Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Friday 11th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

One of the difficulties is that, under article 8 of the Human Rights Act, we are not allowed to deport people to so-called unsafe countries. If 40% of these people come from Europe, by definition they do not reside in unsafe countries. Therefore, we need a Bill such as this so that they can all be sent back immediately to France, Italy, Germany or wherever.

[Mr Hollobone]

I agree with my hon. Friend and I thank him for that intervention. He is far more expert than I am in legal matters, given his extensive parliamentary experience, legal training, and great deal of common sense, but I am not sure whether he is correct. My understanding is that, in our bizarre human rights system, even member states of the European Union are not deemed to be safe countries to return to. I believe that Greece is classified as a country to which it is not safe to return individuals, either under the asylum regulations or the prison regulations. That is a country to which millions of our fellow citizens go on holiday every year—

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[Julian Knight]

rose—

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Will my hon. Friend give way on that point?

[Mr Hollobone]

I have a wealth of parliamentary talent before me and I am happy and keen to give way to all my hon. Friends, but I am operating a taxi queueing system, and to be fair to all my hon. Friends I shall take the interventions in order.

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[Mr Hollobone]

My hon. Friend speaks not just for Crawley and its good citizens, but for the nation. He is spot-on. We need to get rid of the Human Rights Act and replace it with a Magna Carta-like domestic Bill of Rights that we can all understand and that implements justice in the way that the British people would like to see it implemented.

My hon. Friend probably has more foreign national offenders going in and out of his constituency than any of the rest of us, because of the location of Gatwick airport. I am shocked and appalled, as I know his constituents will be, that such a violent offender was released back into his local community. That cannot be right on any level. Such people need to be sentenced and convicted, serve their time in jail in full in their country of origin and not be let back into our country. Then the citizens of Crawley and the rest of the United Kingdom would be able to sleep safe in their beds at night.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

We are now hearing nothing about the repeal of the Human Rights Act. What has happened to that? A moment ago my hon. Friend mentioned the return of foreign criminals. If I am fortunate enough to catch your eye, Mr Speaker, I hope to deal with that in more detail later, but the problem with the present system is that there is nothing to prevent deported foreign criminals—however few are deported—from returning later, because no biometric information is kept. That is one of the points made by Migration Watch, and the Government should change it. As biometric visas are introduced in the future, we will be able to track people who have been convicted and sent to jail here and then sent back to their country of origin.

[Mr Hollobone]

My hon. Friend is correct. We could strengthen the Bill in Committee with specific clauses to that effect. In Justice questions this week I asked the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab), whether it was true that as a member of the European Union, we are not allowed to deport EU foreign nationals who are in prison in our country and ban them from ever returning, and he confirmed that that is the case. We can therefore say without fear of contradiction in the Chamber today that it is not absurd to say that if we remain a member of the European Union, crime will be higher and we will have more criminals in our country. Under the rules of free movement we are not able to stop EU criminals coming into this country, and we are not able to deport back to EU countries those who have been convicted of serious offences and imprisoned.

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[Mr Hollobone]

It is that sort of intervention that confirms my view that the Bill would be poorer if my hon. Friend were not on the Committee. He would bring to it a wealth of experience, not only as a Member of this House, but because he has concentrated on justice issues since he arrived here in 2005. The Bill would be far better were he kind enough to serve on the Committee.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Has my hon. Friend received any notification from the Government about whether the Bill will be allowed to proceed to Committee?

[Mr Hollobone]

I have not received any such helpful indications from the Government, but I do not usually receive helpful indications about very much at all, so I am not necessarily taking the lack of an indication as a negative. I would hope that, given the presence of so many hon. Members here today, the Government might realise that the issue is important to our constituents and needs to be taken seriously.

I am still in a state of shock, having heard the intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley. We are told that we are safer being a member of the European Union, but my hon. Friend has given the House a clear, explicit example of how we are not safer. Here we have an Afghan national—he is not even a national of the Netherlands, but a resident there—who is a convicted murderer, but who can none the less fly into this country. Border Force does not know anything about him. He then commits an offence and is out on the streets in Crawley before being apprehended again. How on earth can we be safer and more secure in our nation with rules such as that?

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[Mr Hollobone]

It was lots of billions to bail out the Irish economy. As part of that agreement for the lending of a substantial amount of money, I am sure we could have done something on repatriating Irish nationals.

No. 3, which, given the size of its population, might be a surprise to some, is Jamaica. There are 567 Jamaican nationals in our jails.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

It is completely absurd that we cannot deport people back to Jamaica, which is a completely safe country. If I am fortunate enough to catch Mr Speaker’s eye, I shall make the point later that there is a particular case of our not being able to deport somebody back to the West Indies. The situation is so difficult that the British taxpayer is now actually funding a prison in the West Indies so that we can pay for people to go back to a prison for which we are paying.

[Mr Hollobone]

I am most grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention. May I welcome you to the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker? It is always a delight to see you grace the Chamber with your presence, and your appearance has certainly made my day.

I have given the House some wrong information—perhaps my eyesight has let me down. I said that Jamaica is No. 3, but it is in fact No. 4. No. 3 is Romania with 629, and Jamaica is No. 4 with 567.

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[Mr Hollobone]

I agree with my hon. Friend that it is fantastic that eastern Europe is now free from the Soviet yoke. He and I spent much of our political life worrying about the cold war—not seeing how it would end, and perhaps thinking that it would never end. Everyone is delighted that it has ended and that eastern European countries are now firmly on their way to becoming fully developed, westernised economies with democratic values and freedoms. That is all fine, but the problem with our membership of the European Union—this is one of the issues that the Bill seeks to address—is that we are not able to check which of the Lithuanians coming to our shores have got criminal pasts. It is an absolute fundamental of our national security that we should be able to stop anyone coming into this country and check whether they have some kind of criminal record, but our membership of the European Union means that we are simply not able to do that.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Before my hon. Friend gets on to another country and mentions the number of criminals we would like to deport, and before my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) praises that country, may we just establish one fact? Those of us who support the Bill have absolutely no objection to the wonderful work done by Poles, Jamaicans, Lithuanians or Latvians; we simply want to deport people who are convicted criminals. That is all we want to do.

[Mr Hollobone]

It is not quite all we want to do. We actually want to stop convicted criminals coming into this country in the first place. I readily admit that that is not clear in the Bill as drafted, but that is something that we could strengthen in Committee. I am sure that that would enjoy my hon. Friend’s support. The main aim of the Bill, however, is to send back foreign nationals convicted of offences to wherever they come from.

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[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I am very grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak on this important Bill. The House will be relieved to hear that my comments need not be very long, because my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone), with his characteristic courtesy, skill and devotion to the procedures of this House, has made such a comprehensive case in favour of the Bill that I cannot for the life of me understand why anybody would oppose the entirely common-sense proposals that he is elucidating this morning.

As we have heard, this issue is of enormous importance. Some 10,000 of our prisoners in custody are foreign nationals, but only about 1,000 recommendations for deportation are made each year. That is even more surprising given that this has been a matter of national debate for so long. There is immense public interest in this issue. Only this week, Rod Liddle, who is not an hon. Friend but a well-known journalist, wrote a most interesting article in The Spectator on precisely this subject. This is a not just a matter for a quiet Friday morning in the House of Commons, but a subject that is constantly discussed all over the nation.

Rod Liddle, in his inimitable way, portrayed the problem we are dealing with. We have heard that there are all these people gumming up our prisons who are not deported, but at last, apparently, the Home Office had decided to get tough in the case of Myrtle Cothill, a

“South African widow aged 92 who wished to see out her final days with her daughter in the UK.”

But the Home Office said “tough luck, Myrtle” and told her she had to get on the next plane and leave the country.

Last week, I mentioned the case of a leading American Shakespearean scholar, who was frogmarched to the airport by the Home Office because he had stayed a few days longer. What the public cannot understand is why so many good people are being kicked out of our country, not least Myrtle Cothill—although after a national campaign and a huge petition, the Home Office finally relented—and yet all these convicted criminals are not being deported, at a massive cost to our taxpayers of up to £1 billion.

[Mr Chope]

Following our debate on this subject last week, I have received correspondence from people who are not my constituents but who know people—for example from the United States—who are being picked on in most unsatisfactory circumstances. It seems that the Home Office is going for the soft-touch people.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

That is the problem. Is the Home Office going for soft-touch people? We had that debate last week with the Under-Secretary of State for Refugees. He gave a skilful performance from the Dispatch Box, but he could not really deny my hon. Friend’s impeccable case. Indeed, the Minister admitted that there are more than 30,000 illegal asylum seekers who cannot be deported, on top of the people we are talking about today, and all that has to do with the Dublin convention and the Human Rights Act 1998.

There was a firm pledge in the Conservative party manifesto to deal with article 8 of the European convention on human rights. There has been massive controversy and publicity about that, and I cannot understand why we are still waiting. I hope that when the Minister replies to the debate, she will tell us what has happened to our reform of human rights legislation, because this is a matter of great public interest.

Rod Liddle gave some interesting examples of such cases, and others have been enumerated in other newspapers. Let us consider the case of Baghdad Meziane. Baghdad is a convicted al-Qaeda terrorist, with links to the appalling people who committed that atrocity in Paris recently. As Rod Liddle states:

“He was convicted in a British court of raising money for al-Qaeda (and also of the ubiquitous credit-card fraud) and sentenced to 11 years in prison. At his trial the judge pointed out, perhaps unnecessarily, that Meziane was a very dangerous man and recommended deportation once his term of incarceration had expired.”

But no. This “very dangerous” and unpleasant man, was actually released from prison five years early and allowed to return to Leicester. He was not put on the first available plane to Algiers, whence, despite his name, he originates.

“Baghdad argued that to deport him would contravene his human right to a normal family life.”

Therefore this man, this dangerous individual, has been released back into our community in Leicester because he claims a right to family life, and despite lengthy legal battles, all our debates, and the Home Secretary’s attempts at legislation, in Leicester he now resides.

[Julian Knight]

May I draw my hon. Friend’s attention to another example where process and legality are failing? Andre Babbage was released from detention by the High Court because there was no prospect of deporting him to Zimbabwe, because he does not have a passport and does not wish to return there, despite a high chance that he will reoffend.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

That is what the public cannot understand. People are laughing at our system, and we are asking the Government to take action. Rod Liddle also mentioned the case of J1—we are not told his real name, because that would apparently breach his privacy:

“J1 is a known friend and colleague of one Mohammed Emwazi, usually referred to by his stage name of Jihadi John”—

that is the Islamic State’s late madman whom we know all about.

“J1 is known to be a senior organiser for Somalia’s exciting Islamic terror franchise, al-Shabab, and has links to the Muslim extremists who tried to blow up London on 21 July 2005. For five years we tried to kick him out, but we have now given up and he is not even under surveillance any more”.

Or how about CS? Again, we do not know CS’s real name because of her right to privacy:

“But at least we know that CS is a Moroccan woman and the daughter-in-law of…Sheikh Abu Hamza al-Masri, now serving a life sentence in the USA for terrorism-related offences. It’s the European Courts of Justice blocking her deportation, because she is the sole carer of her son in this country…She was found smuggling a sim card into Hamza’s Belmarsh cell.”

We cannot kick her out of this country, and we clearly need a Bill such as the one we are discussing. When the Minister replies, she needs to tell the British people why we cannot deal with such people.

Let us leave jihadists for a moment. The article continues:

“There’s always the child rapists. Shabir Ahmed, aged 63, is serving a 22-year sentence for having been the ringleader of a gang of Pakistani paedophiles in Rochdale. Ahmed is petitioning the European Court of Human Rights to prevent his deportation. He claims that his trial was ‘institutionally racist’”.

The Home Office may fight, but I suspect that this man will be staying in a prison in this country.

[Bob Stewart]

I would go further than the Bill and say that when a foreign national commits a crime, we should have some sort of arrangement by which we send them back to their own country as soon as their sentence begins. If necessary, we will pay the costs of that, but let us get them out of our country as soon as possible.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I will deal with that point in a moment, and that is precisely what Migration Watch UK—a very respected charity—is arguing. The article continues:

“We can’t even get rid of the criminals who actively want to leave. Mohammed Faisal is a convicted ‘drug lord’ who is reportedly ‘desperate’ to get back to Pakistan.”

However, the Home Office has messed up his papers, so he is staying put in this country.

“And what of the Yardies?” —

Jamaicans have already been mentioned—

“We couldn’t send them to serve their sentences in Jamaica because the prisons are so bad it would breach their human rights.”

So, as I made clear in an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering, “in desperation”, we are spending £25 million of taxpayers money on

“building them a nice prison there, maybe with views over Montego Bay. There is a plethora of national and supra-national legislation protecting the rights of the foreign criminal: the Human Rights Act, the Dublin Convention, the European Court of Human Rights, the European Courts of Justice. But none protecting the rest of us.”

There are all those conventions and Acts of Parliament, but what about the British people who are paying for all this? They cannot understand how, after 10 years of debates, these people are still with us. They are laughing at us. It is not just a question of money; they are literally laughing at us. Many of them are not just serving time in prison, but they are being let out of prison and back into our communities, having committed appalling crimes. They are not being kicked out. [Interruption.] And no doubt they are indeed receiving benefits. That is why the British people are fed up and want action to be taken. It is unlikely that my hon. Friend’s Bill will get to Committee because it is a private Member’s Bill, but therefore the Government should act, and that is why this debate is important.

There have been many other cases. The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph have run a long-standing campaign, and we owe them a great debt for dealing with this issue and trying to raise it on the national stage. The Daily Telegraph put it well:

“Sixty years ago, with the horrors of the Second World War still fresh and raw, lawyers devised a set of principles designed to prevent a repeat of the Holocaust and other depravities. This was the European Convention on Human Rights, enshrined in British law under Labour’s Human Rights Act in 1998. In 1950, those lawyers did not set out to protect an immigrant’s right to bowl a cricket ball on a Sunday afternoon”—

or any of the other absurd examples that we have seen in the press recently—

“nor did they agonise over any of the other absurd scenarios, uncovered by our campaign”.

[Julian Knight]

The tentacles of the Human Rights Act spread far and wide and in ways that are perhaps not obvious at first to the outside observer. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is unacceptable for the Advocates General of the European Court of Justice to argue that the UK cannot expel a non-EU national with a criminal record who happens to be the parent of a child who is an EU citizen?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Yes. There are so many absurd examples. Those lawyers, who were dealing with a Europe that had been devastated by fascism and Nazism and trying to create a reasonable body of law to protect us all, could not have foreseen how their work in 1950 in setting up the Council of Europe, on which my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) and I are proud to have served, would mean that criminals could deliberately misuse and abuse the system.

There are appalling examples. For instance, Lionel Hibbert, a 50-year-old Jamaican criminal who fathered three children by three mothers within four months of one another, claimed he should not be deported because of his right to family life. Hon. Members will think that that is a ridiculous claim, but British judges agreed with it and overturned the Home Office decision because of that man’s claim to family life. In another example cited by The Daily Telegraph, the violent drug dealer, Gary Ellis, a 23-year-old Jamaican, convinced a court that he had a stable family life with his young daughter and girlfriend, when in fact she had split up with him years previously and refused to allow him into her home.

The court’s willingness to believe those stories and attach inappropriate weight to them is a huge problem—I concede that to the Government—but therefore we need more legislation. Ultimately, the courts have to subscribe to legislation passed by this House to make this absolutely watertight: if someone is convicted and if they are a danger to our society, they can be deported. That is what the Bill is about.

Let me deal with the suggestion from Migration Watch, which is very much like what is suggested in the Bill. We know that there are some 10,000 foreign nationals in custody, and that only about 1,000 recommendations for deportation are made each year. We know that something is wrong. Should there not be—this is what the Bill is about—a presumption that deportation will be recommended for a wide range of offences that attract a sentence of 12 months or more, as well as for offenders who are illegal immigrants? The trigger should be lower for a second or third offence. Central records should be kept, including biometric information, which should be available to visa-issuing posts overseas to prevent offenders from applying for a visa under a false identity. I refer again to my intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering. That is a problem—there is nothing to stop somebody whom we have finally managed to deport from simply changing their identity and coming back.

We know that the current arrangements for the deportation of foreigners convicted of criminal offences are extremely unsatisfactory. Let us a least agree on that. When the Minister replies to the debate, let her acknowledge that the arrangements are unsatisfactory and that we should do something about it.

There are no clear guidelines for the courts. The general principles have not been revised sufficiently. Only 5,000 to 6,000 recommendations were made annually in recent years. There are no statistics on the number of deportations that are carried out, and no feedback to the courts. An offender cannot only appeal against a recommendation for a deportation; they can also appeal against a subsequent deportation order. They can claim asylum and appeal against a refusal of asylum. They can then seek judicial review of removal instructions following the failure of their claim. Who is paying for all those procedures? Who is benefiting from them? Is it the British public or is it lawyers and the convicted criminal? As I have said, that all happens at public expense.

Deportation cannot be recommended as a sentence in its own right, and nor can it justify a reduction of a sentence. Deportation recommendations are often considered towards the end of a custodial sentence. Why not at the beginning? That is what the Bill is about. If someone is convicted, on day one, this should be part of the sentence: “It’s deportation, chum.” Why are we still arguing about it years into someone’s sentence?

As I have said, there is nothing to stop a deported criminal from returning to Britain under a false identity. A recommendation for deportation is a matter for the courts, but a decision is for the Home Secretary, who takes into account the circumstances in the offender’s country of origin, humanitarian aspects and considerations of public policy. That sounds very fair, but what is being done on the ground?

The offender may appeal to an immigration judge against the Home Secretary’s decision. The current position in law is that the court must consider whether the accused’s presence in the UK is to its detriment. I believe—Migration Watch and many other people believe the same—that that is the wrong yardstick. There should be a zero-tolerance approach to serious criminal behaviour by foreign nationals, which should involve a presumption that deportation will be recommended for any offence that results in a 12-month prison sentence.

That sounds entirely logical, and if the Bill by some miracle becomes law, that is effectively what will happen. My hon. Friend the Member for Kettering talked of the Bill going to Committee, where I am sure he would prepared to accept a compromise. If the Minister comes back to us with a sensible compromise, we will consider it. I am sure he would be prepared to withdraw the Bill if the Minister announces today that we are adopting that policy of zero tolerance that involves a presumption that deportation will be recommended in any offence that results in a 12-month sentence.

That is a moderate proposal—it is the Migration Watch proposal, but my hon. Friends might want to ask for more. Migration Watch and I believe that the trigger should be a six-month sentence on a second conviction and a three-month sentence on a third conviction. Currently, magistrates may impose a maximum sentence of only six months, but that is to be increased to 12 months. Until that change is made, the approach I have suggested would mean that magistrates could recommend deportation for a second offence only. That, too, is a moderate proposal.

It is currently not possible to make deportation part of the sentence. Why? That is what we are asking for in the Bill. The law should be changed to permit that, to reduce the amount of time that foreign prisoners spend in prisons. Our jails are already so heavily overcrowded that we cannot carry out proper rehabilitation—we cannot afford it, and it is bad for prisoners. Surely the approach we are suggesting would be much better for prisoners. It is much better for the welfare of prisoners that those 800 Poles who are currently in our jails, or the 500 Jamaicans or Irish, are sent back to prisons in their countries, particularly when there is a foreign language involved, so that they can be rehabilitated and gradually put back into their own societies. It is not good for them or for our taxpayer that they are kept in our prisons.

[Bob Stewart]

That would be very good for the other inhabitants of our prisons, who would have more space. Our prisons are so overcrowded, and currently, more than 10% of our prison population are foreigners.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

That is what we are talking about—10%—so this is a matter of enormous importance.

As I have said, it is vital to avoid lengthy delays in custody, which is what the Bill would do, as I understand it. Deportation proceedings should commence on the very first day of the sentence. That is the key point.

[Michael Tomlinson]

Does my hon. Friend or Migration Watch have a practical solution on where to send the 400-odd prisoners my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) mentioned, who have not declared where they come from?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

That is an interesting question, and I confess that I do not have an instant response. My hon. Friend the Minister has heard that intervention, and I am sure she can deal with it. That just shows, does it not, how people are deliberately laughing at our system and abusing it? People should be aware of that.

[Mr Hollobone]

That is a tricky part of the issue—the 434 people who will not declare their nationality. How, on any basis, can we let them out of prison if they are not prepared to tell us where they came from? Do we have to make special provision for them—a prison in a remote location, another country or elsewhere? Surely we cannot have those people walking our streets when they will not tell us where they come from.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

If, having been convicted, they are not prepared to tell the authorities where they are from, there should be a presumption that they will remain in prison until they do so. That might actually concentrate a few minds. Again, that is something for the Minister deal with.

As long as the United Kingdom remains a signatory of the 1951 refugee convention, criminals cannot be denied the option of claiming asylum, even after conviction. I believe that any such applicants should remain in detention and be put through the fast-track procedure I am talking about.

A serious weakness of the present system is that there is nothing to prevent criminals from returning to Britain under a false identity. Given that they are criminals, they would presumably have no compunction about changing their identity. To help tackle that weakness in the system, all those convicted should have their biometric information recorded and held centrally. As biometric visas are introduced overseas, visa applicants should be checked against the database. The records would detect those reoffending under a different identity. Perhaps the Minister will deal with the serious point raised today about the return to this country of criminals who change their identity. At the moment, we can apparently do nothing about it. We should keep biometric information so that we can identify them and stop them coming back.

Central records should, at the very least, include the immigration status of all those convicted, the number of recommendations for deportation and the number of deportations carried out. The courts should be informed of the outcome of the recommendations—I understand that at present they are not. I may be wrong about that, but the Minister can correct me if she wishes. There should also be a presumption that deportation is recommended for certain classes of offences, including drug offences, such as importation and supply but not necessarily possession; manufacture of class A drugs; people-smuggling offences; forgery of travel documents; serious violent and sexual offences; firearms offences; fraud; all offences involving the handling of the international proceeds of crime; and all defined immigration offences.

On day one, when someone is convicted under the proposals set out in the Bill, and under my suggestions to toughen it up if necessary, deportation proceedings should start immediately. They would be triggered by a certain length of sentence or a sentence for particularly serious types of crime. That is clear and simple, and it should be done. There should also be an automatic recommendation of deportation for offenders who are illegal immigrants and a presumption of deportation for offenders who are in Britain on a temporary basis, for example for work or study, which was dealt with in the Bill that we discussed last week.

As we know, the whole question of article 8 is a mess. We know why it was originally created, and I talked about how lawyers devised the arrangements in the early 1950s, but they are in urgent need of reform. Actually, article 8 specifically states exceptions to the right to family life. So far as those exceptions are in accordance with the law, they include public safety, the economic wellbeing of the country, the prevention of disorder or crime, and the protection of the rights and freedoms of others, for instance of law-abiding citizens.

It is difficult to know how many deportations from the United Kingdom are stopped on appeal due to article 8 arguments, as official figures vary depending on who we ask. Again, I hope the Minister deals with this point. The Courts Service says that in 2010—I am sure there are more up-to-date figures, but maybe these give a good example; I have just got them from the Library—223 people won their appeal against deportation. Of those, 102 were successful on the grounds of article 8. The independent chief inspector of the UK Border Agency said that in the same year 425 foreign national prisoners won their appeal against deportation, primarily on the grounds of article 8. If this debate achieves nothing else, perhaps we can get more up-to-date information on the exact effect of article 8.

[Michael Tomlinson]

Does my hon. Friend consider that the Bill, as drafted, would be strong enough to stop lawyers engaging in article 8-type arguments?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

We need to consider in Committee whether the Bill is strong enough to override article 8, if we are lucky enough to get the Bill to that stage.

[Mr Hollobone]

My hon. Friend is making an interesting and informative speech. Does he agree that one reason for the opacity of the figures is that it depends on how we ask the question? In researching this topic, I came across the fact that there are deportations, removals, transfers and repatriations. I do not know what the difference is between those four things, but depending on which one we ask about, we get a different answer.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Exactly. This is an absolute minefield, and because of that it is prone to manipulation by clever lawyers—I can put it no other way. Frankly, the law needs to be cleared up. I suspect we cannot clear it up unless we repeal the Human Rights Act 1998 and repatriate this whole part of our law into a British Bill of Rights. Lawyers would still argue about the provisions of a British Bill of Rights, but at least we would have created the law in this House and tried to bring some clarity to these matters. Above all, we could try to recreate public confidence. We can become enmeshed in the details, and I am sorry if I have had to go into some of them, but let us focus, laser-like, on what the public are talking about. The public cannot understand that there are 10,000 people convicted of offences sitting in our jails who we are not sending home. Worse, many of them are coming out of our jails and staying in this country. That is what the public want the Government to deal with.

[Michael Tomlinson]

I mentioned lawyers a few moments ago. I declare an interest as a lawyer. Lawyers can find arguments, but the law needs to be clear. The clearer the law is, the less room there is for argument in courts by lawyers and the less reason for judges to make mistakes.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Like my hon. Friend, I, too, am a lawyer. We are only doing our jobs. Give us unclear law and a client to represent, and we will put forward our best case. It is up to the Government to give us clear law. Judges have been known to reconsider deportation on appeal if they feel that it is a punishment disproportionate to the crime committed. That even happened in the case of a crime that resulted in death, in Gurung v. the Secretary of State for the Home Department. If the law is unclear, we open up all sorts of possibilities for lawyers to drive a coach and horses through what we are trying to achieve.

[Mr Chope]

Does my hon. Friend not agree that the ancient English principle of equity should be applied in these cases—that people cannot seek justice unless they come with clean hands?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

That is an interesting point. As usual, the common law of our country, developed more than 1,000 years ago, has an enormous amount of common sense. Perhaps we should worry less about bringing in more laws and more about enforcing present common law.

I will come to the end of my speech in a moment, to allow others to speak. To be fair to the Government, they have tried to do something because of the massive public debate. When the Minister responds to the debate, I suspect she may say that the Bill is not necessary because there is already legislation to deal with the problem. Is she shaking her head, or she is nodding? It is not fair of me to interpret her sedentary signs. However, that is a common response from Ministers.

Let me end on this point. Section 32 of the UK Borders Act 2007 provides:

“The Secretary of State must make a deportation order in respect of a foreign criminal”

if they have been convicted of an offence and sentenced to at least 12 months’ imprisonment. The Act specifies that in those circumstances the deportation of persons will be

“conducive to the public good”

for the purposes of the Immigration Act 1971. Section 33 of the 2007 Act, as amended, identifies six exceptions to automatic deportation. In addition, section 3(6) of the 1971 Act provides that non-British citizens over the age of 17 are liable to deportation from the UK if they are convicted of an offence punishable with imprisonment and their deportation is recommended by the court, although the 2007 Act has somewhat curtailed the scope for criminal courts to make recommendations for deportation. A person cannot return to the United Kingdom while a deportation order remains in force against them, although they can apply for the order to be revoked.

I am sorry to have read out those points. I do not want to sound too much like a Minister—[Hon. Members: “No!”] God forbid. But one would think, would one not, that the law was clear, given the 2007 Act, coupled with the Immigration Act 1971 and recent pronouncements by the Home Secretary? One would think that clear powers were available to Ministers to deal with the problem and deport these people. However, that is simply not happening. There are still 10,000 of them in our prisons, and many of them are living in our communities having left prison and not been deported. I am worried about what is happening on the ground. We have in power for the best part of six years, and this has been an issue of public debate for many more years, so I should like the Minister to explain why we are still waiting for action.

The problem involving the European Union has already been mentioned, but I want to say something about European economic area nationals. The scope to deport EEA nationals is restricted by European law. Specifically, directive 2004/38/EC—often referred to as the free movement of persons directive or the free movement of citizens directive—sets out the circumstances in which an EEA national with a right to reside in another member state, or the family member of an EEA national, may be expelled. The directive does not specify any particular sentence thresholds that must apply to expulsion cases. Instead, it requires that expulsion must be proportionate and based exclusively on the personal conduct of the individual concerned and the level of threat that they pose to public policy or public security. Previous criminal convictions cannot, in themselves, be grounds for expulsion, nor can expulsion be justified on general prevention grounds. Furthermore, more demanding grounds are required to deport EEA national offenders who have resided in a host member state.

In November, in a letter to Donald Tusk, the Prime Minister set out the United Kingdom’s demands for reform in the area of immigration and social benefits, which included a demand to:

“Crack down on abuse of free movement, e.g. tougher and longer re-entry bans for fraudsters”

—this is the Prime Minister speaking, not me—

“and those involved in sham marriages, stronger powers to deport criminals and stop them coming back”

—some of that is in bold type—

“addressing the inconsistency between EU citizens’ and British citizens’ eligibility to bring a non-EU spouse to the UK, and addressing ECJ judgments that have made it more difficult to tackle abuse.”

Moreover, in the Conservative party manifesto, on which we all stood and which we wholeheartedly endorse in every single respect, we said:

“We will negotiate with the EU to introduce stronger powers to deport criminals and stop them coming back, and tougher and longer re-entry bans for all those who abuse free movement”.

Why is there so much dissatisfaction with politicians? Perhaps it is partly because, despite what we sometimes say in letters to high officials of the European Union or in our manifestos—we stated specifically in the Conservative party manifesto that we would deal with this problem and deport these people, and that a negotiation was taking place—we are still discussing this issue on a Friday. I predict that we will not secure the Minister’s agreement to this Bill, or to a Bill like it, but the matter is urgent and should be dealt with.

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[Philip Davies]

I agree with my hon. Friend’s sentiments, but, given where we are, we are going have to do something to give judges as little discretion as possible, because the more discretion we give them, the more they defy the will of Parliament.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I apologise to my hon. Friend if during my remarks I stressed my personal point of view, which is that if someone is sentenced to more than 12 months, they should be deported. I am not agonising too much about that. The problem is that so many of the people who are sentenced to more than 12 months are not being deported. Does my hon. Friend see that point? We should just concentrate on doing away with article 8 and getting our own Bill of Rights so that we can actually deport these serious criminals.

[Philip Davies]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend.

For completeness, I should say that the Court of Appeal stated in R v. Mintchev:

“As a matter of principle it would not be right to reduce an otherwise appropriate sentence so as to avoid the”

automatic deportation provisions. A further clarification stated that

“automatic deportation provisions are not a penalty included in the sentence. They are instead a consequence of the sentence.”

My public service broadcasting message from today to judges is that they should look at the Court of Appeals judgment in that case, so that we do not end up with any other problems like that. There are many crimes for which sentences cannot be appealed, so it is important that judges deal with things the first time. We cannot always rely on the Court of Appeal.

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[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is right. Of course the situation is only going to get worse. We had net immigration into the UK last year of more than 320,000 people. It is not necessary to be the chief statistician to work out that the number of foreign national offenders will keep going up and up, as the number of foreign nationals coming into the UK goes up.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

It is the settled policy of Her Majesty’s Government—I see the Minister for Europe speaking with the Deputy Speaker now—that Turkey should enter the European Union. They support that application, and indeed it has been fast-tracked. There are 77 million Turks. Turkish jails are notoriously appalling. There is absolutely no doubt that if Turkey joined the EU, as is our settled policy, every single one of these 77 million Turks would have an absolute right of entry into this country. A proportion of them would naturally end up in prison, and I predict that very few of them would ever be sent back to Turkish prisons.

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is right. In many respects the problem is even more immediate, because my understanding of last week’s negotiations is that Turkish people will be able to enter the EU without visas, so we do not even have to wait until Turkey joins the EU to see that happen, so of course the problem is going to get worse. That is why the Bill is absolutely urgent. We cannot wait to implement its measures; we need to do something now.

When we look at the number of EU foreign nationals in UK prisons since the introduction of free movement, we see that just six countries—the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Poland—account for over half that population. It is from those countries that we have seen the huge growth in the number of people coming over to the UK from the EU. The numbers from countries such as Spain and Germany are much smaller by comparison.

Of course, the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering did not make—I mention it for completeness’ sake—is what has happened to prisoner numbers in those EU countries. Members may or may not be surprised to learn that at the same time that we have been taking more Polish and Romanian prisoners into UK jails, there has been a corresponding reduction in the prison population in those countries. Members may speculate on why Romania’s prison population has plummeted at the same time as the number of Romanians in UK prisons has gone through the roof. I suggest that the two may be linked, and it is for others to try to disprove that link. It seems to me to be rather more than a coincidence.

My hon. Friend the Member for Kettering said—it was the one part of his speech with which I disagreed—that that was a stain on countries such as Poland, and that it besmirched them. Good luck to them, I say. They seem to be playing a very sensible game. I make no criticism of Poland for wanting to export its criminals to other parts of the European Union. My quibble is not with Poland, but with the UK Government for allowing these people into the country in the first place and not kicking them out at the first possible opportunity. I make no criticism of Poland; I criticise the UK Government for not getting a grip of the situation.

This is a growing problem in our prisons. As my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering rightly said, we have very few prisoners from other parts of the world. We have 180 from the whole of central and south America put together. That tells its own story. This is a direct consequence of our membership of the EU.

We must do something to prevent re-entry. The Bill, on its own, is essential, and hopefully I have explained why we need to do something about kicking people out of the country more efficiently than we are currently doing, but that will be pointless if we do not also have measures in place to prevent re-entry. Otherwise it is just a token gesture. The hon. Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) tabled an early-day motion on this issue. It states:

“That this House notes that the criminal convictions held by EU citizens that are revealed by a Disclosure and Barring Service check are only those held in central records in the UK; is concerned that this does not therefore include convictions held abroad of foreign nationals; further notes that it is not obligatory for an employer to require an employee to provide a certificate of good conduct from their home country; and therefore calls on the Government to introduce and enforce the obligatory disclosure of any previous convictions held by EU and other foreign-born citizens upon application for a job in the UK.”

That is a very sensible early-day motion, and it goes to show that the Bill’s provisions, and indeed going a bit further than my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering, would command support from not just people such as me, but Members on both sides of the House.

Given the points raised by Opposition Members—whether the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, the hon. Member for Bassetlaw, who is a senior Member of the House, or a former shadow Home Secretary—I hope we can look forward to the shadow Minister telling us that the Labour party also agrees with the provisions in the Bill and would actually support going further.

What the shadow Minister says will be important, because this is the last day for private Members’ Bills in this Session, and there will be no further opportunities to take the further stages of any Bill scheduled for today. Therefore, if the Labour party could indicate its support for making it easier to deport foreign nationals, that would give the Government some encouragement to make their own provisions when time runs out for this Bill. I am sure the Minister would be encouraged to know that Opposition parties welcomed more work being done on this issue in the House.

We have no way of knowing the criminal past of any EU citizen entering the UK, contrary to what somebody said in a debate I took part in on the EU. We will have to do a top 10 list of the most outlandish claims by those who want to stay in the EU, but my No. 1 at the moment is that when somebody comes to passport control, we scan their passport and the computer comes up with all their criminal offences in their home country, so we do not have to let them in if we do not want to. I would love that system to be in place, but I am afraid it is a work of fiction—it does not exist at all, as I hope the Minister will also be able to confirm.

I do not want to test the patience of the House—others want to contribute, and there are other matters to be debated today—but I want to make it clear that the Bill is essential; it would certainly command the majority of support among my constituents, and I have indicated that it would also command the support of people on both sides of the House.

Had we been able to kick people out of the country, and had we had a robust policy of border control so that we could take fingerprints or DNA, that might have helped to prevent the Romanian burglar who left his fingerprints and DNA at many of the 31 homes he burgled from getting away with all those crimes because he was not on any DNA database when he entered the country. It might also have dealt with the Lithuanian burglar who was released from prison early and deported, only to be found living back in Britain 12 days later, along with his accomplice, who had apparently been deported from the country not once but twice.

That is what is actually happening in our country day in, day out, week in, week out. We are exposed to dangerous foreign criminals. We have many unnecessary victims of crime in the UK because we are not controlling our borders and not deporting foreign national offenders, even when we know who they are.

The Bill could have prevented the Lithuanian convicted of a knife-point robbery before he came to the UK from going on to rape two women shortly after his arrival. There could be no more tragic example of the problem we face than the death of 14-year-old schoolgirl Alice Gross. The man suspected of killing her had come from Latvia after apparently serving a paltry seven-year prison sentence for killing his wife, yet nobody here knew of his terrible past. The Government have a duty to protect people who live here, and their scandalous failure to do so has had the most dire consequences for many families, including that of Alice Gross.

There is no more important matter facing the House today than this. I hope we will hear from all parties that they will support provisions to make it easier to deport foreign national offenders to keep us safe. The current situation is unacceptable. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering for doing something about it, and I hope the Government will indicate today that they will do something about it too.

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[Karen Bradley]

I have the highest respect for my hon. Friend, but I am sure he would not expect me to agree with his comments. The officials and people in the Home Office, including my team, are incredibly dedicated and determined. This Government and the previous coalition Government have been dealing with the failures of the Labour Government, who for 13 years made it more and more difficult to deport foreign national offenders. We have taken steps to make a difference and will continue to do so—we will continue to do all we can.

In the short time I have, I should like to make one further point. I realise that some of my hon. Friends will disagree with me on this—in particular, my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering, who makes his position clear with his tie. I am absolutely clear that European Union co-operation, and discussion and working with our European Union counterparts, enables us to deport foreign national offenders effectively, through information sharing, including through the Schengen information system and the European criminal records information system. We are also working through the serious offending by mobile European criminals—SOMEC—scheme to share information. We have talked about free movement. I agree that free movement is not an unconditional right. I want free movement of criminal information before any criminal gets to our shores, so we know exactly who they are and that we can stop them from causing trouble and committing crimes on our shores.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I know the Minister is trying to get to the end of her speech, but this is a very important point. Will she at least reply to the point we made that the Government should introduce legislation to ensure that as soon as someone is convicted—on day one—deportation procedures begin?

[Karen Bradley]

As my hon. Friend knows, we have introduced zero tolerance and “deport now, appeal later”. We continue to work further, but it is only by working with our European Union counterparts in other member states that we can hope to achieve what we all want: the UK as safe as possible, so that British citizens can live their lives free from concern that a foreign national offender is walking the streets and may seek to harm them.

With that, I hope my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering will withdraw his Bill. I know he has the very best of intentions, but I also understand that we need to get to on to other business. I would have liked to have spent more time debating the Bill, but I hope he will withdraw it at this point.