Deportation of Foreign National Offenders — House of Commons, 2021-02-02
Topic: Civil Rights
Simon Richard Clarke (Conservative, Centre-right): I will indeed join the hon. Gentleman in saying just that to the Minister. I know that the hon. Gentleman cares deeply about this issue; he is an assiduous attender at these debates, indeed the most assiduous attender in the whole House. It is fantastic to have his support in making these points this evening As I was saying, the European convention on human rights should be a bulwark against tyranny. It was designed against the backdrop of the crimes of Nazi Germany against millions of people across our continent. Genocide, torture, rape, mass displacement and theft were their hallmark, and our continent rightly came together to create a legal framework to outlaw them for all time. However, over the decades since, and with increasing voracity, rights creep in both the Strasbourg court and our domestic courts has distorted those noble goals beyond all recognition To quote the former Law Lord, Lord Hoffmann: "The devil is in the detail: in the interpretation by the courts of the high-minded generalities of the written instrument. It is these interpretations, which often appear to people to bear little relation to the values that they think really important in the way our country is governed…Since the Convention rights were incorporated into UK law by the Human Rights Act 1998, the UK courts have followed in the wake of Strasbourg, loyally giving effect to its rulings and the principles (where discernible) laid down in its jurisprudence." The result is that the UK courts "have reached decisions, sometimes with regret and sometimes with enthusiasm, which would have astonished those who agreed to our accession to the Convention in 1950." That is very relevant to article 3, which lies at the heart of many of these cases Article 3 has been progressively expanded by the Strasbourg court to encompass people’s living standards should they be returned. The 2011 case of M.S.S. v. Belgium and Greece was a turning point, with an Afghan asylum seeker able successfully to overturn being returned from Belgium to Greece, through which he had transited, on the basis of the poor living conditions he would face should he be returned there. To say that Greece is an unacceptable place to which to be returned goes so far beyond what the convention authors would have imagined as inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment as to be almost unbelievable, but it has established a principle and opened the doors still wider for those seeking to overturn deportation orders across the continent, including in this country The upshot of such decisions is that we have a human rights settlement that often seems to protect perpetrators far more effectively than victims and that repeatedly allows serious offenders to cite their rights to escape the consequences of their actions. I do not blame my hon. Friend the Minister for the impasse in a number of such cases, as he is exceptionally helpful and courteous and I know he and his colleagues always operate within the law as it stands. However, this whole issue leaves a bitter taste. We know in many ways that it is only the tip of the iceberg. Last December, the Henry Jackson Society published an excellent report by Dr Rakib Ehsan looking at the issue from the perspective of foreign national terrorist offenders. It identified 45 convicted Islamist terrorists whom we have been unable to deport on human rights grounds since 1998, largely driven by article 3 and article 8, the latter being the right to a family life. Our inability to deport in the way we would like leaves us unable to rid ourselves of people who are a genuine threat to our society, and I have a number of questions for my hon. Friend the Minister that I hope he can address in his reply The first question is whether the Minister has considered extending the principle of deportation with assurances to all cases involving foreign national offenders, as opposed to simply those concerning individuals suspected of terrorism. It seems to me that this is a concept well worth exploring. If we can secure appropriate guarantees from other Governments that they will not mistreat criminals we deport back to them, that ought to suffice Secondly, as part of the fair borders legislation being delivered by my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, which I warmly welcome, will the Government act to tighten relevant legal definitions, such as "inhuman" and "degrading", to strengthen the Home Office’s defence against judicial activism? As I have set out, the steady extension through case law of what those definitions can encompass is clearly interfering with the deportation of foreign national offenders, particularly on the grounds of article 3 of the ECHR, which is of great relevance to a number of cases Thirdly, what wider work is ongoing within Government to assess how we can reform our human rights settlement, so as to ensure that we have effective deportation options at our disposal, and that our citizens are protected properly from those who ought to be removed under the provisions of the UK Borders Act? I believe we need a root-and-branch reconsideration of those issues. The case for a dedicated British Bill of Rights feels ever stronger, as it would allow us to incorporate core convention rights into our domestic law, define them sensibly in a way that mitigates the accumulated legacy of Strasbourg’s judicial activism, and make the whole settlement accountable to our Parliament and our courts As things stand, I do not believe that justice is served in a large number of cases. None of us can be confident that some of the perpetrators will not go on to cause further havoc and harm, and this issue requires our prompt attention. We may have settled a number of issues concerning our relationship with Europe through our recent decision to exit the European Union, but none of that bears on our ongoing challenges regarding our interaction with the European Court of Human Rights and the European convention on human rights. Its goals are noble, but its interpretation in a number of cases is flawed. It is time for action in the course of this Parliament.