Prime Minister’s Questions in Parliament used to confront Boris Johnson over the recent deportation of ex-offenders to Jamaica
Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, has launched an attack on prime minster Boris Johnson in the UK’s House of Commons over the way persons of different ethnicities are treated by the government in the wake of the deportation of ex-offenders to Jamaica.
Referring to the the prime minister’s own alleged past drug use, Corbyn suggested that if the offenders had been Caucasian they might not have been removed for dabbling in class A drugs or non-grievous assault.
Johnson was born in New York but renounced his US citizenship in 2016. He has admitted to using cocaine as a teenager. In 1990 he was recorded on a telephone call discussing the planned assault of a journalist.
Approximately 50 people were due to be flown to Jamaica earlier this week but a last minute decision handed down by the court of appeal prevented the removal of 25 deportees over concerns they had not had proper access to legal advice because of a temporary outage of mobile phone signal in January.
Corbyn suggested that contrary to the facts, the British government was attempting to mislead the public into thinking all of the deportees were guilty of serious offences such as murder and rape. He suggested the government had learnt nothing since the Windrush scandal.
The government responded by saying said none of the offenders were connected to Windrush nor were any of them British nationals.
Johnson’s response acknowledged the foreign national offenders were being deported in accordance with the law and claimed Corbyn was “soft” on the deportation of violent foreign offenders.
