News from the New Party

Learco Chindamo: outrage and opportunism

The decision not to deport Learco Chindamo, the murderer of Philip Lawrence, on his eventual release from prison has sparked an explosion of public outrage which has been shamelessly manipulated and exploited by both the government and the official opposition, as well as the press. 

Chindamo has been resident in this country since the age of 6, albeit that he is the son of Italian and Filipino parents, and holds an Italian passport.  He does not speak Italian and has no family or other connections with Italy other than through his father, with whom he has no contact.  It is to Italy that Chindamo was to have been deported.

Many have railed against this "madness", and called for "common sense", while displaying precious little of the same commodity themselves.  The principal victim of all this has been Mrs Frances Lawrence, who has been disgracefully misled as to the likely fate of her husband's killer, and whose anguished reaction to the court's decision is entirely understandable.

The fact is that the law is clear: under EU legislation it is practically impossible to deport a person from one member country to another unless there are pressing national security concerns, which obviously do not apply in this case.  While it is true that Chindamo's lawyers also cited Article 8 of the Human Rights Act in advancing his case, the provisions of the HRA were not decisive in this matter.  Both the law and practical "common sense" would dictate that Chindamo, regardless of his passport, is to all intents and purposes a British problem and not an Italian one.  To foist Chindamo upon the people of Italy on account of a passport alone would be an abdication of responsibility.

And yet the government has announced that it is to mount a "very vigorous appeal" against the decision, as though its own sense of moral outrage somehow trumps the law of the land.  Confusingly it has also become known that the Home Office made clear that in its view Chindamo continues to represent a real risk to the public.  If Chindamo is a risk he should be in jail and nowhere else: the issue of deportation should not arise.

The response of the Conservatives to all this is odd, bearing in mind their determined efforts to be studiously moderate about everything.  Political analysts looking for evidence of a lurch to the right need not look far this morning.  David Davis has said:

"It is a stark demonstration of the clumsy incompetence of this Government's human rights legislation that we are unable to send a proven killer back to his own country, especially when that country is in the EU."

If anything this is a stark demonstration of David Davis' inability to grasp the facts of the case.  In the first place it is EU legislation that prevents Chindamo's deportation, not the HRA; secondly, for all practical purposes Chindamo's country is Britain; and thirdly, there is no established policy of banishing convicted murderers from these shores once they have completed their sentence. 

David Cameron has not done much better in suddenly calling for the scrapping of the Human Rights Act.  Whilst it is fair to say that if the law is an ass, the HRA is the ass of all asses, this has not become miraculously apparent this week.  We have long advocated the repeal of the HRA, but for Cameron to seize upon this cause now in the entirely irrelevant circumstances of this case reeks of opportunism.

The exploitation of this issue by politicians does nobody any good, least of all Mrs Lawrence, and does politics itself no credit.  The question to be answered is simple: is Chindamo a continuing risk to the public?  If he is then he should stay in jail. If he is not, and he is eventually released, then the law dictates that he should be treated as any other murderer on licence.  A nation which values the rule of law cannot in conscience tolerate any other outcome.