Nigel Farage

“Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was talking about fear and anger growing in the country—and I sense there is also a bit of that growing in this Chamber. When it comes to controlling our borders and to who should be able legally to live, work and settle in this country, and, indeed, to who should not be allowed to stay in our country, I do not believe it is right that that should be under the remit of judges in Strasbourg—who by the way are jurists, most of them not even legally qualified—and under the political control of judges in this country, who now can make their own interpretation of what we have understood for many, many years to be British common law. This Bill intends to restore the power of this Parliament—the power of all of you as MPs to actually be in control of the things that matter most to all voters, whether they supported you or not. This Bill intends to bring back British common law and some ideas—rather than state-given rights, those of birthrights of liberty and freedom. These are things that over centuries served our country far better than any other nation in the European continent. This is about liberty, it is about freedom, it is about democratic control. Just think, whatever the election result, even if 650 of us wanted to change rules on who can come across the channel and stay, we could be overruled by a convention that we signed up to in 1998—[Interruption.] Members shake their heads, but we could literally be overruled. This is about sovereignty—sovereignty of the country, sovereignty of our Parliament. It is about our voters being able to choose the future course and direction of our own country. That is why this matters. Let us remind ourselves briefly of some of the worst examples of the ECHR taking away our democratic rights. Interestingly, it was the last Conservative Government who decided to put in place the Rwanda legislation. It was, in theory, very good, as it would act as a deterrent—[Interruption.] Unless people support the criminal gangs, yes it was a very good idea. The trouble was that it could not happen. Why could it not happen? In the case of the 2022 Rwanda deportation flight, at 10 pm a single judge in Strasbourg, without any legal qualification, decided on the basis of article 3 that the flight could not take off. We have since seen horrendous stories, particularly under article 8 on the right to family life. Well, whose family? The families of British people, or the families of those who have come into Britain, in some cases illegally, and been waved through? Some of it is disgusting beyond belief. A Pakistani child sex offender dodged deportation on the basis that his removal would harm the children he had had in this country. The list goes on and on—Brazilian murderers, rapists and many others who claim the right to a family life under article 8. Well, what about British families? What about their rights and their freedoms? What are the priorities of Members of this place? Of course, we will be told that by leaving this completely outdated, 75-year-old convention—[Interruption.] By the way, I fully understand why it was signed up to in the 1940s—the other European countries did not have constitutions or democracies that could prevent them from going into extremism—but we are not Russia and we are not Belarus. Nobody in the Chamber would say that countries like New Zealand, Australia and Canada are barbaric or backward; they defend freedoms. But I do not defend state-given human rights, because they can be taken away by the very states who has given them in the first place. [Interruption.] I have never seen so many Liberal Democrats in all my life—it is absolutely marvellous. [Interruption.]”