Up next in 10
Deportation of foreign criminals may be branded 'unfair' by human rights lawyers, Ellis says
Aug 10, 2025
Sir Michael Ellis has launched a scathing attack on the Government's latest deportation policy for foreign criminals, dismissing it as nothing more than political theatre.Speaking to GB News, the former Attorney General branded the announcement a "pure political stunt", warning that the scheme would fail to achieve its objectives.FULL STORY HERE.
Show More Show Less View Video Transcript
0:00
I'm afraid I think this is a stunt. It's a pure political stunt
0:04
But perhaps more importantly, I don't think it's going to work. And there are three key problems with this announcement
0:12
I mean, the first is that you've got to have a country that's willing to accept these foreign offenders
0:18
We know already that Pakistan has tried to impose a quid pro quo on the United Kingdom, if reports are correct
0:27
that flights from Pakistan International Airways would need to restart, and they'd been paused for safety reasons
0:35
if they were going to accept some convicted offenders. So you've got to have a country that's willing to take their own offenders back
0:43
and Jamaica is another country that's historically been reluctant to do that
0:47
There's a lot of countries that haven't done it. So nothing in this announcement indicates that that's going to change the picture
0:53
I think unless the British government is prepared to put some pressure
0:58
on foreign countries to accept their own offenders back it simply isn going to get out of the starting box That the first point And the way of putting pressure on might be to
1:10
as Robert Jenrick has spoken about, might be to actually say to these countries
1:14
your visas will be stopped, and you won't have tourists and business people
1:19
able to come to this country, or we'll stop international aid. The sort of thing that we've seen the Americans threaten to do
1:26
I'm anxious to get on to the next two points as well. The other issue, of course, is that human rights lawyers, as you know, Michael, may actually say, well, it's unfair to send them back more accurately
1:39
It's a breach of their rights under the Human Rights Act or under Article 8, the right to a family life
1:45
And I don't see anything in this announcement that's going to stop that
1:49
And the third problem will be the issue of fairness. because let's give an example of, say, two offenders
1:57
who have robbed a bank together with a firearm, for example. One is British, the other is a foreign offender
2:02
They're both convicted in a joint enterprise of robbing a bank. As I understand it this announcement would mean that they would both be sentenced to say 10 years imprisonment The British offender would serve the 10 years or at least five out of those 10 years
2:17
The foreign offender could, on day one, be deported back to his country of origin
2:22
So the victims may... Where that offender might not serve any term
2:26
Might not serve any term at all, and there'd be no guarantee that that would happen
2:30
And so there's a myriad of problems with this proposal. And then the British government breezily says
2:36
that people who have been expelled in this way would not be granted re-entry to the country
2:41
But that supposes that we are able to control our borders, and there's not a great deal of evidence of that
2:46
No, and this isn't, frankly, a solely Labour government issue. We have seen for some years now
2:53
that we don't have proper control over our borders, and that means that you can impose all the regulations that you want
3:00
but if someone is prepared to ignore those regulations and come in illegally, thousands and tens of thousands have been able to do so
3:07
And there no reason to believe that if a person been convicted of a criminal offence and they want to come back into this country that they will be reluctant to do so Just on a tiny technical point are migrants for example who arrive in boats fingerprinted
3:23
Would we pick up that this was someone who'd been convicted of a crime in this country
3:27
Not necessarily. In fact, that's assuming that they come through in a regular means
3:32
If they come to use the current vernacular in an irregular means, you know, in an unlawful way, of course there's no fingerprinting
3:39
There's no way, unless they're stopped by the authorities, there's no way that we'll know who they are
3:47
I mean, that actually is presumably going to be a very low number, to be fair, because if a person's been sentenced
3:53
to a term of imprisonment and then they've been deported and not had to serve any of that sentence
3:57
it seems, to be fair, unlikely that they'll want to come back
4:01
into this country. They might try and leave their home country and go somewhere else. But what I think really is not going to work
4:07
is the proposal generally, without being sure that lawyers aren't going to be able to stop it
4:14
and the countries that you're sending them back to are going to receive it
4:18
And there's no evidence that any of that's changed
#Visa & Immigration
#Legal
#news
#Politics