argyrotsipi/train-dataset huggingface dataset:
Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-11
Topic: Immigration
Philip Thomas Hollobone (Conservative, Centre-right): I have not received any such helpful indications from the Government, but I do not usually receive helpful indications about very much at all, so I am not necessarily taking the lack of an indication as a negative. I would hope that, given the presence of so many hon. Members here today, the Government might realise that the issue is important to our constituents and needs to be taken seriously I am still in a state of shock, having heard the intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley. We are told that we are safer being a member of the European Union, but my hon. Friend has given the House a clear, explicit example of how we are not safer. Here we have an Afghan national—he is not even a national of the Netherlands, but a resident there—who is a convicted murderer, but who can none the less fly into this country. Border Force does not know anything about him. He then commits an offence and is out on the streets in Crawley before being apprehended again. How on earth can we be safer and more secure in our nation with rules such as that?
Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-11
Topic: Other
John Simon Bercow (Conservative, Centre-right): Order. Just before the hon. Member for Kettering takes an intervention from the hon. Gentleman, I just remind him that the Bill contains two clauses, the first of which is the only substantive clause, containing four subsections. The second clause is simply the short title and commencement date of the Bill, and the Bill itself takes up a little over one page. As the hon. Member for Kettering has now dilated very eloquently and with great courtesy for 53 minutes, he might perhaps consider focusing, with that laser-like precision for which he is renowned in all parts of the House, upon the first clause of his two-clause Bill.
Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-11
Topic: Other
Philip Thomas Hollobone (Conservative, Centre-right): I genuinely seek your guidance, Mr Speaker. Is it in order for me to suggest during the moving of the Bill’s Second Reading that additional clauses be added to strengthen and clarify aspects that some Members feel are not necessarily covered by clause 1?
Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-11
Topic: Other
John Simon Bercow (Conservative, Centre-right): The Bill, of course, can be amended and, therefore, notably changed in all sorts of ways in Committee, but that cannot be done today. I have allowed the hon. Gentleman considerable latitude to establish the context and to explain the background to the introduction of his Bill, and I have no regrets on that score, but I feel sure that he will have plenty of meat to present to the House in respect of clause 1. On that clause I am sure he will shortly focus.
Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-11
Topic: Immigration
Philip Thomas Hollobone (Conservative, Centre-right): It was lots of billions to bail out the Irish economy. As part of that agreement for the lending of a substantial amount of money, I am sure we could have done something on repatriating Irish nationals No. 3, which, given the size of its population, might be a surprise to some, is Jamaica. There are 567 Jamaican nationals in our jails.
Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-11
Topic: Immigration
Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (Conservative, Centre-right): It is completely absurd that we cannot deport people back to Jamaica, which is a completely safe country. If I am fortunate enough to catch Mr Speaker’s eye, I shall make the point later that there is a particular case of our not being able to deport somebody back to the West Indies. The situation is so difficult that the British taxpayer is now actually funding a prison in the West Indies so that we can pay for people to go back to a prison for which we are paying.
Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-11
Topic: Other
Philip Thomas Hollobone (Conservative, Centre-right): I am most grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention. May I welcome you to the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker? It is always a delight to see you grace the Chamber with your presence, and your appearance has certainly made my day I have given the House some wrong information—perhaps my eyesight has let me down. I said that Jamaica is No. 3, but it is in fact No. 4. No. 3 is Romania with 629, and Jamaica is No. 4 with 567
Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-11
Topic: Mixed Topics
Philip Thomas Hollobone (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is right. I know that he has raised that issue in the Chamber on numerous occasions, and rightly, because there are few issues that enrage our constituents more than the public money spent on translating things for people who, frankly, should learn to speak English if they want to stay in this country.
Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-11
Topic: Mixed Topics
Philip Thomas Hollobone (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is right in part, but my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch is of course talking about translation services as a whole. The longer a foreign national offender stays in this country, the greater the demand for translation services they will inevitably trigger during their incarceration. They may learn English while they are in prison, but it might not be the sort of English we want to encourage them to learn.
Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-11
Topic: Immigration
Jeremy John Elton Lefroy (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend mentioned Lithuania. I have not detected that I have any Lithuanian ancestry. Does he agree that the fact that Lithuanians are prisoners in this country shows that they have freedom, whereas 20 or 30 years ago, when they were under the Soviet yoke, they were not able to travel to this country to work? As I have said, they and nationals from all the other countries that have been mentioned do a tremendous amount of good for the British economy. I agree that of course a few get into trouble and should be sent home, but does he agree that it is tremendous that the Baltic and other eastern European countries are now free from the Soviet yoke?
Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-11
Topic: Other
Eleanor Fulton Laing (Conservative, Centre-right): Order. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that what we must discuss this morning are matters in the Bill, not matters that are not in the Bill. The Bill is a short one, and I am well aware of what is in it. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman knows that sticking strictly to what is in the Bill is essential.
Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-11
Topic: Mixed Topics
Philip Thomas Hollobone (Conservative, Centre-right): I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, as ever, for your wise counsel and guidance I want to praise Her Majesty’s Government for the prisons initiative in Jamaica. We now come to No. 8 on the list, which is India.
Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-11
Topic: Immigration
Jeremy John Elton Lefroy (Conservative, Centre-right): I am most grateful, and I will. All the countries in the top 10 that I have not yet commented on—India, Pakistan, Nigeria and Somalia—have nationals who are in this country legally and who are abiding by the law, as we would want them to. Those people are making a tremendous contribution. My hon. Friend is talking about people who are not abiding by the law. In just the same way, we would expect our own citizens who do not abide by the law in another country to be imprisoned and, perhaps, repatriated to this country.
Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-11
Topic: Immigration
Pauline Elizabeth Latham (Conservative, Centre-right): Does my hon. Friend accept that many nationals from those countries send a huge amount of their own money back to their country to help their families who are still there? As my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Jeremy Lefroy) said, those people are good, contributing members of this society because they have chosen to come here and they add to what we have in this country. Obviously the criminals are the worst offenders we could possibly have and we need to get rid of them, but there are so many people here who work hard to help their families back home.
Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-11
Topic: Mixed Topics
Philip Thomas Hollobone (Conservative, Centre-right): And those people will be very embarrassed indeed that their fellow foreign nationals are clogging up our prisons in this way. They may be keener than us to see a sensible resolution to the problem The point that I want to make in drawing my brief remarks to a close is that, if we are giving so much money in international aid to Nigeria, Pakistan and Somalia, but those three countries are in the top 10 list of shame in respect of having foreign nationals in our prisons, surely we should do in those countries what we are doing in Jamaica—spending the international aid money that we are already giving them on building prisons in those countries, so that the prisoners in our country can be sent back to them.
Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-11
Topic: Immigration
Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (Conservative, Centre-right): I am very grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me to speak on this important Bill. The House will be relieved to hear that my comments need not be very long, because my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone), with his characteristic courtesy, skill and devotion to the procedures of this House, has made such a comprehensive case in favour of the Bill that I cannot for the life of me understand why anybody would oppose the entirely common-sense proposals that he is elucidating this morning As we have heard, this issue is of enormous importance. Some 10,000 of our prisoners in custody are foreign nationals, but only about 1,000 recommendations for deportation are made each year. That is even more surprising given that this has been a matter of national debate for so long. There is immense public interest in this issue. Only this week, Rod Liddle, who is not an hon. Friend but a well-known journalist, wrote a most interesting article in The Spectator on precisely this subject. This is a not just a matter for a quiet Friday morning in the House of Commons, but a subject that is constantly discussed all over the nation Rod Liddle, in his inimitable way, portrayed the problem we are dealing with. We have heard that there are all these people gumming up our prisons who are not deported, but at last, apparently, the Home Office had decided to get tough in the case of Myrtle Cothill, a "South African widow aged 92 who wished to see out her final days with her daughter in the UK." But the Home Office said "tough luck, Myrtle" and told her she had to get on the next plane and leave the country Last week, I mentioned the case of a leading American Shakespearean scholar, who was frogmarched to the airport by the Home Office because he had stayed a few days longer. What the public cannot understand is why so many good people are being kicked out of our country, not least Myrtle Cothill—although after a national campaign and a huge petition, the Home Office finally relented—and yet all these convicted criminals are not being deported, at a massive cost to our taxpayers of up to £1 billion.
Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-11
Topic: Immigration
Christopher Robert Chope (Conservative, Centre-right): Following our debate on this subject last week, I have received correspondence from people who are not my constituents but who know people—for example from the United States—who are being picked on in most unsatisfactory circumstances. It seems that the Home Office is going for the soft-touch people.
Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-11
Topic: Immigration
Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (Conservative, Centre-right): That is the problem. Is the Home Office going for soft-touch people? We had that debate last week with the Under-Secretary of State for Refugees. He gave a skilful performance from the Dispatch Box, but he could not really deny my hon. Friend’s impeccable case. Indeed, the Minister admitted that there are more than 30,000 illegal asylum seekers who cannot be deported, on top of the people we are talking about today, and all that has to do with the Dublin convention and the Human Rights Act 1998 There was a firm pledge in the Conservative party manifesto to deal with article 8 of the European convention on human rights. There has been massive controversy and publicity about that, and I cannot understand why we are still waiting. I hope that when the Minister replies to the debate, she will tell us what has happened to our reform of human rights legislation, because this is a matter of great public interest Rod Liddle gave some interesting examples of such cases, and others have been enumerated in other newspapers. Let us consider the case of Baghdad Meziane. Baghdad is a convicted al-Qaeda terrorist, with links to the appalling people who committed that atrocity in Paris recently. As Rod Liddle states: "He was convicted in a British court of raising money for al-Qaeda (and also of the ubiquitous credit-card fraud) and sentenced to 11 years in prison. At his trial the judge pointed out, perhaps unnecessarily, that Meziane was a very dangerous man and recommended deportation once his term of incarceration had expired." But no. This "very dangerous" and unpleasant man, was actually released from prison five years early and allowed to return to Leicester. He was not put on the first available plane to Algiers, whence, despite his name, he originates "Baghdad argued that to deport him would contravene his human right to a normal family life." Therefore this man, this dangerous individual, has been released back into our community in Leicester because he claims a right to family life, and despite lengthy legal battles, all our debates, and the Home Secretary’s attempts at legislation, in Leicester he now resides.
Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-11
Topic: Immigration
Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (Conservative, Centre-right): I will deal with that point in a moment, and that is precisely what Migration Watch UK—a very respected charity—is arguing. The article continues: "We can’t even get rid of the criminals who actively want to leave. Mohammed Faisal is a convicted ‘drug lord’ who is reportedly ‘desperate’ to get back to Pakistan." However, the Home Office has messed up his papers, so he is staying put in this country "And what of the Yardies?" — Jamaicans have already been mentioned— "We couldn’t send them to serve their sentences in Jamaica because the prisons are so bad it would breach their human rights." So, as I made clear in an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering, "in desperation", we are spending £25 million of taxpayers money on "building them a nice prison there, maybe with views over Montego Bay. There is a plethora of national and supra-national legislation protecting the rights of the foreign criminal: the Human Rights Act, the Dublin Convention, the European Court of Human Rights, the European Courts of Justice. But none protecting the rest of us." There are all those conventions and Acts of Parliament, but what about the British people who are paying for all this? They cannot understand how, after 10 years of debates, these people are still with us. They are laughing at us. It is not just a question of money; they are literally laughing at us. Many of them are not just serving time in prison, but they are being let out of prison and back into our communities, having committed appalling crimes. They are not being kicked out. [Interruption.] And no doubt they are indeed receiving benefits. That is why the British people are fed up and want action to be taken. It is unlikely that my hon. Friend’s Bill will get to Committee because it is a private Member’s Bill, but therefore the Government should act, and that is why this debate is important There have been many other cases. The Daily Telegraph and The Sunday Telegraph have run a long-standing campaign, and we owe them a great debt for dealing with this issue and trying to raise it on the national stage. The Daily Telegraph put it well: "Sixty years ago, with the horrors of the Second World War still fresh and raw, lawyers devised a set of principles designed to prevent a repeat of the Holocaust and other depravities. This was the European Convention on Human Rights, enshrined in British law under Labour’s Human Rights Act in 1998. In 1950, those lawyers did not set out to protect an immigrant’s right to bowl a cricket ball on a Sunday afternoon"— or any of the other absurd examples that we have seen in the press recently— "nor did they agonise over any of the other absurd scenarios, uncovered by our campaign".
Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-11
Topic: Civil Rights
Julian Carlton Knight (Conservative, Centre-right): The tentacles of the Human Rights Act spread far and wide and in ways that are perhaps not obvious at first to the outside observer. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is unacceptable for the Advocates General of the European Court of Justice to argue that the UK cannot expel a non-EU national with a criminal record who happens to be the parent of a child who is an EU citizen?
Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-11
Topic: Immigration
Michael James Tomlinson-Mynors (Conservative, Centre-right): Does my hon. Friend or Migration Watch have a practical solution on where to send the 400-odd prisoners my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) mentioned, who have not declared where they come from?
Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-11
Topic: Other
Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (Conservative, Centre-right): That is an interesting question, and I confess that I do not have an instant response. My hon. Friend the Minister has heard that intervention, and I am sure she can deal with it. That just shows, does it not, how people are deliberately laughing at our system and abusing it? People should be aware of that.
Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-11
Topic: Immigration
Philip Thomas Hollobone (Conservative, Centre-right): That is a tricky part of the issue—the 434 people who will not declare their nationality. How, on any basis, can we let them out of prison if they are not prepared to tell us where they came from? Do we have to make special provision for them—a prison in a remote location, another country or elsewhere? Surely we cannot have those people walking our streets when they will not tell us where they come from.
Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-11
Topic: Immigration
Philip Thomas Hollobone (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is making an interesting and informative speech. Does he agree that one reason for the opacity of the figures is that it depends on how we ask the question? In researching this topic, I came across the fact that there are deportations, removals, transfers and repatriations. I do not know what the difference is between those four things, but depending on which one we ask about, we get a different answer.
Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-11
Topic: Civil Rights
Edward Julian Egerton Leigh (Conservative, Centre-right): Exactly. This is an absolute minefield, and because of that it is prone to manipulation by clever lawyers—I can put it no other way. Frankly, the law needs to be cleared up. I suspect we cannot clear it up unless we repeal the Human Rights Act 1998 and repatriate this whole part of our law into a British Bill of Rights. Lawyers would still argue about the provisions of a British Bill of Rights, but at least we would have created the law in this House and tried to bring some clarity to these matters. Above all, we could try to recreate public confidence. We can become enmeshed in the details, and I am sorry if I have had to go into some of them, but let us focus, laser-like, on what the public are talking about. The public cannot understand that there are 10,000 people convicted of offences sitting in our jails who we are not sending home. Worse, many of them are coming out of our jails and staying in this country. That is what the public want the Government to deal with.
Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-11
Topic: Immigration
Philip Andrew Davies (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is absolutely right and he explains why that part of the Bill is essential. I shall come on to some of the detail in the Bill later Our former colleague and the former Member for Wells, David Heathcoat-Amory, in his book "Confessions of a Eurosceptic", reminded us of what happened when it was reported that more than 1,000 foreign prisoners were released without being considered for deportation when Charles Clarke was the Home Secretary. That particular scandal cost Charles Clarke his job. The public believed it was a huge scandal, which it is. The release of 1,000 foreign prisoners without being considered for deportation was sufficient for the Home Secretary to resign, yet as a newspaper reported yesterday, 1,800 of them have been here for more than five years. If 1,000 was enough for the Home Secretary to resign, one wonders what the trigger point for a scandal is these days A fair deportation system should, it seems to me, treat all foreign offenders in the same way. I do not think there can be any justification for saying that a foreign offender from one country should be treated differently from a foreign offender from a different country. This has become a growing problem. As my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering said, there have been more than 10,000 foreign national offenders in prison since 2006. This is not a new problem. Given current levels of immigration into the UK, of course, there is no prospect at all of the number going down anytime soon.
Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-11
Topic: Immigration
Philip Andrew Davies (Conservative, Centre-right): My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Someone could argue that it is no good deporting foreign nationals if border control has no way of knowing whether people have got a criminal conviction; they will simply re-enter the country in no time at all. If deportation is to be meaningful, it seems to me that we have to do something different at the border control to make sure that these people cannot come straight back into the country again.
Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill — House of Commons, 2016-03-11
Topic: Mixed Topics
Philip Thomas Hollobone (Conservative, Centre-right): I am so pleased that my hon. Friend has highlighted this important aspect of the issue. It is true to say that with the accession of the east European countries, there has been a wave of criminality in this country. We have imported crime and criminals as a result of our EU membership. As the EU gets larger, with the potential accession of Turkey, does my hon. Friend agree that the situation is only going to get worse?