Theresa May tries to deter Tory uprising on foreign criminals

MPs are hard at work in the Chamber tonight: once they’ve finished voting on the Leveson amendments to the Crime and Courts Bill, they’ll move on to everything else in this piece of legislation. And everything else includes that amendment signed by over 100 MPs on Tory and Labour benches which limits the ability of foreign criminals to resist deportation.

The Leveson debate has been a bit of a gift to ministers, as this big proposal would have enjoyed far greater attention had the Chamber not ben more exercised over press regulation. But that hasn’t stopped a ‘Dear Colleague’ letter going out from Theresa May to Conservative MPs to explain why the government isn’t supporting this call. The letter, which I’ve seen, was sent this evening by George Hollingberry, May’s PPS, and explains that ministers ‘strongly support the intention behind the amendment’, but that ‘our courts would declare it incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights’, and the amendment would therefore be ‘counter-productive’.