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.
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Former Attorney General Sir Michael Ellis has branded Labour’s latest plan for foreign criminals a ‘political stunt’
Mahmood said of the plans: “This Government is taking radical action to deport foreign criminals, as part of our Plan for Change. Deportations are up under this Government, and with this new law, they will happen earlier than ever before.
“Our message is clear: if you abuse our hospitality and break our laws, we will send you packing.”
The former minister outlined three fundamental flaws that would prevent the policy from succeeding.
He explained: “I’m afraid I think this is a stunt, it’s a pure political stunt. But perhaps more importantly, I don’t think it’s going to work. And there are three key problems with this announcement.
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PA | Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood has vowed to ‘send foreign criminals packing’“The first is that you’ve got to have a country that’s willing to accept these foreign offenders. Flights from Pakistan International Airways would need to restart, and they’ve been paused for safety reasons, 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.
“Jamaica is another country that’s historically been reluctant to do that. There are a lot of countries that haven’t done it, so nothing in this announcement indicates that that’s going to change the picture.”
The second major hurdle concerns potential legal interventions. Ellis warned that human rights lawyers could challenge deportations on grounds of unfairness or violations of the Human Rights Act, particularly Article 8 protecting family life.
He stated: “The other issue, of course, is that human rights lawyers may actually say, well, it’s unfair to send them back. More accurately, it’s a breach of their rights under the Human Rights Act or under article eight, the right to family life. And I don’t see anything in this announcement that’s going to stop that.”
The third issue relates to sentencing disparities. Ellis illustrated this with a hypothetical scenario: “Two offenders who have robbed a bank together with a firearm, for example, one is British, the other is a foreign offender.”
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Ellis told GB News that criminals may serve ‘no sentence at all’ if they are deported
“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, ten years imprisonment. The British offender would serve the ten years, and the foreign offender could, on day one, be deported back to his country of origin, he might not serve any term at all. And so there’s a myriad of problems with this proposal.”
Ellis noted that deported offenders would have little incentive to return to Britain, though they might attempt to relocate to other countries rather than remain in their homeland.
He concluded: “If a person’s been sentenced to a term of imprisonment and then they’ve been deported and not had to serve any of that sentence, it seems to be fairly unlikely that they’ll want to come back 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 is the proposal, generally, without being sure that lawyers aren’t going to be able to stop it, and the countries that you’re sending them back to are going to receive it, and there’s no evidence that any of that’s changed.”
