Human Rights

I am glad to hear that. It is good news, but the hon. Gentleman would no doubt accept that it will take more than one or two statements from ACPO to change the culture that has built up. Let us consider the deportation of undesirable aliens who threaten our security, a point that was made in an intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis). Surely common sense dictates that we should be able to remove from this country those who want to do harm to this country and our citizens. We are a compassionate, understanding nation. Of course we will not send people back to countries where they will be persecuted or tortured. Over the past few years we have sent many young British soldiers to fight in wars in countries as diverse as Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Iraq and Afghanistan. Many soldiers have lost their lives and we have spent a vast amount of money fighting those wars. As a result of those wars, we have brought a great degree of peace and stability to those countries, yet there are many people from those countries who claimed asylum in Britain and were allowed to stay here so long as there were serious problems and unrest in their own country representing a threat to them. Now that we have imposed democratic regimes in many of those countries, surely that argument falls apart. I am not suggesting for one moment that we should have a blanket policy of deporting anyone anywhere in the world. Of course we would not do that. Let us look at the case of the nine Afghans who hijacked the Boeing 727 in February 2000, a case which received a huge amount of coverage at the time. The Home Secretary said:"““I continue to believe that those whose actions have undermined any legitimate claim to asylum should not be granted leave to remain in the UK. I plan to bring forward legislation to do this as part of the early Bill to strengthen our immigration laws.””" He went on to say that the serious crimes that the hijackers had committed were incompatible with refugee status. I hope we all agree with those sentiments, but has there been any action? No, because the Home Secretary knows that his plans are contrary to the human rights legislation. The Home Office should admit that. One of the cases that has had an impact on what the Home Secretary could do and what the court had to decide in that case was the Chahal case in the European Court of Human Rights in 1996, with which colleagues are probably familiar. The case has had a number of consequences. For example, in the Singh and Singh case in 2000, the Home Secretary at the time decided that although those two men had committed no crime under British law, they were nevertheless a serious threat to our security; but a British judge, guided by the Human Rights Act and its requirement to use ECHR jurisprudence—that is, the Chahal case—as a precedent, ruled that the Home Secretary could not make that judgment. The Special Immigration Appeals Commission was not happy about having to follow the ECHR jurisprudence. When giving judgment Mr. Justice Potts, a man who is not known for his authoritarian views and who is one of the more compassionate judges on the Bench, said that"““law abiding citizens of the United Kingdom might reasonably feel disquiet about a state of affairs which permits international terrorists proved to be a danger to the national security to remain here””." He could not have put it better.