Asylum Policy

Cat Eccles Excerpts

Monday 17th November 2025 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

We are committed to, and have always supported, the repatriation of Hongkongers. The consultation on earned settlement will be announced to this House very shortly—later this week, I believe—and I look forward to discussing that in detail with my hon. Friend.

[Cat Eccles (Stourbridge) (Lab)]

As a delegate to the Council of Europe, I will always defend the European convention on human rights and its institution and treaties, and that is why it is important to talk about it in the correct context. In the last 45 years, the Strasbourg Court has ruled against the UK on immigration rules only three times, and in the latest year for which figures are available, the number of successful human rights-based appeals represented 0.73% of all sentenced foreign national offenders. The last time article 8 was successfully applied to block a deportation was in 2020, so why does the Home Secretary believe that articles 3 and 8 of the ECHR are blocking the UK from controlling its borders, when the data simply does not back that up?

[Shabana Mahmood]

I do not think the data relating to the Strasbourg Court is necessarily reflective of what we are seeing in our own courts here at home. My hon. Friend knows that article 8 is a qualified right, and it is absolutely appropriate for Governments to dictate how that right is applied in their individual countries. We will do that by bringing forward second Session legislation. There is a case for reform of article 8, and there is absolutely a case for continuing the discussions with our European partners at the Council of Europe on article 3, because we are not the only country that is seeing the expansion of article 3 having implications for the deportation of, in particular, foreign national offenders. The case for reform is strong and we have the right solutions, but we are signatories to the ECHR and we will always be so under this Government.