Kit Malthouse

I understand my hon. Friend’s point, but I would have more faith, or confidence, in his view if it applied to me as well, which it does not. What we are saying is that we can have two British citizens who commit the same heinous acts but receive two different kinds of treatment. One can have his or her citizenship removed and be expelled from the country, but another—say I were to do that—cannot. My view is that this is highly discriminatory, and tramples over some of the inalienable rights that my hon. Friend has mentioned. We currently have plenty of British citizens in high-security prisons who have committed acts as heinous as those committed by people whom we have deprived of British citizenship, but we have decided to deprive them of British citizenship purely because of their heritage and background—purely because they may be second-generation immigrants. As I pointed out on Second Reading, this legislation applies to every single Jewish member of the United Kingdom citizenry. They all have an inalienable right to Israeli citizenship, and as a result, in my view, they all have second-class citizenship. I do not think that that is right. I do not think that it is fair. I think that it drives a wedge into our society, and sows a seed of doubt at the back of everyone’s mind. This is the point that I was trying to make at the start. Those who perpetrate such heinous acts overseas absolutely should be punished. As my hon. Friend will know, over the past 10 years I have been at the forefront of trying to ensure that as many criminals as possible end up behind bars, whatever the criminality might be, but the fact is that there is a principle in British law—we are all supposed to be equal—and the Bill breaches that principle very significantly. Moreover, what the Government are attempting to do not only reinforces that breach, but aims to twist and skew fundamental tenets of British justice that have been our right for centuries.