I will not be giving way.
I will be supporting amendment 11 in relation to the Human Rights Act. I will also support the amendment of my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark on the ECHR. I remember vividly the situation in June 2022. I also remember the referendum we had in 2016, where the majority of people in this country voted to leave the European Union. They did so because they wanted the Parliament of this country to be fully sovereign; they did not want it to be frustrated by foreign organisations, whether the EU or the ECHR. The way in which that happened in June 2022, to a policy that has majority support from most of the people in this country, was devastating.
More generally, it is important that we respect the discussions on Second Reading, when the Prime Minister said that he wanted sound international legal arguments for amendments. That bar has been met, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Newark has explained how that is the case. Fundamentally, I have regretfully come to the conclusion as a Member of Parliament that we should leave the ECHR. My prediction is that, in time, we will. Many of the debates associated with the ECHR are similar to the debates around Brexit. Those who originally wanted to leave the EU were branded extremists and a minority. The same arguments were made, such as, “Let’s reform it from the inside.” We will try that again with the ECHR, and I think we will be unsuccessful.
It is the supranational nature of the ECHR that I am deeply uncomfortable with. We have already seen how that operates. Some Members have made the point that it is not a foreign court because we have ownership of it. People made the same argument about the European Union, and the MEPs going to Brussels. Ultimately, when it came to that decisive referendum, most people who voted on that question disagreed with that view and we rightly left the EU. It is not right and the issue of the ECHR opens up a serious democratic deficit, given that we left the EU. The principles for why we did are live in this debate today, and we must listen.
On the issue of illegal migration, like on the issue of net legal migration, we are playing with fire. The level of frustration felt by millions of people in the country is extreme, and the warnings are there from across of the world about what happens if mainstream parties do not deal with people’s legitimate concerns about mass migration. If the Conservative party does not responsibly and robustly deal with it and finally stop the boats, the warning signs are there for what might happen.