Abu Qatada

Lord King of Bridgwater Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I do not know how and why Abu Qatada ever came into this country, but I will no doubt make inquiries for the noble Lord and let him know. Having said that, there are aspects of our policy of allowing asylum to certain people of which this country should be proud. I do not know whether that is how this particular gentleman, as the noble Lord described him, got in. It would have been better if he never had come in—I agree with the noble Lord on that—but I do not think that we necessarily want to pursue a policy whereby no one could come in at all. We want to have the appropriate strict controls; that is something that my right honourable friend has always made clear and some thing that we are tidying up after the mess of the past 15 years.

[Lord King of Bridgwater]

The last two questions indicate two major issues. One is that extremist preachers in this country have access to exceptional measures of communication that never previously existed and that have become available to many impressionable young people, creating an extremely dangerous situation. The point made by my noble friend of ensuring the total efficacy of the prohibition of access to those means of communication is very important. Secondly, although here we are dealing with Jordan, from which I understand acceptable undertakings have been given by a responsible Government, is it not increasingly the case that there are a huge number of countries of which it is easy for anybody arriving in this country to claim that they will be in danger if they are asked to return there? Finally—and this applies to this case alone—what might be the overall cost incurred by this country, with the number of people that we cannot remove who should properly be removed? Presumably, we are carrying costs that we carried for Abu Qatada while he was in jail—and presumably he is on benefit and carrying further costs as well.