Sir Christopher Chope
MP for Christchurch · Conservative · United Kingdom
“When was the last time that an allotted Opposition day was withdrawn in the way that the Leader of the House is withdrawing this one? I was looking at my calendar of business, otherwise known as the Order Paper, and it says that “The selection of the matters to be debated will be made by the Leader of the Opposition (Standing Order No.”
“The Climate Change Committee has condemned the Government for failing and falling short of adapting to climate change and accepting the reality as it is, which is that by the end of this century, global temperatures will have increased to between 3.5° and 4.5° above pre-industrial levels.”
“The Minister has referred to the grooming gangs inquiry carried out by our friend, the hon. Member for Great Yarmouth (Rupert Lowe), and early-day motion 380 makes a number of recommendations. Will the Minister engage with the hon.”
“The landmark 250th anniversary of the declaration of independence by the United States takes place in the week commencing 29 June. I have applied for an Adjournment debate, but will the Leader of the House enable more Members to be able to participate in marking that historic event?”
“That is exactly what I did on behalf of my constituent Paul Kenchington: I wrote to the Secretary of State about the specialist steel that he uses, and I have not had a reply.”
“Next week, can the Leader of the House produce a Government statement in response to the Hallett review on covid-19 vaccines? Lady Hallett recommended major reform of the vaccine damage payment scheme.”
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“Cuts were made in January by Border Force to the maritime aerial surveillance capability. Has my right hon. Friend been able to reinstate that capability, which is crucial in detecting people who are trying to smuggle into our country and was instrumental in ensuring some of the successes to which she referred earlier?”
“Does my right hon. and learned Friend’s position take account of the European Court of Justice ruling on 5 April, which effectively drives a coach and horses through the whole of the arrest warrant procedure because it makes it clear that the European Court of Justice is in charge of whether or not a European arrest warrant can be applied for?”
“May we have an early debate on the potential role of the House of Commons in providing information to the public in the EU referendum campaign? The public have given up any hope of getting objective information from the Government. Does my right hon. Friend therefore agree that to maintain trust in our institutions the House of Commons Library could have a role in producing information so that our constituents can see the facts on how much we pay to the European Union each week, the negative balance of trade with the European Union, the impossibility of delivering our manifesto commitments to reduce net migration, and so on? Could we not put that on a dedicated House of Commons site, which would be respected as being objective?”
“My hon. Friend’s words of encouragement are to be taken on board. May I give her an example? In a series of successive Sessions, I introduced a Bill to outlaw drug driving, which was eventually implemented by the Government.”
“Can my right hon. Friend explain why there is no reference in this document to the massive trade deficit that the UK has with the rest of the European Union? A reference to various percentages is made, but my constituent Alan from Ferndown emailed me this afternoon to point out that those figures are at best meaningless and at worst totally misleading. What are the actual figures, in terms of millions of pounds, for our deficit? Does my right hon. Friend agree with my response to Alan and many others who are angry about this that rather than just be angry, they must get even?”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend on the progress he has made. Why does clause 115 say that the measure will not come into effect when the Bill receives Royal Assent, but is subject to the Treasury introducing a provision at some later stage? Why can we not legislate on this in the Bill without any qualification?”
“May I follow up on my right hon. Friend’s response on money laundering? When are we going to have a debate about money laundering? Will the Government commit themselves to voting against the proposals? Does my right hon. Friend agree that the current proposals show, in effect, that we are being contaminated in our public life by the corruption that is in the rest of the European Union?”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for what he has said. Can he explain why the Polish Government are not prepared to allow Polish prisoners sentenced in this country to serve their sentences in Poland, which I understand is possible under the transfer of prisoners legislation promoted by the Council of Europe?”
“The Polish people are renowned for their sense of family values. Why is it, then, that Poland does not wish to have its own patriots back in their country so that they can serve their sentences with their friends and family, thereby facilitating their rehabilitation?”
“Is there not an additional problem in relation to the large number of Lithuanian offenders in that they necessitate the use of very expensive translation services in the court system and in prisons?”
“Lithuania benefits enormously from the NATO presence in the Baltics. Is it not a disappointment that, while we are using our public money to help to secure Lithuania against an external threat, it is not prepared to use its resources to secure our people against the threat from their prisoners?”
“That answer surprises me because one of the Justice Ministers told us at Justice questions that the number of foreign national offenders in our prisons had declined. It is surely in the public interest to know whether the number has declined because they are serving their sentences outside prison.”
“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.”
“Does my hon. Friend not agree that the ancient English principle of equity should be applied in these cases—that people cannot seek justice unless they come with clean hands?”
“Is it not depressing that the Government are not even prepared to name and shame the member states of the EU that are not taking back foreign prisoners? Their excuse is that publishing such data could undermine diplomatic relationships with those countries.”
“The “deport first, appeal later” provision was at the core of the Government’s last Immigration Bill, but from what my hon. Friend says, the European Court of Justice has driven a coach and horses through that.”
“As with so many aspects of EU law, that aspect is applied more in the breach than in the observance. The only way in which we can achieve what the Bill sets out is to leave the European Union. We will then be able, once again, to re-establish our position as an independent, sovereign country—masters of our own destiny, and in control of events—with a democratically elected House of Commons that can decide such issues for itself, without interference from foreign courts. I have great pleasure in supporting the Bill, and I am proud to be invited to be a co-sponsor of it.”
“In a sense, the weakness of the Government’s position is summed in their response to the Home Affairs Committee: “We do not routinely provide data relating to specific countries as publishing such data could result in undermining diplomatic relationships with those countries, particularly where they might have less incentive to co-operate with us.” That is the same argument made in relation to those who wish to remain in the European Union—that if we do not do as the remain campaign ask, our European partners might not wish to co-operate with us so much. I think the best way to ensure that EU countries co-operate is to name and shame those that are not taking back the foreign national offenders they should take back under the EU rule of law.”
“Having failed to achieve that, the only way in which we will be able to regain control over our own borders and ensure that those foreigners who abuse our hospitality are forced to leave this country is by voting to leave the European Union on 23 June or, in any event, by introducing a Bill soon afterwards to make sure that the Government exercise their sovereign power to clean up our prisons and remove from them the foreign nationals who should be serving prison sentences in overseas countries.”
“That is why I disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley (Craig Whittaker). Why should we treat citizens of the EU who are not citizens of the United Kingdom more favourably than other foreign nationals? Why do we not treat them all equally? The only way we can do that is to rid ourselves of our current relationship with the European Union. The Prime Minister promised that he would get fundamental change in the European Union. My understanding was that that would include a significant revision of the free movement arrangements, the bugbear causing the difficulties to which so much reference has been made during this debate. But the Prime Minister did not achieve the fundamental reform of the European Union that we wanted and, in attempting to achieve it, we supported him so strongly.”
“If they commit a criminal offence, they should be forced to leave, and quickly rather than slowly. In response to the Home Affairs Committee report, “The work of the Immigration Directorates”, the Government state: “Foreign nationals who abuse our hospitality by committing crimes in the UK should be in no doubt of our determination to deport them.” The problem is that there may be determination to deport, but there is no ability to do so in many cases. There is a big difference between the two, and that is the essence of the Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone). He is trying to ensure that the people who abuse this country’s hospitality are deported. Importantly, the Bill does not discriminate between one type of foreign national and another. It treats them all equally.”
“My understanding is that the problems, costs and frustration caused by foreign national offenders extend as much to people in Scotland as they do to those in the rest of the United Kingdom. It is a pity that we have not heard any SNP Members set out their policies on those important issues. The Bill fits in with the principles we hold dear. We are privileged to be members of the sovereign United Kingdom. We are privileged that we are able to have control over our own borders as a sovereign nation, and as a sovereign nation we should be able to decide who comes, who stays and who leaves our country if they are not citizens. We welcome visitors to our country, but we expect them to comply with our laws. If they do not, it is a basic principle that we should be able to require them to leave.”
“It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham), although I do not agree with her conclusion. This is the 13th Friday in this Session on which I have been present, and I am sorry that not all Members feel it necessary to be here every Friday. I share the frustration of some Opposition Members that it is not always possible to discuss the business one wants. I sympathise very much with the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), whose Bill refers mainly to England. Clause 23 is the only clause in her Bill that extends to Scotland, and I find it extraordinary that a lot of Members from Scotland do not wish to address this Bill, which relates to a UK-wide issue, but wish to retain their interest in debating just one particular clause of the second Bill on the Order Paper.”
“May I say to my right hon. Friend how pleased I am that the House will be sitting on 26 May, because that will be the seventh anniversary of the Prime Minister’s famous speech on fixing broken politics, in which he called for more Back-Bench power, more free votes and less whipping? May we have a debate on that occasion to see how much progress has been made on implementing those principles?”
“I have been writing to constituents over the past six months saying that I agree with the Prime Minister on this issue and, in particular, with what he said in his letter of 20 April. I wonder whether my hon. Friend would be able to help me in drafting a new letter if I were to go into the wrong Lobby. May I ask him whether the Government would introduce fresh legislation in the Queen’s Speech? Why not bring forward a fresh Bill and have a proper discussion about this, de novo?”
“May I invite my hon. Friend to think about how he would choose to spend part of the £350 million that we will save every week when we leave the European Union? Will he also confirm that there will be a big saving in translation services currently expended on foreign national offenders?”
“Is my right hon. Friend satisfied that Turkey is doing enough at the moment to help? Tens of thousands of plastic dinghies are being imported by Turkey from China to allow this trade to continue, and similarly, phoney lifejackets are being sold in Izmir. Why are the Turkish Government not doing something about that?”
“I thank my hon. Friend for his generous comments and for accepting the amendments that I tabled in Committee. Often, one can make only modest achievements in this House, but if this Bill has saved £250,000 of Treasury money and will in future enable Members not to have to pay £2 a month, that will put into perspective the contribution made by my hon. Friend in promoting this Bill and including the necessary amendments. I hope that it will continue its passage without further ado.”
“230.] Having been challenged on that point, the Minister went on to explain that the purpose was not to prosecute people, saying: “Our primary sanctions for immigration non-compliance are removal and civil penalties, which is why, in many respects, prosecution numbers are relatively low.” —[ Official Report , 1 December 2015; Vol. 603, c. 253.] What an understatement “relatively low” was! There are fewer than two prosecutions a week for illegal immigration, although we can see on our television screens exactly what is happening just across the channel. Attempts, many of which are successful, are being made every day by hundreds of illegal migrants.”
“The Minister told me then that new criminal sanctions were not “necessary or appropriate”. He said: “there are already criminal sanctions and removal…powers in place…Section 24 of the Immigration Act 1971 in particular sets out criminal sanctions for various types of unlawful migrant behaviour, including illegal entry and overstaying.” That is, of course, absolutely correct, but my response to the Minister then—and it is the same today—was that in the last year for which figures were available, “there were only 72 convictions in magistrates and Crown courts for all the offences mentioned in section 24”. —[ Official Report , 1 December 2015; Vol. 603, c.”
“Clause 2 sets out the penalties for those offences: a fine or a maximum prison sentence of six months, and—this is important—a deportation order, which would take effect unless the Home Secretary deemed it to be against the public interest. Currently, the United Kingdom is effectively a soft touch for illegal migrants. Very few are caught, and those who are caught are given a slap on the wrist; extremely rarely are they deported. That gives illegal migrants, and their traffickers, a perverse incentive to head for the United Kingdom, and, in the case of those who come here lawfully, to overstay. I have raised this issue with the Immigration Minister on several occasions, most recently when attempting to add a new clause to the Immigration Bill on Report on 1 December 2015.”
“I am indeed so delighted, Mr Speaker, and I beg to move that the Bill be now read a Second time. In so doing, I thank the sponsors of the Bill, my hon. Friends the Members for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), for Shipley (Philip Davies), for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), for Bury North (Mr Nuttall), and for Kettering (Mr Hollobone). I am delighted to see that some other colleagues are present and clearly intend to involve themselves in this important debate. The Bill provides for criminal sanctions against two categories of offender: those who enter, or attempt to enter, the United Kingdom without legal authority, and those who are present in the United Kingdom after 1 July 2016 without legal authority.”
“What concerns me, and what the Bill aims to address, is the very large number of people—there are probably well over a million now—who are here illegally, are intent on staying here illegally, and every now and again ask for some sort of amnesty which would enable them to be legitimised.”
“It is hard to establish the exact basis on which those people left voluntarily. I know that the figures given by my hon. Friend have been cited before, and the number does seem to have risen, but I think that the people about whom we are concerned are those who are staying here deliberately, in breach of the law, as illegal migrants. I shall give some examples shortly. People who leave voluntarily are often those who have overstayed and want an opportunity to make a fresh application from overseas without being caught out. They tend—in my constituency case experience, at least—to be good people who have been caught out by the existing rules and who want, as soon as possible, to rectify their legal position, and to be able to return to the country and remain here legally.”
“As recently as Monday this week, the noble Lord Bates, the Home Office Minister of State—”
“Last year only 12,056 people were subjected to enforced removal, the lowest number for 12 years. The Government sometimes arrange what are known as “assisted voluntary returns”, which often means the provision of an air fare to enable people to leave. The number of assisted voluntary returns last year was also at its lowest level for 12 years, at just 1,635. That information comes from the most recently published Home Office immigration statistics, relating to 2015. Public anxiety about illegal immigration is at an all-time high, but the Government’s effectiveness in tackling it is, in my submission, at an all-time low. There are scarcely any prosecutions and the number of enforced removals has been substantially reduced. In the face of these facts, what are the Government doing?”
“Why are so few of those people being deported? I think that it is because the Government are not taking seriously the need to deter, and to enforce the existing law in the 1971 Act. Given those figures relating to failed asylum seekers, how can the Government say that their focus is on “removal…rather than prosecution”, because removal is less quick and less costly? The facts do not seem to bear that out. So what are the facts? We know that of those who have come here illegally, fewer were subjected to enforced removal last year than in any of the previous 12 years for which we have statistics. In 2004, 21,425 people were subjected to enforced removal, under a Labour Government. My hon. Friends often say that during that period, the Labour Government were a soft touch when it came to illegal migrants. I see that the Minister is nodding.”
“I would indeed like to see such a process, but for deportation rather than extradition. The Bill specifically states that if illegal migrants are convicted, the courts should recommend deportation as a matter of course, but that is, at present, very much the exception. As a consequence, as soon as people arrive in this country—although they may have come here by means of subterfuge, with false documents and so on—they think that if they are caught, they will effectively never be deported. We know that, currently, a mass—tens of thousands—of what are described as failed asylum seekers are in this country, and have not been deported. The figures, which I have somewhere, suggest that the number of deportations of failed asylum seekers is at a 10-year low, yet we know that the number of people seeking asylum last year was at a record high.”
“My hon. Friend says that he is a great man, and I am sure he is. His time in this House happened to coincide with a time when I was not a Member of Parliament, so I do not know him very well. In the other place on Monday, he said in answer to a question from another great man, whom I do know, Lord Green of Deddington, that “the Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and others have been working hard…to increase the discomfort for those who are in this country illegally.” What an extraordinary use of words—”
“The most recent studies are more than 10 years old, but the figure then was in a range between 300,000 and 700,000. That was 10 years ago, so what would the figure be now? In my submission, it must be well in excess of 1 million.”
“The Government keep saying that our relationship with the European Union will be debated on the facts, but they cannot even bring any facts to bear in answer to that precise question. The whole purpose of the Bill is to reduce illegal immigration by identifying, prosecuting and deporting those already here illegally and deterring others who might be planning to come here illegally. How big is the problem that the Bill seeks to address? The Government have very little idea how many foreign nationals are in this country illegally, or so they say. They certainly refuse to gather any data to inform the debate, because of the embarrassment that that would cause. I have some figures that have been produced by the House of Commons Library, and they basically show that the Government have no idea how many illegal migrants there are here.”
“The Minister, Lord Bates, accepted that Lord Green had been “correct in saying that if you use the statistical data available to forecast, you arrive at roughly the numbers he referred to.” He accepted the premise of the question, but when he was asked what the effect would be of the so-called reforms that the Prime Minister came back with following the renegotiations, he said: “Of course, we must see what effect they will have, going forward.” —[ Official Report, House of Lords, 29 February 2016; Vol. 769, c. 576.] If that is not an imprecise statement on what are being bandied around as essentially good reforms that will transform the status of our relationship with the European Union, I do not know what is. It is an extraordinarily vague response to a very precise question.”
“Discomfort! What did the Minister have in mind when he referred to discomfort? Perhaps the Under-Secretary of State for Refugees, my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Richard Harrington), who is on the Front Bench today, will be able to explain what was meant by that term. It suggests someone who might have a mild medical condition. Equally inadequate was Lord Bates’ reply when he was asked “what difference do the Government estimate that the Prime Minister’s so-called EU reforms will make to the figures”? Lord Green had stated earlier that migration levels could lead to “an increase in our population of half a million every year, of which 75% will be due to future immigration”.”
“I do not think that we should have such a requirement, but the fact that we do not have it means that people who are illegal migrants can lie low here for years and years and we do not know anything about them. They come to light only when they are convicted of an offence, and by then we are told that they have been here for too long and we cannot get rid of them. This is a mega crisis in immigration. I proposed this Bill more in hope than in expectation. None the less, I hope that, at the very least, the Minister will have the opportunity to explain how, if the people decide to stay in the European Union on 23 June, all these serious issues will be sorted out.”
“My Bill would cover not just those from the European Union, but illegal migrants more generally. If there are 1 million-plus illegal migrants in this country at the moment, this Bill would enable the Government to get to grips with the matter and to get the authorities working on it. If we got tough with illegal migrants in our country, the people smugglers would divert them away from the United Kingdom, as they always try to use the weakest points of entry. Apart from the weakness of our enforcement and detection procedures, one of the perverse incentives for people to come to the United Kingdom is that we do not have a requirement that people should have identity cards.”
“In 2014, the Prime Minister said that he recognised that this was a really serious issue, that we needed to take control of our borders, that we needed to reduce the levels of migration to the tens of thousands and that he was going to secure that through fundamental reform of the European Union. There has not been fundamental reform of the European Union; in fact there has been no reform at all. What has happened is that we have a very modest reform of our relationship with the European Union, subject to all the provisos about enforceability and the supremacy of the European Court of Justice. Without fundamental reform, we cannot do anything about these illegal people from the European Union, as exemplified by the case to which I have just referred.”
“The Upper Tribunal ruled that it was unlawful for the Home Office to refuse Roman Kasicky permission on security grounds. The Home Office had said: “The UK will seek to deport any EU national whose conduct represents a genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat.” The only problem is that, under our present arrangements with the European Union, we are incapable of being able to deliver on that intent. The only way, in my submission, that we will ever be able to deliver on it is by leaving the European Union, and that is increasingly the conclusion to which people are coming.”
“He had come to this country illegally, stayed in this country illegally and then, when the rules changed for Romania to join the European Union, he was able to stay here as an EU citizen. The Government have always said that they wish to maintain control of our borders so that we do not have to tolerate criminals from the rest of the EU in our country. It only came to light that that person had a criminal record in Romania when he was convicted of a drink-drive offence. Even in a case as strong as that, the courts have intervened to prevent him from being deported from this country. The same article refers to another case in which a violent Slovakian sent home under the deport first rule had won the right to return to the United Kingdom for his appeal hearing.”
“At that stage, she said that there were 70,000 appeals and that she would halve that number by reducing the number of appeal rights from 17 to four. She rightly referred to the abuse of article 8 and the emphasis on foreign criminals and illegal immigrants trying to rely on family connections. At the outset of her speech, she said that she was going to extend the number of “deport first, hear appeals later” cases. It was with some dismay that I read, on 28 February, in the Mail on Sunday that a Romanian rapist, who had been removed from Britain, had been allowed back in by judges who ruled that his fast-track deportation broke EU law and breached his human rights. This was a person who had been convicted in Romania of rape.”
“The NHS document suggested that, at any one time in England, there are about 2.5 million overseas visitors and migrants, of whom 450,000 are from the European economic area, and about 580,000 are irregulars, who include failed asylum seekers liable to removal, people who have overstayed their visas and illegal migrants. Even back then—in 2013—the health service statistics suggested that there were the best part of 600,000 people here. Earlier today, courtesy of the Mail Online , I listened to what the Home Secretary said to the Conservative party conference in 2014 about the determination of herself and the Government to reduce the number of appeal rights and the number of appeals by foreign criminals against removal from our country.”