Measures to Combat Terrorism

Part of the debate – in the House of Commons at 12:31 pm on 26 January 2005.

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Photo of Charles Clarke Charles Clarke Home Secretary 12:31, 26 January 2005

I appreciate the general support given by my right hon. Friend. His own experience in the foreign service leads him to speak with great authority on these matters. There are two aspects to his question. First, it is important that in any country to which deportation is considered, the individual does not face torture, the threat of death and so on—the various issues that are rightly raised in the European convention on human rights. Those are questions that we will raise explicitly. It is also important—this is the second part of the second track, so to speak—to recognise that those Governments themselves are sometimes under threat from the same kind of challenges that we have to deal with, and it is important for us to talk to them about how we can deal with these matters. But the fundamental issue is the one that he raises, and it is the reason why I put this in the context of the European convention on human rights at the outset. Obviously the individuals, the courts looking into the situation and others will want to be assured that should those individuals be removed to those countries, they are not at risk of the kind of treatment banned under international law. That will be the bottom line of our consideration of these matters.