Immigration Bill

Debate between Chris Bryant and Jeremy Corbyn

Thursday 30th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

It is a great delight to follow the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) although I would like to correct him on a few details. Although Palmerston thought that Don Pacifico was undoubtedly a British citizen, merely because of his birth in Gibraltar, that would not necessarily apply today in the same way because he was actually a Portuguese Jew who therefore had more than one nationality at the time. I am not sure that the hon. Gentleman’s point applies reliably to the debate.

I entirely agree with everything the Home Secretary said about sham marriages. They are a real problem and in certain places in the country—most notably around London and the west midlands—there is a real issue to be tackled. I warmly commend Ministers who have taken the right actions in the Bill to deal with that. I am concerned, however, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) said earlier, about the business of removing people’s citizenship, not least because the way the proposal has been drafted gives a phenomenal degree of Executive power to the Secretary of State. I worry about that, as do several other Members, including the hon. Members for North East Somerset and for Brent Central (Sarah Teather).

Two years ago I remember going to the deportation centre at Heathrow and seeing a young man whose state we do not know. He refuses to say where he is from because he thinks he will be deported to that place. He had then been in that deportation centre for four years because for him, that half life in a sort of prison was better than the danger of being deported back somewhere. Some think the best way of dealing with the problem of deporting foreign criminals involves measures to change the rules on article 8. The biggest problem lies not with that, however, but with an awful lot of people who get to this country and instantly abandon their paperwork, either because that is what they intended to do from the beginning, or because they are from countries to which we simply cannot deport people. Again, I commend those Ministers who have worked—as Labour Ministers did in the previous Government—to try to ensure that people will not be subject to torture if they are returned to their country of origin, and that they will have a fair trial and so on There are, however, many countries around the world where such things still do not apply, and those cases make up the largest number of people, let alone those whose paperwork has been lost by the Home Office—also a substantial number. Of course I want foreign criminals to be deported and sent back to their country of origin, but I also want their human rights to be protected. I still believe in the right to a fair trial and am opposed to torture. I believe in all the things we have signed up to as a country. Let us not pretend that the Bill will sort out the bigger problem.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Does my hon. Friend accept that one problem is the number of countries that have not signed the convention on torture? We should not deport anyone to a regime where no convention on torture is applicable, and we should not rely on dubious one-off agreements, which is what we have been doing.

[Chris Bryant]

I completely agree, and anyway, if we sought to deport anyone to such a regime, we would face the courts, which is a very expensive business in this country, and we would be certain of failure. It would be a nugatory exercise.

I worry about creating more stateless people, which is effectively the intention of the Home Secretary’s proposal. I can see an argument for making someone stateless when they are abroad—we can say that a person who has done something appalling, perhaps in another country, is longer welcome in this country and remove their citizenship—but I have a much greater problem with making someone stateless when they are in this country. What would we do? We make them stateless and deprive them of citizenship, but then what? Do we banish them? Do we pronounce exile? Does the Speaker demand that they leave the country? Do we march them to the airport if they refuse to go themselves? In any case, where will they go? What country will take them? That is my problem with the proposals being advanced. There is a mediaeval element in the Bill and it will not help us one jot.

UK Extradition Arrangements

Debate between Chris Bryant and Jeremy Corbyn

Monday 5th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn]

The hon. and learned Gentleman makes an excellent point, and I agree with him. That is the fundamental weakness in the 2003 Act, which does not allow that discretion which any sensible, right-thinking person would apply straight away on a humanitarian basis.

I was not going to mention the General Pinochet case until I got to the end, but I may as well do so now, as it fits with the hon. and learned Gentleman’s point. Like many others, I fought to get Pinochet extradited so that he could go on trial. We won the cases all the way through, but unfortunately the then Home Secretary decided that there was an overriding medical reason for allowing General Pinochet to return on the “Lazarus flight” to Chile, where he walked off the plane and seemed to be perfectly healthy.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I rather agree with my hon. Friend about General Pinochet, not least as several of my friends were killed by his police force in Chile. My hon. Friend said that any sensible person would want to change the leeway allowed to the Secretary of State, but unfortunately the report that we are discussing this evening says:

“We note the arguments for increasing the role of the Secretary of State in the surrender of persons…We are not convinced that changes should be made”.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I am sorry that the authors of the report are not convinced, but it is up to us in this House to try to convince the Government to make those changes. Although I welcome the examination of the issue, as well as this debate, it is absolutely up to us to ensure that that happens.

The second case that I want to mention is that of Julian Assange and the ongoing attempt to extradite him to Sweden. I want to go on to something else in a second, but let me briefly quote Debra Sheehan, who has been campaigning for Mr Assange not to be extradited to Sweden: “I believe this ruling”—the ruling that he can be extradited—

“sets a very dangerous precedent allowing any UK citizen—and possibly any European citizen—to be extradited without charge. Mr Assange’s case shows that the European arrest warrant can be used in a totally disproportionate way without using other less draconian methods of completing police investigations, such as Mutual Legal Assistance.”

The European arrest warrant is a serious issue, because, as others have pointed out, it seems that countries with a far from rigorous, fair and open judicial system can gain arrest warrants against British subjects, who are then taken to a different jurisdiction, where they face a much lower threshold of proof before a conviction is obtained. It is not our business to protect criminals, but it is our business to ensure that people get a fair trial and that there is absolutely the presumption of innocence before any conviction is made.

The third case that I want to mention is that of Babar Ahmad, which was brought up excellently by my friend the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). Yesterday I received an e-mail from his father that I would like to quote from:

“I am writing to request that you attend the debate…and…vote in favour of reforming the laws so that they strengthen the protection for British citizens, such as my son Babar Ahmad, who is now in his eighth year of detention-without-trial.”

He continues:

“Babar is the longest detained-without-trial British citizen in the modern history of the UK. He is in his 8th year of detention in a maximum security institution. He has served the equivalent of a 14 year sentence and if he had been tried and convicted in the UK, he would be probably out by now.

The CPS has recently admitted that it never considered the evidence against Babar before it was sent to the US authorities”—

a point made by my friend, the hon. Lady—

“yet for over seven years, they have allowed him to languish in prison without trial, refusing to prosecute him on the alleged basis that there is ‘insufficient evidence’ to prosecute him. The crimes for which he stands accused are said to have taken place in the UK. Over 141,000 people and 100 senior lawyers have”

written in his support.

“If extradited to the US Babar faces a period of 3 years pre-trial detention in complete isolation. If convicted he would face life without parole in solitary confinement at a Supermax prison”.

Is that really what we want for British citizens under this law? That is what will happen if Babar Ahmad’s extradition goes ahead. His father continues:

“On 22 June 2011, Parliament’s JCHR explicitly raised concerns over Babar’s case recommending that the government urgently re-negotiate the UK-US”

agreement. Finally, just to make the point, he says that this debate is part of the “enormous public interest” in the case, and in particular the examination of it by the Muslim community in this country, which feels that Babar Ahmad’s case is indicative of something about the treatment of people where there is any suspicion of the kind of offences in which he is alleged to have been involved. He cannot be tried in this country because of the way he has been treated—the trial would collapse—so why on earth should we even consider allowing him to go to the United States?

Baroness Helena Kennedy, who is extremely eminent on all legal matters and somebody for whom I have enormous respect, wrote an excellent article in The Guardian today in which she raised the question of the forum. She wrote:

“To my mind, where there is clear evidence to a criminal standard of a crime being committed either in the UK or from the UK and jurisdiction is being contested, an English court should be required to determine the strength of the evidence and the ‘forum conveniens’—that is, the location of any prosecution. The court’s decision on forum should be based on clear guidance—the nationality of the defendant and the victim; location of both the prosecution and defence evidence, witnesses, and so forth. Yet as it stands there is no statutory right for a UK defendant to challenge extradition on forum grounds.”

I hope that the Minister will be able to respond to that in winding up the debate.

The general point that I want to make is this. We are not here to defend criminals. We are here to ensure that those who have been charged are given a proper hearing and a fair trial. Extradition arrangements must be fair and reciprocal, and in most past cases they have been, in the sense that the Minister for the Interior, or the Home Secretary, has been able to exercise some degree of discretion as to whether or not a person should be extradited. I think that that is right, although one might disagree with the discretion used on certain occasions. What we have here, however, is a completely imbalanced system—as a result of both the European arrest warrant and our arrangements with the United States—which I consider to be contrary to all the judicial traditions of this country, and on which I think it right for the House to take a stand.

I hope that the motion will be passed, and that that will send a clear message to the Government about what we want. I understand that there may not even be a vote. That either indicates unanimity or that the dark forces of the Whips’ Offices in all parties have taken the night off, but I fear that they are forces that never sleep.

On 11 November the Home Secretary received a long letter from Shami Chakrabarti, general secretary of Liberty, which made points about forum, and many more general points. She wrote:

“The human rights bar in the 2003 Act is of the utmost importance and we continue to encourage its effective application by the British judiciary.”

I hope that the Minister will be able to assure us that that letter has received a reply, and will be able to inform us of the Government’s general attitude. We are here to stand up for justice and liberty, and I believe that our arrangement with the United States is the opposite of those things.

Voting by Prisoners

Debate between Chris Bryant and Jeremy Corbyn

Thursday 10th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

The hon. Gentleman has made his point extremely well, and I think that it has been taken by many Members.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I am very puzzled by my friend’s approach. If we as a country are signed up to the European convention on human rights, which we frequently use—all of us as Members of Parliament use it in representing our constituents—and if the Court makes a judgment on the question of prisoners’ voting rights within that convention, we are bound by that judgment, by treaty and by law. Why on earth are we debating this issue unless the long-term agenda—and I suspect that it is the agenda of many Members—is complete withdrawal from the convention? Surely that is the real agenda of many people.

[Chris Bryant]

It is certainly not my agenda, and I hope that I shall be able to please my hon. Friend with some of the things that I am going to say. I would add, however, that politicians engage in pick and mix sometimes—indeed, virtually every day of their lives.