Unaccompanied Children (Greece and Italy)

Pauline Latham Excerpts

Thursday 23rd February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right to say that many people across the country are deeply disappointed by this action, because the scheme was working. It was saving lives and people’s futures. Charities told the Home Affairs Committee that they estimated that there had been a drop in the number of children and teenagers trying to get here illegally during the period in the autumn when a lot of this support was put in. We were therefore reducing the number of dangerous illegal journeys by providing the safe legal routes and undertaking the managed work with other countries. That is crucial in terms of clearing the camp in Calais to prevent the trafficking, the modern slavery and the dangerous illegal journeys.

Ministers have given four reasons for closing the Dubs scheme. The first is that it encourages traffickers. The second is that the French want us to close it. The third is that local authorities have no more capacity. The fourth is that the Government have delivered on the Dubs amendment. Let me take each in turn.

First, the Home Affairs Committee heard evidence yesterday from UNICEF, Citizens UK, Save the Children, the International Rescue Committee and one of the Children’s Commissioners. Those agencies are all doing important work with child refugees in Greece and Italy and along the French coast. All were categoric that the ending of the Dubs scheme will increase, not reduce, the trafficking risk, and that by taking away the safe and legal routes it will increase the number of children and young people who end up in the arms of traffickers and smugglers’ gangs, not reduce it.

The hon. Member for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen) and I visited Dunkirk and Calais on Monday. In Dunkirk, we met 13 and 14-year-olds who had been in the Calais camps. They had gone to the French centre and into safe accommodation, but for all kinds of complicated reasons their claims had been turned down and they had lost hope and got lost in the system. They are now back in Dunkirk in a really dangerous situation. I am really at a loss to know how the camp is allowed to continue as it is, because it is clearly being run by a smuggling gang—there is no doubt about what is happening in that Dunkirk camp. Two teenage boys we met were sleeping in a hut with 80 adult men. It was deeply unsafe, and when we asked them they said that they felt unsafe. They had gone back there because they had lost hope in any chance of the legal system getting them to safety.

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

My feeling is that that is terrible—it is really bad—but why are the French not doing anything about it? Why should it be us? Why are the French not dealing with that situation? They should be, because it is in France, which is not an unsafe country. Lots of people live there quite safely, so why are we worried about us doing something about it when in that situation it should be the French?

[Yvette Cooper]

Of course the French should be dealing with the trafficking that is taking place in Dunkirk, and there should be enforcement. Frankly, though, other countries need to do something as well, because we can be in no doubt that the gang that is operating there, taking families across from Dunkirk to Britain, will have a lot of operations in Britain as well. There ought to be co-ordinated police action against that trafficking gang, because that is absolutely important.

The joint action between Britain and France to get the children into French centres was working in the autumn. Some of the children were then going into the asylum system and safety in France, and rightly so; some of the others—perhaps the most vulnerable or those with family in Britain—were getting sanctuary in Britain. The two teenagers we spoke to both said that they have family in Britain. They had been turned down, but given no reason—there was no piece of paper and nothing in the system—for why they had been turned down. As a result, they had turned up in Dunkirk and in Calais again. We will see more and more children arriving in Calais and Dunkirk and going back, at risk, pushed by the fact that the safe legal route has been taken away.

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[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

We have heard some very passionate speeches and, I am sure, heartfelt views, but we ought to get back to reality and exactly what is happening. I think that some Members just did not listen to what the Minister said or to the statistics he gave about the numbers of people being brought into this country.

I have not been to Dunkirk or Calais, or to Greece or Italy, to see the refugees there, but I have been to Jordan and Turkey, where I have seen the camps in which children and adults are living. Nobody in their right mind wants to be in a refugee camp. It is not somewhere any of us want to go, but it could be us at some point. We might need to do that—I hope not—but any country in the world could find itself in that situation.

Given the desperate situation that the Syrian people are in, they are in a pretty safe place in those refugee camps. They are being fed, they are being given a health service, and their children are being given an education. Many people do not realise this, but the Jordanian Government have said that any child on Jordanian soil, of whatever nationality—they have Palestinian refugees as well as others—will receive the same education that their own children are receiving. This is not the case for the trafficked children who have been taken across the continent to come to Britain. As they have been trafficked, they are out of education and do not have a health service. They should have been settled in the refugee camps because people are getting a pretty good deal there. Interestingly, the Azraq camp is not full—there is plenty of space there—so it is not as though there is nowhere for people to go.

[Heidi Allen]

I mean this with no disrespect to my hon. Friend—I completely understand her point—but the problem is that Europe reacted too late, so these families and children had already made the journey to Greece and Italy and are trapped there. If we do not contribute, who will take responsibility for them?

[Pauline Latham]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point, but does she not recognise that France, Italy and Greece are safe countries? They are not Nazi Germany, where Lord Dubs came from. He escaped from being murdered. These children and families are not under threat of murder—they are in safe countries whose Governments should be respecting and dealing with them under all sorts of international rules.

Going back to the Syrian refugee camps in Jordan, every building at the Azraq camp has been provided by IKEA. Nobody gives it credit for supporting so many of these refugees. In the desert, all the solar panels that are heating and lighting the buildings have been given to the region by IKEA to help these young people. We are providing a lot of the education and health services.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

rose—

[Pauline Latham]

I will not give way again because I do not have long to speak.

We have provided the bore hole to provide safe water for the people there. They are safe. We should be saying to them, “Stay there.” Most of them do not want to come here. Why would they want to when they can speak their own language and do not need to learn English?

Why are all these people being pulled to Calais, Dunkirk and other places? They came recently. They were cleared in France, as we have heard. There was an agreement last year whereby those refugees were sorted out legitimately. More have come since then—many more—so one cannot say that there is no pull factor.

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Pauline Latham]

I am sorry, but I will not give way again because I do not have long.

I believe that we should be supporting those camps. Britain has done its bit—£2.3 billion is not insignificant. We should be proud of the money we have put in there and proud of the fact that we have protected those people. There is a rule of law in those camps—it is not perfect, but it is not perfect here either. We need to provide as much as we can to keep the people in the region, because most Syrians want to go home once it is safe to do so. If they come here, they will not be able to go home as easily. I understand the sentiments of what people say, but I think that we should stop being so sentimental and look at what is the best thing to do for these families and children, which is to keep them in the region—and that is what this Government are doing.

[Chris Law (Dundee West) (SNP)]

I was shocked to hear the comments made by the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham) about sentimentality, so I will start by asking the House a very simple question: what must it be like to be a child refugee? To deal with sentimentality, let us try to imagine that. Can any of us actually imagine the mental and physical trauma experienced by someone escaping their home country under fear of persecution?

Their departure from their home is involuntary and abrupt. Resettlement involves danger such as crossing deserts, mountains and seas. It can involve being confronted with additional conflict along the journey and going without basic resources such as food, water and shelter. Escaping by sea brings additional hardships, such as extreme weather, the loss of other passengers, witnessing loved ones drown or freeze to death, and fear. When children reach their final destination, the risks continue and in many cases worsen. Alone and afraid, vulnerable children are at the greatest risk of trafficking, neglect, sexual exploitation and physical abuse.

I have heard Members say today that some refugee camps have lots of space and that they are adequate. However, in the informal refugee camps that we know about in Greece and Italy, 90% of people do not have an adequate place to sleep, such as a tent, and there is little in the way of washing facilities. Many children in Greece find themselves in detention centres, where they are made to live and sleep in crowded, dirty, rat-infested cells, often without mattresses, and deprived of basic sanitation, hygiene and privacy. It has been reported that some boys are even turning to prostitution to keep themselves alive. If I am sentimental for bringing that up, I am very proud to be so, because those are the basic facts of what is going on in some of the worst refugee centres.

[Pauline Latham]

If we are talking about Greece and it being rat infested with no mattresses, whose fault is that? That is Greece’s fault. It should be helping those children.

[Chris Law]

The simple fact of the matter is that the world is a small place and we all belong in it as one human race. We have to recognise that we need to support partners abroad, as well as look at opportunities to provide support here at home.

Calais Children and Immigration Act

Pauline Latham Excerpts

Wednesday 16th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Goodwill]

I certainly received reports of some people leaving the camps as the clearance started. I also received reports of people coming back into the camps as they saw how that clearance was taking place. Indeed, some children who had been elsewhere in France arrived at the camps, hoping that they would be part of the scheme and could be relocated and considered under the Dubs and Dublin regulations. Unfortunately, those late arrivals were not considered in the same way. The advice that we always give to people is to claim asylum in the first safe country that they reach, and if not so, then to claim asylum in France, where they can be adequately processed.

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

May I commend the Minister for the evidence he gave to the International Development Committee this week? Opposition parties might benefit from reading it, because he was very open and honest about what is happening. Will he confirm that any action taken by the Home Office in France must be approved by the French? Is it right that, until relatively recently, the French did not want Britain to take any children under the Dubs amendment for fear of creating a pull factor?

Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill

Pauline Latham Excerpts

Friday 11th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hollobone]

My hon. Friend is right. I know that he has raised that issue in the Chamber on numerous occasions, and rightly, because there are few issues that enrage our constituents more than the public money spent on translating things for people who, frankly, should learn to speak English if they want to stay in this country.

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is talking about the international development budget and prisons abroad. In the very uncertain world in which we now live, does he not agree that it is good that our Government are spending money on strengthening the legal systems in these countries so that they can deal with their own prisoners?

[Mr Hollobone]

Yes, I support that. A stronger legal system in these countries would help to facilitate the return of their nationals imprisoned in this country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hollobone]

This might be an issue that the International Development Committee, on which he sits, might want to explore, because when one compares the list of the top 10 countries with the most foreign national offenders in our jails with the list of the 28 countries to which this country gives the most international development aid, three countries stand out—Nigeria, Pakistan and Somalia. All three countries are on the list of the 28 countries to which the Department for International Development gives international aid and in the top 10 list of countries with the most foreign national offenders in prison in this country.

[Pauline Latham]

Does my hon. Friend accept that many nationals from those countries send a huge amount of their own money back to their country to help their families who are still there? As my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) said, those people are good, contributing members of this society because they have chosen to come here and they add to what we have in this country. Obviously the criminals are the worst offenders we could possibly have and we need to get rid of them, but there are so many people here who work hard to help their families back home.

[Mr Hollobone]

And those people will be very embarrassed indeed that their fellow foreign nationals are clogging up our prisons in this way. They may be keener than us to see a sensible resolution to the problem.

The point that I want to make in drawing my brief remarks to a close is that, if we are giving so much money in international aid to Nigeria, Pakistan and Somalia, but those three countries are in the top 10 list of shame in respect of having foreign nationals in our prisons, surely we should do in those countries what we are doing in Jamaica—spending the international aid money that we are already giving them on building prisons in those countries, so that the prisoners in our country can be sent back to them.

[Mr Hollobone]

My hon. Friend’s bid to be on the Bill Committee is accepted. That is exactly the sort of constructive suggestion we need to strengthen the legislation.

[Pauline Latham]

Does my hon. Friend agree that if we did do that, the standard of the prisons we would provide would be far superior to the standard of the prisons that many developing countries provide for their citizens?

[Mr Hollobone]

I am not sure that my constituents are that fussed about the standard of prisons that are built in other countries—they just want the foreign nationals to be sent back to them—but I take the point that my hon. Friend makes.

I want to highlight one other issue that is of concern. I asked the Secretary of State for Justice how many foreign national offenders were serving their sentence in prison, and I have read out to the House the list of shame that I received. However, I also asked how many foreign national offenders were serving their sentence outside prison, and the answer that I got from the Ministry of Justice was:

“The number of convicted foreign national offenders serving their sentence outside prison is not published due to data quality.”

In other words, “We don’t know.” I am very worried indeed about that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

As I have already suggested, an awful lot of things on the statute book are not being implemented by judges. Some offences do not carry a prison sentence, so that would not apply no matter how many strikes someone has. We now have a mandatory prison sentence for a second offence of possession of a knife, but we saw just this week that only half of the people to whom that should apply have been sent to prison. The House’s intention is clearly not being followed by the courts, which is why we have to make the law as clear cut as possible to avoid such problems in future.

[Pauline Latham]

Rather than bring in yet more legislation, should we not put pressure on judges to follow the current legislation? They are clearly failing in their duty to send to prison the people who should be sent to prison. It is also clear that we are regularly not deporting the people who should be deported.

[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.

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[Mr Nuttall]

It is a bit of both, and partly because the European Union now includes the EU charter of fundamental rights, which essentially replicates the European convention on human rights—for these purposes those things are one and the same. If we are powerless to stop convicted rapists entering our country, we must ask what has become of our national sovereignty. I have no doubt that millions throughout the country will believe that the case that I have mentioned alone demonstrates that we need to change that state of affairs and why the Bill is so necessary.

Clause 1(1) requires the Secretary of State to make regulations, which I believe should deal with the process of removal. We are fortunate that the National Audit Office has investigated the costs and processes of returning foreign national offenders, and that it published a detailed report, “Managing and removing foreign national offenders”, in October 2014. Before anyone starts to complain that this situation is all the fault of the current Government, it is worth noting briefly that, according to the report, back in 2006, the Home Office found that more than 1,000 foreign national offenders had been released from prison without even being considered for deportation.

Although the NAO report acknowledged that the coalition Government put more resources into managing and removing foreign national offenders, it also made it clear that progress on reducing the number of foreign national offenders in our jails was slow. It confirmed—this deals with the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering has just raised—that the difficulties that hindered removals were caused by the application of the European convention on human rights, as well as the application of European law on the free movement of persons. There we have it: the National Audit Office has confirmed his concerns.

[Pauline Latham]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is rather strange that Nigerian prisoners call on the European Court of Human Rights when they are not European? They live in this country but retain their Nigerian nationality.

[Mr Nuttall]

If that is the case, it does seem strange—I am sure it will seem very strange to our constituents.

The NAO report acknowledged that the Government have put more resources into managing and removing foreign national offenders and made it clear that progress had been made, but it highlighted that the police had carried out an overseas criminal record check on only 30% of foreign nationals arrested. It made it clear that obtaining relevant documents such as passports at an early stage would greatly speed up the process of removal, and that fostering closer links between immigration officers and front-line police officers would speed up the process.

The Public Accounts Committee provided a commentary in its report, “Managing and removing foreign national offenders”, which was published in January 2015 following the NAO report. The Committee’s report states that

“police forces have been slow to recognise the importance, when arresting foreign nationals, of checking their immigration status and whether they have a criminal record overseas and they rarely use search powers to find evidence of identity and nationality.”

Whatever the reasons for that—it could be a lack of training or a lack of awareness—it is significant, because establishing nationality at an early stage would allow for further background checks to be carried out.

The report also states:

“Only 30% of foreign nationals arrested were checked against one key overseas database for a criminal record in 2013–14, and the great majority of police forces do not have automated links between fingerprint machines in their police stations and the Home Office’s immigration databases.”

The Committee suggested that a massive £70 million could be saved by fostering and developing such links.

The NAO noted in its report that in 2013-14, more than one third of foreign national offenders who were removed left as part of the early removal scheme. That is the scheme that returns foreign national offenders to their country of origin before they would be let out of prison if they were back here in the UK. The NAO also noted a key improvement in reducing the number of failed removals from 2,200 down to 1,400, but 1,400 still fail. That number is still far too high. I hope we will hear some detail from the Minister on why so many removals fail and what is being done to improve the situation.

Very often, we hear that problems with the delivery of Government services are due to a lack of resources, but the Public Accounts Committee noted that the number of staff working in foreign offender management had actually increased from fewer than 100 in 2006 to more than 900 in 2014—a huge percentage increase. The taxpayer can rightly expect to see an enormous improvement for that increase.

It is helpful to consider the cost to the taxpayer of dealing with foreign national offenders, because it demonstrates what an enormous drain on taxpayer resources this problem is. The NAO estimated that the average cost of managing a single foreign national offender was about £70,000 a year. The total bill for 2013-14 was an estimated £850 million, which confirms a figure that was mentioned earlier. I should add that that does not represent the total cost of a foreign national offender to British society. The figure is an estimate from the NAO, because there is an absence of definitive data. There is of course the possibility that the actual cost is much higher when one considers all the costs, from the investigation of the crime through to managing an offender in the community. Perhaps the most notable finding by the NAO, which the PAC also raised, was that managing foreign national offenders costs an estimated £100 million a year more than managing British prisoners. The Committee also noted that the Home Office did not know the reoffending rates of foreign national offenders in the community. The public will want to have confidence that such matters are now being addressed and recorded. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s comments on that point.

Both the NAO and the PAC highlighted the delays in the removal process. The NAO carried out a review of 52 cases in which a foreign national offender had been successfully removed and discovered that 20 cases had had avoidable processing delays. They included seven instances where the case had not been worked on for an average of 76 days, and a further six cases where administrative errors had delayed the process. In order to gather information on foreign national offenders, the Home Office sends out to each one a 50-question paper form. On average, it takes 32 days just to send out the questionnaire, which does not exactly give the impression of speed or urgency. It is perhaps not surprising that foreign national offenders are not so keen on administrative matters such as paperwork. It is not a surprise that almost half of the forms are never, ever returned.

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[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

I am extremely disappointed: I have sat here since 9.30, unlike the Members of the SNP and the Green party who have only come in recently and not all of whom have stayed. They are trying to stop democracy in this Chamber. They do not want us to speak. Most of us have been here a long time and probably intend to stay till 2.30. It is a bit rich that they should try and stop democracy on private Members’ Bills when no private Member’s Bill is more important than any other.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) on securing a Second Reading of his Bill, particularly after sleeping in the corridors of this place to ensure that the subject would be aired. SNP and Green Members would not have done that. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) for taking the Bill forward. I believe it was national homelessness week recently. I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough is not in that situation, but was merely sleeping in the corridor to ensure that his Bill was listed and heard in this place, which I bet none of those SNP and Green Members would have done.

As other Members will have noted, the House debated an almost identical Bill this time last year, when a few of the Members who support this Bill were candidates trying to secure election. The Conservative manifesto platform on which they ran explicitly pledged to tackle criminality and the abuse of free movement. That included negotiating with the EU to introduce stronger powers to enable us to deport criminals and stop them coming back, and tougher and longer re-entry bans for all those who abuse free movement.

I have little doubt that the sentiment of this concise Bill—preventing foreign nationals who commit a crime in the UK from remaining or returning—is supported by the vast majority in this House and of the public. Britain is one of the most generous and hospitable nations in the world, and every one of us should be proud to be lucky enough to call this country home. Understandably, it is also one of the most sought-after countries to live in. Rightly, we have to be careful about how many people we allow into the UK, and we must have strong protections in place to ensure that those who pose a threat to our way of life and our established customs and traditions do not have the chance to come here. I believe that we do have provisions firmly in place and that this Government, and the Conservative-led Government in the previous Parliament, deserve credit for the work they did to tighten restrictions and increase resources to let the border police and Home Office do their job.

Because we are such a generous nation, there are few things more frustrating to the public than when those who come here and abuse our hospitality do not adhere to our laws and waste taxpayers’ money going through our legal system. There have been high-profile cases of the processes for removing individuals from the United Kingdom taking too long and costing too much money. Members have today given many examples of that. Again, that is understandably frustrating for the public when the obvious solution is to remove them from the country and not let them back in.

It is especially frustrating when human rights are invoked as part of the reason they cannot be removed. This week saw International Women’s Day and I think of the many women and girls around the world who suffer real human rights abuses without legal recourse, not the tenuous human rights claims that have been used to stop the eviction of criminals from the United Kingdom. I was in Nigeria last week and met the families of the girls who have been abducted by Boko Haram. We are coming up to two years since their abduction, and the world should be shocked that many of them are still missing. Those girls have suffered abuses of their human rights, whereas some of the human rights claims evoked in this country are total rubbish.

There is particular frustration about the over-generous use of article 8 of the European convention on human rights, as my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley (Craig Whittaker) explained, which prevents deportation of EEA and non-EEA nationals if it would breach a person’s right to private and family life. How a criminal’s right to family life has ever been allowed to supersede the safety of the British public I shall never understand. It is also hard to believe that Greece is an unsafe country to return its nationals to, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering mentioned.

I therefore have a lot of sympathy with the Bill and the Members who have brought it forward. I also admire its simplicity and brevity; the main part, clause 1(1), is just 43 words long. Unfortunately, however, I am unable to support the Bill as it stands, because I believe that we already have functioning procedures in place to keep criminals out. The language of the Bill, brief though it is, is too ambiguous. We would have to withdraw from a number of conventions and treaties that benefit us in order to implement it. It also disregards any idea of individuals being able to rehabilitate themselves, which is something this Government are making positive efforts with in this Parliament.

As I am sure the Minister will outline, the UK already has provisions for deporting foreign criminals enshrined in law. They have not always been as strong as they are now, so the previous Government deserve credit for the steps they took to address the problems of deporting foreign criminals who commit a crime in the UK. Perhaps the Government should, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering mentioned, look at simplifying the four definitions of how people can be returned to their country: if they had just one, it might be easier for judges to implement.

In the Immigration Act 2014, the Government set out that the law should be on the side of the public, and the starting point is the expectation that foreign criminals will be deported. The Act also rightly changed the law so that, when there is no risk of serious, irreversible harm, foreign criminals can be deported first and have their appeal heard later. It also changed the rules so that those who do have a right to appeal will be able to appeal only once, thus avoiding wasting time and UK taxpayers’ money on drawn-out legal appeals, which have happened far too often in the past. That is on top of the long-standing rules we have in place on deporting foreign nationals, including on the automatic deportation of non-EEA nationals who are convicted in the UK and who receive a single custodial sentence of 12 months or more for one conviction. It is shocking to hear that judges sometimes say they will give only an 11-month sentence so that people do not have to be deported.

A non-EEA person who has been deported is already prohibited from entering the UK while the deportation order against them remains in force. Such orders are indefinite, unless a decision is made to remove them. That leaves open the possibility that a person who commits a crime when they are young can appeal to return later in their life when their character is proven to have changed. The Bill affords no such second chances and proposes no scale for different offences.

There is a range of petty crimes that could technically merit a prison sentence but for which courts may, based on the individual, judge that not to be necessary. The Bill is rigid in its definition of what crime has to be committed for someone to be excluded from the UK, referring to

“any offence for which a term of imprisonment may be imposed by”

a UK court of law. Such strict terms—free from provision for any individual consideration, which our legal system currently has—are a flaw in the Bill.

We already have in place a tough system to refuse visas or entrance to individuals applying to come to the UK who have a criminal history in the UK or elsewhere. I know it is not Government policy to publicise exclusion decisions, but I believe the Home Secretary when she says those measures have successfully kept hundreds of criminals out of the UK. That, however, does not get to the heart of the issue the Bill is aimed at—a swift repeal of European law, which prevents EEA nationals from being excluded from the UK if they are sentenced. Under the European directive on freedom of movement, more demanding grounds than previous criminal conviction are required to deport EEA national offenders who have resided in a host member state for over five or 10 years. I was pleased that the Prime Minister made easing restrictions on deporting EU national offenders part of his renegotiation deal and, in particular, that the Commission agreed to examine the five and 10-year residence thresholds for expulsion.

The Bill does not acknowledge that the freedom of movement directive contains restrictions. I agree that there has been abuse of free movement in the EU, but EU offenders who commit a crime in the UK can already be removed and kept out, with a re-entry ban of one year. I hope the Prime Minister does not give up on his efforts to have that re-entry ban extended. The Secretary of State already has the power to exclude those deemed a serious threat to public policy or public security.

[Dr Lisa Cameron (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (SNP)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Pauline Latham]

I thought SNP Members wanted us to conclude, but I will give way.

[Dr Cameron]

First, I must declare an interest, having previously completed risk assessments in this regard. Does the hon. Lady agree that it is important that foreign national offenders receive comprehensive risk assessments so that appropriate judgments can be made?

[Pauline Latham]

The hon. Lady makes an interesting point, but it might be difficult to do comprehensive risk assessments, and that would delay the process. If somebody has been convicted, they need to go back to their own country immediately.

As part of the Prime Minister’s EU renegotiation deal, the EU Commission will clarify the meanings of the “serious” and “imperative” grounds on which we can exclude people from the UK, removing ambiguity and making it easier for our immigration services to carry out their duties.

For those who are removed and deemed to be a threat to the UK, we still have border checks in place to make sure that they cannot be allowed in. This Government and the Conservative-led previous Government deserve credit for strengthening the data our border police have through the warnings index, specifically those on whether anyone coming through our border is subject to an outstanding deportation order. The Bill would also do away with the Schengen information system, which allows European states to share information on criminals, thereby preventing them from getting into the UK in the first place.

Ultimately, although I agree with the sentiment behind the Bill—all of the speakers have spoken powerfully, mainly in favour of the Bill, and I understand where they are coming from—we already have in place a lot of what it is trying to achieve, namely the exclusion of those non-UK individuals under discussion from enjoying the opportunities and hospitality that this country offers. Therefore, I do not believe the Bill is necessary.