Around 20,000 serious foreign criminals remain in Britain after serving prison sentences and should have been deported, according to Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp.
Speaking at Policy Exchange, Mr Philp claimed that thousands of offenders sentenced to more than a year behind bars are still living in the UK despite completing their sentences.
He said: “Around 20,000 serious foreign criminals have been sentenced to over a year in prison but are still circulating on our streets after release. Every single one is a risk to the public.”
The Conservative frontbencher argued that Britain’s deportation system has become increasingly ineffective, with legal challenges and lengthy appeals preventing the removal of many offenders.
Mr Philp said relatively few non-European foreign criminals are being deported despite significant numbers being held in British prisons.
“Last year only 110 foreign criminals were deported to Jamaica, Iraq, Nigeria and Somalia put together,” he told the audience.
The Shadow Home Secretary linked the issue to wider concerns about immigration control, arguing that public confidence has been damaged by the perception that dangerous offenders are able to remain in Britain long after they should have been removed.
He pointed to the case of convicted criminal Ernesto Elliott, who was due to be deported to Jamaica but was removed from a deportation flight following a human rights claim. Mr Philp said Elliott later murdered 35-year-old Nathaniel Eyewu-Ago in south-east London.
“The consequences can be fatal,” he said.
The speech formed part of a broader attack on what Mr Philp described as a legal and judicial framework that makes deportations increasingly difficult.
He argued that the Human Rights Act, the European Convention on Human Rights, asylum laws, modern slavery legislation and the immigration tribunal system have together created multiple opportunities for offenders and illegal migrants to delay or prevent removal from the UK.
Mr Philp claimed the current system has left elected politicians unable to deliver the immigration policies voters expect.
“The truth is this: politicians are not properly in control of the immigration system. The courts are,” he said.
The Conservative MP called for a series of major reforms, including leaving the European Convention on Human Rights, repealing the Human Rights Act, abolishing immigration legal aid, scrapping the Immigration Tribunal and significantly restricting judicial reviews in immigration cases.
He also argued that illegal migrants arriving by small boat should no longer be permitted to claim asylum in the UK and should instead face rapid removal.
The intervention comes as immigration continues to dominate political debate, with concerns over illegal Channel crossings, asylum accommodation costs and foreign national offenders remaining high on the political agenda.
Mr Philp warned that unless mainstream politicians take more decisive action to address the issue, public trust in both the immigration system and democratic institutions will continue to erode.
“The public has lost trust,” he said. “We have lost control, and half measures or tinkering will not get it back.”
READ PHILP’S FULL SPEECH HERE:
Thank you Dean. It’s always a pleasure to come to Policy Exchange. Policy Exchange has undertaken substantial work in this area – including its Judicial Power Project. Dean – thank you, and please keep up the good work.
Let me start with the story of Rhiannon Whyte. She was just 27 years old and worked in an asylum hotel. On the evening of 20th October 2024, Rhiannon had finished her shift and walked to a nearby station to get the train home.
She was followed by Deng Majek, an illegal small boat immigrant from Sudan who had entered the UK three months earlier. He attacked Rhiannon, stabbing her 23 times tragically killing her.
I’ve met Rhiannon’s Mum, Siobhan who is here with us today, and she has said this to me: “It’s not fair that an illegal immigrant could come into the county and do this to my daughter. Why doesn’t the government stand up and do something?” It’s a good question.
Cases like Rhiannon’s are why public trust in the government on immigration is so low. The government has not stopped mass channel illegal immigration – over 73,000 have crossed since the election – more than under any other Prime Minister. Every time a new rape or assault by an illegal immigrant is reported, public trust drops further. Such as three small boat migrants gang raping a woman on Brighton beach. A 12 year old girl in Nuneaton raped by an Afghan illegal immigrant. A woman in Hyde Park raped by an Egyptian illegal immigrant – who was also a convicted terrorist. A 14 year old girl in Epping sexually assaulted by an Ethiopian illegal immigrant. And of course Stephen Ogilvie in Belfast almost beheaded last week in broad daylight by a Sudanese illegal immigrant. The list goes on an on.
And the public is equally unhappy that likely well over a million people are in this country illegally.
The problem extends to foreign criminals. While foreign criminals are deported in quite large numbers to countries like Albania, Poland and Romania, relatively few non-European criminals are deported. Last year only 110 foreign criminals were deported to Jamaica, Iraq, Nigeria and Somalia put together – despite there being over ten times as many prisoners from these nationalities in prison and many more out in the community. Around 20,000 serious foreign criminals have been sentenced to over a year in prison but are still circulating on our streets after release. Every single one is a risk to the public.
The consequences can be fatal. Convicted criminal Ernesto Elliott was due to be deported back to Jamaica. But he was removed from the flight following a human rights claim.
A few months later, Elliott murdered 35-year-old Nathaniel Eyewu-Ago in south east London. If the deportation had gone ahead, then Mr Eyewu-Ago would still be alive today.
Even where an asylum claim fails, other legal challenges often prevent removal. Last year only 12,000 failed asylum seekers left, even though 80,000 first applications were rejected that year.
The failure to grip immigration is undermining trust in democracy itself. People vote for illegal immigration to be ended. They vote for foreign criminals to be deported. And yet it doesn’t happen. This situation is completely unacceptable and it must change.
Mainstream political parties must now have the courage to take the radical steps needed to fix this, or the public will turn away from the mainstream.
We must start by asking why this issue has not been fixed.
The truth is this: politicians are not properly in control of the immigration system. The courts are.
The lack of parliamentary and ministerial control of the immigration system is undemocratic. Radical and sweeping change is needed to end the tyranny of the courts and restore democratic control over the immigration system.
Over the years, Parliament has allowed the creation a legal system that hands near unlimited power to judges to decide individual immigration cases and the power to shape how the whole system operates through case law.
Judges have used this power over time to make the system more an
d more permissive – so illegal immigrants and foreign criminals often cannot be deported. The consequence is that the UK becomes an attractive destination for illegal immigrants.
I want to examine how this happened.
First is the ECHR. Lord David Wolfson KC has brilliantly exposed how the ECHR,
implemented domestically by the Human Rights Act, prevents effective border control. The way judges in the UK have interpreted the vaguely worded ECHR clauses is often more expansive than their European cousins or even the judges in Strasbourg itself.
That is possible because the ECHR Articles are necessarily very broadly drafted. For example, Article, 3, “freedom from torture, inhuman or degrading treatment”. That was originally written to mean don’t send people to concentration camps. No one would argue with the clause as drafted, or if reasonably interpreted. But that clause is now interpreted by Judges such that “inhuman treatment” includes sending an Iraqi drug dealer back to Iraq because he had apparently become “too westernised”. It is also now considered “inhuman treatment” to send a convicted paedophile back to Zimbabwe because as a paedophile he might face hostility there. No thought about the rights of British children to be protected, or the right of Parliament to decide who stays in this country. So these criminals were allowed to stay in the UK. This is totally unacceptable, and it must end.
And because the ECHR sits above national law and is given full domestic force by the Human Rights Act there is little Parliament can do about its effects. Even where Parliament legislates, individual decisions then risk getting injuncted by the courts if the court considers them ECHR incompatible. It has, anyway, been the policy of successive governments to almost always legislate in a way that is compliant with the courts’ expansive interpretation of the ECHR.
I remember vividly, as a Minister, designing what is now the Nationality and Borders Act. I wanted to raise the asylum threshold – so only people who could clearly prove they were at risk of being persecuted would get asylum. But I was advised that while I could change our domestic asylum law, there was no point – because the migrants would simply make the same claim under ECHR Article 3 and judges would grant the claim by applying a similar criteria to current asylum policy. So as a Minister in a majority government I could not legislate with the effect I wanted, even if Parliament voted it through – because of the ECHR.
Next we come to modern slavery. Tony Blair signed up to the ECAT Treaty in 2007 and the 2015 legislation which followed is all very well meaning – it aims to stop people being abused. But they allow a foreign citizen with reasonable grounds to claim that they are modern slavery victims to avoid or delay deportation. The threshold to establish reasonable grounds are very low – a plausible sounding claim with no supporting evidence gets accepted – even if the person has previously expressly said they are not modern slavery victims. As a result, tens of thousands of foreign citizens facing deportation have made modern slavery claims – including very serious criminals who have successfully used modern slavery claims to prevent or substantially delay deportation.
Next we have asylum claims. Almost all small boat illegal immigrants claim asylum. From countries like Sudan, Eritrea, Syria and Afghanistan almost all applicants eventually get asylum. No wonder so many people from those nationalities cross the channel.
The evidence needed to establish an asylum claim is low. People claim to be Christian – often purporting to convert after arriving in the UK. Some well-meaning but misguided vicars even sign this off. Many applicants claim to be gay – or if they inconveniently have a wife or child or in one case had been convicted of raping a woman, they claim instead to be bisexual. Some claiming to be dissidents in their home country only joined an opposition group after arriving in the UK in order to establish an asylum claim – advised, of course, by their immigration lawyer. But this nonsense has all been accepted by the courts.
Many of the human rights, modern slavery and asylum claims are made in strikingly similar forms, once advice from an immigration lawyer is received. Claims that had never previously been mentioned are often advanced shortly after meeting an immigration lawyer. All this is funded by immigration legal aid.
We are using taxpayers’ money to fund lawyers who sometimes advise illegal immigrants on how to fabricate plausible-sounding claims. This was recently exposed by the BBC, who secretly recorded the associate of an immigration lawyer advising immigrants to fabricate claims to be gay or domestic abuse victims in order to be able to stay in the UK.
And it gets worse. It is also possible to make multiple claims over time – including multiple asylum claims on contradictory grounds. The whole circus can be dragged out for years. I recall the notorious case of Yacob Ahmed. This man was a Somali illegal immigrant who violently gang raped a teenage girl. After his prison sentence, the Home Office tried to deport him back to Somalia. Over eight years, Mr Ahmed made multiple asylum claims, multiple human rights claims and multiple modern slavery claims before he was finally deported in 2023. It took eight years.
And there’s always Judicial Review as a last resort to get the courts to stop someone being deported, or to challenge a new government policy on various grounds – ranging from an alleged failure to consult properly on a new policy to the illegal immigrant’s own reasonable expectations. There are plenty of options for the inventive immigration lawyer.
Then we have the Immigration Tribunal itself. After the Home Office has made a decision, it can be appealed to the First Tier Tribunal. The waiting time for an appeal is now over a year and there are a staggering 150,000 cases pending. If the immigrant doesn’t like that decision, then they can try their luck at the Upper Tribunal instead. This can take another year.
Some of the judges who make decisions on the Tribunal are themselves highly suspect. A number have previously been or supported open borders campaigners. Immigration Tribunal judges have previously worked for open borders groups such as Asylum Aid, Refugee and Migrant Justice, Refugee Action and Safe Passage UK. Several have also previously openly expressed pro-migration views.
Given the evident biases of some Tribunal Judges, it is no surprise they have made some extraordinary decisions. Judge Hugo Norton-Jones handed down a judgement using the ECHR to allow Palestinians to enter the UK to join family members here, despite the government expressly having decided to create no such route. A Ghanaian criminal deported 12 years ago was allowed back into the UK again using the ECHR, citing the fact he was feeling depressed in Ghana. A Nigerian armed robber who “presents a high risk of serious harm” to the public, won an appeal against removal from the UK because mental healthcare in Nigeria is not as good as here. Another immigration judge allowed an Albanian burglar with 50 convictions to stay in the UK because the offending was, apparently, “not very extreme”. These cases show Immigration Tribunal Judges handing down decisions that fly in the face of common sense – but are enabled by the current system. This is an insult to the British public and it has to end.
Given this thicket of opportunities to prevent deportation it is perhaps no surprise that 93% of small boat illegal immigrants get to stay and the numbers of foreign criminals deported to countries outside Europe each year is so small.
So what is the solution? Only radical action will return control over the immigration system to Parliament and take control away from the courts.
First, we need to leave the ECHR and repeal the Human Rights Act. In doing this, we should not replace them with a domestic version – because a British Human Rights Convention or Bill of Rights would necessarily be worded in the same vague terms as the ECHR and so the same problems of expansive judicial interpretation would arise. Policy Exchange has made exactly this argument.
Most important and reasonable rights are in domestic statute or common law already. But if Parliament feels there is a gap in domestic rights then Parliament can, and should, legislate expressly to fill the lacuna – but it should do so precisely and in detail, not in vague terms that allow open-ended and expansive judicial interpretation.
Tinkering with the definition of Article 8, as Labour proposes, will make no real difference. This has been tried before, and it doesn’t survive contact with the courts. And attempts to reform the whole ECHR require 46 member states to agree and the acquiescence of the Strasbourg Court, all of which will take years if it ever happens at all. Lord Hermer himself admitted last September to the Lords Constitutional Committee that claiming the ECHR could be reformed was simply a “political trick”. This is the only thing I have ever agreed with Lord Hermer on.
Human Rights advocates such as Keir Starmer say leaving the ECHR would mean we can’t co-operate with other countries on migrant returns and other issues. That is clearly nonsense. Most countries we need to return illegal immigrants and criminals to are outside Europe and aren’t even in the ECHR themselves. And ECHR members already co-operate freely with the USA, Canada, Australia and many others – all of whom are outside the ECHR and they are not international pariahs. The argument is obviously nonsensical.
Second, we need to reform asylum. Illegal immigrants like the Sudanese man who committed the Belfast attack should not be able to claim asylum at all. Period. No asylum for illegal immigrants. Illegal immigrants should instead be rapidly deported. And where we do allow an asylum claim then the bar for accepting that claim should be high. Real, hard evidence should be needed of the genuine risk of personal persecution. By persecution we mean things like threat to life, imprisonment or torture. We do not mean inconvenience on a day-to-day basis, a less generous welfare or health system or requirements for military service. We can implement this change by amending domestic legislation. Outside the ECHR and absent the HRA, the courts will not be able to find ways of over-riding Parliament as they do today.
Third, we need to end the use of modern slavery claims as a basis for people to stay in the UK. This will mean leaving the ECAT Treaty and amending the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and other domestic legislation.
Fourth, we will completely abolish the Immigration Tribunal and abolish Immigration Legal Aid. Immigration decisions should be made by the Home Office with a quick internal appeal process. Applicants should simply present the facts of their claim and a decision will be made. The assistance of external lawyers, who have been known to coach the applicant to lie as the BBC recently exposed, will not be required.
Finally, Judicial Review of immigration decisions and policy should be severely curtailed. Judicial Review on the grounds of irrationality (sometimes called Wednesbury unreasonableness), procedural impropriety – which often means things like purportedly not consulting properly – or the supposed “legitimate expectation” of the illegal immigrant will be excluded, or ousted.
Of course we do need guard rails of some kind. So as a safeguard, Judicial Review of immigration decisions taken by the Home Office will be allowed – but on narrow grounds. Judicial Review of immigration decisions or policy should only be allowed on the grounds of Vires – that is, that the government is acting outside its statutory powers. For example, the government should obviously not be able to apply immigration powers to British citizens or to those with the lawful right to be here – and you would of course expect the courts to be able to step in and stop this if it was attempted.
I estimate that these measures will remove about 98% of current immigration cases from the court system.
As a further safeguard, in exceptional humanitarian cases the Home Secretary would have the discretionary ability to allow someone to enter or stay, the exercise of which power would not be judicially reviewable. At times of international crisis, like Ukraine or the late 1930s, it would of course always be open to Parliament to create a bespoke humanitarian entry scheme. This has actually happened four times in the last ten years – for Hong Kong, Ukraine, Syria and Afghanistan.
So, ladies and gentleman, this set of polices represent a complete departure from the approach to immigration law that has grown up over the last forty years. But that is necessary, because the system is so clearly broken. The public has lost trust. Elected politicians are being systematically prevented from controlling our borders. We have lost control, and half measures or tinkering will not get it back.
These sweeping reforms will end the control exercised over immigration by the judiciary. It will return control to parliament. It will enable democratically elected ministers to decide who can come to the UK and who can stay.
The public will once again be able to decide – through elections – how the UK immigration system operates.
If I were Home Secretary I would use these freedoms to deport every illegal immigrant – like Deng Majek – within a week of arrival – to their home country if possible and a safe third country if not. That would rapidly deter anyone from entering the UK illegally, including by small boat.
I would also use these powers to ensure the deportation of all foreign criminals, not just some. I would ensure that over time all those here illegally would be removed. At the moment, doing these things is virtually legally impossible – which is why successive governments of both colours have not done them.
These sweeping reforms are critical to restore trust in politics.
They restore Parliamentary control of our immigration system, and end the tyranny of the courts.
It is now critical that mainstream politicians have the courage to make these radical changes, because if we don’t the public will turn away from the mainstream.
The public, rightly, expects our borders to be controlled. And this plan will do it.
Thank you.
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