It is a pleasure as ever to follow the Chair of the Select Committee. I welcome the comments of the Home Secretary on my amendment 74 on ending child detention. The Government were right to do it a few years ago and they are now absolutely right to write it into legislation. It was profoundly wrong that under the previous Government thousands upon thousands of children were detained purely for immigration purposes—7,075 children in five years, and not just for a day or so but in one case as long as 190 days. That was a disgrace to this country and I am delighted that the Government ended it and have made sure that, whatever the next Government and the one after that, they will not be able to reintroduce it. It was a great shame that the Labour Front-Bench team refused to be as pleased as I was that this had been written into law, and I look forward to the legislation in the Lords reflecting Government policy. That is excellent.
I listened carefully to what the Home Secretary said on statelessness. I thank her for coming to talk to me and many of my colleagues about it; we had many questions. I have a lot of sympathy with the problem that she faces. There are instances in which citizenship should be taken away, and one is where fraud has taken place. I have no problem with someone who has acquired British citizenship by fraud not being allowed to keep it. That is easy. There are then issues about dual nationals—again, that is an easier case—and mono nationals who are in the UK. I share the concerns of the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) any many others about the problems of taking citizenship away from someone who is in this country. The Home Secretary hopes that they will be able to acquire citizenship of another country, and in some cases that may be possible, in which case they would not be stateless, but we cannot be sure.
It seems to me that the country that may be able to give someone citizenship may be less keen to do so when we have just ruled that they are a danger to this country. They would be far more reluctant in that situation. We would certainly be much less keen to grant citizenship to someone who had just been deprived of citizenship of another country. There is then the question of what happens to that person. The Home Office advice about people who are stateless is that they can have two and a half years leave to remain and can then apply for a further two and a half years, after which they get indefinite leave to remain. Are we saying that we will grant people indefinite leave to remain while they cannot leave the country? Do we really want people who are so dangerous, who have been involved in such awful gang behaviour, to be trapped inside this country? I find that deeply alarming.
I do not like the idea of creating two-tier citizenship. So while I respect what the Home Secretary is trying to do, I will not support the new clause; I will vote against it.
I will not talk in great detail about the other amendments that I and my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) tabled about the interests of children except to say that it is odd that, in a time of austerity when we are trying to save money, we still spend a huge amount detaining people for a long time who will not be able to get out of the country in the end.
It is costing us millions and millions of pounds and it seems to me that this is a saving that the Home Office should be keen to make. I hope that it will.
In the last minutes remaining, let me turn to the new clause tabled by the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab), who spoke, as ever, extremely well. I agree with what the Home Secretary said about his new clause. It is clear that it would be illegal and would undermine what we are trying to achieve. She argued, and I see no reason to disagree, that it would weaken the deportation. My hon. Friend spoke eloquently about it, saying that it was phenomenal how far it ran against the interests of children. It is not something that I or that Liberal Democrats can support. All of us will vote against the proposal. We will stand up for the Government’s original legislation on this issue whether or not other Government Members do. I hope that hon. Members such as the hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox) will persuade many of their colleagues to stand up for the Government on this issue and vote against the new clause. I hope that he will be joined by colleagues in the Labour party; I believe that they have now finally settled their position. I look forward to the new clause being comfortably defeated.