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Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

There were 12 defendants but only one was acquitted, and he was represented by me. Much more intellectual members of the Bar defended the rest and got them off on appeal. My point is that the defendants were escaping from the Taliban. We are at war with the Taliban. The defendants were professional people with no record of criminality in their home country who took steps to escape from a regime which they believed had rumbled their attempts to set up an opposition party against the Taliban. If one went back to a time prior to the Second World War and suggested that the refugees who came to this country fleeing the Nazis—with whom we later went to war—should have special immigration status, there would have been uproar. We would never have heard the end of it, and rightly so. To condemn people in the position of the Afghan escapees to the restrictions of the proposed order is unjust and unfair. I wait to hear whether the Minister can assure me that the 50 people he thinks will be subject to this order will not include those who were acquitted in the courts of this country and who were escaping from our own enemies.