UK Borders Bill

I know that the Opposition voted against the Human Rights Act in 1998, and they went into the last election proposing that the refugee convention be renegotiated, although I understand from my close reading of the Daily Express that the hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green) now proposes that the Opposition support the refugee convention. Of course, the issues that the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr. Jackson) mentions would all need to be taken into account. If it is of any comfort to him, I looked at the ethnic minority breakdown of people in our jails, which was provided in Hansard in answer, I think, to a question asked by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field). I also looked at the figures for countries that are frequently deemed ““hard to remove to””, and five out of six foreign nationals in prison are not from those countries. There are eight nations that could be classed as ““hard to remove to””, but we removed about 1,500 failed asylum seekers to those countries in 2005 alone—a number not dissimilar to the number of people in our jails who are from those countries.