European Convention on Human Rights

Tom Harris Excerpts

Tuesday 19th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Pete Wishart]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.

We are here today to consider changes to article 8 of the European convention on human rights, which will effectively define the basis on which people can enter or remain in the UK based on their right to a family life. The motion is a revelation, almost declaring that article 8 is not an absolute right and that it is therefore okay to interpret it in any way that the Government want and for them to give guidance to that effect.

The Government are determined to have their way with the judiciary and to tell it how to interpret these provisions. Why bother even having a judge? Why cannot the Home Secretary and the Minister for Immigration do it themselves? We will have an end to judges performing the delicate balancing exercise they carry out every day in these tribunals and courts will now be dictated by the Secretary of State.

The Home Secretary has set herself quite an ambitious deadline. She has pledged by the end of the summer to end the abuse of the right to a family life by people who should not be here. She has been egged on by the “end the human rights” brigade, whom we see every day in the right-wing press, on the Conservative Back Benches and on the Labour Front Benches. They paint an extraordinary picture of our inner cities, inhabited by marauding foreign national murderers who in the evenings go home to their luxury penthouse flats, probably paid for by benefits and taxpayers’ money, and spend time on the phone to any one of the lavish lawyers who invent any kind of bizarre excuse to show that they have the right to a family life in the UK. That is the picture painted and the pretext behind the assault on article 8 that we are seeing today, and it is all utter nonsense.

Do you know the reality of the question of the right to a family life, Mr Deputy Speaker? Let me tell you. It is not about the marauding foreign nationals about whom we hear every day from the Conservative party. It is about the people whom we see in our constituency surgeries every day when we deal with their cases, who are separated from their families because of the inflexible rules and their rigid application of those rules by the UKBA.

[Mr Tom Harris (Glasgow South) (Lab)]

I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman’s rant, but can he explain whether he shares the general feeling of repulsion held by most Members of the House about the example of the failed asylum seeker who was responsible for the death of a 12-year-old girl, left the scene of that crime and used his right to a family life to remain in the country? It is of course a small example, but does he understand why we feel such revulsion? Does he understand why ordinary people feel revulsion? Does he accept that one does not have to be a Daily Telegraph or Daily Mail reader to be revolted by that example?

[Pete Wishart]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me the opportunity to say absolutely that such people have no place in our country and should be dealt with efficiently and effectively, but article 8 allows the judiciary to do that. What the Government want to do is dictate to judges exactly how they should interpret these cases. I am all for getting rid of all the murderous, mayhem-causing foreign nationals we hear about every day—it is absolutely right that we do that—but let us talk about what actually happens on the ground in our constituency offices and the day-to-day routine cases.

There is a fantastic case in Scotland just now concerning a man called Gary Boyd, who is the deputy head teacher at Kirkwall grammar school in Orkney. He has just returned to his native Scotland after an absence of five years with his Australian wife of nine years. She is having to return to Australia with her eldest son to reapply to come back into the UK because of the way in which the rules have been interpreted by the UKBA, with no flexibility but total rigidity. She had indefinite leave to remain and was out of the country for a long time and did not know that she had to reapply to stay here. She is now off to Australia. What that means—we are talking about the right to family life—is that she will be separated from her husband for six months. Their eldest son is supposed to be sitting his O-levels next year, but he does not know whether he will now be sitting them because of having to go to Australia, and we do not know whether their youngest daughter will be able to start nursery education at the end of the year. This is the reality of the right to a family life and these are the things we should be considering—the rigid rules being applied by the UKBA.

[Mr Tom Harris]

I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman again but the example he has just cited has absolutely no relevance to the motion before the House. We are talking about deportation cases, but he is not talking about deportation. He is talking about a couple who did not obey the rules that are applied to every single other person in the country. Will he admit that he is not talking about a deportation case?

[Pete Wishart]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman once again because he gives me another opportunity to restate that this is the reality—the things that we have to deal with in our constituency offices day in, day out. Yes, we see the headlines in The Daily Telegraph and yes we are appalled by the actions of some foreign nationals. Yes, such people should be deported, but if we are discussing, as we are this afternoon, the right to a family life, this is the reality—the stuff we deal with day in, day out. That is the stuff that needs the real attention.

Who can forget where all this started? It was the hilarious speech by the Home Secretary at the Conservative party conference when she—I am not making this up—cited the example of a Bolivian man who was allowed to remain in the country because he owned a cat. Of course, the Home Secretary is never one to unleash the cat among the pigeons. That ridiculous story had the Justice Secretary twitching in his Hush Puppies. He said at the time that he was willing to bet it was not true, and he was absolutely right because the Home Secretary’s story unravelled faster than a condemned pasty shortly after her speech.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Tom Harris (Glasgow South) (Lab)]

I begin by offering support to my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), who is resuming his place in the Chamber. He is right to express concern about the purpose of the debate and the purpose of the motion on the Order Paper. I have a lot of time for the Immigration Minister, and I know that he will have taken those comments seriously. I expect that in his summing up, he will want to explain to the House why we are here today and what precedent he expects the motion to set—or what precedent has already been set at some time in the past that leads him to believe that the discussion of the motion will have a substantial effect on the decisions of judges in the future.

Before I continue my remarks, I should like to comment on the contribution from the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart). It was a misjudged contribution. He repeatedly referred disparagingly to right-wing papers such as The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail. Actually, there is a troika of right-wing newspapers. Everyone knows that they are The Telegraph, The Mail and The Sun, but the hon. Gentleman did not mention The Sun or any News International newspapers. I cannot think why. Apparently the right-wing press is now limited to The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail.

The hon. Gentleman also showed utter contempt for the citizens of England by suggesting that Scots, unlike the English, are welcoming of immigrants, and that every immigrant to Scotland is integrated into Scottish life as of day one—I think that was the expression that he used. Naturally, he is entirely wrong. Scots, like citizens in the rest of our country, are tolerant and welcoming, but like those in the rest of the country, we value fairness. Support for immigration in Scotland does not extend to support for open-door immigration of the kind proposed by the Scottish National party.

[Pete Wishart]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has had a chance to look at the Scottish Social Attitudes survey that was carried out in the past year. If he has had a look at it, what does he make of it?

[Mr Harris]

I can tell the hon. Gentleman that, unlike him, I speak to constituents all the time, and I know that my constituents have exactly the same view as citizens throughout the United Kingdom. They want to welcome asylum seekers, they want to welcome immigrant communities, but they want a sense of fair play that applies equally across the border. Scots are no more or less tolerant of foreign-born criminals remaining in the UK than are our fellow citizens unfortunate enough to live south of the border.

Now that the hon. Gentleman has had a chance to calm down and get his breath back, I would like to ask him whether, if Scots throughout the country are some sort of homogenous entity, all thinking the same thing, he can explain why the only local authority in Scotland that applied to welcome asylum seekers was Labour-controlled Glasgow—not Perth, not Edinburgh, not another local authority anywhere in Scotland, just Glasgow?

As has already been highlighted, the deportation of foreign criminals is more often frustrated by bureaucratic process than by appeals under article 8 of the Human Rights Act. My concern today is that some Members of the House and many members of the media—yes, the right-wing media—are using the relatively small number of appeals under this part of the Act to make the case for the Act’s repeal. That would be unacceptable. It is important that the debate focuses on the reasons behind the failure of the Government—and, yes, the failure of previous Governments—rather than on the straw man of the Human Rights Act.

Nevertheless, it is a concern to all our constituents when someone who has enjoyed British hospitality, and who has chosen to repay that hospitality with contempt for our law is allowed to remain in the UK. My understanding—perhaps the Immigration Minister will be able to clarify this in his summing up—is that the interpretation of article 8 as representing an absolute right to a family life is a peculiarly British interpretation. My understanding is that other judiciaries operating elsewhere in the EU under the European convention on human rights attach a significantly different interpretation to article 8—one that more frequently allows the deportation of foreign criminals.

The Government’s own policy on the circumstances in which deportation would not be appropriate—for example, if the person had lived here under valid terms for at least 15 years—deserves some attention.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) has already referred to the shocking case of Aso Mohammed Ibrahim, who in 2003 was responsible for the death of 12-year-old Amy Houston in a hit-and-run incident in Lancashire. Mr Ibrahim is variously described as an asylum seeker, a failed asylum seeker and an illegal immigrant. In fact, only the last term is correct. He arrived in the UK in 2001 and was refused refugee status, so he was never—not for one second—a refugee, and his appeal rights were exhausted by the end of 2002.

It is not the Human Rights Act that is to blame for the fact that too many criminals are allowed to remain here; it is the failure of the UK Border Agency to remove illegal immigrants in far greater numbers, and that should concern the House. Of course I accept the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn, who is a former Home Secretary, which is that on many occasions we simply cannot return people to their country of origin because it would not be safe to do so.

However, I have come across many constituents who have been in the country for eight or 10 years, applied for asylum and had the application refused, but who regard the refusal simply as an indication that no decision on their case has yet been made. They are wrong. They have been given the decision on their case: they have been told that they are in the country illegally and so should remove themselves. Far too often we allow time to march on and they do not make arrangements to remove themselves, but the UK Border Agency should remove them forcibly—I know that that process costs a lot—if they are not prepared to remove themselves voluntarily. I should point out that, although this debate has been billed as being about the scandal of permitting criminals to remain in the UK, the motion rightly refers only to migrants, not criminals.

I welcome the Government’s statement that one of the exceptions to the presumption that an individual will be deported is where an individual has been resident in the UK legally for 15 years. I hope that the Minister, in summing up, can confirm that the many thousands of individuals who have remained here illegally, ignoring decisions to refuse them refugee status, will not qualify under that exception as they have not been in the country legally. That issue is as pertinent to the cases of law-abiding immigrants as it is to criminals, and article 8 has been used to confirm the residency in the UK of many who have no criminal past and who are of less interest to the right-wing tabloids.

Countries across the whole UK are relocating, but our hospitality is sorely tested when people who come here either to seek refuge or to build a better life for themselves repay it by exhibiting contempt for our rules and, by implication, contempt for our citizens. Whether they have broken the law through an appallingly violent and callous act, as in the case of young Amy Houston, or by ignoring an appeal ruling that they have no right to remain here, the right to a family life cannot be absolute. The Government are right to say so. However, they are merely reflecting what the whole country already believes.

[Yvette Cooper]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. The Home Secretary did not properly clarify earlier whether this motion is separate from the normal and proper debates on the different immigration rules. The Clerk of the Journals has now provided some clarification and reassurance that these are in fact separate. He has advised:

“The effectiveness of the statutory disapproval procedure for any particular Statement of Changes in the Immigration Rules laid before Parliament is a matter of law, which cannot be altered or over-ridden by any Resolution of the House of Commons.”

Will you confirm that that is indeed the case, because I think that would provide the House with important clarification and allow it to deliver a clearer message?

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate, which I think we would all agree has been interesting. I note that several of the Members who have spoken are not in their seats, but I will none the less refer to their contributions.

The hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier) spoke about a great number of the wider immigration issues that he believed needed addressing. However, it is important to remember that that is not the subject at hand this evening.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) referred to a constituency case, involving Mr Mohammed, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Graham Jones) also referred. I think everybody would agree—the Home Secretary tacitly referred to this, albeit without naming the case—that that case is one of the most heinous examples of where it has felt as though the judges were out of step with public opinion, and certainly the opinion in this House. I do not think that one has to be a supporter of The Daily Telegraph or the Daily Mail to hold that view; it seems to me a fairly commonsensical one. Indeed, my right hon. Friend and my hon. Friend detailed what were some pretty horrific incidents and the way in which fairly flimsy excuses were used to remain in this country.

The hon. Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins)—he, too, is not in his place, so I hope that I do not misrepresent him—said, “I want to see all criminals deported as soon as possible.” That would return us to a rather 19th-century understanding of what should happen to criminals in this country. I think he meant that all foreign criminals should be deported as soon as possible, but—[Interruption.] I think that returning to what happened to the Tolpuddle martyrs would—

[Mr Tom Harris]

We are reviewing the policy.

[Chris Bryant]

No; we, at least, are certainly not reviewing it.

However, the hon. Member for Keighley did say something with which I wholeheartedly agreed. He said that it was not racist to want to debate immigration. I have said this at the Dispatch Box before, and I will say it again: just because someone wants to talk about immigration does not make them a racist. There are certainly some people who want to talk about immigration because they are racists, but I believe that everybody has a perfect right to debate this issue, and we should be able to do so calmly and reasonably.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) expressed a view about the motion before us which I think a lot of us had come to when he said, “I no longer know what this debate is about,” and when he referred to the unusual process that has been used. I will refer later to why I think this is not the process for us to go through. I think we have come to a much greater understanding of what the legal implications will be of the decision we take this evening, but he was right to highlight the fact that some of the water had been somewhat muddied by earlier contributions.