Change law to kick out Rochdale rapist, No 10 urged

No he's not, and he does not.

He was not British at birth, and his acquired British nationality has been revoked.

He tried to give up his Pakistani (birth) nationality, but didn't do it properly.

He is now only Pakistani.

Yes, so many people seem to want to tie us up in legal knots so that we can't negotiate properly with anyone. It's turned the UK into a soft touch, always following the rules while other countries act robustly to defend their own interests.

Maybe we should look at the numbers of visas we give to Pakistan anyway, in view of the fact that Pakistani-heritage grooming gangs have sprung up in towns and cities across the UK.

@Blossomtoes

It’s odd how people change the situation to suit their narrative. We have many people who are not British citizens who we really would like to repatriate, but struggle to do so. It’s not easy to solve.

He’s a British citizen. He holds a British passport. That’s the fact of the matter. He’s a British citizen who was convicted in a UK court and served his sentence in the UK justice system. In no way, shape or form is he Pakistan’s problem, however much you might want him to be.

He committed a crime here and served a sentence here.

Just as British citizens who commit a crime in another country serve a sentence there.

What makes you think it's so hard to stop issuing all visas to Pakistani citizens until Pakistan take back the ones we're no longer willing to have here?

That's entirely within our right and our power. As a first step.

Tariffs on imports, sanctions, cutting aid are also normal forms of influence. That's a second step.

These aren't even particularly contentious. Why are you so reluctant fot the UK to stand up for itself? Countries less powerful than us regularly do far more...

Plenty of far more serious aggressions are committed against the UK every day. Our enemies stir up political division, commit cyber attacks on our institutions, destroy undersea cables... they give weapons and training to proxies and terrorists, and support attacks against our citizens on our soil.

In the extreme, countries bomb and invade. We have in the past, where necessary (not against a nuclear power)

What countries don't do - if they want to remain countries - is sell out their own citizens and their own future in order to be people-pleasers, and appease absolutely everyone else.

And they don't do whatever they're told to 'because it's the law'. Countries are their own law, based on the power they have.

Putting a boundary in place about who we let into our country - and who we insist another country take back - really, really isn't that hard.

@strawberrybubblegum Do you not think he would be back there if it was that easy? Why did he serve a prison sentence here? If he’s their problem? It’s not that easy in the real world. Maybe you should negotiate with Pakistan? Just tell them your demands and I am sure they would agree!

He's Pakistani.
He's not British.
He's their problem.

Unless our useless politicians make him our problem, by prioritising absolutely anyone - any country, any foreigner - above the British people as usual.

@strawberrybubblegumHes our problem. He’s certainly not Pakistan’s problem. Unless they agree it is!

100% agree. They're globalists to their core and they play to the lawyers and leftists in their own social bubble.

All this is harming British citizens. It's also damaging social cohesion and it causes resentment towards Muslim and other ethnic minority communities.

Many, many countries don't allow children who are in the country on their parents' visa to remain once they reach adulthood.

The UK's immigration laws - where once one member of the family gets a visa, their entire extended family can come too - are ridiculous.

He is not ours, and he's not our problem.

He's cost us way too much already: both financially and in enormous harm to our children and our society.

The 'it's not written in the visa' answers on here are part of the UK's problem, epitomised by Starmer giving everything of the UK's away, as soon as he caught sight of any rule or request written by anyone saying he should.

No other country acts like this.

The UK's politicians need to start acting for the UK. That is their responsibility. That is their job.

It is not for them to cause yet more harm to the UK - more harm to our own children, more harm to our own society, more cost (which could be better spent to benefit our own citizens) - just to make sure that nothing bad or uncomfortable ever happens to an evil child rapist from another country.

I'm not really happy with our government issuing hundreds of thousands of visas to the citizens of a country where women and girls have really low status and it's commonplace for families to sell their very young daughters to middle aged men.

That doesn't sound like a good idea to me at all. Considering the nature of Pakistani culture, maybe the grooming gang scandal was inevitable.

Yes, I agree. The fault lies with the short sightedness and complacency of the original legislation. British citizenship should be conditional and abusing and torturing British children should definitely be enough for someone to have that citizenship revoked, regardless of when they first entered the UK and that means the govt needs to find a way to send him back to where he came from.

Laws can change, and in this case should.

We have no responsibility to keep him here.

The UK issues hundreds of thousands of visas to Pakistani citizens every year: visitors, students, workers, family re-unification. If Pakistan won't take back their criminals, those visas need to all stop immediately until they do. We can't let in people whose country we can't rely on to take them back.

The law is written down. Not that 'don't rape children' should need to be.

He broke his side of the agreement, to an extreme level.

I'm fine with us going back on what we said in return.

He is not ours. He was given a visa aged 10, that permitted him to live in the UK.

He was not British at birth.

He is no longer welcome.

@5MinuteArgument I have no idea where he is but yes, he’s our trash.

So if Pakistan won't accept him we have to keep him in the UK? I hear he's recently been housed near to a primary school and a mosque so he must be very happy at the outcome of his crimes against British children.

Does that mean the activities of 'tough talking' Mahmood on this case are all performative? I think they probably are.

I agree, and abuse of that privilege should have consequences.

Making him serve his whole sentence would be a start. But, broadly, I think it would be sensible for people of foreign origin to be deported automatically at the end of their sentence. It’s a privilege to get to live in another country, and even more of a privilege to be granted their passport. Committing a crime is an abuse of that privilege.

Yes, the punishment for this scumbag is totally inadequate. He's done14 years for 30 counts of child rape. He's been barred from entering some parts of Greater Manchester inc Rochdale, but as you say these towns are quite close together and I imagine the communities there are closely connected. So for him it's largely business as usual. This is why community cohesion in this country is fraying.

He was staying in Hyndburn which is very close to Rochdale (part of Accrington) the MP for there put a post out on Facebook saying he had been moved on. There are reports he has been moved to another neighbouring town which I won't name incase it isn't true. These towns are all too close. It's disgusting.

@5MinuteArgument At what point did I say it was a solution? My argument is that there’s NO solution if Pakistan won’t take him. Neither did I say we cannot negotiate because of the colonialist past. I said Pakistan had raised it as a negative. You will find that diplomacy doesn’t work in the way you would like it to. Why do you think the Rwanda deal was negotiated for example? All those immigrants we could not send home. It’s virtually impossible to get a country to accept a criminal who is now free. Sometimes we might exchange prisoners but this is not the case here. It’s a hard lesson to learn but we cannot tell others what to do and threatening won’t be well received and we would not like it either.