Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mark Harper and Christopher Pincher

Monday 2nd December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

10. What changes she plans to make to the deportation appeals system.

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

We are making changes in the Immigration Bill to reduce the number of appeal rights and to ensure that those convicted of criminal offences will, in most cases, be able to be deported first and their appeal to take place from overseas.

[Christopher Pincher]

I am grateful to the Minister for tightening up the previous Government’s deportation regulations so that the scandalous waste of time it took to deport Hamza and Qatada can never happen again. Can he confirm that the proposals he has tabled are unlikely to be struck down by the European Court of Human Rights? If they might be, is he prepared to take action against the European convention on human rights first?

[Mr Harper]

We have looked very carefully at this, and we are confident that the measures in the Immigration Bill, including the changes that clause 14 makes to put article 8 on a proper statutory basis, are robust. The Home Secretary has made it clear that at the election we will have to deal with the impact of the Human Rights Act 1998 and the convention. Indeed, that has been reinforced by comments from Lord Sumption, who pointed out that the Court is now engaged in judicial law-making, which is in constitutional terms remarkable, taking many contentious issues that should be questions for political debate and turning them into questions of law to be resolved by a tribunal. I could not agree with him more.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Mark Harper and Christopher Pincher

Tuesday 15th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Christopher Pincher]

The Minister has mentioned that the Boundary Commission for England will operate using English regions. Does that mean that it will start by clustering together English counties and then work to refine the boundaries within those counties, or will this be done specifically at regional level?

[Mr Harper]

I can understand why hon. Members are asking me these questions, but these are matters for the boundary commissions. One of the things that we made very clear in the debate when we were being accused of gerrymandering by the Labour party was that in our system the boundary commissions draw the lines, whereas in some other countries those lines are drawn by political parties in legislatures. We have set the guidelines for the boundary commissions and the rules are in the Bill, which we hope will be passed by Parliament and thus enacted. The detail of how the boundary commissions go about that work is a matter for them and they are experienced in doing such work. When they have these public hearings, having published their proposals, they will set out the nature of the scheme under which they are going to listen to people, and they will be very clear about how they have reached their decisions. These are matters for the boundary commissions. I can understand why my hon. Friend is trying to tempt me on this, but it would be wrong for Ministers to try to get involved in directing the boundary commissions on how they carry out their work.