Business of the House

Andrew Stephenson Excerpts

Thursday 9th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lidington]

No one would want to see genuine business visitors delayed or having a visa application refused but, as I said in answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy), there are checks that we expect the immigration service to carry out to ensure that our immigration rules are properly observed and that we are protected against the real risk of terrorism. Potential visitors coming from an area where terrorism is rife will clearly be subjected to those checks. I do not know what happened in the individual cases described by the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry), but if she has concerns about them, she is right to take them up with the Immigration Minister directly.

[Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)]

The current political composition of Pendle Borough Council is 24 Conservatives, 15 Labour members, nine Liberal Democrats and one British National party member—the last BNP councillor in the country. That means that the Labour-Lib Dem coalition that runs the council currently has to rely on the support of that BNP councillor to get things through. Yesterday, the Lancashire Telegraph reported on the shabby deal done between the local Lib Dems and the Labour party, and the BNP for securing support for their budget. May we have a debate on racism, and how the Pendle Labour party and Liberal Democrats are happy to turn a blind eye to it in order to cling on to their position and expenses?

[Mr Lidington]

The one crumb of good news in what my hon. Friend said is that there is now only a solitary BNP councillor left in England. I would hope that all democratic political parties in Pendle and at national level would unite to say that doing deals with the BNP is utterly repugnant and unacceptable, whether at local council level or anywhere else.