Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill

Christopher Chope Excerpts

Friday 11th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hollobone]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I am second to none in my admiration for the Polish people, the Polish nation and individual Poles. The Polish work ethic, frankly, would give many of our own citizens an example of how to behave in life. We have a lot to learn from them. My criticism is not of Polish people; it is of the EU system. Under EU rules, we are unable to prevent Polish citizens with criminal records from coming into this country, we are unable to send back to Poland the few Polish citizens who are convicted of criminal offences and imprisoned in our country, and we are unable to prevent them from returning. I am full of praise for the Polish nation and for hard-working Polish citizens. As on so many issues, my hon. Friend is absolutely right, but we must not ignore the fact that of the 160 countries represented in our prisons, Poland is in first place.

[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I say very gently to the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) that I hope he is not intending to provide biographical details of each of the people from Poland before proceeding to the second of the 160 countries of which he wishes to treat. If that is his intention, it might test the patience of the Chair. I feel sure that he is planning no such mission. On that note, no doubt he will take the intervention from the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope).

[Mr Hollobone]

Indeed, I give way to my hon. Friend.

[Mr Chope]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for what he has said. Can he explain why the Polish Government are not prepared to allow Polish prisoners sentenced in this country to serve their sentences in Poland, which I understand is possible under the transfer of prisoners legislation promoted by the Council of Europe?

[Mr Hollobone]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention, and I bow to his huge knowledge and experience of the Council of Europe and its various pronouncements. He is right to highlight the EU prisoner transfer agreement, introduced some years ago, which was meant to be the great panacea for the number of EU citizens in our jails. We were apparently going to be able to send EU prisoners in our jails back to their EU countries.

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[Mr Chope]

The Polish people are renowned for their sense of family values. Why is it, then, that Poland does not wish to have its own patriots back in their country so that they can serve their sentences with their friends and family, thereby facilitating their rehabilitation?

[Mr Hollobone]

That is an extremely good question. The honest answer is that I do not know.

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[Mr Hollobone]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight those figures. There is a particular issue with Jamaica and drugs, and I think that is where the problem arises. To be fair, Her Majesty’s Government have recognised that. In September 2015, the UK made an agreement with the Jamaican Government to start sending Jamaican prisoners serving time in British jails back to Jamaica. That is exactly the sort of arrangement that needs to be put in place with as many as possible of the 160 countries.

The agreement was concluded at the end of September by the then International Development Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Welwyn Hatfield (Grant Shapps). The official announcement of 30 September 2015 said:

“The agreement was concluded today after years of negotiations as the Prime Minister made the first visit by a UK Prime Minister to Jamaica in 14 years.

It is expected to save British taxpayers around £10 million over 30 years once the first prisoners are returned from 2020 onwards.

The UK will provide £25 million from the government’s existing aid budget to help fund the construction of a new 1500 bed prison in Jamaica…The prison is expected to be built by 2020 and from then returns will get underway.”

I know many supporters of the international aid budget are present, as are one or two Members who have slightly different views. Whatever one’s views on Britain’s international aid budget, I think we can all agree that it is extremely generous. I believe we are the only major western economy to hit our millennium goal target of spending 0.7% of our economy on international aid. I would hope that we can all agree that spending part of the international aid budget in this way makes a huge amount of sense. If we spend it on building prisons in those countries that have a large number of nationals imprisoned in our country, we can start to send these people back to those prisons, saving British taxpayers’ money being spent on incarcerating them in our jails.

I am disappointed, however, that it seems to take so long to build those prisons. I do not understand why it takes five years to build a 1,500-bed prison in Jamaica. If we asked the Royal Engineers to put up a building, I am sure they could do it in double-quick time, and then we could start shipping these people back pretty soon.

I encourage Her Majesty’s Government to make more such arrangements. They could certainly look at my list of shame for further opportunities. We have got to No. 4 on the list, which is Jamaica. No. 5 is Albania; there are 472 Albanians in our jails. Close behind in equal sixth place is Latvia. Let me get that right—I think it is Lithuania with 471, in equal sixth place with Pakistan. I am not an expert, but I believe the population of Pakistan is a lot bigger than that of Lithuania, so for Lithuania to have the same number of prisoners as Pakistan says something to me about why our membership of the European Union is not doing us any favours.

[Mr Chope]

Is there not an additional problem in relation to the large number of Lithuanian offenders in that they necessitate the use of very expensive translation services in the court system and in prisons?

[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.

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[Mr Hollobone]

I am very glad that our hon. Friend is in the Chamber. I hope that she will be so impressed by my remarks that she will invite me to visit the prison in Jamaica, because I am keen to see for myself how our international aid money is being spent. I think that the initiative offers a sensible solution to the problem.

[Mr Chope]

Lithuania benefits enormously from the NATO presence in the Baltics. Is it not a disappointment that, while we are using our public money to help to secure Lithuania against an external threat, it is not prepared to use its resources to secure our people against the threat from their prisoners?

[Mr Hollobone]

As ever, my hon. Friend sums it up really rather well. He makes the case that his constituents would make, which is that our membership of these international organisations should work both ways. We are spending a great deal of British taxpayers’ money in defending Lithuanians from the Russian threat, and the very least they could do is to take back their 471 nationals from this country to prisons in their own country. After all, we are supposed to have an EU prisoner transfer agreement, from which Lithuania does not have a derogation, so I do not understand why there is a problem.

I am anxious, as I am sure you are, Madam Deputy Speaker, to complete my list so that I can move on to other aspects of the Bill. There are some important countries at the bottom of the top 10. India, with 458, is No. 8, and I am looking for No. 9 on my list—

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[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.

[Mr Chope]

That answer surprises me because one of the Justice Ministers told us at Justice questions that the number of foreign national offenders in our prisons had declined. It is surely in the public interest to know whether the number has declined because they are serving their sentences outside prison.

[Mr Hollobone]

That is a very good point. Neither my hon. Friend nor I—nor, indeed, the House—is any the wiser because of Her Majesty’s Government’s obfuscation over providing the data. We can all sense that it is a real problem that we do not know how many foreign national offenders are loose on our streets. We have heard a couple of examples today from my hon. Friends the Members for Solihull and for Crawley of foreign national offenders being at large in our communities.

If this Bill became law, it would send a clear signal to our constituents and to the world at large—if you are a foreign national and you are in our country, you must not break our laws, and if you do break our laws, you will be sent back to the country from where you came and banned from ever returning. I commend the Bill to the House.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I am very grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak on this important Bill. The House will be relieved to hear that my comments need not be very long, because my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone), with his characteristic courtesy, skill and devotion to the procedures of this House, has made such a comprehensive case in favour of the Bill that I cannot for the life of me understand why anybody would oppose the entirely common-sense proposals that he is elucidating this morning.

As we have heard, this issue is of enormous importance. Some 10,000 of our prisoners in custody are foreign nationals, but only about 1,000 recommendations for deportation are made each year. That is even more surprising given that this has been a matter of national debate for so long. There is immense public interest in this issue. Only this week, Rod Liddle, who is not an hon. Friend but a well-known journalist, wrote a most interesting article in The Spectator on precisely this subject. This is a not just a matter for a quiet Friday morning in the House of Commons, but a subject that is constantly discussed all over the nation.

Rod Liddle, in his inimitable way, portrayed the problem we are dealing with. We have heard that there are all these people gumming up our prisons who are not deported, but at last, apparently, the Home Office had decided to get tough in the case of Myrtle Cothill, a

“South African widow aged 92 who wished to see out her final days with her daughter in the UK.”

But the Home Office said “tough luck, Myrtle” and told her she had to get on the next plane and leave the country.

Last week, I mentioned the case of a leading American Shakespearean scholar, who was frogmarched to the airport by the Home Office because he had stayed a few days longer. What the public cannot understand is why so many good people are being kicked out of our country, not least Myrtle Cothill—although after a national campaign and a huge petition, the Home Office finally relented—and yet all these convicted criminals are not being deported, at a massive cost to our taxpayers of up to £1 billion.

[Mr Chope]

Following our debate on this subject last week, I have received correspondence from people who are not my constituents but who know people—for example from the United States—who are being picked on in most unsatisfactory circumstances. It seems that the Home Office is going for the soft-touch people.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

That is the problem. Is the Home Office going for soft-touch people? We had that debate last week with the Under-Secretary of State for Refugees. He gave a skilful performance from the Dispatch Box, but he could not really deny my hon. Friend’s impeccable case. Indeed, the Minister admitted that there are more than 30,000 illegal asylum seekers who cannot be deported, on top of the people we are talking about today, and all that has to do with the Dublin convention and the Human Rights Act 1998.

There was a firm pledge in the Conservative party manifesto to deal with article 8 of the European convention on human rights. There has been massive controversy and publicity about that, and I cannot understand why we are still waiting. I hope that when the Minister replies to the debate, she will tell us what has happened to our reform of human rights legislation, because this is a matter of great public interest.

Rod Liddle gave some interesting examples of such cases, and others have been enumerated in other newspapers. Let us consider the case of Baghdad Meziane. Baghdad is a convicted al-Qaeda terrorist, with links to the appalling people who committed that atrocity in Paris recently. As Rod Liddle states:

“He was convicted in a British court of raising money for al-Qaeda (and also of the ubiquitous credit-card fraud) and sentenced to 11 years in prison. At his trial the judge pointed out, perhaps unnecessarily, that Meziane was a very dangerous man and recommended deportation once his term of incarceration had expired.”

But no. This “very dangerous” and unpleasant man, was actually released from prison five years early and allowed to return to Leicester. He was not put on the first available plane to Algiers, whence, despite his name, he originates.

“Baghdad argued that to deport him would contravene his human right to a normal family life.”

Therefore this man, this dangerous individual, has been released back into our community in Leicester because he claims a right to family life, and despite lengthy legal battles, all our debates, and the Home Secretary’s attempts at legislation, in Leicester he now resides.

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[Sir Edward Leigh]

Like my hon. Friend, I, too, am a lawyer. We are only doing our jobs. Give us unclear law and a client to represent, and we will put forward our best case. It is up to the Government to give us clear law. Judges have been known to reconsider deportation on appeal if they feel that it is a punishment disproportionate to the crime committed. That even happened in the case of a crime that resulted in death, in Gurung v. the Secretary of State for the Home Department. If the law is unclear, we open up all sorts of possibilities for lawyers to drive a coach and horses through what we are trying to achieve.

[Mr Chope]

Does my hon. Friend not agree that the ancient English principle of equity should be applied in these cases—that people cannot seek justice unless they come with clean hands?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

That is an interesting point. As usual, the common law of our country, developed more than 1,000 years ago, has an enormous amount of common sense. Perhaps we should worry less about bringing in more laws and more about enforcing present common law.

I will come to the end of my speech in a moment, to allow others to speak. To be fair to the Government, they have tried to do something because of the massive public debate. When the Minister responds to the debate, I suspect she may say that the Bill is not necessary because there is already legislation to deal with the problem. Is she shaking her head, or she is nodding? It is not fair of me to interpret her sedentary signs. However, that is a common response from Ministers.

Let me end on this point. Section 32 of the UK Borders Act 2007 provides:

“The Secretary of State must make a deportation order in respect of a foreign criminal”

if they have been convicted of an offence and sentenced to at least 12 months’ imprisonment. The Act specifies that in those circumstances the deportation of persons will be

“conducive to the public good”

for the purposes of the Immigration Act 1971. Section 33 of the 2007 Act, as amended, identifies six exceptions to automatic deportation. In addition, section 3(6) of the 1971 Act provides that non-British citizens over the age of 17 are liable to deportation from the UK if they are convicted of an offence punishable with imprisonment and their deportation is recommended by the court, although the 2007 Act has somewhat curtailed the scope for criminal courts to make recommendations for deportation. A person cannot return to the United Kingdom while a deportation order remains in force against them, although they can apply for the order to be revoked.

I am sorry to have read out those points. I do not want to sound too much like a Minister—[Hon. Members: “No!”] God forbid. But one would think, would one not, that the law was clear, given the 2007 Act, coupled with the Immigration Act 1971 and recent pronouncements by the Home Secretary? One would think that clear powers were available to Ministers to deal with the problem and deport these people. However, that is simply not happening. There are still 10,000 of them in our prisons, and many of them are living in our communities having left prison and not been deported. I am worried about what is happening on the ground. We have in power for the best part of six years, and this has been an issue of public debate for many more years, so I should like the Minister to explain why we are still waiting for action.

The problem involving the European Union has already been mentioned, but I want to say something about European economic area nationals. The scope to deport EEA nationals is restricted by European law. Specifically, directive 2004/38/EC—often referred to as the free movement of persons directive or the free movement of citizens directive—sets out the circumstances in which an EEA national with a right to reside in another member state, or the family member of an EEA national, may be expelled. The directive does not specify any particular sentence thresholds that must apply to expulsion cases. Instead, it requires that expulsion must be proportionate and based exclusively on the personal conduct of the individual concerned and the level of threat that they pose to public policy or public security. Previous criminal convictions cannot, in themselves, be grounds for expulsion, nor can expulsion be justified on general prevention grounds. Furthermore, more demanding grounds are required to deport EEA national offenders who have resided in a host member state.

In November, in a letter to Donald Tusk, the Prime Minister set out the United Kingdom’s demands for reform in the area of immigration and social benefits, which included a demand to:

“Crack down on abuse of free movement, e.g. tougher and longer re-entry bans for fraudsters”

—this is the Prime Minister speaking, not me—

“and those involved in sham marriages, stronger powers to deport criminals and stop them coming back”

—some of that is in bold type—

“addressing the inconsistency between EU citizens’ and British citizens’ eligibility to bring a non-EU spouse to the UK, and addressing ECJ judgments that have made it more difficult to tackle abuse.”

Moreover, in the Conservative party manifesto, on which we all stood and which we wholeheartedly endorse in every single respect, we said:

“We will negotiate with the EU to introduce stronger powers to deport criminals and stop them coming back, and tougher and longer re-entry bans for all those who abuse free movement”.

Why is there so much dissatisfaction with politicians? Perhaps it is partly because, despite what we sometimes say in letters to high officials of the European Union or in our manifestos—we stated specifically in the Conservative party manifesto that we would deal with this problem and deport these people, and that a negotiation was taking place—we are still discussing this issue on a Friday. I predict that we will not secure the Minister’s agreement to this Bill, or to a Bill like it, but the matter is urgent and should be dealt with.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) and for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) on, between them, ensuring that we are debating the Bill this morning, because it deals with a matter that is of great concern to my constituents.

I want to focus on two questions relating to the Bill. The first is the question of whether it is needed, and the second is the question of whether its provisions are satisfactory. It could be argued, in answer to the first question, that the Bill is extremely timely. Members may have seen, only yesterday, an article in The Times which focused on the fact that five foreign criminals leave UK jails every day and stay in the UK. It stated that nearly 6,000 are waiting to be deported. The number of foreign offenders in the community has risen by 53% in five years, despite Government attempts to speed up deportations.

I think that support for the Bill is more widespread than many Members may imagine. The Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), was quoted in the article as saying:

“The Prime Minister promised to make the speedy removal of foreign national offenders a priority but these figures show the Home Office has failed…The public will be alarmed that 1,800 offenders are still here after five years. This demonstrates either incompetence, inefficiency or both.”

The number of foreign offenders released from jail pending deportation rose from 3,772 in 2011 to 5,789 in the final quarter of last year, and, as the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee made clear in his remarks—I think that this needs to be reiterated—more than 1,800 of them have been living in the community for five years or more. That is a disgrace. Moreover, a further 1,300 have been living here for between two and five years, and of 416 prisoners who were released in the last three months of last year, only six were deported. That is an absolute disgrace. The Bill is, as I said, very timely.

Probably the most shocking thing of all—I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering will be particularly shocked by this—is that the Home Office figures that were released showed that foreign offenders convicted of 16 murders, 56 rapes and hundreds of robberies and violent attacks were still living in the UK at the end of last year. That is the nature of the beast with which we are dealing. I am afraid that, whatever the Government are doing, it simply cannot be seen as good enough. Those figures should shock all of us, and I hope that they shock the Government.

The widespread support for the Bill is also made clear by an intervention, during questions on an urgent question in 2014, from the former shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), who said:

“When people come to Britain, they should abide by the law, and the whole House wants to see foreign criminals being deported.”—[Official Report, 27 October 2014; Vol. 586, c. 903.]

She said that only a couple of years ago, from the Labour Benches. I look forward to seeing support for the Bill not just from Conservative Members, but from Members on both sides of the House.

Given that the EU referendum is to take place on 23 June, and given that EU national offenders make up an increasingly large part of our prison population each year, I think it right for people to be informed of the realities of our EU membership, and of what control this country actually has over the removal of foreign national offenders, particularly those from the EU.

[Mr Chope]

Is it not depressing that the Government are not even prepared to name and shame the member states of the EU that are not taking back foreign prisoners? Their excuse is that publishing such data could undermine diplomatic relationships with those countries.

[Philip Davies]

I agree with my hon. Friend. In my view, it is the failure of those countries to take back foreign offenders that is undermining diplomatic relationships, rather than the release or otherwise of the information.

The Bill clearly aims to do something that I think most people would consider to be common sense: to deport criminals who are not citizens of this country if they commit an offence that is serious enough to warrant a prison sentence. I think that it is important to establish whether someone qualifies for deportation, but I shall come to that when I go into the details of the Bill.

Governments have not resisted the principle of deporting foreign criminals. In fact, it was the last Labour Government who introduced measures for their automatic deportation in certain circumstances, in the form of the UK Borders Act 2007. I do not propose to bore everyone rigid by quoting from its provisions here and now, but suffice it to say that it made a clear attempt to define foreign criminals and to ensure that, in certain circumstances, they were removed from prison. The key part of that Act, the first condition, was that a person is sentenced to a period of imprisonment of “at least 12 months”—along the same lines as what my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) mentioned in his speech. The Labour Government introduced that provision back in 2007.

There were some exemptions within the Act. I shall not bore everybody rigid by going through every single one, but there were quite a few, if anyone would like to look through the legislation. The exceptions included where deportation would breach a person’s convention rights under the ECHR; where people were covered by the refugee convention; where the offender was under 18 years old at the time of offending; where the deportation breaches the offender’s rights under Community treaties; and where the foreign criminal is subject to the Extradition Act 2003 or to the Mental Health Act 1983.

Herein lies the problem, because the exemptions make it virtually impossible to deport anybody. That is the key issue. It is all very well saying, “We’re going to have an Act of Parliament with this particular provision in it”, but if people cannot be removed because of a potential breach of the Human Rights Act or rights under the Community treaties, which provide for the free movement of people, we are in big difficulties. Given the high proportion of EU citizens who count as foreign offenders, the legislation is barely worth the paper it is written on.

[Mr Chope]

Is that not why clause 1 of this Bill includes the words

“Notwithstanding any provision of the European Communities Act 1972”?

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right and he explains why that part of the Bill is essential. I shall come on to some of the detail in the Bill later.

Our former colleague and the former Member for Wells, David Heathcoat-Amory, in his book “Confessions of a Eurosceptic”, reminded us of what happened when it was reported that more than 1,000 foreign prisoners were released without being considered for deportation when Charles Clarke was the Home Secretary. That particular scandal cost Charles Clarke his job. The public believed it was a huge scandal, which it is. The release of 1,000 foreign prisoners without being considered for deportation was sufficient for the Home Secretary to resign, yet as a newspaper reported yesterday, 1,800 of them have been here for more than five years. If 1,000 was enough for the Home Secretary to resign, one wonders what the trigger point for a scandal is these days.

A fair deportation system should, it seems to me, treat all foreign offenders in the same way. I do not think there can be any justification for saying that a foreign offender from one country should be treated differently from a foreign offender from a different country. This has become a growing problem. As my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering said, there have been more than 10,000 foreign national offenders in prison since 2006. This is not a new problem. Given current levels of immigration into the UK, of course, there is no prospect at all of the number going down anytime soon.

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[Mr Nuttall]

In truth I do not know whether they gave such examples, but I think that the ruling put future deportations at risk. Understandably, it will only serve to increase the sense of frustration that so many of our fellow citizens feel at how powerless this country now is to keep out convicted criminals.

[Mr Chope]

The “deport first, appeal later” provision was at the core of the Government’s last Immigration Bill, but from what my hon. Friend says, the European Court of Justice has driven a coach and horses through that.

[Mr Nuttall]

That provision already seems to have run into the quicksand, if I can put it like that. As my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley pointed out regarding the UK Borders Act 2007, despite the Home Office’s latest plan—at least it is trying to do something, to be fair to it—the will of elected Members of this House has yet again been frustrated by the judiciary, who seem to think they know better than those of us who represent our constituents.

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[Mr Christopher Chope (Christchurch) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham), although I do not agree with her conclusion. This is the 13th Friday in this Session on which I have been present, and I am sorry that not all Members feel it necessary to be here every Friday. I share the frustration of some Opposition Members that it is not always possible to discuss the business one wants.

I sympathise very much with the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), whose Bill refers mainly to England. Clause 23 is the only clause in her Bill that extends to Scotland, and I find it extraordinary that a lot of Members from Scotland do not wish to address this Bill, which relates to a UK-wide issue, but wish to retain their interest in debating just one particular clause of the second Bill on the Order Paper. My understanding is that the problems, costs and frustration caused by foreign national offenders extend as much to people in Scotland as they do to those in the rest of the United Kingdom. It is a pity that we have not heard any SNP Members set out their policies on those important issues.

The Bill fits in with the principles we hold dear. We are privileged to be members of the sovereign United Kingdom. We are privileged that we are able to have control over our own borders as a sovereign nation, and as a sovereign nation we should be able to decide who comes, who stays and who leaves our country if they are not citizens. We welcome visitors to our country, but we expect them to comply with our laws. If they do not, it is a basic principle that we should be able to require them to leave. If they commit a criminal offence, they should be forced to leave, and quickly rather than slowly.

In response to the Home Affairs Committee report, “The work of the Immigration Directorates”, the Government state:

“Foreign nationals who abuse our hospitality by committing crimes in the UK should be in no doubt of our determination to deport them.”

The problem is that there may be determination to deport, but there is no ability to do so in many cases. There is a big difference between the two, and that is the essence of the Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone). He is trying to ensure that the people who abuse this country’s hospitality are deported.

Importantly, the Bill does not discriminate between one type of foreign national and another. It treats them all equally. That is why I disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley (Craig Whittaker). Why should we treat citizens of the EU who are not citizens of the United Kingdom more favourably than other foreign nationals? Why do we not treat them all equally? The only way we can do that is to rid ourselves of our current relationship with the European Union.

The Prime Minister promised that he would get fundamental change in the European Union. My understanding was that that would include a significant revision of the free movement arrangements, the bugbear causing the difficulties to which so much reference has been made during this debate. But the Prime Minister did not achieve the fundamental reform of the European Union that we wanted and, in attempting to achieve it, we supported him so strongly.

Having failed to achieve that, the only way in which we will be able to regain control over our own borders and ensure that those foreigners who abuse our hospitality are forced to leave this country is by voting to leave the European Union on 23 June or, in any event, by introducing a Bill soon afterwards to make sure that the Government exercise their sovereign power to clean up our prisons and remove from them the foreign nationals who should be serving prison sentences in overseas countries.

In a sense, the weakness of the Government’s position is summed in their response to the Home Affairs Committee:

“We do not routinely provide data relating to specific countries as publishing such data could result in undermining diplomatic relationships with those countries, particularly where they might have less incentive to co-operate with us.”

That is the same argument made in relation to those who wish to remain in the European Union—that if we do not do as the remain campaign ask, our European partners might not wish to co-operate with us so much. I think the best way to ensure that EU countries co-operate is to name and shame those that are not taking back the foreign national offenders they should take back under the EU rule of law. As with so many aspects of EU law, that aspect is applied more in the breach than in the observance.

The only way in which we can achieve what the Bill sets out is to leave the European Union. We will then be able, once again, to re-establish our position as an independent, sovereign country—masters of our own destiny, and in control of events—with a democratically elected House of Commons that can decide such issues for itself, without interference from foreign courts. I have great pleasure in supporting the Bill, and I am proud to be invited to be a co-sponsor of it.