Ben Bradshaw
Main Page: Ben Bradshaw (Labour - Exeter)Department Debates - View all Ben Bradshaw's debates with the Home Office
(7 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Wallace
The hon. Gentleman might like to reflect on some of his comments. It was this Government who brought in exit checks, which did not exist under the Labour Government, so people could leave the country come what may. People do not just travel through e-gates unmonitored—of course they are monitored—so his allegation is wrong. And no one was dragged to the House. He should realise that I like the sound of my own voice, and I am happy to stay here all afternoon to answer questions on this issue, if he wants.
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)
It is not good enough for the Minister, as the Prime Minister’s official spokesman did yesterday, simply to hide behind intelligence as an excuse for not answering the most basic questions about this dreadful case, so let me try a policy question: what assessment has he made of the impact of the coalition Government’s disastrous decision to scrap Labour’s control orders and his ability to monitor people like this?
Mr Wallace
The right hon. Gentleman forgets the position of Labour’s control orders before the courts. Funnily enough, as I pointed out earlier, his Government did not seem to have quite the right regard for the Human Rights Act 1998 or the rule of law that they should and were constantly seeing their measures struck down. We do believe that TPIMs are a good policy—one of the tools in the toolbox to enable us to monitor these people. We will use them wherever we can and whenever we need to do so, to make sure that we do everything to keep people who pose a threat under control. So far, we have not abandoned them or failed to use them when the need presents itself.