The Hero
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- Jun 29, 2008
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Theresa and Ken's catfight: Clarke outburst wrecks May's big speech on human rights
Theresa and Ken's catfight: Clarke outburst wrecks May's big speech on human rights
Ken Clarke created havoc at the Tory conference yesterday by provoking a blazing Cabinet row over human rights law which was quickly dubbed cat-gate.
The Justice Secretary, who also made incendiary comments on Europe and the Lib Dems, went out of his way to pick a fight with Theresa May over her plans to end rampant abuse of Labours Human Rights Act.
Mrs May, in a loudly cheered speech, had cited the example of a Bolivian immigrant who cannot be deported because and I am not making this up he had a pet cat.
Cat got her tongue: Theresa May claimed that an illegal immigrant had not been deported because he had a pet
There is a well-known case of an immigration judge saying that the fact a man had bought a cat with his girlfriend showed they had a strength and quality of family life.
Mrs Mays remark was accompanied by a series of other examples of how the Article 8 right to a family life is being misapplied.
But at a fringe event afterwards Mr Clarke, without any prompting, accused Mrs May of misrepresenting human rights law.
Keynote speech: It was later claimed that the man had been allowed to stay in the country for entirely different reasons
Kitten heels: Theresa May is famed for her love of colourful footwear
Cat ruling denied: Mrs May's claims were refuted by the Judicial Office who said the ruling in the case had nothing to do with the cat - reportedly called Maya
He said: They are British cases and British judges she is complaining about. I cannot believe anybody has ever had deportation refused on the basis of owning a cat. Ill have a small bet with her that nobody has ever been refused deportation on the grounds of the ownership as a cat.
In a later TV interview, Mr Clarke said: I heard Theresa refer to it and I sat there with a Victor Meldrew reaction. I thought, I cant believe it.
Last night, Downing Street sources were standing by Mrs Mays version of events which was supported by the court papers from the original case in 2009.
While the cat was not the main reason for the decision not to deport the man, the pet was explicitly mentioned by the immigration judge, who said: The evidence concerning the joint acquisition of Maya (the cat) by the appellant and his partner reinforces my conclusion on the strength and quality of [their] family life.
While the Home Office appealed against the decision and lost, the fact remains that, in the original verdict, a court allowed a migrant to stay partly because of his ownership of a cat.
Foreign Secretary William Hague this morning sought to play down a public spat between his two Cabinet colleagues, insisting the pair were 'very much on the same page'.
He dismissed the disagreement and joked that the conference had 'gone pretty well' if discussions about a cat were the worst controversy to become a talking point.
'They are very much on the same page. Theresa May and Ken Clarke are completely agreed about this policy in changing how we interpret Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights,' he told ITV's Daybreak.
There was huge frustration that Mr Clarke had overshadowed a well-received announcement by Mrs May that immigration rules would be changed to stop Article 8 routinely being used to prevent the deportation of foreign criminals.
As the Daily Mail revealed yesterday, judges will finally have to balance the criminals right to a family life against their crimes and immigration status.
Tory MP Philip Davies last night called for Mr Clarke to be sacked, calling him out of touch. Theresa May is speaking up for what most people in the country think, he said.
Mr Clarke began his day with a defiant speech in which he defended plans to cut spending on prisons. He said that, with each jail place costing £40,000 a year, he was not prepared to follow the old brain-free policy of throwing money at the problem.
[h=3]NO BENEFIT CUTS IN CRIME CRACKDOWN[/h]Plans to dock benefits from those convicted of crimes were yesterday omitted from a fresh welfare crackdown following a Whitehall turf war.
Ministers announced that the unemployed will have to take job offers within an hour-and-a-half commute from their homes or risk their benefits being stopped.
They also said claimants would be required to spend several hours a day looking for work, following evidence that currently they spend as little as eight minutes a day doing so in order to keep getting state handouts. But a flagship measure which had been expected in the package sanctions that would see benefits stripped from those convicted of various crimes even if they are not jailed was missing.
Government sources said the Work and Pensions Department was happy with the proposal, but Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke was dragging his feet.
Magistrates and judges would have to determine at the time of sentence which offenders should have their handouts docked, and Mr Clarkes Ministry of Justice is understood to have failed to agree that the policy is workable.
Insisting that the justice system was broken, he told the conference that more than three-quarters of the adults charged over Augusts riots were repeat offenders who had been through our present system.
But critics said that far from suggesting prison doesnt work, the statistics showed the opposite. The figure Mr Clarke did not mention was that, of the rioters with serial convictions, two-thirds had never been imprisoned but had escaped with community punishments.
In other remarks Mr Clarke supported the way Britons are being extradited to the U.S. under the lopsided Extradition Act, although he declined to comment directly on the case of Aspergers sufferer Gary McKinnon, who is facing a lengthy jail term for hacking U.S. military computers.
[h=3]WHAT KEN CLARKE AND THERESA MAY SAID...[/h]
Justice Secretary Ken Clarke said Mrs May had made clear that 'there is nothing wrong with Article 8 if you read it all'
THERESA MAY: In a list of examples of how Article 8 of the Human Rights Act the right to a family life was being misapplied by British judges, she cited the example of a Bolivian immigrant who cannot be deported because and I am not making this up he had a pet cat.
KEN CLARKE: Id have to find out about these strange cases she is throwing out.
They are British cases and British judges she is complaining about. I cannot believe anybody has ever had deportation refused on the basis of owning a cat.
Ill have a small bet with her that nobody has ever been refused deportation on the grounds of the ownership of a cat...
Ill probably find she agrees with me that its these daft misinterpretations of the Act which are giving the whole thing a bad reputation. We should be a force in favour of human rights and liberty...
I heard Theresa refer to (the cat) and I sat there with a Victor Meldrew reaction. I thought, I cant believe it.
Mr Clarke was also typically loose-tongued on a range of other issues: On Nick Clegg: I always thought Nick Clegg was going to become a Conservative MP when I first met him as a young man. It is an argument Nick and I have never resolved. He comes out with all sorts of stuff about Gladstonian liberalism which I faintly look at him quizzically about.
It is the Liberals that got us into power this time. With any luck ... we might even woo some of them into our party by the time we have finished. Some we would welcome. Some we would not.
ON EUROPE: If once great powers like the British, the Germans, the French and the Italians wish to fade into oblivion they will carry on acting totally independently and separately at odds with each other in all aspects of foreign affairs and economic policy.
If they wish to punch above their weight, to be a force in the world, then the Union is a way of maximising influence.
If we were to leave the EU then presumably we would end up like Liechtenstein or Iceland you pay your contributions, you abide by the rules but you have no say in making the rules. I see no advantage in that.
ON EXTRADITION: If British people are accused of breaking American law they should go to stand trial in the United States of America.
It is a very long time since we refused the extradition of anybody to the United States, because although they have a different and more flamboyant system of justice to our own I dont think you can say you cant get a fair trial.
A father whose daughter was knocked down and killed by a failed asylum seeker has welcomed Theresa May's rule change.
Paul Houston's daughter Amy, 12, died after uninsured driver Aso Mohammed Ibrahim ran her down in his car. Ibrahim was allowed to remain in the UK by claiming deportation would be against his human rights of being allowed a family life.
Mr Houston, 41, said: 'I don't think anyone would disagree with what Theresa May has said. I am very encouraged by what she said and just hope now she puts her words into actions.
Aso Mohammed Ibrahim, right, was jailed for four months after knocking down Amy Houston, left, in Blackburn in 2003
'For too long, the Human Rights Act has been abused by criminals, failed asylum seekers, terrorist and paedophiles - all the wrong people in society. It is about time the Government put the viewpoints and the rights of the victims over the rights of the criminals.
Amy Houston's father Paul Houston with partner Carole Nevins. Mr Houston has welcomed today's news
'I have always said that it seems to be a charter for failed asylum seekers, criminals and terrorists and needs to be looked at. The act needs to benefit the innocent and the vulnerable as it was intended to do'.
Mr Houston's seven-year-old battle to have Ibrahim, 33, deported ended in heartache earlier this year when judges ruled kicking the failed asylum seeker out of the country would breach his human rights.
They said that as Iraqi Kurd Ibrahim had married an English woman and had two children - a boy and a girl - since the accident in 2003, his right to family life under the Human Rights Act meant he must stay in the UK - despite having a string of criminal convictions.
Ibrahim arrived in Britain hidden in the back of a lorry in January 2001. His application for asylum was refused and a subsequent appeal in November 2002 failed, but he was never sent home.
In November 2003, while serving a nine-month driving ban for not having insurance or a licence, he ploughed into Amy near her mother's home in Blackburn, Lancashire.
He ran away, leaving her conscious and trapped beneath the wheels of his black Rover. Six hours later her father had to take the heart-breaking decision to turn off her life-support system.
But despite leaving Amy to die, Ibrahim was jailed for just four months after admitting driving while disqualified and failing to stop after an accident.
Since his release from prison he has accrued a string of further convictions, including more driving offences, harassment and cautions for burglary and theft.
Mid-flow: Justice Secretary Ken Clarke knows how to grab an audience's attention
Theresa Mays Munster Family eyeliner certainly suggested a new, vampish approach to crime-fighting and immigration but this conference has been short on wallop.
Too many platform speakers have been treading water. One, yesterday, disgracefully, even recycled his speech from last year.
There is policy paralysis. I keep wanting to scream: You were elected to change things, so get on and change them before the country is sucked down the plughole!
They claim that we live in dangerous times. So where is the urgency? Where is the change of tone demanded by crisis?
Justice Secretary Ken Clarke knows how to grab an audiences attention.
The old warhorse had a cheerful tilt at our feral underclass and how it needs to be diminished.
He presented himself yesterday as an old-fashioned beak, keen to see criminals banged up and put right. Is that the real Ken? Or was it just a façade, to be dropped once he is back in Whitehall surrounded by clever lawyers?
Mr Clarke told us about a new scheme which will only reward managers if the cons stay out of trouble. Good. Its worth trying, at least.
Kens sheer experience is reassuring. His tummy. The sing-song voice. His chuckling admission that he is faintly surprised to find himself in office at this age.
Towards the end of his speech Mr Clarke said: We must give strong, confident and principled government. In office youve got to make a worthwhile difference. That sounded to me like a coded pull your finger out to Cabinet colleagues.
Mr Clarke spoke in the middle of the morning, just after Boris Johnson, Mayor of London. Oh, Boris, Boris, you lazy dog.
They love him, of course. Around me, ladies gooed, gushed, nudged their neighbours and gazed at each other, brimming with excitement. You can always rely on Boris, said one gent. Boris reliable?
Ha! They gave him a standing ovation simply for arriving. Then they settled down and sat there on their seat edges, grinning, waiting to burst into laughter while he worked his way through a studiously sombre opening few lines about the riots.
Their anticipation of hilarity was almost bullying in its insistence. Once or twice, titters broke out simply because he ruffled his hair. He must have been able to sense their impatience for mirth.
Conservative comic: Boris Johnson is greeted by 'Hackney Heroine' Pauline Pearce, who challenged and shouted at rioting youths in August
Comedy has become Boriss narcotic. Might it destroy him? Earlier we had been shown a video which had clips of Boris in black and white, Boris in a brick-lined lane, Boris up close to camera, whispering urgently about crime control. The electoral strategy, plainly, is to aim for something serious.
Yet here, on stage, his attempt to sound statesmanlike went ignored because the party activists were simply waiting for jokes. And soon he was serving them up.
There is a good theory to be made for marbling a serious message with wit. But there is a point at which the comedy is overdone and kills the message. Id say Boris crossed that line yesterday.
A passage in the middle of his speech described how the London 2012 Olympics are helping industry in the rest of the country because various sprockets and cogs and girders being used in the Gamess sites are being made by factories in Wolverhampton, Northampton, Poole and so forth.
He kept asking if anyone in the audience was from these various towns and then congratulated them. Ho ho.
He did exactly the same routine in his speech to the Tory conference last year.
Although he presented it yesterday as some sort of extempore riff, I am fairly sure that some of it, word for word, was identical to his 2010 speech.
Come on, Johnson, raise your game. Be a grown-up. Your city has just been left smoking by vandals. The gates of Rome are swinging on their hinges. Yet, at the start of your campaign for re-election, you cannot even be bothered to think up a new paragraph for your set-piece speech. Not good enough.
Theresa and Ken's catfight: Clarke outburst wrecks May's big speech on human rights
Ken Clarke created havoc at the Tory conference yesterday by provoking a blazing Cabinet row over human rights law which was quickly dubbed cat-gate.
The Justice Secretary, who also made incendiary comments on Europe and the Lib Dems, went out of his way to pick a fight with Theresa May over her plans to end rampant abuse of Labours Human Rights Act.
Mrs May, in a loudly cheered speech, had cited the example of a Bolivian immigrant who cannot be deported because and I am not making this up he had a pet cat.
Cat got her tongue: Theresa May claimed that an illegal immigrant had not been deported because he had a pet
There is a well-known case of an immigration judge saying that the fact a man had bought a cat with his girlfriend showed they had a strength and quality of family life.
Mrs Mays remark was accompanied by a series of other examples of how the Article 8 right to a family life is being misapplied.
But at a fringe event afterwards Mr Clarke, without any prompting, accused Mrs May of misrepresenting human rights law.
Keynote speech: It was later claimed that the man had been allowed to stay in the country for entirely different reasons
Cat ruling denied: Mrs May's claims were refuted by the Judicial Office who said the ruling in the case had nothing to do with the cat - reportedly called Maya
He said: They are British cases and British judges she is complaining about. I cannot believe anybody has ever had deportation refused on the basis of owning a cat. Ill have a small bet with her that nobody has ever been refused deportation on the grounds of the ownership as a cat.
In a later TV interview, Mr Clarke said: I heard Theresa refer to it and I sat there with a Victor Meldrew reaction. I thought, I cant believe it.
Last night, Downing Street sources were standing by Mrs Mays version of events which was supported by the court papers from the original case in 2009.
While the cat was not the main reason for the decision not to deport the man, the pet was explicitly mentioned by the immigration judge, who said: The evidence concerning the joint acquisition of Maya (the cat) by the appellant and his partner reinforces my conclusion on the strength and quality of [their] family life.
While the Home Office appealed against the decision and lost, the fact remains that, in the original verdict, a court allowed a migrant to stay partly because of his ownership of a cat.
Foreign Secretary William Hague this morning sought to play down a public spat between his two Cabinet colleagues, insisting the pair were 'very much on the same page'.
He dismissed the disagreement and joked that the conference had 'gone pretty well' if discussions about a cat were the worst controversy to become a talking point.
'They are very much on the same page. Theresa May and Ken Clarke are completely agreed about this policy in changing how we interpret Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights,' he told ITV's Daybreak.
There was huge frustration that Mr Clarke had overshadowed a well-received announcement by Mrs May that immigration rules would be changed to stop Article 8 routinely being used to prevent the deportation of foreign criminals.
As the Daily Mail revealed yesterday, judges will finally have to balance the criminals right to a family life against their crimes and immigration status.
Tory MP Philip Davies last night called for Mr Clarke to be sacked, calling him out of touch. Theresa May is speaking up for what most people in the country think, he said.
Mr Clarke began his day with a defiant speech in which he defended plans to cut spending on prisons. He said that, with each jail place costing £40,000 a year, he was not prepared to follow the old brain-free policy of throwing money at the problem.
[h=3]NO BENEFIT CUTS IN CRIME CRACKDOWN[/h]Plans to dock benefits from those convicted of crimes were yesterday omitted from a fresh welfare crackdown following a Whitehall turf war.
Ministers announced that the unemployed will have to take job offers within an hour-and-a-half commute from their homes or risk their benefits being stopped.
They also said claimants would be required to spend several hours a day looking for work, following evidence that currently they spend as little as eight minutes a day doing so in order to keep getting state handouts. But a flagship measure which had been expected in the package sanctions that would see benefits stripped from those convicted of various crimes even if they are not jailed was missing.
Government sources said the Work and Pensions Department was happy with the proposal, but Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke was dragging his feet.
Magistrates and judges would have to determine at the time of sentence which offenders should have their handouts docked, and Mr Clarkes Ministry of Justice is understood to have failed to agree that the policy is workable.
Insisting that the justice system was broken, he told the conference that more than three-quarters of the adults charged over Augusts riots were repeat offenders who had been through our present system.
But critics said that far from suggesting prison doesnt work, the statistics showed the opposite. The figure Mr Clarke did not mention was that, of the rioters with serial convictions, two-thirds had never been imprisoned but had escaped with community punishments.
In other remarks Mr Clarke supported the way Britons are being extradited to the U.S. under the lopsided Extradition Act, although he declined to comment directly on the case of Aspergers sufferer Gary McKinnon, who is facing a lengthy jail term for hacking U.S. military computers.
[h=3]WHAT KEN CLARKE AND THERESA MAY SAID...[/h]
Justice Secretary Ken Clarke said Mrs May had made clear that 'there is nothing wrong with Article 8 if you read it all'
THERESA MAY: In a list of examples of how Article 8 of the Human Rights Act the right to a family life was being misapplied by British judges, she cited the example of a Bolivian immigrant who cannot be deported because and I am not making this up he had a pet cat.
KEN CLARKE: Id have to find out about these strange cases she is throwing out.
They are British cases and British judges she is complaining about. I cannot believe anybody has ever had deportation refused on the basis of owning a cat.
Ill have a small bet with her that nobody has ever been refused deportation on the grounds of the ownership of a cat...
Ill probably find she agrees with me that its these daft misinterpretations of the Act which are giving the whole thing a bad reputation. We should be a force in favour of human rights and liberty...
I heard Theresa refer to (the cat) and I sat there with a Victor Meldrew reaction. I thought, I cant believe it.
Mr Clarke was also typically loose-tongued on a range of other issues: On Nick Clegg: I always thought Nick Clegg was going to become a Conservative MP when I first met him as a young man. It is an argument Nick and I have never resolved. He comes out with all sorts of stuff about Gladstonian liberalism which I faintly look at him quizzically about.
It is the Liberals that got us into power this time. With any luck ... we might even woo some of them into our party by the time we have finished. Some we would welcome. Some we would not.
ON EUROPE: If once great powers like the British, the Germans, the French and the Italians wish to fade into oblivion they will carry on acting totally independently and separately at odds with each other in all aspects of foreign affairs and economic policy.
If they wish to punch above their weight, to be a force in the world, then the Union is a way of maximising influence.
If we were to leave the EU then presumably we would end up like Liechtenstein or Iceland you pay your contributions, you abide by the rules but you have no say in making the rules. I see no advantage in that.
ON EXTRADITION: If British people are accused of breaking American law they should go to stand trial in the United States of America.
It is a very long time since we refused the extradition of anybody to the United States, because although they have a different and more flamboyant system of justice to our own I dont think you can say you cant get a fair trial.
A father whose daughter was knocked down and killed by a failed asylum seeker has welcomed Theresa May's rule change.
Paul Houston's daughter Amy, 12, died after uninsured driver Aso Mohammed Ibrahim ran her down in his car. Ibrahim was allowed to remain in the UK by claiming deportation would be against his human rights of being allowed a family life.
Mr Houston, 41, said: 'I don't think anyone would disagree with what Theresa May has said. I am very encouraged by what she said and just hope now she puts her words into actions.
Aso Mohammed Ibrahim, right, was jailed for four months after knocking down Amy Houston, left, in Blackburn in 2003
'For too long, the Human Rights Act has been abused by criminals, failed asylum seekers, terrorist and paedophiles - all the wrong people in society. It is about time the Government put the viewpoints and the rights of the victims over the rights of the criminals.
Amy Houston's father Paul Houston with partner Carole Nevins. Mr Houston has welcomed today's news
'I have always said that it seems to be a charter for failed asylum seekers, criminals and terrorists and needs to be looked at. The act needs to benefit the innocent and the vulnerable as it was intended to do'.
Mr Houston's seven-year-old battle to have Ibrahim, 33, deported ended in heartache earlier this year when judges ruled kicking the failed asylum seeker out of the country would breach his human rights.
They said that as Iraqi Kurd Ibrahim had married an English woman and had two children - a boy and a girl - since the accident in 2003, his right to family life under the Human Rights Act meant he must stay in the UK - despite having a string of criminal convictions.
Ibrahim arrived in Britain hidden in the back of a lorry in January 2001. His application for asylum was refused and a subsequent appeal in November 2002 failed, but he was never sent home.
In November 2003, while serving a nine-month driving ban for not having insurance or a licence, he ploughed into Amy near her mother's home in Blackburn, Lancashire.
He ran away, leaving her conscious and trapped beneath the wheels of his black Rover. Six hours later her father had to take the heart-breaking decision to turn off her life-support system.
But despite leaving Amy to die, Ibrahim was jailed for just four months after admitting driving while disqualified and failing to stop after an accident.
Since his release from prison he has accrued a string of further convictions, including more driving offences, harassment and cautions for burglary and theft.
Mid-flow: Justice Secretary Ken Clarke knows how to grab an audience's attention
Theresa Mays Munster Family eyeliner certainly suggested a new, vampish approach to crime-fighting and immigration but this conference has been short on wallop.
Too many platform speakers have been treading water. One, yesterday, disgracefully, even recycled his speech from last year.
There is policy paralysis. I keep wanting to scream: You were elected to change things, so get on and change them before the country is sucked down the plughole!
They claim that we live in dangerous times. So where is the urgency? Where is the change of tone demanded by crisis?
Justice Secretary Ken Clarke knows how to grab an audiences attention.
The old warhorse had a cheerful tilt at our feral underclass and how it needs to be diminished.
He presented himself yesterday as an old-fashioned beak, keen to see criminals banged up and put right. Is that the real Ken? Or was it just a façade, to be dropped once he is back in Whitehall surrounded by clever lawyers?
Mr Clarke told us about a new scheme which will only reward managers if the cons stay out of trouble. Good. Its worth trying, at least.
Kens sheer experience is reassuring. His tummy. The sing-song voice. His chuckling admission that he is faintly surprised to find himself in office at this age.
Towards the end of his speech Mr Clarke said: We must give strong, confident and principled government. In office youve got to make a worthwhile difference. That sounded to me like a coded pull your finger out to Cabinet colleagues.
Mr Clarke spoke in the middle of the morning, just after Boris Johnson, Mayor of London. Oh, Boris, Boris, you lazy dog.
They love him, of course. Around me, ladies gooed, gushed, nudged their neighbours and gazed at each other, brimming with excitement. You can always rely on Boris, said one gent. Boris reliable?
Ha! They gave him a standing ovation simply for arriving. Then they settled down and sat there on their seat edges, grinning, waiting to burst into laughter while he worked his way through a studiously sombre opening few lines about the riots.
Their anticipation of hilarity was almost bullying in its insistence. Once or twice, titters broke out simply because he ruffled his hair. He must have been able to sense their impatience for mirth.
Conservative comic: Boris Johnson is greeted by 'Hackney Heroine' Pauline Pearce, who challenged and shouted at rioting youths in August
Comedy has become Boriss narcotic. Might it destroy him? Earlier we had been shown a video which had clips of Boris in black and white, Boris in a brick-lined lane, Boris up close to camera, whispering urgently about crime control. The electoral strategy, plainly, is to aim for something serious.
Yet here, on stage, his attempt to sound statesmanlike went ignored because the party activists were simply waiting for jokes. And soon he was serving them up.
There is a good theory to be made for marbling a serious message with wit. But there is a point at which the comedy is overdone and kills the message. Id say Boris crossed that line yesterday.
A passage in the middle of his speech described how the London 2012 Olympics are helping industry in the rest of the country because various sprockets and cogs and girders being used in the Gamess sites are being made by factories in Wolverhampton, Northampton, Poole and so forth.
He kept asking if anyone in the audience was from these various towns and then congratulated them. Ho ho.
He did exactly the same routine in his speech to the Tory conference last year.
Although he presented it yesterday as some sort of extempore riff, I am fairly sure that some of it, word for word, was identical to his 2010 speech.
Come on, Johnson, raise your game. Be a grown-up. Your city has just been left smoking by vandals. The gates of Rome are swinging on their hinges. Yet, at the start of your campaign for re-election, you cannot even be bothered to think up a new paragraph for your set-piece speech. Not good enough.