Deportation of Foreign National Offenders

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Wednesday 7th February 2024 Westminster Hall

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Gray.

I do not really know where to start in this debate. Uncharacteristically for me, as someone who does not profess to be any kind of person of faith, I might start with a passage from Leviticus:

“When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God.”

The Bible may not talk about asylum seekers and refugees, as the hon. Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean) says—I honestly would not know—but there is certainly an awful lot in there about treating other people as you would treat yourself and your own family. There has been very little of that in this afternoon’s debate.

We are here in very febrile times. I completely understand how upset people are about the attack in Clapham. That person should be fully held to account for his actions. He should face the full extent of the law and the justice system, and deportation, if indeed that is what is decided. There is no question about that. There is a process there that should be respected.

Hon. Members have heard me talk many, many times about the issues around asylum, but they probably have not have heard me say that, yes, there are circumstances in which people need to be removed. The right hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel) will remember that when she was Home Secretary I wrote to her plenty of times about many constituents in many complex situations. There is very little that I have not seen in my constituency, given the complexity of casework that I have.

However, I also know that there are circumstances in which people cannot be deported, because to do so would mean their execution. We do not extradite to countries that have the death penalty, for example, so to say that everyone must be deported in all circumstances simply is not the basis on which the law of this country operates. I have had situations like that in my constituency, where people could not be removed and sent back to their countries of origin, because they would almost certainly have been executed on arrival.

The only thing on which I agree with the hon. Member for Redditch is that this situation is, indeed, the fault of the current Government and their predecessors.

[Rachel Maclean]

That is not what I said.

[Alison Thewliss]

The hon. Lady said that it is the current Government’s fault. She is quite correct in saying that. The Conservatives have been in control for quite some time now, and they have failed on numerous occasions to deal with the situation.

Stephen Shaw’s review of the issue identified many areas in which the Home Office had failed to deal properly with foreign national offenders. I appreciate that time is limited, but I want particularly to pick up on the excellent point from the hon. Member for East Lothian (Kenny MacAskill) about our responsibilities to people who are more British than foreign. Stephen Shaw reflected on that in his review, saying that

“a significant proportion of those deemed FNOs had grown up in the UK, some having been born here but the majority having arrived in very early childhood. These detainees often had strong UK accents, had been to UK schools, and all of their close family and friends were based in the UK… Many had no command of the language of the country to which they were to be ‘returned’, or any remaining families ties there… The removal of these individuals raises real ethical issues.”

He also said that

“the twelve month sentence criterion for deportation in the UK Borders Act is not a very good guide to criminality”—

we can all think of sentences of 12 months or so that are not the types of sentences that some hon. Members read out earlier. He further said:

“I find the policy of removing individuals brought up here from infancy to be deeply troubling. For low-risk offenders, it seems entirely disproportionate to tear them away from their lives, families and friends in the UK, and send them to countries where they may not speak the language or have any ties.”

If we believe in rehabilitation, that means that if I were to commit a crime, I would go to prison, serve my sentence, and then be considered rehabilitated; I would not be sent to another country. We have a double standard in how we treat these people.

Stephen Shaw’s review also points out the inability of caseworkers to manage the FNOs within the system currently. It makes it clear that they are not being well managed, that casework is not being well managed and that people are not being prepared for return. He feels that all those circumstances lead to a risk that people will be brought back to a life of crime and will not be rehabilitated at all.

The independent chief inspector of borders and immigration has expressed the same concerns, saying:

“This is no way to run a government department.”

There is a lot that the UK Government could be doing better to achieve some of the aims that Government Members would put forward.