THE former chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee has said UK judges are at fault over decisions to allow criminals to remain in the UK.

Speaking to GB News, Tim Loughton said: “Whatever you and I might think about the ECHR, this isn’t directly the fault of the ECHR.

“This is the fault of our judges in UK tribunals hearing Home Office cases for people trying to fight deportation.

“The lower tier judges in these cases seem to have made crazy judgments; allowing this Pakistani guy who was on the sex offenders register for trying to have sex with prepubescent girls.

“One, why has he only been given a sentence for 18 months, I don’t know. And two, why he’s allowed to have any contact with his own children after, I don’t know.

“The fault is with the tribunals, and this is something the Home Affairs Select Committee looked into, because they’re a bit of a law unto themselves.

“The Home Office was getting a lot of flak for these cases of people appealing and being upheld by the tribunal. We took evidence from people who were trying to claim that they converted to Christianity, therefore they couldn’t be deported back to a strict Muslim country, because their lives will be in danger. That was a farce.

“That was down to the way the tribunals operate, and that needs to be absolutely tightened up.

“The ECHR needs to be reformed and it’s not just us saying that; lots of other European countries are saying that as well, and a lot of other European countries do not abide by ECHR judgments anyway. We’re just the ones who always play by the rules.

“There’s a big waiting list at the moment. There’s about 34,500 asylum appeal claims which are going to be going through the courts, and I think they need to be looked at properly.

“This is what the Home Affairs Select Committee was doing, and we were taking evidence, and then it got interrupted by the general election last year, so we never actually came to our conclusions.

“But from what I saw, I think somebody needs to have a proper look at the way they operate. There needs to be an assessment of some of their judgments.

“And when we get crazy judgments like this, and these are the minority, but there’s still, it’s still happening far too often, then I think we need to drill down into how on earth could a British judge in a British court come to those conclusions?

“Because to you and me and most of the general public out there, why on earth are we siding with criminals rather than using the law to get rid of them? Because they shouldn’t be here. We don’t want them.”