Foreign National Offender Removal Flights

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Wednesday 18th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Tom Pursglove]

I, too, think there is absolutely a place for rehabilitation within the criminal justice system. That is right and proper, and something I think we all broadly accept across the House, but what we are talking about here is serious criminality that is a scourge on our society and our communities, and causes real harm to real people and real families in the communities we represent. That is front and centre in the decisions we make, and of course we act in accordance with our legal responsibilities under the legislation as it stands. I have to say that I am hearing a sort of orchestra of suggestion that we are getting decisions wrong. We are getting decisions right on these cases. It is the process that is flawed and we are fixing it.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

May I encourage my hon. Friend to come to the Dispatch Box more often, because that was one of the best Government statements we have had in recent times? Residents in the Kettering constituency want foreign national offenders who have committed serious and violent offences to be deported and they will be appalled that, thanks to the intervention of lefty, woke human rights immigration lawyers, 107 of those who should have left our shores this morning remain on British soil. May I urge my hon. Friend to go further and faster, arrange more flights and attach conditions so that those who are deported are never allowed to re-enter the United Kingdom?

[Tom Pursglove]

It is fair to say that the status quo is thoroughly depressing. I know that, behind people in Corby and east Northamptonshire, Kettering people are very sound and they are right to raise this issue. [Interruption.] And of course people in Wellingborough, too. They are right to demand action. They are right to be impatient for the change we have promised. We will continue to work hard and constructively to deliver the reforms we are making. The issue about people returning in breach of a deportation order is one that I am conscious of. The changes we are making through the Act, particularly around illegal entry, should help us to clamp down on that.