“(1) The UK Borders Act 2007 is amended as follows.

(2) In section 32—

(a) in subsection (1)(a), at the end insert ‘and’;

(b) in subsection (1)(b) leave out ‘and’ and insert ‘or’; and

(c) leave out subsection (1)(c) and substitute—

‘(c) who has been charged with or convicted of an offence under section 24 of the Immigration Act 1971’

(d) leave out subsections (2) and (3).

(3) In section 33, leave out subsections (1), (2), (3) and (6A).

(4) The Illegal Migration Act 2023 is amended as follows.

(5) Leave out subsection (5) of section 1 and insert—

‘(5) The Human Rights Act does not apply to provision made by or by virtue of this Act or to—

(a) the Immigration Act 1971,

(b) the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999,

(c) the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002,

(d) the Nationality and Borders Act 2022, or

(e) the Immigration Act 2016.’

(6) In section 6 of the Illegal Migration Act 2023, leave out subsections (4) and (5).

(7) In section 24 of the Immigration Act 1971, leave out all instances of ‘knowingly’.” —(Matt Vickers.)

This new clause would prevent a foreign national who is convicted of any offence from remaining in the UK, as well as anyone who has been charged with or convicted with an immigration offence under section 24 of the Immigration Act 1971.

Brought up, and read the First time.

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

With this it will be convenient to consider new clause 42—Removals from the United Kingdom: visa penalties for uncooperative countries—

“(1) The Nationality and Borders Act 2022 is amended as follows.

(2) In section 70, omit subsections (4) and (5).

(3) In

(4) In section 72—

(a) subsection (1), after ‘A country’, for ‘may’ substitute ‘must’.

(b) In subsection (1)(a) omit ‘and’ and insert—

‘or,

(ab) is not cooperating in relation to the verification of identity or status of individuals who are likely to be nationals or citizens of the country, and’

(c) in subsection (1)(b), after ‘citizens of the country’ insert ‘or individuals who are likely to be nationals or citizens of the country’,

(d) omit subsections (2) and (3), and

(e) in subsection (4), omit from ‘70’ to after ‘subsection (1)(a)’ .

(5) Omit section 74.”

This new clause would require the Secretary of State to use a visa penalty provision if a country is not cooperating in the removal of any of its nationals or citizens from the UK, or in relation to the verification of their identity or status.

Currently a prison sentence of one year is required before a foreign national who is a convicted criminal can be deported. Even then, removal can be frustrated by asylum and human rights claims. New clause 34 would prevent a foreign national who is convicted of any offence from remaining in the UK, as well as anyone who has been charged with or convicted of an immigration offence under section 24 of the Immigration Act 1971, and would disapply the Human Rights Act from those cases. We believe that the protection of British citizens is paramount and should be the overriding priority for Government. If a foreign national has been convicted of any offence, they should lose their right to remain in the UK.

On that point we agree, so why was his Government so tardy at actually deporting foreign national offenders when they were in office?

We have just had a lengthy discussion about the Human Rights Act and the impact it has on deportations. However, if she agrees so wholeheartedly on the principle, I am sure she might consider backing our amendment.

There are a number of countries where the UK has a significant number of foreign national offenders currently serving in British prisons. However, we deport only a small number of those foreign national offenders each quarter. Our new clause 42 would require the Secretary of State to use a visa penalty provision if a country is not co-operating in the removal of any of its nationals or citizens from the UK, or in relation to the verification of their identity or status. We have done this by amending the Nationality and Borders Act, so that the ability to impose visa sanctions is not discretionary but mandatory. We know that there are countries that are hard to secure returns to. We believe strongly that that should not be without consequences for those countries.

New clause 34 shifts the lens to where it belongs—on the victims left in the wake of foreign offenders, not the perpetrators gaming the system. In 2024, theft offences alone averaged just 8.1 months—a shopkeeper’s livelihood dented, a pensioner’s purse snatched, or a family’s peace of mind and sense of security destroyed. Public order crimes averaged just 9.6 months, with more huge consequences for the wellbeing of victims who are left with a fear of entering public spaces or unable to go about their ordinary lives. Yet the one year deportation bar enables those culprits to linger, post-sentence, free to reoffend while victims wait for justice that never comes.

This clause says, “Enough.” Any conviction, for shoplifting or worse, triggers removal—no Human Rights Act excuses—because every day a foreign offender is allowed to stay is another day a British victim’s trust in the system erodes. Why are the Government okay with that shadow hanging over our streets? New clause 42 would force nations to play ball uphill. We see too many countries dither and delay in refusing to take back offenders. Mandatory visa sanctions flip that script. No co-operation, no UK visas for their elite. Watch fast how passports materialise when there are real consequences. Why is Labour soft-pedalling when we could wield this stick, clear the backlog and reduce pressure on prison places?

New clause 34 prevents any foreign national who is convicted of any offence from remaining in the UK. It should be a fundamental principle of our system that immigration never makes the British public any less safe. Unfortunately, however, many of those who have come to the UK in recent years have broken our laws. According to Ministry of Justice figures, a staggering 23% of sexual crimes in the UK—almost one in four—are committed by foreign nationals.

The overall imprisonment rate for foreign nationals is 20% higher than that for British citizens. Of course, the trend is not uniform: some nationalities are more heavily represented than others. Albanian migrants are nearly 17 times more likely to be imprisoned than average; those from Algeria are nearly nine times more likely and those from Jamaica nearly eight times more likely to be imprisoned than average.

Those who seek to harm this country, to break its laws and to undermine what we hold to be fair and right should not be allowed to remain here. As the Government are well aware, our prisons are already overcrowded. We must not allow foreign criminals to continue exacerbating this problem and we must not endanger the British public by allowing foreign criminals to stay in this country.

Under our current system, too many of those who break our laws are being allowed to remain in the UK. Often, Home Office attempts to deport foreign criminals are blocked because of absurd and ever expanding human rights rules. In the interests of public safety, we must not allow foreign criminals to remain in Britain; that includes by making sure that the Human Rights Act cannot be used to prevent us from deporting those who break our laws.

How, specifically, does new clause 34 do that? It amends section 32 of the UK Borders Act 2007, which we have already mentioned today. Section 32 would be amended from its current form, which defines a foreign criminal as a person who is neither a British nor an Irish citizen, who is convicted of an offence that takes place in the United Kingdom and who is sentenced to a period of imprisonment of least 12 months, or is a serious criminal as defined in section 72 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. What would replace section 32 would be much simpler; it would instead say that a foreign criminal was anyone who is neither a British nor an Irish citizen who is convicted of any offence in the United Kingdom, and explicitly include within that anybody who has been charged with or convicted of an offence under section 24 of the Immigration Act 1971, which sets out the situations in which a person can be considered to have entered this country illegally. That includes if they do so in breach of a deportation order; if they required leave to enter the United Kingdom and knowingly came here without that leave; or if they required leave to enter the United Kingdom and knowingly stayed here beyond the time conferred by that leave, among other specific conditions.

New clause 34 also seeks to ensure that the rules will be upheld in all circumstances and asserts therefore that the principle of removing criminals from this country is of utmost importance and must be prioritised above other legislation. That includes human rights legislation, for the reasons we have already set out.

I turn to new clause 42, which requires the Secretary of State to use a visa penalty provision if a country proves to be unco-operative in the process of removing any of its nationals or citizens from the UK. Such a lack of co-operation may arise in verifying their identity or status or it may pertain to the process of removing people whose identity and status has not been established. New clause 42 seeks to do that by amending section 70 of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022. That Act set out the idea of a visa penalty provision, effectively allowing the Home Secretary to suspend visa applications from countries that do not co-operate with the activity that the Government are trying to take to secure and protect the border. The new clause would strengthen that Act by changing that from an option for the Home Secretary to a duty and by adding explicitly the point about countries that are not co-operating with the process of verifying the identity or status of individuals whom we consider likely to be nationals or citizens of the countries in question.

I am struggling to understand this new clause. There are a number of reasons why other countries may not be able co-operate with the UK on immigration and visa cases—it could be political instability, or there could be a right-wing despot in charge—but that impacts on ordinary asylum seekers. Does the hon. Lady not accept that there are a number of political or even administrative reasons why they are not always able to co-operate?

The new clause maintains the Home Secretary’s ability to judge whether or not a country is being unco-operative. If it is unable to help, that is different from being unco-operative in the way that we would define it here.

A volume of information seems to be coming at us now, and it feels as though every 20 words, something absolutely absurd is said. It is a marked contrast with what has gone before. I see the hon. Member for Weald of Kent and the hon. Member for Stockton West standing there, but I hear the voices of other people in their party. It feels very peculiar.

I have a specific question. Quite apart from the fact that the Conservatives effectively decriminalised shoplifting, if an Albanian national is convicted of shoplifting but cannot be deported to Albania, is the hon. Lady saying that she would impose a visa penalty on Albania if it did not accept that shoplifting Albanian national, regardless of what that might do for the wider relationship between Albania and the UK in terms of deportations?

I will happily come to the second question in a second, but I am a little confused. Is the hon Gentleman suggesting that I did not write my speech myself?

Yes, actually.

In that case, I am happy to reassure him that I wrote every word.

The short answer to the question about Albania is yes. We think that would be completely appropriate. Why would Albania refuse to accept one of its own citizens that should, by our rules and our laws, be returned to that country? If it refuses to do so, we would absolutely consider that to an appropriate trigger for that response.

To continue what I was saying, new clause 40 amends section 70 of the Nationality and Borders Act, and it expands the Act to cover both nationals as well as citizens. We consider that it should be a basic and fundamental principle that we should be able to remove from this country those who break our rules. That is harder than it might sound, particularly when individuals are determined to lose their documents and obfuscate their identity and origin in every way they can. What we propose here will align other countries’ incentives with our own. It will create substantial pressure on other nations to co-operate with us to secure our border, and we strongly hope that the Government will consider adding it to the Bill.

New clauses 34 and 42 reprise some of our debate on the last group of new clauses, but they also introduce the idea of the visa penalty that, as the hon. Member for Weald of Kent has just explained, is encompassed in new clause 42. New clause 34 seeks to extend automatic deportation to any foreign national convicted of an offence in the UK, or charged with an immigration offence, without consideration of their human rights. We dealt with some of that in the last debate. It would remove protections for under-18s and victims of human trafficking, and it seeks to extend the automatic deportation provisions to certain Commonwealth and Irish citizens who are currently afforded exemption from deportation.

I do not believe these new clauses would be workable. They are unrealistic and would undermine our international obligations. We already have the power to deport any foreign national on the grounds that doing so would be conducive to the public good, regardless of whether they have had to serve the 12-month prison sentence that the UK Borders Act 2007 requires. If they are subject to a 12-month prison sentence, it is a duty to deport them.

The hon. Member for Weald of Kent was a special adviser in the Home Office, so she knows about these things, and the hon. Member for Stockton West is a spokesperson in the shadow Home Office team. The Conservatives talk a lot about deportation, but they did not do a lot about it when they had the power to do so.

In the aftermath of the general election on 4 July 2024, by the end of December the new Government had increased enforced deportations of foreign national offenders, most of them directly from prison, by 21%. The legacy that we were left included 18,000 time served foreign national offenders who had done their time in jail, had been released and were running around in our communities. Clearly, we have a big backlog that we have to try to deport. Despite Opposition Members’ protestations, they did not try hard enough to deal with deportation in those cases. A lot of those foreign national offenders did not ever get to the stage of making human rights claims against being deported; they were simply not picked up and deported by Immigration Enforcement because the Conservatives took their eye off the ball.

À propos of new clause 34, we do not think it would be proportionate to deport a person for a single minor offence. That could mean not having a TV licence, for example. Do we really want to deport people for not having a TV licence, given that the Conservatives could not deport 18,000 time served foreign national offenders, who are in our communities even now—some have committed serious offences—when there is a legal duty to deport them? Conservative Members want to introduce a new clause that increases the number of people we are required to deport, but they singularly failed to deport foreign national offenders who were jailed during their time in office. They seem to be protesting too much about their legacy and not dealing with the realities.

The new clauses would not prevent persons who are being deported from raising human rights claims with the European Court of Human Rights. A bit like the last group of new clauses, they would deliver nothing except the outsourcing of our deportation considerations to Strasbourg, and that would slow down the removal of those who are being deported. The new clauses would undermine our obligations to identify and support victims of trafficking, as set out in the Council of Europe convention for action against trafficking in human beings, of which we are a signatory.

New clause 34 seeks to amend key immigration offences set out in section 24 of the Immigration Act 1971 so that there is no requirement to prove knowledge. It is likely that such amendments would be subject to ECHR challenge, resulting in delay, fewer successful prosecutions and therefore fewer deportations. New clause 34 also seeks to amend the Illegal Migration Act 2023 by disapplying the Human Rights Act 1998 from key immigration legislation. When we debated the last group of new clauses, we decided that we do not want to do that. This is a technical point, but the new clauses relating to the Illegal Migration Act would have no effect and are redundant because this Bill will repeal those provisions of that Act.

The focus of the hon. Member for Weald of Kent is clear: she wants to ensure foreign national offenders are deported from the UK at the earliest opportunity. I agree that we should be doing that. In fact, we had a 21% increase in the number of enforced deportations of foreign national offenders in our first seven months in office, but the new clause will not further the cause because it risks slowing down removals.

The Government are focusing on the enforcement of the immigration system and increasing returns. Through this Bill, we are creating new powers to enable more effective controls around individuals who pose a threat to the public while deportation is pursued. We will continue that work.

On new clause 42, we have been clear that the swift return of those with no right to be in the UK forms a key part of a functioning migration relationship. That is why more than 20,000 people have been returned since we came into office. My officials and I have been working hard to strengthen relationships with our international partners to that end. For example, on a recent visit to Iraq, the Home Secretary signed a joint statement on migration. That included further work on the return of people who have no right to be in the UK, where returns are currently very slow, and the continued provision of reintegration programmes to support returnees.

Where co-operation with countries on returns falls below the levels expected and where appropriate, we use all levers available to us, including visa penalties and having meetings with the appropriate ambassadors to tell them that if things do not improve, visa penalties will be coming along. It does no good to require the Home Secretary to introduce visa penalties, when penalties are something we can use if we get no co-operation whatsoever. The hon. Member for Weald of Kent should be under no doubt that those sorts of penalties will be used if we think that doing so would have a positive effect on co-operation.

Those who are listening to our debate may not realise that deporting somebody is not easy. It requires getting an emergency travel document issued. In order for a country to issue an emergency travel document, they have to accept that the person concerned is one of their citizens to begin with. That kind of identification takes time. It is important that we try to co-operate with our international partners so that we can make this process as quick and efficient as possible, rather than going to war with our international partners and alienating them. The hon. Member for Weald of Kent should be in no doubt that should visa penalties need to be threatened or introduced, we would certainly do that.

The existing provision in the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 gives the Home Secretary sufficient scope to be able to use visa penalties if it is assessed to be appropriate. The last Government introduced these powers but exercised their discretion not to use them, despite obviously having returns challenges. This Government intend to retain the discretion to use the powers in the right way at the right time, so that they will be effective to the maximum. We do not need a clause in primary legislation to require the Home Secretary to use visa penalties in all circumstances, regardless of the context and without an assessment as to whether it would make things worse or better.

The fact that new clause 42 aims to remove the discretion to decide whether to use the powers is inherently flawed. It is not something that the Opposition sought to do when they were in Government. It is not something that the hon. Member for Weald of Kent seems to have pushed when she was a special adviser in the Home Office. There is no immediate way to discern whether a Government are co-operating or not. That is a discretionary judgment that would have to be taken by Ministers in each context. Visa penalties have not been used before. In each case where their use has been considered, we have been able to successfully unblock co-operation through other means, such as ministerial and senior-level engagement, of which I myself have done some.

The provisions already provided for in the Nationality and Borders Act are sufficient for our primary aim of these powers, and I urge the Opposition not to push the new clauses to a vote.

We wish to divide on new clause 34.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

The Committee divided: Ayes 2, Noes 14.

Question accordingly negatived.