Peter Bone
Main Page: Peter Bone (Independent - Wellingborough)Department Debates - View all Peter Bone's debates with the Home Office
(12 years, 4 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
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Damian Green
The hon. Gentleman has been here long enough to know that if the shadow Minister for Immigration asks an urgent question, it is answered by the Minister for Immigration. That is the way things work.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
Would not the British Government prefer foreign nationals who come here, commit a crime and are put in prison to be sent home to their country early, rather than be kept in prison and let out again to commit further crimes?
Damian Green
As I explained to the right hon. Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Frank Dobson), it seems slightly perverse for anyone to want to send out a signal that if someone commits a serious crime in Britain, uniquely in the world they will get off with either no sentence or a very short one. We want people to know that if they commit a crime in this country, they will be caught and convicted. If they are convicted, they should serve a proper sentence. Of course it would be preferable if they could serve some of that sentence in their own country, and we have negotiated arrangements to that end with certain countries.