Dr Zubir Ahmed

I am afraid that it is not the point that I was trying to make, but I will take on some of the hon. Member’s arguments. In Scotland, we have some of the highest levels of unemployed young people anywhere in the United Kingdom. We should first and foremost start by addressing their issues and getting them into employment before we start opening up a wider debate about immigration, illegal migration and numbers. I also say to him that in the city of Glasgow, it is bad enough that the right wing manipulates immigration and migration issues to march masked men down the streets of my constituency, but also on the other side, politicians must also take responsibility, including those in the Scottish Government, who pay lip service to social cohesion and anti-racism rhetoric but never follow through by funding the infrastructure that fundamentally relies on social cohesion to be a successful endeavour. Let me get back to the point I was trying to make. We must address this issue because we are placing minorities in the firing line if we do not. I am so glad that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is bringing forward a Bill that will do precisely that, because what is missing right now in this debate is trust and confidence in the asylum and immigration system. The Immigration and Asylum Bill, currently in Committee, precisely serves to restore that trust and confidence by ensuring that we can regulate and produce an independent authority that will fast-track asylum applications, and that we can reinterpret components of human rights legislation to make sure that they are fit for the present and not the past. On that, I must note that the ECHR is not some kind of foreign construct, as some have tried to outline today in this place. It is a British construct. It is a Churchillian construct. It is the fabric of what it means to be British. It is what made my grandfather and my father serve the British and come to this country. It is because of the ECHR that we have freedom of religion. It is because of the ECHR that we have freedom from torture. It is because of the ECHR that we are able now to extricate ourselves from things like corporal punishment. And, actually, it is because of the ECHR—we are talking about women’s safety today, and rightly so—that women who are victims of domestic violence are protected from their housing benefit being cut. I ask hon. Members from both sides of the House to remember that when we have this debate, it has consequences for people from many communities up and down the country. It has consequences for people who are legitimately here, many for generations, and who are caught in the net by people who wish to exploit this debate and question their legitimacy in this country—and often to question the legitimacy of people like me to be in this place. That is something we must never forget.