BRITAIN will have a "tougher, firmer and fairer" immigration policy now that the Conservatives are governing alone and no longer encumbered by the Liberal Democrats, Theresa May has told MPs as she outlined the justice and home affairs offer in the Queen's Speech.

 

The Home Secretary outlined how the UK Government would legislate for new powers to ensure Britain had an immigration system that worked in the national interest, which was fair to British subjects and legitimate migrants but tough on those who flouted the rules or abused the state's hospitality.

Mrs May said Ministers would take the "radical step" of making illegal working a criminal offence to "make Britain a less attractive place for people to come and work in illegally".

On detention centres, she said the Government was looking into the current set-up and requirements.

"I would prefer to see people being detained for a very short period of time; in fact, for many people they are only detained for a matter of days and the majority of detention is less than two months.

"But it is important we have the system that can ensure we are going to be able to deport people, to remove them from this country quickly, when they have been identified and when they should not be here."

Mrs May insisted the Tory Government was committed to human rights reform to avoid abuse by people who should not be in the country.

But Yvette Cooper, her Labour Shadow, denounced the Conservatives' desire to scrap the Human Rights Act and replace it with a British Bill of Rights, saying it would be a "shameful abandonment of Britain's historic respect for the rule of law and a wilful destruction of the post-war legacy Britain gave the world".

Joanna Cherry QC, the SNP's spokeswoman on justice and home affairs, claimed the Government was giving the impression it considered human rights and the rule of law an inconvenience.

In her maiden speech, the MP for Edinburgh South West said withdrawal from the Human Rights Act and European Court of Human Rights would "send out entirely the wrong signal" on the international stage.

Stressing how the nationalism of the SNP was outward-looking, she urged the Tory Government away from the "narrow, inward-looking nationalism of withdrawing from the ECHR and drawing up its own Bill of Rights".

Ms Cherry said she was "fundamentally opposed" to the repeal of the Act and pointed out the UK had lost fewer than one per cent of cases brought against it in Strasbourg.

She praised the Government's handling of the Abu Qatada case, which saw the Home Office spend almost £2m of taxpayers' money over eight years trying to deport the Muslim cleric, once accused of being Osama bin Laden's right-hand man in Europe.

"It might have taken time to deport Abu Qatada," argued Ms Cherry, "but the UK Government should be proud of doing things properly."