Labour has capitulated over Pakistani deportations as direct flights from Islamabad and Lahore have doubled without a promised deal being signed.
GB News revealed last year that Pakistani delegates proposed accepting grooming gang deportations if its flag carrier, Pakistan International Airlines, resumed flights to the UK.
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A month later, the British High Commission lifted the ban on the airline, without any such deal in place, so that flights could resume.
The UK initially banned the airline from flying in 2020 over concerns surrounding the Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority’s compliance with international safety standards after a PIA plane crash killed 97 people.
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However, PIA has now announced it is ramping up the number of flights bound for London Heathrow from both Islamabad and Lahore.
The airline will increase the number of weekly flights from Islamabad to Heathrow from three to five in October.
Meanwhile, the number of journeys from Lahore, in eastern Pakistan, will be doubled, meaning there will be two weekly flights to London.
GB News understands there is still no deal on the table for Pakistan to accept the return of its national offenders in the UK.
This includes Pakistani Shabir Ahmed, the Rochdale grooming gang ringleader, who managed to dodge deportation through a legal loophole despite his vile crimes.
Ahmed was convicted at Liverpool Crown Court in August 2012 of two rapes, aiding and abetting rape, sexual assault and trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation.
The child sex offender swindled his way out of a return to Pakistan due to provisions under the Immigration Act 1971, which protects arrivals to the UK before 1973 provided they have lived in Britain for a minimum of five years.
The lack of a settled agreement to repatriate a number of grooming gang offenders of Pakistani origin has led to cross-party fury.
At the time of Ahmed’s release, Paul Waugh, Labour MP for Rochdale, said: “This depraved paedophile should have been deported to Pakistan years ago.
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“The people of Rochdale want him booted out of the country and it’s simply unacceptable that the Government of Pakistan are refusing to take him back.
“If the Citizenship Act needs to be amended to do that, ministers should look at doing just that.”
Speaking to the People’s Channel, Shadow Foreign Secretary Dame Priti Patel took aim at the series of Labour ministers accountable for “failing” to see through deportations of foreign offenders.
She told GB News: “A succession of feeble Labour ministers have destroyed Britain’s standing in the world as they virtually signal globally and fail to confront those countries who have harmed our citizens and country through abhorrent crimes and criminality.
“Labour’s failure to take all necessary tough action to remove foreign national offenders and grooming gang members, is a stain on Britain’s international influence.
“It shows how weak this Government is when it comes to negotiating deals to keep our county safe and place sanctions on those countries who do us harm.”
Keighley MP Robbie Moore previously told GB News that the restoration of normal flights without any guarantees of deportations would be a “disgraceful failure of diplomacy”.
“This is also a double-edged scandal,” he said.
“Not only is the Pakistani Government refusing to accept the return of foreign nationals convicted of heinous crimes, but when convicted offenders flee to Pakistan before their trials, authorities there seem unwilling or unable to locate them.”
Labour ministers were also criticised last month after insisting they were doing “everything possible” to boot the paedophile from the country while handing Pakistan £153million in foreign aid.
A Home Office spokesman told The People’s Channel: “Nearly 10,000 foreign criminals including murderers and rapists have been removed since the last election – a 36 per cent increase on the 21 months prior.
“Any foreign national who receives a prison sentence in the UK is referred for deportation at the earliest opportunity and will be barred from ever returning.”
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