Immigration and Asylum Bill (Seventh sitting)

Melanie Onn Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2026 Public Bill Committees

[Blake Stephenson]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for supporting the general thrust of what we are trying to achieve with the amendments, and I accept his point. By having a narrow list, we may constrain future opportunities and changes, and we need to be flexible. However, it is important that the Committee expresses its view that these crimes are abhorrent. Although it is a narrow list, this place can of course legislate further in the future, as life changes. I thank the hon. Gentleman for his general support and I understand his point, but given the gravity of these crimes, it is important that this Committee is very clear that they are totally unacceptable.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes) (Lab)]

I think there is broad agreement on the principle behind the hon. Gentleman’s amendments, but is he seriously suggesting that, for every additional crime that we decide needs to be added to his inexhaustible list, we must come back to the House and somebody has to sign off on it?

[Blake Stephenson]

We are here to legislate, so I do not think it is unreasonable for us to be defining what is right and wrong. Perhaps we can leave it to the Minister to respond.

The unfortunate reality is that, with this Bill, the Government are falling into the very same trap that the previous Government fell into. The legislation may be designed to work around the constraints imposed by the ECHR, but it will ultimately run up against the very same problems. The courts will default to the positions that they have consistently taken, enabling individuals with no right to remain in this country to delay or prevent their removal. Indeed, when the Bill fails to enable the Government to address the extensive range of grounds for resisting removal that flow from the ECHR, will the Minister finally accept that—as we have long argued—the real problem lies outside the drafting of the legislation, however robust it might be, and however robust the Government intend it to be today?

As I have already noted, the Minister described discussions about leaving the ECHR last week as unnecessary and counterproductive. If she genuinely believes that deterrence must sit at the heart of the response to these challenges, I struggle to see how removing the ability of foreign criminals to rely on the convention to delay or prevent their removal could reasonably be considered as either unnecessary or counterproductive.

The Opposition will not oppose clause 20. Extending these rules to all deportation cases and restoring the balance against the public interest are steps in the right direction that we support. However, the clause removes the clear lines that protected the public from the most serious offenders, and it gives these criminals access to exceptions that cannot be used today. We will seek to press amendments 107 and 108 to a vote, and I would be grateful for the Minister’s answers to the various questions I have asked.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Vickers]

Let us be absolutely clear about what this group of amendment is about: it is about whether a foreign national who comes to this country and commits a serious crime found to be worthy of a long sentence gets to stay here. The British public have a simple answer to that question, and so do we: they should go. The principle at stake is straightforward: if someone is a guest in this country and they rape, rob, deal drugs or abuse a child, they have forfeited the right to remain here—not after years of appeals or after a tribunal has weighed their family life against the lives of others that they have wrecked. They should go.

On Second Reading, the Government told the House that clause 20 would make it easier to remove foreign criminals and that deportation should go ahead outside of a limited number of truly exceptional circumstances. The trouble is that the clause does not match them; for the most serious offences, it does the opposite. Behind every one of these cases is a victim: a woman who lies awake wondering whether the man who attacked her is still living a few streets away, or a family who were told that justice had been done, only to learn that the offender is now fighting to stay.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire explained how the law works today. Since 2014, someone sentenced to four years or more for rape, armed robbery or dealing drugs on our streets has been unable to hide behind their family or how long they have lived here. Those exceptions are simply not enough; someone has to show very compelling circumstances over and above them. That is a high bar, and it is meant to be. The worse the crime, the narrower the door.

Clause 20 takes that line away. The four-year threshold is gone. Someone serving 10, 15 or 20 years can now walk straight into the argument that deporting them would be unduly harsh on their family. Today that route is closed to them, but under this Bill, it is opened. Let us think about what that means. The victim found the courage to give evidence, the jury convicted, the judge handed down a long sentence and then, at the end of all that, the defender gets to say that deportation would be too hard on them.

The Minister will tell us not to worry, because subsection (2) of proposed new section 117C says that the more serious the offence, the greater the public interest. That goes to one of the oldest questions in lawmaking: do you legislate with a rule or with a standard? A rule says four years, and that settles it; a standard says to weigh everything up and decide case by case. Rules give certainty; standards give discretion. In this area, discretion has been a gift to lawyers and a source of deep frustration to the public.

That is precisely why Parliament chose a rule in 2014. The whole purpose was to narrow the discretion of the courts because the balance they were striking was one the public simply did not recognise. Clause 20 hands the scales back, and we all know where weighing exercises end up: in front of a tribunal, then an appeal, then another appeal. Can the Minister point to a single line in proposed new section 117C that stops someone sentenced to four years or more relying on the “unduly harsh” exception? I have read it several times and I cannot find one.

Between 2015 and 2022, around 420 foreign offenders a year won human rights appeals against their removal. That is more than one every single day, and that is with the four-year rule still in place. The Home Office does not even publish how many had sentences of four or more years. If the Government are so confident that the clause is tougher, let them publish the numbers. Amendment 107 would put the four-year rule back, and amendment 111 would keep the existing rules on how a sentence is counted, so that the system works.

Then there is amendment 109: it is only a few words, but they tell us everything. Today, a serious offender must show very compelling circumstances “over and above” the exceptions. Clause 20 changes that to circumstances “at least as strong”. “Over and above” means more; “at least as strong” means the same. That is not tightening the test but loosening it. When Parliament changes the wording of a test, the courts are entitled to presume that it meant to change the meaning, so a tribunal reading “at least as strong” will quite properly conclude that this House intended a lower bar. We would be legislating for exactly the outcome the Government say they want to avoid. Parliament chose those words in 2014, and the courts have applied them ever since, so why change them? Did the Home Office mean to lower the bar, or did nobody notice? Neither answer should give this Committee much comfort. Amendment 109 would put the original words back.

Amendment 108 goes further than the current law; we make no apology for that. Sentence length is a rough guide to how dangerous someone is, but it is not the whole story. Guilty pleas get discounts, and the facts of individual cases mean that some very dangerous people get less than four years. Amendment 108 says that, for the worst offences, the type of crime settles it. If someone is convicted of a specified violent, sexual or terrorist offence or a sexual offence against a child, long residence and family routes are off the table, whatever the sentence. Let me put that plainly: a foreign national who has sexually abused a child should not be able to stand in a tribunal and argue that deporting them would be unduly harsh on their family. What about the harshness inflicted on the child?

[Melanie Onn]

I am listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman’s points, but that is not what the Bill provides for; it certainly does not allow for what he suggests. We have had some silly games with semantics. Does he agree that this is a broad catch-all of very serious crimes, including those he is talking about?

[Matt Vickers]

We are saying that the Bill puts in place choices based on how long someone has been sentenced. We are saying that if someone is sentenced to more than four years, they should not be eligible. If someone commits specific offences, such as sexual offences against a child, they should not be able to rely on the exceptions. That is exactly where we are at.