Nigel Farage hit back at heckling MPs as he gave a speech calling for Britain to leave the European Convention on Human Rights in the Commons today. The Reform UK leader faced repeated interruptions, mainly from Lib Dem MPs, as he unveiled legislation that would see the UK withdraw from the treaty.
At one point during his speech, which saw the deputy speaker repeatedly intervene to restore order, Mr Farage told MPs who were speaking over him: “Children, be quiet.”
After a jibe about Vladimir Putin, he commented: “It’s marvellous to see the levels of intellectual debate in this place, it really is.”
Following another interruption, he said: “I would ask the Liberal Democrats and others in this place, what is wrong with you? Do you not believe this country is good enough to make its own laws?”
Mr Farage was presenting a 10-minute Bill on quitting the ECHR, which has widely been blamed for Britain’s failure to get a grip on the small boats crisis.
In his speech, the Clacton MP warned that Brexit “cannot be complete all the while we’re subject to a foreign court”.
He said: “I do not believe that it is right when it comes to controlling our borders for this to be under the remit firstly of judges in Strasbourg, who by the way are jurists, most of them not even legally qualified, and secondly, under the political control of judges in this country who now can make their own interpretation of what we’ve understood for many years to be British common law.
“This Bill intends to restore the power of this Parliament to actually be in control of the things that really matter most to voters.
“This Bill intends to return British common law and to bring back some ideas, rather than state-given rights, of birth rights, liberty and freedom.
“These are things that over centuries served our country far better than any other nation in the European continent. This is about liberty, it’s about freedom, it’s about democratic control.
“And just think of this, whatever election result there is even if 650 of us wanted to change rules on who can come across the Channel and who can stay, we can be overruled by a convention we signed up to in 1998.”
He added: “This is about sovereignty of the country, it’s about sovereignty of our Parliament, it’s about our voters being able to choose the future course and direction of our own country and that is why this matters.”
MPs voted down Mr Farage’s bill by 154 to 96.