UK Borders Bill

We have to try to draw apart two different things. The inquiries that the hon. Gentleman has made are about the offences that have been committed by a reasonable number of individuals. As I think that the replies will have made it clear—I apologise if they have not—such an answer would involve a search through the details of each record. I think that the information sought by my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford relates to what is happening to the perpetrator. Such information would detail whether an offender was being pursued for deportation, whether a deportation order had been served and whether the person had left the country. In other words, that information would show whether the victim was safe from further harassment or intimidation—or worse. One does not need to surf through an individual’s case history in enormous detail to provide such information, which is often required not only victims, but by estranged spouses, who are involved in the particular problem that I face in my constituency. Let me deal with a point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester, East. A piece of correspondence that is with my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary addresses some of the questions that he raised. Amendment No. 2, which he tabled, relates to a debate that we had in Committee about whether the relevant date for consideration should be the date of conviction or the date of the offence. I shall rehearse the argument that was made, by which I guess that I stand. It is often very difficult to pin down the precise date of an offence, especially if it relates to drug dealing or sexual abuse. In sexual abuse cases, the victim is often unable to pin down the precise date of the offence, and the offence might have been perpetrated over a substantial period of time. If the relevant date was that of the offence, there would be a risk that the provisions would not be triggered for such an individual, although, as the hon. Member for Monmouth (David T.C. Davies) said, that person would be better not in Britain any more. While the answer that we propose might not be perfect, it is, on balance, the best possible solution. We have heard arguments at different extremes. The hon. Member for Rochdale (Paul Rowen) and my neighbour, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming), argued that we should start with the judicial process. However, we already start with a judicial process because there will be criminal proceedings and a judge will hand down a sentence. I am troubled that their proposal would remove the strong relationship between committing an offence and being deported. It would put a great deal into the hands of judges and leave too much to judicial discretion. That would create the risk of different decisions being made in different parts of the country. I suppose that my objections to the hon. Gentlemen’s proposal are threefold. First, we would lose all clarity about whether a breach of Britain’s hospitality leads to deportation. Such clarity about consequences serves as an important deterrent that we should retain. Secondly, we would lose the British public’s wider reassurance that serious criminality is not to be tolerated and that people who commit a serious offence will be removed. The combination of those factors would create the strong risk that criminally minded foreign nationals would be given the green light to try their luck because they could treat the discretion of the courts as a roll of the dice. Thirdly, I do not think that the proposal would get away from the problem of judicial reviews, given that amendment No. 35 would leave open the possibility of judicial review at the end of the process. It is important to remember that the non-suspensive appeal procedures for asylum claims that we have tried have been tremendously successful. There have been very few judicial reviews and even fewer have been lost.