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Gladys Taulo

I should like to offer more than the traditional congratulations to the right hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Miss Widdecombe) on securing this debate; she has now had two in two weeks. I would like to quote briefly from this week's House magazine, in which she has the quote of the week. She says:""I always imagined that when I was making my last speech and about to depart, I would be sad—instead of which I find my uppermost sentiment is one of profound relief."" I do not know whether she feels that again this evening. I would like to tell her that the House will miss her. She brings the House into good repute. She and I disagree on many matters politically but, as I said the week before last, we agree on more things than people would expect. I should like to make a partisan point at this stage. The right hon. Lady said that there was a problem with targets in this country, and that we went for the easy cases because of those targets. That is not our policy, however. The criteria that we apply put the harmful cases at the top. The removal of foreign national prisoners is an example. Every day, in some of the tabloid newspapers, we see instances of our fighting exactly those cases, and expending significant resources on doing so. Of course we should apply common sense, and I shall demonstrate how we are doing so, but we cannot run the immigration system on a whim. There are rules and laws that have been passed by the House, and in this particular case the lady in question was outside the rules. Were I to say that I would not enforce them because she was a nice lady, or for some other reason, I would be subject to ridicule. To continue with my partisan point, I presume that, if the right hon. Lady is against targets, she will be speaking out in the next few weeks against her own party's ridiculous immigration policy, which is based entirely on a target—a cap—that would be damaging. The cap would be applied to tier 1 and tier 2 cases exactly like this one, and people would be excluded not on the basis of common sense but on the basis that the cap had been reached. Whatever the needs of the care sector, for example, no one would be allowed in. Apart from being impractical, that is exactly the kind of policy that brings targets into disrepute. The Opposition criticise us for having targets, but they are proposing just such a policy to replace ours, so I hope that the right hon. Lady will speak out about that. I also hope that the right hon. Lady will speak out in favour of the enforcement of the rules. She has raised the case of this particular family, and I am allowed to respond. The family is in education, and it is using the national health service. I have no doubt whatever that the lady in question has contributed significantly and that she has paid taxes, but you cannot have it both ways. Well, you can, Mr. Deputy Speaker, because you are the Deputy Speaker, but one cannot have it both ways. One cannot be in favour of controlled and managed migration that does not allow anyone to operate outside the rules or to use the NHS or the education service, but then say that we should not implement the rules. I shall turn to the specific points of this case, because I am sure that they will be of more interest to the right hon. Lady. Before I move on, I should say that a letter is in the post and on its way—