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Lord Harper (Con)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 3 November 2025

Debate

Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill

Contribution

I suggest that careless driving is not a trivial offence. When I was Immigration Minister, I dealt with a father who had lost his child because of someone’s poor driving. We were struggling to remove that person from the country for a similar reason to that which the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, set out: they were an EU national, and there was a stricter test about whether you could remove them. I have to say that that father who had lost his child thought that that driving offence was really serious, so I would not trivialise it at all. The second test is that, if we cannot deport someone to the country from which they came, we should look at whether there is an opportunity, as we set out in our Rwanda policies, to deport them to another safe country. It is very clear that the British people do not want serious criminals who have come to this country staying here. We can have a debate about the detail of this, but the principle is very clear. When the Minister replies, I hope that he will address the principle of whether he thinks that people in the circumstances set out by my two noble friends should be able to stay here.

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