Farce of Iraqi sex offender stuck in Britain... even though he’s happy to pay for a flight home!

A FOREIGN criminal has been stuck in Britain for three years even though he wants to be deported, ministers have been told.

The convicted sex offender has even offered to pay for his air fare back to his native Iraq – but the Home Office has failed to put him on a plane.

He claims he cannot leave the country of his own accord because he is on the sex offenders register and needs permission from the authorities.

The farcical case was raised by his local MP in Newport, Labour’s Jessica Morden, in the House of Commons on Monday.

She said: ‘The man lied about his name and country of origin and is a convicted sex offender who has breached the terms of his licence?

‘The courts want him returned home. He wants to return home and will even pay for his flight, but for some unfathomable reason, the Home Office seems incapable of authorising or allowing that. It has been three years. Why?’

Home Office minister Michael Tomlinson said: ‘It is interesting to note that

‘He wants to go home, it’s been three years’

opposition members, including the leader of the Labour Party, have campaigned to ensure they are preventing the deportation of foreign criminals.

‘Those on the Government benches are determined to see foreign criminals removed and there was an increase in removals of 74 per cent last year.’

The Daily Mail has been told that the foreign criminal in question arrived in the UK as a child more than a decade ago. He lied about his name, age and nationality and was granted leave to remain.

Then five years ago, he was convicted of sex and drug offences, and served with a deportation order while in prison and taken to an Immigration Removal Centre, where he admitted his true identity.

He was issued with a one-way travel document by the Iraqi embassy but was never put on a deportation flight because they were grounded by Covid. He has been released on bail and has told the Home Office he wants to go home before his travel document expires in May this year.

The man, whose name has not been made public, said he needs the police, probation and Home Office to give him permission to leave the country because he is on the sex offenders register.

But sources claimed the account given of the foreign criminal’s plight was not correct – and the Government said it was a ‘longstanding policy’ not to comment.

Latest figures showed that 3,926 foreign national offenders were returned from the UK in 2023.

Rates have increased since the pandemic ended but are still 41 per cent lower than a peak of 6,628 in 2017. And as of September 2022, there were still 11,769 foreign criminals living in the community in the UK while subject to deportation action.

Last year former immigration watchdog chief David Neal – since sacked by ministers for blowing the whistle on glaring border security lapses – said the Home Office performance in removing foreign criminals was ‘not efficient’.

LAST week, while on a train across Europe — my first proper holiday with my partner in four years — I couldn’t resist the urge to switch on my phone and log back into X, formerly known as Twitter.

It was the day that the longawaited Cass report was finally published. I’d already read it — a copy of the four-year independent investigation into gender identity clinics in England had landed in my inbox hours earlier — and I still felt a gnawing sense of sadness about the thousands of struggling children who had been badly let down.

Insidious

On X, I noticed my colleague Wes Streeting, the Shadow Health and Social Care Secretary, was taking the report very seriously. ‘ The Cass Review must be a watershed moment for the NHS’s gender identity services,’ he wrote.

‘Children’s healthcare should always be led by evidence and children’s welfare, free from culture wars. Clinicians and parents alike want the best for children at this crucial development stage.

‘ This report provides an evidence-based framework to deliver that.’

He went on to urge the Government to act and thanked Dr Hilary Cass and her team for their work, adding: ‘I am committed to working constructively with the Health Secretary to put children’s health and wellbeing above the political fray.’

It was a mature, sober response and I felt relieved that members of my own party were starting to wake up to the damage being done by this insidious ideology.

But there was also another emotion: anger. Because where had the Labour Party been?

At the forefront of my mind was the old cartoon of the lone woman sitting in a boardroom surrounded by men and one of them says: ‘That’s an excellent suggestion, Miss Triggs. Perhaps one of the men here would like to make it.’ The fact is, many women have been shouting from the rooftops about what is happening to gender-confused children and we have been ignored.

Worse, we have been abused by strangers and colleagues for simply expressing the view that children need safeguarding when it comes to life-changing medication.

Usually, my policy is to never tweet anything in anger. But as I scrolled through X to see that another man — this time a political editor — was describing Wes as ‘the only politician to say anything sensible about this issue’, the dam burst. I typed out a series of incandescent tweets.

‘ To the many women, blanked, sidelined, dismissed by male leaders when exposing this for years... As male leaders take applause, praise and credit for simply listening to an expert and finally reading the room... Perhaps less moral cowardice now? No apologies to those “investigated”, reprimanded, passed over, bullied, deselected...’

I was furious. Furious that so many children had been harmed, furious for women — and men — who had tried in vain to get people to listen and, yes, furious for myself.

Outspoken

I must be clear, I feel no sense of victory and other women have lost far more in this gender storm. But for the past five years I’ve been in its epicentre and the bullying within the Labour Party has been intense.

As a woman and politician who is openly ‘gender critical’ — meaning I believe in biology over gender and in women’s absolute right to single- sex spaces and sports — I’ve been shunned in Westminster and excluded from meetings.

I’ve had ‘ anonymous’ complainants instigate investigations into me.

‘That’s politics!’ some will cry. Maybe so. But to see a man come along and say the same things I’ve been saying, and suddenly the whole party wakes up, is infuriating.

This is not a personal dig at Wes. Of all my colleagues, he has been most outspoken about the fact I was right and should receive an apology.

In interviews, Keir Starmer has ranged from saying how it ‘wasn’t right’ (for me to say only women can have a cervix) on the Andrew Marr show in September 2021 to, in more recent years, how much he ‘respects’ me.

Yet have I heard a word from him? Or from senior colleagues? No! When asked on political panel shows, one or two have lied about having spoken to me ‘behind the scenes’. Not one of them wants to discuss with me policies to ensure Dr Cass’s recommendations are implemented.

Earlier this week when we had the debate in the Commons on Cass, we heard new lines from the Labour front bench, who now appear willing to accept the report’s recommendations.

But not one senior Shadow Cabinet member has yet approached me. I believe the Labour Party thinks ‘ the gender issue’ doesn’t matter to the voting public. For them it’s a ‘culture war’.

At the heart of this attitude is, I believe, a deep- seated misogyny within the party.

I joined politics to put the needs of my constituents first. When Keir became leader, he promised we would always be able to approach him.

But nothing could be further from the truth. The leader of the Labour Party has almost no personal contact with his backbenchers. The last message I sent to Keir, practically begging for support, was ignored.

Keir is bundled in and out of meetings before you even have a chance to say: ‘Have you heard about this major medical scandal at the Tavistock clinic?’ The truth is I have as much access to the Leader of the Opposition as any of you.

Of course, it’s not only male colleagues who have been hostile. There’s a group of female MPs, some of whom have behaved appallingly.

Some have ‘ whispered’ loudly about ‘f****** terfs’ as I walk past. Then, as our official policy appears to change, I’ll see them on television saying: ‘It’s terribly concerning that women haven’t been able to talk about this issue.’ Their hypocrisy is monumental.

Anyone with a modicum of safeguarding knowledge should have been saying: ‘What? We’re asking for children’s puberty to be stopped at 11 or 12? We’re telling schools to go along with this and even promote it as a positive choice?

‘Hang on, are these Labour MPs forcing through debates where we make it illegal to question those children, or offer them talking therapy, when they are not even old enough to buy a vape?’

Apology

Of course, there is no going back for the thousands of children pushed, by the NHS, down unevidenced and untested medical pathways.

As Cass says, we will never know what happened to many of them because all but one of the adult gender clinics refused to cooperate in a data analysis project that would have allowed tracking of longerterm outcomes of 9,000 gender dysphoric young people.

There is no ‘prize’ for those of us who were ‘ right’. Journalists such as Suzanne Moore and Julie Bindel will not be invited to write for the Guardian again, because they spoke up. The cast of Harry Potter are never going to say: ‘Sorry J. K. Rowling, we were wrong — but thanks for making us millionaires.’ And that apology from the Labour Party isn’t likely to be in the post any time soon.

Personally, I don’t want a ‘reward’. What we want is acknowledgement. A nod to say these women were warning of these dangers. And that it was those men who are now claiming moral ‘ victory’ who chose not to listen.