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Canterbury City Council Bill
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That so much of the Lords Message [21 May] as relates to the Canterbury City Council Bill be now considered.—(The Chairman of Ways and Means.)
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Leeds City Council Bill
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Nottingham City Council Bill
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Reading Borough Council Bill
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City of London (Various Powers) Bill [Lords]
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Hon. Members
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To be considered on Tuesday 26 June.
Transport for London Bill [Lords]
Motion made,
That so much of the Lords Message [21 May] as relates to the Transport for London Bill [Lords] be now considered.—(The Chairman of Ways and Means.)
Oral Answers to Questions
(11 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Rebecca Harris (Castle Point) (Con)
1. What recent progress has been made in the E3 plus 3 talks with Iran; and if he will make a statement.
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)
The E3 plus 3 held talks with Iran in Istanbul and Baghdad this year, and talks took place in Moscow yesterday and are continuing. I told Foreign Minister Salehi of Iran last week that the E3 plus 3 is sincere and united in its approach to the negotiations. We have made a credible offer to Iran, focused on a halt to 20% enrichment and on confidence building. The onus is now on Iran to respond. If it takes concrete steps, the international community will reciprocate.
Rebecca Harris
I welcome the hard work the Government are doing as part of the E3 plus 3 to bring a peaceful, diplomatic solution to the dispute with Iran. Will my right hon. Friend give more details about the offer that the E3 plus 3 has made to Iran? Does he agree that if Iran fails to accept that offer, the pressure of more sanctions will be necessary?
Mr Hague
Yes, I agree with my hon. Friend. There is a long-standing offer from European Union nations to assist with civil nuclear power in Iran once we are assured that its nuclear programme is purely for peaceful purposes. The offer made at the talks in Baghdad is an attempt to resolve the nuclear issue. It is focused on confidence-building measures and a halt to 20% enrichment. The ongoing talks in Moscow are tough and frank, and both sides have set out clear priorities. It is, of course, our intention that the European Union’s oil sanctions will come into force on 1 July. If no progress is made, we will certainly want to intensify the sanctions.
Sir Malcolm Rifkind (Kensington) (Con)
Does the Foreign Secretary agree that any serious concessions by the Iranians should be welcomed, but that for the discussions and negotiations to succeed the Iranians will have to demonstrate, with full verification and transparency, that they no longer seek either nuclear weapons or a nuclear weapons capability?
Mr Hague
That would be required for the issue to be settled and for the negotiations to succeed. It is important for Iran to announce concrete steps and to put forward concrete proposals. It has put forward some proposals in the talks in Moscow over the past 48 hours. As I have said, the talks remain very tough and frank, and have not met with success so far. In the absence of success, including as my right hon. and learned Friend defines it, the international pressure will only be intensified.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
We lost 179 of our brave soldiers in pursuit of non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. We have lost 419 soldiers protecting the United Kingdom from a non-existent Taliban terrorist threat. Are we to expose more British lives to defend ourselves from non-existent long-range Iranian missiles carrying non-existent Iranian nuclear weapons?
Mr Hague
The hon. Gentleman must not fall victim to Iranian propaganda about that, and of course we could also differ about some of the premises of his question, including the terrorist threats that have emanated from Afghanistan. I hope he will support the fact that the whole of our effort is going into finding a peaceful diplomatic solution. That is what the twin-track approach of sanctions and negotiations is about. One hundred per cent of our effort is dedicated to a diplomatic solution to the problem.
Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)
Will the Foreign Secretary acknowledge the important role of Baroness Ashton and the European External Action Service in making the talks happen? Does he agree that that has increased the possibility of finding a peaceful pathway out of the crisis?
Mr Hague
Baroness Ashton is playing a very strong and effective role in leading the negotiations of the E3 plus 3. It is impressive that all six nations involved, including Russia and China, are working very closely together and presenting a united front and a united set of negotiating requirements. That adds greatly to the power of our position in the negotiations.
John Robertson (Glasgow North West) (Lab)
2. What recent discussions he has had with the government of Singapore on human trafficking.
The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Mr Jeremy Browne)
Our high commission in Singapore has supported local anti-trafficking initiatives. We welcome Singapore’s first national plan of action against trafficking in persons, published in March 2012, and look forward to further measures being implemented to tackle the problem.
John Robertson
We all agree that Singapore’s Government are moving in the right direction, and they have been backed up by EU parliamentarians. Is it not time that we used in the Commonwealth what has happened in Singapore and is happening in the EU? Is anything being done in the Commonwealth in relation to Singapore?
Mr Browne
It is fair to say that Singapore is not one of the nine priority countries on human trafficking that the Home Office identified last year, which are Nigeria, China, Vietnam, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Uganda, Romania, India and Albania. We nevertheless recognise that there are concerns. Progress has been made, and we are keen to work with others in the Commonwealth and further afield to make further progress.
Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)
Given that human trafficking is a cross-Government issue, what steps is the Minister taking with the Department for International Development to ensure that as we pursue the millennium development goals and sustainable development goals, the goal of tackling human trafficking is not missed?
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
3. What recent discussions he has had with his EU counterparts on the co-ordination of security efforts in (a) Niger, (b) Nigeria and (c) Africa.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Henry Bellingham)
We have regular discussions with EU partners, both in Brussels and across Africa, as part of our co-ordinated strategy on addressing peace and security issues. The discussions cover Niger, Nigeria and wider African issues such as the European Council conclusions on the Sahel.
Chi Onwurah
The extremist Islamic group Boko Haram is responsible for countless atrocities across Nigeria, including attacks on three churches just last weekend. It then disappears into the Nigeria-Niger border area. The British Government provide security assistances to Nigeria, and I understand that the French do the same for Niger. Will the Minister promise to talk to his counterparts in France to ensure that support is properly co-ordinated, so that that terrible organisation finds it less easy to hide?
Mr Bellingham
I certainly share the hon. Lady’s condemnation of those appalling attacks, and of the retaliatory attacks by Christians against Muslim communities. We condemn both communities for what happened and urge the Nigerian Government to do what they can to secure calm. The UK has shared its experience on counter-terrorism policy, doctrine and legal frameworks, and we will of course co-ordinate our actions with the French. The President of Niger, President Issoufou, was in London all last week at the invitation of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, and we discussed with him a number of counter-terrorism and security issues.
Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)
Given that there is regular and substantive high-level contact between British and Nigerian Ministers, what evaluation have the Government and other EU countries carried out of the Nigerian economy and the impact on it of the security measures that have had to be implemented as a result of terrorism, kidnapping and armed robberies?
Mr Bellingham
The Nigerian economy is growing rapidly, but most of the growth is concentrated in the south, around Lagos, which is expanding to about 15 million people. The tragedy of the communal killings and lack of security in the north is harming growth in a big way, which will lead to a great deal of poverty, youth unemployment and other problems. That is why it is so important that communities are reconciled so that the economy can grow and wealth can be created.
Graeme Morrice (Livingston) (Lab)
4. What recent discussions he has had with his NATO counterparts on the rights of women and minorities in Afghanistan.
Gemma Doyle (West Dunbartonshire) (Lab/Co-op)
10. What recent discussions he has had with his NATO counterparts on the rights of women and minorities in Afghanistan.
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)
At the Chicago NATO summit in May, I discussed with NATO colleagues our continuing support for the fundamental human rights of all Afghan citizens and full implementation of UN Security Council resolution 1325 on women, peace and security. The final summit communiqué reaffirmed our commitments in these areas.
Graeme Morrice
How do the Government plan to ensure that violence against women is addressed at the upcoming Tokyo meeting on Afghanistan?
Mr Hague
We have encouraged the Afghan Government to implement the elimination of violence against women law that has been agreed in principle, and to bring into practice the UN convention on the elimination of all forms of violence against women. We bring these matters up with the Afghan Government regularly and work with many people in the Afghan Parliament to encourage that agenda. I am pleased to say that women now hold 69 of the 249 seats in the lower House of the Afghan Parliament, which bears favourable comparison with some European countries.
Gemma Doyle
What is the Foreign Secretary’s response to President Karzai’s endorsement of the code of conduct published by the ulema council of clerics, which permits men in Afghanistan to beat their wives? Will the Foreign Secretary guarantee that women’s rights will not be sold down the river in negotiations on the future of Afghanistan?
Mr Hague
The hon. Lady can gather from what I have said how strongly the Government are committed to making further progress on those issues, as she obviously is. One reason we want to encourage the implementation of the laws I mentioned in response to the previous question is the statement and the code of conduct to which she refers. We have discussed the code of conduct with representatives of Afghan civil society. Their advice is to concentrate—parallel to whatever the code says—on the good work that they and we are doing to improve women’s rights in Afghanistan in other ways.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
Does the Foreign Secretary agree that fighting for women’s rights in Afghanistan has been an incredibly important part of the role so brilliantly carried out by, most recently, 20 Armoured Brigade, 120 of whose soldiers will march through Carriage Gates this afternoon at precisely 3.30 pm, to be met by as many hon. Members as I hope can find time to be there?
Mr David Ward (Bradford East) (LD)
Some continue to say that our troops have lost their lives in Afghanistan in vain, and that they should come home today. What, in the Secretary of State’s view, would be the situation regarding the rights of women and minorities if that were to happen?
Mr Hague
If we were to pull our troops out of combat prematurely and cease many of the other efforts we are making in Afghanistan, the position would be much more difficult, because through this period, when our and other forces are present, and when we are working closely with the Afghan Government, the prospects for women’s rights are improving. I am sure the timetable we have set is right—our troops will cease to be in combat after the end of 2014—but I hope the concepts of women’s rights are becoming more entrenched in Afghan society and politics all the time.
Mr John Spellar (Warley) (Lab)
Does the Secretary of State agree that women’s rights in Afghanistan are a fundamental part of the security agenda, and that they must be protected in any settlement? That will require the involvement of women in peace and transition talks, to protect the gains made over recent years. Does he therefore recognise that time is rapidly moving on in those discussions? What will he do to try to inject some urgency into the process?
Mr Hague
This country makes a constant effort to ensure that urgency is part of the process. I was in both Pakistan and Afghanistan last week, talking to the Governments of both countries about reconciliation and their relations with each other in promoting a political settlement and reconciliation in Afghanistan. Of course, we will continue with all those efforts, bearing it in mind that the process must be Afghan led, and that Afghans must determine their own future. We are trying to support that process rather than dictate to them the future terms of their settlement.
Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con)
Rape and other forms of sexual violence have frequently been used as weapons of war against women in Afghanistan and the world over. What initiatives is the Foreign Secretary taking to counter this massive issue and to move it up the global agenda?
Mr Hague
We believe that this issue should have massively more attention in the international community, which is why, on 29 May, I launched a new initiative of the British Government. We are assembling a team that will gather evidence of sexual violence being used as a weapon of war and can be deployed in different parts of the world. We encourage other countries to do the same. It will be a major theme of the foreign policy part of our G8 presidency, and I welcome my hon. Friend’s support.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
5. What recent discussions he has had with his European counterparts on the eurozone crisis.
Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)
14. What recent discussions he has had with his European counterparts on the eurozone crisis.
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)
My ministerial colleagues and I have regular discussions with our eurozone and European counterparts. It is in the UK’s interests to have a stable eurozone, the countries of which must do all they can to stand behind their currency.
Mr Hague
We might be drifting away from foreign policy, Mr Speaker. The fact that the United Kingdom has its safe haven status, with the lowest interest rates in our history, is an important point that the hon. Gentleman ought to remember. When our Prime Minister put his name to the letter ahead of the March European Council, along with 11 other Heads of European Governments, calling for measures to stimulate growth—improving the single market, free trade agreements with other nations and removing barriers to business—it received a strong endorsement from many European nations. Clearly we influence the debate very strongly.
Karl Turner
I hear the Foreign Secretary’s response to my hon. Friend, but yesterday the Prime Minister gave what is becoming his all-too-familiar speech to eurozone countries. Does the Foreign Secretary agree that reciting the same old platitudes is a poor excuse for leadership? Is it not time for a plan for jobs and growth?
Mr Hague
The Prime Minister is fully entitled to say what he believes should be done, as are many other world leaders at the G20. There is no reason the UK should be unable to give its views about what should happen in the eurozone, given that the United States and many other countries are free to do so. The eurozone economies have an important effect on our economy, and what is happening there is having a chilling effect on our economy, so we are fully entitled to give our views, as well as to show strong leadership in controlling and bringing down the excessive deficits left to us by the Labour party and in having a safe haven status that is the envy of much of the rest of Europe.
Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)
My right hon. Friend is a great historian as well as Foreign Secretary. Does he accept that the eurozone crisis is not only a eurozone crisis but a European Union crisis, and political, economic and democratic in nature? Given that it affects the daily lives of 450 million people in Europe, has the time not come for a convention, not of the kind held last time, but one based on the principles of democracy and the defence of the British nation?
Mr Hague
I will go so far with my hon. Friend, as usual, but not all the way, as usual. I absolutely agree that the crisis is having a major effect not only on those in the eurozone but more broadly, and that it is having major political as well as economic ramifications. As for drawing together, in whatever form, reflections on the future of Europe arising from the crisis, however, it would be better to do that when one can discern how the crisis will end and progress and develop over the coming months.
Joseph Johnson (Orpington) (Con)
Many residents in Orpington work in financial services and make a big contribution to the success of this country’s biggest export sector. Can the Secretary of State say what safeguards the UK financial services sector might need in the event of steps towards banking union in the eurozone and fiscal compact countries?
Mr Hague
Safeguards will certainly be needed—my hon. Friend is quite right to raise that—but as things stand proposals and ideas about banking union take many different forms. Many people mean many different things by “banking union”. If such proposals are made more tangible and specific, we will set out the specific safeguards that we think we need for the single market. We are already making the case in European capitals that in the event of a banking union in the eurozone, which, by the way, we will certainly not be part of—let me make that absolutely clear—such safeguards will be necessary.
Mr Douglas Alexander (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (Lab)
I am intrigued by the apparent complacency of the Foreign Secretary’s most recent answer. Given the Chancellor’s advocacy of greater integration in the eurozone, would the Foreign Secretary be willing to set out for the House what legal or political safeguards for British businesses and exporters the Government will be proposing at next week’s European Council?
Mr Hague
The Chancellor has set out exactly what we think should happen. For the eurozone to be successful, it is necessary to have more support from stronger economies, to help weaker economies adjust; more pooling of resources, whether through common eurobonds or some other mechanism; a shared back-stop for the banking system, to strengthen banks and protect deposits; and, as a consequence, much closer oversight of fiscal and financial policy. That is what we believe the eurozone needs to do. However, if it were to adopt measures that affect—or may affect, in any way—the ability of the single market to operate effectively and in the interests of this country, we will need the safeguards for which we are already making the case. Once we have specific proposals, we will set out those specific safeguards.
Mr Alexander
If President Hollande is successful at next week’s European summit in securing agreement for a jobs and growth package, will the Prime Minister support his new-found best friend in this endeavour or will the Government stick to their failing austerity-alone approach, which has delivered a double-dip recession here in Britain?
Mr Hague
The Opposition might need to take a closer look at some of the things that President Hollande is advocating, because he is saying that France must balance its budget by 2017. He is also saying that growth cannot come from state spending and that it must be reined in—to use his words—so perhaps the Opposition might care to decide whether they truly support the words of President Hollande.
Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
6. What steps his Department is taking to encourage inward investment from developing economies through the diplomatic network.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Henry Bellingham)
We are strengthening the UK’s diplomatic network to increase substantially our presence in emerging markets. This will transform relationships in the fastest growing cities and regions, and reinforce work on investment opportunities, which is obviously a key part of repositioning our economy and our drive for export-led growth.
Stephen Phillips
I welcome the Government’s commitment to the expansion of our commercial-diplomatic network, but given the pressure on budgets, including that of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, how are these measures and the programme of opening new embassies to be funded?
Mr Bellingham
We are already in the business of opening new embassies. We have opened two this year in Africa—I opened one in Abidjan the other day—and we are opening embassies in Mogadishu, Monrovia, Antananarivo, in Madagascar, Bishkek, in Kyrgyzstan, and San Salvador. This will be paid for through a gradual reduction of our footprint in Iraq and Afghanistan and the closure of various subordinate posts in Europe.
Mr Andrew Love (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)
The level of trade and investment involving the BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India and China—is a source of some disappointment to our British economy. What steps is the Minister taking to strengthen our role in those emerging markets, where there are real opportunities for growth?
Mr Bellingham
I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we are working absolutely furiously to try to increase the amount of trade with those countries. UK Trade and Investment—indeed, the entire network—is working as hard as it can to increase trade. In fact, in all those countries our bilateral trade is on target to double over the comprehensive spending review period. Of course there is more work to do, but I would suggest that, through the efforts of Ministers, UKTI and our missions, we are making good progress.
Tristram Hunt (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab)
7. What recent assessment he has made of his Department’s procurement policies.
The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)
We are always looking for opportunities to improve efficiency and to support cross-Government policies such as open procurement to small and medium-sized enterprises.
Tristram Hunt
I thank the Minister for his answer. Given the Government’s mercantilist foreign policy, should we not be using our embassies to show off the best of British? Ceramics businesses in my constituency complain that our consulates are undermining exports by not using British-made ware. Will the Minister confirm that, in future, when dinner is served and when tea is poured in UK embassies across the world, the words “Made in Stoke-on-Trent” will be in evidence?
Mr Lidington
The hon. Gentleman is a good champion of the interests of his city and his constituents in this regard. The Government are well aware of the fine quality of the porcelain from Stoke-on-Trent and, indeed, from other places in the United Kingdom, but in taking procurement decisions we have to balance the wish to showcase the best of British with the need to provide value for money, so that we can continue to protect front-line services.
Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)
8. What recent assessment he has made of the political situation in Syria.
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)
The political situation in Syria is dire. All parties must now implement the Annan plan, and the international community needs to come together to compel the regime to do so. Major General Mood is briefing the United Nations Security Council today, and we stand ready to pursue robust action in the Security Council.
Mark Menzies
Can the Secretary of State assure the House that every peaceful diplomatic effort is being made to prevent the Syrian Government from getting their hands on weapons that they can use against their own people?
Mr Hague
Yes, I can. We have in place a European Union arms embargo for Syria, and we discourage anyone else from supplying it with arms. We have had specific discussions with Russia on that matter, and I am pleased that the ship that was reported to be carrying arms to Syria has now turned back, apparently towards Russia.
Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
As the Foreign Secretary knows, Syria has a large stockpile of chemical weapons. Is he confident that, when the Assad regime falls, the international community will be willing and able to secure those weapons to ensure that they do not fall into the hands of Hezbollah or of affiliates of al-Qaeda?
Mr Hague
The right hon. Gentleman raises an extremely important point. The existence of such weapons has long been one of our concerns about Syria, and it is a concern in this situation. Yes, I am confident that the international community will take any necessary action on that, but I do not want to go into any more detail today.
Sir Peter Tapsell (Louth and Horncastle) (Con)
Does the United Nations understand that the Syrian tragedy is essentially a sectarian civil war, with Saudi Arabia and Iran supplying arms and money to their rival surrogates inside Syria, and that Russia, for well understood reasons, is determined to prevent the Sunni from overthrowing the Alawites?
Mr Hague
My right hon. Friend and I have had this exchange several times, and he is right to point out the importance of the Sunni-Shi’a tensions, and sometimes conflicts, in the region. As I have said before, however, I believe that there is more to it than that. There are also many people in Syria, of different ethnicities, religions and beliefs, who want freedom and democracy in their country, and who want to be rid of their repressive regime. The factors that my right hon. Friend has mentioned are not the only ones at work, but they certainly add to the complexity of the situation. They also add to the importance of opposition forces representing all groups in Syria and preserving their rights in the future, as well as the importance of trying to negotiate a peaceful political transition in Syria, which is what we are attempting to do.
Mr Douglas Alexander (Paisley and Renfrewshire South) (Lab)
In his recent answer, the Foreign Secretary reiterated his support for the Annan plan, but only last week the UN was forced to suspend the observer mission in Syria. In the light of that suspension, does he accept what is already clear to many people on the ground in Syria—namely, that the Annan plan is simply not working? Will he set out today the steps beyond the Annan plan that the UK is now advocating that the international community take to bring about a cessation to the violence in Syria?
Mr Hague
I accepted, some time ago, that the Annan plan was not working. It is not working at all at the moment, but it would be wrong to give up completely on the plan, because the road to any peaceful settlement in Syria will be through either the Annan plan or something very similar to it. It is therefore important to persist with those efforts, and we are doing that particularly in our talks with Russia. I met the Russian Foreign Minister again in Kabul last week, and the Prime Minister has met President Putin in the past 24 hours to pursue this matter further. We are seeking international agreement, including with Russia, on how to ensure the implementation of the Annan plan. We are ready to take that matter forward at the UN Security Council or in a contact group, or in both together. Of course, if all those efforts fail, we will want to return to the UN Security Council, as well as greatly to intensify our support for the opposition and to see more sweeping sanctions from across the world.
Sir Menzies Campbell (North East Fife) (LD)
Is my right hon. Friend aware of reports that this afternoon the United Nations will decide to withdraw completely UN monitors? Were that to happen, a valuable independent source of information about what is taking place in Syria would simply be lost. I do not expect a detailed reply to the question I am about to put to him, but may we take it that the United Kingdom will use all available methods of obtaining information to ensure that we have a clear view of what is happening in Syria?
Mr Hague
Yes, certainly, of course we will do that. We are awaiting at the UN Security Council today the briefing of Major-General Mood, who has been heading the monitoring mission, so no decision about what will happen to the mission has been taken in advance of that. It is very important that information is assembled, particularly about crimes and atrocities that have been committed. Earlier this year, we sent teams to the borders of Syria to assemble such evidence. The Syrian activists who assembled the evidence of the massacre at al-Houla were trained by the United Kingdom. We will continue our efforts to make sure that one day justice can be done.
Dr William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)
Can the Foreign Secretary suggest any new initiative that will encourage political development and progress in Syria, and stop the daily slaughter of the innocent?
Mr Hague
The initiatives I have mentioned are all really a continuation or extension of the initiatives that have already been taken. We have not given up the search for an internationally agreed peaceful transition in Syria, but it is vital for such a transition to have the active support of Russia. That is why over recent weeks we have attached such importance to diplomacy with Russia. We will continue with those efforts.
Richard Ottaway (Croydon South) (Con)
The Foreign Secretary will know from conversations with the Russians that they are accusing us of using their veto as a fig leaf for our lack of policy. Will he nail that once and for all by pointing out that a united international community is far more likely to achieve results than a divided one?
Mr Hague
Yes. I think it would be wrong to characterise the Russian veto in that way. The veto exercised by Russia and China in February was against all the other 13 members of the United Nations Security Council, which very much favoured a united international stand on this issue. Nevertheless, Russia has supported the Annan plan and has agreed with the two most recent UN resolutions. That is why we continue to discuss the issues with them and to work with them. I hope we can reach a common position with them on the implementation of the Annan plan or something very close to it.
Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
I recently met a large group of Syrian students. Will the Foreign Secretary update us on any information he has or any discussions he is having with the Home Office about Syrian student visas? Some are being forced to return home where their lives are at risk. Will the right hon. Gentleman update us on what progress is being made to make sure that the German and US model is followed, allowing them to stay?
Mr Hague
That is more of a question for my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, but as the hon. Gentleman asks, I will discuss the issue with the Home Office. We have very clear rules in this country: we do not return people to a situation in which they are likely to be tortured, killed or abused. If we thought that that was going to happen to these people, we would not do that, but I will take up the hon. Gentleman’s point further.
Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)
9. What steps his Department is taking to encourage political stability in Bangladesh.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Alistair Burt)
I visited Bangladesh at the end of May. In conversations with the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister and the leader of the opposition, I was able to stress how important it is to have free and fair elections with full political party participation by early 2014. Improving human rights, democracy and the rule of law—all foundations of political stability—are key parts of the UK’s development assistance programme there.
Eric Ollerenshaw
I thank the Minister for his reply, but does he agree with me that the British Bangladeshi community could do a great deal more to help with this process, rather than adding fuel to the divisions, as is sometimes the case?
Alistair Burt
My hon. Friend has made an important point. It is true that Bangladeshi political culture is very confrontational. The stand-off between the leaders of the major parties is very deep and very bitter, and in my time in Bangladesh I encountered many people who believed that the country—which is doing very well in many respects—would do better if there were a more co-operative political process. I think that the diaspora in the United Kingdom could indeed play a part in that.
Mr Frank Roy (Motherwell and Wishaw) (Lab)
11. What recent steps he has taken to raise the issue of human rights abuses with the Government of Bahrain.
Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)
12. What recent discussions he has had with his Bahraini counterpart on the implementation of the recommendations of the Bahrain Independent Commission of Inquiry report.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Alistair Burt)
The United Kingdom Government take many opportunities to raise concerns about human rights and the importance of implementing the independent commission's recommendations with the Bahraini Government. I visited Bahrain on 11 June, and had an opportunity to discuss the issues directly with Bahraini Government representatives, members of Opposition parties and representatives of civil society.
Alistair Burt
The Human Rights and Democracy report contains a case study examining circumstances in Bahrain. It is true that our process of reporting has tended to mean that that if difficulties arise during the year, they are not always included. Compiling the reports on a quarterly basis will give us more opportunity to include more information. Bahrain is included as a cause for concern, and we have regular conversations with members of all sides there. The picture is very complex.
Alistair Burt
The truth is that there are elements on both sides of the divide in Bahrain who want to talk to each other, and elements on both sides of the divide who do not. I spoke to representatives of the major Opposition party. It is difficult to engage members of the Opposition in negotiations because they have preconditions which they claim not to have, and the same can be said about some members of the Sunni support side. It is a complex picture, but what the United Kingdom does is encourage both sides to engage. We are using, for example, our experience in Northern Ireland, where good political leadership and a great deal of dialogue led to reconciliation and the bringing together of two elements of society that had been bitterly divided. There is much that we are delivering, and much that we can do.
Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)
May I follow up the point raised by the right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd)? The Government of Bahrain have consistently held the view that the door is open for a meaningful dialogue with members of Opposition parties, which are, of course, recognised in Bahrain. The Government cannot have that dialogue on their own. The Opposition have a moral responsibility to come to the table and engage in meaningful dialogue with the Government in order to make progress.
Alistair Burt
My hon. Friend is right. Bahrain is sometimes portrayed as having no Opposition activity, with marches postponed or cancelled, but in the run-up to the grand prix recently Al-Wefaq, the main Opposition party, held authorised demonstrations. However, as my hon. Friend says, if a meaningful dialogue is to take place, there must be two sides to it. We will continue to urge both Opposition and Government to engage in such a dialogue, because the implementation of the commission’s recommendations is just as important as the recommendations themselves.
Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)
I welcome the setting up by the Bahraini Government of a Ministry of Human Rights and Social Development, but what is my hon. Friend’s assessment of the progress that is being made? Are the reforms having a real effect on the quality of human rights in Bahrain?
Alistair Burt
There are developments that make a difference, such as human rights training in the security forces and a code of conduct for the police, efforts to prosecute members of the security forces who may have been involved in offences last year, and a general recognition that the recommendations in the independent commission’s report need to be implemented. A series of reforms are taking place, but, as my hon. Friend suggests, more needs to be done.
Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)
13. What recent assessment he has made of efforts to encourage the Israeli and Palestinian leaderships to return to negotiations.
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)
I welcome the recent efforts by the Palestinian and Israeli leaderships to renew direct contacts. We have urged both sides to focus on dialogue, to avoid any steps that could undermine the prospects for peace and to work towards the resumption of direct negotiations.
Rosie Cooper
Following the Israeli Deputy Prime Minister’s reported request to meet the Palestinian President, what steps is the Secretary of State taking to help both parties to overcome the current impasse and resume negotiations?
Mr Hague
We are strongly urging both sides to build on the current contacts, and we have discussed that with, among others, the new Israeli Deputy Prime Minister. Those contacts include the joint statement of 12 May following the exchange of letters between Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Abbas. We are encouraging them to resume direct negotiations. We welcome the statement by Prime Minister Netanyahu that the new coalition in Israel presents an opportunity to advance the peace process, and we urge them to take that opportunity.
Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)
19. Much of the watching world is troubled by the thought that if there is continuing delay, there will be continuing illegal building of habitations by Israel in Palestine. Can the Foreign Secretary assure me that this issue will be a high priority for the Government, because with every year that passes the chance of peace and justice in those two countries recedes?
Mr Hague
I agree with my right hon. Friend, and he knows how regularly and vigorously we raise this issue. I have straightforwardly condemned recent announcements of settlement activity on occupied land. It is because of that activity that the opportunity for a two-state solution will slip away unless it is agreed in the not-too-distant future, so this remains one of the world’s most urgent and pressing issues.
Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)
15. Whether his Department has issued guidance to Ministers on attending the European football championships in Ukraine.
The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)
I am sure the entire House will wish the England players every success in their match later today. On the question of attendance by Ministers, however, we took the decision that no Ministers should attend group games at Euro 2012. We are keeping the question of attendance at later stages under review.
Teresa Pearce
I am pleased to hear that Ministers have been asked not to attend group games, but why are the Government not also making it clear now that they rule out any official ministerial attendance at England matches at all stages, even the final?
Mr Lidington
We have consistently said to the Ukrainian Government that the selective use of justice in Ukraine is unacceptable and we want their policy to change. There is still time for improvement, but unless that happens I do not want to hold out much hope that our policy will shift.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend welcome the fact that the England team went to Auschwitz-Birkenau ahead of the tournament to bring home to people, in eastern Europe in particular, the horrors of the Nazi atrocities? What a welcome respite that is from some of the terrible things we have heard about in Ukraine.
Mr Lidington
I entirely endorse what my hon. Friend says. It is particularly important that sporting champions—who can, perhaps, cut through to parts of society that will not listen to speeches by politicians—set an example in the way the England players did.
Emma Reynolds (Wolverhampton North East) (Lab)
The trial and ongoing detention of Yulia Tymoshenko has widely been denounced as politically motivated. Further to the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce), why do the Government appear still to take the position that human rights do not matter at the knockout stages of the European championships? Is it because they do not have confidence in their own policy, or because they do not have confidence in our team?
Mr Lidington
I am afraid the hon. Lady must have written her question before she listened to my answer to her hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce). We have made it clear in every conversation at official and ministerial level with our Ukrainian counterparts that if they want to have the democratic future and the closer links with Europe that the Ukrainian Government say they want—and that we believe need to happen—they have to show they are serious about democratic, as well as economic, reform.
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr William Hague)
Last week I travelled to Pakistan and Afghanistan where I visited our troops in Helmand and participated in the Heart of Asia conference, where I discussed the situation in Syria with Ministers from Russia, China and Turkey. This week I will meet the Foreign Ministers of the Gulf Co-operation Council, and the Government will host the visit of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.
Valerie Vaz
I thank the Foreign Secretary for his answer. Will he join me in wishing Aung San Suu Kyi a happy birthday? She is the embodiment of peace and reconciliation. Does he agree with me that the controversial constitution of 2008 still puts the defence services at the heart of the Burmese Government? Will he assure Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the people of Burma that we will walk alongside them in their long walk to peace and reconciliation?
Mr Hague
Absolutely, and I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her question. I think that the whole country will wish Aung San Suu Kyi well and will be delighted to see her this week. I am delighted that at your invitation, Mr Speaker, and that of the other place she will be coming to address us here in Parliament. It is important to recognise that there is still a long way to go in Burma. Although her party has won the 40 recent by-elections, that represents only a small part of the Parliament. I do believe that the President of Burma is sincere in his intentions, but there will be a variety of views about the democratic progress of Burma within the regime, so it is vital for all of us who believe in freedom and democracy across the world to work with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi over the coming months and years.
Charlotte Leslie (Bristol North West) (Con)
I think I actually had Question 9, so my apologies for standing up inadvertently.
Mr Speaker
No, it was not that the hon. Lady was standing up inadvertently. It is that I am calling her to stand up advertently, on the basis that I alternate between the two sides of the House. Her opportunity is now and the nation wishes to hear her.
Charlotte Leslie
T9. Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. In the midst of difficult, apprehensive and gloomy times in the eurozone, what measures are the Government taking to ensure that we are engaging as proactively as possible with exciting emerging markets in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly Mozambique?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Henry Bellingham)
It was well worth waiting for that question, Mr Speaker. I can tell my hon. Friend that the FCO and UK Trade and Investment are actively supporting UK businesses throughout southern Africa, including in South Africa and Mozambique. Indeed, recent successes have included assisting Aggreko to secure a $255 million deal to construct a power plant that will supply electricity to both South Africa and Mozambique. That is a big success story.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
T2. Will the Foreign Secretary explain exactly what the Government’s policy is towards the Democratic Republic of the Congo? Very controversial elections were held there last year, which were heavily criticised by the Carter Centre, the European Union and the Churches in the Congo. A great deal of military incursion is occurring, particularly in the east; the treatment of women there is appalling; and huge profits are being made by mining companies. We would be grateful if the House could be told exactly what the British Government’s strategy is in that situation.
Mr Bellingham
The EU observers’ report found that the vast majority of people in the DRC were able to vote in relative peace and security, although I entirely accept that there were irregularities in that election. Looking forward, we are very concerned about what is happening in the Kivus, in the eastern DRC. It is essential that the situation there does not deteriorate further, and we urge all parties, including surrounding states, not to use proxies and to stay out of the situation. We urge all sides to work for peace in that troubled region.
Jo Swinson (East Dunbartonshire) (LD)
T10. Credit is due to both the previous Labour Government and this coalition Government for the UK’s global leadership on the arms trade treaty. Vital economic issues are being discussed at the G20 meeting this week, but will the Foreign Secretary tell the House whether the Prime Minister will also use the opportunity to lobby other world leaders in advance of next month’s arms trade conference, so that we can get a robust, comprehensive and effective arms trade treaty to save millions of lives?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Alistair Burt)
Yes. We do indeed regard a robust and effective arms trade treaty as absolutely vital. We have continued the work done by the previous Government. There is a strong degree of consensus on this, but it is important that the treaty is both robust and effective. Negotiations are due to start on the final leg of this in July, in New York, and Ministers will be keeping a close eye on it.
Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)
In Egypt, as we speak, the army appears to be working to frustrate the outcome of the democratic election that took place at the weekend. What action are the UK Government taking to support the people of Egypt who voted in that election?
Mr Hague
We welcome the peaceful conduct of the second and final round of Egypt’s presidential elections, but this is a critical moment in the move towards democratic, civilian-led government in Egypt. We are concerned by recent announcements of the dissolution of Parliament and the reintroduction of powers of arrest and detention for the military. We want the process of drafting a new, inclusive constitution and the holding of new parliamentary elections to be taken forward as soon as possible and the Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), has today been making those representations to Egyptian Ministers.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
I absolutely agree with the Foreign Secretary when he says that there are similarities between what is happening in Syria now and what happened in Bosnia in the 1990s. I also note that he mentioned “robust action”. If we take any robust action that involves our servicemen, may I ask the Foreign Secretary to ensure that it includes robust rules of engagement so that our servicemen, if by chance they were ever deployed in that dreadful country, would have sufficient means to defend themselves properly?
Mr Hague
My hon. Friend speaks with a great deal of experience and I certainly take that point and agree with it. Should we come to that eventuality, we will try to do that. Having heard our earlier exchanges, he will be conscious that our efforts are devoted to a peaceful political transition in Syria and to a cessation of violence. At no stage have we advocated a military intervention, but we recognise that the situation is so grave and deteriorating so quickly, and that such crimes are being committed, that we cannot take any options off the table at the moment.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
T3. I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Two Nobel peace laureates are in the United Kingdom today: Aung San Suu Kyi and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Will the Secretary of State take this opportunity to update the House and the country on what steps the Government are taking to work with those Nobel laureates and the authorities in Burma and Tibet to address ongoing human rights issues?
Mr Hague
I mentioned a few moments ago our support for democratic change and human rights in Burma, including the resolving of the conflicts that continue, such as that in Kachin state. Ethnic conflicts have continued although there is a ceasefire in place in many of them. All that work will continue. We have a regular and formal human rights dialogue with China. As the hon. Gentleman knows, we, like the previous Government, recognise Tibet as part of the People’s Republic of China—let there be no mistake about that—but we certainly speak up for human rights in China, as we have done regularly and will continue to do.
Anna Soubry (Broxtowe) (Con)
Gambian national General Omar Mbye is married to my constituent Deborah Burns and today appears in the Gambian Supreme Court to appeal a conviction for treason and a sentence of death. Will the Minister assure me that the Foreign Office is doing all it can to ensure that justice prevails in the Gambia, particularly in this case, and to ensure that this man is not executed?
Mr Bellingham
General O. B. Mbye and seven other defendants were charged with and convicted of treason and sentenced to death. Their case comes up in the Supreme Court in Gambia today and I understand the general is married to a British citizen who is a constituent of my hon. Friend’s, so obviously we are following the case closely and will provide her constituent with all possible consular and other assistance. On a wider note, we have growing concerns about President Jammeh’s Government and his attitude to the Opposition and to human rights, as well as the way he is discriminating against minorities.
Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)
T4. One of my constituents, a UK resident for 40 years, and 16 members of her family have inherited land in southern Cyprus. In order to dispose of the land, the Greek high commission has insisted that she prove UK residence for the past 38 years. She has provided passports and medical records and has now been asked to produce utility bills from 1974, a nigh on impossible task. Will the Minister or his officials communicate with the Greek high commission to find a way forward for that family?
The Minister for Europe (Mr David Lidington)
If the hon. Lady speaks to me later, I will see whether there is anything further we can do to assist.
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
As Daw Aung San Suu Kyi reminded us in her speech from Oslo last week, while we celebrate her freedom there remain many prisoners of conscience in Burma. Will the Foreign Secretary urge the Government there to establish a review of the cases of all prisoners so that it is possible to determine the actual reason for their arrest?
Mr Hague
Absolutely. I have discussed this issue regularly with the Burmese authorities including with the President of Burma directly. I was pleased that in January there was such a large-scale further release of political prisoners in Burma, but the hon. Gentleman is quite right to say that some remain. In many cases, the Government of Burma allege that there is a responsibility for a violent crime or particular crime—not just the holding of a political opinion. That means that these cases have to be gone through and resolved individually. We will certainly encourage the Government of Burma to do that.
Mr Speaker
Order. I am keen to accommodate colleagues. The evidence so far is that we have time for the questions but not always for the answers. We need short questions and short answers.
Mrs Linda Riordan (Halifax) (Lab/Co-op)
T5. Is the Minister aware that following the blockade of Gaza, the Gazans suffer an acute shortage of drinking water, with 90% of the water being contaminated and 90 million litres of untreated or partially treated sewage being dumped in the sea every day? Will he now tell the Israelis that this is a cruel and illegal way to treat Gazans?
Alistair Burt
The situation in Gaza has long been of concern to the UK Government, and representations are made to the Israeli authorities regarding their responsibilities there. Things have gradually been improving in respect of trade in Gaza. but this issue is bound up in the longer-running and larger dispute between Israel and the Palestinians regarding the middle east peace process. The concerns that the hon. Lady raises have been raised by the UK Government and we will continue to raise them.
Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)
Gosport-based Royal Navy sailor Timmy MacColl went missing in Dubai on 27 May. His pregnant wife and the rest of his family and friends are clearly very worried about his whereabouts. Will the Minister please reassure me that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is doing all it can to bring him home safely?
Alistair Burt
Yes. I thank my hon. Friend for raising this case. Our consular teams in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and in Dubai are aware of this case and we have met representatives of the family. It is a distressing and puzzling case and we are giving as much assistance as we can, along with other agencies, to the investigation.
Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)
T6. Last week, a Conservative Member of this House expressed huge admiration for General Pinochet. Given that General Pinochet sanctioned sadistic torture against innocent men, women and children, will the Foreign Secretary condemn his colleague’s comments?
Mr Hague
I am not aware of the particular comments, but the hon. Gentleman can rest assured that the Government support a strong, democratic, free and open future for Chile, and our relations with the Government of Chile are excellent on that basis. Looking to the future, there is no doubt about where we stand.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
Will the Government seek a new and less intrusive arrangement with the European Union as many member states press on to a political union and centralised government that we could not conceivably join?
Mr Lidington
We want to see the eurozone restore economic stability. That is in the interests of the United Kingdom as much as any other European country. The Prime Minister is demonstrating, through his leadership on the agenda to do with growth, deregulation and trade, that the UK continues to shape the direction of the European Union in a way that serves the prosperity and security of the people of this nation.
Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)
T7. Further to the Minister’s answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Mrs Riordan), is he aware that the Israelis allowed only three lorry loads of exports through the Kerem Shalom crossing in the weekend of 5 June, compared with an average of 240 truck loads a week before the blockade? That is why factories are standing idle and why a third of the population is unemployed. Will the Minister tell the Israeli Government that the blockade is not only inhumane but totally counter-productive?
Alistair Burt
Briefly, yes. The hon. Lady’s makes a comparison between what goes through now and what went through before the blockade, and we make exactly the same point. It is more than went through last year, but that is not good enough. It is in the interests of Israel and the people of Gaza and beyond that the economic prospects of the people of Gaza improve. Israel can play its part in that and we urge it to continue to do so, just as we encourage those in Gaza not to launch attacks on Israel.
Mr James Clappison (Hertsmere) (Con)
The Prime Minister has rightly set his face against the EU’s proposal for an unjustified 6% increase in its budget. Will the Minister take this opportunity to express his opposition to the External Action Service’s claim for a 5.7% increase in its budget and qualify the motion that appears on the Order Paper today?
Mr Lidington
When that motion was debated and agreed without a Division at yesterday’s European Committee, I made it very clear that we were opposed to an increase in the External Action Service’s budget, and that we expected the EAS to live up to the terms of the decision establishing it, which said that it had a responsibility to secure value for money and to return to budget neutrality.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
T8. As a greater number of American veterans of the Afghan war commit suicide than die in combat, and as uncounted thousands of our own troops return, broken in body and mind, should we not follow the example of Canada, Holland, France and Australia and bring our troops home at an earlier date than planned?
Mr Hague
It is also important to remember the immense achievements of our troops in Afghanistan, who have helped to bring stability to areas of Afghanistan that would not otherwise have known it, and who have done so much to reduce the terrorism threat to this country and many others, and it is very important for that job to be completed, as we intend it to be, by the end of 2014. It is important to remember the achievements of our troops, and not just the problems that they encounter.
Mr Speaker
Order. The hon. Gentleman is a very experienced denizen of the House. He will know that points of order follow statements, and the hon. Gentleman’s point of order is one that we await with eager anticipation.
Development of Greenfield Land (Irchester, Northamptonshire)
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
I rise to present a petition signed by 2,012 people from the village of Irchester—half its male population. It concerns development outside the village boundary to which all three political parties were opposed before the last local elections. The leading signatories are Mr Chris Stening, Mr Tony Skipper and Mr Richard Webb.
The petition states:
The Humble Petition of residents of Irchester, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire and the surrounding areas,
Sheweth, that any proposed residential development on Green Field sites, outside the village boundary policy line, would put a great strain on Irchester’s infrastructure and have a huge damaging impact on the local environment.
Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your Honourable House requests the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to urge the Northamptonshire County Council, the Borough Council of Wellingborough and the Parish Council of Irchester to ensure that no such development takes place.
And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray, etc.
[P001098]
Change of School Name (Hemmingwell, Northamptonshire)
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
I have a petition from a grass-roots organisation that has grown up, concerning the change of name of an important school in my area. Its leading signatories are Emma Davies, Serena James and Julie Burgess.
The petition states:
The Humble Petition of residents of Hemmingwell, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire and the surrounding areas,
Sheweth, that the proposed change of name of the Oakway schools in Hemmingwell and the additional cost in changing the school uniform are both unnecessary and costly and that the schools in Oakway are well established and the name is well known.
Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your Honourable House urges the Secretary of State for Education to urge the Northamptonshire County Council and the Board of Governors at the Oakway schools to work together to ensure that any merged school will be named Oakway Primary School
And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray, etc.
[P001099]
Civil Service Reform
(11 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Paymaster General (Mr Francis Maude)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement about the civil service.
The British civil service plays a crucial role in modern British life. It is there to implement the policies of the Government of the day, whatever their political complexion. Its permanence and political impartiality enable exceptionally rapid transitions between Governments. Most civil servants are dedicated and hard-working, with a deep-seated public service ethos. Like all organisations, the civil service needs continuous improvement, and I want today to set out the first stage in a programme of practical actions for reform.
In 2010 we inherited one of the largest budget deficits in the developed world, and despite success in improving Britain’s financial standing, we still face significant financial and economic challenges, as well as rapid social, technological and demographic changes. The Government have embarked upon a programme of radical reform of public services to improve quality and responsiveness for users and value for the taxpayer. We need a civil service that is faster, more flexible, more innovative and more accountable in order to succeed. Our civil service is smaller today than at any time since the second world war, and this has highlighted where there are weaknesses and strengthened the need to tackle the weaknesses.
We need to build capabilities and skills where they are missing. We need to embrace new ways of delivering services. We need to be digital by default. We need to tie policy and implementation seamlessly together. We need greater accountability, and to require much better data and management information to drive decisions more closely. We need to transform performance management and career development.
Today, Sir Bob Kerslake, the head of the civil service, and I are publishing a civil service reform plan that clearly sets out a series of specific, practical actions to address long-standing weaknesses and build on existing strengths. Taken together, and properly implemented, those actions will deliver real change. They should be seen as a first step in a programme of continuing reform for the civil service. This is not an attack on the civil service, and civil servants have not been rigidly resistant to change, but the demand for change does not come just from the public and from Ministers—it comes from civil servants themselves, many of whom are deeply frustrated by a culture that is overly bureaucratic, hierarchical and focused on process, rather than outcomes.
That was revealed in the responses to our “Tell Us How” website, aimed at getting fresh ideas from staff about how they could do their jobs better. Civil servants themselves bemoaned a risk-averse culture, rampant grade-ism, and poor performance management. The action plan is based heavily on feedback from civil servants themselves, drawing on what frustrates and motivates them, while many of the most substantive ideas in the paper have come out of work led by permanent secretaries. Reform of the civil service never works if it feels like it is being imposed on civil servants by Ministers, but neither would it succeed if the civil service were simply left to reform itself. Because we want this to be change that lasts, we have discussed the proposals widely, including with Ministers of the previous Government, to draw on their experiences and ideas.
The civil service of the future will be smaller, pacier, flatter, more digital, more accountable for effective implementation, more capable, with better data and management information, and more unified, consistent and corporate. It must also be more satisfying to work for. These actions must help to achieve that. Under published plans, the civil service will shrink from around 500,000 in 2010 to around 380,000 by 2015—it is already the smallest it has been since the second world war. Sharing services between Departments will become the norm. That has been discussed for years; it is now time to make it happen.
Productivity also needs to improve. For too long, public sector productivity was at best static, while in the private services sector it improved over the same period by nearly 30%. Consumer expectations are rising and, as we have been told, there is no money. The public increasingly expect to be able to access services quickly, conveniently and in ways that suit them. We are conducting a review with Departments to decide which transactional and operational services can be delivered through alternative models. Services that can be delivered online should be delivered only online. Digital by default will become a reality, not just a buzz phrase.
We should no longer be the prisoner of the old binary choice between monolithic in-house provision and full-scale privatisation. We are now pursuing new models: joint ventures, employee-owned mutuals and new partnerships with the private sector. MyCSP, which manages the civil service pension scheme, became the first joint-venture mutual to spin out of Government recently, and it provides a model for future reforms.
The civil service culture can be slow moving, hierarchical and focused on process rather than outcomes. Changing that would be really hard in any organisation. We can make a start by cutting the number of management layers. There should only exceptionally be more than eight layers between the top and the front line, and frequently many fewer. That will help to speed up decisions and empower those at more junior levels. Better performance management needs to change the emphasis in appraisals emphatically towards delivery outcomes and reward sensible initiative and innovation.
We also need to sharpen accountability, which is closely linked to more effective delivery. Management information in Government is poor, as the National Audit Office, the Public Accounts Committee, the Institute for Government and departmental non-executive board members have vigorously and repeatedly pointed out. Therefore, by October this year we will put in place a robust and consistent cross-Government management information system that will enable Departments to be held to account by their boards, Parliament, the public and the centre of Government.
We will also make clearer the responsibilities of accounting officers for delivering major projects and programmes, including the expectation that former accounting officers can be called back to give evidence to the PAC. The current arrangements whereby Ministers answer to Parliament for the performance of their Departments and the implementation of their policy priorities will not change but, given their direct accountability to Parliament, we believe that they should have a stronger role in the recruitment of permanent secretaries.
We will therefore consult the Civil Service Commission on how to strengthen the role of the Secretary of State in the recruitment process for permanent secretaries. The current system allows the selection panel to submit only a single name to the Secretary of State. At other levels, appointments will normally be made from within the permanent civil service or by open recruitment but, where the expertise does not exist in the Department and it is not practicable to run a full open competition, we are making it clear that, as now, Ministers can ask their permanent secretaries to appoint a limited number of senior officials for specified and time-limited executive/management roles.
By common agreement, both inside and outside the civil service, there are some serious deficiencies in capability. Staff consistently say in surveys that their managers are not strong enough in leading and managing change. In future, many more civil servants will need commercial and contracting skills as services move further towards the commissioning model. While finance departments have significantly improved their capabilities, many more civil servants need a higher level of financial knowledge. As set out elsewhere in the plan, the civil service needs to improve its policy skills and fill the serious gaps in digital and project management capability.
By autumn we will have for the first time ever a cross-civil service capabilities plan that identifies which skills are missing and sets out how those gaps will be filled. Staff consistently say in surveys that their managers are not strong enough in leading and managing change, so, for the first time, leadership and potential leadership talent will be developed and deployed corporately.
As long ago as 1968, the Fulton commission identified that policy skills in the civil service were consistently rated more highly than operational delivery. That is still the case today. We will establish, therefore, the expectation that permanent secretaries appointed to the main delivery Departments will have had at least two years’ experience in a commercial or operational role, and we will move over time towards a position in which there is a more equal balance between those departmental permanent secretaries who have had a career primarily in operational management and those whose career has primarily been in policy advice and development.
A frequent complaint of civil servants themselves concerns performance management. They feel that exceptional performance is too often ignored and poor performance is not rigorously addressed. In future, performance management will be strengthened by a senior civil service appraisal system that identifies the top 25%, and the bottom 10%, who will need to show real improvement if they are to remain in the service. Departments are already introducing similar appraisal systems for grades below the senior civil service.
The Government are committed to ensuring that the civil service will be a good, modern employer and continue to be among the best employers in the country. Departments will undertake a review of terms and conditions to identify those that go beyond what a good, modern employer would provide. We will also ensure—again, meeting a consistent concern of civil servants—that staff get the IT and security arrangements that they have been asking for, so that they can do their jobs properly. That is a part of doing what is necessary to make civil service jobs more satisfying.
Another key goal is to improve and open up policy making so that there is a clear focus on designing policies that can be implemented in practice. Too often in the past policy has come from a narrow range of views, but Whitehall does not have a monopoly on policy-making expertise, and in future open policy making will become the default and we will create a small central fund to pilot policy development commissioned from outside Whitehall.
I repeat that this plan is just the first stage in a programme of reform and continuous improvement. It responds to concerns expressed by Parliament, by Ministers and former Ministers and, most importantly, by civil servants themselves. None of the actions in the plan is in itself dramatic, and none will matter unless it is properly implemented, but together, when implemented, they will represent real change.
I will oversee the implementation of the plan, and, as the paper sets out, Sir Bob Kerslake, as head of the civil service, and Sir Jeremy Heywood, the Cabinet Secretary, will be accountable for its delivery through the cadre of permanent secretaries.
Change is essential if the civil service is to meet the challenges of a fast-changing world. I commend the plan to the House.
Jon Trickett (Hemsworth) (Lab)
I thank the Minister for his courtesy in providing me with an advance copy of the plan, and for taking some time to explain his thinking.
The British civil service is widely admired, and rightly so, for its core values of honesty, impartiality and professionalism, and that is why it is so worrying that in the past two years the Minister has presided over chaotic change, which has seen a collapse in morale and more than one in three of the most senior civil servants leaving voluntarily. We, in contrast, sought radical but incremental change in the service.
On accountability, management culture and increased flexibility, there is always more to do, and we will support and, indeed, welcome sensible reforms such as improving management culture, information systems and skills development. We especially welcome the drive to digitise. It is essential to promote this process so that we obtain the highest possible levels of productivity from all staff. How does the Minister see digitisation proceeding?
In an era of flexible networks, the civil service can be seen as over-hierarchical and bureaucratic, as well as operating within self-contained departmental silos. Will the Minister indicate his intentions in reducing hierarchy and bureaucracy? The civil service has often been criticised in relation to procurement, IT, the management of change, and project management. What plans does he have to improve performance in all those areas?
I note the Minister’s suggestion that there should be interaction between the civil service and the private sector, but will he confirm that he is not making a presumption that private sector experience is somehow superior to the service of the public within the public sector ethos? We welcome the increased accountability of the civil service to Parliament and his comments on the Public Accounts Committee. On public sector mutuals, will he ensure that more information is placed before the House on this matter in due course?
The Minister has proposed that the performance of the worst 10% of civil servants be addressed. What consultation has he had on that proposal, and when does he intend it to be introduced? Of course, we welcome the drive to improve the standards of management in the public service, but is there not a danger that he and his colleagues may indulge in a blame game? After all, the problems that his Government face result from the failure of Ministers, not of the civil service. In identifying the worst-performing public servants, perhaps he might consider the proposal that he name and shame the poorest Ministers; I can see one of them talking to him on the Front Bench now. Perhaps he does not need to, though, because the court of public opinion has already rendered its verdict, at least in relation to the Secretary of State for Health. Given the double-dip recession, does he agree that at least the Chancellor of the Exchequer should now be placed in special measures?
Has the Minister done any U-turn on regional pay? Will he confirm that while there is nothing wrong with sensible local bargaining of the kind that we did when we were in office, we live in a single United Kingdom and the suggestion of large-scale regionalising of pay is divisive and should now be dropped?
The Minister has said that he intends further to reduce the size of the civil service and that the Government would cut back-office staff and not front-line services. Staff reductions on the scale that he has announced cannot possibly be easily developed. We are not talking about simple numbers on a page but real human beings facing redundancy at a time of high unemployment. These people have chosen to serve the public. How does he intend to deal with the human consequences of his decisions, and will he be engaging with the trade unions and other staff representatives in this process? His staffing estimates must be based on detailed risk impact assessments. For example, will the country be left vulnerable as a result of further cuts at the UK Border Agency, in the police service, or elsewhere? Will he agree to place in the Library copies of all departmental risk impact assessments of staff reductions?
On the sensitive area of the relationship between Ministers and civil servants, I have two concerns. The Minister proposes to formalise the process of seeking policy advice from outside agencies, and he intends that Ministers play a larger role in appointing permanent secretaries. We welcome careful progress on both those suggestions, but equally, is there not a danger that they might lead to cronyism and a dangerous politicisation of the civil service? What assurances will he give to the House that in engaging in the appointment of civil servants and in selecting external agencies providing policy advice, neither of those matters will fall into disrepute because of ideological, or even personal, favouritism by particular Ministers?
We welcome the positive proposals in the plan, but it will do little to correct the chaos that now exists in many Departments. After all, the point of reform is to make things better than they were before.
Mr Maude
I am grateful for the shadow Minister’s welcome for much of what we have said, although I regret the tone of some of his contribution.
On the hon. Gentleman’s last point about potential politicisation, we are very concerned that that should not happen. Any proposals about the involvement of Ministers in appointments, which has operated in various ways for a long time, must be regulated properly by the Civil Service Commission, whose task it is to ensure that there is no taint of cronyism or favouritism. There have been many suggestions, particularly in the time of the previous Government, that cronyism has been a feature of the way in which Governments operate. Because of that, the Civil Service Commission is particularly concerned to ensure that any changes are made extremely carefully. I and my colleagues strongly support that.
I have not announced any further reductions in the size of the civil service. The figure of 380,000, which is the consequence of the plans that Departments already have, is already out there. The reductions are obviously taking place in a planned and considered way by Departments, and they are alert to the need for front-line services to be protected wherever possible.
The hon. Gentleman mentioned issues of morale in the civil service. However, the people survey, which is a consistent survey across the whole civil service that is done every year—a welcome innovation by Lord O’Donnell under the previous Government—suggests that morale has remained remarkably stable at a time of uncertainty, a pay freeze, the reform of pension schemes and significant downsizing. Turnover, as measured by resignations from the civil service, has also remained stable. There is obviously a reduction in the size of the senior civil service, but that is simply a consequence of the overall reductions in size across the civil service.
I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s support for our plans for digitisation. That will not always be without controversy, but it is important. The Government lag behind most providers in making services available to consumers online. Too many online Government services fail, meaning that the non-digital delivery of transactions by post, phone or physical contact has to be retained. That is much more expensive and a lot less convenient for the user. It is important to tackle that problem. He will be aware of the invaluable review that was done by Martha Lane Fox 18 months ago, on which we are drawing heavily to drive our plans forward with urgency.
I accept the hon. Gentleman’s point about interaction with the private sector. I do not make the assumption that the answer to every problem in the civil service is to bring in people from the private sector. In fact, much more needs to be done to equip existing civil servants with skills. That is where interaction is so important. The culture in the civil service needs to feel much more recognisable to people from the private sector, so that when there is interaction, they do not feel like they have stepped on to a different planet. We believe that enhanced interaction will contribute to that.
The only moves that there have been towards regional pay were made under the previous Government, when the Ministry of Justice introduced a degree of regional pay. No final decisions have been made on the matter and we will not proceed without good evidence and a strong rationale for doing so.
Finally, the hon. Gentleman’s response reflected the widespread consensus that there is a need for change. Our proposing change which responds very much to concerns within the civil service does not mean that we think that the fundamental model is wrong. Arguments are made for a more American approach, but one would lose many important benefits such as the institutional knowledge, continuity and ease of transition through that approach. We have therefore worked within the constraints of the model as it is, but much can be done within those constraints. None of the changes need be massively controversial or dramatic, but together they will make a real difference to the way in which the country is governed.
Mr Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for publishing a civil service reform plan, which will prove to be the comprehensive cross-departmental change programme that the Public Administration Committee has long been calling for. Will he engage all his fellow Ministers to ensure that they lead the programme alongside permanent secretaries? Without effective leadership, no change programme will succeed. Finally, will he reaffirm that the civil service must remain one of our great institutions and a force for the stability of government, our constitution and our nation?
Mr Maude
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who has been urging me to publish a civil service reform plan for some time. I have said many times that I am keener on civil service reform than I am on civil service reform plans, but we have set out the plan and what we aim to achieve. It will require concerted political leadership, and there must be no hiding place. The political leadership of the Government and wide consensus across the party divide, which I think there is, together with the leadership of the civil service, will provide the best chance of implementing the plan successfully. I completely accept his point that the civil service is an important component of our stability, but we need to ensure that stability does not equate to a lack of any movement.
Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)
I welcome the substance of what the Minister said and the bipartisan tone in which he put it. In particular, may I welcome his proposals for greater involvement by Secretaries of State in the appointment of their permanent secretaries? I say by way of confession that, although I am not sure what the rules were at the time, in each of the three permanent secretary appointments that I made—in the Home Office, the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Justice—I insisted that there was a shortlist of at least three candidates from which I should choose. There was not the least allegation that I had acted in a partisan or cronyist way. The point that I made to those Departments was that if I was to take responsibility for the whole Department and for the work of that permanent secretary, I needed to have some confidence in the individual at the official top of the organisation.
Mr Maude
I am extremely grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his point of view, which I think most people who have been Ministers would recognise and respect. As Ministers we come to the House of Commons and, more or less cheerfully, take responsibility and are held accountable, sometimes in very robust terms, for what our Departments deliver and how they perform. The relationship between a permanent secretary and a Secretary of State is the most important one in a Department, and it is not reasonable for a Secretary of State to feel that he or she has no real choice in the appointment of that permanent secretary.
Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)
Will the Minister reiterate that one of the great strengths of the reform agenda that he has put forward today is that it responds to the demands of ordinary civil servants themselves? History shows that if the Cabinet Office acts in isolation, the project is doomed to failure. We require much wider leadership of the reform agenda, right across the civil service.
Mr Maude
My hon. Friend makes the point very well that it would not work if we tried to impose reform that went against the grain of the hard-working majority of civil servants, who come to work to do a good job and serve their fellow citizens, and who want to go home at the end of the day feeling that they have been able to make a difference. The plan would not have a chance of being successfully implemented. We need to call on the leadership of the civil service, but also on those throughout the civil service who see a need for change and want to be part of it.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
It is opportune that the Public and Commercial Services Union parliamentary reception is taking place at the moment, to which all Members, including the Minister, are invited. That union represents staff who have had job cuts, privatisation, pay cuts and pay freezes and who have had their pensions undermined. They have even had their redundancy payments cut. Will he call in and explain to those staff what is meant by “Departments will undertake a review of terms and conditions to identify those that go beyond what a good…employer would provide”? Does that mean that there will be more cuts to job security, maternity cover, paternity leave or sick pay? Will he explain precisely what it means?
Mr Maude
Depending on how long this statement goes on, I would be delighted to call in to the PCS reception and renew old acquaintances and friendships.
To which terms and conditions does the statement refer? Civil servants hate it when outlandish and archaic terms and conditions, many of which they will not have known exist, get picked up by the media and lampooned. Such terms and conditions enable the media to project civil servants—quite unfairly—as feather-bedded and pampered, which is demoralising for them. We want the civil service to be a good, modern employer, and among the best employers, but that means that such outlying terms and conditions, which are hard to defend in the modern world, must be addressed. They include, for example, the fact that as soon as people become civil servants, they are entitled to six months’ full sick pay. That is out of kilter with anything that exists in the wider public sector or the private sector. That sort of thing will need, over time, to be addressed.
Mr Speaker
Order. I cannot at this point say how long the statement and exchanges will last, but the reception might conceivably—I know not—even be extended if its organisers anticipate that they are to be blessed with a visit from a ministerial celebrity.
Mr Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (Con)
I welcome the Minister’s talk of sharpening accountability and of better accountability upwards to departmental boards. He even talks of giving Secretaries of State more of a say on appointments. Why has he not considered enhancing accountability to the Select Committees of the House? Surely without that change, the mandarin is not truly outwardly accountable to the public.
Mr Maude
I completely understand my hon. Friend’s point. He will know that the right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge), the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, who is away on Committee business at the moment, strongly takes that view. The Government have not opined on that suggestion at this stage, because the House of Lords Constitution Committee is conducting an inquiry into exactly that issue and we do not want to pre-empt its deliberations. My hon. Friend’s point, however, is a powerful one.
Dr William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)
In his statement, the Minister said that the “demand for change…comes from civil servants themselves”, and yet went on to say that changing the civil service culture would be “really hard”. There seems to be a contradiction in that. Can we be sure that the reorganisation of the civil service is in the interests of service to the community, and not simply a cost-saving exercise?
Mr Maude
We need to save costs—that almost goes without saying—and every Department is working under a severe financial constraint, one consequence of which is the significant reduction in the size of the civil service, to which I have referred. The proposals are about ensuring that, in such circumstances, when there is a smaller civil service and less money around, citizens can be served and receive public services of a good standard, and in many cases we hope a better standard than they currently receive.
Mr Speaker
Order. The hon. Member for Sevenoaks (Michael Fallon) has an intriguing approach to indicating his desire to be called—he raises his eyebrows in a very pointed fashion—but I can assure him that I was going to call him anyway.
Michael Fallon (Sevenoaks) (Con)
Is it fair that businesses outside London and the south-east must compete for staff against public offices whose pay and conditions are set nationally? If local pay works so well and flexibly for the Courts Service, why would we be squeamish about extending it?
Mr Maude
At the risk of my hon. Friend’s eyebrows going into overdrive, may I say that no final decisions have been made? He makes the argument. We have invited the pay review bodies to look at that proposal but no decision will be made until the evidence has been properly examined and the existence or otherwise of a strong rationale has been established.
Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)
I would like to return to the issue of accounting officers being recalled to Select Committees. In his statement, the Minister referred only to the Public Accounts Committee. May I urge him to consider other Committees, such as the Defence Committee, given that procurement decisions can cover 10, 15 or 20 years? Will he consider not only making that clearer, as he said in his statement, but making it a duty?
Mr Maude
For the PAC, it is becoming the practice that, in the right circumstances, former accounting officers can be called back. I hear what the hon. Lady says; it is a powerful case. Actually, I would not find it objectionable if former Ministers were called back to Select Committees to talk about decisions they were involved with in a previous life. I see the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), the former Lord Chancellor, nodding assent, which is courageous of him.
Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
As my right hon. Friend said, as long ago as 1968 the Fulton commission identified that policy skills were consistently rated more highly than operational delivery. Forty years later, during my time on the PAC, we found out that not a single permanent secretary had ever run a project. After all these reviews, will he really achieve where everybody else has failed, and get fewer permanent secretaries who have an Oxbridge degree in Latin, can write a beautiful minute and are charming, and actually get people who can run a project and be on the right pay scale for it?
Mr Maude
I hope that my hon. Friend, who stewarded the PAC with such distinction and speaks with great authority on this subject, would recognise that the appointment as head of the civil service of Sir Bob Kerslake, who has a formidable history of operational delivery in local government and running big local authorities, is a step in the right direction. If my hon. Friend looks across the piece, he will see that there are more, but not yet nearly enough, permanent secretaries with a background in operational delivery. We need to go further, however.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
On 23 May, in answer to my question about bonuses, the Prime Minister told the House that there was
“no place in the modern civil service for a presumption of good performance.”—[Official Report, 23 May 2012; Vol. 545, c. 1130.]
Why has the Minister not taken the opportunity, in his excellent paper, to outlaw the culture of bonuses for senior civil servants, especially in failing organisations, such as the UK Border Agency? Giving senior civil servants bonuses of £3.5 million cannot be right.
Mr Maude
Performance pay is always controversial, whether in the public or private sector. The paper suggests that a voluntary earn-back scheme, such as that suggested by Will Hutton in his report on fair pay, might be worth considering. We will invite the Senior Salaries Review Body to consider such a scheme for the senior civil service. Civil servants would be invited to put, say, 5% of their basic pay at risk, so that they have to earn it back, with the possibility of exceeding it with exceptional performance. That would not feel like a one-way bet.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
How will these reforms enable the civil service to deliver much higher quality and with greater accuracy, given the high error rates typical in areas such as benefit distribution?
Mr Maude
For a start, there needs to be better performance management and much better management information. It is a constant complaint that the quality of data is poor and inconsistent. It is hard to hold Departments and parts of Departments to account when we do not know how well they are performing. I point out to my right hon. Friend that when we turned MyCSP, the organisation that delivers the civil service pension scheme, into a joint venture mutual, its levels of productivity and accuracy, doing difficult processing work, improved markedly as it moved towards the vesting date.
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
I hope I am not alone in having a great sense of unease about the greater involvement of Ministers in selecting permanent secretaries. When permanent secretaries have to succumb to ministerial favour, is there not a danger of moving towards a presidential system, with more politicisation, less impartiality and civil servants fearing to speak truth unto power lest their careers not advance? I hope that I am not alone in saying that, and I hope that the Minister has a good answer.
Mr Maude
The answer is that we are absolutely not moving to the presidential-type system. I recommend that the hon. Gentleman talk to his right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn, who has experience of this. The simple truth is that if a Minister is to be accountable for what their Department does, it is not that unreasonable to suppose that they should have a better degree of choice in selecting the principal instrument for the performance of their Department.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
If local residents in the borough of Kettering phone Kettering borough council, of which I have the honour and privilege of being a member, they speak to a human being who answers the phone within 10 seconds. We ran the British empire with fewer civil servants than we have now, and if Kettering borough council can do that, should not organisations such as the Inland Revenue helpline be told that they have to do the same?
Mr Maude
My hon. Friend makes a powerful case, not just for the merits of Kettering borough council, but for what central Government and the civil service can learn from the best in local government. We make that point in the plan. There is, for example, good experience in local government of local authorities sharing services to a much greater degree than in the past—including, in many cases, sharing chief executives. We have suggested that this is also something that central Government could learn from.
Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)
I listened with great interest to what the Minister said about opening up policy development work. I note what he said about the Civil Service Commission, but I wonder whether he will expand on it. I am not making a partisan point, but he will recall answering questions recently about suggestions—allegations and so on—that, for example, Mr Peter Cruddas had influence over the No. 10 policy making machinery. If policy making is outsourced to think-tanks, there are bound to be occasions when suggestions are made that outside bodies—donors and so on—have undue influence over those think-tanks, so is the Minister anticipating some sort of regulatory framework? Will he expand a little further on that for us?
Mr Maude
The first thing to say is that this proposal is only a modest move. It will be piloted and reviewed to see what works and what does not. I completely concede the hon. Gentleman’s point that the work needs to be done carefully. It is not, I hasten to add, a recipe for giving more business to consultants—we have massively cut the business that central Government give to consultants—but we think there is scope for commissioning policy development work from academics, for example, which seems to be a fruitful idea that is worth pursuing to see what the benefits are.
Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)
It is important that those who choose the civil service as a career path should still have a wide experience and keep up to date with the knowledge, skills and experience that will be useful. Has the Minister considered whether the parliamentary term and timetable—our cycle—might offer time for development and training opportunities for those staff, or time for fast-track staff in particular to take paid sabbaticals in industry, commerce and the voluntary and philanthropic sectors, which are at the cutting edge of personnel development?
Mr Maude
That is a valuable point, which we address. Such development is available and possible, but it happens to a much lesser extent than is desirable. Exposure to different worlds and different experiences can enrich the ability of senior civil servants to deliver effectively for citizens.
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
The Minister referred to a central fund. How much will be in it, and will it come from separate Departments? Will he be using a tendering process, or will he just be appointing one particular person?
Mr Maude
It is a modest fund of £500,000 from the Cabinet Office, to be matched by Departments, if they want to bid to use it. I would not generally expect there to be a single appointment. Under the circumstances, we would want to get different groups in to pitch their ideas for how they would develop the work and so on. However, these are early stages. We want to explore how to do the work effectively, but we think it is worth pursuing.
Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend clarify whether he will be publishing the personal objectives of permanent secretaries and the interim project milestones of senior responsible owners? Further to the question that my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh) asked, given that 70% of civil servants work in operational roles, will he clarify how many permanent secretaries do not have two years’ experience in such roles?
Mr Maude
I do not have the last fact immediately at my fingertips, although it could no doubt be there soon. On my hon. Friend’s first point, yes, we do plan to publish permanent secretary objectives. They ought to be set in a rigorous way through agreement with the Secretary of State, with the lead non-executive on the Department’s board, with the Prime Minister and with the head of the civil service. That needs to be done. We will then publish those objectives, because the public need to be able to see the extent to which they are being met. My hon. Friend also asked about milestones. We are becoming much more open and saying much more about the way in which the major projects are governed, and about their performance, than has ever been the case.
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
As well as suggesting a greater role for Secretaries of State in the recruitment process for permanent secretaries, the right hon. Gentleman referred to Ministers being able to ask permanent secretaries to appoint a limited number of senior officials to time-limited executive or management roles. Has he any plans to circumscribe or, better still, proscribe any involvement, interference, intervention or influence by special advisers in relation to such matters? Does experience not teach us that special advisers should not taste, touch or handle any aspect of such a process?
Mr David Ruffley (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)
I welcome the thrust of the reform, but will the Minister clarify one point? Does he support the idea that a Secretary of State should have the final say in the recruitment of a private sector individual to the post of permanent secretary, provided it is done on a fixed-term, performance-related basis?
Mr Maude
Yes, I do believe that. Obviously, that would need to follow a selection and recruitment process that had been regulated by the Civil Service Commission to ensure that the appointment had been made on merit following fair and open competition, as the law requires. Given that degree of regulation, however, and the assurance that that should give that the individual was an appointable candidate for not only the current Secretary of State but any future ones, there is no obvious reason why that should not happen.
John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)
The Minister said that there was nothing dramatic in his plans. Is it not time for a bigger reform than one that simply involves the appointment of permanent secretaries? Should not a change of Government mean a change at the top of those agencies delivering the most important parts of the new Government’s programme? Perhaps we should consider a system closer to that of the United States, in which Ministers would propose appointments which would then be confirmed or rejected at hearings in this House. Those who were appointed would then, like Ministers, be publicly accountable as well as directly accountable to Parliament.
Mr Maude
I hear what the right hon. Gentleman says. As an experienced former Minister, his views attract respect and deserve careful consideration, but his suggestion would involve a fundamental change to the model that we have in this country. That is not unthinkable, but a deep change would be involved. We believe that our system works really well—or is capable of doing so—and that we can make these changes within the current model to deliver real change. We can also get on with that quite quickly.
Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)
My right hon. Friend rightly began his statement by saying of the civil service: “It is there to implement the policies of the Government of the day, whatever its political complexion.” He will be aware, through his role as a constituency Member of Parliament and as a Minister, of the frustrations expressed by many Ministers at the lack of determination of some in their Departments to implement the programme on which the Government of the day were elected. What assurances can he give us that this programme of reform will keep its central facet—namely, that the civil service is there to implement the will of the people as expressed by those elected to the House of Commons?
Mr Maude
That is a fundamental tenet of our system, and if there were widespread concern that that was not happening, pressure to change the system along the lines that the right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey) has outlined would become hard to resist. The key point, however, is that the permanent secretary of a Department is under an obligation to provide Ministers with officials who are capable of delivering the Minister’s priorities. If that is not happening, Ministers are entitled to—and should—make quite a fuss.
Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
While I fully agree that we need to deal with poor performance effectively, and I look forward to seeing the Minister’s capabilities plan, will he tell me why he has chosen to use norm-referencing at an arbitrary 10%, which is going to encourage colleagues to have a dog-eat-dog approach and to vie with each other to get out of the bottom 10%, like in some ghastly TV game show, rather than to deal with poor performance where and whenever it occurs?
Mr Maude
All the evidence suggests that without some, by its very nature, relatively arbitrary way of ranking performance, we will not get the focus on dealing with poor performance. I do not take a simplistic view of poor performance that suggests that anyone who is underperforming should immediately exit the civil service because the first thing that should be done is to provide proactive support and development of the individual to get them to improve. If that does not prove possible, then it is not right and it is not fair to the rest of the civil service, who work hard and are dedicated, to see the civil service’s reputation pulled down by those who are consistently underperforming.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
When looking at civil service reform, will my right hon. Friend continue to ensure the curtailing of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money spent on civil service management conferences? Will he also curtail the huge spending on expensive head-hunters by civil service departments, often staffed by former senior civil servants themselves?
Mr Maude
Spending on all those things has massively reduced since the coalition Government were formed. We can often do these things much more effectively. Management-type conferences, away-days and all that sort of thing now take place largely in the Government’s own property at much lower cost. It is sometimes necessary to use head-hunters to do particular recruitments, but this should be the exception rather than the rule.
Ms Margaret Ritchie (South Down) (SDLP)
I thank the Minister for his statement, in which he said that the civil service of the future would be smaller. In light of that, what will be the staffing head count implications for those parts of the civil service that reside within the devolved regions, such as the Northern Ireland Office and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs?
Mr Maude
Those decisions will be taken by those Departments themselves. We do not expect to do that by central diktat. So far as civil servants in the devolved Administrations are concerned, that is of course the responsibility of those Administrations. The Northern Ireland civil service is slightly different as it is separate, but in Scotland and Wales, the permanent secretaries of both those Administrations have been involved in the development of these plans.
Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)
Civil servants at GCHQ and elsewhere in my constituency already deliver what I call a gold-plated service to government, despite serious challenges to recruitment and retention. Will these reforms strengthen the hand of unique institutions such as GCHQ in the face of serious private sector competition for highly expert staff?
Mr Maude
I am very aware of the amazing work done by GCHQ and of the extraordinary talents that get attracted to Cheltenham, and by and large retained there, in support of work of the highest importance for the safety of the nation. There is certainly nothing that we are doing that will inhibit the ability of organisations such as GCHQ to do what is necessary to recruit and retain the very best.
Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)
There are many talented public servants at all levels of the civil service, but will my right hon. Friend assure me that these plans will allow that talent to be recognised and advanced by rewarding innovation and successful outcomes?
Mr Maude
My hon. Friend makes a very good point—that the system does not always reward those who innovate. We make the point in the paper that no one’s career ever seems to suffer if they continue to preside over an inefficient status quo, but if people try something new that does not work, they can feel very exposed. We need to be as rigorous in examining, testing and challenging the status quo as we are with innovation and change. We need to be supportive of those who try new things. Not everything new that gets tried will work, but the best organisations learn at least as much from things that are tried and do not work as they do from things that are tried and do.
Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)
The Prime Minister recently stated in Malaysia that “Yes Minister” remains true to life. The Minister has said today: “There should only exceptionally be more than eight layers between the top and the front line…That will help to speed up decisions and empower those at more junior levels.” Could we not be a little more ambitious?
Mr Maude
I am always open to encouragement of that nature. In a really big organisation—and some parts of central Government are very big organisations—eight is not an inordinate number of layers. Those are still quite big spans of authority. In most cases, however, the number should be significantly lower. We particularly want the changes to empower people at the front line to make decisions and judgments without constantly having to refer them up the hierarchy, because that will make their jobs more rewarding and satisfying.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
Can my right hon. Friend confirm that a reduction in the size of the civil service will not be offset by an increase in the number of former civil servants who are subsequently re-employed as consultants?
Mr Maude
I have no control over whether former civil servants obtain employment as consultants. I can say, however, that the amount of money that the Government spend on consultants has fallen by some 60% since the election, that it remains at a much lower level, and that it will continue to do so.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
I am delighted that my right hon. Friend is prepared to learn from local government. The Communities and Local Government Committee is conducting an inquiry into the operation of mutuals and co-operatives, and other forms of working. The evidence is still coming in, but it is clear that such arrangements lead to better services, more job satisfaction, and innovation. However, in order to go forward, people need support: they need financial backing, and they need to be encouraged to take the work on. What measures will my right hon. Friend take to provide them with that opportunity?
Mr Maude
We have set up a mutuals information service so that we can provide ready access to information. We have also set up a small fund that can buy legal and commercial advice for groups of public sector workers who want to establish themselves as mutuals. That is beginning to succeed, but what is needed above all is for the managers in such public sector organisations to support those who want to spin themselves out as public service mutuals. There is a tendency for managers to feel that that is somehow a threat and to resist it, but they should see it as a big opportunity, for all the reasons that my hon. Friend has so eloquently cited.
Rory Stewart (Penrith and The Border) (Con)
The 2001 reforms of the Foreign Office led to a torrent of management jargon, and to officials managing themselves instead of getting to grips with foreign countries. Will the Minister reassure us that this round of reforms will not promote people on the basis of abstract management skills at the expense of the energy, imagination, practical wisdom and courage which are at the heart of good administration?
Charlotte Leslie (Bristol North West) (Con)
Bristol is currently negotiating its exciting city deal, which will create a revolution in regional growth. Can my right hon. Friend confirm that the reforms will enable the civil service—particularly in the vital Department for Transport, which oversees the infrastructure for growth—to be as dynamic, growth-focused and, indeed, business-minded as Bristol, our regions and the nation need it to be?
James Morris (Halesowen and Rowley Regis) (Con)
I welcome the statement. Does the Minister agree that one of the most important things the modern civil service needs to do is look at new ways of delivering public services, particularly given the challenges of the digital era?
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
My right hon. Friend touched on the importance of importing the very best of transformational change from the enterprise sector. Will he say a little more about that?
Mr Maude
We want a civil service culture that is much more recognisable to those who come from the private sector so that there can be greater interaction. Where people do move from one sector to another, frequently it does not work because they feel like they have landed on a different planet. It is particularly valuable for civil servants to spend some time in the private sector as they will pick up additional skills, as well as vice versa. There can be very valuable cross-fertilisation. This has often been tried, but it has worked far too rarely. We are going to have another go.
European Convention on Human Rights
(11 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
The Government are committed to reviewing and reforming—I must interrupt myself to apologise, Mr Speaker, as I should first move the motion.
I beg to move,
That this House supports the Government in recognising that the right to respect for family or private life in Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights is a qualified right and agrees that the conditions for migrants to enter or remain in the UK on the basis of their family or private life should be those contained in the Immigration Rules.
It might have been unfortunate if I had forgotten to do that formal bit, Mr Speaker.
Mr Speaker
The Home Secretary can rest assured that I would have reminded her.
Mrs May
I know you are assiduous in your duties, Mr Speaker, and I recognise that you would, indeed, have reminded me—and with courtesy, I am sure.
The Government are committed to reviewing and reforming all the main routes of immigration to the UK. As a result, we anticipate net migration will fall from the hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands. Last week I laid new immigration rules for family immigration. These new rules will ensure that those who come here can do so only on the basis of a genuine relationship, that once here they can pay their way, and that they can integrate properly into British society. So we will increase the minimum probationary period for new spouses and partners to five years; we will stop dependent relatives becoming an unnecessary burden on the national health service; and we will introduce new tests to ensure family migrants can speak English, understand our history and respect our values.
But central to making those new rules work effectively is for this House to set out its view on how the right to family and private life in article 8 of the European convention on human rights should interact with our immigration policy. The ECHR makes it absolutely clear that article 8 is not an absolute right. Article 8(1) of the convention provides for the right to respect for private and family life, but that is qualified by article 8(2), which allows the state to interfere in the exercise of that right.
In an immigration context, the convention allows interference in the right to respect for family or private life on grounds of public safety, such as the prevention of crime, or to protect the UK’s economic well-being, including by controlling the numbers of immigrants allowed to enter or remain in the country. That means the Government can interfere with the exercise of article 8 rights, in full compliance with the ECHR, and in full compliance with the law, where it is necessary and proportionate to protect the public from foreign criminals or to safeguard our economic well-being.
The problem is that Parliament has never before been given the opportunity to set out how it believes it should be possible to interfere with article 8 rights in practice. That meant the courts were left to decide the proportionality of interference with article 8 rights themselves, in each and every individual case, and without the benefit of the views of Parliament.
We are putting that situation right. We are letting Parliament do its job by making public policy, and we are letting the courts do their job by interpreting the law, with regard to the clear view of Parliament of where the public interest lies.
Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the original ECHR is a very noble document, but that the problem is the misinterpretation of it by modern judges? Does she also agree that the actions the Government are taking will give these judges the clear message that they should go back to the original principles of the convention rather than adhere to political correctness?
Mrs May
I believe that what we are doing today and the motion we are asking this House to pass—I hope it will pass with support from all parts of the House—will send a clear message about what we believe the article 8 rights mean in terms of where the public interest lies. That is important because, as I say, Parliament has not been able to do that so far. But of course we uphold the principles of human rights, and this is in no way contrary to those principles or to the convention because, as I have said, the convention itself qualifies this particular right.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
As nobody has a dispute about whether article 8 is an absolute—it has always been subject to definition by national courts—why on earth are we debating this today? Is this not just part of the Home Secretary’s general attack on the whole principle of the European Court of Human Rights and the European convention on human rights, which her Back Benchers frequently raise at every possible opportunity?
Mrs May
I am a little surprised that the hon. Gentleman stands up to question why Parliament is debating something, as he has usually been keen for Parliament to debate more than it does. The point of this is that clearly—I shall deal with this later—there has been a request from the judiciary that Parliament should make its views clear on this issue, so that they can take that into account when examining cases. It is entirely reasonable that Parliament should give its voice on this matter.
Mr James Clappison (Hertsmere) (Con)
I warmly welcome the Home Secretary’s approach. On this question of Parliament’s view, is it not important that when the courts are striking a balance between family rights and the article concerned, and “serious offences” by foreign offenders, it is right that they should know what Parliament regards as “serious offences” for these purposes?
Mr David Ruffley (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)
Will my right hon. Friend deal with something that is in the minds of all Government Members? A robust measure such as this, put in front of the House, could have been debated at any time in the 13 years before the 2010 election.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
I am looking at a motion that says nothing about Parliament’s view on article 8; all it seems to be is a restatement of the bleeding obvious. We all know that article 8 is a qualified right, so why are we here debating a nothing motion?
Mrs May
I suggest that the hon. Gentleman read right to the end of the motion, as he will then see that we do indeed record that we support the
“right to respect for family…life in Article 8”.
We say that it is “a qualified right” and we agree that
“the conditions for migrants to enter or remain in the UK on the basis of their family or private life should be those contained in the Immigration Rules.”
That is the second crucial part of the motion. Opposition Members are arguing that somehow Parliament should not debate an issue that is of considerable concern to members of the public. The public do not want to see foreign criminals whom they think should be deported, and whom the Government think should be deported, being able to stay in the UK because they are able to claim a right under article 8. Parliament has the opportunity today to set out its view on this clearly.
Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)
May I, in fully endorsing the Home Secretary’s approach and this motion, ask her to comment on the following? The previous Government, including through my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), did make great efforts to get the courts to change their approach, as they did in the Amy Houston appeal—I have details of the grounds of appeal here with me—but it was only when the courts found themselves trapped by their own precedent that this became necessary. I therefore endorse this approach, but it is not for the want of trying an alternative route pursued by the previous Government.
Mrs May
The right hon. Gentleman makes the valid point that this has been an issue for some time. I think it would have been possible for the previous Government to have done what we are doing today and bring a motion before Parliament, but we have done it and we are giving people that opportunity.
Mrs May
I shall make a little progress, if I may, because I have taken a number of interventions.
With the changes that I am making, there will generally be no need for a separate assessment of article 8 beyond the requirements set out in the immigration rules. Compliance with the immigration rules will mean compliance with article 8, other than in truly exceptional circumstances. So, a foreign criminal who does not meet the criteria set out in the rules will be deported and they will not have a second bite at the cherry via article 8. Similarly, a migrant seeking to come to the UK to join a partner must meet the criteria set out in the rules or a visa will be refused and there will be no separate article 8 claim. The immigration rules will no longer be a mere starting point, with leave granted outside the rules or appeals allowed under article 8 for those who do not meet them. The rules will instead take into account article 8, relevant case law and appropriate evidence and they will be proposed by the Executive and approved by the legislature.
Of course, the courts have a clear constitutional role in reviewing the proportionality of measures passed by Parliament, but now the focus of the courts should be on considering the proportionality of the rules rather than the proportionality of every individual application determined in accordance with the rules. Where the courts consider individual deportation decisions, it should now be with consideration of Parliament’s public policy intent firmly in mind.
Some have suggested that Parliament cannot set out how article 8 should be qualified because we are bound by the European convention on human rights. They evidently do not understand that article 8 is a right that is qualified by the convention itself. Of course, judges will continue to consider each case on its individual merits, but it is the courts themselves that have said that Parliament needs to make its views clear. In a case in 2007, the House of Lords said that a statement from Parliament was needed on where the public interest lies in the operation of article 8 in immigration cases. The Court of Appeal, last year and this year, has indicated that greater weight is to be given to the public interest when that has been endorsed by Parliament. Today’s motion provides the courts with the statement and the endorsement from Parliament that they have said is needed. The courts should then give that statement from the elected legislature the weight that it deserves.
John McDonnell
Will the right hon. Lady clarify whether we are legislating today? Are we passing into law the rules that she published less than a week ago?
Mrs May
The motion recognises the qualification of article 8 and invites the House to agree that it is set out in the immigration rules. The immigration rules themselves have been laid before Parliament—[Interruption.] I am very happy to read the motion again. It states that the House
“agrees that the conditions for migrants to enter or remain in the UK on the basis of their family or private life should be those contained in the Immigration Rules.”
Mr Cash
I am much encouraged by the line the Home Secretary is taking on all this. Over and over again, as she knows, I have raised the question of the interpretation by the courts of matters relating not only to the European convention but to European Union law. Is she taking the opportunity, by one means or another, to have discussions with those in the superior hierarchy of the judiciary? To bolster the assumptions that lie behind what she is saying in defence of the sovereignty of this Parliament, does she want to put the words “notwithstanding the Human Rights Act 1998” in front of the legislation so that the courts are under no misapprehension about what they are to do?
Mrs May
I think my answer to my hon. Friend will be shorter than his question. The motion makes it absolutely clear what we are asking people to do today and I am certain that the judiciary will take into account the view of Parliament. Indeed, as I have said, members of the judiciary have suggested that it would be helpful to have the view of Parliament.
Since the Human Rights Act was implemented in 2000, it has become clear that the existing immigration rules do not properly set out how article 8 should be qualified in real cases. As a result, foreign criminals and those who failed to meet the requirements of the immigration rules and who should not be allowed to come to or stay in the UK have increasingly been able to challenge their decisions in the courts on the grounds of a breach of article 8. So, for those who do not meet the requirements of the rules, grants of discretionary leave outside the rules on article 8 grounds have risen steadily to the point that in 2010 the UK Border Agency granted discretionary leave on the basis of article 8 in around 9,500 immigration cases. That means that in 9,500 cases, applicants could not meet the requirements of the immigration rules but were allowed to stay in the UK none the less. In addition, reflecting established policy on dealing with such cases, they were automatically granted full and immediate access to the benefits system. Perversely, that placed them in a better position than applicants who had met the immigration rules and were denied such access while they served a two-year probationary period.
Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)
A key criticism regarding the use of article 8 is how it has appeared to give greater protection to convicted foreign criminals facing deportation than to British citizens facing extradition. Can the Home Secretary reassure my constituent Gary McKinnon and others like him facing issues of mental illness and autism—I do not want to trespass on to that particular case—that the principle of this motion will not affect genuine article 8 applications relating to extradition?
Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)
Following the question put by my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), I should like some clarification. As has been emphasised several times this afternoon, the immigration rules are being changed, presumably arising from the Home Secretary’s statement last week. Will Parliament have the opportunity to debate those changes?
Mrs May
The immigration rules have been laid and it is open to any Member of the House to pray against them and see whether they can initiate a debate on them in the House. [Interruption.] It is open to anybody to pray against the immigration rules if they wish to debate the detail of them. I will refer to the changes that are being made. What we are saying today is that article 8 should be qualified in line with the immigration rules. I think I have repeated the motion several times.
Pete Wishart
The right hon. Lady is going to have to explain very carefully and clearly exactly what we are debating today. Are we debating and agreeing to the rules that she announced in her statement last week or are we agreeing to restate once again the fact that article 8 is qualified in the terms of the European convention on human rights?
Mrs May
I am tempted to give exactly the same answer to the hon. Gentleman as I gave to him earlier. What we are debating is Parliament’s saying, first, that the House supports the Government in recognising the qualified nature of article 8 and, secondly, that the basis on which article 8 can be qualified is set out in the immigration rules. It is open to hon. Members to pray against the immigration rules if they wish to debate them. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) asks whether we are agreeing to the immigration rules. What we are agreeing is that article 8 is qualified as set out in the immigration rules. There is then the separate issue—perhaps it would be helpful if I put it this way—of whether the immigration rules are prayed against and whether there is then a debate and a vote on those rules. I hope that I have helped him. There is a very important point at issue here: the courts have said that Parliament needs to give its views about the qualification of article 8 and that is what I am inviting hon. Members to do today.
Mrs May
I am going to make some progress now. I apologise but I have taken several questions from one hon. Member and I want to make some progress.
I was talking about the cases we have had, and I note that there are issues at appeal stage. Last year, 1,888 appeals against deportation were lodged. Of the 409 successful appeals, 185—that is 45%—were allowed on article 8 grounds. Those are the consequences of having had immigration rules that do not properly set out the qualified nature of article 8. The new immigration rules state how the balance should be struck between the public interest and individual rights. They take into account relevant case law, evidence, independent advice and public consultation, and they provide clear instructions for UK Border Agency caseworkers about the approach they must normally take in deciding article 8 claims. They provide the basis for a consistent, fair and transparent decision-making process, and I ask the House to agree that they reflect how family migration should be controlled in the public interest. Once endorsed by the House, the new immigration rules will form a framework that Parliament considers is compatible with article 8, on which the courts can therefore place greater weight as a statement of the public interest.
I turn now to the criteria in the new immigration rules that will be used to judge claims under article 8 in practice. The particular aspects of the new family immigration rules that are relevant are those on criminality, the best interests of a child, the family or private life of non-criminals, and the income threshold.
Perhaps nothing has done more to damage public confidence in the immigration system than when serious foreign criminals have used flimsy article 8 claims to avoid removal from this country. The European convention on human rights is clear—those who commit crimes do not have an unqualified right to respect for private and family life. So we are changing the immigration rules to make clear Parliament’s view that if someone is a serious criminal, if they have not behaved according to the standards we expect in this country, a weak claim to family life is not going to get in the way of their deportation. There is no place in this country for foreign criminals who threaten our safety and security and who undermine our rights and freedoms.
If a foreign criminal has received a custodial sentence of 12 months or more, deportation will normally be proportionate. Even if a criminal has received a shorter sentence, deportation will still normally be proportionate if their offending has caused serious harm or if they are a persistent offender who shows a particular disregard for the law. So where a foreign criminal is sentenced to less than four years, where no children are involved, and where the criminal has been here lawfully for less than 15 years, discounting their time in prison, deportation will normally be proportionate, even if they have a genuine and ongoing relationship with a partner in the UK. Even if the criminal has been here lawfully for 15 years, unless there are insurmountable obstacles to family life with that partner continuing overseas, deportation will still normally be proportionate.
Alok Sharma (Reading West) (Con)
I welcome the motion and I hope it will have the support of all Members across the House, but can my right hon. Friend give me an assurance that in cases involving children, the best interests of the child will be a primary consideration in any decision that is made?
Mrs May
I shall speak in more detail about the best interests of the child, so perhaps the hon. Lady will wait and see if I answer her query in the comments that I make.
On the criminality issue first, the test for private life will also be a stringent one. Deportation will be proportionate unless the foreign criminal has been continuously resident in the UK for at least the past 20 years, excluding any period of imprisonment, and they have no social, cultural or family ties with their country of origin. For offenders aged under 25, deportation will be proportionate unless they have spent at least half their life residing continuously in the UK, excluding any period of imprisonment, and they have no ties with their country of origin. In all other cases, other than in exceptional circumstances, deportation of the foreign criminal will be proportionate.
Mrs May
May I make a little more progress? My hon. Friend may choose to try again when I have finished dealing with this issue.
For the most serious foreign criminals—those sentenced to four or more years in prison—deportation will almost always be proportionate. Article 8 rights should prevent deportation of serious foreign criminals only in the most genuinely exceptional circumstances. So I ask the House to agree that the rights of the British public should outweigh the rights of foreign criminals in the way the new immigration rules describe. The choice for a foreign national wishing to avoid deportation is now simple: do not break the law.
I said that I would come on to the best interests of a child. The best interests of a child in the UK must always be a primary consideration. That is what the law requires and the new immigration rules reflect how the best interests of a child should be taken into account in striking a proportionate balance between an applicant’s family life and the public interest, for both criminals and non-criminals. For non-criminals, where a child would have to leave the UK as a consequence of the decision to remove their parent, the question is then whether it is reasonable to expect the child to leave. The best interests of the child will normally be met by remaining with their parents and returning with them to their country of origin, unless the child is a British citizen or has been resident in the UK for at least the past seven years and it would not be reasonable to expect the child to leave the UK.
For criminal parents, there is a broader range of circumstances in which the public interest may outweigh the best interests of a child. For serious foreign criminals, those sentenced to four or more years, the best interests of a child will only outweigh the public interest in deportation of the foreign criminal in exceptional circumstances. For criminals sentenced to between 12 months and less than four years, or those sentenced to less than 12 months but whose offending has caused serious harm or who are persistent offenders and show a particular disregard for the law, deportation will still normally be proportionate.
Lisa Nandy
I am grateful to the Home Secretary for giving way; I know that she wants to make some progress. Can she give an assurance that decision makers will not try to second-guess what is in the best interests of a child? We would not accept that in any other form of decision making relating to children. The individual circumstances of the child must be considered in the decision-making process.
Mrs May
One of the points about what we are doing, to which I tried to allude earlier, is that there is a statutory duty—in section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009—to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in the UK. We are now bringing the consideration of the best interests of the child formally into the new immigration family rules, which reinforces that point.
I was talking about criminals who have been sentenced to between 12 months and less than four years or who are persistent offenders. Article 8 will prevent a deportation only if they have a genuine and subsisting parental relationship with the British citizen child or a child who has lived in the UK for at least the last seven years, if it would not be reasonable to expect the child to leave the UK with the foreign national criminal and if there is no other family member able to care for the child in the UK. Unless all three conditions are met, it will normally be proportionate to deport the criminal. If the criminal’s child is not a British citizen and has lived in the UK for less than seven years, the criminal can still be deported. If it will be reasonable to expect the child, whatever their nationality, to leave the UK, the criminal can still be deported. If there is another family member who can care for the child in the UK, the criminal can still be deported. These requirements represent a rational and proportionate qualification of article 8 rights in the interests of public safety and security, and I invite the House to endorse them.
Mr Brazier
My right hon. Friend is making a powerful case, and one that most Members will support, but is she aware that she has used the words “except in exceptional circumstances” seven or eight times already? If the court alone is free to determine what are exceptional circumstances, experience from other areas of the law suggests that in practice we might find that we make disappointingly little progress.
Mrs May
I recognise my hon. Friend’s concern, but there has to be a reference to exceptional circumstances. The way we are approaching it—setting out clearly the criteria that identify and describe the right to a private and family life—means that the exceptional circumstances will be far more limited than they have been up to now. As I hope he and others will understand from the detail I have given to the House, I have been going through every aspect of this carefully and setting out the expectations clearly. Therefore, I have every expectation that, in being able to look at those criteria and see what the public interest is in these matters, or how Parliament has defined the public interest, there would need to be truly exceptional circumstances indeed for someone to be allowed to remain in the UK outside the criteria. I have been clear that I have every expectation that this will have the impact we want it to have. If it does not, we will of course have to look at potential further measures.
Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)
I support the direction in which the Home Secretary is heading but have just one question. I might be jumping the gun, but given that so many countries practise torture—I think that she will reaffirm the position that prisoners are not sent back to such countries—what do we do in cases where we cannot send a criminal back to their country of origin because of this. As I have said, torture is used frequently around the world.
Mrs May
Under the convention, the question of whether someone will be subjected to torture relates not to article 8, but to article 3, I think—[Interruption.] I am getting nods from hon. Members. Of course, the European convention on human rights includes the statement that people should not be sent back to countries where they will be subject to torture, but the issue under discussion is one reason why, on a number of matters, we have negotiated with a number of countries throughout the world what is called “deportation with assurances”. This has been tested in the courts and enables us to deport individuals, with the assurance, which we have achieved through a memorandum of understanding, that they—individuals in those circumstances—will not be subject to torture when they are returned.
Dr Francis
Given the complexity of the changes and their number, instead of our having a debate today, would it not be more appropriate to refer the matter for scrutiny to some of the many Select Committees of this House, including my own? As Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, I raised the matter earlier this afternoon with its members, who agreed with me that this was a matter of considerable concern which should be referred to our Committee. To illustrate the issue’s complexities, I note that 75 years ago this month 6,000 Basque refugee children arrived in this country. Would they have been excluded under these new rules?
Mrs May
I recognise the work undertaken on the matter by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which the hon. Gentleman chairs, and, if he wishes to see a debate about the immigration rules, it is of course entirely open to the Committee and, indeed, to the hon. Gentleman himself, as I indicated earlier, to pray against them, but today I am asking Parliament to say, “We recognise there is a qualified right, and that qualification is set out in the immigration rules agreed by the House.”
The new immigration rules will demand that, for non-criminals without children to remain in the UK on the basis of their family life, they will have to show that they are in a genuine relationship. If they can pay their way and meet the income threshold and other requirements, they can qualify for settlement after five years. If they cannot meet those requirements, but insurmountable obstacles to family life with their partner are continuing overseas, they can enter a 10-year route to settlement.
To remain in the UK on the basis of a private life, applicants must have resided continuously in the UK for at least 20 years, discounting any period of imprisonment; or they must be under 18 years old and have resided continuously in the UK for at least seven years; or they must be aged 18 or over but under 25 and have spent at least half their life residing continuously in the UK; or they must be aged 18 or over, have resided continuously in the UK for less than 20 years but have no social, cultural or family ties with their country of origin. If applicants qualify under those criteria, they will enter a 10-year route to settlement.
The European convention on human rights also makes it clear that article 8 may be interfered with to protect the economic well-being of the UK. Strasbourg case law has established that this includes controlling immigration. This Government believe that anyone who wishes to bring a foreign spouse, partner or dependant to the UK should be able to support them financially, and we sought advice from the Migration Advisory Committee on the minimum income level that would allow a British citizen or a person with settled status in the UK to support an immigrant partner or dependant.
Following that advice, we have set the income threshold at £18,600, a figure that was at the lower end of the range recommended by the Committee, but the level at which a sponsor can generally support themselves and a partner without accessing income-related benefits. Children, of course, involve additional costs to the state, particularly in schooling, so, again following advice from the Migration Advisory Committee, the income threshold will rise to £22,400 for a partner and one child, with an additional £2,400 for each further child.
Both partners’ earnings from employment in the UK can be counted towards the new requirement, together with their non-employment and pension income, and significant savings can also be used to offset any deficit in income, but third-party support in the form of subsidies or undertakings will not be allowed.
An applicant whose sponsor is in receipt of a specified disability-related benefit or carer’s allowance will be exempt from the new financial requirement. We believe that the new financial requirements are necessary, proportionate and firmly in the public interest, and I trust Parliament will endorse that view.
It may be helpful to the House if I set out some examples of how the new rules might operate in practice. In a non-criminal context, there might be the example of a former student who came to the UK with his partner and one-year-old child. His relationship with his partner has now broken down, and he has seen his child—now aged four—only once in the last year. He has no role in the child’s daily care. His partner, also a student, continues to study, and she and the child will remain here for another year. As the former student’s course has now ended, he has applied under the family rules on the basis of his child. In this case, the child is not British and has not lived in the UK for the past seven years. The father is not a primary carer and does not appear to have a genuine and subsisting relationship with his child. His former partner is also here only on a temporary basis for one more year. The application would therefore be refused.
Another example might be that of a young married couple who met overseas. The woman subsequently came to the UK to study and they married here. The man is a British citizen who earns just less than the minimum income threshold, and the woman is no longer a student and is not working. The couple are genuine and their relationship is ongoing, and they may still be able to meet the income requirement, but if not, and if there is no evidence of any insurmountable obstacles to their continuing their family life together overseas, we would expect them to do so.
In criminal cases, there might be an example of a serious foreign criminal sentenced to four years imprisonment for class A drugs supply. He has no family in the UK but claims that over his previous 15 years in this country he has built up a substantial private life. This man’s crimes represent such a serious level of offending that they outweigh any article 8 issues. There is no evidence that his case is exceptional, and this criminal could expect to be deported.
Another foreign criminal is sentenced to two years’ imprisonment for actual bodily harm. He has been in the UK lawfully for seven years before being sent to prison and has a partner who is settled in the UK. Again, there do not appear to be any exceptional circumstances in this case. The criminal has been lawfully resident in the UK for less than 15 years. It is therefore proportionate and in the public interest for this criminal to be deported.
For too long, the rights of foreign criminals have been placed above the rights of the British public, and for too long Parliament has not given its view on when it is proportionate to remove those criminals in the public interest. We are putting that right. We are making it clear that the British public’s right to protection from crime trumps a foreign criminal’s weak claim to family life, and we are allowing the views of those in Parliament, as the democratically elected representatives of the British people, to be heard on this issue loud and clear. We trust that the courts will give due weight to a statement from this House.
Today I have outlined common-sense proposals with which I hope all right hon. and hon. Members can agree. I ask the House to approve this motion and to let its views be heard. I commend the motion to the House.
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
The Government have raised concerns about how article 8 of the European convention on human rights and the Human Rights Act 1998 are interpreted in cases involving foreign criminals convicted in the UK and then put up for deportation. I agree with the Home Secretary that the Government should be able to deport foreign citizens who have come to Britain and then broken British laws. People who come here from abroad need to abide by our laws and our values.
As the House will know, in 2007 the Labour Government introduced provisions for the automatic deportation of foreign criminals in the UK Borders Act 2007, and the number of foreign criminals deported each year trebled from 1,673 in 2005 to 5,528 in 2009. The Home Secretary has raised what the Home Office says are 185 cases that have gone to appeal each year on grounds of family life. We agree that there is a problem, with people finding it hard to understand the justice of the decision by the courts in some cases where foreign criminals have not been deported.
Article 8 is a qualified right. It says:
“Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life.”
However, it also says that that needs to be balanced with
“the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.”
It is not like article 3 on the prevention of torture, which is properly an absolute right, and which is not affected by this motion.
It stands to reason that article 8 should be a qualified right. People can be imprisoned if they break the law even if it affects their family life. The courts decide the balance of rights in individual cases, but it is part of our legal framework that Parliament can set out how qualified rights should be balanced in different areas; indeed, Parliament does so all the time through legislation. That relationship between Parliament and the courts is made even more explicit in the Human Rights Act, where Parliament is actively encouraged to debate how the rights should be balanced, and the judiciary are expected to take that into account.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
That being the case, why has our system apparently been so unbalanced over the past decade?
Yvette Cooper
It was the Labour Government who introduced the UK Borders Act 2007, which provided for the automatic deportation of foreign criminals. The number of deportations of foreign criminals increased substantially from 2005 until the election in 2010, after which the number fell significantly. I therefore say to the hon. Gentleman that his Government bear some responsibility for the action that is being taken. More needs to be done in practice to deport foreign criminals, as opposed simply to discussions of the motion today.
Mr Clappison
If the right hon. Lady is proceeding down that track, perhaps she will remind the House how many prisoners were found not to have been considered for deportation in 2006, let alone have their article 8 rights taken into account. Will she confirm that the figure was just over 1,000?
Yvette Cooper
It is interesting that the hon. Gentleman has mentioned the figure of 1,000. The number of foreign criminals being deported each year trebled between 2005 and 2009 to more than 5,000. In the most recent financial year, the number of foreign criminals being deported from this country fell by 1,000 compared with the previous year. The UK Border Agency has raised a series of concerns about how individual cases are being dealt with and the problems with travel documentation. Those are effectively administrative concerns. Some 1,000 cases are not being dealt with, not as a result of article 8, but because of serious problems with administration at the UK Border Agency. I think that that is serious, and I hope that he does too.
Mr Clappison
Is the right hon. Lady telling us that the Home Secretary of the day, Charles Clarke, who was an honourable man, resigned because he presided over such a glorious success?
Yvette Cooper
As the hon. Gentleman will know, as a result of the problems over foreign criminals, a series of actions and measures were taken that increased the number of foreign criminals being deported. The problem for the Government is that the actions that they have taken seem to have reduced the number of foreign criminals being deported by more than 1,000 a year—a drop of nearly 20% in 12 months. That means that foreign criminals who should be deported are staying in this country and in the community. The UK Border Agency is not deporting them because of the chaos and fiasco within it.
Alok Sharma
Will the right hon. Lady be supporting the motion this evening? Everything that she is saying suggests that she supports what the Home Secretary has set out.
Yvette Cooper
I think that we need action to deport more foreign criminals. That includes more practical action through the UK Border Agency. The Home Secretary and the Minister for Immigration need to explain what they think the motion means. I will come on to that now, because it is an important issue.
The relationship between Parliament and the courts is made explicit in the Human Rights Act 1998. Parliament is actively encouraged to debate the way in which rights should be balanced, and the judiciary is expected to take that into account. Similarly, the British courts cannot strike down an Act of Parliament or primary legislation on immigration, even if they think that it does not comply with the Human Rights Act. Parliament has to decide how to respond if that is the case. That is the legal and democratic framework within which we operate. As part of that, it is reasonable for Parliament to express its view on the balance of different rights, and in particular the balance of different qualified rights. Indeed, we do so all the time through our legislation.
Jeremy Corbyn
My right hon. Friend will have heard the intervention of the Chair of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. Does she not think that it would have been better if this proposal had been laid on the Table today to enable his Committee to examine it and its implications for our participation in the European convention on human rights?
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend makes an important point, because the Joint Committee on Human Rights does important work. The status of the motion is unclear, because we do not know exactly how the Home Secretary expects it to operate. For example, we know that the new immigration rules affecting foreign criminals, which were set out last week, explicitly refer to how article 8 should be addressed. We believe that is legitimate, but other immigration rules do not make such reference. The rules on foreign criminals also allow the courts to consider exceptional cases, but the process remains deeply unsatisfactory and confused. The Home Secretary has said that she wants to send clear signals to the courts, but she is not sending clear signals to the House.
Mr Cash
Is the Home Secretary aware of the series of speeches made by the Lord Chief Justice to the Judicial Studies Board and others? He has made it abundantly clear that in his opinion the judiciary, including the senior judiciary, have given far too much attention to the Strasbourg precedents and not enough to what he describes as the “golden thread” of the English common law. He says that it is therefore essential that we get this right and do not engage in generalised waffle about the question—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. The hon. Gentleman has had two interventions that have taken up speaking time. I am sure he would not want to do that, in case he wants to catch my eye later.
Yvette Cooper
I am not sure whether the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) was accusing me or the Home Secretary of “generalised waffle”. Given his record, I fear that it could have been either of us. It was probably both.
I am sure the hon. Gentleman will have read considerably more of the judicial pronouncements on this subject than I have, but the House is being challenged to send a clear signal to the courts, and we are not being clear about what we are doing in the motion. The status of the motion remains unclear because it is neither primary nor secondary legislation.
Mr Straw
Although the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) is quite right to refer to the important observations of the Lord Chief Justice, does my right hon. Friend accept that even if the Human Rights Act had never have been passed, we would still have been faced with this conundrum about the balance between the articles in the European convention on human rights so long as we remained committed to the convention? That is a key part of the Conservative party’s policy as well as ours.
Yvette Cooper
My right hon. Friend is right. The convention provides an important framework, and like him I understand that the Conservative party remains committed to it. A strength of the Human Rights Act—I know he was a key pioneer in bringing it into British law—is that it provides Parliament with the ability to debate article 8. It is legitimate for us to do so as part of our debate on immigration rules and all kinds of other legislation.
Mr Burrowes
I will help the right hon. Lady not to take any further interventions by asking her to be clear about the Opposition’s position. They cannot have it both ways. I understand that they accept the observation of the House of Lords in the Huang case in 2007 that immigration lacked a clear framework, but do they also accept the observation that that was because the immigration rules
“are not the product of active debate in Parliament”?
We are having that debate today, so surely she should welcome that and accept the motion. Let us not just talk about it, let us have some action.
Yvette Cooper
The hon. Gentleman is right that we need a proper debate in Parliament and proper scrutiny. However, there are concerns about how the Home Secretary has set the matter out today. For example, the motion represents neither primary nor secondary legislation, so it is not clear whether the Home Secretary wants it to trump case law. She spent some time reading individual cases on to the record, so we can only assume that she wants the motion and today’s debate to trump case law and individual decisions. However, it is only a motion of the House. We have told her that we are happy to work with her on primary legislation to ensure that there is a proper legal framework.
Yvette Cooper
I will give way one last time, to the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), who I know intervened on the Home Secretary.
Pete Wishart
Is it the right hon. Lady’s understanding that what the motion asks us to do—she is absolutely right that it is neither primary nor secondary legislation—is sign up to the Home Secretary’s immigration rules applying in their totality unless the shadow Home Secretary and her colleagues introduce another motion to challenge them?
Yvette Cooper
That is not what the motion says. It deals simply with an issue of principle about whether Parliament should be able to set out how article 8 is interpreted. Various lawyers have said that the motion is little more than a statement of fact and is effectively the equivalent of the Home Secretary regarding the immigration rules as compliant with article 8.
That is what the motion does, but it is not clear whether the Home Secretary expects us to endorse the detailed content of individual immigration rules, only some of which she discussed in her speech—many were not discussed. She referred, for example, to foreign criminals. The Opposition believe that the Government’s broad approach to foreign criminals is the right one—we think it is right to take stronger action, including through the immigration rules and the Border Agency—but this process is not appropriate as a general rule for the scrutiny of the content of immigration rules. For Parliament to attempt such scrutiny just two sitting days after the rules were published would be inappropriate, and it would be unlikely to reassure the courts that the detail had been properly scrutinised and debated.
In particular, today’s debate cannot be about the detail of the wider family immigration rules, which were published only last week. Further scrutiny will be needed, because there are concerns about whether the rules are the most effective way of protecting the taxpayer, and whether they are fair and just. Those concerns should be debated properly, but that cannot happen in a debate on a general motion.
The motion refers simply to the broad immigration rules and cannot suffice as proper scrutiny or endorsement of the changes to individual rules. The Opposition are happy to support the Government’s approach to tackling foreign criminals, because we believe that more action needs to be taken, including through the immigration rules. We also believe the Government are right to consider how to ensure that article 8 is interpreted. In that way, they can provide a framework of guidance when it comes to dealing with foreign criminals through the immigration rules.
There is a wider challenge. The Home Secretary’s reason for introducing the motion was that she is concerned that more foreign criminals should be deported. She will know that the number of foreign criminals deported in 2011-12 fell by nearly 18%. If all those in the cases to which she referred—the 185 cases that the Home Office said were granted appeal on article 8 grounds—were instead deported, the number deported in the most recent financial year would still have fallen by around 15% on the previous year. Whatever the Home Secretary’s intention, the motion still deals with only a small minority of cases involving foreign criminals.
The border inspector has made it clear that one of the main reasons why people are not being deported is difficulty in obtaining travel documentation. Everyone recognises that that can be difficult and untimely in some cases, but those practical operations have clearly become significantly worse since the election, which is a deep concern. The Home Secretary has said nothing today to answer those concerns or to address the growing concern that the Border Agency’s performance is deteriorating substantially on the Government’s watch.
The Opposition want to be able to support the Government’s approach to tackling foreign criminals, but we need more answers from the Home Secretary about what she hopes the motion will do.
Mrs May
There is a very simple question for the shadow Home Secretary. Does she believe it is right that, as the courts have said, Parliament should give a clear view on what the public interest is in relation to the operation of article 8 of the European convention on human rights, on the right to a private and family life? If she believes that that is the case, and that fewer foreign criminals should be allowed to stay in this country on the basis of article 8, she should support the motion and give a clear message to the courts. I am beginning to think that she is trying to confuse the courts and to prevent them from taking that interpretation of the motion. Does she support a clear message to the courts or not?
Yvette Cooper
The Home Secretary talks about clear messages, but she is not giving a clear message to the House, never mind to the courts. She has been confused at every step about what the motion is supposed to do. Time and again, she has been asked whether it is supposed to trump case law or endorse the details of individual immigration rules, on which no opportunity for proper scrutiny has been given, and which have not even gone through the normal processes in the House. It is not clear whether this is supposed to be an endorsement of the existing immigration rules or the future immigration rules. She has not made her position clear.
We would like to be able to support the Home Secretary in her principled statement that article 8 should be discussed by the House and is a matter for legitimate debate. We also want to support her in taking action to deport more foreign criminals, but we urge her to do something about the real problem, which she is still ignoring. She also needs to provide answers to the House about how the detail on other aspects of the immigration rules, particularly on family and other parts of her proposed immigration changes, will be scrutinised, and whether she is trying to bypass the normal scrutiny processes.
The Home Secretary has not chosen a normal approach today. She needs to do more to deport more foreign criminals, but she should not try to subvert normal processes and should be straight with the House about what she is asking it to do.
Jeremy Corbyn
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. In her speech, the Home Secretary referred extensively to rules laid before the House but not prayed against and therefore not debated. Is it in order for us to discuss the contents of those proposed rules, because that is exactly what she did throughout her opening speech?
Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)
I shall be fairly brief. In one sense, it is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), because I would like to pick up one or two of her points. Her speech started as though it would be bipartisan but ended on an extremely partisan note.
A couple of background points should be made immediately. First, under the previous Government, there was a surge in net immigration quite unprecedented in our country’s history. Even according to official figures, more than 2 million more people entered the country than left it under the last Labour Government, but given that border controls had largely broken down and we were no longer measuring embarkation, there is a range of statistics and estimates suggesting that the numbers might be much higher. For example, the Office for National Statistics keeps on revising up its population projection statistics. In 2004, it said that by 2050 the UK population would reach 67 million, but it now says that in just 15 years, it will be 73 million—twice the increase.
Secondly, the shadow Home Secretary made much of the number of deportations of foreign criminals, looking particularly at a single year. The statistic she did not share with the House is that the number of foreign criminals in British prisons almost trebled under the Labour Government, from 4,000 to more than 11,000. That should concern us all.
Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)
Is that not actually a good statistic showing that the police were catching criminals and locking them up?
Mr Brazier
The hon. Gentleman is obviously not familiar with the statistics. The number of criminals in the criminal justice system, or in prison, rose by between 20% and by 30%—I cite these figures from memory—over that period. The fact that the number of foreign criminals trebled suggests that much was wrong with our border controls at the time.
I strongly support what my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is trying to do. She and the Minister for Immigration, my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green), my constituency neighbour who is sitting next to her, have taken a brave stand in this area, against a great deal of criticism by much of the media and many parts of the legal establishment. My concerns about what we are doing are all to do with the fact that we are not going far enough. They are in no way about opposing what we are trying to do.
My first concern is one that I mentioned in an intervention on my right hon. Friend. Experience from a number of other areas of law—not least family law—suggests that the courts might drive a coach and horses through what we are trying to achieve by putting the words “except in exceptional circumstances” in each of the relevant places. An alternative would be either simply not to include those words at all, or to say that in exceptional circumstances cases should be considered again by the Home Office.
My next concern is about the way in which we are looking at the rights of children. I hope that most Members of this House—at least those who have been here for a while—will be aware of the amount of time I have spent pursuing the concerns of the most disadvantaged and vulnerable children, particularly in adoption and fostering, and the way in which child witnesses are treated in court. I have to say that the most colossal amount of garbage has come out of some of the court cases. The idea that it is somehow automatically in the child’s interests that a parent who is also a violent criminal who has committed a serious criminal offence should be kept in the country, whether or not the child has regular contact with that parent, seems extraordinary. In many cases it is in the child’s interests that that individual should be deported.
My next concern is that although we are taking a tough line with foreign criminals—something I strongly support—I would urge my right hon. Friend to consider applying some of this thinking more widely. A large proportion of the people who are in this country illegally came in through a perfectly legal route and have chosen to overstay. Two of the most common types of cases involve those who came in on student visas and overstayed—I represent the largest number of students in any constituency in the country—and those who came in on family visits and overstayed. By allowing the courts to continue treating each case on its own merits, from scratch, we are making it harder and harder to justify allowing people to come in for perfectly legitimate reasons.
We want to encourage students into this country, and of course people should be able to come in for family weddings and all sorts of other reasons. However, if it is possible for them to bring an article 8 family connection case after they get here, every time someone who has relatives in this country comes here as a student—I am dealing with one such case at the moment, through my constituency postbag—and every time someone who, by definition, has relatives in this country comes over for a family wedding, Home Office officials will inevitably look at those cases with a jaundiced eye. There is a strong case for saying that if those who come in through certain routes then want to make an article 8 application, they should be able to do so only after they have left the country, applying through the normal routes, irrespective of any exceptional circumstances.
I want to make only one wider point. We get few opportunities in this House to debate the wider issues around immigration. I know from my experience on the doorstep, not only from working in my constituency but from helping in a number of others—in the general election, in local elections and in the marvellous election that has just delivered Boris Johnson as Mayor of London again—that people are deeply concerned about the wider issues around immigration. I am fully behind everything that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and my hon. Friend the Minister for Immigration are trying to do in this regard, but we are a long way from meeting the target, and the target itself seems to regard elderly couples retiring to live in the sun as somehow a balance for young people from areas with very high birth rates coming to this country. We have a very long way to go.
I want to end by saying that we must be clear on one central point. This is an important measure and we must send a message to the courts that it is we in Parliament, not the courts, who are answerable to the people. The courts must therefore listen to what we have to say.
Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)
The hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier) has just said that he wants the House to discuss the wider issues of immigration, and I entirely agree with him. The immigration rule changes, to which the motion refers in a coda, go much wider than simply the interpretation of article 8 in respect of the deportation of foreign criminals. I would say, parenthetically, to the Home Secretary that while I support many of the other changes, I remain concerned about some of them, not least the removal of the right of appeal in family visit cases, which I introduced in the late 1990s. That measure has worked well and fairly, and in my experience it has led to abuse in very few cases. I therefore support the motion before the House in the context in which it has been brought forward—namely, to deal with the problem of the deportation of foreign national criminals.
The particular case that got me heavily involved in this matter as a constituency MP was the death in a motor accident of young Amy Houston. She was walking with her brother in Newfield drive in my constituency when a vehicle driven by an asylum seeker, Mr Mohammed Ibrahim, knocked her down and killed her, although she was alive for six hours after the event. He drove off without stopping or giving up any details. Amy’s bereaved father, Paul Houston, lives in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Graham Jones), who will give the House many more details of the case.
That asylum seeker, an Iraqi Kurd, was convicted of a series of offences arising from the accident. He had no driving qualifications, he was driving while disqualified and uninsured, and driving without a valid test certificate. Subsequently, he was cautioned by the police for the possession of cannabis and for burglary and theft. He was again convicted of driving while disqualified and uninsured, and, six years after the accident, convicted of the offences of harassment, damage to property and theft, for which he was fined. In 2008, he was also arrested and fined £200 for offences arising from a dispute with the woman he subsequently claimed to have married. I shall call her Mrs Smith, as there are children involved and I have no wish to involve them.
That man’s rights of appeal were completely exhausted, and he was due to be sent back. When the matter went to appeal—at Mr Houston’s behest and mine—to an immigration judge, one of the points that the judge regarded as acting in the man’s favour was the fact that the Home Office had made no effort to deport him between 2002, when his right to remain here was exhausted, and 2006. That was because it would not have been safe to deport Mr Ibrahim to Iraq at that time, for reasons of which everybody was aware. Notwithstanding that, it was decided that the relationship he had formed with Mrs Smith, by whom he had had two children, was sufficient to justify a family life entitlement under article 8.
I have to say—I and my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) looked at this—that the evidence of a successful family life was very flimsy indeed. There was total confusion in the court about whether the two had been married and where the marriage had taken place—in Blackburn or Birmingham. Those two places are different and separated by well over 100 miles. There was dispute about the date. On her own admission, Mrs Smith visited this man only once during the nine months in which he was detained as an immigration detainee.
At the behest of my right hon. Friend, the former Home Secretary, there was a further appeal. We had hoped that the courts would use this as a test case to change the law in the direction that the current Home Secretary now rightly seeks. I regret to say that, sadly, that did not happen. As a result, I strongly believe that the only alternative, however imperfect, is to bring forward this motion and try to get a change in the approach of the courts.
I want to apologise to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, to the Home Secretary and to the House, because I have to leave shortly before 6 o’clock. I also apologise to the Minister for Immigration, as I shall not be in my place to hear his winding-up speech—unusually, in my case.
In saying all this, I make no criticism of the judiciary who dealt with these cases. One thing I learned from much contact with the senior judiciary is that precisely because the system rightly sees itself as subordinate to Parliament but does its best to interpret Parliament’s will, the courts sometimes get caught by precedent. As senior members of the judiciary sometimes told me in respect of other cases, unless there is an appeal that really hits the spot, which they can then sort out, the only remaining course is sometimes for Parliament to seek to clarify the law.
Mr Cash
I am most grateful. In dealing with the critical question of proportionality, which is what arises in these cases when a balance needs to be struck by the courts either way, does the right hon. Gentleman agree that, in the absence of very express provision, it will be impossible to fetter the court’s discretion—even with a steer from the wording—in the determination? The evidence is that individual judges will tend to continue to make their own judgment, whatever Parliament seeks to say.
Mr Straw
I am afraid that I do not accept that. A feature of our courts is that they are, quite properly, very conscious of the need to apply the law as they believe Parliament has laid it down. I am confident—I cannot be certain—that, had this proposed approach been passed by Parliament and if necessary enshrined in legislation, the courts would have been able to exercise their judgment on proportionality in a way that showed proper respect to the Houston family and to that poor child rather than to Mr Ibrahim and the woman with whom, in my judgment, he formed a relationship solely in order to evade immigration control and deportation.
Mr Brazier
The right hon. Gentleman is generous in giving way. He is also generous-spirited in saying that he makes no criticism of the judge concerned, in the light of that truly extraordinary judgment. Does he accept, however, that if the motion is passed and such cases continue to arise, it will be time for parliamentarians to start to criticise judges?
Mr Straw
I think that it is a matter of style. It is perfectly right and proper for Members of Parliament to dissent from what the courts have said, as I do here, but I do not think it proper for them to insult or abuse members of the judiciary. It is the essence of our democracy that we have a separation of powers, and that can work only if each side respects it.
My final point is one that I put briefly to the Home Secretary when she made a statement, and it concerns the ending of the confidentiality of judgments in cases such as this. There is good reason for asylum cases themselves to be confidential; indeed, we are bound to that by the 1951 Refugee convention. However, I do not believe that when someone has failed in an asylum case and subsequently seeks something very different, it is right or in the public interest for the whole of the judicial determinations—pages of them—to be effectively kept secret.
It was only by accident that I got hold of that judgment. I was asked by the Home Office not to disclose it to Mr Houston. It was an extraordinary circumstance. Confidentiality in such cases means that the argument that the judiciary come up with is not open to the public scrutiny that is essential if our law is to apply itself properly.
Kris Hopkins (Keighley) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to contribute to what I think is a very important debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier) spoke of the importance of the issue of immigration on the doorstep. Time and again, we hear concern and anger at the frustration that the Government experience when they attempt to deport someone who has committed a serious criminal act.
Ours is a very generous country, which rightly offers the hand of friendship and help to people wherever they may come from. That has been demonstrated by our commitment to international development, and also by our top record on asylum. It is important for us to start from that position. However, I believe that we as a nation have a right to set out the rules on immigration, and to determine migration into this country. That is why I support these rules and the measures that the Government have already taken, such as capping economic migration from outside the European Union, introducing minimum skills, closing the tier 1 general route that has allowed self-selecting migrants to come here without a job, reforming the student visa system, and setting a minimum income for those who wish to bring a spouse or family member here.
I know that some people in my constituency find that last measure upsetting, and they have made representations to me, but why should the British public have to bear that financial burden? If someone wants to come to this country—which is a great country—and gain from all the services, facilities, democracy and freedom of speech that it provides, that person should be required to meet some minimum standards.
We have been revisiting the citizenship test, and I think it important that British history and culture are at the centre of it. Now we are rewriting the immigration rules to help prevent article 8 of the European convention on human rights from being abused, and I think that important as well. I want criminals to be deported from this country as soon as possible, and I welcome the fact that we have removed 4,500 in the last year. I take the point made by the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), and I look forward to the Government’s explanation about the variation of 1,000. I want every single person who can be deported to be deported.
Each incremental change that we make is important. We should not stop reminding individuals that it is a privilege to come to this country, live in it and gain citizenship of it. Those who abuse that privilege should lose it. The last Government lost control of migration, and they lost public confidence in our border controls. We have a huge responsibility to right that wrong.
Although, as we have mentioned, immigration is raised constantly on the doorstep, in our mail boxes, in the pub, and wherever I go as a politician, only a small number of Members are present to contribute to today’s debate. If people do not engage in public debate on the issue because of the stigma associated with it, I would say to them that it is not racist to debate immigration. It is important for us to contribute our voice, take ownership of immigration issues, face up to the fact that policies have failed in the past, and enable the public to be confident about the fact that we take responsibility. If we do not, fascist organisations will step into the void that we have created by not discussing these issues.
Mr Brazier
My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Does he agree that it is supremely ironic that the one major public figure who has had the strength of character to say that many decent people have ended up voting for horrible organisations such as the British National party because they have given up on mainstream parties is our noble Friend Baroness Warsi?
Kris Hopkins
I think our noble Friend makes an extremely important contribution to the debate.
Debating this matter is an essential part of the democratic process, and I want to encourage more people to do it. We wince at the language that is used, but let us get over the issue of language: let us have the debate in all parts of the country, and give people confidence by doing so. The debate has provided an opportunity for the will of the House to be seen, and I look forward to voting in favour of the motion.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
Unfortunately the Home Secretary is not present, but let me place on record that I have a good deal of time for her. I think that her speech a few years ago about “the nasty party” was incredibly courageous. [Interruption.] I was trying to make a wider point. I think that it helped to change a bit of the culture of politics in this country. However, I am extremely disappointed in the process that is taking place today. I no longer know what we are debating, or what the purpose of the debate is. If its purpose is to establish some form of credentials for the House—to cause the courts to acknowledge statements in the House and thus, to an extent, shape their judgments in the light of the debate—this is not the way to go about it.
Normally we would debate legislation, and the legislative proposals would be published in good time. Often, as one of my hon. Friends pointed out, those proposals would be presented to the relevant Committee of the House, which in this instance would probably be the Joint Committee on Human Rights. We would receive a report, a legislative proposal would be debated in the House in some form, and then, as a result of a vote, legislation would be enacted. That is the way in which we not only legislate, but shape the interpretation of legislation by the courts.
Pete Wishart
Like the hon. Gentleman, I am totally confused about what we are voting for this evening. There have been three explanations of what the vote at 8.30 pm will entail, but the danger is that we may be voting for the immigration rules in their entirety, as laid out last week. That is unacceptable to me, and I am sure that it is unacceptable to the hon. Gentleman.
John McDonnell
Let me finish the point I was making, which is that this is an object lesson in how not to go about influencing others, and certainly not the courts. The immigration rules’ legislative proposals were published only a week ago, and there are 45 pages of amendments to what is an even more detailed document. I ask Members who have read all that material to put up their hand. For the benefit of Hansard, I note that one Member has raised their arm—or perhaps two.
Mr Cash
As an assiduous reader of these documents, may I mention that the Journal Office has advised that the use of an approval motion for such rules is normally subject to negative procedure, although that is not taking place in this instance, and the contention that Parliament’s view is subject to review by the courts is also surprising in the context of article 9 of the Bill of Rights? The Clerks have clearly therefore taken on board some serious points regarding the procedure that is being followed.
John McDonnell
I heard those points when they were made previously, and the House of Commons Library note provided to us describes this as an unusual process—I put it no stronger than that. We are having this debate only a matter of days after having received the detailed and complex documents to which I referred, and I simply do not understand the reason for this haste.
Moreover, the first section of the motion is a statement of the obvious; article 8 is, indeed, a qualified right. It then tries to inveigle us into a commitment to support the immigration rules that we received only a few days ago, and which have not been debated. That is an unacceptable attempt to bounce the House into agreeing to something that many of us have genuine concerns about.
We would welcome a wider debate. I know this might sound unusual, but, frankly, I want to consult my constituents on the matter. I want to understand their concerns about these new rules. My anxiety is that we are now entering a political phase. During some Members’ speeches, certain other Members were suggesting, “Well, vote against the motion.” I want nothing to do with this motion, but they were shouting and bearding people about voting against the motion—[Interruption.] I do not think the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson) has been in the Chamber since the beginning of the debate, has he?
John McDonnell
I apologise and withdraw that comment, therefore, but there were definitely shouts of, “Well, vote against it.” Such behaviour draws us into the realm of political knockabout, when we should be having a considered debate about the legislative proposals, and what that results in is clear to anybody who has seen the Daily Telegraph campaign currently being waged, in which it is naming judges and publishing their performance in individual trials. It is saying how many people those judges have deported over the last period. This is taking the form of a witch hunt, therefore, and it is an unacceptable attempt to influence the judiciary. I agree with the hon. Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins) that there needs to be an honest debate about immigration, but to drag things down into a political knockabout on how to vote on a motion that is irrelevant in respect of any legislation is unacceptable and clouds the atmosphere in this House, and thereby undermines its ability to influence any law court or judge.
The procedure the Government have introduced today completely undermines the credibility of the House on this matter. We need to get back to the normal processes of legislation. We need to ensure Members have the necessary information well in advance of any debate, rather than having it in the curtailed time scale that we have experienced on this occasion—and that is particularly important in this instance, as the matter under discussion is very complex, and very sensitive as well. The full procedures of the House should be followed, including referring the matter for consideration by the relevant Committees of the House which will then report back, and giving Members the time to consult their constituents and then to come to a considered view and arrive at a decision on a vote. That vote may well prove to be unanimous, because people will feel they have been fully involved. No court can interpret this current process as expressing the definitive will of the House, however, because many Members will have not a clue what we are voting on as the information has been provided so late.
Mr Cash
I just wonder whether the hon. Gentleman noticed that the Home Secretary referred to the fact that as yet nobody has placed a prayer of annulment to the immigration rules. I understand the rules were introduced into the House only on 13 June. I therefore suspect that, in the event of such a prayer being put, he has the option—and the right—to call for a vote on the substance of the rules.
John McDonnell
That is exactly the point I was about to make. It is important that Members take their responsibilities seriously and that the motion is prayed against. That will enable us to go through the due process of this House, so we can arrive at a decision that Members will feel party to, and that then will have some substance and significance in influencing future judgments in the courts—taking into account, of course, the separation of powers.
Today’s debate is almost a waste of time. It will be looked on as an embarrassment to the House. If we want to improve the standing of MPs and the Houses of Parliament within our community, this is not the route we should be pursuing. I therefore want nothing to do with this motion. I want my position recorded very clearly. I oppose the motion and I wish to get back to a process of legislating whereby every Member feels fully involved—and involved in a process that is serious and significant, not trite as in this instance.
Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), although, unlike him, I welcome this debate and the serious way in which Ministers have identified and targeted the issue of article 8 undermining deportation, especially in relation to foreign national criminals, but also, increasingly, in relation to other elements of our immigration controls. It is worth putting the specific problem of article 8 into perspective. The European convention on human rights was never intended to have any extra-territorial application at all. It was certainly not intended to fetter deportation in any way. That much is very clear from the travaux préparatoires of the convention, all of which are in the public domain.
All of the restrictions have arisen through judicial legislation. Judges in Strasbourg and the UK have stretched existing rights to restrict our capacity to deport. That is contrary to both the separation of powers and basic democratic accountability. It is a serious constitutional matter. It is for elected Members of this House, not unaccountable judges, to decide whether British human rights need to be upgraded from the ones we signed up to in 1950. I should say that, for my part, as a matter of principle and as an elected representative, I support upholding the absolute prohibition on torture. Some will disagree, but I think it is wrong to deport anyone into the arms of a torturing state. On the question of what the right balance might be in terms of deportation and human rights, however, it must be for elected law-makers to decide whether we are going to raise the bar. Politicians can, perfectly respectably, disagree on where the bar should be set, but democrats cannot disagree that it is for legislators to strike that balance.
The fact is that the European Court of Human Rights has been legislating since the 1970s. In the notorious Chahal case in 1996 it was decided that Governments could not deport terrorist suspects if there was a substantial risk of torture in the country to which they were to be returned, but Strasbourg has gone much further. We see new fetters placed on deportation, most recently in the Abu Qatada case. The House will recall that Qatada’s deportation was barred by Strasbourg not because he faced the risk of torture—that was rejected—but because he might not get a fair trial in Jordan. That is a very dangerous precedent. It cannot be Britain’s responsibility to ensure that the justice systems of the world meet British or European standards. Again, it is not for Strasbourg to expand the fetters on deportation through judicial legislation.
Jeremy Corbyn
Surely the hon. Gentleman is rather overreaching himself here. This country signed the UN convention against torture, as one of many countries that did so, and it therefore specifically becomes part of UK law and there is precedent for that. So deporting somebody to a regime that does not accept the convention against torture and therefore might torture them would be illegal under UK law, leaving aside what might happen to them when they were sent back.
Mr Raab
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but he made so many leaps of legal logic that I could not possibly follow them all. The fact is that Strasbourg’s application of a bar on deportation when the individual is at risk of not having a fair trial in their home country is not set out in the UN convention against torture and is not in the European convention on human rights; this is something that Strasbourg, of its own whim, created. The number of appeals by Qatada, at home and in Strasbourg, makes a mockery of the rule of law.
That said, by far the biggest problem we face on deportation arises as a result of the new restrictions under article 8 and the right to family life. If we are being honest, we cannot blame that on Strasbourg, because these are home-grown restrictions; they are a direct result of judicial legislation by UK courts under the previous Government’s Human Rights Act, beyond even the high tide of judicial legislation in case law that has come from Strasbourg. As a result of the Immigration Minister’s direction, the Home Office has produced data showing that 400 foreign criminals a year defeat deportation orders on article 8 grounds. That represents 61% of all successful challenges to deportation orders and this is by far the biggest category.
These cases are not just statistics; they involve real lives. Many shocking cases have been reported in the news, and I wish to refer to just one, that of my constituent Bishal Gurung, a waiter from Esher who was brutally killed by a gang, with his body dumped mercilessly in the river Thames. The perpetrator was convicted of manslaughter and later released. He frustrated his deportation order by citing his right to family life. Let me make it clear: he had no wife, no children and no dependants, yet still he claimed that his family ties trumped the public interest in his deportation. The House can imagine how Bishal Gurung’s family felt about that, and we can imagine what they feel it says about British justice. Now I can at least tell them that the Government and the House of Commons are trying to tackle the problem and reform the law.
Mr Denis MacShane (Rotherham) (Lab)
We all encounter cases where members of constituents’ families have suffered as a result of the most brutal crimes and wish the most terrible justice to be placed on those who committed the crimes—if they are British, they of course stay in our courts and within our country. What I am worried about is: what happened to the principle of not visiting the sins of the father on the child? In the case the hon. Gentleman cites there was no family, but in many cases these men have married British women and have sired British children. Do those children and those wives have no right to have a life, after the sentence has expired, with their father and with their husband?
Mr Raab
The right hon. Gentleman makes a very important point. He crystallises things cogently, but in this case there were no dependants, so what he says does not apply. This is an interesting case. There are many examples where someone has committed a vicious, violent crime—it might be murder or, as in some cases, a sexual offence—has had a child in the meantime and has coerced members of the family, putting them under duress, so that they give evidence, which this person has then relied on to stay in this country. I challenge the view that it is always in the best interests of a child to be with a father of such character and background, but it is very difficult for a court to make that determination when they have evidence in front of them.
I shall discuss one case, which is the most skewed and perverse that I have come across. There are reporting restrictions on it, so I shall be careful about talking about some of the details. It involves an individual raping his partner and then claiming that relationship as part of the family life that he relied on to stay in this country. Many people would regard that as both legally unsustainable and morally perverse.
This is not just about the deportation of foreign criminals; it is about the shifting goalposts of article 8. It is very important to understand that the state of the law now—that static snapshot—is not the sole issue; it reflects years of development. My worry is about the direction in which things are headed. I worry that it will be increasingly impossible to apply border controls, be they in relation to the deportation of foreign national criminals or to other aspects of coalition policy, including cracking down on things such as forced marriage, increasing language requirements or dealing with sham student visas and bogus colleges. All those things will come later because the goalposts will keep shifting. That is a real danger for this Government and for future Governments.
Mr Cash
In his excellent, extremely well researched and powerful speech, my hon. Friend has not yet referred to the manner in which section 6 of the Human Rights Act 1998 impinges on this question. When I was shadow Attorney-General and I invoked our party to repeal the Human Rights Act as part of our policy, it became the policy up to and including the general election. Does he agree that nothing will stop the courts striking down immigration rules as a disproportionate violation of article 8 if they decide to do so?
Mr Raab
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. If he is patient, he will find that I will come on to deal with exactly that point, but I wish to avoid duplication at this moment.
I shall now deal with the points made by the shadow Home Secretary. She clearly knows little of the history of this problem or has conveniently forgotten it, so let me remind the House that this problem has been created by the Human Rights Act that her Government introduced. In fairness, there is an additional element to this, because the previous Prime Minister at least recognised that there was a problem. The House may recall his barnstorming 2007 conference speech in Bournemouth. His biggest cheer came when he vowed, all misty eyed, that
“any newcomer to Britain who is caught selling drugs or using guns will be thrown out. No-one who sells drugs to our children or uses guns has the right to stay in our country.”
As a result, we got changes, including the UK Borders Act 2007, to which the shadow Home Secretary referred. Section 32 of that Act deals with the deportation of foreign national criminals—so far, so good. However, by including an express reference to the Human Rights Act in section 33—something that was totally unnecessary and a matter of political choice—the previous Prime Minister, far from strengthening our capacity to deport, fatally weakened our capacity to deport. Ultimately—this is the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) is making—primary legislation trumps the Human Rights Act, but not if that Act is expressly written into the relevant statute. That may sound like a technical point, but it is crucial to understanding what went wrong with the 2007 Act. The former Prime Minister emasculated his own deportation law, and that speaks volumes about the expediency with which Labour has approached this debate. I believe that the shadow Home Secretary will be a bit less pious about this issue and will perhaps eat a little more humble pie before the House—I am sure that the shadow Immigration Minister will do so. [Interruption.] We live in hope.
I welcome the changes and the motion, but there are questions about whether the changes to the guidance and a mere resolution of this House can deliver the reform we need. I put that precise question to the Lord Chief Justice in November, when he appeared before the Joint Committee on Human Rights. He made it clear that without primary legislation the courts would probably not rein in the expansion and application of article 8 in deportation cases. So I would be grateful if the Minister said what the Government will do if these changes are not fully effective, as at least Government Members hope they will be. Does he agree that if we cannot stop the rot, we will need a new UK borders Act to deal with this issue clearly, categorically, once and for all? It is vital that we can measure the success of the proposed changes we are debating today. Will he ensure that the Home Office now records the number of deportation cases frustrated on human rights grounds, with a breakdown in respect of articles 3, 6 and 8—the main offenders—so that we can measure, see and scrutinise whether this problem gets better or worse as a result of the changes being introduced? The Home Office has not routinely recorded those data. The Immigration Minister went out of his way to ensure that it produced a single quarterly snapshot in 2011—I welcome that and commend him for it—but can he reassure us that that information will be routinely recorded from now on?
Human rights reform is contentious and it needs to take place on three levels: reform of the Strasbourg court; replacement of the Human Rights Act with a British Bill of Rights; and UK legislation to strengthen our border controls.
For my part—others might feel differently—I recognise that our coalition partners are sensitive about the Human Rights Act. I accept that we are unlikely to see the reform that I would like to see in this Parliament and I have already made clear my commitment to the absolute prohibition on torture. I cannot understand, however, why anyone except the lawyers, non-governmental organisations and academics who have made an industry out of human rights would die in a ditch to stop the deportation of serious criminals because it might disrupt their family, social or private ties. To me, as I have said, that suggests a skewed moral compass, not just legal chaos for our border controls.
The changes we need require primary legislation, but we do not have to touch the Human Rights Act to solve this specific problem. It can be done by statutory amendment. I hope that the proposals before us today will tackle the problem—they have my full support—but, if they do not, I hope that all parties will agree to consider very seriously the case for amending the UK Borders Act. We need to draw a line in the sand, to restore democratic control over the criteria for deportation, to stop the ever-expanding list of legal excuses used by some of the worst criminals to stay in this country, to protect the public and, above all, to restore their confidence in British justice. We will do that only by injecting a healthy dose of common sense back into the increasingly perverse application of our human rights law.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
Sometimes, I do not know why we bother. We all turn up for these debates. All those who take an interest in home affairs and issues such as human rights are here, and you are here in your finery, Mr Deputy Speaker. We have heard a very confused speech from the Conservative Secretary of State and we have heard from Labour Members, ever compliant on human rights and home affairs. We have not heard from the Liberals; I do not know whether we will, but I would be interested to hear what they have to say. We are all here, but we are all more or less wasting our time. Why not just get on with it and get The Daily Telegraph, along with the Daily Mail, to conduct our immigration policy? That is what we are getting, with immigration rules that are practically out of The Daily Telegraph’s leader column.
What an absolute farce this afternoon has been. What on earth are we debating? I do not have a clue. We have had three different explanations from the Government about what we are being asked to consider. We are asked to consider that article 8 is a qualified right. Yes, that is a restatement of the bleeding obvious, as I said earlier, and we all know that. We are then asked to support the Government’s immigration rules. Does that mean the immigration rules in their totality, as the Home Secretary said when I intervened, or part of them? Or are we just giving a direction to the judges? I have absolutely no clue whatsoever what we are being asked to consider this evening. It is a total waste of time and a farce. As the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) says, we need a proper process to consider this very important subject—and it is important.
Pete Wishart
I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman is being helpful, but that seems to be another interpretation. When he sums up, the Minister for Immigration must tell us exactly what we are voting on this evening, because I do not know. I cannot support the immigration rules in their totality, so if the Government are saying that we have to accept them tonight, I unfortunately cannot support them and will press the matter to a Division. We cannot accept the rules as they stand. This is a very important debate condensed to four hours and a lot of nonsense.
Jeremy Corbyn
Like the hon. Gentleman, I am confused by much of the debate. Would his interpretation be that whatever the outcome of the rather odd motion the Home Secretary has tabled, it cannot by any stretch of the imagination be construed as an approval of the rules, a direction to courts or as anything other than a vague statement from the Home Secretary of whatever she happens to believe in today?
Pete Wishart
The hon. Gentleman might be right—I do not know. We need to hear from the Government exactly what we are voting on. The Home Secretary made three different attempts to tell the House what we will be voting on tonight, but we are no clearer. At some point, we will need to hear from the Government exactly what they are asking us to support. If they want us to support the full rules, I cannot do that. It is a Conservative assault on article 8 and I will not be able to support it this evening.
We need a considered debate on immigration. Hon. Members who have spoken are absolutely right that the matter concerns our constituents, but in Scotland we do not share the Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, right-wing Tory view of immigration. Scotland consistently sees these issues differently. Scotland’s population is at an all-time high, but only a few years ago we had great concerns that it was going to fall below the iconic 5 million mark for the first time since the 20th century. That was a real and absolute concern that has been addressed by immigration. We see immigration as something that is valuable to our communities and that is there to be cherished, grown and developed. The minute people set foot in our nation, they are new Scots. They are integrated from day one and that is why we do not have such problems.
Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)
Will the hon. Gentleman therefore confirm whether, were Scotland to become independent, it would have its own independent border service?
Pete Wishart
You betcha. We have been observing what has been happening in the UK Border Agency and it is a textbook guide of how not to do to it. It is a nonsensical agency; it is dysfunctional and gets things absolutely wrong. I look forward to the day when we exercise control over our own immigration policies, so that we can have policies that are designed for and suited to our demography, our economy and our population. Right now, our population is at an all-time high because of immigration and we see that as good and positive.
Mark Reckless
Just to clarify, is the hon. Gentleman presuming that an independent Scotland would be part of a common travel area in the way that the Republic of Ireland is? If so, can he be certain of that—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. We are straying way off the matter under consideration.
Pete Wishart
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.
We are here today to consider changes to article 8 of the European convention on human rights, which will effectively define the basis on which people can enter or remain in the UK based on their right to a family life. The motion is a revelation, almost declaring that article 8 is not an absolute right and that it is therefore okay to interpret it in any way that the Government want and for them to give guidance to that effect.
The Government are determined to have their way with the judiciary and to tell it how to interpret these provisions. Why bother even having a judge? Why cannot the Home Secretary and the Minister for Immigration do it themselves? We will have an end to judges performing the delicate balancing exercise they carry out every day in these tribunals and courts will now be dictated by the Secretary of State.
The Home Secretary has set herself quite an ambitious deadline. She has pledged by the end of the summer to end the abuse of the right to a family life by people who should not be here. She has been egged on by the “end the human rights” brigade, whom we see every day in the right-wing press, on the Conservative Back Benches and on the Labour Front Benches. They paint an extraordinary picture of our inner cities, inhabited by marauding foreign national murderers who in the evenings go home to their luxury penthouse flats, probably paid for by benefits and taxpayers’ money, and spend time on the phone to any one of the lavish lawyers who invent any kind of bizarre excuse to show that they have the right to a family life in the UK. That is the picture painted and the pretext behind the assault on article 8 that we are seeing today, and it is all utter nonsense.
Do you know the reality of the question of the right to a family life, Mr Deputy Speaker? Let me tell you. It is not about the marauding foreign nationals about whom we hear every day from the Conservative party. It is about the people whom we see in our constituency surgeries every day when we deal with their cases, who are separated from their families because of the inflexible rules and their rigid application of those rules by the UKBA.
Mr Tom Harris (Glasgow South) (Lab)
I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman’s rant, but can he explain whether he shares the general feeling of repulsion held by most Members of the House about the example of the failed asylum seeker who was responsible for the death of a 12-year-old girl, left the scene of that crime and used his right to a family life to remain in the country? It is of course a small example, but does he understand why we feel such revulsion? Does he understand why ordinary people feel revulsion? Does he accept that one does not have to be a Daily Telegraph or Daily Mail reader to be revolted by that example?
Pete Wishart
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me the opportunity to say absolutely that such people have no place in our country and should be dealt with efficiently and effectively, but article 8 allows the judiciary to do that. What the Government want to do is dictate to judges exactly how they should interpret these cases. I am all for getting rid of all the murderous, mayhem-causing foreign nationals we hear about every day—it is absolutely right that we do that—but let us talk about what actually happens on the ground in our constituency offices and the day-to-day routine cases.
There is a fantastic case in Scotland just now concerning a man called Gary Boyd, who is the deputy head teacher at Kirkwall grammar school in Orkney. He has just returned to his native Scotland after an absence of five years with his Australian wife of nine years. She is having to return to Australia with her eldest son to reapply to come back into the UK because of the way in which the rules have been interpreted by the UKBA, with no flexibility but total rigidity. She had indefinite leave to remain and was out of the country for a long time and did not know that she had to reapply to stay here. She is now off to Australia. What that means—we are talking about the right to family life—is that she will be separated from her husband for six months. Their eldest son is supposed to be sitting his O-levels next year, but he does not know whether he will now be sitting them because of having to go to Australia, and we do not know whether their youngest daughter will be able to start nursery education at the end of the year. This is the reality of the right to a family life and these are the things we should be considering—the rigid rules being applied by the UKBA.
Mr Tom Harris
I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman again but the example he has just cited has absolutely no relevance to the motion before the House. We are talking about deportation cases, but he is not talking about deportation. He is talking about a couple who did not obey the rules that are applied to every single other person in the country. Will he admit that he is not talking about a deportation case?
Pete Wishart
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman once again because he gives me another opportunity to restate that this is the reality—the things that we have to deal with in our constituency offices day in, day out. Yes, we see the headlines in The Daily Telegraph and yes we are appalled by the actions of some foreign nationals. Yes, such people should be deported, but if we are discussing, as we are this afternoon, the right to a family life, this is the reality—the stuff we deal with day in, day out. That is the stuff that needs the real attention.
Who can forget where all this started? It was the hilarious speech by the Home Secretary at the Conservative party conference when she—I am not making this up—cited the example of a Bolivian man who was allowed to remain in the country because he owned a cat. Of course, the Home Secretary is never one to unleash the cat among the pigeons. That ridiculous story had the Justice Secretary twitching in his Hush Puppies. He said at the time that he was willing to bet it was not true, and he was absolutely right because the Home Secretary’s story unravelled faster than a condemned pasty shortly after her speech.
Mr Raab
Has the hon. Gentleman read the case to which he is referring? I do not think he can have because the cat was a relevant factor—not the decisive factor but a material one—in the relationship between the boyfriend and the girlfriend, which was relied on in this case. Has the hon. Gentleman read the case?
Pete Wishart
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I have been following his campaign with great interest, but I think he has ruined it totally with that intervention.
Pete Wishart
Of course I have read the case. The hon. Gentleman has ruined his campaign totally. He has conducted a great campaign in some ways, because it has attracted a lot of attention, and good luck to him because he has managed to secure all these fantastic column inches in all the right-wing newspapers, but he has done himself no justice with that intervention.
When the Home Secretary made her statement the other day, I asked her about these other rules that we now have to consider, which I believe we are now being asked to support. They include the measure that a family has to come up with a minimum income guarantee of £18,600. In the statement, I asked the Home Secretary why there is a flat rate across the whole United Kingdom and why there are not different rates to reflect the different incomes in other parts of the UK. In Dundee, there is a different standard of living than in London docklands—that just makes sense. She said that it would not be possible to impose different rates across the UK. What absolute rubbish. That happens in Australia. The Australians have different immigration rules for different states and they seem to get along perfectly well. All we would need to do is license people. If there was an agreement for someone to come to one part of the UK, they would have to stay in that part or lose their right to stay here and be arrested and deported. That is simple, straightforward and could easily have been done, but the Home Secretary decided that was not for us, and now everyone across the UK has to have at least £18,600.
Even if that sum is secured, the partner is now likely to be stuck in the purgatory of a probation period of five years rather than the current two. If one is foolish enough to have children, the required income level rises substantially. We are told that this is to prevent migrants from sponging off the state, but Government statistics show that foreign-born people are less than half as likely to claim benefits as those who were born here. The measures will force families to choose between staying apart or moving abroad.
The Home Secretary ridiculously says that these immigration policies are not about numbers, but if they are not, why have the Government imposed the arbitrary cap that is already doing such damage to our universities, colleges and one of the few sectors of our economy that is actually booming?
The Minister for Immigration (Damian Green)
I think the hon. Gentleman is very confused. He is talking about a cap on universities but there is no cap on student numbers in this country. There is a cap on work visas, which is nothing to do with universities.
Pete Wishart
I am grateful to the Minister. He has received representations from countless educational institutions right across Scotland that have told him again and again about the damage that his immigration policies are doing to our university and college sector. I wish that he and the Home Secretary would respond positively and do the right thing for our universities and colleges, which are suffering in Scotland because of these Tory immigration policies.
This is such a Tory solution. There is one rule for the rich immigrant and another for the poor, forcing an estimated 15,000 families a year to emigrate or live apart. That is heartless and it gives the lie to the Tories’ manifesto claims to support what in their words is society’s building block—the family.
We will not do things this way and we look forward to getting the levers of immigration. We have observed what has happened down here and it does not work. We have seen the chaos of the UKBA and we will not do the same. We will make sure that Scotland is a welcoming, accommodating place when we have the levers of immigration at our disposal. I was at one of our national conferences at the weekend and I listened, consecutively, to an Italian Scot, an Asian Scot and a Frenchman who declared himself a new Scot and a European. Such people all contribute to the Scottish economy and to our community and culture. They have enriched Scotland. When we secure the full levers of immigration we will design a system that will attract the best and the brightest and we will address our demographic and population concerns. I cannot wait for that day when we will get rid of the Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail right-wing Tory nonsense determining our immigration policy here.
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
I was interested to hear the contribution of the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), and particularly his analysis of immigration and what Scotland might look like under his vision of immigration.
It will come as no surprise to the House that I, as a British Asian, follow all things immigration with a degree of interest. I not only welcome this debate but applaud the Secretary of State’s statement to the House last week and congratulate the Government on bringing forward this motion on the application of article 8. I say that in relation to everything the motion is promoting.
For too long our immigration system has, as my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) highlighted, been left open to interpretation, abuse and the failures of the previous Government to address many issues. Here we are addressing the issue of foreign national offenders and lawyers using human rights as an excuse—the wrong kind of excuse—to cause a range of problems and undermine public confidence in this country’s immigration and criminal justice policies. As has been mentioned, not only did the previous Government fail to address many of the problems that have been touched on today, but their inaction made the situation far worse, which makes the challenge faced by this Government even greater.
Few things have been more damaging to public confidence or caused as much division as what has been perceived as the open-border policy pursued by Labour, which left our borders subject to the consequences of uncontrollable immigration. This is no doubt why, throughout my time as a Member of Parliament, short though it has been thus far, and before then as a candidate, immigration has been one of the most pressing concerns in my constituency when I have been out knocking on doors. Instead of feeling safe and protected by a system that manages immigration responsibly, my constituents have little or no confidence in our ability to protect our borders. It falls upon the shoulders of this Government to redress that balance now, as they are doing.
My constituents are left astounded, shocked and appalled by judgments made under article 8 or other human rights laws that have allowed foreign criminals to walk our streets and commit crimes. We have already heard about some of those crimes this afternoon. My constituents know full well that the immigration and the legal systems defy common sense when criminals such as Mohammed Ibrahim are able callously to kill a young girl and then rely on human rights laws and claim a right to a family life to avoid being deported.
On top of that, the European Court of Human Rights has been blocking us from deporting Abu Qatada. We have had the issue of prisoner votes in this country. All this highlights how powerless Parliament has become when faced with the onslaught of human rights case law. What these decisions by immigration tribunals and judges do is demonstrate that the human rights laws that they are following alongside case law value the rights of criminals over the rights of the law-abiding majority and the victims of crime. They also undermine the entire immigration system, including those who come to this country who are self-sufficient, want to be British, want to contribute to our economy and, importantly, want to abide by this country’s laws.
It is therefore absolutely right that the Government pursue the changes not only to rebalance the immigration system, but to prevent these outrageous and appalling abuses from happening in the future. It is fundamentally important to our democracy that Parliament is able to hold the courts to account and lay down guidance and rules for them to follow. I urge Ministers to press ahead, regardless of some of the hollow criticism that we have heard, because the public expect the Government to act on such issues, to put in place proper controls on immigration and to put an end to the appalling way in which human rights laws have been subject to interpretation.
The Home Secretary rightly said this afternoon that coming to Britain to live and settle is a privilege. When foreign nationals break our laws, show scant regard for our way of life and put the law-abiding majority at risk, they should expect to be deported. They have wilfully chosen to offend, and in those circumstances they have chosen to forfeit their entitlement to remain in this country. The Home Secretary can be assured of my support and the support of my constituents as she presses ahead with these important reforms. This is a positive and welcome motion, but on the wider issues of immigration and deportation, I would like to see further steps. The public expect more proactive steps forward.
We have heard about the 5,000-plus foreign national offenders who were deported last year, but 11,000 remain in our prisons. Under the present rules it is almost impossible to deport some of the 4,000 who are of European origin. I would like to see the motion taken further, although that is not the subject of the debate today. In a future system foreign prisoners who need to be deported should go straight from jail to a plane. That would go a long way in reassuring our constituents and increasing confidence in the system.
I support the motion and hope that it will be the first of a number of positive measures to bring power and decision making back to this Parliament so that we can regain control of our borders and regain public confidence when it comes to human rights issues in this country.
Mr Tom Harris (Glasgow South) (Lab)
I begin by offering support to my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), who is resuming his place in the Chamber. He is right to express concern about the purpose of the debate and the purpose of the motion on the Order Paper. I have a lot of time for the Immigration Minister, and I know that he will have taken those comments seriously. I expect that in his summing up, he will want to explain to the House why we are here today and what precedent he expects the motion to set—or what precedent has already been set at some time in the past that leads him to believe that the discussion of the motion will have a substantial effect on the decisions of judges in the future.
Before I continue my remarks, I should like to comment on the contribution from the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart). It was a misjudged contribution. He repeatedly referred disparagingly to right-wing papers such as The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail. Actually, there is a troika of right-wing newspapers. Everyone knows that they are The Telegraph, The Mail and The Sun, but the hon. Gentleman did not mention The Sun or any News International newspapers. I cannot think why. Apparently the right-wing press is now limited to The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail.
The hon. Gentleman also showed utter contempt for the citizens of England by suggesting that Scots, unlike the English, are welcoming of immigrants, and that every immigrant to Scotland is integrated into Scottish life as of day one—I think that was the expression that he used. Naturally, he is entirely wrong. Scots, like citizens in the rest of our country, are tolerant and welcoming, but like those in the rest of the country, we value fairness. Support for immigration in Scotland does not extend to support for open-door immigration of the kind proposed by the Scottish National party.
Pete Wishart
I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has had a chance to look at the Scottish Social Attitudes survey that was carried out in the past year. If he has had a look at it, what does he make of it?
Mr Harris
I can tell the hon. Gentleman that, unlike him, I speak to constituents all the time, and I know that my constituents have exactly the same view as citizens throughout the United Kingdom. They want to welcome asylum seekers, they want to welcome immigrant communities, but they want a sense of fair play that applies equally across the border. Scots are no more or less tolerant of foreign-born criminals remaining in the UK than are our fellow citizens unfortunate enough to live south of the border.
Now that the hon. Gentleman has had a chance to calm down and get his breath back, I would like to ask him whether, if Scots throughout the country are some sort of homogenous entity, all thinking the same thing, he can explain why the only local authority in Scotland that applied to welcome asylum seekers was Labour-controlled Glasgow—not Perth, not Edinburgh, not another local authority anywhere in Scotland, just Glasgow?
As has already been highlighted, the deportation of foreign criminals is more often frustrated by bureaucratic process than by appeals under article 8 of the Human Rights Act. My concern today is that some Members of the House and many members of the media—yes, the right-wing media—are using the relatively small number of appeals under this part of the Act to make the case for the Act’s repeal. That would be unacceptable. It is important that the debate focuses on the reasons behind the failure of the Government—and, yes, the failure of previous Governments—rather than on the straw man of the Human Rights Act.
Nevertheless, it is a concern to all our constituents when someone who has enjoyed British hospitality, and who has chosen to repay that hospitality with contempt for our law is allowed to remain in the UK. My understanding—perhaps the Immigration Minister will be able to clarify this in his summing up—is that the interpretation of article 8 as representing an absolute right to a family life is a peculiarly British interpretation. My understanding is that other judiciaries operating elsewhere in the EU under the European convention on human rights attach a significantly different interpretation to article 8—one that more frequently allows the deportation of foreign criminals.
The Government’s own policy on the circumstances in which deportation would not be appropriate—for example, if the person had lived here under valid terms for at least 15 years—deserves some attention.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) has already referred to the shocking case of Aso Mohammed Ibrahim, who in 2003 was responsible for the death of 12-year-old Amy Houston in a hit-and-run incident in Lancashire. Mr Ibrahim is variously described as an asylum seeker, a failed asylum seeker and an illegal immigrant. In fact, only the last term is correct. He arrived in the UK in 2001 and was refused refugee status, so he was never—not for one second—a refugee, and his appeal rights were exhausted by the end of 2002.
It is not the Human Rights Act that is to blame for the fact that too many criminals are allowed to remain here; it is the failure of the UK Border Agency to remove illegal immigrants in far greater numbers, and that should concern the House. Of course I accept the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn, who is a former Home Secretary, which is that on many occasions we simply cannot return people to their country of origin because it would not be safe to do so.
However, I have come across many constituents who have been in the country for eight or 10 years, applied for asylum and had the application refused, but who regard the refusal simply as an indication that no decision on their case has yet been made. They are wrong. They have been given the decision on their case: they have been told that they are in the country illegally and so should remove themselves. Far too often we allow time to march on and they do not make arrangements to remove themselves, but the UK Border Agency should remove them forcibly—I know that that process costs a lot—if they are not prepared to remove themselves voluntarily. I should point out that, although this debate has been billed as being about the scandal of permitting criminals to remain in the UK, the motion rightly refers only to migrants, not criminals.
I welcome the Government’s statement that one of the exceptions to the presumption that an individual will be deported is where an individual has been resident in the UK legally for 15 years. I hope that the Minister, in summing up, can confirm that the many thousands of individuals who have remained here illegally, ignoring decisions to refuse them refugee status, will not qualify under that exception as they have not been in the country legally. That issue is as pertinent to the cases of law-abiding immigrants as it is to criminals, and article 8 has been used to confirm the residency in the UK of many who have no criminal past and who are of less interest to the right-wing tabloids.
Countries across the whole UK are relocating, but our hospitality is sorely tested when people who come here either to seek refuge or to build a better life for themselves repay it by exhibiting contempt for our rules and, by implication, contempt for our citizens. Whether they have broken the law through an appallingly violent and callous act, as in the case of young Amy Houston, or by ignoring an appeal ruling that they have no right to remain here, the right to a family life cannot be absolute. The Government are right to say so. However, they are merely reflecting what the whole country already believes.
Yvette Cooper
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. The Home Secretary did not properly clarify earlier whether this motion is separate from the normal and proper debates on the different immigration rules. The Clerk of the Journals has now provided some clarification and reassurance that these are in fact separate. He has advised:
“The effectiveness of the statutory disapproval procedure for any particular Statement of Changes in the Immigration Rules laid before Parliament is a matter of law, which cannot be altered or over-ridden by any Resolution of the House of Commons.”
Will you confirm that that is indeed the case, because I think that would provide the House with important clarification and allow it to deliver a clearer message?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I thank the right hon. Lady for notice of her point of order. The legal effect of the resolution is not a matter for the Chair; it is a matter for the courts. But I can confirm that, as a matter of procedure, agreeing the motion would not prevent the tabling of any motion to disapprove a Statement of Changes in the Immigration Rules as provided by statute.
Mr Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and West Devon) (Con)
I had not intended to speak, but a number of matters have been raised on which, it seems to me, some light might be thrown. The hon. Members for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) and for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) both questioned the effect of what we are doing, and it is on that point that I hope to shed some light.
This is a limited, practical measure, and one that I support, but I do not hold out an enormous degree of hope that it will have a substantive effect on the exercise of the courts’ discretion. Section 3 of the Immigration Act 1971 provides that the Home Secretary can amend the immigration rules, and it provides for the procedure, by way of negative resolution, by which those rules can be challenged. If they are challenged, the Act requires the Home Secretary simply to consider the points that have been made on the resolution that has disapproved them and alter, as she sees fit, the executive administrative guidance that those rules contain. Today, an attempt is being made to give some democratic force to the alteration of the immigration rules, which the Home Secretary could otherwise have done simply by an Executive act, in the hope that it will communicate to the courts the fact that there has been some consideration by Parliament.
I take the view that that might well have some effect on the courts beyond the fact that they will attach a degree of weight to the Home Secretary’s opinion in any event. It is well established in the human rights jurisprudence that a decision maturely taken by the Executive—in this case a Secretary of State who has a wide range of advice available to her and who can consult experts in the field—to change the existing immigration rules would already be accorded a degree of weight by the courts when they are considering what is a proportionate decision in the application of a specific human right. What the Home Secretary is doing today, which, I submit, the House should applaud, is giving the House an opportunity to voice its opinion on the changes she has decided to make.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
The key point, as I think the Clerks have already made clear, is that we are not deciding on the totality of the changes; we are deciding only on the basis of what is in the motion being debated today. I would not want the hon. and learned Gentleman to conflate the two by mistake.
Mr Cox
The courts are more than capable of appreciating that what we are dealing with here is not primary legislation. Primary legislation will be accorded a much greater degree of weight—some people use the word “deference”, but the courts have disapproved it—because there is usually a period of consultation, a Bill might have been scrutinised before it was even brought to the House and a wide range of interests will have been taken into account in the process of scrutiny. A court is more than able to distinguish between a piece of primary legislation and a motion such as the one before us and to see the scope that the motion considers. That is why I say that this process is likely to produce a degree—probably a very modest degree—of additional weight to be accorded to the Home Secretary’s discretion. Her discretion would normally be accorded a degree of weight by the courts, and the motion might add a little more to the changes to the immigration rules than they would already have been accorded.
It is not difficult to interpret what is being done here. It is perfectly valid. The courts will not be deceived or hoodwinked. They will see what we are doing. They will no doubt read, if they take the trouble to go that far down the pages of Hansard, the profoundly principled position that the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington took when he held up his hands and, with a cry of horror, said, “Not with my assent.” But the reality is that the motion will lend some modest substance to the already substantial decision that the Executive and the Home Secretary have taken. She should be applauded for, and congratulated on, giving the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire the opportunity to mount that—one hon. Member described it as a “rant”; I should never be so impolite—extraordinary, eloquent and passionate diatribe, to which he treated the entire House from his position on the Opposition Benches, representing the Scottish National party.
John McDonnell
If the hon. and learned Gentleman’s argument is that what we are doing today is virtually meaningless, I agree, but where does that fit with Pepper v. Hart, which we have always used as the guide to what influences a court’s decisions, and which defines very narrowly how a reference to Parliament—in other words, to a ministerial statement that gives guidance on existing legislation—can be made?
Mr Cox
May I say first that it is not my argument—and the hon. Gentleman knows it. It is a forensic point, which does not do his subtlety and sophistication justice, to suggest that I am saying that this is meaningless. On the contrary, I am saying that it has meaning but we must not overestimate the meaning that it has.
Mr Cox
No! It makes a useful and practical contribution and is a useful measure that, to the extent that the courts are able to perceive what has gone on here, will no doubt provide a useful added measure of weight to the Home Secretary’s discretion. As for Pepper v. Hart, that is concerned of course with primary legislation and the detailed interpretation of individual clauses.
All that is being done here is that the courts are being invited to take note that the motion before us is not simply the executive fiat of the Home Secretary, and that the Home Secretary has put it before Parliament—much the same would have applied if it had been challenged under the 40-day procedure—and a debate about it has been held. Indeed, the courts in the past have examined motions and resolutions of this House and pointed out that they were merely resolutions, but they have not ignored them, and that is exactly what I expect will happen in this situation.
So the motion is perfectly reasonable. It is a laudable attempt to give this House the opportunity to have its say, and if I may say so there was a degree of pedantry from Opposition Front Benchers, who stood on their moral high horse and said, “This should have been primary legislation.” Of course it should not; the immigration rules already have a statutory procedure for amendment, through the Home Secretary’s laying them before Parliament. That is how they are amended, so we ought to avoid the forensic froth of suggesting that this is not a useful and practical—albeit, I accept, limited—measure.
There is no doubt that the Executive have the right, supported by Parliament in whatever measure they ask Parliament to support them, to put to the courts a degree of guidance on the exercise of the courts’ undoubted discretion to decide what is proportionate. This is not an attempt to fetter the courts; it cannot be. As my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) has so often said, the courts are “unfetterable”. They will not be fettered by this House, and rightly so. The courts must exercise an independent, individual judgment.
There are other circumstances, however, in which the Executive seek to give guidance to the courts on what they consider proportionate in the circumstances. Let me give the House another example. The Home Secretary has a discretion to make an exclusion order against somebody outside this country whom it is not conducive to the public good to admit.
In—I think—2007 or 2008, what is called an acceptable behaviours policy was promulgated, setting out the general approach that a Home Secretary will take to what is a proportionate decision when people have made expressions that make them undesirable entrants to this country. That was done because, of course, article 10 on freedom of expression can be invoked, and the acceptable behaviours policy provides a broad framework for the discretion that the Home Secretary is to exercise in deciding whether to admit such a person who is guilty of such statements.
The sentencing guidelines are not dissimilar. They are guidance to a court on how a discretion might be used, but they are not binding: they cannot fetter the independent and individual judgment of the court. So, in my view, what is being proposed here is not without precedent in other areas. It is a limited, practical measure, and it is one that the House should strongly support, because there is a widespread belief among the public—sometimes wrongly held, as the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire has said, and sometimes a caricature—that the Human Rights Act is a shield for all kinds of disgraceful behaviour. The motion before us will do something to restore public confidence in the decisions that the courts make, and will demonstrate that the Government and this House are conscious that a change needs to be made. What will that do? It will assist the courts in striking the right balance and in achieving a degree of consistency, and, in my respectful submission, that is a wholly laudable aim to which this House ought to give its support.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
I am grateful to the hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox) for making a wonderful speech, trying to convince the House that we are actually doing something useful when the Clerk has just explained to us that we are not doing anything very useful whatever. We are deeply indebted to the hon. and learned Gentleman, and the courts are the stronger for the ability to make that kind of argument—to make something utterly irrelevant seem important. It is a skill and a talent that, sadly, only some of us are able to possess.
The Home Secretary probably tabled this rather strange motion because she assumed that it would be a useful bone to feed to her Back Benchers, who are obsessed with the Human Rights Act, with the European convention on human rights and, in some cases, with anything to do with Europe. They follow their obsession every day in The Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail and Daily Express. Some of them even read The Sun, I believe, and they continue with that obsession.
We should be slightly more careful than that, however, because the European convention on human rights was established in 1948 to look to a future in Europe based on human rights and a respect for people, rather than on the power of the state to oppress people. We had come out of the Nazi period, the most horrible period in European history, so the popular press, which consistently reports anything to do with human rights as a laughable matter, should remember that many people owe their very lives to the existence of that convention and the European Court of Human Rights, which have had a good effect on many other countries.
The Home Secretary may be saying that immigration law trumps the Human Rights Act and the European convention on human rights, but article 8 has always been qualified and no one has ever disputed that. What would she and others say if the Hungarian Government made a similar statement, announcing that it absolved them of any need to be taken to the European Court of Human Rights for their treatment of Roma people and Traveller people in Hungary? We should think a bit more deeply about the causes of human rights abuse throughout Europe, and be a bit more sympathetic to the European Court of Human Rights and the European convention on human rights.
I shall not speak for long, because others want to get in and the debate is time-limited, but the Home Secretary placed in the Vote Office last week an explanatory statement on her immigration proposals, and it ranges far wider than the question of just deporting foreign criminals. It skates over the important issue of how children and families are treated in the right to family life. She has chosen to interpret that right in the narrow sphere of the individual—usually male—criminal who has served a sentence, left prison, is hopefully a reformed character and then asserts that he has a right to family life in the UK, giving stern warnings that she will not accept any of that stuff any more and they are going to be on their way. She might care to look at what the London School of Economics did in considering the effects of article 8, and what others have done in this respect.
Baroness Hale has said that a child cannot be held responsible for the moral failings of their parents. That is a profound statement that emphasises that children do have rights in these situations. They have rights not to be deported, and their parents have rights to enjoy the company of their spouse or partner. Surely that is what we should be looking at. What is the effect on those children of one parent being removed? Some of us have been through the sad experience of arguing that case on behalf of constituents. One partner and their children do not want to be removed to another jurisdiction, so they remain here knowing full well that the missing partner—the ex-prisoner—will not be allowed into this country for at least 10 years. That is a huge proportion of a child’s life and experience. We should be slightly more liberal and understanding about these issues.
Obviously in some of the extreme cases, such as that cited by my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), one would have no sympathy with what those individuals have achieved, but looking at extreme cases does not make for good law. A serious examination of the totality makes for a better example of good law. That is why I suggested that we should refer the whole issue to the Joint Committee on Human Rights.
Pete Wishart
As usual, the hon. Gentleman is making a powerful case. He, like me, will remember the debates of years ago when we argued the same type of case. In those days, we would be joined by the Liberals, but today we have heard not one speech by a Liberal Member on a very important issue that they used almost to scream about. We have not had even one intervention by a Liberal Member. Two of them came wandering into the Chamber, had a little look around, and disappeared again. Is the hon. Gentleman as surprised as I am that we have heard nothing from the Liberals today?
Jeremy Corbyn
I am sorry to disappoint the hon. Gentleman, but I cannot help him by describing what the Liberal Democrats are doing today, because I am not responsible for them. However, having been involved in a lot of human rights, anti-terrorism and immigration debates over the many years I have been in Parliament, I know that there are different allies in different Parliaments. Sometimes there are Conservatives one agrees with, sometimes there are Liberals one agrees with, and sometimes there is nobody one agrees with, but that’s life, and we plough on.
Mr Cash
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, because he and I have agreed on several matters, including the Chagos islanders. May I offer him the thought that absence of the Liberal Democrats may have something to do with the lack of clarity in the motion? If it was as clearly expressed as I would like, notwithstanding the Human Rights Act and all that goes with it, I rather suspect that there might be some difficulty for those on the Liberal Democrat Benches, because they would want it to be less clear than I would.
Jeremy Corbyn
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I respect him for standing up for his principles and acknowledge that he and I have agreed on quite a lot of occasions, particularly on the disgraceful treatment of the Chagos islands by all Governments over very many years. We hope that the European Court of Human Rights, which is now hearing that case, will come to a good judgment, which we expect imminently.
When I intervened on the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) about the torture and ill-treatment of people in other jurisdictions, he did not agree with me, and that is fair enough; he does not have to. However, he should understand that the European convention was a very important step in improving human rights standards around the world. The principle of a continent-wide human rights court has been copied to some extent on other continents—for example, central America has such a court. The idea of an international convention such as the United Nations convention against torture is a very powerful one. That is why I disagreed so very strongly with Tony Blair, when he was Prime Minister, on his agreeing to the deportation of people to jurisdictions that had not signed the international convention on torture. That undermined the convention, damaged the human rights of the individual, and damaged us as a country that is supposed to stand up for human rights and justice.
I cannot really describe what we are debating today, and I do not think that the Home Secretary can either. I look forward to a full debate on her proposed immigration rules, because some of them will have a devastating effect on the family life of very poor people in this country who have migrated here, work hard, clean our floors, look after our children, drive our trains, and help our industries to get along. We should also remember that immigration in this country has helped to create our relatively high standards of living. It does the House no credit when people condemn all immigration as an economic problem. Immigration is an economic benefit to our society, and it is about time we publicly recognised that.
Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)
I agree with what the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) said about some of the benefits of economic immigration, but there is something else that I would like to put on the record. As many of us know, the best way to keep a secret is to make a speech in the House of Commons. I sincerely hope that that does not apply to the speeches that I have heard today—particularly, if I may say so without any disrespect to Opposition Members, those by my hon. Friends the Members for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab), who made a superbly forensic speech, and for Witham (Priti Patel), and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox).
Although my remarks will not necessarily be entirely consonant with wholehearted support for these proposals, for reasons that I will explain, I still genuinely support the idea that it is important to give an indication of the Government’s views. A great deal of hard work has been put into this. The more I look at it, the more I realise that the Government’s advisers have really applied themselves to it. As we now know, the immigration rules were tabled on 13 June but have not yet been decided on by the House and will, I suspect, be subject to an annulment prayer because Labour Front Benchers will decide that that is what they want to do.
Irrespective of that general sense of support for these proposals, there is also a rather unfortunate element that was indicated in the excellent speech by my hon. and learned Friend. He said, using very carefully chosen words, that the proposals will create an impression or perception whereby, in some of the national tabloid press and elsewhere, they will be construed, as we have already read, as being simply about slamming criminals and unacceptable persons who should not be allowed in this country in the first place and should be deported. I think that that general perception has been conveyed and that, given that the best way to keep a secret is to make a speech in the House of Commons, the spin that is put on this will carry the day.
However, that will not affect the courts, which will make their own decisions. Moreover, the proposals are geared in the direction of indicating to the courts that the general will of Parliament is to move away from the free-for-all of applying Strasbourg precedents, and that Parliament is making a statement that must be had regard to. Indeed, in line with what I said in an intervention, that has been a matter of concern in the generality of judicial interpretation, which has been criticised by the Lord Chief Justice in a series of very measured speeches. On one occasion about two years ago, he strongly advised his brothers and sisters in the judicial profession in the High Court that the most important matter for a judge is to uphold the common law. I think that he said it in those terms. He went on to say that they had to be much more careful about not simply adopting Strasbourg precedents in the application of their judgments in English courts and, by implication, that they should have more regard to what Parliament has said.
This exercise is being conducted with great complexity. One only has to look at the new immigration rules, which I have in my hand, to notice that they contain strong gearing elements. Whether they will have any effect on certain members of the judiciary remains to be seen. Individual cases, some of which have been mentioned, raise difficult questions of family law and relationships. As has been said, we hear about such cases in our constituencies. I do not think that what we heard earlier was a rant. There is an important point here. I have been confronted by some difficult family issues in the field of immigration. We ought not to be dismissive of the importance of forming a proper and proportionate judgment about these questions.
Important questions have been raised in the debates in which I have taken part over the past few years on the interpretation of statute law. An example is the Jackson case, which was not to do with human rights in the same context as this matter, but was to do with interpretation by the judiciary. Tom Bingham, the late, lamented Lord Chief Justice, took to task two Law Lords in the Jackson case. He said not only in the judgment but in his speech that they were exceeding their role by asserting judicial supremacy over Parliament.
It is therefore essential that we pay tribute to the intentions that lie behind this exercise, while at the same time being clear that the proposals lack clarity. The intentions that lie behind this extremely careful operation will not necessarily produce the results that many people expect. Given the latitude that will still be conferred on judges and the rules of proportionality that have to be applied, I anticipate that there will be ructions down the line when the rules are applied by individual judges.
I suspect that the lack of clarity has something to do with the attitudes of some in government, some in the civil service and some in the higher reaches of the judiciary and in certain chambers, who have no doubt been consulted. It might also have some connection to the attitude that would have been adopted by the Liberal Democrats if they had been confronted with the kind of clarity that could be provided, but that certainly is not. I can do no more than speculate on that. When I pressed an amendment in the Lisbon treaty debates that stated, “notwithstanding the European Communities Act 1972”, on which 55 of my hon. Friends followed me into the Lobby with enthusiasm, despite the suggestions from the Whips that they should do no such thing, the Liberal Democrats said that if I had pressed the other amendment that I had tabled, which stated “notwithstanding the Human Rights Act 1998”, they would have supported it. I therefore ask whether we are always entirely clear as to what the Liberal Democrats are up to at any given point in time.
There is a further point regarding the motion, although I do not want to be too pedantic or legalistic. It states that article 8 is a “qualified right” and that
“the conditions for migrants to enter or remain in the UK on the basis of their family or private life should be those contained in the Immigration Rules.”
I hope that you will forgive me, Mr Deputy Speaker, for pointing out that as we are debating this matter today, on Tuesday 19 June, I construe those words to mean the immigration rules as they now are, not as they are anticipated to be under the proposals printed on 13 June.
On page 1 of the statement of changes, which I suspect will be debated, there is a provision titled “Implementation”, which states that, with the exception of an awful lot of paragraphs,
“the changes set out in this Statement shall take effect on 9 July 2012.”
The other paragraphs
“shall take effect on 1 October 2012.”
It goes on to say:
“However, if an application for entry clearance, leave to remain or indefinite leave to remain has been made before 9 July 2012 and the application has not been decided, it will be decided in accordance with the rules in force on 8 July 2012.”
Therefore, the new immigration rules will not, I am glad to say, have retrospective effect. The implication of the wording in the motion might not be as clear as it should be. That leaves us with the reasonable position that the motion relates only to the immigration rules that are in force at this time. That is a technical point.
I regard the proposals as a steer. The Government are hoping that they will succeed and I wish them well if it is possible for them to do so. However, I think that there will be difficulties of interpretation. The harder the case, the more likely it is that an individual judge will say, “I am not bound by this motion. I am bound by what the law says.” The law that they are construing, from 9 July and 1 October 2012, will be the new rules.
The explanatory memorandum states:
“The new Immigration Rules provide a clear basis for considering family and private life cases in compliance with Article 8. To accompany the new rules, a statement of ECHR compatibility is being published on the Home Office website”.
It goes on to say, although I doubt whether this can be taken for granted:
“The new Immigration Rules will reform the approach taken as a matter of public policy towards ECHR Article 8…in immigration cases.”
It goes on to say—the distinguished Immigration Minister is sitting on the Front Bench and knows this backwards:
“The Immigration Rules will fully reflect the factors which can weigh for or against an Article 8 claim. The rules will set proportionate requirements that reflect the Government’s and Parliament’s view of how individuals’ Article 8 rights should be qualified in the public interest to safeguard the economic well-being of the UK by controlling immigration and to protect the public from foreign criminals. This will mean that failure to meet the requirements of the rules will normally mean failure to establish an Article 8 claim to enter or remain in the UK, and no grant of leave on that basis. Outside exceptional cases, it will be proportionate under Article 8 for an applicant who fails to meet the requirements of the rules to be removed from the UK.”
Why have I bothered to read all that out? So far, none of it has been mentioned in the debate, but it is what we are actually debating. It is about whether the courts will be steered by Parliament and apply its decisions—hopefully the right decisions—as a matter of proportionality.
As a number of Members have said, article 8 already provides a qualified right. As ever, I am afraid that the qualification simply has not been explained. Article 8 states:
“There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right”—
and then the crucial words, which the shadow Home Secretary conveniently left out—
“except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.”
The words
“except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society”
prompt the very question that we have to debate. Until I hear the Minister’s reply, I have to say that we are doing so without any confidence that “the law” means the law of this Parliament.
In the democratic society in which we in this country live, those words must mean the law passed in this Parliament. In certain instances, that will exclude decisions taken by the judges in Strasbourg and/or principles adumbrated in Strasbourg but applied in our courts that are contrary to the views expressed by, for example, the Lord Chief Justice. In the context of article 8, it would be nonsense if “the law” meant anything other than the law of the United Kingdom.
We have to resolve that question in the interests of Parliament, which will decide how this country is to be governed. We must decide whether it is to be governed under the European convention on human rights. I believe that we should withdraw from the convention altogether, because we have been continuously besieged by interpretations of it that are contrary to the views expressed by the people of this country as a whole. We can perfectly well legislate to protect human rights, which I would be the first to defend, by passing appropriate laws in our own land according to our own wishes. Many of those laws may well be parallel, if not identical, to those passed under the convention and the Human Rights Act.
The reason I called for the repeal of the Act 10 years ago, when I was shadow Attorney-General, was precisely because of the mess that we are now in. I hesitate to say so, but I anticipated that we would be in this position, as I did over the Maastricht treaty. By keeping ahead of the curve, whether on the convention or the issue of Europe as a whole, we would have saved ourselves a great deal of trouble. We would have defended Parliament’s right to legislate on behalf of the people of this country, who in a democratic society have a right to govern themselves. That is the central principle at the heart of our Parliament. The debate raises questions about that matter but does not entirely resolve them.
I do not say that the courts should in any way be inhibited from making a decision based on their interpretation of the law. However, the law is made here. We have to decide what the law is, and it behoves us to make that law clear. In this case it could have been made clearer by our simply saying, “Notwithstanding the European convention on human rights and the Human Rights Act 1998, we legislate for these immigration rules accordingly.” There would have been absolutely no argument about that in the courts, because the courts would have had to say, “We have no option but to administer the law as laid down by Parliament.” That is the crucial issue at the heart of this debate.
Although I will support the general steer that we are providing, I am afraid that there may yet be difficulties and ructions further down the line, with the courts taking disconsonant decisions that are contrary to the intentions behind the rules, which are supposed to represent a clear basis but do not.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
Order. The wind-ups will start at six minutes past 8. Three more Members wish to participate, so I ask Members to give some consideration to others.
Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)
I am grateful for the opportunity to raise my concerns about the impact that the immigration rules will have on children in particular. Before I came to this place I had the privilege of working with the Minister, and I know that he is committed to the welfare of children in the immigration system. We worked together to ensure that there was a commitment to ending the immigration detention of children, which has been hugely important to many children. We also both worked hard to ensure that the last Government extended the Children Act duty to those children, which is particularly relevant to today’s debate.
The statement of intent on family migration, which was published in advance of the new article 8 immigration rules to which the Home Secretary referred extensively, takes heed of the duty on the UK Border Agency under section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009 to have regard to the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of children while they are in the UK. Many of us fought very hard for that legislation, because immigration officials have been given increasing powers over the years without a counterbalance in law to ensure the protection of children. That section created a duty to consider a child’s best interests in decisions that affect them, and to weigh those interests against other considerations such as criminal convictions, which we have talked so much about today. That already happens in article 8 determinations.
My concern is about how narrowly a child’s “best interests” are defined in the statement of intent that was published in advance of the new immigration rules. It states:
“The best interests of the child will normally be met by remaining with their parents and returning with them to the country of origin, subject to considerations such as long residence in the UK and exceptional factors.”
During the many years in which I worked with refugee and migrant children in the Children’s Society, I dealt with many cases in which that was plainly not the case, as I am sure have other Members. I will give a few examples.
I dealt with countless cases in which girls would have been subjected to female genital mutilation if they were returned to their home country. I also dealt with the case of a young girl whose father was from Eritrea and whose mother was from Ethiopia. Huge consideration had to be given to her safety and welfare, given the state of relations between those two countries. There were also many cases of child abuse. One in particular really sticks in my mind. There was a child who we believed may have been subjected to abuse by her own parent, and in the end that did turn out to be the case. In that sort of occurrence, it is clearly not in the interests of the child to be removed with the adult. The Minister might say, “There is an exception. Discretion is written into the rules,” but my concern is that marking out a clear presumption that it is in the best interests of a child to be returned will direct UK Border Agency and court officials and deter them from making proactive decisions.
Since the tragic death of Victoria Climbié and the Lord Laming report that followed, we have come a long way in ensuring that all agencies, including the UK Border Agency, the courts and others, understand that they have a shared responsibility to safeguard children. That involves not only the reactive child protection approach, but a proactive approach. The measure might well unravel a great deal of the progress that has been made with the UK Border Agency and such children.
I am sure Ministers will say that discretion remains with the courts, even if there were no such concerns, but I share the view put forward forcefully by Amnesty International—that, effectively, the measure seriously limits the courts’ discretion. In the example I gave, if those factors had not been proactively investigated by UK Border Agency, it is hard to see how a decision to remove the child with the parent would be challenged in court, because the investigation would not take place and the evidence would not exist.
Furthermore, during the decade that I dealt almost daily with the UK Border Agency, I saw a culture that worked against the full investigation of human concerns. Little that I have seen since being elected to the House has convinced me that that has changed. In fact, if anything, with staffing cuts and increased pressure on UKBA staff, the situation is getting worse, not better. Case owners work to targets, and in particular to time-limited targets. Speed matters. Too often, there is a tick-box exercise rather than a full investigation of the facts. I have seen for myself how that tick-box exercise happens without a proper assessment of children’s needs prior to their detention. The Government rightly took a stance against that; I hope that they take a similar stance to protect children in respect of this measure.
When I worked for the Children’s Society, I was often called upon to deliver training for UKBA staff. One thing that struck me was their willingness to equip themselves with the skills and knowledge they needed to protect children, and to think creatively and more widely. However, people came to me time and again and said, “I’m really not sure that this is my responsibility. I am meant to be looking at so many other overriding concerns, including immigration concerns.” The child’s welfare and immigration considerations often conflict. The staff need clarity and certainty that the child’s welfare is a priority, and that they should not take actions to meet targets if it means that they do not fully and proactively investigate child protection concerns.
I hope the Minister considers that concern after the debate, but I am also concerned about the prescription in the statement of intent, which sets out that deportation will be presumed in cases involving criminality that results in a custodial sentence of between 12 months and four years unless the person has
“a genuine and subsisting parental relationship with a British citizen child or a child who has lived in the UK for at least the last seven years, and it would not be reasonable to expect the child to leave the UK with the foreign national criminal and there is no other family member who is able to care for the child in the UK”.
The seven-year rule, which no longer exists, was a useful indicator of whether someone had established a private life in the UK, but such detailed prescription surely has limits. I struggle to see how the seven-year prescription could be helpful to the courts. Why, for example, should a child who has been here for five years, who was born here and spent most of their life here, and who faces the prospect of returning to a country about which they know nothing, where they have no family and do not speak the language, have a less powerful claim to have established a private life than a child who has been here for eight years, but who faces the prospect of returning to country where they have family and people they know, friends and ongoing relationships, and where they speak the language? My concern is that the measure takes away the important ability to test the strength of the relationship ties that children have formed in the UK, which is the basis of article 8 decisions.
Moreover, I am concerned that hon. Members are being invited to make assumptions about the situation of children whom we know nothing about. We would never accept that for citizen children, and we should not accept it for non-citizen children. I urge Ministers to look again at the measure.
Graham Jones (Hyndburn) (Lab)
I rise to raise the concern of Mr Paul Houston, my constituent, who has been spoken of considerably in the debate. The case is familiar to all MPs. Mr Houston’s daughter died after being the victim of a hit and run by an asylum seeker, Aso Ibrahim Mohammed. Amy was left to die under the wheels of his car.
Mr Mohammed was granted leave to stay in the UK following his asylum case, in which he made the case for remaining here to protect his right to family life under article 8 of the Human Rights Act 1998. During the several years between the tribunal decision in 2010 and the crime for which Mr Mohammed served a paltry four-month sentence in 2003, he claimed he had established a new family with a British national and had two children with her here in the UK.
The delays in dealing with Mr Mohammed, in the words of Mr Houston, were no doubt caused by staff at the Home Office failing to find Mr Mohammed and an ineffective Border Agency. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) said, there were also problems with deportation to Iraq—Mr Mohammed is a Kurdistan national.
Mr Mohammed arrived in the UK illegally, hidden on the back of a lorry, on 31 January 2001 and claimed asylum on the same day. On 18 July 2001, his application for asylum was refused. He appealed the decision, but his appeal failed on 12 November 2002. During that period, Mr Mohammed had already been cautioned by the police for criminal damage. As a result of his failed appeal, the UK Border Agency issued a notice to Mr Mohammed that he was required to leave the UK by 28 November 2002. Had he left, the accident in which Amy lost her life would have been prevented and she would be enjoying life today.
The Houston family have never been provided with an answer as to why UKBA did not take effective steps so that Mr Mohammed was removed from the UK on that date or why he was not at least detained pending removal. When I spoke to Paul in my constituency office, he expressed his qualified support for the Human Rights Act, but he feels that judicial processes led to the perverse outcome.
The Government say the motion will send a signal to the courts, but I am not convinced that it will have any legal impact. Why are the Government not pursuing primary legislation? Mr Houston’s most significant concern about the interpretation of article 8 is not the parameters and guidelines laid down in immigration policy that are the basis for judicial judgment, but the process of determining claims under article 8.
According to the Home Secretary, the guidelines will state that deportation will not be proportionate if an individual has a
“genuine and subsisting relationship with a partner in the UK”.
My concern, and that of Mr Houston, is how tribunals arrive at the conclusion that an individual has such a relationship.
There are fundamental differences in the application of criminal law, as in the court case at which Mr Mohammed appeared in 2002, and the application of civil law in the asylum tribunals of 2010. I question the judicial process for determining a “genuine and subsisting relationship” as laid out by the Home Secretary. In criminal law, the evidence is tested beyond reasonable doubt. In the criminal case of Mr Mohammed, the Crown Prosecution Service was unable to present a case beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr Mohammed caused Amy’s death by the more serious crime of dangerous or careless driving, partly owing to conflicting statements. He was instead convicted for having no licence or insurance.
It is worth noting that Mr Mohammed had exhausted all asylum appeals to be in the UK during 2002, a year before the incident that cost the life of that young child. Mr Mohammed was released from prison after completing just four months of his custodial sentence in early 2004. At this point, he was still an illegal asylum seeker and had no right to family life in the UK, and should have been removed from the UK. What will the Home Secretary do to ensure that those who break the law in such circumstances, but receive less than the 12 months’ custodial sentence recommended in today’s guidelines by the Home Secretary, are still deported?
Subsequently, Mr Mohammed accumulated a number of criminal convictions and police cautions over the years, and it was not until late 2008—four years later—that the authorities caught up with him and brought about deportation instructions. What will the Home Secretary do to ensure that those who have entered a deportation process are deported, and further that in cases such as Mr Mohammed’s, people cannot circumvent their deportation through a subsequent appeal under article 8? I note with concern that the number of successful deportations has fallen by 18% in the last year.
By 2008, Mr Mohammed was entitled to make a fresh claim stating that to deport him would breach his right to a family life, and legal battles through the civil law system commenced. Following his release, this man has been convicted of possession of cannabis, cautioned for burglary and theft, convicted of driving uninsured, banned from driving and convicted of harassment. My right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn also mentioned a dispute between Mr Mohammed and his former wife involving a £200 fine and his being bound over to keep the peace. This does not sound like a man enjoying a family life.
Mr Houston raises a key concern with the tribunal system—what he describes as the 51% rule of probability. Under this rule, circumstantial and anecdotal evidence allowed Mr Mohammed to win his tribunal case based on the balance of probability, rather than on what we have in the criminal justice system—the “beyond reasonable doubt” rule. During 2009-10, Mr Mohammed was allowed to present evidence in support of his claim through the upper tribunal for immigration and asylum. Mr Mohammed and his knowledgeable legal representatives only had to convince a judge that the evidence of his UK relationship was true on the balance of probability. My right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn touched on the issues with the evidence submitted to the tribunal, which was flaky to say the least.
Such critical evidence should be tested beyond reasonable doubt. Mr Houston feels aggrieved that such circumstantial and conflicting evidence for the relationship of Mr Mohammed with a British national played a huge part in the judge’s granting him asylum under article 8. As someone sympathetic to the benefits of the Human Rights Act, Mr Houston believes that this is a ludicrous application of British law.
The Government need to do far more to deport foreign criminals. The problem with the motion is that it ignores the real problems of the chaos within UKBA. The Home Secretary may be well intentioned in desiring a fairer justice system, but what are her intentions for dealing with the problems caused by cases such as Mr Mohammed’s, particularly the acceptance of hearsay evidence in the decision-making process at tribunals? What does she intend to do to ensure that justice is seen to be delivered?
I understand that there is an opportunity to challenge and contest the statements presented at tribunals under part 32.14 of the civil procedure code against a person who presents false evidence. In Mr Mohammed’s case, however, there was no challenge, despite the evidence of his relationship being flaky and suggestions that there was an arrangement to the benefit of his asylum claim.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn spoke about the dubious evidence put forward by Mr Mohammed. I agree that it was simply a means of evading deportation under article 8. In cases where individuals use article 8, on the right to family or private life, and where claims are tolerated because of inefficiencies or delays by the Home Office in dealing with cases, hearsay evidence at a tribunal should be tested and challenged beyond reasonable doubt. Fairness is about not only interpretation or immigration law but the judicial process itself.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I congratulate the Home Secretary and Immigration Minister on bringing this matter before the House. I fully understand the reason for the debate, but I hope that the clarification given in the letter that hon. Members have seen will ensure that there is no Division.
Everyone has a right to respect for his private and family life, home and correspondence, as many other hon. Members have said. This has been used by many people, however, to claim that anyone has a right to live and settle, with their family, where they choose and so can come to the UK, with or without a visa, to have a private family life. It must never be forgotten, however, that the right is a qualified not an absolute right, and that qualifications are essential in respect of immigration. We must therefore retain the right of the Home Secretary to control immigration through the rules already implemented and what is proposed today.
The Home Secretary’s clarification of the rules for the courts has assured me and, I hope, the House. The Human Rights Act was a good thing in principle, but once lawyers became involved, it changed, as is so often the case. I am reminded of that great and famous Shakespearean quote, “First kill all the lawyers.” That is a bit drastic, I know—I am not saying we should do it—but it is how many people feel when they hear some European judgments. The status of our judiciary has been perpetually challenged by the European Court in cases presided over by people with questionable experience making questionable rulings. As is often the case with Europe, we sign up to something in theory that turns out to be completely different in practice. That is our frustration with Europe and many of its rulings.
The ruling on the Abu Qatada case revealed that seven of the 11 top judges at the European Court of Human Rights had little or no judicial experience; one was 33 when appointed and had no senior judging experience. British judges go through years of training in the law before their application will ever be considered. To have such under-qualified people overruling our own judges is a slight, but worse still, it is dangerous and leaves us with our hands tied on too many occasions. That is the reason for this debate, I believe.
In the past, and even this very day, article 8 issues are being raised in asylum applications or as a basis for standalone applications for leave to remain in the UK. They have also been raised in appeals against deportation or removal. This was not the reason the article was created; it was not meant to be a free pass into the UK and the benefits of living in such a great nation. According to the Courts Service, in 2010, 233 people won their appeal against deportation, and of those 102 were successful on article 8 grounds. According to figures from the independent chief inspector of UKBA, however, in 2010, 425 foreign national prisoners won their appeals against deportation, and these were won primarily on article 8 grounds.
Whichever figures are right, the matter must be addressed, which is what I think the Home Secretary is trying to do through the motion. While our immigration rules should always take note of human rights issues, they must be based on the needs of the country, which must have the right to caretake those very rights. Article 8 is increasingly difficult to impose legally; it is time to get this right, which is what the motion does.
I have received correspondence from groups stating that the removal of paragraph 395C of the immigration rules is tantamount to sacrilege. That paragraph stated that no one could be removed from the UK if it would contravene the UK’s obligations under the Geneva convention on refugees or the European convention on human rights. It set out a range of factors that UKBA had to consider before deciding to remove a person from the UK and reflected the considerations necessary for assessing compatibility with article 8. Those considerations included the person’s length of residence in the UK, the strength of their connections with the UK, their personal history, their character and conduct, their domestic circumstances and, importantly, any previous criminal record.
Other briefings, however, point out that deleting the paragraph has not altered the UK’s obligations under the convention. We are still bound by the rules, but that does not mean that we cannot implement our own rules. In my view, we have not yet given our sovereignty to Europe. The Home Secretary has confirmed that there will be safeguards for those who have been subjected to torture in their homeland—an assurance that many Members have sought and received. I agree with the Home Secretary in asserting her right, and the right of every UK citizen, to have control over immigration in this country.
I am not by nature someone who scaremongers. If I were, I would be reciting the figures, which are screaming out for an immigration policy change. What I will say is that if we deny ourselves the right to allow or disallow people into the country, will there even be a United Kingdom in the future, or will we be like other countries that have put their trust in the European Union only to find themselves on the brink of demise?
Ben Gummer (Ipswich) (Con)
Several times in his speech the hon. Gentleman has referred interchangeably to the European Union and Europe when discussing the European convention on human rights. It is very important that we make the distinction in this House and in public, because the public are making the same association between the European Union and the European Court, and it is very damaging when trying to understand both institutions and separate them in the public mind.
Jim Shannon
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. Clearly we want to focus on where the responsibility for this issue lies.
I want to make a quick comment about what the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) said. We agree on many things. I am a descendant from an Ulster Scot from the lowlands of Scotland, so I have an affinity with the Scottish nation. It is very obvious which papers he does not read in his house, but it is also obvious what his concerns are, and they are rightful concerns. I disagree with him on independence for Scotland, and I also disagree with him on the issue we are discussing, but I am sure that there are many other issues on which we will agree in future.
We have the right to make immigration control rules. As a nation, it is not in our nature to abuse human rights—that is not what this debate is about—and we will certainly not start doing that with these rules, especially when there is an underlying onus to consider the human rights implications in every decision our judiciary makes. I therefore support these rules and the guidance, as well as the clarification that the Home Secretary and the Minister for Immigration have provided. I believe they are necessary and important, and the people I represent want to see them in place.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate, which I think we would all agree has been interesting. I note that several of the Members who have spoken are not in their seats, but I will none the less refer to their contributions.
The hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier) spoke about a great number of the wider immigration issues that he believed needed addressing. However, it is important to remember that that is not the subject at hand this evening.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) referred to a constituency case, involving Mr Mohammed, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Graham Jones) also referred. I think everybody would agree—the Home Secretary tacitly referred to this, albeit without naming the case—that that case is one of the most heinous examples of where it has felt as though the judges were out of step with public opinion, and certainly the opinion in this House. I do not think that one has to be a supporter of The Daily Telegraph or the Daily Mail to hold that view; it seems to me a fairly commonsensical one. Indeed, my right hon. Friend and my hon. Friend detailed what were some pretty horrific incidents and the way in which fairly flimsy excuses were used to remain in this country.
The hon. Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins)—he, too, is not in his place, so I hope that I do not misrepresent him—said, “I want to see all criminals deported as soon as possible.” That would return us to a rather 19th-century understanding of what should happen to criminals in this country. I think he meant that all foreign criminals should be deported as soon as possible, but—[Interruption.] I think that returning to what happened to the Tolpuddle martyrs would—
Chris Bryant
No; we, at least, are certainly not reviewing it.
However, the hon. Member for Keighley did say something with which I wholeheartedly agreed. He said that it was not racist to want to debate immigration. I have said this at the Dispatch Box before, and I will say it again: just because someone wants to talk about immigration does not make them a racist. There are certainly some people who want to talk about immigration because they are racists, but I believe that everybody has a perfect right to debate this issue, and we should be able to do so calmly and reasonably.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) expressed a view about the motion before us which I think a lot of us had come to when he said, “I no longer know what this debate is about,” and when he referred to the unusual process that has been used. I will refer later to why I think this is not the process for us to go through. I think we have come to a much greater understanding of what the legal implications will be of the decision we take this evening, but he was right to highlight the fact that some of the water had been somewhat muddied by earlier contributions.
Chris Bryant
We did not have a Liberal contribution—I was going to point that out earlier—but I am sure that the Liberals will be reserving their position for when they form a Government on their own, without the Conservative party.
The hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) made a thoughtful contribution, as usual. He was right to say that the European convention on human rights was never originally intended to have any kind of extra-territorial effect. However, I would merely point out to him that it was not intended to have any effect on whether homosexuals could serve in the military in any country in the United Kingdom or how marriage law should be interpreted. There are undoubtedly aspects of how the ECHR has been interpreted by the Court in Strasbourg that have been significantly beneficial, not only to people in the United Kingdom, but to people in Russia and other signatory countries.
The hon. Gentleman also referred to the shifting goalposts of article 8. That is another area where there is some agreement across the House, and certainly between the two Front Benches. He also pointed out that it would be difficult to be precise about what constituted success in the terms to which the Home Secretary referred at the beginning of the debate. How will we know whether what we are doing today has been successful? It is difficult to be precise.
I would not call the speech by the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) a rant, but it had—
Chris Bryant
I would not call it that, either. I thought the hon. Gentleman’s speech was just wrong, and in some areas inappropriate, although he did unite the House in condemnation of himself—I think that is mostly what he seeks to achieve in politics—so it was quite a success.
The hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel)—again, she is not in her place—spoke about a whole range of wider immigration issues. All I would say is that today’s debate is not about those wider issues; rather, it is about the specific set of issues that are incorporated in the motion—a motion that is tightly drawn and does not have any papers tagged to it.
My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South (Mr Harris) did a very good job of demolishing the argument of the hon. Member for Perth and—is it “Perth and Perthshire”?
Chris Bryant
I see; otherwise, I would have thought that it was a rather tautological name for a constituency.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right: many of our constituents, in many different parts of this country—in Wales, just as in Scotland and England—have significant concerns about matters relating to the deportation of foreign criminals, and they want them addressed better in the criminal justice system.
I always enjoy listening to the hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox), not least because I see him as a very successful barrister, and I am aware that there is a convention in this House that if an hon. Member were to ask another Member who practises at the Bar to represent them in court, that Member would be required to provide their services, free, gratis and for nothing. I therefore look forward to him representing me one day in some action, free, gratis and for nothing. [Interruption.] I think he is mouthing something at me, but I am not quite sure what it is. I know that he was seeking to be helpful to the Government and to support the direction of travel in which they are moving, but I noted that he said, “I do not hold out an enormous amount of hope.” I think he was referring to whether this proposal is going to be a successful manoeuvre, which is partly our concern as well. It is not a concern about the direction of travel, but a concern about whether this measure is precisely the right way in which to steer ourselves in that direction of travel.
The hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) is one of my favourite Members, because I have debated with him so many times—and he also told me once that he loved me, so I cannot dislike him. He referred to the application of the rules of the European Court’s decisions in relation to the courts in the United Kingdom. He, too, said that whether the decisions we make today will have any effect remains to be seen. I say that—and I think he said it, too—not out of a desire to undermine where we want to go, but to ensure that we securely get change in the direction to which many hon. Members have referred.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) made a moving speech about some of the experiences that she has had personally and in dealing with her constituents. In particular, she mentioned the situation facing many women and children. We would do ourselves a disservice if we were to pretend that the European convention on human rights had done nothing to protect the sorely abused rights of women around the world. In many cases, it has acted as a beacon for what a decent society should look like and how a decent society should go about its business.
The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said that he thought that there would be no Division on the motion. I thought that he might have been having a dig at the hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon when he said that everything goes wrong when lawyers get involved. He was also critical of some of the judges in the European Court of Human Rights because they sometimes did not have the level of qualifications or the amount of experience that we would expect of a British judge. I am certain of the need for reform of the way in which the judges are appointed and the way in which the Court does its business and comes to its decisions, but that is not a reason for us to leave the European Court or to abandon the convention, not least—I might not be able to carry the hon. Gentleman with me on this—because it is a requirement of membership of the European Union that we should be a signatory and adhere to the Court.
The hon. Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer), who has just fled the Chamber, made a tiny intervention on the hon. Member for Strangford, in which he pointed out the difference between the European Union, the European Court and the European convention on human rights. He was absolutely right to say that that difference was often not recognised.
The Home Secretary made several issues crystal clear in her speech. First, she made it clear that Pepper v. Hart was right, and that it is absolutely right for the courts to bear in mind what is said by a Minister or in a debate in the House of Commons—or, for that matter, the House of Lords—when legislation is ambiguous and the court is uncertain of how to proceed, without breaching article IX of the Bill of Rights, which states that a court is not able to question or impeach a proceeding in Parliament.
Mr Cash
In regard to interpretation, certainly in the field of European law—whether in the European Court of Justice or the European Court of Human Rights—the travaux préparatoires, as they are called, include all sorts of explanatory memorandums and so on. So when we talk about a clear basis, the question is whether it will stand up in due course. I hope that it will, but I am not sure.
Chris Bryant
I am not entirely sure whether I agree with that, so I am afraid that I am going to gloss over it. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will give me a better lecture on the matter later.
We agreed with the Home Secretary’s point on Pepper v. Hart. We also agreed when she effectively said that she accepted the judgment in the Pankina case of 2010 that the mere tabling of new immigration rules is often not enough to provide legal or political clarity to the courts. We agree with that, which is why we would wholeheartedly welcome a debate in Parliament on these matters. There are those who would say that the process that the hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon referred to earlier has been inadequate in the past.
The Home Secretary also referred to changes in the operation of article 8 in relation to the deportation of prisoners. Again, we completely agree with the direction of travel that she is taking and with what she is trying to do. In a sense, that is what we tried to do in 2007 with the changes in the law, but we accept that further work needs to be done. She said specifically that foreign criminals had used flimsy human rights arguments to remain in this country, and we agree. She said that the broader issue of the other changes, tabled last Wednesday, was a separate issue. We wholeheartedly agree with that, too.
We have some concerns about the process, but I do not want to overstate them. The motion expressly refers to “the Immigration Rules”. It therefore stands to reason that we are debating the rules that are in force today, rather than any that have been tabled but will not come into force until 9 July and could, in theory, be annulled in the future. So I am not sure that this motion provides quite the level of legal clarity that the Home Secretary would like.
Furthermore, there is the question of exactly how much influence a motion of the House has. We have already heard from the shadow Home Secretary about the ruling from the Clerks on that point. A few weeks ago, a motion of the House, which was agreed unanimously, stated that nobody wanting to come to this country from Russia should be allowed a visa if they had had anything to do with the death of Sergei Magnitsky. That motion has no force in law, however; it is just an interesting statement from the House of Commons. It has not been agreed by the House of Lords, and it has not gone through any kind of primary or secondary legislative process.
It might have been better if the measures had been taken in a different order, with the full set of rule changes being followed by the motion that we are considering today. Indeed, many hon. Members have said that there might well be a need for primary legislation to provide the courts with the absolute clarity that they need.
I want to make it absolutely clear that we are supporting the motion today on the understanding that it applies solely to the operation of article 8 in relation to the deportation of foreign criminals. In the words of the Home Secretary, the rest is a “separate issue”.
The Minister for Immigration (Damian Green)
I am grateful to Members on both sides of the House who have treated this important subject seriously today. I am also grateful for the support for the Government’s approach that eventually appeared from the Opposition Front Bench, although I was rather doubtful about it earlier, when the shadow Home Secretary was speaking. I am also grateful to the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) and the hon. Members for Glasgow South (Mr Harris) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon), as well as to those on the Government Benches who have spoken.
Let me deal with the central question. The motion clearly sets out for the agreement of the House where we believe the balance should lie between the right to respect for family and private life under article 8 of the European convention on human rights and the legitimate aims of our immigration controls. That view is reflected in the new immigration rules that we laid before the House last week. We are in complete agreement that article 8 is a qualified right. Article 8 sets out the basis on which the public interest can justify proportionate interference in individual rights to family and private life. It is the responsibility of the Government, and of Parliament, on behalf of the public, to set out when and how the public interest should qualify those individual rights. The immigration rules are the appropriate vehicle for the expression of the views of the Government and Parliament.
Pete Wishart
I am beginning to get confused all over again. I thought that we had received clarification on this earlier, but the Minister is now inviting us to support all the Government’s immigration rules, which will be unacceptable to many people in the House.
Damian Green
No sensible person would put that interpretation on what I have just said. No sensible person would put that interpretation on the motion that is before the House, which the hon. Gentleman has shown, over the past three and a half hours, he is incapable of reading. Read the motion, and you will see what we are debating.
The immigration rules are the appropriate vehicle for the expression of the views of the Government and Parliament. They are a statement of the normal practice to be followed by the Secretary of State’s caseworkers in making immigration decisions under the statutory framework that Parliament has provided.
Since the Human Rights Act 1998 was implemented in 2000, it has become increasingly apparent that the existing immigration rules do not provide a sufficiently clear and comprehensive framework for considering family and private life cases in line with article 8. The rules have not reflected adequately the factors that can weigh in favour of, and against, an applicant’s article 8 claim. The courts—understandably, as the Government have never set out for Parliament’s agreement a clear position on article 8 in the immigration rules—have had to decide for themselves on the facts of the cases before them whether article 8 did or did not provide a basis for the applicant to come to or stay in the UK.
The courts have therefore not been able to give due weight to Government’s and Parliament’s view of where the balance should be struck between individual rights and the public interest, as they have not known fully what that view is. As the Government and Parliament have not established the correct balance in the rules, the courts have arguably been as well placed as the Secretary of State’s caseworkers to assess the case and make a decision. In the absence in the rules of a comprehensive statement of public policy in these matters, the courts have developed the policy themselves through case law on issues such as the required level of maintenance for family migrants.
The changes to the immigration rules that we laid before Parliament on 13 June fill the public policy vacuum we inherited by setting out the position of the Secretary of State on proportionality under article 8. The new rules state how the balance should be struck between the public interest and individual rights, taking into account relevant case law and evidence. They provide clear instructions for caseworkers on the approach they must normally take, and they therefore provide the basis for a consistent, fair and transparent decision-making process.
As the immigration rules will now explicitly take into account proportionality under article 8, the role of the courts should focus on considering proportionality in the light of the clear statement of public policy reflected in the rules. They should not have to consider the proportionality of every decision taken in accordance with the rules on every immigration application. The starting point from now will be that Parliament has decided how the balance under article 8 should be struck, and although Parliament’s view is subject to consideration by the courts, it should be accorded the deference rightly due to the legislature on the determination of public policy. That is the approach that the new immigration rules seek to put in place in the immigration system.
By subjecting the public interest that the rules reflect to debate and approval in Parliament today, we are making good the democratic deficit we inherited on the operation of article 8 rights in the immigration sphere. We are also responding to the need that the courts have themselves identified for the Government and Parliament to take proper responsibility for these matters of public policy.
The hon. Member for Hyndburn (Graham Jones), who is not in his place, raised the important Mohammed case, which precisely illustrates why we are proceeding in this way. He asked a specific question about what would happen in a case like that where the sentence was not for 12 months or more. I am happy to repeat what my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said in her opening remarks, that “even if a criminal has received a shorter sentence, deportation will still normally be proportionate if their offending has caused serious harm.” There is that additional power.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) raised an interesting point, which was repeated by the shadow Immigration Minister, about which rules we should look at—the rules as they stand today or the new rules. Again, I am more than happy to repeat what my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said, this time in her statement last week:
“I will shortly ask the House to approve a motion recognising the qualified nature of article 8 and agreeing that the new immigration rules should form the basis of whether someone can come to or stay in this country”.—[Official Report, 11 June 2012; Vol. 546, c. 50.]
That is what she told the House last Monday; that is what we are debating today.
The shadow Home Secretary and, indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier) made points about the importance of removing more foreign national offenders, on which we agree. She asked why the numbers had come down. The simple fact is that fewer cases are arising that fit the deportation threshold. The numbers in this category are down approximately 12% in 2011 in comparison with 2010, while the overall prison population has not fallen. The number of people forcibly removed or departing voluntarily during the first quarter of 2012 has remained steady. It is slightly higher than in the fourth quarter of 2011, so I hope the right hon. Lady will be reassured that action is being taken on the very important point she raised about removals.
In what might be described as the less serious part of the debate, the hon. Members for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) and for Glasgow South (Mr Harris) and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox) raised the issue of whether the courts would take any notice Parliament. What the new rules do are respond to what the courts have said about the lack of a clear framework in immigration cases for balancing individual article 8 rights and the wider public interest. The House of Lords—this was before we had the Supreme Court—observed in the Huang case back in 2007 that immigration lacks a clear framework representing the competing interests of individual rights and the wider public interest because the immigration laws
“are not the product of active debate in Parliament”.
That is precisely the purpose of today’s debate. We are having an “active debate in Parliament” on immigration rules as they affect the balance between individual rights and collective rights on article 8.
Frankly, this House ought to welcome the fact that Parliament becomes the central part of a debate on an issue that is important to our constituents. I am genuinely surprised that so many Opposition Members appear to think it inappropriate for Parliament to act in this way. I shall take up what must be a luxury for any Home Office Minister under any Government and pray in aid Liberty, which said today:
“Any fair immigration policy will be a combination of rules and discretion, allowing both for clarity and compassion in the handling of individual cases and the system as a whole. On that basis, Immigration Rules are the obvious way for any Home Secretary to seek to guide both her officials and the judiciary in their handling of cases.”
I think Liberty is exactly right in its interpretation. As I say, that is what we are doing today.
My hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins) can be reassured that we are indeed, as he urged, trying to deport as many criminals as possible. I hope he will be reassured by the figures that I read out a few moments ago.
My hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) has huge legal expertise in this matter and spoke with much wisdom. I was glad to hear from him that my answers to all his parliamentary questions have done some good in providing him with facts and figures. He asked what will happen if the courts do not respond. As my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said previously, if we need to take further steps, we will, but we do not anticipate that happening.
My hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) eloquently pointed out how the distortions of human rights law have indeed created real problems in this country. She said she would like to see people taken straight from jail to the airport to be deported. I cannot quite promise her that, but I hope she is reassured to some extent that the average number of days between a foreign national prisoner finishing their sentence and being removed has decreased markedly. In 2008, it was 131 days; by 2011, we had got it down to 74 days, so we are indeed speeding up that process.
The hon. Members for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) and for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) talked about the best interests of children. The hon. Lady is quite right that she and I worked closely together for some time on these matters during the dark days of the previous Government when they were trying to do bad things through immigration legislation. Of course we recognise the importance of the statutory duty under section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009
“to safeguard and promote the welfare of children…in the UK”.
It is precisely for that reason that we have reinforced our approach by bringing a consideration of the welfare or the best interest of children into the new immigration rules. In assessing that best interest, the primary question in immigration cases involving removal is whether it is reasonable to expect the child to leave the UK. The best interests of the child will normally be met by their remaining with their parents. As the hon. Lady predicted, I make the point that in these rules, exceptional factors are allowed for.
There will be exceptional factors. I do not entirely share the hon. Lady’s view of the box-ticking nature of the way in which the UKBA and individual caseworkers approach these cases, not least because of the training that they have been undertaking—training to which, as she rightly said, she has contributed in the past. We are continuing to train so that our caseworkers act in a sensitive way, but exceptions can certainly be made in extreme cases.
In these rules we are introducing clear, proportionate requirements relating to who can enter or remain in the UK on the basis of their family life. They are requirements that reflect case law, evidence, independent advice and public consultation. We invite the House to agree that they are requirements which reflect the fact that family migration should be controlled in the public interest, and the fact that the best interests of a child in the UK should be taken into account.
Article 8 will cease to be an afterthought in the decision-making process, considered only after a decision has been made under the immigration rules. Instead, the determination under article 8 will be made according to the immigration rules which the Government have put in place, and which Parliament has agreed correctly reflect the public interest. We have set clear and transparent requirements as the basis for the ability of a partner, child or adult dependant of non-European economic area nationality to enter or remain in the UK because of his or her relationship with a British citizen or a person with settled status in the UK.
Applicants will have to meet clear requirements in the rules which reflect an assessment of the public interest. Those requirements are a proportionate interference with article 8 because they draw on the relevant case law, because there is a strong rationale and evidence for the fact that they will serve the public interest, and because, if Parliament agrees to the motion—as I hope and expect that it will—they will reflect the correct balance between individual rights and the public interest.
No set of rules can deal with 100% of cases, and there will be genuinely exceptional circumstances in which discretion is exercised outside the rules. However, it is in the interests of both the public and applicants for there to be a clear system to ensure fairness, consistency and transparency. The public, applicants and caseworkers need to know who is entitled to come or stay, and on what basis, and who is not. If there is to be a system of that kind, there must be rules: rules that deliver sustainable family migration to the UK that is right for the migrants, for communities and for the country as a whole, rules that properly reflect individual rights and the wider public interest, and, above all, rules that are set in Parliament, and not by individual legal cases. With that in mind, I commend the motion to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House supports the Government in recognising that the right to respect for family or private life in Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights is a qualified right and agrees that the conditions for migrants to enter or remain in the UK on the basis of their family or private life should be those contained in the Immigration Rules.
Financial Services (Market Abuse)
(11 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Financial Secretary to the Treasury (Mr Mark Hoban)
I beg to move,
That this House takes note of European Union Documents No. 16010/11 and Addenda 1 and 2, relating to a Draft Regulation on insider dealing and market manipulation (market abuse), No. 16000/11 and Addenda 1 and 2, relating to the Draft Directive on criminal sanctions for insider dealing and market manipulation, and No. 8253/12, relating to the European Central Bank Opinion on market abuse legislation; recognises that an efficient financial market that aids economic growth requires market integrity and public confidence; welcomes the UK’s leading role in combating market abuse; and supports the Government’s decision not to opt-in to the Criminal Sanctions Directive until it is clear that related provisions within the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive Review and the Market Abuse Regulation are further progressed in order to enable the Government to evaluate the implications for the UK, and ensure high standards in tackling market abuse are maintained.
I welcome the opportunity to open the debate. It is important, before I deal with the details of the motion, for me to reinforce our commitment to ensuring that there are efficient financial markets which assist economic growth. If markets are to be efficient, however, they must command public confidence and demonstrate their integrity. Central to that is the sense that those who are trading in shares, whether they are retail customers or our largest fund managers, are doing so in possession of, or with access to, the same information. We must also ensure that markets are not manipulated against the interests of those who are trading in shares.
It is the recognition of the importance of markets that have integrity and command public confidence that has led to the UK’s leading role in tackling the problems of market abuse. We established our own civil market abuse regime in 2000, ahead of the EU market abuse directive of 2003. The Financial Services Authority has made considerable strides in recent years since launching its “credible deterrence” strategy for market abuse in 2008, particularly as a result of the financial crisis. Our no-nonsense approach to market abuse is now a regular feature of national and international news. The FSA levies increasingly large penalties, and exercises its criminal powers. Abuse of this sort will not be tolerated. In 2003, the FSA handed down fines relating to market abuse totalling just over £1 million; halfway through this year, the figure is £8.9 million. The FSA is bringing the full weight of the law against perpetrators of abuse, and that includes the £7.2 million imposed in the Punch Taverns case.
The hard-line stance that we have taken on market abuse is one of the reasons London flourishes as a global financial centre. Investors and other market participants value the cleanliness of our market, which is why they use London to carry out their business. Market abuse is a blight on financial markets. It destroys confidence. It puts typically sophisticated financial actors at an unfair advantage over ordinary investors and savers. Those who manipulate the markets or abuse their position to trade on inside information undermine the efficiency and safety of the financial marketplace.
Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)
I am sure my hon. Friend is in no way trying to divert attention away from the fact that jurisdiction is now, effectively, with the European Court of Justice. I am not going to ask him to be precise, but does he not agree that for the purposes of interpreting financial services regulations within the framework of the supervisory authorities that have been created, all these matters are ultimately matters of European law as applied by our Parliament so long as it continues voluntarily to accept them?
Mr Hoban
I am not sure I agree with my hon. Friend. I do not want to be diverted along that path, but I point out to him that, as he will know as Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee that put forward this motion for debate on the Floor of the House, the criminal sanctions directive acts as a minimum harmonisation directive, and this House can impose more stringent penalties than the minimum required.
Mr Hoban
My hon. Friend missed out on the opportunity that I and the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) had of serving on the Financial Services Bill Committee. We spent a considerable amount of time developing the details of jurisdiction in the UK, through giving powers to the Financial Services Authority. There are areas where rules are made at a European level, but, equally, there are areas where rules are made in the UK, and it is not appropriate to say, “There’s only European law.” There is a whole raft of UK law on these matters.
To date, the UK has used the flexibility of the minimum harmonisation EU directive to create a stronger standard, applying the regime to more venues and having stronger rules. Now we have the opportunity to have a better framework applied across the whole of the EU, and that is in our interests.
It is clear that market abuse can take place beyond our borders and yet still affect securities traded within our borders. For that reason, the Government support the Commission’s objective to revise the EU market abuse framework. Improving the strength and consistency of the framework is vital to investor confidence.
There are challenges and opportunities in shifting to a regulation. There are challenges if the UK’s own practices are compromised. There are opportunities from having a more consistent and stronger EU regime and potentially reducing the cost and complexity of compliance for market actors.
Clearly, our prime objective is to ensure that the powers currently available to competent authorities are not weakened, which would damage the UK and the creditable work of the FSA. Secondly, we wish to deliver a robust framework for tackling market abuse within Europe.
Interest in changes to the market abuse framework extends beyond this House. In March, the European Central Bank published its opinion of the market abuse proposals. Its commentary focused largely on the new provision in the regulation for competent authorities to be able to delay the publication of inside information with systemic consequences. The Government echo the ECB’s support for seeking the legal framework to be improved in this respect. This is a key provision for the Bank of England and the FSA following the financial crisis and the difficulties experienced surrounding the disclosure of emergency lending assistance.
I want to outline briefly the EU market abuse package proposed by the Commission. In October 2011, the Commission published a regulation and an accompanying directive on criminal sanctions for market abuse. Those proposals together update the framework formerly established by the market abuse directive 2003, including proposing EU harmonisation of criminal law for market abuse for the first time. The legal basis for the criminal directive is article 83(2) of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union. This is the first use of the relevant provision since the Lisbon treaty was agreed. It means that the directive is subject to a justice and home affairs opt-in. The UK and Ireland have discretion on whether it should apply to them. Denmark is automatically opted out. In light of the fact that this was the first use of the article, it was important that the Government carefully contemplated the issues and came to the appropriate decision.
The European Scrutiny Committee also considered the use of the opt-in. In its 52nd report of the last Session, the Committee noted that the full potential impact for the UK of the draft directive will become certain only once negotiations are concluded. The European Affairs Committee concurred with that opinion, but we are, of course, bound by the regulation.
The Government’s decision not to opt in at this time is a reflection of the sequencing of the directive compared with related legislative proposals. The proposed directive is entirely dependent on the outcome of the market abuse regulation, and the markets in financial instruments directive, which are both in relatively early stages of negotiation. The Government believe that it is very challenging to assess the implications, scope and way in which the criminal directive may develop, given the broader uncertainty of the market abuse framework, which itself is simultaneously subject to a major review.
The key issue here is ensuring that the interaction between the criminal and administrative regimes is clear and workable for all member states. Above all, we need to address the flexibility of when to apply a criminal penalty and when an administrative penalty needs to be retained within member states’ national systems. That must be determined on a case-by-case basis, in the light of the evidence of an individual case. In addition, there was uncertainty about whether the powers of competent authorities would be weakened in respect of accessing telephone records in the regulation and, potentially, the accompanying criminal directive.
It is essential that competent authorities have the flexibility to determine the appropriate type of penalty—whether it is criminal or administrative—and the powers available to them to investigate suspected cases of market abuse. The Council has itself recognised the difficulties involved in trying to complete negotiations on the criminal directive, with linked proposals being negotiated simultaneously. Therefore, the presidency decided to pause progress on the directive, in order to wait for policy progress to be made in the market abuse regulation.
However, I note that although the Government have decided not to opt in at this stage, we have continued to participate fully in negotiations. It is important that we use our expertise in combating market abuse, including the fact that the UK already covers market abuse in its criminal law today. If we are able to do that, and further progress the related proposals in the market abuse regulation and the markets in financial instruments directive in a manner that meets our objectives, we may consider opting in to the criminal directive. We can assess this only when the trio of proposals are properly progressed.
Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)
The Minister is giving a lucid and paced description of Government policy. Let me cut to the chase. It is important that he has the opportunity to hear my question. Are we as a nation—are the Government—opting in to the criminal sanctions market abuse directive, or is he proposing to opt out of it? Which is it?
Mr Hoban
At the moment, let me clarify the position by saying that we have not opted in. As I was saying, we need to see how discussions on three linked legislative proposals work through before deciding whether or not to opt in, but our priority is to ensure that we have a proper market abuse regime in place—one that maintains the highest standards and ensures that the Financial Services Authority, which is responsible for this area of policy, is enabled to use its powers fully to ensure that there is confidence in the integrity of markets.
So I can reassure the House that this Government will not allow legislation on market abuse to be insufficient, and we would not opt into a directive that would undermine the FSA’s current powers in this area. I welcome the opportunity to debate this issue tonight, including the opt-in decision. This is an important issue, and it is right that hon. Members have an opportunity to debate it.
Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)
This is indeed an important debate. Market abuse, insider dealing and market manipulation are issues that do not get the airtime that they deserve. It is important that white collar crime and abuses of what we might call white collar financial services activities are properly attended to. We know that in recent years the regulators, or the relevant authorities, have sometimes struggled properly to prosecute or pursue issues where allegations have been made and there are difficulties in pinning down the right level of evidence. This is an important opportunity to see how, when the European Union proposes new regulations to tighten up some of the rules, the UK Government approaches such questions. I was interested to see in the Financial Services Authority’s recent annual report the quite shocking statistics on potential market manipulation that still takes place and often goes uncaptured.
The statistic that leapt out at me concerned something called APPM monitoring—I know that hon. Members enjoy their acronyms—or abnormal pre-announcement price movement monitoring. Apparently, such movements are still at a level of more than 20% in respect of announcements of mergers or acquisitions. If we look back at share transactions and other dealings, we can see that there are palpably instances when information has leaked out and people have taken advantage of information asymmetry. Such market abuses are notoriously difficult to pin down and prosecute, but they are unfortunately still a feature of many of our markets and financial services and we need to do a great deal to bear down on them.
The original market abuse directive was adopted back in 2003, but the new set of regulations proposes to try to tighten up the arrangements in a number of areas. There are gaps in the new markets that have emerged, for example, particularly in commodities trading and derivatives trading. I shall talk about those in a moment. There are problems with regulatory enforcement, where outdated arrangements are in place. There is a lack of legal certainty, particularly when issues cross nation state boundaries, and a risk of regulatory arbitrage. I was not surprised, therefore, that that was one area in which the Commission made proposals.
Chris Leslie
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for showing that sanity is sometimes tested in these debates. I should also pay tribute to his work and to that of the European Scrutiny Committee, without which many of these important debates would never materialise on the Floor of the House—even if this debate is in the middle of the football, possibly with less exposure and fewer viewers watching on BBC Parliament than might normally do so. I am sure that there will be a rerun of these proceedings and people will be able to watch them at their leisure.
What is different about the market abuse regulations? We know that a parallel criminal sanctions directive is being discussed, although the Government’s position is far from clear. They are almost saying that they will not opt in at this stage, but might change their mind later depending on a number of rather strange factors. There are important reasons why we need to tighten up the criminal offences regime for market manipulation and for insider dealing, and those important steps must be taken. I agree with some of the proposals in the market abuse regulations that will broaden the definition of insider information to cover information that is not generally available for reasons of transaction opacity.
I am particularly keen to see improvements in the market abuse regulations in areas such as commodities and derivatives trading, which were not as large and significant as they are now. About 15 years ago, some £300 million of commodities trading took place in the UK, whereas that has now increased by almost 1,000%. Billions and billions of pounds are now moving from investment-based activity to speculation-based activity. These issues are serious. One might think about speculation in metals and gold and wonder where the harm is, as that is the nature of the world we are in today. However, speculation in wheat, cocoa and other basic food and commodity substances that can have a bearing on the nutrition of many millions of people in developing countries is an issue that matters in the real world.
If there is market abuse and manipulation, it can have a serious impact on real lives. That is why it is important that when we see so many giant corporations with very deep pockets so often being accused of distorting markets and purchasing whole monthly future contracts, potentially hurting consumers in poorer countries, we should take the opportunity to ask whether we have the right market abuse arrangements in place and whether we could make changes. If companies were cornering the market in equities or listed shares it would trigger regulatory action, but when large corporations corner the market in commodities it does not. That is a bizarre anomaly and we need to modernise the arrangements.
We need to see other important changes in the market abuse regulations. How do we identify insider dealing and market manipulation? What are the rules about information being delayed before public announcements? After the financial crisis, there were serious lessons to be learned about revealing information about abuses that might have a bearing on systemically important transactions and organisations. There are some proposals in the arrangements to deal with these issues. These are very serious questions that need to be addressed.
There is a parallel proposal for a criminal sanctions directive that defines the two offences of insider dealing and market manipulation, which should be regarded by member states as criminal offences if committed intentionally. The intention is to introduce a minimum level of harmonisation for criminal sanctions and, in particular, to provide that the competent authority should have the power to impose administrative pecuniary sanctions of up to twice the amount of profit gained or lost.
There is virtue in the criminal sanctions directive and the market abuse regulations, but we are now in this rather byzantine legislative Committee treacle trying to move these issues forward. The Minister may well be personally involved in these areas—I do not know to what extent—but if hon. Members care to take the time to look at the voluminous documentation associated with this debate they will find some interesting correspondence between the Minister and the European Scrutiny Committee. The Minister will have to forgive me if I paraphrase him incorrectly, but in that correspondence he says that the Council discussions have been somewhat fractured—I think that was the word he used—as a result of the fact that the criminal sanctions directive is taken through the Justice and Home Affairs Council whereas the market abuse regulations are taken through ECOFIN.
We then have the added little twist that the Cypriot presidency is taking over on 1 July an issue that has not been resolved and is still in abeyance. The Justice Secretary attended the Justice and Home Affairs Council at the end of April, which kept open—this is where we get into Eurospeak—the “horizontal articles” for a “partial general approach”. I know that is something that Members will be familiar with. In other words, those involved were saying, “Nothing is really going to change on this particular issue. We are just going to tread water for quite some time.”
Then we have the crazy situation in which the market abuse regulation grinds slowly forward while in a parallel universe the criminal sanctions directive enters an entirely different Council Committee. One almost, but not quite, feels sorry for the Minister trying to balance or juggle this particularly tricky set of negotiations, but rather than waiting, reacting and observing the process, he needs to grip this issue by the scruff of the neck and move it forward.
Ultimately, this is the main question I want to ask him: what is he doing to move matters forward? Can he give a proper explanation of where he stands on the substantive elements of the market abuse regulations and of the criminal sanctions directive in particular? He says that it is difficult to assess the scope and implications so far because it depends on the review of the markets in financial instruments directive and various other factors. Difficult or not, he needs to set out the Government’s position on the substantive policy issues. That is what I expected him to do this evening. The issues are not rocket science. He should set out his position. Even if it is a negotiating position, I would like to know the Government’s starting point in this set of discussions. This is a poor way of making decisions.
Clear leadership is not being shown in sorting out the matter and getting a grip of the question. It is necessary to improve and modernise the regulations on market abuse because modern-day financial markets have left behind the old regime. I understand the Commission’s attempts to get some coherence and harmony on market abuse issues and to deal with the regulatory arbitrage issues that arise from time to time, but the Government must answer a number of questions. Why do they feel that they are still unable to set out their position on the substantive policy issues? When does the Minister expect some resolution of the issues? In particular, who does he think should be moving matters forward? Is he just a bystander, waiting for others to do that—the Cypriot presidency or someone else? When will he, as a Minister, show a lead, tackling market abuse, dealing with insider trading arrangements and ironing out some of these important questions? He is too relaxed and a little complacent on these questions. He needs to take charge and grasp the issue.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
I refer Members to my declaration of interests, as I am still actively involved in financial markets—though I am glad to say not in market abuse—and particularly in emerging markets, which has become more relevant in Europe. When I started in emerging markets, Greece and Portugal were such, and I have a feeling that they may soon be classified as emerging markets again.
I support the Government on not opting into the current criminal sanctions proposed by the European Commission. It is classic European Commission stuff. The Commission thinks harmonisation would be very useful because it is concerned about regulatory arbitrage. Regulatory arbitrage ignores the strength of the British position—that people want to trade in London. They are not particularly interested in trading in a Bulgarian bucket shop. Therefore we should remember the strength of our position and not be cowed by feeling that everything across Europe must be the same.
When we look at the wonderful documentation, we are reminded that the great joy of anything to do with Europe is that it provides thousands of pages to read and inwardly digest, almost always written in a form that is as impenetrable as possible, which is part of the problem with the European Union, as the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) so wisely pointed out. There is such confusion in how laws are developed that very few people manage to get to grips with them.
I wish to quote a short excerpt about why the Commission wants the criminal sanction to be brought together. It is so that member states
“can contribute to ensuring the effectiveness of this Union policy by demonstrating social disapproval of a qualitatively different nature compared to administrative sanctions or compensation mechanisms under civil law.”
That is fine, except that we are already doing it. The Government have already said that all the criminal offences that the European Union wants to bring together are covered by our own law, so it is hard to see why they then argue that it is essential that there should be harmonisation.
It is important to remember, with this opt-in at this stage, that if we opt in we cannot opt out again. This is not going to be part of the block opt-out of opt-ins that we can get by 2014. Anything that we opt into at this stage is permanent, so we would have a permanent criminal sanction agreed at the European Union level, which may not be suitable for what we want in this country.
The real problem is that Europe is the wrong area of focus for this country when it comes to financial markets. I know that we have a large market share in a whole range of financial products, that about 80% of hedge funds in the European Union are based in London and that we do more than a third of all global foreign exchange transactions. However, I thought that it would be interesting to look up where we rank across the whole range of financial services. There is an index, “The Global Financial Centres Index”, which ranks countries and capitals by a variety of measures to show how successful they are in financial services. It includes the people they have and their skills, and the depth and breadth of their markets. When we look at it, we see that London comes first, which should not surprise us. New York comes a fairly close second, followed by Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, Zurich, Chicago, Shanghai, Seoul, Toronto, Boston, San Francisco and then Frankfurt. Germany, at 13th, is the first European Union country with a financial centre on the list.
We should not be worrying about co-ordination with Europe. To do so is to look at the past, at an outdated and outmoded form of competition. We need to look to the broader world, to the people with whom we really compete: Hong Kong, Shanghai and, of course, New York. Therefore, the Government must show some backbone by not giving in to more Europeanisation, because that is what has been done previously, that is what the EU is used to, and that is the comfort zone of the bureaucracy. We need to look at how our arrangements and regulations compete with the further world, not with what might be called the near abroad. If we do that, we will find that we want our own regulation and we want less European regulation, and we can negotiate from a position of strength, because the financial markets in the United Kingdom are overwhelmingly larger than those in continental Europe.
Therefore, I support the Government in not opting in, but I do not support them in qualifying it by saying “at this stage.” There is no need for any further transfer of powers to the European Union. That is part of the coalition agreement and we should never opt in to anything further in future.
Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)
I thoroughly endorse almost everything my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) has said, but I would go somewhat further, because I have a complete aversion to the whole concept of the transfer of our jurisdiction over matters affecting the City of London. I have said that for many years now. In fact, when the de Larosière report was published I wrote in the Financial Times that I saw it as a ticking time bomb, or words to that effect, and that if matters were allowed to continue we would find ourselves mopped up by European jurisdiction.
Following the statement my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary made to the House only last week, I asked a simple question: in the light of the vast amount of commitment and time that has been spent transferring jurisdiction over matters affecting the City to the European Union, how on earth will we be able to protect the City, the related single market aspects, including financial services, and matters of the kind now before the House in the market abuse directive when they are governed by qualified majority vote? Those are the realities.
The truth is that we have made the most massive strategic mistake in relation to matters of this kind, which are governed by qualified majority vote, under directives such as the MAD directive otherwise known as the market abuse directive, which was bitterly opposed by the City of London in the early part of this century. I have to say that events then turned for the worse and those proposals have now been overtaken.
Before I turn to the specifics of the matter before us, I ought to mention that the veto on the fiscal compact, which the European Scrutiny Committee said was effectively unlawful on the evidence we received, has not been followed up. The Government and the Attorney-General are clearly of the view that the agreement on the fiscal compact between the 25 was unlawful, but in reality nothing has been done. We have just had a reply from the Government to our report on the question, and on which we held an inquiry, but in no way do they continue to do anything to put to the test the illegality that lies at the heart of the fiscal compact. We are therefore still in the position whereby the Government regard the fiscal compact of the 25 as being a matter of irregularity, but they do not do anything about it.
That is a dangerous situation, and it has gone beyond that—to the fiscal union itself being promoted and advocated by the Government. That will make things even worse, with an even deeper black hole, as I said on television yesterday. The banking union proposals, which are also now being pressed upon us, will come to fruition around the time of the summit on 28 June, and I fear that we are being taken down an extremely dangerous route.
The market abuse directive before us is one example of that tendency to legislate continuously on financial services matters, and my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset is quite right that we could legislate for ourselves on them. Bad markets, as I have said in articles I have written in the past, are bad business, and we have at our disposal in this Parliament every means to pass legislation on our own account, without necessarily or by any means having to leave it to the European Union. I would be going beyond the remit of this debate if I went into that in any further detail, but I repudiate the idea that we cannot legislate for ourselves on such matters.
I am by no means convinced that the Government intend to make it entirely clear whether or not we will opt in, and that is the problem with the opt-in. I think my hon. Friend is of the opinion that the Government have decided that we will not. I am not sure, but I thought he said that.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. No, that is not what I think. I think that the Government have not opted in, technically, at the moment, but hope to do so in future, and I think that will be a great mistake.
Mr Cash
In that case we are, as so often, ad idem and in agreement, and I am glad to hear that confirmation from my hon. Friend.
This whole business has one way or another been developing over the past 12 years—and before. It has been before the European Scrutiny Committee, and we have recommended it for debate, but it has been overtaken by further developments, particularly since the financial crash, which we are now in. I am extremely doubtful about whether market abuse in itself—important as the subject matter is, and something that needs to be dealt with—is in any way a contributor to the financial mess that the European Union is in.
We are in an economic crisis, we are in a black hole, and we should have a convention at which all those matters, including directives of this kind, are put before the member states with their cards on the table. We should say unequivocally that we want a different kind of Europe and put it to them, and the negotiating position that we adopt, those red lines, should then be put to the British people. We should have a referendum on those matters to make it absolutely clear that the direction of this over-legislated, over-burdensome European jurisdiction is doing no good whatsoever to the free markets—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. The hon. Gentleman took some time to set his intended comments in context, which I allowed, but I now require him to address the business before us. We do not need any more general scene-setting on his attitudes towards the European Union, so perhaps he could come back to the business before the House.
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. It is not for the hon. Gentleman to disagree with me. He thought that he was covering the subject by making general points about opt-ins, but I would like him now to refer to the documents before the House. He has been speaking for some time, and he should bring the attention of the House to his points on these documents.
Mr Cash
Well, to put it simply, the Committee is concerned that the Government might opt into the draft criminal sanctions directive once it is adopted. There would be a debate on that matter if they decided to do so. I do not think that we should opt in. That matter is part of the broader landscape and specific issues that are before the House.
The question of what the draft directive means by the word “intentionally” in relation to market abuse raises some very important legal issues. Then there is the question of whether the draft directive would apply automatically if there were proof of intent or whether there would be discretion to apply an administrative penalty rather than a criminal one. Those are all matters on which we could legislate on our own account if we wished to do so. I make no apology for repeating that point.
A further point concerns the practical application of the proposed new definition of “inside information”, which involves the whole issue of insider dealing. The trouble is—I say this with respect to Madam Deputy Speaker—that definitions in relation to European legislation raise the question of how this matter will be adjudicated on by the European Court of Justice. We have our own means and opportunities to pass legislation in this House that will define these questions.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
My hon. Friend has come to the absolute crux of the matter. Once we opt into something, it is then justiciable by the European Justice of Justice. That brings the ECJ into a role regarding our criminal law, and that is a very substantial step for the Government to be taking.
Mr Cash
I am deeply grateful for the support of my hon. Friend, who is also a member of the European Scrutiny Committee and who has very considerable expertise in his own right. He has developed an acute sense of British and United Kingdom interests in relation to matters of great importance to the City of London.
A further point is that there is no useful recital in the directive, as there normally would be, to indicate the parameters of the draft regulations. We are deeply concerned about that. There is no certainty that we will opt in, but that does not alter the fact that there is grave concern that we will eventually end up being told that we will do so. If that is what happens, I, for one, will undoubtedly vote against it.
The directive aims to prevent insider dealing and the misuse of financially sensitive market information in the financial markets. That cannot be separated from the broader landscape of the manner in which the European Union is interfering in matters in the United Kingdom that affect the City of London. The City of London represents some 20% of our gross domestic product. I entirely take on board the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset that we are at the top of the league in global financial market activity. I believe that a serious attempt is being made by other members of the European Union—with Frankfurt at No. 13—to move further up the positions. That will be done partly through regulatory collusion and the use of qualified majority voting, as Professor Roland Vaubel has indicated in his general concerns about the manner in which qualified majority voting and directives are dealt with.
The intervention of the financial crisis in 2007 delayed the implementation of the original provisions and prompted a rethink. Whether that rethink is beneficial is another issue. The new EU regulation that will replace the original directive, which is proposed alongside the new directive, provides for minimum harmonised standards of enforcement and sanction throughout the community. Although the UK Government are broadly supportive of the measures, there are procedural uncertainties, notably in the problem of aligning the three interlocking legislative measures at the same time. That has led the Government to conclude that the UK should not yet opt into the directive. I am interested to hear whether the Minister has a view on the words “not yet”. I do not think that he will commit himself at this stage, but there will be considerable difficulty and trouble for the City of London if we do opt in.
I do not believe that the directives are in the interests of the United Kingdom. We can legislate on these matters ourselves. There is much talk of fiscal union, banking union, supervisory authorities and the wholesale transfer of our jurisdiction over the City of London, which means so much to our gross domestic product and to our ability to compete internationally. That is being undermined by proposals of this kind, whether or not they are brought into effect.
Mr Hoban
I will respond briefly to the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie) and to my hon. Friends the Members for Stone (Mr Cash) and for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg).
The challenge that we face is that there are three interlocking legislative initiatives: the markets in financial instruments directive, which provides the scope of markets; the market abuse regulation, which looks at broadening the scope and is intimately linked with MiFID; and the criminal sanctions directive. Because the UK has a world-leading regime on market abuse, has historically taken a tough line and has a range of sanctions in place that few countries in the European Union can match, we are shaping the debate in this area and playing a major role in getting it right. We are trying to ensure that we maintain the high standards that the Financial Services Authority has in its investigatory powers and its sanctions.
The progress on these matters is not as quick as we would like, but that is partly because there are three interlocking initiatives. It is not quite the case that one moves at the speed of the slowest ship in the convoy on these things, but there is a challenge. The hon. Member for Nottingham East said that the matter is being passed across to the Cypriot presidency. A whole raft of things are being passed across to the Cypriot presidency. There is nothing new in stuff passing from one presidency to another. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Nottingham East asks from a sedentary position when we will get some movement. Discussions on MiFID are proceeding and it is one of the priorities of the Cypriot presidency. That will perhaps form the keystone and get the rest of it happening.
We are reserving our position on the opt-in. It is vital to London’s continued success as the world’s leading financial centre that we have the right measures in place on market abuse. That is why we have not opted in.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I am extremely grateful to the Minister. I have just one question. What advantage is there to opting in if the rest of Europe is going to do it anyway and we already have something better in place?
Mr Hoban
We have an interest in ensuring that criminal sanctions are applied across Europe if we think the directive is appropriate, because shares and instruments that are traded within our borders can be affected by market manipulation outside our borders. It is therefore important that we have a proper regime in place, but let us leave the decision whether to opt in until the three interlocking pieces that I mentioned come closer together. Then I am sure the European Scrutiny Committee will bring us back to the topic once again.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House takes note of European Union Documents No. 16010/11 and Addenda 1 and 2, relating to a Draft Regulation on insider dealing and market manipulation (market abuse), No. 16000/11 and Addenda 1 and 2, relating to the Draft Directive on criminal sanctions for insider dealing and market manipulation, and No. 8253/12, relating to the European Central Bank Opinion on market abuse legislation; recognises that an efficient financial market that aids economic growth requires market integrity and public confidence; welcomes the UK’s leading role in combating market abuse; and supports the Government’s decision not to opt-in to the Criminal Sanctions Directive until it is clear that related provisions within the Markets in Financial Instruments Directive Review and the Market Abuse Regulation are further progressed in order to enable the Government to evaluate the implications for the UK, and ensure high standards in tackling market abuse are maintained.
Business without Debate
Petitions
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
I rise to present a petition signed by 2,012 people from the village of Irchester—half its male population. It concerns development outside the village boundary to which all three political parties were opposed before the last local elections. The leading signatories are Mr Chris Stening, Mr Tony Skipper and Mr Richard Webb.
The petition states:
The Humble Petition of residents of Irchester, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire and the surrounding areas,
Sheweth, that any proposed residential development on Green Field sites, outside the village boundary policy line, would put a great strain on Irchester’s infrastructure and have a huge damaging impact on the local environment.
Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your Honourable House requests the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to urge the Northamptonshire County Council, the Borough Council of Wellingborough and the Parish Council of Irchester to ensure that no such development takes place.
And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray, etc.
[P001098]
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
I have a petition from a grass-roots organisation that has grown up, concerning the change of name of an important school in my area. Its leading signatories are Emma Davies, Serena James and Julie Burgess.
The petition states:
The Humble Petition of residents of Hemmingwell, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire and the surrounding areas,
Sheweth, that the proposed change of name of the Oakway schools in Hemmingwell and the additional cost in changing the school uniform are both unnecessary and costly and that the schools in Oakway are well established and the name is well known.
Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your Honourable House urges the Secretary of State for Education to urge the Northamptonshire County Council and the Board of Governors at the Oakway schools to work together to ensure that any merged school will be named Oakway Primary School
And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray, etc.
[P001099]
Access to Water (Chillerton and Gatcombe)
(11 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)
I asked for this debate to highlight how Southern Water is treating residents of Gatcombe and Chillerton, two of the many delightful villages in my beautiful constituency. I also want to draw attention to the lack of any affordable route to get the dispute that exists with a monopoly supplier considered independently. I have raised those matters with Ministers before, but it seems that they fall down a deep, dark hole somewhere between the Ministry of Justice as a legal issue, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills as a consumer protection issue, and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which is responsible for the supply of water. My right hon. Friend the Minister may have drawn the short straw, but I am particularly grateful that he is here to pick up the baton.
Southern Water charges some residents of the villages and surrounding areas of Gatcombe and Chillerton full rates for the supply of their water. However, owing to a number of agreements, most notably the Seely agreement of 1907, many residents in the area are entitled to free water or reduced rates for their supply. They pay full rates for sewage and waste water disposal—that is not in dispute.
The 1907 agreement was made between Sir Charles Seely and Shanklin urban district council. The Seelys are an old and distinguished family. Sir Charles was a Liberal Unionist and then Liberal MP for Nottingham, and his second son, Jack, was the Member of Parliament for the Isle of Wight from 1900 until 1906, and again from 1923 to 1924. It is said that he was in South Africa fighting in the Boer war when he received a telegram from his mother telling him he had been elected. He sent a telegram back asking, “Which party?” In fact, he served as both a Conservative and a Liberal MP. It is tempting to think that he would be comfortable with the coalition Government we have today, but all hon. Members know that the Liberals were a very different proposition from today’s Liberal Democrats.
The 1907 Seely agreement permitted Shanklin urban district council to install and maintain waterworks on privately owned land in Chillerton. In return, villagers living on that land were to receive a water supply either free or at a preferential rate, depending on where they lived. The arrangement was to continue for 999 years.
Such a clause would be typical of the Seelys. They were a philanthropic family who did many good works for the island and islanders. Southern Water is the successor in title to that agreement and bound by its terms—or at least it should be. Southern Water claims that the 1907 agreement has “run its course” and that people who live on that land today are not entitled to any discount on their water supply. In fact, some properties currently receive free water, some pay a reduced rate and others get no reduction at all. There appears to be no rhyme or reason as to who pays what.
It is clear that Southern Water is not behaving in a fair and consistent way. It has even asked my constituents for details of which of their neighbours are getting discounted water so it can remove the benefit. Needless to say, my constituents have not responded to such requests for information. Amazingly, Southern Water appears not even to know to whom it is giving discounts.
This issue does not affect thousands of people—there are only 352 electors, and not all of them are affected—but over the years a number of my constituents have tried to sort out the problem, including John and Adrienne Horne and George Nightingale, who have kept me up to date with what is happening. The parish council and county council have tried to help without success. I have written to Southern Water’s chief executive. Our most recent exchange was in March this year. It was unproductive.
Southern Water says that any financial loss to householders has long since expired, but seems not to understand that the benefit was always intended for the residents whether or not they suffered loss. It says that costs have gone up, that water usage has increased, and that water from the area may not meet current water quality standards. Finally, it says it would not enter into such an arrangement these days, and that it would instead make a one-off compensation payment to the landowner. All those arguments have been made before, but my constituents have received legal advice saying that none of it affects their rights as residents and Southern Water’s obligations to them.
As I said, my constituents have taken legal advice, including counsel’s opinion, all of which confirms their view that Southern Water is bound by the agreement, but all this has been to no avail, and we now seem to have reached a stalemate. Southern Water says that it is interpreting the law in a particular way, and that is that—if it says that a 999-year lease lasts for only 100 years, that, as far as it is concerned, is the end of the story.
As far as I can see, there is little basis on which Southern Water can legitimately argue that this legally binding 999-year agreement has no force in 2012 or beyond, particularly given that residents in some of the newer properties were given reduced rates on their water charges, because of the Seely agreement, as recently as 2008. Southern Water has claimed in correspondence that any benefit should have ceased many years ago.
The Seely land was given at a peppercorn price in 1907 in return for the long-term benefit to villagers, yet Southern Water sold some of it in 2004 for £50,000—houses have since been built on it—adding insult to injury. The Minister knows that Southern Water is a monopoly supplier and that my constituents cannot simply go elsewhere to get water. Ofwat, which regulates the market, states that consumers treated unfairly by water companies must go through the company’s complaints procedure. Afterwards, they have the right to complain to the independent Consumer Council for Water, which is a statutory body that should represent consumers’ interests in dealings with water companies, but the council has refused to get involved, saying it is a legal matter.
It seems that the only way my constituents can get proper consideration of their case is by taking Southern Water to court, but that would cost many thousands of pounds and is simply not feasible. That surely cannot be right. It has been suggested that residents should not pay the water rates that are not due, but Gatcombe and Chillerton residents are a sensible group of people and are concerned that such a course of action might have an adverse effect on their credit records.
We are left in the position where Southern Water, a financial giant of a company with a turnover of almost £650 million, is riding roughshod over my constituents. It realises that there is no realistic prospect of “the little people” taking it to court and that the regulator will not get involved, so it is applying the law as it wishes it to be applied—and tough luck to anyone who disagrees.
In short, there seems to be no way in which my constituents’ concerns can be examined independently without recourse to the courts, yet Sir Charles Seely knew, more than 100 years ago, that it was necessary to provide “the little people” with a means of settling disputes. The Seely agreement makes provision for independent arbitration of any dispute, but Southern Water is simply not interested. Sir Charles would be outraged, and so am I.
Taking into account that this is a regulated industry, I hope the Minister can help me to find a way forward that will ensure that the residents of Gatcombe and Chillerton get their legal rights. We need to find a way of getting these agreements examined and, if appropriate, enforced consistently and fairly. Furthermore, Southern Water must be made to deal properly with the residents of Gatcombe and Chillerton.
Finally, I would like to thank the Minister very much for being here to respond to this debate. I wrote only recently to his colleague the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), inviting him to come to the Isle of Wight for a number of reasons, and this was one of them.
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr James Paice)
Let me start by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner) on securing this debate and, as one who has known him for many years would expect, on the considered way in which he has made his points. It is probably as much a surprise to him as it is to me that I am replying to the debate, rather than the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Richard Benyon), who deals with such issues in the Department. Unfortunately he is unwell this evening, and I volunteered to respond to the debate in his stead. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight will understand, therefore, that my depth of knowledge of the subject is a little more limited than that of my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary, who I have no doubt will respond to his invitation—to which he referred at the end of his speech—as soon as possible.
Clearly this is an issue of great importance. My hon. Friend was kind enough to furnish us with a copy of what he was proposing to say this evening, so that we could prepare for it. Having read through it several times, as well as listening to him just now, I can assure him that I fully understand the concerns that he has expressed, and which I am sure most hon. Members would share, faced with such a constituency case. Although this is an important issue, however, I am now going to have to disappoint my hon. Friend slightly, because as my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary said in the letter that he wrote to him on 1 June, this is a legal matter. As the case may end up in court, notwithstanding my hon. Friend’s comments, I have been strongly advised, as I am sure sometimes you are on different issues, Mr Speaker, not to say anything that could be deemed to be of use to one side or the other in such a hearing, tempting, as I can assure him, though it is for me, as he will know—sometimes I am renowned for saying what I think, rather than what I have been told I should say.
My hon. Friend also referred to the role of the regulator, Ofwat. As I think he knows, the regulator’s role is to regulate prices, so that companies can charge their customers as a whole, based on that regulation. The regulator can cap the total revenue that companies can collect from their customers, and set rules to ensure that customers are charged fairly. The regulator plays an important role in ensuring that we have resilient water resources, balancing the need for investment to maintain and improve water and sewerage infrastructure to meet water quality and environmental standards with the need to keep prices low for customers. However, as the subject of this debate centres on a legal agreement—which, as I have said, may end up in the courts—I am afraid that I am unable to comment, and I have to confirm that Ofwat does not have a role in the dispute.
Nevertheless, if my hon. Friend will permit me, I would like to spend just a moment on wider water issues, some aspects of which are relevant to this debate. There has been a lot of discussion in the country over the past two or three months, with the initial drought and then the rain over the past 10 weeks, which has brought much needed relief. However, these events demonstrate to everybody in the country the need to take action to secure sustainable water supplies, now and in the future. That action was set out in the Government’s water White Paper, which we published last year. It described a vision for future water management in which the water sector is resilient, in which water companies are more efficient and customer-focused, and in which water is valued as a precious and finite resource. The White Paper also described the actions to be taken by all of us—the water industry, businesses and agriculture, the Government, and families in their homes and gardens. The White Paper sets out the Government’s long-term vision for the water industry and the need for reforming the abstraction and competition regimes. We will also introduce a draft water Bill before the summer recess.
My hon. Friend referred to the fact that his constituents had nowhere else to go for their water. I am sure that he will therefore welcome that part of the water Bill that will increase resilience by increasing competition for customers and stimulating a market for new water resources, precisely to address the issue of customers having no alternative. Upstream competition should encourage existing water resources to be used more efficiently, reducing the threat of drought and requiring less water to be abstracted from our rivers and boreholes in water-scarce areas.
I know that the action we are taking to ensure that our water resources remain resilient and sustainable will be close to my hon. Friend’s heart, and to those of other hon. Members. The White Paper described the things that we can all do to use water more sustainably, whatever we are paying for it. Families can use less water in their gardens by installing a water butt, by using grey water and through other methods. They can also save water, and money, in the home by fitting water-efficient devices such as dual flushes and aerated shower heads, and by repairing dripping taps. I am delighted that the Isle of Wight is leading the way on sustainability. Having strong family connections with the Isle of Wight, I am personally enthused by that fact.
Without wishing to spin this matter out any longer than I or my hon. Friend might wish, I have to reiterate that because the issues that he has quite properly raised and publicised relate to a legal matter, it would not be appropriate for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to comment officially or for Ofwat to intervene. In the last part of his speech, however, he said that the Seely agreement made provision for the independent arbitration of any dispute. He also, rightly, said that the prospect of the cost of legal action was rearing its head for the little people. If such a clause exists in the agreement to enable the independent arbitration of the dispute, it therefore seems to me that that would be a sensible and logical step for both sides to take. Speaking personally, I would strongly urge both sides to use that facility for independent arbitration, which should provide a way to resolve this matter without further time-wasting or further cost to either side.
Question put and agreed to.