Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Edward Leigh Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 10th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

This is a vital issue, and Labour voters feel as strongly about it as Conservative voters. Our inability as a country to control the people smugglers is utterly debilitating to the political process, and is causing tremendous unhappiness and angst in our nation. We can throw brickbats across the Chamber and blame each other, arguing about which Minister is or is not responsible, but until we solve this problem together we are simply feeding a vast populist movement that could be intensely damaging to both the Conservative and Labour parties, so we have to work together to solve it.

I know that I will not persuade Labour to support the Rwanda scheme, but experience shows that the only effective deterrent is to detain and deport. We know that from other countries, such as Australia. I will not become involved in an argument about whether Rwanda is right or not, or how many people were or were not exported, and I agree that the Government should be commended for wanting to be seen to do something, but what they are doing is ineffective because it scraps the Rwanda scheme.

The devil is in the detail, so let me deal with one detail to prove this point. Article 33 of the 1951 refugee convention forbids the return of refugees to countries where they may be at risk, but it creates a specific exception for those claiming refugee status who either pose a danger to the security of the country or have been convicted of a particularly serious crime. That exception exists regardless of the threat of being persecuted, so, under the convention, someone who is a criminal can be exported to Afghanistan. Article 3 of the European convention on human rights is a very sensible and restrained one-sentence article prohibiting torture, but the European Court has expanded its meaning to interpret it as prohibiting Governments from returning individuals to countries where they could be subject to inhuman or degrading treatment. That is a massive extension of article 3’s sensible and reasonable intention. I am sorry to go into so much detail, but it is essential to understand what is going on.

This is typical of the way in which judges have worked to undermine legitimate Government action undertaken by elected representatives. Two weeks ago, I sat in the hemicycle of the Council of Europe listening to Lord Hermer saying that he would always accept every interpretation of the convention. That, in my view, is unhealthy, and undermines our democracy as well as the public legitimacy of the system. The refugee convention was drafted in 1949, in tandem with the European convention on human rights—it is very old, even older than I am, and that is something—and it was drafted by the same people. It was never intended that the ECHR should apply to immigration at that time; it was only in the 1980s that judges in the European Court extended it. In 1996, in Chahal v. United Kingdom, it was held that there was an absolute rule to prevent the exporting of criminals. I am a delegate to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, and the Government should work with other members there to seek to revise the convention. All European Governments are struggling: we are all in the same mess.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Does the right hon. Gentleman not agree that the European convention on human rights and the European Court of Human Rights are not a pick and mix? If we are signed up to the convention, we have to abide by the decisions taken by the Court. The right hon. Gentleman seems to be taking an approach that does not accept the jurisdiction of that Court over UK law, which is implicit within the Human Rights Act 1998 in this country.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I know that the right hon. Gentleman has a particular point of view, but what I am trying to explain to the House is that the convention was never intended to apply to immigration. The refugee convention applied to it, and under the refugee convention we can export criminals. It is judges who have extended the European convention on human rights. Unless we persuade the Court to change, I am afraid that if we want to solve this problem—if we want to stop people coming across the channel, and if we want to detain and deport—in the end we will have to grasp the nettle and get out of the European convention on human rights.

There is precedent for issuing a temporary derogation, given that we are facing a crisis, but if that is not heeded, we always have the option to leave the convention altogether and opt out of the Strasbourg Court’s expansive rulings. That covers the criminals claiming asylum or entering illegally. For non-criminals, we need a programme like Rwanda, although it may not be Rwanda; I know that I will not convince the Government on that. As for legal migration, the Government—any Government—must stop subsidising legal arrivals undercutting existing workers in Britain. I am very critical of my own Government for allowing this mass immigration, and I was constantly raising these points from the Back Benches, but at least, albeit too late, the Conservative Government committed themselves to raising the earnings minimum to meet the average earnings in the UK. That must be kept up to date and enforced.

Let me end by saying that it we are to solve this crisis, we need, ultimately, to get out of the convention, stop the boats, and stop importing low-paid workers legally.