David Norris (Independent)

That is very unfair. A small number of us will be here working throughout the day on this Bill and, by and large, they are the same people who put a great deal of effort into this area. I have invited in a group of people for lunch. I am not making the point that I am entitled to eat. I will happily work through any hours but I do not like to be discourteous to people I have invited here on the assumption that we would follow the usual tradition. I do not understand this niggardliness with regard to the way in which we are treated. I appeal to the Leader to provide for a sos during this debate because we all put in the work and we are entitled to be treated with the minimum of respect.

I want to raise another issue, which is serious. It is a matter I have down on the Order Paper and concerns the case of Pamela Izevbekhai, the Nigerian woman who is currently under threat. I asked the Leader last week if he would be prepared to make time for this resolution to be passed. It states that Members of the House did not envisage this kind of action when they passed the relevant legislation. I know that many Members on the Government side feel exactly the same and feel as strongly as I do about this.

I met Pamela Izevbekhai yesterday. She is under very considerable nervous strain. She is scheduled to be deported on 10 December. What an extraordinary way for us to celebrate Christmas, namely, by issuing an order for her deportation back to a country where the lives of herself and her children are very clearly in danger.

I am extremely disturbed by another aspect of this matter. Last week I received a very nasty and racist anonymous letter enclosing an article from one of the Murdoch-owned newspapers. Both the letter writer and the article suggested that her claim for asylum was fraudulent on a number of bases, including the allegation that she had lived in the United Kingdom for two and a half years. This is completely untrue. I have seen affidavits and proofs, including affidavits from her employers, her parish priest and the kindergarten which her children attended, that she was in Nigeria during that time.

I am a member of the National Union of Journalists and, having spoken to some journalistic colleagues, I understand that a journalist was apparently contacted by "a source in immigration", who made these inaccurate statements available to the journalist. It was not the journalist who contacted the source. I would like this matter to be inquired into. Is it appropriate that sources within immigration, paid officials of this State, should leak false allegations to the newspapers during a period when apparently this House cannot discuss it because we are told it is at the European Court of Human Rights for a determination of process?