Yet more hypocrisy from the Tories

I read the story the other day that up to 3000 foreign criminals would be released without being deported and wondered how it was once again in the news. Only 250 EU criminals (and I'm not talking about MEPs here) will be even considered for preliminary deportation procedures, according to a probation circular.

Well, I'm not surprised. Last year I was talking about the same regulation stopped countries from denying entry to EU nationals on the basis of a criminal record:

Article 27 (2) of 2004/58/EC says:

'Measures taken on grounds of public policy or public security shall comply with the principle of proportionality and shall be based exclusively on the personal conduct of the individual concerned. Previous criminal convictions shall not in themselves constitute grounds for taking such measures (restricting freedom of movement).'

If we continue:

he Conservatives said yesterday that the revelation was a further embarrassment for Home Secretary John Reid.

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis said: 'Yet again we see that the public will be put at risk as a direct result of John Reid's failure.

'He spun he had a deal to remove these offenders but the rhetoric has not matched the action. John Reid was brought in to deal with the foreign prisoner crisis yet one year on as he quits office we see he has totally failed.'

Oooh, the Tories are criticising an EU law! But why? This law came into force because of EU enlargement to ten new member states, which the Tories were in favour of!

As I have said before, it was also a Tory who wrote the report in the European Parliament calling for Bulgaria to join the EU, and they are also in favour of Turkey joining.

It was under Michael Howard's stint as Europe Minister that laws governing control of our borders were first given away to the EU, and also the Tories are always talking about how much they love the single market, and how freedom of movement must be incorporated into this for it to work properly.

So what is David Davis complaining about? Why is he blaming John Reid? If the Tories didn't like it, they could have voted against it, rather than supporting it....