Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed

Gerald Howarth Excerpts

Monday 4th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sir Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) (Con)]

May I commend my right hon. Friend’s approach and urge her to go further in her robustness and scrap the Labour-introduced Human Rights Act 1998? While she is at it, will she follow the advice of our right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) and have the burqa banned in this country? It is alien to our culture and has enabled this man to abscond.

[Mrs May]

I thank my hon. Friend. He and I, as Conservative Members, both stood on a manifesto at the general election to scrap the Human Rights Act. I expect to stand on that manifesto at the next general election; it will be a Conservative commitment. He asks about the burqa. I will repeat my position, which is one that I have made clear on previous occasions. First, I believe it is the right of a woman to choose how she dresses. We should allow women to be free to make that choice for themselves. There will be circumstances when it is right to ask for a veil to be removed—for example, at border security or perhaps in courts—and individual institutions, like schools, will make their own policies on dress. However, I fundamentally believe it is the right of a woman to be free to decide how to dress.