IMMIGRATION INTO the United Kingdom went out of control during Labour’s 13 years in power, leading to the arrival of 2.2 million people – four times the population of Manchester, British home secretary Theresa May has said.
During a strongly anti-immigration speech to the Conservative party’s conference in Manchester, Ms May said the influx had “overloaded” infrastructure, housing, schools and hospitals, along with transport services.
“That’s why we’ve made it our aim to get net migration back down to the tens of thousands,” she said while warning Conservative grassroots that progress would be hard won. “It is not as simple as turning off a tap.”
Ms May, in denouncing Labour, said they had regarded anyone worried about immigration “as a bigot”, even though “left-wing elites” are not the ones “who pay the price” when a government fails to control immigration.
“The people who do are the ones I am in politics to serve – the men and women who work hard for a living, make sacrifices for their family and care about their community. It should be our moral mission to help working people [to] build a better future,” she said.
New regulations to limit entry by those involved in “sham marriages”, or forced marriages, will be published shortly, while a spouse will have to pass an English language test before getting permission to join their partner, immigration minister Damian Green said.
A permanent right to stay will not be granted unless the couple remains together for at least five years, rather than two years as is the case now, said Mr Green.
He said hundreds of people had “dumped” spouses once they could and brought in others. “That’s not romance, it’s fraud,” he said.
In 2005, the UK, along with Ireland and Sweden, were the only EU states to grant immediate access to citizens from the eight eastern European states that joined the union. Labour had predicted that just 13,000 would come to the UK.
“The actual number was 750,000. That’s another mistake we will not repeat. I can tell you that every new country joining the EU will go through a transitional period before they have full access,” said Mr Green.
Justice secretary Ken Clarke clashed openly at the conference with the home secretary, who repeated her determination to replace the Human Rights Act brought in by Labour with a more limited British Bill of Rights.
Immigration rules would be changed, she said, to ensure the right to a family life guaranteed by article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights can no longer be used to stop the deportation of foreign criminals after they finish prison sentences.
She said the convention was used by up to 100 such criminals to secure permission to stay on in the UK since “our courts – and the problems lies mainly in British courts – interpret the right to a family life as an almost absolute right”.
“The right to a family life is not an absolute right, and it must not be used to drive a coach and horses through our immigration system. The meaning of article 8 should no longer be perverted,” she said, to Conservative cheers.
However, Mr Clarke disagreed strongly, saying “daft misinterpretations” in the UK of the Convention on Human Rights – which was created partly because of the influence of Winston Churchill – “are giving the whole thing a bad reputation”.
Defending the European Convention of Human Rights, he said “the victorious British, who had fought fascism” had wanted to “get back to universal European standards, at least, of individual liberty – the thing for which the Conservative party stands most strongly inside the British political system”.
Deportation claim gets May into right cat flap
BRITISH HOME secretary Theresa May’s claim yesterday that a Bolivian man who had been jailed in the UK could not be deported after he had finished his sentence “because he had a pet cat” was rejected by top judges last night.
The Bolivian’s cat was included by Ms May in a list of alleged abuses of the right to a family life enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights, along with the case of a drug-dealer allowed to stay because his daughter “for whom he pays no maintenance” lives in the UK.
However, Ms May ran into difficulties – and mockery – quickly after it emerged that Maya, the cat, was not the reason a judge quashed the bid to deport the man, who gave ownership of the cat as part of evidence that he had a stable relationship with his girlfriend.
“This was a case in which the home office conceded that they had mistakenly failed to apply their own policy (that couples were protected if they had been together for more than two years) for dealing with unmarried partners of people settled in the UK,” a judicial spokesperson said.
Justice secretary Ken Clarke joined in the mirth provoked by May’s claim: “I cannot believe anybody has ever had deportation refused on the basis of owning a cat. I’ll have a small bet with her that nobody has ever been refused deportation on the grounds of the ownership of a cat.” Her declaration led to immediate headlines of “May’s catastrophe” and “ImPurffect Day”, while tabloid reporters happily went in search of quotes from her fellow Conservative MPs Jonathan Rees-Mogg and Kitty Ussher.
