Immigration and Asylum Bill

Debate between Chris Philp and Julian Lewis

2nd reading
Monday 13th July 2026 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman knows nothing about Facebook clips, but let me be honest: mistakes were made in the past, and the policies that we have now developed, under new leadership, will fix those issues. In fact, this indefinite leave to remain policy was first proposed by us about a year ago, and then, very wisely, the Home Secretary adopted it.

Let me come to the commitment that the Home Secretary made on Shabir Ahmed, the vile gang rapist who should be deported back to Pakistan. We support the amendment to section 7 of the Immigration Act 1971, although section 33 of the UK Borders Act 2007—I think it is subsection (1)(b)—might need some attention as well. I would only ask the Home Secretary not to do that by amending this Bill, which will probably take a year or so to reach the statute book. I hope that she will consider doing it instead through emergency legislation in September, which could be completed in a couple of weeks; we took the Terrorist Offenders (Restriction of Early Release) Act 2020 through Parliament in, I believe, 15 days in February of that year. There is not a moment to lose, and this can be fixed quite quickly.

As for the substance of the Bill, I agree with some of the Home Secretary’s analyses of where the problems lie. She is right to say that the immigration appeal system, modern slavery laws and human rights laws are being abused on an industrial scale by foreign criminals, and also by people with no legal right to be here, including people who came here illegally in small boats. These illegal immigrants and foreign criminals do make repeated claims, time after time.

The Home Secretary gave the example of a foreign criminal whom it took four years to deport. I was aware of the case of a Somali man who entered the country illegally and participated in the violent gang rape of a 16-year-old girl. On his release from prison, it took eight years to deport that man back to Somalia, because he made two or three different claims on sometimes contradictory grounds. I think that he made two modern slavery claims, and a number of human rights claims as well. There have been other cases in which foreign criminals have avoided being deported. For example, an armed robber avoided being deported back to Nigeria on the grounds that his mental health needs would not be taken care of perfectly there. Another man, a drug dealer, was not sent back to Iraq on ECHR grounds because, apparently, he had become too westernised. There was not a single thought for the safety of British children and the need for them to be protected from paedophiles. A Zimbabwean paedophile was not deported to Zimbabwe because he might get treated with hostility there. The judge gave no thought to protecting British children, and no thought to protecting our citizens from criminals.

In another case, a man was taken off a charter flight to Jamaica, again on human rights grounds—I think it was article 8—and about six months after being removed from that flight, he murdered someone on the streets of south London. That happened because of the supposed human rights of a criminal who went on to commit murder. I agree with the analysis that our immigration legal system, our modern slavery system and the human rights system are being abused on an industrial scale, and that has to end.

[Sir Julian Lewis]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that part of the problem is that practitioners of the legal system seem to believe that there are such things as absolute human rights, whereas most human rights are relative, and can be trumped by other people’s human rights, and in fact, can be abrogated? When you infringe other people’s human rights, you surely cannot expect your own to have priority over theirs, in a sensible system.

[Chris Philp]

I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend. When it comes to foreign criminals, and people who enter this country illegally, having exited a safe place, namely France, I do not think that they should be given all the protections that we have been discussing this afternoon.

Let me turn to some of the specifics that the Home Secretary has put in the Bill. The changes to the immigration tribunal system, and the measures dealing with modern slavery and trying to better define article 8 constitute small steps in the right direction, but on their own, they are not going to work. Past Governments have attempted to make such measures work, but they have essentially failed, and I think that they will fail again. For example, better defining article 8 in domestic law was attempted in—I think, from memory—section 19 of the Immigration Act 2014, which I believe created section 117 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. That was an attempt to do, broadly speaking, what the Home Secretary is trying to do now, and it did not work, because judges—not just those in Strasbourg, but our domestic judges, empowered by the Human Rights Act—simply continued interpreting family rights very expansively and allowing foreign criminals to stay. I admire the Home Secretary’s effort to do this, but it has been tried before and it did not work.

Excluding modern slavery claims by foreign criminals has also been attempted before. The Bill essentially seeks to amend section 63 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, which was an attempt by a previous Government to fix this problem four or five years ago, and it has been repeatedly struck down by the courts. Because of the ECHR and the way in which it is incorporated by the Human Rights Act, it does not matter how we legislate. As with section 63 a few years ago, following the Home Secretary’s most recent attempt today judges will use the European convention on human rights, empowered by the HRA, to circumvent laws passed by this Parliament. The Home Secretary experienced that herself just last week, when her “one in, one out” scheme was upset by vexatious modern slavery claims. She tried valiantly to fix the loophole in guidance, and last week a court struck it down. The conclusion that I have reached—having suffered in the Home Office in the past as she is suffering now, trying to fix these issues within the construct of the ECHR and modern slavery legislation, and the examples that the Home Secretary gave only support this—is that the only way to fix this issue is to come out of these institutions entirely. We cannot do it by tinkering, which is what the Bill seeks to do. The previous Government tried it, I have tried it personally, the Home Secretary’s predecessor tried it, and she is now trying it again. The truth is—

Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Chris Philp and Julian Lewis

2nd reading
Monday 10th March 2025 Commons Chamber

[Chris Philp]

The Minister will come back to it later.

[Sir Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)]

It seems to me that the Government’s good work in this Bill in criminalising the possession of knives with intent will be undermined if the police have to wait for someone to take out the knife and commit an attack before they can discover whether they have a knife. Surely, if there is a separate offence arising from mere possession, as my right hon. Friend says, it is particularly important to enable the police to discover that someone possesses that knife before they have had a chance to do harm with it.

[Chris Philp]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. If we are to prosecute these offences, put more potential perpetrators in prison and, critically, protect the public, we need to detect more of the knives that are routinely carried on our cities’ streets. That means more stop and search and the use of knife-scanning technology of the kind I just described to identify those knives before they are used. My right hon. Friend put it very powerfully.

The Opposition may also be minded to table amendments on the setting up of a statutory national inquiry into rape gangs. For some reason the Government have only set up local inquiries in five areas. Some local authorities are refusing to hold inquiries, which is scandalous. About 50 towns are affected, so inquiries into just five of them is not good enough. Moreover, those local inquiries do not have the statutory powers under the Inquiries Act 2005 to compel witnesses to give evidence. The chairs of the Manchester local inquiry resigned last year because, even then, public authorities were covering this up. We need a national statutory inquiry, and we intend to amend the Bill to achieve that if the Government will not agree to one. Local councils and councillors, the police and the Crown Prosecution Service were all involved to a greater or lesser extent in ignoring or even covering up these terrible offences. We need to get to the truth.