Immigration Bill

Debate between Yasmin Qureshi and Julian Brazier

Thursday 30th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Yasmin Qureshi]

On the point about removing people’s citizenship, my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) was born in England, but I was born in Pakistan. We are both British nationals, but if she was to commit murder, which I am sure she is not going to, she could not be deported, whereas if I did, I could be. Is that fair?

[Mr Brazier]

That question runs across several different issues. I was making the same point that the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), the Chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, made, which was about people who take up arms abroad. Whether they were born in this country or not, there is a long tradition of stripping citizenship from people who commit such offences. On the issue of murder, if somebody holds British citizenship, I would not allow the Executive a specific power in that area. I hope that answers the hon. Lady’s question.

I strongly support new clause 15. We have heard about the various cases, including one from the right hon. Member for Blackburn, and we have gone around the buoy of these three centres of power—the British Parliament, the British courts and the ECHR. I strongly support the view of Lord Judge, the outstanding retiring Lord Chief Justice, that Parliament needs to make it clear which, ultimately, is the supreme court for British law. Is it the UK Supreme Court, as he suggests it should be, or are we going to concede that the final word lies in Strasbourg? I firmly believe that the final word should stay in this country.

The point that my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton made, which was repeated by a number of other people—including my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg)—is that while his proposal is almost certainly incompatible with recent rulings of the European Court of Human Rights, that cannot mean that it is illegal. This is a sovereign Parliament. We can pass the measure and the courts can try cases under it. If we make it clear, as I believe we should, that the Supreme Court in this country should be the supreme court, we do not have a problem. It is by pursuing cases such as this that we can finally sort out whether or not, as some Members on both sides claim, it is possible to sort out these issues and still accept the ultimate sovereignty of Strasbourg. We believe that we have to sort it out by, as Lord Judge argued, stating that Parliament is ultimately a sovereign body and that the Supreme Court in this country is indeed the British supreme court. Only by having a measure like this can we sort that out.