My hon. Friend pre-empts the point that I am about to come to. A few are villains, and I would be the first to concede that, along with him. Predictably, as the Home Office always does when it has a weak case, it trotted out the gory details this morning—it listed 29 rapists, 52 violent offenders, 27 child sex offenders and 43 other sex offenders—designed, no doubt, to make our blood curdle.
That brings me to the other point of these new clauses. My question to the Minister, which I hope he will answer when he winds up the debate, is: when precisely did the Government start deportation proceedings on all those serious cases? Did they start the day that those people went into prison or sufficiently far in advance that those serious villains could go straight
from prison to plane, with no stop at the detention centre? No, they did not, I am sure, but I would like to hear whether the Minister thinks they did the right thing on that.
The fact is that, to borrow a phrase from a former Home Secretary, the Home Office is not fit for purpose in managing deportations. Part of the point of these new clauses is to force the Home Office to get its act together, deal with the villains and stop punishing the innocent. That is why there is a six-month delay built into the new clauses—to give it time to get a grip.
I have one simple thing to say to the House. I have long been proud of our British justice system, but I am ashamed of what our incompetent deportation system does to people who arrived on our shores already badly damaged by human trafficking and modern slavery. It is time we put it right with new clauses 7, 8, 9 and 10.