Raab: We’re changing law to make sure more criminals are deported
After Mail delivers damning dossier of offenders’ claims...
THE Deputy Prime Minister last night pledged to ‘inject some common sense’ into Britain’s human rights laws after the Daily Mail sent him a dossier of serious criminals who avoided deportation.
Justice Secretary Dominic Raab is set to unveil a Bill of Rights, and the legislation is expected to crack down on claims under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The Mail’s investigation showed how killers, robbers and sex offenders remained in the UK by arguing their right to a private or family life in Britain’s immigration courts.
Mail reporters analysed more than 100 cases to lift the lid on how the law has forced judges to value the individual rights of criminals above the public’s safety.
The cases also revealed how the UK’s immigration courts are snarled up with a ‘merry-go-round’ of appeals and asylum claims delaying some deportation cases for more than a decade.
Mr Raab said: ‘Foreign nationals who commit serious crimes should not be able
‘Prevent abuses of the system’
to evade deportation by claiming the right to family life.
‘This is exactly why we need a new Bill of Rights – to prevent these abuses of the system and inject some common sense.’
The Ministry of Justice has revealed that Article 8 – the right to a family or private life – is used in about seven in ten successful challenges against deportation.
Last month, a deportation flight to Jamaica took off with just seven of its 112 passengers on board, leading Home Secretary Priti Patel to blast ‘meritless’ legal claims. Earlier this week the first removals flight to Rwanda, for migrants arriving in the UK via ‘irregular’ routes, was grounded after a litany of last-minute challenges, including Article 8 claims.
The Mail can reveal the convicted criminals who have been able to stay in Britain include:
■ A Malawian rapist who won the right to remain because his deportation would breach the Article 8 rights of his sick wife;
■ A Bangladeshi sex attacker who successfully argued his right to a family life in the UK because he had not offended for 13 years;
■ An Iranian man convicted of an ‘sustained, violent… [and] utterly terrifying’ assault on his former partner who was allowed to remain because his deportation would add to his mother’s depression;
■ A knife-wielding robber from Jamaica who was allowed to remain because he had lived in the UK legally since he was eight – more than half his life;
■ A sex offender who successfully appealed his deportation to Zimbabwe by arguing it would be unfair on his youngest son if they were separated;
■ A drug dealer with more than a dozen criminal convictions and four prison sentences who was allowed to remain because it would be ‘unduly harsh’ for his five- year- old son to return to Nigeria with him.
The audit of judgments also revealed a slew of cases where former prisoners had successfully argued against deportation on the basis of their Article 3 rights – which prohibit torture or degrading treatment. A rapist jailed for preying on sleeping women escaped deportation to Afghanistan because he could face persecution from the Taliban.
The Mail’s findings drew an angry response from backbench MPs. Tom Hunt, the Tory MP for Ipswich, said: ‘The majority of the public would be appalled by these cases. It’s ridiculous we can’t get rid of these foreign criminals.
‘If as a country we’ve given them asylum, that comes with rights and responsibilities – if they are breached then they need to be deported. It’s quite clear there is something badly wrong with the status quo.’
Tory MP Philip Davies said the public were ‘sick to the back teeth’ of perverse rulings, adding: ‘The law is clearly an ass. These decisions are making the country a laughing stock.’
The issue of foreign criminal deportations is separate to the Home Office’s flights to Rwanda, which are for asylum seekers arriving by ‘irregular’ routes – such as in a small boat across the Channel.