I will not be alone in welcoming the decision of Judge Richard Chalkley in the Upper Tribunal of the immigration courts that Mahmoud Jabber, a convicted drug dealer living in Accrington should be deported back to his country of origin, Palestine.

As this paper reported last week, the judge said that Mr Jabber had an ‘appalling history’ of criminality. He’s been serving six years for involvement in the supply of heroin and crack cocaine, and 21 months for money laundering.

Britain has been a safe haven for genuine refugees, for centuries.

In the 17th and 18th Centuries we took in thousands of “Huguenots” – French Protestants who were being persecuted by the French state.

We provided refuge in the 1930s for some Jewish people from Germany who were fleeing violent anti-Semitism.

This was, however, in the face of a pretty harsh approach by the Home Office. Some Jewish people did not make it through our restrictions. The experience of the Holocaust prompted the 1951 Refugee Convention, making it obligatory for all signatory states to provide asylum for anyone in well-founded fear of persecution by the state.

During the Cold War many refugees came from the Soviet bloc; since then, from almost any country experiencing internal instability and violence.

The Home Office, and successive Home Secretaries, have long taken their responsibilities very seriously to ensure that no one is deported if there is a serious risk of their ill-treatment on their return.

The Home Office produces meticulously-detailed country assessments about the risks – including for Palestine.

But there will be some whose case has no merits, and who will, frankly, seek to embroider their claim that it would be dangerous if they went back. In no case that I have dealt with, either as local MP, or as Home Secretary, can I think of a single one where mistreatment did happen once the individual was returned.

Mr Jabber was given a second chance, and allowed to stay here in 2008. The judge in this case made the right decision in deciding that enough was enough.