UK Parliament / Open data

Illegal Migration Bill

It is conventional in this place to say that it is a delight and a joy to follow the preceding speaker, and generally one does so as a matter of convention, but I am always pleased to follow the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), even though I disagreed with almost everything he said. I know that he speaks with integrity and that he believes in his heart what he has said today, but I have to tell him that his purity—if I may put it in those terms—and his absolute Christian dignity have got the better of his reason in respect of this issue.

The hon. Gentleman’s constituents, like mine, expect this House to be where power lies, for it is this House that is answerable to them. He owes his political legitimacy to his relationship with the people he described in his constituency, as I do to those in mine. When other powers in other places supersede the authority of this House, in the way the European judges did when they held up the planes for those being sent to Rwanda, our constituents feel not only frustrated but let down. They feel let down because they see the will of this House and the will of our Government being impeded, and indeed frustrated, by those overseas powers.

About this proceeding contribution

Reference

730 c730 

Session

2022-23

Chamber / Committee

House of Commons chamber
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