Deportation of Foreign National Offenders

Jonathan Gullis Excerpts

Wednesday 7th February 2024 Westminster Hall

[Jonathan Gullis (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Rachel Maclean) on securing this extremely important debate.

It is an absolute abomination that we see tens of thousands of illegal migrants choosing to come from safe mainland France and arriving undocumented on the shores of our country. They are predominantly young men: over 70%. In some cases—not all, but some—they will go on to commit heinous crimes or will be using these routes on behalf of gangs or even terrorist organisations, as has been reported by our security services. That is potentially undermining our nation’s very security.

The people of Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke simply will not stand for that, but they find themselves up against an institution like the Church of England. Its leader, Archbishop Justin Welby, has created political activists within the clergy to go out of their way to allow people to pretend that they have somehow seemingly converted to Christianity. A document leaked to GB News, seen by Nigel Farage and others, says, “After someone’s application has been granted, don’t be shocked if that person does not subsequently attend the church congregation.” It tells us everything we need to know about the abuse of the system that the BBC, the Church of England, the Labour party, lefty lawyers and do-gooder celebrity types are acting against national interests and are willing to leave our borders wide open without our knowing or understanding who is coming in and endangering our great nation.

I feel real anger at His Majesty’s Opposition, the Labour party. Back in February 2020, more than 150 Labour peers and Members of Parliament went out of their way to sign a letter that sought to stop the deportation of serious offenders, all because they wanted some cheap likes on social media platforms such as X, formerly known as Twitter. These people—people like the shadow Foreign Secretary; the shadow Health Secretary; the shadow Minister for Women and Equalities; the shadow Justice Secretary, who would be in charge of the prison estate if, God forbid, the Labour party were ever to take control of this country; the shadow Attorney General, when she is not busy demeaning the St George’s flag or the white van man, supporting the de-banking of political opponents or enabling murderers and rapists to stay in our country and terrorise our streets; and the shadow Solicitor General, when he is not busy spreading tin-hat, deepfake, fake news images on social media accounts—are signing letters that endanger people on our streets. They are endangering communities in places like Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke, where sadly we have seen radicalisation that led to a dreadful terrorist act. Someone from the town of Tunstall went and committed the heinous crime on London bridge.

This is an issue of the utmost importance. When the Leader of His Majesty’s Opposition, the right hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), signed the letter, he was busy pandering to his Corbynista friends—or should I say his former friends, whom he has recently ditched in order to pretend that he has somehow rehabilitated himself—to get the extreme loony left that still rages in the Labour party to back him for leader?

The Leader of the Opposition, who has been busy ditching his 10 pledges, is happy to whitewash his history as the Director of Public Prosecutions. Tajay Thompson, who was convicted of battering two women and went on to commit further drug-dealing offences, was prevented from being deported while the right hon. and learned Gentleman was head of the CPS. The right hon. and learned Gentleman also opposed the deportation of Fabian Henry, a foreign rapist who attacked a girl of 17 and abducted and sexually a 15-year-old. That is his record: when it came to putting people allegedly behind bars, he was busy working in the interests of those who very much undermine the safety of the young women and children of our country.

I will not have the Labour party virtue-signalling. I hope that the shadow immigration Minister, uses this debate to apologise on behalf of the Labour party for those who signed the letter, and to say that they will never do such a thing again.