Julian Lewis
Main Page: Julian Lewis (Conservative - New Forest East)Department Debates - View all Julian Lewis's debates with the Home Office
Asylum Seekers: Removal to Rwanda
Julian Lewis Excerpts(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Tom Pursglove
I am afraid to have to say to the right hon. Lady that what I find abhorrent is people drowning in the channel. What is not acceptable is for us to abdicate the responsibility to stop that criminality and stop the risk to life. I should also be very clear about language: this is not deportation. We deport foreign criminals. Let us be very clear about the language; it is important when we debate these issues. Again, I just make the point, for the benefit of the House, that people should come here through safe and legal routes. We have generous safe and legal routes available. That is the right way to come to this country. There is not that risk to life in the same way when people come through safe and legal routes.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
Does the Minister agree with Oxford’s professor of constitutional law, Richard Ekins, who wrote on Sunday that the root of the problem is the Human Rights Act 1998 incorporating the European convention on human rights into our law, which
“enables courts to interpret legislation unreasonably, contradicting the will of Parliament.”
Will he revisit that legislation? We should not have these matters decided by unelected judges in Strasbourg.
Tom Pursglove
It is fair to say that we believe there is a legal basis for this policy and that at all times we will be compliant with our obligations under both the refugee convention and the ECHR, but my right hon. Friend will, of course, be aware that the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Dominic Raab), the Deputy Prime Minister, is taking forward a programme of reform in relation to the Human Rights Act, and will no doubt want to make his views known.