Time to halt legal gravy train
John Lamont MP, my Westminster colleague, has come in for some predictable criticism because he signed an early day motion which called for the implementation of “a comprehensive national strategy to identify, detain, and deport” all illegal immigrants.
Up popped the usual suspects, like Green MSP Ross Greer, parroting stuff about immigrants filling vacancies in the NHS or care sector, conveniently overlooking the fact there aren’t enough homes for people living here now, that they can’t get GP appointments or find an NHS dentist.
Such vacancies contrast with the high number of inactive working age people, over a fifth of the labour force, and a rise of 500,000 on pre-pandemic levels. The UK is the only G7 country showing such an increase, and the leap in sickness benefit claims isn’t all down to Long Covid.
At the heart of the problem is an attitude that UK law doesn’t matter, and human rights lawyers are only too keen to drain public resources by using the courts to block deportations on the spurious grounds that even sending back violent criminals is a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights.
By its nature illegal immigration is hard to measure, but it’s thought there are around a million people here with no right of residence. Of the 166,000 people whose asylum applications were refused in 2010-23, 84,000 were still here this time last year, and now 24,000 Aghan refugees must be accommodated because of a staggering security blunder, it’s time the legal gravy train slowing down deportations was halted.
Sue Webber is a Scottish Conservative MSP for Lothian