Labour’s ‘immediate deportation’ plan is dead on arrival

Labour has unveiled new plans for the ‘immediate’ deportation of foreign criminals. This week, the UK government announced that offenders would be sent to their country of origin straight after being convicted, with any appeals to be heard via video link from their homeland. It follows amendments to the Criminal Justice Act 2003 made in June, which allow the government to deport foreign prisoners once they have served 30 per cent of their sentence. As justice secretary Shabana Mahmood has put it: ‘If you abuse our hospitality and break our laws, we will send you packing.’

No doubt Labour hopes the new policy will help it sound tough on crime and the border. But it has been aptly described as the ‘most far-reaching amnesty in modern British history’, as it would allow individuals convicted of potentially serious crimes (except murder, terrorism or other crimes attracting life sentences) to avoid prison altogether, simply due to their nationality. This raises both ethical and practical questions. It could mean some criminals escaping punishment for the offences they’ve committed. And what would stop a newly released, recently deported criminal from simply returning to Britain illegally to reoffend?

There are also questions over how many criminals will actually be affected by the latest changes. Albanian people are by far the most likely foreigners to end up in English and Welsh prisons, but Albania hasn’t signed up to the immediate-deportation scheme. Also exempt is Pakistan, which comes a narrow fourth (after India) in the foreign-criminal leaderboard.

Moreover, this policy fails to address the legal complexities that currently allow so many foreign offenders to remain in the country. Decades-old laws rooted in the 1951 Refugee Convention and the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) would continue to apply.

Labour’s new policy would therefore do nothing to prevent the kinds of egregious cases that now regularly appear in the newspapers. Recent examples include the Algerian robber who avoided deportation because a judge found that his trans identity placed him at risk in his native country. Or the Jamaican murderer who was allowed to remain in the UK over fears he would be targeted by a rival gang member. In other words, he could not be deported because he was involved in serious crime. We do not know how many more perverse asylum claims our immigration tribunals have granted, because most of their decisions are not made public.

In reality, Labour’s latest initiative is just another attempt to evade the root cause of our immigration woes. Human-rights laws and foreign treaties like the ECHR and the Refugee Convention constrain our ability to decide who can enter and remain in our country. They transfer power to immigration tribunals, which are run by unaccountable members of the judiciary, most of whom see no duty to respect the will of the people when it comes to immigration.

This is not a government we should expect to clean up the mess. Keir Starmer – himself a former human-rights lawyer – may be projecting a tough posture, but under the surface, he remains committed to all the legal frameworks that safeguard foreign offenders.

We clearly need a new approach to human rights, though this will not be easy. Much of the liberal establishment cannot imagine living under anything other than the status quo. Take the case of human-rights lawyer Shami Chakrabarti, who appeared on Newsnight this week. When her co-panellist, the Telegraph’s Poppy Coburn, advocated repealing the Human Rights Act, Chakrabarti retorted: ‘That is not a country that I would feel very comfortable about.’ To many human-rights lawyers like Starmer and Chakrabarti, these rights are integral to Britain’s national identity. They are seen as our only bulwark against tyranny.

In truth, ‘human rights’ are only a bulwark against democracy. We had a tradition of civil liberties long before New Labour introduced the Human Rights Act in 1998, and we offered refuge to migrants before the Refugee Convention. Repealing these laws or leaving these treaties would not strip us of our liberties. Quite the opposite: it would strengthen the social contract on which our liberties rest. Sovereignty would be restored, freeing us to envision something new – something aligned with the evolving reality of our democracy and society. Something we can shape on our own terms.

None of that will be possible if our governments continue to tinker at the edges. The inability to deport foreign criminals is merely a symptom of a broken asylum and immigration system. We need far-reaching reform, not yet more gimmicks that only kick the can down the road.

Luke Gittos is a spiked columnist and author.