IF you believe MPs can be trusted to make our laws without someone watching over them, you should have been in the Commons last Thursday.

That was the day our elected representatives rammed through a change so breathtakingly authoritarian it would normally be seen in nasty dictatorships.

Moments earlier, MPs came close to voting for a measure that Downing Street had warned was clearly illegal. Yes – illegal.

And, to cap it all, neither of these two flashpoints are the reason why the legislation was brought forward in the first place.

In summary, four hours of often rabblerousing debate on the Immigration Bill was – with the honourable exception of a few MPs – a national embarrassment.

Now, I’ve written before about the Commons cheerfully waving through badlydrafted laws, with no proper scrutiny, that the House of Lords must make fit for purpose.

Nevertheless, last Thursday still represented a new low.

Some readers may remember the Immigration Bill was dreamt up to tackle socalled “health tourism”, which allegedly allows foreigners to use our precious NHS.

With the Ukip threat growing, a report was hastily cobbled together to claim there is a £2bn treatment bill. And landlords and GPs were told they must crack down on abuses.

Turning landlords into de fact border guards is hugely controversial, but – last Thursday – the issue was barely mentioned.

Instead, the Bill was hijacked by demands for action to stop foreign criminals using human rights law to avoid deportation, by giving ministers, not judges, the final say.

This was the measure which – No.10 lawyers ruled unequivocally – was illegal.

So the Prime Minister was duty-bound to fight it, right? Wrong.

Incredibly, but in keeping with his refusal to stand up to his right-wingers, Mr Cameron ordered abstentions, relying on Labour and the Liberal Democrats to restore sanity.

Sadly, this sanity did not survive a further vote, the one that will warm the hearts of dictators around the world, which the Commons passed with Labour abstaining.

It means the UK is on track to strip foreign- born terror suspects – that’s suspects, not people convicted of any crime – of citizenship, potentially making some stateless.

Where will these people go? And how can they be expelled if no country will accept them?

The Home Secretary had no answers, but it made no difference.

The plan had been hatched just one day earlier, in a desperate attempt to win over deportation rebels. There was no evaluation, or consideration – MPs just whizzed it through.

I like to think many awoke the next day like the regretful drunk, asking themselves “What the hell did I do last night?”

I suggested MPs needed someone watching over them.

That means the courts and a second chamber, but not the semi-feudal, cash-forpeerages disgrace that is the current House of Lords.

Somebody has to save MPs from themselves occasionally – especially when it comes to hysteria over immigration.