Abu Qatada

David Nuttall Excerpts

Monday 12th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I would be breaking the law. Anybody—any official, any civil servant, anybody who had anything to do with putting him on the plane—would be breaking the law, and that is why we will not be doing that. It would be breaking the law.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

Can the Home Secretary confirm that until the European Court of Human Rights interfered and stopped Abu Qatada’s deportation last January, British courts and British judges had always agreed with the Government that he should be deported?

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend is right: Abu Qatada had taken his appeal through all levels of the courts here in the UK, and at every level it had been found that he could be deported. It was the appeal to the European Court that prevented his deportation, and although today’s decision is one of a British court, it has been taken against the background of a very high barrier to deportation that has now been set by the European Court.