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  courtesy of this morning's telegraph
  
  For the first time The Sunday Telegraph can disclose how scores of people the Government wanted to remove from the country have been able to stay by claiming that they had a "family life" here under Article Eight of the European Convention of Human Rights.
  
  
  A total of 102 people defeated the Home Secretary in the courts in 2010 on family rights grounds, including violent criminals and illegal immigrants who had no other right to be in the country.
  
  
  None claimed that they would be in danger of torture or abuse if they were sent home.
  
  
  It can also be disclosed that one foreign criminal who used Article Eight was a violent thug and drug dealer who beat his girlfriend and failed to pay child maintenance - but was still allowed to stay in a ruling made by three senior judges. Last night the figures fuelled the row over the use of the European Convention, which was passed into British law by the previous Labour government, and particularly Article Eight - the "right to private and family life". Dominic Raab, the Conservative MP who obtained the figures, said: "Before the Human Rights Act, no criminal had ever claimed a right to family life to frustrate a deportation order in this country.
  
  
  "It is high time we changed the law, to restore some common sense and retain public confidence in our border controls."

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