Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill
Debate between Natascha Engel and David Nuttall(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker
These are no longer genuine points of order; they are points of frustration. The Procedure Committee is currently doing an inquiry into private Members’ Bills, so I direct the hon. Gentleman to that. There are other avenues through which he can raise issues that are of concern to himself and to his constituents. Now is not the time. With that, I think that is the end of points of order on this matter.
Mr Nuttall
According to information released by the Home Office on immigration enforcement transparency data for the fourth quarter of 2015, of the 5,789 foreign national offenders subject to deportation action, 1,865 had been living in the community for 60 or more months, showing how complex some cases can be and the obstacles that the Home Office faces when trying to deport people. Hon. Members may be aware that, according to Home Office figures, the average time taken to deport a foreign national offender is 149 days. Were the Home Office to take action today, a foreign national offender would not have to worry about being deported until 5 August.
When a person is sentenced to 12 months or less in prison, the Government can consider deportation only on a public interest basis by looking at the cumulative effect of the offending. The Bill would ease that administrative burden. For example, a foreign national offender from a non-EEA country with a six-month sentence would be excluded from the UK under clause 1. As has been noted, if we turn to EU nationals we come up against the problem of the principle of free movement of people. If people abuse that right, it is absolutely right that this country should have the right to exclude them if they break our laws.
In conclusion, this is, on the face of it, a modest Bill, but one with huge potential to help remove from the country those who seek to abuse our generosity by breaking our laws. We have heard how big the problem is: around one in eight of the prison population is a foreign national. The price tag attached to keeping all these foreign nationals in our jails is somewhere in the region of a huge £250 million a year, so there is a massive incentive to get the problem sorted out not only for law and order, but for the British taxpayer. The Bill seeks to move the pendulum back in favour of the law-abiding majority and the taxpayer, and I hope it receives the unanimous support of the House.
Backbench Business Committee
Debate between Natascha Engel and David Nuttall(12 years, 7 months ago)
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Natascha Engel
I agree, especially in respect of the new intake from 2010, who were unused to the way Parliament worked before and made no assumptions; they have made this Committee their own. The biggest difference I have identified between the previous Parliament and this one is that the Backbench Business Committee, as a forum for Back Benchers, has given them the opportunity to hold the Government to account properly and do the job of a Back Bencher much more effectively than in previous Parliaments. In large measure, that is thanks to the imaginative way that the 2010 intake, especially, has used the Backbench Business Committee.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way and to her Committee for preparing this report. I, too, will be careful in my remarks, as a member of the Procedure Committee. She has made a pertinent point about the value of the Backbench Business Committee, particularly the opportunity it has provided to Back-Bench Members to raise matters that otherwise would never have seen the light of day, and which have attracted enormous interest throughout the country—no more so than last October’s debate on whether there should be a referendum on our relationship with Europe. Paragraph 51 of the Committee’s report shows that it attracted more than 500,000 viewers on the BBC Parliament channel and the internet. Is the hon. Lady aware of any other debate, scheduled by the Government, that attracted that level of attention?
Natascha Engel
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that plug. Of course, it was he who came to the Backbench Business Committee with the suggestion for a debate on a referendum on the EU.
One of the most shocking events I encountered while chairing the Backbench Business Committee—I do not know whether other hon. Members felt the same—was the first time I ever heard a Conservative Member call a Labour Member his honourable friend.