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Oral Answers to Questions
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Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)
1. If he will bring forward legislative proposals to introduce standardised packaging of tobacco products.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Jane Ellison)
As the hon. Gentleman knows, the Government have decided to wait before making a decision on standardised packaging, but the policy remains under active consideration. As he can imagine, I have spent much of the past two weeks, as I get to know my brief, looking at that carefully.
Gavin Shuker
I welcome the Minister to her new role. Stirling university’s systematic review of plain packaging concluded that it made cigarettes less attractive and health warnings more effective. Will she give me a straight answer: has she read the report, and if not, why not?
Jane Ellison
The straight answer is that I have not read the whole report, but I have read the summary, and it reaches some interesting conclusions. It is one of a number of interesting new pieces of information and evidence coming forward to support decision making in this policy area, and from work going on in countries right around the world as well as Australia.
Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
Three hundred thousand young people a year start smoking, and the tobacco industry’s last vestige of advertising is packaging. Will my hon. Friend, in her new role, look at the proposal very seriously so that we can stop young people starting this terrible habit?
Jane Ellison
Stopping children and young people smoking is a priority for us all; all Members care deeply about the health of their constituents. I can certainly assure my hon. Friend that we are looking at that very seriously and assessing all the new information available, not just from this country but from around the world.
Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)
The vast weight of not only expert opinion but of public opinion says that standardised packaging cuts the risk of people taking up smoking. When will the Government act on that and ignore what is coming from the vested interests—the lobbyists and the big tobacco companies—as an excuse for doing nothing?
Jane Ellison
I can only repeat what I have said: I am a new Minister and I am looking at this very carefully. There are interesting new pieces of information coming through all the time to assist us in making public policy in this area. It is under very active consideration.
Paul Burstow (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)
I welcome the Minister to her new role. Will she, when considering the evidence, look at the fact that the tobacco industry, in its marketing and packaging strategies, is aiming at certain markets, particularly children and young people, whom they want to start smoking? Given her desire to ensure that children do not take up the practice, surely she should act on the evidence by ending the existing packaging arrangements and having standardised packaging so that we can deal with this problem.
Jane Ellison
At the risk of repeating myself, all I can say to my right hon. Friend is that I am looking at that very carefully. He is right that we all want to stop children and young people smoking. There is a mass of evidence out there, and we are gaining new evidence and information all the time to help us make decisions. I will continue to look at it as one of the absolute priorities within my brief.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
I welcome the hon. Lady to her new post. We knew that her predecessor supported standardised cigarette packaging: Labour will table amendments to the Children and Families Bill in the other place and in this place to make that a reality. I have listened to contributions from Members on the Government Benches supporting the policy. Will the Minister tell us today whether she supports standardised packaging?
Jane Ellison
We are very aware of the discussions that have been going on in the other place and the amendments that have come forward, in which we have taken considerable interest. At this stage, we want to look at all the available evidence, because new information is coming through, before coming to a view. I take this opportunity to welcome the hon. Lady to her new post.
Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)
2. What assessment he has made of the adequacy of provision of maternity services in Gloucestershire.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr Daniel Poulter)
On 12 November last year, I announced the allocation of a £25 million capital fund to the NHS to improve maternity services across the country, and that has supported improvements in 110 maternity care settings. I am pleased to say that, of that figure, Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust was awarded £150,000 to refurbish the Stroud maternity unit.
Neil Carmichael
I thank the Minister for that encouraging answer. We now have 1,400 new midwives since 2010. Coupled with the very welcome recent investment in Stroud maternity unit, does he agree that this represents a real choice for expectant mothers and an excellent maternity service in general?
Dr Poulter
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight the fact that when we came into Government there was a historical shortage of investment in maternity and midwifery care. We now have almost 1,400 more midwives in the work force, training commissions are being maintained at a record high, and we are continuing to invest in on-the-ground capital projects to support the birthing environment for women.
Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
3. What assessment his Department has made of the effect of the European working time directive on patient care and the professional development of doctors.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr Daniel Poulter)
We are aware that concerns exist about the impact of EU legislation on some areas of training and service delivery within the NHS, specifically the impact of the EWTD on patient experience and continuity of care, and the detrimental effect on the quality of training for doctors.
Julian Smith
Harrogate hospital, which serves much of my constituency, suffers very badly from recruitment and retention issues as a result of the working time directive. Does the Minister agree that it, and other areas of social and employment law, should be front and centre of our renegotiation strategy prior to the referendum in 2017?
Dr Poulter
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight some of the concerns that have been raised by the Royal College of Surgeons and other groups about the impact of the European working time directive in medicine. That is why we have tasked the royal college with investigating and doing some work on exactly what the impact is on surgical trainees and elsewhere in the health sector. We look forward to its reporting back, and I hope that that will be very informative for future discussions on other work force regulations.
Nick Smith (Blaenau Gwent) (Lab)
4. What estimate he has made of the number of NHS Trusts forecasting a financial deficit at the end of 2013-14.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr Daniel Poulter)
The Trust Development Authority and Monitor, for foundation trusts, indicate that there will be a financial surplus across the health care provider sector in 2013-14.
Nick Smith
With so many NHS trusts in deficit and many missing their A and E targets, when will the Minister stop blaming everybody else and get a grip on the A and E crisis?
Dr Poulter
I am disappointed that the hon. Gentleman used a pre-prepared question and did not listen to my answer. Throughout the health care provider sector, over 80% of trusts and foundation trusts are in financial surplus, and the overall end-of-year forecast is pointing to a surplus of £109 million across the sector. To support hospitals through what can be very difficult winter periods, with flu and other seasonal problems, we have put in place measures including a £500 million fund for winter pressures. That will take the pressure off A and E—unlike in Wales, where the Welsh Administration are cutting the budget for the NHS. In Wales the NHS has failed to meet A and E waiting targets since 2009.
Mr Stephen Dorrell (Charnwood) (Con)
While I welcome the fact that the provider sector as a whole is in surplus, will my hon. Friend confirm that some trusts are indeed anticipating that they will be running deficits? Will he also confirm that the National Audit Office has estimated that up to 30% of acute hospital admissions would be avoidable if we had properly integrated services, and that that would allow us to deliver not only better financial management but, much more importantly, better quality care for patients?
Dr Poulter
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight the fact that a very small minority—20%—of trusts across the health care provider sector, including trusts and foundation trusts, are anticipating a deficit. Many of those trusts have a direct legacy of debt from the private finance initiative arrangements that the previous Government put in place. That is one of the direct legacies of the poor PFI deals that were arranged. He is absolutely right to highlight the importance of integrated and joined-up health care. That is exactly what the £500 million we are providing for winter pressures is designed to do by focusing on better preventive care to keep people out of hospital.
Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)
Trust balance sheets are bound to be affected by the resources allocated to the commissioning groups. On 12 June last year, I asked the then Minister for
“a clear assurance that he will not downgrade the importance of economic deprivation in his resource allocation formula”.
He told the House:
“Yes, I can give that assurance.”—[Official Report, 12 June 2012; Vol. 546, c. 167.]
Why is the Minister’s Department now consulting on doing precisely what the then Minister said he would not do and taking £230 million out of the budget for the north-east and Cumbria?
Dr Poulter
The right hon. Gentleman has perhaps misunderstood the information imparted on that occasion. It is very clear that the allocation formula is now independently set and NHS England has primary responsibility for it. There is legitimate concern. There is a 10% deprivation weighting for some of the poorest communities in-built into that formula. It is also important that we recognise that demographics and an ageing population are putting pressure on a lot of CCG budgets, but these are matters for NHS England.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
As Morecambe Bay trust seeks to recover from its financial crisis, one of the options put forward by clinicians is for a new, acute hub hospital to be created south of Kendal to improve safety, access and financial efficiencies. It is bound to involve a capital cost to start off with. If the new hub hospital is the option chosen by clinicians, will my hon. Friend give it his backing politically and financially?
Dr Poulter
My hon. Friend will be aware that this is a matter for local commissioners to decide and it is not for Whitehall to impose solutions on them. There are issues and efficiencies that Morecambe Bay trust can drive by better managing its estate and reducing temporary staffing costs. The hospital and trust will, of course, want to look into those issues in improving their financial outlook and the quality of care they can provide for patients.
Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)
Whatever the Minister claims, the reality is that the Secretary of State has lost grip of NHS finances just as he has lost grip of the crisis in A and E. Earlier this month, we learned that half of all NHS hospital trusts are now predicting deficits—up from one in 12 last year. As a self-proclaimed champion of openness, will the Minister now commit to publishing those deficit figures monthly and guarantee that all NHS acute trusts will balance their books by the end of the year? It is a simple question—yes or no.
Dr Poulter
The hon. Lady is being economical with the figures. I indicated earlier that 70% of trusts and 89% of foundation trusts are predicted either to break even or end the year with a financial surplus. That is hardly a difficult position. Those trusts that have deficits are often a direct legacy of the PFI deals negotiated by the previous Government and the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) when he was Secretary of State. The sector as a whole is predicting £109 million of surplus. That is hardly a deficit. I know that the Labour party is not very good with figures and cannot add up, which is why this country is in such an economic mess, but the figures speak for themselves: £109 million of surplus is predicted for trusts and foundation trusts.
Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)
5. What recent progress he has made on improving the performance of hospital trusts placed in special measures.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
8. What recent progress he has made on improving the performance of hospital trusts placed in special measures.
John Stevenson (Carlisle) (Con)
9. What recent progress he has made on improving the performance of hospital trusts placed in special measures.
Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)
12. What recent progress he has made on improving the performance of hospital trusts placed in special measures.
The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
Significant progress has been made at all 11 trusts placed in special measures in July, including changing the chair or chief executive officer and recruiting more nurses in every single one them and partnering each of them with a high-performing hospital so that they can make rapid progress in turning things around.
Martin Vickers
I thank the Secretary of State for his reply. He will be aware of my constituents’ concerns about services at Diana, Princess of Wales hospital in Grimsby. There are doubts about the future of the stroke unit and high mortality rates, and there are also problems with the East Midlands ambulance service. Will the Secretary of State give an assurance that he is satisfied that progress is being made at the hospital?
Mr Hunt
I think good progress is being made and I commend my hon. Friend for his campaigning on the issue. The trust concerned has introduced better privacy for patients, hired 154 nurses since the Keogh report and introduced electronic vital signs reporting at the bedside—all because we are being transparent and open about problems in the NHS and not sweeping them under the carpet.
Andrew Bridgen
Burton hospital, which serves part of my constituency, was one of the 11 hospitals placed in special measures following the Keogh report. Will my right hon. Friend assure my constituents that the improvements needed in those hospitals will be carried out in a culture of openness and transparency rather than one of opaqueness and cover-up, which so unfortunately typified the way in which the previous Government ran the NHS?
Mr Hunt
I know that my hon. Friend takes a very close interest in what happens at his hospital and I think that progress is being made in turning it around. What will be of concern to my hon. Friend is that, as far back as 2005-6, Burton’s mortality rate was 30% higher than the national average—it was even higher than that at Mid Staffs—and yet the problem was not sorted out. We are sorting it out.
John Stevenson
As the Secretary of State is aware, North Cumbria trust is in special measures. We have on our doorstep a potential solution to our problems, namely Northumbria trust. Will the Secretary of State give me an assurance that everything possible will be done to get North Cumbria out of special measures at the earliest opportunity and, much more importantly, that every support will be given to Northumbria in is acquisition of North Cumbria?
Mr Hunt
I can give my hon. Friend both assurances because Northumbria has been doing a huge amount to help North Cumbria turn itself around, including installing its patient experience systems to ensure that patients are treated with the dignity and respect that they deserve. The problems have been around since 2007 and he can tell his constituents that we are finally turning them around.
Stephen Metcalfe
As my right hon. Friend will be aware, Basildon university hospital in my constituency is one of the 11 hospitals that were placed in special measures following the failure of the previous Government to act on the information that they had. Will he tell the House what support the new management team, in whom I have great confidence, are receiving and when my constituents can expect to see sustained, long-term improvements?
Mr Hunt
I reassure my hon. Friend that the trust has hired 257 more nurses since the problems emerged this year, has better A and E processes, and has been partnered with the Royal Free in London to help it make even more progress. He will be as shocked as I am that when the Care Quality Commission identified problems at that hospital the last Government sat on the report for six months. That cannot be acceptable.
John Healey (Wentworth and Dearne) (Lab)
How can NHS patients and staff have any confidence in decisions about their local services when they are taken by the Competition Commission on the overriding grounds of what is best for a competitive market and not what is best for patients? Will he learn from the failure of the merger between the Royal Bournemouth and Christchurch Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and the Poole Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, and take merger off the table as an option for Rotherham hospital?
Mr Hunt
May I reassure the right hon. Gentleman that the competition authorities make their decisions based on what is in the best interests of patients and do not hold competition as an overriding ideology? He is right that we need to work closely with those authorities to ensure that they have the expertise to take decisions in the right way and with trusts to ensure that they have the expertise to ensure that they do not stumble when they go through those processes.
Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)
How can the public have confidence in their health service when police officers are taking patients who are sick and injured to A and E because ambulances are backed up outside A and E and take longer than an hour to arrive?
Mr Hunt
I will tell the hon. Lady why the public can have confidence in their health service: compared with three years ago, on broadly the same budget, the NHS is doing 800,000 more operations year in, year out; MRSA rates have halved; and the number of people who wait for a year or longer for operations has gone down from 18,000 to fewer than 400.
Clive Efford (Eltham) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State explain why we have had a summer crisis in A and E? We are all used to the emergency services being overwhelmed in winter. Given the crisis that we have had, what will he do to assist the NHS in averting a winter crisis this year, rather than just blaming everybody else?
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Health is clearly not adequately monitoring performance. If he was, he would be aware that serious problems remain across the accident and emergency departments of the trusts that were placed in special measures by Professor Sir Bruce Keogh. On his watch, the A and E performance at eight of the 11 trusts has got worse since Keogh reported, including at my hospital in Tameside. The A and E performance has got substantially worse at East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust, where the number of patients waiting for more than four hours has doubled since Keogh reported, and at Medway NHS Trust, where the figure has quadrupled. When will he stop all the grandstanding, cut the spin and get a grip on his A and E crisis?
Mr Hunt
I hope that the hon. Gentleman will be pleased that something is happening under this Government that did not happen under the Labour Government: we are putting those hospitals into special measures and sorting out the problems, including the long-term problems with A and E such as the GP contract—a disaster that was imposed on this country by the Labour Government.
Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)
6. What the current (a) highest, (b) lowest and (c) mean average registered nurse-to-patient ratio is on acute hospital wards.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr Daniel Poulter)
As my hon. Friend is aware, we do not hold information on registered nurse-to-patient ratios on acute hospital wards. Local hospitals must have the freedom to decide the skill mix of their work force and the number of staff they employ to deliver high-quality, safe patient care.
Andrew George
I am grateful to my hon. Friend. The Government should be monitoring the situation, but he will be aware of the concern, which I have consistently highlighted, about inadequate registered nurse ratios in acute hospital wards, and of the Health Committee’s report into the Francis inquiry, which made recommendations in that regard. In inspecting hospitals, what objective measure should the Care Quality Commission use when looking at safe staffing levels on acute hospital wards?
Dr Poulter
The CQC is working with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence and NHS England to devise tools to do exactly that. As my hon. Friend will be aware, the number of front-line staff required, whether nurses or doctors, to look after a patient who is in a cardiac intensive care unit will differ from the number required in a rehabilitation setting. The tools that the chief inspector of hospitals will be able to apply are being developed.
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)
Why do the Government continue to set their face against the essential recommendation of the Francis inquiry on minimum staffing levels?
Dr Poulter
The simple reason, as the right hon. Gentleman will be aware from his time at the Department of Health, is that ticking boxes on minimum staffing levels does not equate to good care. It can sometimes lead to a drive to the bottom, rather than to addressing the needs of the patients whom the front-line staff are looking after. The Berwick review has borne that out clearly. It is important to consider the patients and the skills mix on the ward, and to ensure that we get things right on the day for the individual needs of the patients.
Sir Peter Bottomley (Worthing West) (Con)
Will my hon. Friend ask the chief inspector to ensure that by the bed of every in-patient there is the name of the nurse and the doctor responsible, so that nobody gets lost in hospitals again?
Dr Poulter
I am very sympathetic to the point made by my hon. Friend. The chief inspector has indicated that he will look at how individual wards are run on a granular level to ensure there is the right skills mix to look after patients on any particular day, with proper accountability for patient care.
Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
The chief inspector of hospitals says he will monitor levels of unanswered call bells, but not the ward staffing levels that cause the bells to be unanswered. Is that not ridiculous? Is it not time that Ministers changed their minds on this important issue, as Robert Francis has now done?
Dr Poulter
As the hon. Lady will be aware, on the basis of the Francis report the Berwick review considered that issue in detail and highlighted the fact that safe staffing levels are not about ticking a box for minimum staffing, but about developing tools that recognise the individual needs of patients on the ward. The previous Government went down the route of tick-boxes in health care. I worked on the front line during that time and that route did not deliver high-quality care. We need the right tools to support front-line staff so that they make the right decisions in looking after patients. It is not about tick-boxes; it is about good care.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
7. What recent assessment he has made of the effect of the public health responsibility deal on the products and marketing practices of the fast-food industry.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Jane Ellison)
We appreciate the contribution that the fast-food sector is making to the responsibility deal. More than 5,000 fast-food restaurants have labelled calories clearly, which means that more than 70% of high street fast food and takeaway meals are labelled. There is always more to do and we are keen to take this forward. Progress has been made through voluntary responsibility deals with industry.
Kerry McCarthy
I welcome the Minister to her new post. I do not suppose she has yet had time to look at the authoritative international study of asthma and allergies in childhood, which shows a clear link between the consumption of fast food and asthma and allergies. The Government, however, have refused to discuss that with the public health responsibility partners. When will the Government start to take public health seriously and hold companies to account?
Jane Ellison
The idea that the Government do not take responsibility for public health seriously is ridiculous. Public health will never be improved just from Whitehall. The work has to be done together, among local government—which is keen and has been given the tools and resources—central Government, business and industry. Such long-term partnership working to improve the public’s health can only be done together. I will look at the hon. Lady’s specific point, but I reject the idea that the Government are not taking this issue seriously—far from it.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
Will the Minister confirm that as far as fast food is concerned, personal responsibility will not be replaced by Government-imposed nanny state regulation?
Jane Ellison
It is good as a Minister to hear the phrase “nanny state” get its first airing. We believe in the informed consumer, and that is the idea behind so many restaurants labelling calorie content on their food. Most of us want to be healthy and most of us know when we want to diet and lose weight. By working with business, we can enable the consumer to make an informed decision about their health.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
I declare my interest and welcome the Minister to her new portfolio. I wish to support the nanny state to this extent: it is fine for companies to sign up to the responsibility deal, but they have to deliver. As her first act as Minister with responsibility for diabetes, will she ban sugar from all Department of Health canteens, and stop selling in our hospitals fizzy drinks that contribute to diabetes?
Jane Ellison
As the right hon. Gentleman might know, my first outing as public health Minister was to attend a diabetes think-tank, which I hope indicates how seriously I take the issue. I do not think what he asks for is within my powers, but obviously I will take a close interest in the Department of Health canteen. The right hon. Gentleman is right. We have never said that other measures will not necessarily be taken, but the responsibility deal has taken us a long way when many predicted it would not, and we are keen to inject new energy into it.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
When I was in the classroom as a school teacher, people used to come to school having had Micro Chips for breakfast. I do not wish to see a nanny state imposed on anybody, but we must do a lot more education. I urge the Minister’s Department to work cross-departmentally with the Department for Education to ensure that we get proper health and food education in our schools. Those using fast food at the moment are often those who can least afford it.
Jane Ellison
I am glad my hon. Friend has raised the issue of working with schools and education, and I have already had initial discussions with my opposite number at the Department for Education. We think we have an exciting agenda to take forward, and I hear what my hon. Friend says.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
In 2011-12, childhood obesity rose by 37% across the United Kingdom. Will the Minister take into account the child marketing strategy of the fast-food industry when considering how best to address the issue?
Jane Ellison
I am interested in looking at what the hon. Gentleman says, and I will be happy to talk to him about that.
Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)
10. What steps his Department is taking to promote a culture of openness and transparency across the NHS.
The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
We need to change the culture of the NHS so that where there are problems with care or safety, people feel able to speak out. The Government have banned gagging clauses, they are introducing a statutory duty of candour, and they have for the first time published surgery outcomes for 10 specialties by consultant.
Alun Cairns
I commend the Secretary of State for his transparency agenda, which has uncovered previously untold horrors. What more can he do to ensure that in future no Minister can ever cover up failure in the NHS?
Mr Speaker
Order. I told the Secretary of State privately before, and I say it publicly now, that if he intends to devote part of his answer to talking about what happened under the previous Government, he can abandon that plan now and resume his seat. I suggest he resumes his seat.
Mr Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)
As part of this openness and transparency, will the Government improve their relations with the police and prison services, so that we can have a clearer idea of why people with mental illnesses are spending time in police cells or being sent to prison?
Mr Hunt
I am pleased to tell the right hon. Gentleman that we are working closely with the police to try to ensure that some of the people held in police cells are given much faster access to mental health services. That includes a street triage pilot, which has had early and promising results.
Charlotte Leslie (Bristol North West) (Con)
I was informed this morning that the chair of the NHS property board has resigned. That follows the revelation last week, through parliamentary questions I asked, that the board has been raiding its capital allocation to subsidise its own revenue funding. In the interests of transparency, will the Secretary of State undertake to review and publish the recruitment and employment procedure of executive and non-executive members of the board—including civil servant Peter Coates who created the board, which oversees £3 billion-worth of assets—and conduct careful audit and scrutiny of the board’s accounts and minutes?
Mr Jamie Reed (Copeland) (Lab)
With regard to openness and transparency, the Secretary of State’s failure to extend the Freedom of Information Act to private providers delivering NHS services is fostering a culture of secrecy. As he forces clinical commissioning groups to tender more services to the private sector, and if he truly believes in openness and the independence of health regulators, will he follow the clear advice from Monitor and extend FOI legislation to private providers, or is he content to allow them to continue to withhold information from patients?
Mr Hunt
When it comes to transparency about care, there should be an absolute level playing field between private providers and NHS providers. To answer the hon. Gentleman’s question on regulators, what this Government are going to do, Mr Speaker, is ensure that the Care Quality Commission has statutory independence so that no Government can ever try to interfere with the processes of reporting poor care.
Mrs Linda Riordan (Halifax) (Lab/Co-op)
11. Whether he plans to close all or part of Calderdale Royal hospital’s accident and emergency ward.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Jane Ellison)
I am advised by the NHS that there are no plans for the closure or downgrading of the accident and emergency department at Calderdale Royal hospital. Obviously, as the hon. Lady knows, the reconfiguration of local health services is a matter for the local NHS commissioners. As I understand it, they and the local authorities are currently reviewing health and social care services, including emergency care, across the wider Huddersfield and Calderdale area.
Mrs Riordan
I thank the Minister for her reply, but we need stronger reassurances in Halifax that the accident and emergency unit at Calderdale Royal is safe, particularly given the threatened closures of walk-in centres. Will she give that commitment now?
Jane Ellison
As I have said, those are matters for the local NHS commissioners. As I understand it, they have begun a review. The hon. Lady will want to be deeply engaged with it on behalf of her constituents. Everything that might be proposed will be subject to a full public consultation.
Mr Speaker
Order. I am always pleased to hear the hon. Gentleman, but I simply point out to him that Calderdale is rather a long way from Morecambe and Lunesdale. Calderdale is the subject of the question; therefore, it is essentially closed. I hope that that is helpful to him and the House.
Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)
13. What progress has been made on implementation of the Barnet, Enfield and Haringey clinical strategy.
The Minister of State, Department of Health (Norman Lamb)
The local NHS continues implementing the Barnet, Enfield and Haringey clinical strategy, which was approved by the Secretary of State in September 2011 following a review by the independent reconfiguration panel. Enfield council has recently issued an application for judicial review of local clinical commissioning group plans. Unfortunately, I am therefore limited in what I can say in that regard.
Nick de Bois
Department of Health Ministers know well of my continued opposition to the decision. However, does the Minister understand that it is crucial that the investment in primary care first promised by the Secretary of State in 2008 is in place before the reconfiguration takes place? Will the Minister confirm that patients will have access to a doctor on the Chase Farm site 24/7?
Norman Lamb
First, I acknowledge my hon. Friend’s campaigning on behalf of his constituents—he has worked very hard. I understand that, as part of the case for change and for reconfiguring health services at Chase Farm hospital, a doctor will be available to see patients at Chase Farm 24 hours a day, seven days a week. However, given that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health has been named as a defendant by Enfield council in the judicial review, it would not be appropriate for me to comment further at this time.
Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)
Does the Minister recognise that the question is not if the changes take place, but when? Does he recognise that all my local doctors say that it is in the best health interests to get on with the changes, not least given that the £200 million invested in the new North Middlesex hospital in Enfield was dependent on them?
Norman Lamb
I recognise my hon. Friend’s work in this regard. Decisions should be based on clinical judgment and the views of local doctors are important. He draws attention to a fantastic new facility. I pay tribute to everyone who has worked to achieve it. It will serve the local community well.
Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
14. What measures are in place to hold doctors accountable for their mistakes.
The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
While always paying regard to the superb job done by most doctors, we should allow no hiding place for doctors who endanger patients’ lives by irresponsible or careless behaviour, which is why we have asked the Law Commission to come up with proposals to speed up General Medical Council investigations. We are also considering a new criminal offence of wilful neglect, as recommended by Professor Don Berwick.
Priti Patel
The cancer diagnosis of my constituent, Mrs Julia Wild, was delayed by nine months because of a mistake by the initial doctor at her first assessment. For four years, she has been fighting for an apology, for transparency and for the doctor to acknowledge what went wrong with her case. What can Mrs Wild, and other patients in the NHS who have had similar experiences, do to ensure that their complaints are taken seriously, that these life-changing mistakes are acknowledged and that the individuals responsible are held to account?
Mr Hunt
My hon. Friend speaks extremely well and I fully understand her concern about Mrs Julia Wild and the care she received. I cannot second-guess the clinical judgment of the GMC, but I agree that Mrs Wild is owed an apology. If the local NHS will not give it, I will give it now. We should have spotted the advanced lobular cancer and I apologise to her that we did not.
Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)
On Friday I visited Cruddas Park surgery in my constituency to see the fantastic work that doctors and staff are doing in the face of huge levels of unmet need, health inequalities and rising mental health issues. If we hold doctors to account for their mistakes, is it not right that they should be able to hold Ministers to account for taking millions of pounds out of their funding and then telling my right hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne East (Mr Brown) that it was nothing to do with him?
Mr Hunt
Doctors should be able to hold Ministers to account, as should the public. That is why they will be pleased to know that we protected the NHS budget, and did not follow the advice of the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), who wanted it cut from its current levels.
Mr Crispin Blunt (Reigate) (Con)
While we are always of course keen to hold doctors to account for their mistakes, I trust that we will be equally keen to reward them for examples of really good practice, such as those my right hon. Friend will see on Thursday when he makes his very welcome visit to the East Surrey hospital. I commend to him the work of Dr Ben Mearns and his emergency and acute team, who demonstrate good practice and also make it transparent to the rest of the national health service.
Mr Hunt
I am greatly looking forward to visiting my hon. Friend’s hospital on Thursday and going out on the front line. I agree that we need to celebrate success. This has been a difficult year for the NHS as we have learned to be much more transparent about problems when they exist, but one of the advantages of having a chief inspector is that his team will be able to identify and recognise outstanding practice, so that everyone will understand that, as well as some of the problems that get more attention, brilliant things are happening throughout our NHS.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
Is the Secretary of State comfortable with a surgeon such as Ian Paterson flitting between the NHS and the private sector, making the same blunders in both but being subject to different levels of accountability and his victims having access to different levels of redress?
Mr Hunt
As I said in response to an earlier question, the responsibility to be transparent about care should apply equally in the public and the private sector. Obviously, in the public sector we have more levers, because we are purchasing care and we can impose more conditions than it is possible to do in the private sector. The most important thing is to have a culture in which such problems come to light quickly when they happen, so that they are dealt with and not repeated.
Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)
15. For what reasons the publication of data on one-year and five-year survival rates for all cancers within the Clinical Commissioning Group Outcomes Indicator Set has been deferred until March 2014.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Jane Ellison)
I am aware of delays in the availability of source data at a local level. For that reason, it is not possible to publish data on one-year and five-year survival rates for all cancers before March 2014. I know that my hon. Friend is frustrated by this and that he has done a lot of work on this issue as the chair of the all-party group, but I am sure he will agree that it is better to have accurate information to make these vital clinical judgments.
Mr Baron
The Minister will be aware that the all-party group on cancer has campaigned long and hard for the monitoring of the one-year and five-year survival rates as a driver for earlier diagnosis—cancer’s magic key. What assurances can she give that the March 2014 deadline will be met and that appropriate action will be taken against those CCGs that underperform?
Jane Ellison
We have spoken to NHS England, which has advised me that it is not aware of any reason to think that the March 2014 will not be met. As my hon. Friend knows, however, the day-to-day management of CCGs is a matter for NHS England, and I am sure he would not approve of Ministers trying to micro-manage CCGs from Whitehall. His strength of feeling is clear, and I am happy to have an ongoing dialogue with him and the all-party group on this matter.
Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)
Having heard the Minister’s answer on survival rates and the importance of early diagnosis, may I ask her whether cancer patients in need of life-saving treatment recommended by their clinicians who have waited for more than two weeks because of the commissioners’ delay in agreeing funding have the legal right to insist on being treated once they have gone past the two-week deadline? If so, how would they do that?
Jane Ellison
If my hon. Friend will allow me, we will perhaps need a separate conversation. I am happy to meet her afterwards to discuss the matter she has raised.
Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
16. What steps he is taking to ensure that the NHS becomes a more patient-led organisation.
The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
The big shift we need to make is to turn the NHS into a patient-led organisation. Two measures that will help that are: independent inspections by a new chief inspector that put the patient experience at their heart; and asking every NHS in-patient if they would recommend their treatment to a friend or member of their family.
Steve Baker
I am encouraged by that answer. Long ago, the medical establishment was held to account by what were essentially patient-led co-operatives, and today more and more voices are asking for more patient engagement. Will the Secretary of State consider a paper brought forward by Civitas and Anton Howes calling for the incremental implementation of patient-led commissioning to close this gap?
Mr Hunt
No one campaigns harder than my hon. Friend on the issue of putting patients first in his constituency and throughout the NHS. CCGs have a legal obligation to involve patients in decisions about services and about them personally. The ideas in the paper he mentions are interesting, and I respect them, but given that we have brand-new commissioners and inspectors going out this year, I think we should see how the current reforms work first.
Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
The Secretary of State for Health (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
Today we published a report demonstrating that the NHS could recover as much as £500 million from better systems to monitor and track those who should be paying for the NHS treatment and introducing new charges to certain categories of people currently exempt. This is a significant sum of money that could fund 4,000 doctors, and far from being xenophobic, as some in the Opposition have alleged, the Government believe it is right that overseas visitors who do not pay for the NHS through the tax system should make a fair contribution through charges.
Annette Brooke
Poole hospital, which is much loved locally and has excellent care ratings, has a financial problem relating to tariffs that must be addressed. The £5 million spent on putting a failed case for a merger between Bournemouth and Poole hospitals to the Competition Commission raises questions about processes and openness with the public. I hope the Secretary of State can make some comments today, but will he meet me and other local MPs to discuss all these issues in greater detail?
Mr Hunt
I am happy to do so. I want to make it clear to my hon. Friend that I am keen to ensure we have a structure inside the NHS that makes it easy for high-performing hospitals that want to work more closely together and share services to do so, if it is in the interests of patients. We need to do more work in this area.
Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)
The Secretary of State has been in post for a year, and in that time we have got used to his style: everything is always someone else’s fault, be it lazy GPs, uncaring nurses or the last Government. And today we see more diversion tactics—now immigration is to blame. But there is an inconvenient truth that gets clearer day by day and which he cannot spin away: A and E is getting worse and worse and worse on his watch. We have had ambulance queues, a treatment tent in a car park and now police cars doubling as ambulances, with a patient dying on the backseat. The NHS stands on the brink of a dangerous winter. Will he today set out in detail what he personally is doing to avert a crisis?
Mr Hunt
I welcome the right hon. Gentleman back to his place. It is a great pleasure to see him there, even if it is not entirely what the Labour leader wanted.
If the right hon. Gentleman is shocked that I breached the A and E target for one quarter last year, he will want to make a full apology for the fact that he breached it for two quarters when he was Health Secretary.
Andy Burnham
This complacent spin is no good to the NHS. If he wants to compare records, let us do that. Under me, 98 per cent. of people were seen within four hours; under him, over 1 million people in the last year waited more than four hours in A and E—not only a winter crisis, but the first summer A and E crisis in living memory. Today it gets worse. New figures this morning show a further 450 nursing jobs have been cut, taking the total close to 6,000 under this Government. But what were they doing last night? They were voting in the Lords against safe staffing levels. Will he now listen to the experts, stop the job cuts and take immediate action to ensure that all A and Es have enough staff to provide safe care this winter?
Mr Hunt
We will listen to no one on the Opposition Benches when it comes to safe care for patients in the NHS. They presided over a system where whistleblowers were bullied, patients were ignored and regulators felt leaned on if they tried to speak out about poor care. That is a record to be ashamed of.
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
T5. There is evidence that a nutritional meal can be a real aid to the recovery of patients, yet the Campaign for Better Hospital Food found that 82,000 hospital meals are thrown in the bin every single day. Will the Minister update the House on the steps being taken to ensure that patients receive a hot balanced meal, served at an appropriate time?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Dr Daniel Poulter)
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight the importance of all patients receiving high-quality nutrition, and a lot of work has gone into promoting time for hospital patients to be fed and into protecting mealtimes, as well as into reducing hospital waste. Hospital food waste is now below 7 per cent nationally.
Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)
T2. We have a crisis in community nursing in Hull, with district nurses being stretched to breaking point. Does the Minister not agree that withdrawing funding from this service is economically short-sighted given that the foundation trust’s deputy chief executive says:“If the crisis continues, the nurses will not be able to care for patients in the community and it could result in them being readmitted to hospital”?
Dr Poulter
The hon. Gentleman is right to highlight the fact that local commissioners have a duty to ensure adequate community health care provision. I hope that that is an issue that he will take up with them. If he would like help in that fight, I am happy for him to come and meet me, and to bring in the local commissioners to talk this through, as it is important that we have enough community nurses to provide good care in communities and local commissioners need to listen to that.
Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
T6. Can my hon. Friend update the House on what he is doing to support the earliest relationships of new families through early years intervention? Specifically, will he support the cross-party “1,001 Critical Days” manifesto?
Dr Poulter
I pay tribute to the work that my hon. Friend has done on the early years, and there are many good things in that manifesto. That is why we are investing in an additional 4,200 health visitors by 2015 and why we are supporting the most vulnerable families by increasing to 16,000 the number of families that will be supported by family nurses by 2015. A lot of investment is going into early years, which pays back to the Exchequer and gives much better care to families, too.
Alison McGovern (Wirral South) (Lab)
T3. Wirral council has said that anybody who wants to be involved in providing social care must show their commitment to the ethical care charter. Will the Minister congratulate leading councillors Phil Davies and Chris Jones on taking this initiative, which includes a move away from zero hours contracts? Will he say specifically what conversations he has had with the Local Government Minister and with Treasury Ministers about making sure that each and every local authority has sufficient funds to fulfil their legal obligations in care services?
The Minister of State, Department of Health (Norman Lamb)
I pay tribute absolutely to that local initiative, which is exactly the sort of direction we are going in. I have made the point several times that we cannot get great care on the back of exploiting workers. The idea that people should not be paid while they are travelling from one house to another is, in my view, unacceptable. When employers and care providers breach the minimum wage legislation, we should be absolutely clear that that is completely unacceptable. To ensure great care, the Government are introducing in 2015-16 the £3.8 billion integrated transformation fund, which will pool resources between the NHS and social care to ensure that we shift the focus to preventing ill-health and deterioration, and I think that that can make a real difference.
Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)
T7. I and my hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti) have long campaigned for the maximum hospital facilities at Frenchay hospital, including a community hospital with an outpatients clinic—as was agreed as part of the Bristol health services plan in both 2005 and 2010. Now it seems that NHS managers are attempting to revisit these plans, something to which I am opposed, as is my hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke, who has recently written to the Secretary of State to ask for a meeting to look into the situation. Will the Secretary of State agree to meet us both and investigate the situation?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health (Jane Ellison)
I am always happy to meet colleagues for discussions, particularly when they are championing important health care facilities in their local area. I can confirm that the Secretary of State has received a formal referral from South Gloucestershire council in relation to these proposals, and has referred them to the Independent Reconfiguration Panel. He will of course consider the panel’s recommendations before making a final decision, and I am sure that my hon. Friend would agree that it would be inappropriate to pre-empt those deliberations.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
T4. My constituent Jemma Hill is 25 and suffers from chronic hip pain, for which a specialist has recommended hip arthroscopy surgery. However, she has now been told that her local clinical commissioning group does not fund such treatment. Does it not make a mockery of GP-led commissioning when a CCG will not fund the treatment recommended by a specialist to whom the GP referred my constituent in the first place?
Jason McCartney (Colne Valley) (Con)
T8. Does the Secretary of State agree that we need to learn from the mistakes of the Safe and Sustainable review of children’s heart surgery services and improve the forthcoming review in two ways? First, we should make the process a lot more transparent. Secondly, areas such as neo-natal, paediatric and adult intensive care unit services and transport and retrieval services should fall within the scope of the new review.
Norman Lamb
I agree that we must learn the lessons. NHS England is responsible for conducting the new review into congenital heart disease services, and it is committed to conducting a review that is robust, transparent and inclusive, in the interests of delivering high-quality, sustainable services for all patients.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
T9. When the minimum wage increased recently, a working carer on 15 hours a week contacted me because she found herself to be 85p over the threshold for carers allowance, meaning that she would lose £259 a month. What work is the Minister doing with other Departments to ensure that carers are not penalised for caring and working?
Norman Lamb
First, we should applaud the work of the many carers around the country who are doing absolutely invaluable work. It is obviously important to ensure that the policies of one Department do not have an adverse impact on the work of another, and I will be happy to look into the case that the hon. Lady has raised.
John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
T10. Dr Elizabeth Stanger, a highly respected Salisbury GP, recently questioned me about the sustainability of providing multiple treatments for complex medical problems for several generations of the same family of foreign nationals. I welcome today’s announcement, and ask the Minister to reassure me that the mechanism to recover the funds will ensure that the money goes back to the clinical commissioning group so that it can provide a benefit locally.
Mr Hunt
I absolutely can reassure my hon. Friend about that. The point about the new, improved system for recovering charges is that we want the money to go back to the people providing the services so that they will be able to resource them better. This is not the diversionary tactic that some have accused us this morning of introducing; £500 million could have a huge impact on the NHS front line and allow his GPs to do a much better job.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
This evening, the joint health overview and scrutiny committee for Trafford and Manchester will meet to consider whether the preconditions for the reconfiguration of services in Trafford, including those set down by the Secretary of State, have been met. I understand that the NHS area team has already confirmed that it believes the conditions have been fulfilled, but will the Secretary of State tell me what would happen if, as seems possible, the scrutiny committee were to take a different view tonight and decide that not all the conditions had been met?
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
A written answer from the former Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry), to my recent parliamentary question has on this subject revealed that people living in the south-west of England are three times as likely to contract Lyme disease as those in the rest of the country, yet I have a constituent doing what he calls drug runs to the rest of Europe to access the medicines necessary to tackle his symptoms. Will the Minister meet me to discuss how we can ensure the continuing availability of treatments for Lyme disease on the NHS?
Jane Ellison
I learned a great deal about Lyme disease in the course of answering my first parliamentary questions, so I would be very happy to meet my hon. Friend to have that discussion.
Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)
Given that at least a quarter of a million children aged 11 to 15 take up smoking across the country each year, does the Minister accept that if we wait for two to three years for evidence to emerge from Australia about the impact of standardised cigarette packaging, hundreds of thousands of children will have started to smoke in the meantime?
Jane Ellison
On the Government Benches, we are interested in all measures that might stop children smoking. I do not recognise at all the time scales that the hon. Gentleman mentions. We are looking now at what is emerging in Australia and around the world so that we have more information on which to base an informed decision.
Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
When the Secretary of State meets the chairman of NHS England to discuss future priorities for NHS spending, will he ensure a fair deal for rural areas by ensuring that they reflect rurality, sparsity and the number of elderly patients and that we keep the minimum income guarantee for rural GP practices?
Mr Hunt
I can reassure my hon. Friend, as I am meeting some Yorkshire GPs later this week who have concerns about that very issue. The most important thing about the difficult issue of the funding formula is that it should be fair. That is why under the new legislation we have given the decision to an independent body so that it is taken at arm’s length from Ministers and so that it strikes the right balance between the issues of rurality, age and social deprivation.
Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)
The NHS, with its massive purchasing power, can make a real difference to local areas through jobs and through supply chains. Some hospital trusts are enthusiastically implementing the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012, including Barts and King’s. Will the Minister ensure that his new procurement strategy recognises the importance of social value?
Dr Poulter
The right hon. Lady makes a good point. We want improvements to the procurement process not just to save money, so that hospitals have more money to spend on the front line, but to support small and medium-sized businesses appropriately, such as by simplifying the qualifying questionnaire process, which is often too complex for small businesses to become involved in and therefore rules them out of the market. There are a lot of good things and I am happy to meet her to discuss the matter further if she would like.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
The Secretary of State knows Worthing hospital well; he has rolled his sleeves up there. When I went there a few weeks ago, I was told that the average age of patients in the hospital, stripping out maternity, is 85, yet we have qualified for no winter pressures money and we have a diminishing number of community hospital beds. Will he look into this anomaly, as he well knows the specific pressures we have on the south coast?
Mr Hunt
I understand my hon. Friend’s concerns and I know that there is a large elderly population in Worthing. I thought it was an excellent hospital with a fantastic atmosphere when I went and did part of a shift there. The winter pressures money went to the third of A and E departments that are struggling the most, so it is probably a compliment to his hospital that it did not receive it. We felt that with limited funds we had to concentrate resources where they were going to have the most impact. I hope that he understands why we had to make that difficult decision.
Joan Walley (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)
This week, the report of the trust special administrator in respect of Stafford hospital is being presented to Monitor. Given that the preferred option is that the University Hospital of North Staffordshire should in some way take over, will the Secretary of State urgently meet all Members of Parliament for the north Staffordshire area to ensure that health care in north Staffordshire, where we already have a deficit of £31 million with an extra £18 million set to come over, will not be destabilised?
Mr Hunt
We are acutely aware of those concerns. In any reconfiguration, and particularly in this one, we want to ensure that there is no instability in the local health economy. We have given the trust special administrator a little longer to come up with a plan for Stafford hospital to try to secure local agreement, so I have not had a recommendation yet and I am going to wait and see what he says.
Mr Speaker
Order. I am grateful to the Secretary of State and colleagues, but as usual demand has exceeded supply and we must now move on.
Point of Order
(11 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Mr Speaker
I am sure that it will not be a continuation of questions, but something novel, innovative and unrelated to what has transpired before.
Mr Reed
Mr Speaker, the hon. Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Alun Cairns) echoed an untrue allegation made by the Secretary of State concerning a ministerial cover-up of hospital failures under the previous Government. That is a serious allegation and I seek your guidance. Should not the hon. Gentleman either provide immediate evidence or withdraw what is a demonstrably untrue allegation?
Mr Speaker
The hon. Gentleman has put his concerns on the record. Each Member in this House is responsible for what he or she says, but as the hon. Gentleman knows, because his hearing is impeccable, I exhorted him not to continue Question Time. I have known him for more than a decade and he is nothing if not respectful of rules and order, so I know that that is not a cheeky expression on his face but merely his version of an accepting smile.
Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)
Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker—
Mr Speaker
I do not think that anything further is required. The hon. Gentleman’s proffered assistance is generous in spirit but entirely unnecessary in practice. We shall leave it there for today. If there are no further points of order—[Interruption.] Well, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) is in a very good mood, and so he might be. I saw him literally leap from the floor—his feet lost contact with the ground—in his eagerness to catch my eye, and on this occasion he was successful. We shall leave it there—I am glad that the House is in such a good mood.
Descendants of Deceased Adopted People (Access to Information)
(11 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the Adoption and Children Act 2002 to allow access to information for the descendants of deceased adopted people; and for connected purposes.
The direct descendants of deceased adopted people continue to face significant difficulty when they attempt to access information about their biological, rather than adopted, family. For example, the child of a deceased adopted adult often finds it impossible to trace any information about their biological grandparents. That difficulty is heightened when the adopted individual has made no efforts to trace their biological parents before they die. Information about the biological relatives of deceased adopted people can be fundamentally important, especially in relation to medical conditions.
If an adopted person dies suddenly, their direct descendants often need to inquire into the condition from which they have suffered to discover whether what they died from is hereditary. For example, familial breast cancer typically occurs in people with an unusually high number of family members who have been affected by breast, ovarian or a similar cancer. Those who have a family history of breast cancer often need different medical management from those without such a history because of the clear differences in the potential for developing such cancers.
While it is important that everyone is able actively to look after their own health, the descendants of deceased adopted people are prevented by procedural barriers from doing so. For all they know, a hereditary condition is sitting within them like a ticking time-bomb, and the current legislation prevents them from attempting to defuse it. Particularly in an era when we ask everyone to take more care of their own health and inject some personal responsibility into their well-being, it is crucial that the descendants of deceased adopted people are granted access to the medical information required to undertake preventive measures.
The solution to such a quandary is relatively simple but, as I have learnt in the few years I have been in this place, the simple solutions often appear to be the most difficult to implement. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] I welcome the House’s enthusiasm. If we simply insert the term “their direct descendants” into specific clauses of the Adoption and Children Act 2002, the direct descendants of deceased adopted people will be granted access to information to which, I believe, they are rightfully entitled. Such an amendment has the support of the descendants of deceased adopted persons group and the British Association for Adoption and Fostering. Some people have expressed concern that that will lead to a rush of claims, but there is no evidence to show that the proposed measures will open the floodgates to unmanageable numbers of descendants of deceased adopted people wishing to access information through intermediary services.
I welcome the support expressed by Julia Feast of the British Association for Adoption and Fostering, who has been a committed advocate of this important matter. In Julia’s own words, the
“descendants of deceased adopted people should have been included when a description of a birth relative was defined in the Adoption and Children Act 2002. I welcome the measures being put forward in this Bill, and hope that they will pave the way for meaningful change.”
I am also particularly grateful for the advice and support of my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) and the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan), who raised the prospect of the increased numbers the Bill would benefit because of forced adoptions.
I can assure the House that these measures will not be problematic and complex. The agencies that would provide intermediary services for descendants of deceased adopted people already have the skills, knowledge and experience to process applications received. The sensitivities and complexities would be dealt with in the same way as they are at present for a birth family seeking information about contact with an adopted person.
It must be noted that in 2010 the Law Commission looked at introducing such an amendment via the other place, and there is still the potential for such an alteration to be made in that way. However, given the limits on Government time, of which we in this House are all too plainly aware, such potentially wide scoping currently remains unlikely. Therefore, a small amendment could be made which grants the direct descendants of deceased adopted people access to medical records. I hope the Bill will proceed through the House with the support demonstrated by many Members across the House, for which I am grateful.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Nick de Bois, Tim Loughton, Mr David Blunkett, Mark Durkan, Sir Bob Russell, Bob Blackman, Mr David Amess, Stephen Phillips, Caroline Nokes, Mark Field, John Robertson and Mr Dominic Raab present the Bill.
Nick de Bois accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 22 November and to be printed (Bill 116).
Immigration Bill
(11 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
We have introduced a limit on economic migration from outside the EU, cut out abuse of student visas and reformed family visas. As a result, net migration is down by a third. Our objective—
Simon Danczuk
The Home Secretary says that net migration is down by a third; the reality is that it has fallen by only a quarter. The House of Commons Library has confirmed that, and the Government are at risk of misleading Parliament. Would the Home Secretary like to correct the record?
Mrs May
It is a bit cheeky for a Labour Member to stand up and complain about the figures for falling migration. Immigration is down since 2010 and net migration is down by a third from its peak in 2010.
Our objective remains to reduce annual net migration to the tens of thousands by the end of the Parliament, and we must also reform the immigration system that manages the flow of migrants in and out of the UK. When I addressed the House in March this year, I explained that the immigration system that we had inherited from the last Government was chaotic and dysfunctional. Having created a separate entity in the UK Border Force to get a grip on border checks, we were left with a UK Border Agency that still lacked transparency and accountability, and to tackle that I split the UK Border Agency into two distinct operational commands inside the Home Office—UK visas and immigration and immigration enforcement. I made it clear that while organisational reform was necessary to transform the way in which we dealt with immigration, it would not on its own be enough to achieve that goal. We also needed to update the IT infrastructure and to change the complicated legal and policy framework that so often worked against us. The Bill changes some of that legal and policy framework so that it will be possible for the immigration system to operate fairly and effectively.
Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)
The Home Secretary was clearly right to intervene in the way she did to sort out UKBA, which was clearly dysfunctional, and that was the right move in the right direction. But those of us who are willing to give the Bill a Second Reading—I am one of them—have concerns that there was no draft Bill, no Green Paper and no White Paper; there was consultation on only part of the Bill, and there are sensitive areas that need to be looked at across the board, including in connection with the legal aid changes. Why do we have to deal so quickly with such sensitive and difficult issues?
Mrs May
It has been clear for some time, as I have laid out, that the Government want to bring forward legal and policy framework proposals to make sure that we can deliver for people in this country a fair approach on immigration, which ensures that those who come here and stay here and use our public services contribute, and that those who are here illegally can be removed more quickly. My right hon. Friend is a long-standing Member of the House and knows full well that there will be significant opportunities for discussion of this matter in Committee. I can assure him that there have already been a considerable number of discussions on the elements that have gone into the Bill. These are issues that have been addressed by Select Committees in the past.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
We look forward to considering this again in the future. The BBC is reporting that the immigration vans that were introduced by the Government to go around certain cities to ask people to leave the country will no longer be rolled out. When she appeared before the Select Committee last Tuesday, she said that the vans were not her personal idea, but part of a package. Has she now seen the pilot and is she now telling the House that they will not be rolled out throughout the country?
Mrs May
What I said to the right hon. Gentleman was that I did not have a flash of blinding light one day and walk into the Home Office and say, “I know, why don’t we do this?” I have looked at the interim evaluation of the vans. Some returns were achieved, but politicians should be willing to step up to the plate and say when they think that something has not been such a good idea, and I think that they were too blunt an instrument. But we should also be absolutely clear about what used to happen under the last Government. If somebody came to the end of their visa, no one got in touch with them to say that they should no longer be staying here in the UK. That is now happening as a result of the changes to immigration enforcement. As a result of that work, during the last year some 4,000 people have left the UK. It is absolutely right that we do that, but we will not be rolling out the vans; they were too much of a blunt instrument.
Mr Lee Scott (Ilford North) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that if we are able, in a sensitive area, to stop some of the abuses, it will allow us to help the very people whom we all in this House want to help, instead of having our system abused?
Mr James Clappison (Hertsmere) (Con)
Is it not also the case that the previous Government not only did nothing to encourage people to leave the country when they had overstayed, but instituted a series of amnesties that undermined the credibility of the whole system for overstaying people?
Mrs May
I have taken a number of interventions and will now make some progress.
I will set out the elements of the Bill in context. First, the Bill will cut abuse of the appeal process. It will streamline the labyrinthine legal process, which at present allows appeals against 17 different Home Office decisions—17 different opportunities for immigration lawyers to cash in and for immigrants who should not be here to delay their deportation or removal. By limiting the grounds for appeal to four—only those that engage fundamental rights—we will cut that abuse.
Secondly, we will extend the number of non-suspensive appeals so that, where there is no risk of serious and irreversible harm, we can deport first and hear appeals later. We will also end the abuse of article 8. There are some who seem to think that the right to family life should always take precedence over public interest in immigration control and when deporting foreign criminals. The Bill will make the view of Parliament on the issue very clear. Finally, the Bill will clamp down on those who live and work in the UK illegally and take advantage of our public services. That is not fair to the British public and to the legitimate migrants who contribute to our society and economy.
Sarah Teather (Brent Central) (LD)
Did the Home Secretary take advice from colleagues in the Department for Education on the extent to which her definition of article 8 is compliant with our obligations under the UN convention on the rights of the child?
Mrs May
I can assure my hon. Friend that we have had a number of discussions with colleagues in the Department for Education on the operation of the proposals in the Bill. There is an agreement across the Government that we need to do precisely what I have just set out in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Mr Scott): we must ensure that we are fair to those people who come here legitimately and do everything the right way, but we must also make it easier to remove those people who do not have a right to be here.
Mrs May
I will make some progress before giving way again.
Part 1 of the Bill is about removals. The current process for enforcing the removal of people who are in the UK unlawfully is complex, with too many stages before an individual can be removed. With multiple decision points, the current system provides individuals with multiple opportunities to bring challenges throughout the process. That increases the risk of further delays before removal takes place. We want to adopt a system in which only one decision is made. That will inform the individual that they cannot stay in the UK, and enable immigration enforcement to remove them if they do not leave voluntarily.
The existing system, designed by the previous Government through eight different Acts of Parliament, does not work. It was inevitable that such a complex system would be exploited. The Bill remedies that. As well as delaying the removal process, some illegal migrants held in immigration detention may apply to an immigration judge for bail and then use it as an opportunity to disappear. Bail might be appropriate in some circumstances, but can it be appropriate to grant bail when a detainee is booked on a flight in the next few days and there are no exceptional circumstances? Should immigration detainees who have already been refused bail be permitted to make repeat applications day after day? The Bill will bring sense to the law in this area and stop that abuse.
Mr David Heath (Somerton and Frome) (LD)
The Home Secretary mentioned the eight previous Acts. During my time in the House it has seemed that we get a new immigration Bill at least every two years, and very few of them seem to have any long-lasting beneficial effect. Can she convince me that the Bill is not another example of the Home Office reaching for the statute book, rather than dealing with the management of the immigration service properly, and can she estimate how long we will have to wait for the next immigration Bill?
Mrs May
This is about putting in place a number of legal changes that will help ensure that the system can be better managed. Alongside that policy change, as I have evidenced in the fact that I have abolished the UK Border Agency and set up the two new commands within the Home Office, we are of course making changes in how we manage and administer the system to make it operate more smoothly and rather better.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
Will the Home Secretary confirm that limiting the number of bail applications that can be made is nothing new? Under the Bail Act 1976, the number of applications one can make in criminal cases is limited before exceptional circumstances have to be shown, so this is nothing new and we are simply improving the process.
Mrs May
My hon. Friend is right. We have seen cases in which people have made repeated bail applications, which then have to be dealt with, and sometimes all that happens is that the application is withdrawn at the last minute, which of course causes problems for individuals.
Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)
The Home Secretary is being generous in giving way. Does she agree that a process with so many in-built delays takes a toll not only on the taxpayer but on those going through the process, who have to live through so much uncertainty during that time? Does she also agree that if we are to require the decision makers to make a greater number of decisions earlier in the process, they will need to have greater expertise in order to do so?
Mrs May
We obviously want to ensure that those making the decisions do so properly. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that it is only fair to those who are making applications that they get a decision that has been properly considered within a reasonable space of time. Sadly, that was not happening in the system we inherited, so we are having to make a lot of changes. I have been clear that that change cannot take place within six months; it will take some time before we can see the system that everybody wants.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
With reference to the point the hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr Heath) made about discussing numerous immigration Bills during his time in the House, along with the introduction of the UK Border Agency and the Australian-style points-based system and the huge reduction in the number of asylum seekers coming to this country, does that not make it absolutely clear that claims that the previous Labour Government were totally uninterested in immigration are total nonsense? We can argue about how effective the Acts were, but the fact that the previous Government came back so many times to discuss immigration makes it clear that they were very sensitive to the issue.
Mrs May
Unfortunately, the previous Labour Government were interested in immigration in the wrong way. One of the things this Government have had to do, for example, is root out abuse of student visa applications, which started under the previous Government’s points-based system. I will take no lectures about the previous Labour Government’s interest in immigration.
Mr David Ruffley (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)
In June 2003 the then Immigration Minister, Beverly Hughes, said that the impact on migration into Britain of 10 accession countries joining the European Union would be “minimal”, with 13,000 migrants expected a year. That was laughably inaccurate. Can the Home Secretary assure us that the Bill will ensure that there is no repeat of that shocking open-door immigration policy?
Mrs May
I can be absolutely clear with my hon. Friend that, as far as this Government are concerned, full transitional controls should be put on any country joining the European Union. We are also looking at a number of proposals to deal with what we have described on various occasions as the potential pull factors for individuals coming here. The Bill will deal with some of the issues that require a legislative response. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is also looking at concerns about access to benefits and, I am pleased to say, is working well with other EU member states that have similar concerns about the way some of these systems currently operate.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
I am very grateful to the Home Secretary. I want to raise the issue of EU identity cards. She is suggesting that landlords will be required to understand all the EU ID cards that guarantee somebody’s right to be in this country. One of the difficulties is that in Italy, for instance, it is not the national state that provides the ID card but the local authority, which can be tiny. How on earth can a commercial landlord be expected to understand all 444 different EU ID cards?
Mrs May
The problem with the argument that the hon. Gentleman and other Labour Members have been advancing in relation to landlords is that we already have an example of a system where people check the status of individuals: employers do that, and they are provided with support by the Home Office. Exactly the same will happen with landlords. The idea that this is something entirely new is completely wrong. Many landlords already ask exactly these sorts of questions of the people to whom they are renting properties.
Establishing the identity of illegal migrants is a further difficulty in the removal process. Visa applicants are required to give their fingerprints to an entry clearance officer before they enter the UK. Following my border reforms last year, the fingerprints of arriving passengers are checked to ensure that the person who has travelled to the UK is the rightful holder of the visa, but there are gaps in our powers to take fingerprints, and the Bill closes them. When the police encounter a suspect, they have the power to check fingerprints, but when an immigration officer encounters a suspected illegal migrant, they may check fingerprints only where consent is given unless they arrest them. Not surprisingly, not everyone consents. Officers need powers equivalent to those of the police so that when they find an illegal migrant they can check their fingerprints to confirm their suspicion and start enforcement action.
Mrs May
I have already been very generous in taking interventions.
Part 2 is about appeals. The appeals system is complex and costly. Seventeen different immigration decisions attract rights of appeal, and when a case finally comes to a close some applicants put in fresh applications and start all over again. That is not fair to the public, who expect swift enforcement of immigration decisions. The Bill sorts out the mess. In future, the 17 rights of appeal will be reduced to four. Foreign criminals will not be able to prevent deportation simply by dragging out the appeals process, as many such appeals will be heard only once the criminal is back in their home country. It cannot be right that criminals who should be deported can remain here and build up a further claim to a settled life in the United Kingdom.
As well as reducing the number of appeals, we propose to simplify the process. An appeal to an immigration judge is a very costly and time-consuming way of correcting simple casework errors that could be resolved by a request to the Home Office to review the decision. This is what we already do overseas for millions of visa applicants. Applicants will be able to contact the Home Office and ask for a simple administrative review to remedy such errors. That can resolve errors in decisions cheaply and quickly, within 28 days, and it is substantially quicker than the average 12 weeks that it currently takes to appeal via the tribunal with all the costs that that incurs. The Bill creates an effective and efficient appeals system that will ensure that the process cannot be abused or manipulated to delay the removal of those who have no basis for remaining in the UK, but it still provides an opportunity to challenge a decision where fundamental rights are concerned. The public are fed up with cases where foreign criminals are allowed to stay because of an overly generous interpretation by the courts of article 8—the right to respect for family and private life. Under the current system, the winners are foreign criminals and immigration lawyers and the losers are the victims of these crimes and the law-abiding public.
The Government first sought to address this issue in July 2012 by changing the immigration rules with the intention of shifting the weight the courts give to the public interest. This House debated and approved the new rules, which set out the factors in favour of deportation and the factors against it. The courts accept that the new rules provide a complete code for considering article 8 where we are deporting foreign criminals. However, some judges have still chosen to ignore the will of Parliament and go on putting the law on the side of foreign criminals instead of the public. I am sending a very clear message to those judges: Parliament wants a law on the people’s side, the public want a law on the people’s side, and this Government will put the law on the people’s side once and for all. This Bill will require the courts to put the public interest at the heart of their decisions.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
Given that the figures show that first-instance decision making is very poor in this regard, with 42% of family visit visas and 51% of entry clearance applications successfully appealed last year, does the right hon. Lady agree that it would be better to focus on getting the system right than on eroding appeal rights against immigration decisions?
Mrs May
No, I have been very generous in giving way. Let me say to Labour Members and to the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) that one of the problems we have seen in some family visit appeals in the past—this is why we removed the family visit appeal process—is that people have introduced new information into the appeals mechanism in the time since the original decision. That means that the decision in an appeal that is won is not necessarily based on the original case but may be based on the case put forward on appeal, which may be different. The hon. Lady needs to be careful when she quotes figures.
Mr Straw
May I correct the right hon. Lady on one thing? Long experience tells me that the tribunals do not accept information that has come in after the original application was made; it would sometimes be better if they did. We are all interested in streamlining the system. However, given the very high number of decisions on appeal that overturn the original decisions by the Home Office or the immigration officials abroad, what guarantee can she offer that the quality of the reviews that will now be undertaken by Home Office officials as an alternative to appeals will be subject to proper supervision? In my experience, when we had those reviews before we often got poor-quality decision making and people within the Department saying, “Oh well, if so and so has already said no, I’m going to say no too.” If that happens we end up with more judicial reviews.
Mrs May
First, tribunals do accept, and have been accepting—we have seen examples of this—information that has come forward after the original application was made prior to the appeal. The figures that the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion quoted related to family visit appeals. We have already removed the ability to appeal on a family visit visa. It takes less time and is slightly cheaper for people to reapply and, if they have further information, to put it into the appeals mechanism. Of course, we need to ensure that the system is operating properly, and we will be looking to ensure that, through the operation of the ability to challenge administrative error, we ensure that people are making decisions fairly on the basis of the decision that is put in front of them.
Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)
I welcome the fact that this Bill will enable the system to become effective, as well as humane. How will it impact on human trafficking, not least in relation to those who are human trafficked and are dealt with more as criminals than as they should be—victims?
Mrs May
My hon. Friend will know that we are looking at the whole question of how we deal with human trafficking, or—let us call it what it is—modern slavery. Next year we will introduce a Bill to deal with modern slavery, with a particular focus on dealing with the criminal gangs who undertake this activity. The launch of the new National Crime Agency gives us an even greater ability to deal with those gangs. I want to ensure that we not only start to reduce but end this horrible crime of human trafficking—modern slavery.
Mrs May
I am going to make some further progress.
Part 3 is about migrants’ access to services. We want to ensure that only legal migrants have access to the labour market, free health services, housing, bank accounts and driving licences. This is not just about making the UK a more hostile place for illegal migrants; it is also about fairness. Those who play by the rules and work hard do not want to see businesses gaining an unfair advantage through the exploitation of illegal labour, or to see our valuable public services, paid for by the taxpayer, used and abused by illegal migrants.
Hon. Members will know that the right of non-European economic area nationals to work in the UK is restricted, and where the right to work is granted, it may be restricted to a particular employer or limited hours. Employers are required to ensure that their employees have the right to work in the UK and if they do not, they will face penalties, but the process for enforcing those fines is complicated. The Bill will streamline that process, making employers think again before hiring illegal labour.
Let me turn to the national health service. Many temporary migrants are currently allowed free access to the NHS as if they were permanent residents. Such an approach is extremely generous, particularly compared with wider international practice. Our intention is to bring the rules regulating migrant access to the NHS into line with wider Government policy on migrant access to benefits and social housing. That means restricting access to free NHS care to those non-EEA nationals with indefinite leave to remain and those granted refugee status or humanitarian protection in the UK. Under this Bill, other migrants will have to contribute.
Temporary migrants seeking to stay in the UK for more than six months will have to pay an immigration health surcharge on top of their visa fee. I assure the House that this surcharge will make the system fairer and will not undermine our aim to attract the brightest and the best. We have carefully examined what other countries do and will ensure that the UK offer is a competitive one in a tough global market.
Mrs May
I want to make more progress.
Dealing with migrants is not new for the NHS. There is already a framework for charging other countries. The NHS must enforce it and recover the cost of treating foreign nationals from foreign Governments, and all of us in government will work with it to make the system work.
The Government also want to ensure that illegal immigrants cannot hide in private rented housing. We are already working with councils to tackle rogue landlords who provide beds in sheds and illegal, overcrowded accommodation. Under the Bill, we will go further and have the necessary powers to deal with rogue landlords who rent homes to illegal migrants.
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)
Is the Secretary of State able to quantify the number of foreign nationals treated by the NHS who are not entitled to free care and who came here solely and deliberately to get free health care?
Mrs May
I suggest that the hon. Lady look at the audit conducted by the national health service that was released today. It makes it absolutely clear that we are talking potentially about several hundred millions of pounds across the NHS when we consider the number of people who come here and are able to use the service without contributing, who come here as health tourists and who come here and use the service when they should not be able to do so. That is why the Bill is absolutely right.
I say to Opposition Members who say that somehow it is wrong to ask people who come to this country to contribute, that it is only fair to the millions of hard-working people who pay into the NHS through their taxes that somebody who comes here to live for a period of time should be asked to contribute. It is only fair also to ensure that when people come here to use the NHS, or use it when they are here and their Government should be paying, that we actually recoup that money.
Barry Gardiner
The most recent migration statistics quarterly report by the Office for National Statistics was published in August 2013 and it noted that the net flow of long-term migrants was 176,000, compared with 235,000 in June 2010, when the right hon. Lady’s Government came to power. That suggests that the figure of 25% cited by my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) when he intervened earlier is right and that the right hon. Lady’s figure of 33% is wrong. Will she confirm that those are the latest statistics and that the reduction was by 25%?
Mrs May
If the hon. Gentleman looks at Hansard, he will see the answer I gave to the hon. Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk). I said that net migration has come down by a third from its peak in 2010. That figure is absolutely correct, because in September 2010 the figure was 255,000 and the latest figure, therefore, is a fall of 31%.
Mr Speaker
I hope it is a point of order rather than a point of frustration. I shall discover which.
Mr Speaker
People are free to suggest what they like. These are matters of debate. Of one thing I am sure, having known the hon. Lady for 16 years: she requires no protection from me or, for the most part, I think, from anyone.
Mrs May
I have to say that this morning’s reaction from the shadow Health Secretary, the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), to the proposal to charge for use of the NHS shows that the Labour party is going to be on the wrong side of this argument, because people in this country want to see people being treated fairly in relation to the NHS.
Mrs May
I want to make a little more progress.
Of course, as I said earlier, many private landlords already make checks, on a tenant’s identity and credit status, making it difficult for illegal migrants to rent properties from them. However, not all landlords do it, so we propose to replicate the long-standing requirements for employers to check the immigration status of those they are about to employ.
We are not asking landlords to become immigration experts. Those who undertake simple steps will have nothing to fear and there will not be a penalty. Rogue landlords will face penalties, hitting them where it hurts—in their wallets. This will make it harder for landlords to house illegal immigrants and harder for illegal immigrants to settle in the UK.
It is not excessive regulation. It is a proportionate approach to a significant problem and we have listened very carefully to those who have warned us of the consequences of not doing this properly. We will make it easy for homeless and vulnerable people to prove their entitlement through simple documentary requirements. We will have a statutory code of practice, making it clear that if landlords racially discriminate they will be breaking the law. We will exempt those parts of the housing market, such as homeless hostels and student halls of residence, where further regulation would not be appropriate.
The Bill will also introduce new rules to crack down on illegal migrants accessing banking products and services in the UK. Many illegal immigrants are already prevented from opening bank accounts, thanks to existing identification and fraud requirements. However, there is no specific rule to stop illegal migrants opening an account in the UK. This Bill will require banks and building societies, for the first time, to refuse a customer who wishes to open a new current account when they have been identified as an illegal immigrant.
Having tackled the ability of illegal migrants to work, access health care, rent property and open bank accounts, I also want to ensure that illegal migrants are denied driving licences. The Bill will give legislative force to the current administrative practice, but the measures go further, giving us the power to revoke licences. We will do everything we can to make it harder for illegal migrants to establish a settled life in the UK when they have no right to be here.
Part 4 of the Bill tackles sham marriages and sham civil partnerships undertaken by a fraudulent couple for their own immigration advantage. The Home Office estimates that, every year, between 4,000 and 10,000 applications to stay in the UK are made on the basis of a sham marriage or sham civil partnership. Registration officials already have a duty to report suspected sham marriages and sham civil partnerships to the Home Office. The number of reports of suspected sham cases has risen in recent years, with 1,891 reports received in 2012. At the moment we have the ridiculous situation whereby we cannot always stop a marriage or civil partnership that a registrar believes to be a sham. The current 15-day notice period provides very little time for the Home Office to act before the ceremony takes place.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
Having listened to the debate so far, I think that hon. and right hon. Members and the public at large will be astounded that these sorts of basic restrictions on illegal immigrants have not been the law of the land for so long. It is about time that we passed this Bill.
Mrs May
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I think that members of the public will say it is right that we are fair to people living in the UK and to those who have come here legally, and that we ensure that those who are here illegally do not find it easy to stay and that we are able to remove them.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
A lot of the individual sanctions will be dealt with by statutory instruments. So far it is clear that if a landlord fails to comply and lets a property, they will face a potential fine of £3,000 for each disqualified adult allowed to occupy the property. What sanctions, fines or prison sentence will be given to a doctor or nurse who treats, or a vicar who marries, a disqualified adult?
Mrs May
We are not talking about people not being able to receive treatment in the national health service. We are talking about two things in the NHS. First, when people come here and use the NHS, we will ensure that the NHS recovers the money from their country that it should be recovering. It has not been doing that as well as it should be. Secondly, when people come to stay here for a limited period—for more than six months, but not permanently—we will ask them to pay a surcharge to reflect the fact that they might use public services when they are here.
The Bill will increase the marriage and civil partnership notice period to 28 days—
Mrs May
I have tried to explain the point about sanctions in the NHS by pointing out that the hon. Gentleman’s assumption about the system that we are putting in place appears to be incorrect. He also mentioned members of the clergy who conduct sham marriages. If he looks back at the press from the past couple of years, he will see that members of the clergy have been arrested and prosecuted for conducting sham marriages on purpose.
The Bill will increase the marriage and civil partnership notice period to 28 days in England and Wales, and allow for it to be extended to 70 days when there are reasonable grounds to suspect that a marriage or civil partnership is a sham. The Home Office will investigate the genuineness of the couple’s relationship and consider taking immigration enforcement action when we believe it to be a sham. If the couple do not comply with the investigation, we will prevent a marriage from taking place. Should a sham marriage or civil partnership go ahead, couples will not gain an immigration advantage, but will be removed or prosecuted.
Fixing the immigration system cannot be done overnight. There were too many problems with the system that we inherited for that to be possible. However, the Bill will help us further along the road. It is frankly ridiculous that the Government have to operate such a complex system to deal with foreigners who fail to abide by our laws. It is ridiculous that the odds are stacked in favour of illegal migrants. It is unacceptable that hard-working taxpayers have to compete with people who have no right to be here. The Bill will begin to address those absurdities and restore balance. I commend the Bill to the House.
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
The Home Secretary and the Prime Minister have made a series of claims about immigration and the Bill, many of which do not stack up. They said that there would be action against illegal working, but there is nothing about that in the Bill. The Prime Minister promised action against those who
“deny work opportunities to UK workers.”
Again, there is nothing about that in the Bill. They promised to reduce the “pull factor” for people from the EU. Again, there is nothing in the Bill about that. They promised to
“reclaim our borders and send illegal immigrants home”,
but border control has got worse and fewer people are being returned than ever. They promised—the Prime Minister said “no ifs, no buts”—that net migration would be down to the tens of thousands by the election. It is currently at 176,000 and recent figures show that it has gone up. There has been a lot of rhetoric and a lot of confusion, and people are concerned about immigration.
We know that over many generations, people have come and contributed to this country: they have built our biggest companies, worked in our public services, and become great scientists, Nobel prize winners and even Olympic medal winners. We also know that in a global economy, in which people travel and trade more than ever, pulling up the drawbridge on all migration is not good for Britain.
Stronger controls are needed. Migration needs to be managed and, yes, we should have a proper debate about measures to control immigration, deal with its impact and tackle illegal immigration. Unfortunately, that is not what we have heard from the Home Secretary today.
Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)
Does the shadow Home Secretary realise that we have already gone a little over half the distance from the very high levels of net migration that we saw under the last Labour Government to our target of tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands? Will she congratulate the Home Secretary on that progress?
Yvette Cooper
The most recent figures for net migration show that it has increased. The hon. Gentleman has chosen to support a target that ignores illegal migration altogether and that includes university students who contribute to the economy. Furthermore, he can claim that progress has been made in meeting the target if the number of British citizens who leave the country or who fail to return to the country increases. That is the target that he is pursuing.
Meg Hillier
Many of my constituents are first, second or multiple generation immigrants who work hard to prop up our NHS and other public services. Does my right hon. Friend agree that penalising people when their families come over by adding extra charges to every application is unfair on those people who are breaking their back for Britain?
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is right that the system has to be fair for people who have come here over many generations and who have contributed to this country and continue to do so. It is right that people who come here must contribute and be able to support themselves. Equally, the system has to be fair to all. There are considerable concerns that the system is not fair. The Home Secretary’s proposals do not address those concerns.
Mr Clappison
In the light of the right hon. Lady’s comments, will she tell us whether she would have a target for net migration if she were Home Secretary?
Yvette Cooper
As we have said before, the problem with a net migration target is that it encourages more British people to leave the country or to remain in other countries. The Prime Minister has promised—no ifs, no buts—that he would reach the net migration target of tens of thousands by the time of the election. On the Government’s own figures, net migration is going up.
We believe that the pace of migration matters. It is right to support measures that will bring the level of migration down, but we must also have serious measures to tackle illegal immigration and to ensure that the system is fair, including in its impact on employment and the workplace.
Yvette Cooper
I will give way to the Home Secretary if she will tell us whether she regrets using the divisive ad vans in the first place.
Mrs May
I have already answered a question about the ad vans. Given that the shadow Home Secretary has not answered the question that my hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison) asked about net migration, perhaps she will answer my question. Does she accept that the level of migration under the last Labour Government was too high?
Yvette Cooper
We have said that the pace of migration was too fast. It is right to have measures to bring the level down. We have said that many times. The Home Secretary has had every opportunity to apologise for the divisive ad vans, which she has admitted were a serious problem. I will give her another opportunity to intervene to do so.
Yvette Cooper
Hopefully the hon. Gentleman will apologise on behalf of the Home Secretary for pushing those divisive ad vans.
Mr Speaker
Order. I think that there is an identity crisis that needs to be resolved. I think that the right hon. Lady was pointing in the direction of the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson).
Mr Stewart Jackson
On the subject of regrets, does the right hon. Lady share the regret of the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls), who said in 2010 that having unmitigated and unplanned immigration from the European Union at the same time as 5.2 million people were on out-of-work benefits under the last Labour Government was a mistake that the Labour party needed to face up to?
Yvette Cooper
We have said that we should have had transitional controls for eastern Europe. Government Members need to consider how they can defend the fact that since the election deportations have dropped by 7% and deportations of foreign criminals are down by 14%, and how they can explain why the number of illegal migrants absconding at Heathrow has trebled since the election and why the number caught afterwards has halved since the election.
Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)
Will the shadow Home Secretary give way?
Yvette Cooper
I ask the hon. Gentleman to explain that point if the Home Secretary will not.
Mr Raab
The right hon. Lady is in a rich vein of contrition. Will she add to her list of apologies an apology from the last Government for signing up to EU rules that made it much harder to tackle benefit tourism and, on the point that she has just raised, human rights laws that made it much harder to deport foreign national criminals?
Yvette Cooper
There is nothing in the Bill about the matters that so concern the hon. Gentleman. Where is his apology for the fact that the number of businesses that are fined for employing illegal migrants has halved since the election? Again and again, action on illegal migration has got worse and enforcement has deteriorated since the election.
Yvette Cooper
I want to make some progress on the measures that are in the Bill, even though a lot of the measures that we need to tackle illegal immigration are not in it. Let us consider the Bill before us. Some measures are sensible and we will support them. Some are confused and we await illumination on how the Government plan to make them work. Some areas raise genuine concerns, and in other areas the Government are not going far enough, particularly on the labour market and on illegal immigration.
I am glad that the Bill includes stronger action against sham marriages. Indeed, we called for those measures. Like the Government, we listened to the concerns of registrars about cases where they feared abuse, but had too little time to ensure that investigations took place. We also called for stronger enforcement powers for UK Border Force officials. The problem is that the UK Border Agency does not use the powers it has in practice at the moment and enforcement has been getting worse.
The Home Secretary talked about biometrics. We agree that there are some loopholes that should be closed for taking fingerprints, but she needs to explain why her Home Office Ministers endorsed stopping the fingerprinting of stowaways at Calais. This is not about a loophole in the law; it is about a loophole in practice that we raised with Ministers two-and-a-half years ago and which they refused to do anything about.
Yvette Cooper
I will give way to the Home Secretary if she can explain why, two-and-a-half years ago when this was raised with her, the Home Office Minister agreed that it was right for UKBA not to fingerprint stowaways at Calais.
Yvette Cooper
And I suggest that the Home Secretary checks her facts, because in April 2011 we raised with Home Office Ministers the importance of restoring fingerprinting to Calais, which border officials had chosen to do. Two-and-a-half years ago, she refused to do that and she has continued to refuse to do that, and her Home Office Ministers said that was the right thing to do. I will let her intervene again if she will tell me that she will now, two-and-a-half years later, restore the fingerprinting of stowaways to Calais. Will she restore the decision to do fingerprinting at Calais? The Home Secretary is refusing, repeatedly, to restore the fingerprinting of stowaways at Calais, despite the fact that we have raised this with her and other Home Office Ministers repeatedly. Her Home Office Ministers have endorsed the decision not to have fingerprinting at Calais, not to be able to check illegal immigration and not to be able to follow up when people attempt to return to this country.
We support measures to restrict access to British driving licences for those who are here illegally. In fact, we introduced those measures. As the Government have admitted, the changes were mostly brought in before the general election, but we are happy to support them all over again. It is also sensible to have stronger checks on bank accounts.
There has been a principle stretching back over 30 years that overseas visitors should contribute for using the NHS. We will therefore support sensible contributions to the NHS from visa payments, and it would be helpful for Ministers to confirm that such payments will go to the NHS. It would also be helpful if Ministers confirmed whether they have dropped proposals for GPs to have to implement the same kinds of checks as private landlords before letting pregnant women see a midwife, or giving children the measles, mumps and rubella vaccination—both issues that doctors have raised as public health concerns.
Simon Hughes
If the right hon. Lady is honest, she will realise that Labour’s record on illegal immigration is far from glorious. I have indicated that I am willing to give the Government the benefit of the doubt on Second Reading, although I have criticisms of some aspects of the Bill. It would be helpful to know whether the official Opposition will support or oppose the Bill on Second Reading.
Yvette Cooper
I will set out the Opposition’s response on exactly that point in due course.
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is right. Doctors have concerns about whether the proposals are workable in practice—the practical bureaucracy attached to the proposals—and the implications for public health. We think it is sensible to have better co-ordination between hospitals on, for example, cost recovery through the E111 system, but for any proposals it is important that the Government listen to GPs’ concerns.
Caroline Lucas
Building on the right hon. Lady’s point, does she agree that it is not only inhumane for doctors not to treat people with serious illnesses, but counter-productive? If somebody is here with a communicable illness, it is counter-productive for doctors not to treat them. This is just a nasty policy and a case of blaming foreigners to distract from the Government’s £20 billion of cuts to the NHS and the cost of reorganisation.
Yvette Cooper
This is a matter on which the Government still need to answer questions and they are confused about what they are proposing. The Bill contains limited measures, but they also seem to be setting out other measures that are not in it.
The measures on landlords take up 16 clauses—a quarter of the Bill. This, it appears, is the Government’s flagship policy on tackling illegal immigration. The only trouble is that we have no idea how it is supposed to work. There are more than 400 European identity documents, and the Government have not explained whether private landlords are supposed to know which one is which. There are countless different documents to show that people are entitled to be here. Will private landlords have to know each one? On some figures, nearly one in five usual residents, including British citizens, do not have passports. What will they have to do to rent a flat? When the Home Secretary was asked two weeks ago about how this policy would be implemented, all she could say was:
“There’s a lot of confusion.”
That is right, and the Home Secretary has done nothing today to clear that confusion up.
All these policies on driving licences, tenancy agreements and bank accounts will, according to the Home Secretary, tackle illegal immigration. How much difference will they actually make in practice, even where the policy is sensible enough in principle? One does not need a British driving licence to drive in Britain and one does not need a British bank account to take cash out of a cash machine or to earn some cash on the side. What difference will the measures make to the growing number of people who are here illegally because they are less likely to be stopped at the border and less likely to be sent back home? Deportations are down by 7%. The number of people stopped at the border and turned away has halved since the election. The number of illegal immigrants absconding through Heathrow has trebled, and the number caught afterwards has halved. Six hundred and fifty thousand potential smuggling warnings were deleted by the Home Office without even being read, and 150,000 reports of potential bogus students were never followed up.
There is still no answer from the Home Secretary about how many people came in without proper checks as a result of her bordersgate experiment. We get the same response from the Home Secretary each time: to blame the civil servants, to blame the landlords, to blame all migrants, to blame the technology and to blame the Labour Government. Her latest response is to blame the Minister for Immigration.
Keith Vaz
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. The issue of who comes in and out of this country is important. Does she share my concern at the delay in starting the tendering process for the e-Borders project? As we know, there were problems with the project under the previous Government and it is three-and-a-half years since the contract was terminated. Does she not agree that we need this as soon as possible?
Yvette Cooper
My right hon. Friend makes an important point. The Government decided to suspend the contract three years ago, in 2010. There has been a complete freeze with no contract in place and no proper action taking place. He is absolutely right that we need not just proper checks in place when people arrive, but proper checks on deportations and departures to be able to take follow-up action on illegal immigration.
What was the Government’s flagship policy to tackle illegal immigration, which was trailed by the Prime Minister, who this summer promised new action? It was to hire a man with a van to drive around in circles for two weeks. What was the Home Secretary thinking? Did she really think that people here illegally, who have ignored Home Office letters and avoided UK Border Force scrutiny, would change their minds because they saw one of her posters on an ad van? What did she think people were going to say: “Oh, thank goodness I saw the ad van today. I had just forgotten I was supposed to go home. Hang on while I pop out and get an airplane ticket”? Will she confirm that only one person has rung up to return? He did not even see the vans: he saw a picture in The Guardian. This has not just been a blunt instrument; it has been a complete failure. Will she admit that this has been a pointless gimmick from the start?
Last week the Immigration Minister said that the vans could be rolled out around the country, but instead the Home Secretary strung him out and today decided that the policy is a blunt instrument and she will not do it again. Why did she do it in the first place? Will she stand up and tell the House how many people returned home as a result of it? The Immigration Minister said that only one person returned as a result of the ad vans, but will the Home Secretary say how many people have returned as a result of her ad van approach?
This is not just about a policy that is ineffective and a blunt instrument. The Home Secretary sent the van around four London boroughs with the highest proportion of ethnic minority British citizens. One Brent resident—a British citizen—said:
“As a child in the 1970s with migrant parents I remember how ‘go home’ was shouted at us in the streets and graffitied on walls. One of my earliest memories is of the panic I felt when hearing my parents discussing in hushed tones whether we would indeed have to ‘go home’, as we watched the National Front march on TV.”
The Home Secretary agreed to that slogan. She agreed to send it round communities whose parents heard it from the National Front in the 1970s, and whose British citizens work in our public services, build our businesses, and fight in our armed forces today. She signed off and defended that policy, all for the sake of one person returning. She should be better than that, and I hope she is ashamed of what she did.
Barry Gardiner
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for allowing me to intervene, because Brent was one area where the van came round. On the occasions when it did so, the division and hurt that it caused in the community was extraordinary. Does she agree that the policy could not have been introduced because the Home Secretary genuinely thought it was likely to inspire anyone to leave the country, and that instead it was a calculated political propaganda move? As such, her party should pay back to the taxpayer the cost of those vans.
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend makes an important point, and the Home Secretary should confirm that she will never pursue such divisive gimmicks again. That is beneath her and ought to be beneath the Government.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
The policy was disgusting and embarrassing. What a dreadful episode it was, and let us hope it never happens again. On apologies, however, will the right hon. Lady apologise for the intervention by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) in the summer? He had a go at Tesco and Next, but he got the place of Tesco’s base wrong. Will the right hon. Lady apologise to Tesco and Next for that “British jobs for British workers” nonsense revived by the hon. Member for Rhondda?
Yvette Cooper
The labour market is an important issue, and it is particularly important to ensure that employers are not exploiting low-skilled migration. I will come to that issue in a moment, but let me finish the point about illegal immigration.
Instead of gimmicks, we need practical measures to help tackle illegal immigration. Why not improve enforcement? Why not reinstate fingerprinting for stowaways at Calais, as we have been urging the Home Secretary to do for two and a half years? Why not tighten up checks in the first place? Student visitor visas have now become too easy a route through which people come to Britain to work illegally. They do not even have to provide proper paperwork to show they have a place on a course. Numbers are up 70% since the election. Surely that should ring alarm bells for Ministers. The Labour party will table amendments to have proper checks on student visitor visas, stronger inspections and enforcement, and stronger action against employers who take on and exploit illegal migrants. If the Home Secretary is serious about tackling illegal immigration, I hope she will back our amendments and plans.
Yvette Cooper
I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, but we must make some progress so that other Members can contribute.
Dr Huppert
The right hon. Lady mentioned student visitor visas. Is she aware how essential those are for many colleges and English language schools, and a whole ranges of other institutions around the country? Does she really want to damage their business?
Yvette Cooper
It is right to have a proper system that is fair and supports our economy, universities and higher education sector, but also prevents abuse. It is a concern that the hon. Gentleman’s Government are dissuading and discouraging university students who want to come here from all over the world, but he should also be worried about the potential for abuse of student visitor visas, as highlighted by the independent inspectorate. Concerns were raised, but because those visas are not included in the Government’s net migration target, the fact that numbers have increased by 70% does not bother Ministers, even though the inspectorate raised the risk of abuse.
Yvette Cooper
I will give way one more time, and then I must make progress.
Barbara Keeley
My right hon. Friend is perhaps moving on to what is not in the Bill. The Home Secretary said earlier that she wants to end modern-day slavery. Last week a dreadful case of modern slavery and trafficking ended with the conviction of a couple from Eccles who had brought a deaf 10-year-old orphan girl into the country, using the passport of a 20-year-old woman. They kept her as a domestic slave and subjected her to sexual assault. Is it not tragic that someone who is rescued, such as the victim in this case, and actually well looked after, might have been snatched back into trafficking, and ended up in a brothel or worse? The Government have not enacted measures to assign a trusted individual in such cases, although they could have done so in this or other Bills. How can we take the Home Secretary seriously when she has those opportunities yet does not take them?
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend makes an important point. It should disturb us all that an appalling two thirds of children who are rescued from slavery and trafficking go missing again and often become victims of the same traffickers or other groups. We need far stronger action on that; we owe it to those children who have been rescued, often from appalling conditions. We should not let them simply disappear again.
David T. C. Davies
Does the right hon. Lady recognise that one reason for that is that care workers in children’s homes are not allowed physically to restrain and prevent children from walking out? That is a result of the Human Rights Act, which was passed by her colleagues, along with the failure to deal with immigration that has led the Government to bring forward these urgent proposals today.
Yvette Cooper
If I had known the hon. Gentleman was going to raise such nonsense, I would not have let him intervene in the first place.
Let me move on to some of the remaining elements of the Bill. People who come to Britain and then abuse British law should not expect to stay here, and Labour has previously supported action to ensure that article 8 of the European convention on human rights is properly interpreted in cases involving foreign criminals. We also believe that appeals should be speeded up—serious cases that go to Strasbourg certainly take far too long.
The measures in the Bill do not deal with those issues, however, and instead it appears that the Government want to abolish appeals for whole categories of immigration cases because they cannot cope with the fact that they get so many decisions wrong in the first place. There are genuine and serious concerns about that approach because it turned out that the Government got it wrong in 50% of entry clearance cases that went to appeal. In managed migration cases that went to appeal, they got it wrong in 49% of decisions. In the majority of those cases the problem was Home Office error, so why not just put a bit of effort into getting the decision right in the first place? If those appeal rights are removed, many cases will cite human rights grounds to get an appeal and more cases will go to judicial review. The Government’s own impact assessment shows that that could cost £100 million, halving any savings the Home Secretary might hope to make.
The real gap in the Bill is that is says nothing about the exploitation of immigration in the workplace. There is nothing to deal with employers who take on illegal migrant workers or to tackle the exploitation of legal migration by the undercutting of wages and conditions in the local labour market. There is nothing to deal with the lack of enforcement of the minimum wage, or employers who use loopholes in the minimum wage to overcharge workers for overcrowded accommodation and offset that against their pay. There is nothing to deal with agencies that recruit only from overseas and exclude local workers from their books, or employers who recruit for some shifts only from certain nationalities.
All those practices are bad for everyone—they are bad for migrant workers who are exploited, bad for local workers who are undercut, bad for other businesses that are undermined and bad for our economy, which continues to depend on low-skilled migration being exploited in that way. The Government are doing nothing. The Labour party will set out amendments to give councils powers of enforcement on the minimum wage, close loopholes and tackle irresponsible agencies, and I hope the Government will support those measures.
The Bill does not do what the Government claim it does. Some of the measures are sensible, some are confused, and some are of serious concern. They claim it tackles illegal immigration, but it does nothing of the sort. It fails to do enough to tackle the serious problems. The Opposition will not oppose the Bill as we believe it should go to Committee so we can amend and reform it, use the opportunity to introduce better and fairer controls to deal with the Government’s failures, and make immigration work for all.
Mr Speaker
Order. A considerable number of colleagues are seeking to catch my eye. I have not, at this stage, imposed any formal time limit on Back-Bench contributions, but a certain self-denying ordinance on the part of each hon. Member will serve to help others to get in. We can be led in this matter by a notable paragon of virtue, Mr Robert Syms.
Mr Robert Syms (Poole) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
I fully welcome the Bill. All hon. Members realise how strongly people feel about this very important subject. We do not have to knock on many doors before ordinary hard-working people who are trying to pay the bills and bring up their kids start to moan about the immigration system.
The problem is that, over a number of years, the system has become somewhat dysfunctional. The Government have made it a high priority to have a firm but fair immigration policy. Hon. Members know that many legal migrants add fully to our country. Many create jobs, and there are many surgeons, doctors and others in the NHS. However, in our hearts, we know that many come to the UK to take advantage of us and see us as a soft touch, and that many are here illegally. In the Bill and a series of measures taken since 2010, the Government are trying to tighten the system and make it more robust, and to send a signal to the world that we are not a soft touch, and that we are determined to ensure that only people who are legitimately in the UK should be here.
The Bill is sensible. It streamlines the process and begins to introduce biometrics; reduces the number of grounds of appeal from 17 to four; and restricts some of the rights under article 8. The reality is that all hon. Members deal with immigration cases. We know the nature of the game and how it is played. There are constant appeals and new applications so that time goes by and people who should not really be in this country stay here. I therefore welcome what the Government are doing. If we combine it with better management of the border authorities, we will make good progress.
Rehman Chishti
I agree with everything my hon. Friend has said so far. We need to get things right and acknowledge when things went wrong. One important factor is the hundreds of bogus colleges set up in our country over so many years, as a result of which thousands of people who should never have come to this country did so. The Government have closed 600 or so. That is the right way forward.
Mr Syms
There must be a balance, because many language schools generate foreign exchange, provide good education and feed people through to our universities. The Government have ensured that the ones that survive—some will prosper—do so because they are legitimate, but many people took that route here. That part of Government policy is very sensible.
Jeremy Corbyn
I understand what the hon. Gentleman says about foreign overseas students, but does he recognise that, in the case of London Metropolitan university, the Home Office overreaction did a great deal of damage to Britain’s international reputation? Thankfully, that has mostly changed in respect of London Metropolitan, but do we not need to be slightly cautious, because overseas students bring an awful lot to the country?
Mr Syms
I agree with the hon. Gentleman’s general point—that many overseas students bring a lot to the English language centres and the university sector—but that is no excuse for the university sector not keeping proper records and knowing what happens to students. I felt very sorry for the students involved rather than for the university, but the Home Office moved quickly to try to get them into other, proper institutions. The immigration authorities acted as responsibly as they could to deal with the difficulties some students faced.
Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the success of the Government’s policy is reflected in the fact that student numbers have fallen in those institutions that most abused the system? That proves that the steps the Government took worked.
Mr Syms
My right hon. Friend makes a good point.
We need to send signals to people around the world that we are serious about ensuring that people who are here illegally should not stay. That is why I welcome the measures on bank accounts and driving licences. There are concerns about private sector landlords, but if someone is about to rent out a £250,000 or £500,000 home, there is a good, solid logical reason for having the full documentation. After all, they want to collect the rent. Many residential landlords already take passport and other such details. The Bill is a perfectly common-sense approach to ensuring that there is a barrier for those who should not be here but no difficulty for those who have a right to be here.
Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)
I am sure my hon. Friend is aware that estate agents are obliged to take contact information—both photograph identification and proof of address—from tenants and landlords under money-laundering regulations. Does he agree that the measure in the Bill is a simple and reasonable extension of the existing regulations, which have worked so well?
Ms Abbott
The hon. Gentleman says that the measures on landlords should pose no difficulty for people who already live here. When my parents first came to this country, landlords would routinely tell prospective black tenants that the room was gone. Does not the legislation bring us back to the situation in which people, rather than go through the rigmarole, will see a black face and say, “The room is gone”?
Mr Syms
I understand the hon. Lady’s concerns because of her family history, but the reality is that people who are legitimately here have many protections. All the Government are saying is that, if someone wants to rent a property, they should have a passport. For simple, sensible reasons such as getting credit, most people need some kind of documentation, so the problem will not be insurmountable.
On the NHS, I welcome the health surcharge. Nothing annoys my constituents more than the feeling that resources that should be devoted to their care are being used by people who do not have a right to them. All hon. Members know that the NHS has not followed its policy of collecting money. The easiest thing to do is say that someone does not come from abroad and collect the money as if they were British citizens. The Government’s measures are sensible.
As our constituents feel so strongly, we must have a firm but fair immigration policy. If they do not believe the Government take immigration seriously, the only people who benefit are extremists. We know that many people have extreme views on immigration.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
I am sure that, like me, my hon. Friend hears pleas for unaffordable, high-value and new treatments for cancers and so on, but the pot is not limitless. Our constituents wish to know that those who have contributed to the pot will be able to take from it in their time of need. We might provide universal health care, but we do not provide global health care.
Mr Syms
Absolutely. The measure does not affect accident and emergency or short-term care, but it is a signal that the Government are serious. We should not squander resources on those who do not deserve them, particularly if people are waiting for operations. One figure used today is that 4,000 more doctors could be employed if we collected the money. There is therefore a prize for tightening the system.
Given the number of hon. Members who want to speak, I do not intend to go on much longer. I broadly welcome the thrust of the Bill. I would be happy to serve in Committee if asked, and I look forward to the Bill’s progress through the House, because it is an important priority for the British people.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Poole (Mr Syms), who has struck the right tone for debating immigration policy. I am glad that Labour Front Benchers will support the Government while tabling vigorous and robust amendments in Committee. That is how the House should discuss immigration policy. I am very much against the arms race that seems to have developed in the past few years, in which political parties compete with one another to show that they are tougher on foreigners. If the House of Commons can demonstrate in the debate and the vote the belief that we need to tackle illegal migration but that we need a fair and just system, we will send out a powerful message.
I first served on a Bill Committee 26 years ago, with my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott). We have made journeys to the Front Bench, but have ended up on the Back Benches again—she more recently than I. We have therefore heard some of this discussion before, because with every immigration Bill Governments always say that they want to be tough but fair. We still end up with an immigration Bill before us every two years. Although Governments are willing to do something about immigration, especially illegal immigration, that is not borne out by what actually happens.
Dr Huppert
The right hon. Gentleman is right to highlight the number of immigration Bills. Does he share my concern about the lack of pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill—or indeed of previous ones—and does he think that the Home Affairs Committee could have done that well? Would it not be good if some of our previous recommendations had been included?
Keith Vaz
As a member of the Committee—there are four Committee members in their places this afternoon—I am not going to offer to take on more work, given our work load. As the hon. Gentleman knows, every quarter we look at the work of the Home Office on immigration, and I am certain that some aspects of the Bill will be included in the work that we do. We will therefore scrutinise some aspects of the Bill but not its entirety.
In pursuing an immigration policy that is fair and just, we need to be very careful with our enforcement methods. We also need to welcome decisions taken by the Government when they move in the right direction. The Home Secretary was right to shelve the ad vans, and I congratulate her on doing so. As the shadow Home Secretary and others have said, those vans caused enormous concern in the communities. We do not have a figure for how many people got into the vans and asked for a lift back to the airport, but the vans cost £10,000 and were out for six days in inner-city London. As yet, we do not know how many people have gone back. When the pilot is over, we will need those figures. Meanwhile, I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) for his superb Adjournment debate. It gives us all heart to know that we can call for an Adjournment debate to advocate the abolition of an aspect of Government policy and for it to happen two weeks later. It gives us comfort to know that we have some powers as Back Benchers.
Jeremy Corbyn
Although I agree with my right hon. Friend about the ad vans, is he aware that immigration officials are still hanging around underground stations in London, stopping people at random and asking for papers? That creates a deeply unpleasant and hostile atmosphere. It is very ineffective in achieving its aim, but it creates much community tension in the process.
Keith Vaz
It worries me if that is happening; it is certainly not the best way to enforce immigration policy. The best way is to go through the proper process of making an application. If the result is negative, the person should leave the country. I have just had figures from Capita and the Home Office for the number of people who have left the country as a result of the £2.8 million contract that the Home Office gave Capita—although I cannot understand why it was not possible for Home Office officials to write the letters and send the e-mails instead of giving the job to a private company. According to those figures, 20,000 cases have been closed as a result of Capita’s activities.
I will come to my second bit of praise for the Home Secretary at the end of my speech, but I first wish to highlight a couple of issues that cause me concern. The first is the issue of landlords checking people’s passports, which will cause huge problems. The shadow Home Secretary said that people might have to look at 400 different European identity cards and documents. I am concerned that ordinary landlords who are not trained in immigration policy will simply not know the difference between leave to remain, indefinite leave and other Home Office statuses placed on non-British passports. Most landlords, when they grant tenancies, already ask for copies of people’s passports. The risk is that the only people who will be able to get accommodation are those with British passports. That means that a lot of people with a perfect right to remain here will not be able to get accommodation because landlords are too scared or do not understand the law.
I recently visited Calais to look at the border and I asked our excellent border officials how they were able to test whether certain passports and documents were forgeries. They brought out this very big, expensive machine. It was about 10 years old and not the most sophisticated piece of equipment, but they told me, “We use this to find out whether a document is a forgery.” We cannot expect landlords to have such machines—they would not be able to afford them—but if we do not train them or have regular inspections, which we could not afford, it is difficult to know how the provisions will work in practice. In theory, it is a brilliant idea, but it is totally unworkable in practice.
Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)
Does my right hon. Friend know that up to 40% of the British population do not have a passport and do not travel abroad? Many of those people are poor, and they will not be able to get housing because landlords will not take the risk.
Keith Vaz
I did not know that and I thank my right hon. Friend for that information, which suggests an even greater problem with what the Government propose. Those Members who are lucky enough to serve on the Bill Committee—not me, I should inform the Whips—will need to look at this issue very carefully.
My second concern is the removal of rights of appeal. This is a crazy idea. The one way in which people can be sure of whether they can stay in the country or have to leave is the appeals process, whereby someone with the authority of a judge looks at the case. There is nothing wrong with the appeals process. I know that the Minister for Immigration recently said that immigration lawyers get too much money and that one of the purposes of the Bill is to cut their income. I declare an interest, as my wife is an immigration lawyer, although she does no legal aid work. If the decision making is right in the beginning, cases would not have to go to appeal.
The Minister for Immigration is prepared to listen to points made by Members of Parliament. Whenever we have put points to him, he has listened carefully, and I think that he should listen seriously to the idea of creating a hub in London. He has talked about the need for administrative reviews. The problem with those reviews is that unqualified people have to look at legal issues. I am not sure whether the same immigration officials who said no at the first stage are the right people to say no at the second stage, but that is what happens with the entry clearance operation. If someone is knocked back on a visa, but has a right of appeal, they go to the same post and talk to the senior immigration officer who has to make the decision. It would be a much better idea—and I am sorry that the Labour Government did not do it—to create a hub in the UK for cases that have been knocked back. People could go to a senior official at the hub and put arguments for people to come into the UK.
Jake Berry
The right hon. Gentleman may not be aware of the case of Amy Houston, a girl from my constituency who was killed by an asylum seeker. He made appeal after appeal after appeal. Owing to the length of time that those appeals took, he was able to establish the right to a family life by fathering two children in this country. He killed that young girl with a motor vehicle, and he is not the sort of person we want to welcome into Britain. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that we need these reforms to stop such cases in the future?
Keith Vaz
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. After 26 years as an MP, I get frustrated when people come to my surgeries on Friday evenings and say, “We want to stay longer.” I feel they have no right to stay, but I am not an immigration officer and do not know the history of their case. Multiple appeals do not help, but the solution is a quick and robust decision. We must tell people, in a timely way, whether they have a right to remain in this country, and if they do not, they ought to leave. That is when the enforcement process should begin and end, not 10 years after someone makes an asylum application, when they have established a family. It is very difficult to tell people to go back, when faced with a loving family and children looking into your eyes who do not want to go to a country they know nothing about. It is the failure of the system that creates such misery, and that is what we need to end.
Finally, I wish to make two quick points. First, the Minister is due to appear before the Select Committee shortly—I will not give him the date now, because he is deep in conversation with the Minister of State, Home Department, the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker)—and when he comes, we will want real, practical dates for the introduction of the e-Borders programme. As I have said, the Minister listens to the House’s concerns and is prepared to act accordingly, but in my view it is not acceptable that three and a half years after the e-Borders contract was cancelled we still do not have tendering.
In case my right hon. and hon. Friends think that that is all the Government’s fault, I must say, I am afraid, that the previous Government’s handling of the e-Borders project was lamentable. It is an absolute disgrace that anyone should sign a contract for an e-Borders programme worth £750 million and not tell the company what they expect and when they expect it. That is why we have an arbitration process that has been going on for two and a half years and which will cost the British taxpayer millions of pounds. This is a lesson not just for a future Labour Government, but for the present Government. When they sign procurement contracts, they must have benchmarks.
I say to the Minister, however, that we do not have to wait until 2015; we can have exit checks now. He has not written back to me since his last appearance before the Select Committee, when I asked him to confirm that there were no exit checks on departure. [Interruption.] No, the Minister has not. Mr Speaker, when you or I leave the country, the airline has a lot of information on us: it knows how we booked our ticket, sometimes which hotels we are staying in, whom we are travelling with, which seat we are on—we can book our own seats—and so on. When we leave at Heathrow airport, they look at our boarding cards, but they do not check our passports. It would be easy to introduce these checks now, and it would be a big win for the Government —much better than ad vans. They could place immigration officers at departure gates—it would not create any queues—to check people’s passports as well as boarding cards. They would then know who was going in and out. It is not as brilliant as an e-Borders programme, but it would be the first stage of knowing who has left the country. I hope the Minister will give special attention to that point.
Finally, on the administration of the Home Office, I give full credit to the Home Secretary for abolishing the UK Border Agency, but it will only have been worth abolishing if we get something better. Over the past few weeks, I have been trying to get answers from senior Home Office officials to simple Select Committee questions about the number of people with the right to remain in the country and the number of people who have applied for further leave to remain. In the end, I got the answers half an hour ago, after I said that I would come to the Chamber and name the officials who had not replied to my letter. I do not want, as the Chairman of a Select Committee, to have to do that, but when people write to Ministers and officials, they need a reply. That goes not only for Select Committee members, but for members of the public; members of the public want timely replies.
New legislation will work only if the Minister and the Home Secretary improve the administration of the Home Office on immigration and visas issues. The Home Secretary abolished the UKBA because she said it was closed, secretive and defensive. If at the end of the year we are having exactly the same problems with the same officials in the same jobs, answerable to the same line managers, which is what they were told would be the case, we will be disappointed. At the moment, their administrative changes have a fair wind, but we will want to see a real difference in how immigration policy is not just agreed by the House, but implemented after it becomes legislation.
Sarah Teather (Brent Central) (LD)
Last month, one of my constituents—I will call him Philippe—attended an asylum-screening appointment at Lunar house. He had a history of serious ill treatment in Cameroon and had in his hand a referral to Freedom from Torture from his very worried advocates, so one would have expected him to be treated with care and attention when he arrived for his screening appointment. It is worth reading the whole of his statement—it took me some time to do so—to understand what happened to him over three days in September. It gives a picture of what happens to people when they try to navigate Home Office bureaucracy. I want to tell hon. Members a little about what happened to him, because there is a danger that this debate will be about headlines and statistics, but will forget the very people we are being tough on—the very people who are the subjects of the Bill.
Reading all that my constituent said, one gets a sense of his fear and nervousness when he first arrived at Lunar house with all his documents in his hand, and then the abject rudeness with which he was treated, the dismissals, the disbelief and the downright incompetence; and the petty squabbles between contractors unwilling to go beyond the letter of their own instruction and offer basic, normal human compassion and basic, normal information to my constituent. Hon. Members need to read it all to understand his fear, confusion and bewilderment, to follow him from the first moment, when he arrived, with nervous trust, for his asylum-screening appointment, to the moment when, in vain and with frustration, he tried to make the official at Lunar house appreciate that he was there for an agreed appointment and to get her to read his referral to Freedom from Torture. In vain, he tried to make his point through the interpreter about where his belongings were, but instead he was arrested, handcuffed and taken to Harmondsworth. Reading his statement, one gets a sense of just how frightening that is for somebody previously detained in their own country and of its impact on that individual.
Finally, when Philippe arrived at Harmondsworth, rather late at night, somebody realised he should not have been there; somebody eventually checked his documentation and realised that he had originally turned up for a routine asylum-screening appointment, and he was taken back. Eventually, after petty squabbles, which he witnessed, he was dumped in a hostel without any documentation, without being told where he was and without being given an address. There followed a distressing 48 hours, during which he had a paranoid episode and ended up lost on the streets of south London. He had one contact, one human being, who went out of their way to help him. Someone from a church in Brent who had been working with him drove around the streets of south London to find him and then took him into her own home and reconnected him with his lawyer—the best and worst of humanity across three days.
David T. C. Davies
The hon. Lady paints a moving picture, and I am sure we all sympathise with her constituent, but does she agree that these mistakes happen because a large number of people are coming over, abusing the system and preventing us from helping those most in need, which is exactly what the Bill is designed to prevent?
Sarah Teather
No, I do not accept that. This happens because of the culture of disbelief in the Home Office, and it is that culture that needs to change, yet I see nothing in the Bill that will have any impact on the quality of decision making or on how individual officials treat constituents such as mine when they go with their asylum or visa applications. In my 10 years as an MP, I have seen countless examples of this behaviour, as all Members will have done. Those of us with the highest levels of immigration casework will have seen more, but it is a source of huge frustration for many MPs that our advice surgeries are spent mostly dealing with stuff that the Home Office should be dealing with.
Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)
The hon. Lady is making some powerful points about the human cost of the way our immigration system works. Has she, too, experienced cases like those in Feltham and Heston of people who have been given leave to be here and to work but have struggled for months at places where they have been given jobs because they are waiting for documentation? Their lives, and those of their families, are on hold and they then fall into poverty.
Sarah Teather
The hon. Lady makes an excellent point. These are the sort of people I worry will fall foul of the Bill because they struggle to provide their documentation. We know that there are a lot of people who fall through the net when they are first given refugee status and end up destitute. They make up the bulk of the people whom the British Red Cross deals with in terms of food parcels because they cannot prove their entitlement to benefits. A significant number of people have the right to stay but will struggle to be able to prove it.
Personally, I have never seen an organisation more in need of checks and balances on its own use of power than the Home Office or, indeed, its predecessor, the Border Agency. Instead, the Bill gives powers that it is not equipped, nor frankly able, to meet and powers that it cannot be relied upon to exercise properly. Where it exceeds or abuses its power, or simply fails to do the job, it will be shielded from challenge in many cases and there will be no redress whatever. The implications of the Bill cannot be understood without also placing it in the wider context of legal aid changes and proposals to restrict judicial review.
The problem is that the impact on individual lives gets lost in the grandstanding of headlines. When immigration is all about reducing numbers on a spreadsheet to meet an arbitrary cap or creating arbitrary political dividing lines and traps for opponents to fall into, the subjects of the legislation—the human beings at the centre of it—are somehow invisible. I am weary of a politics that creates and defines enemies in order to demonstrate potency but, frankly, it angers me to see politics do that at the expense of those who have the least power to change their own futures. All three Front Benches, I am afraid, are at it, including my own, scrabbling over the mantle of toughness, chasing opinion polls and, in some cases, wilfully whipping up fear and loathing in the process. It is staggeringly careless with lives and with community relationships that have been built up over a long time.
I am afraid that whatever the damage that is done by the detail of the Bill when, I dare say, it is ultimately passed, some of the worst damage has been done in our debate in the lead-up to it. The language with which this was brought forward is what really causes the damage to community relations. I remind hon. Members of the debate we had earlier about the Home Office vans. That is a case in point; it had almost no effect on the ground except to whip up real tension between communities. My constituency was one of those areas that was targeted by the vans.
Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)
I can understand the passion with which the hon. Lady is speaking and she is making a very sensitive point, but does she agree that there is an element to this that involves the prevention of exploitation of vulnerable people who are brought in illegally, treated badly and fall outside the system? If their pimps and traffickers are unable to do that because we have tougher immigration laws, we will free those people from being put in that awful position. I had a young lady brought to me whose passport had been taken off her. If people can come to our country legally, it will stop those who want to be able to take advantage of them outside the system.
Mr Speaker
Order. May I ask hon. Members to make interventions that are brief? We have a lot of colleagues to accommodate and I am keen to do so.
Sarah Teather
I am certain that the commitment of the hon. Lady on the issue of human trafficking is very real. However, there is nothing in this Bill that will make that situation any better for the individuals who are caught up in it. It is worth remembering that, for a lot of vulnerable people who come here, it is very difficult to enter the country legally. Many of the legal routes have been closed down. Someone coming here and applying for asylum may have entered the country illegally and then claimed asylum. Understanding that is important, as is understanding some of the detail. I am in danger of speaking for too long and I know that other hon. Members want to speak, but we must understand that those who get caught up in this may be some of the most vulnerable people.
There is a great deal in the Bill that will have catastrophic consequences on the ground. In most cases, the problem that it seeks to fix has been poorly defined and the solutions ill thought through. All of it is incredibly rushed, a point made by a number of hon. Members. A number of my hon. Friends have also made the point about there being no pre-legislative scrutiny. It seems to me that the detail has been negotiated by an exceptionally tight group of people within the Government, and very little time is being afforded to this House to consider it. One day on Report is extraordinary. The very small period of time between the Bill being published and Second Reading means that most of the briefings from relevant organisations came in yesterday afternoon as they have just begun to grapple with the detail of this Bill. There is a significant amount of detail and the devil will be in making sure that the detail is correct.
It is worth noting some of the increases in power that the Bill gives. There is an extension of removal powers and the application to family members—including British citizens, I should add, who are not excluded from the Bill. Those matters will be in secondary legislation and we have no way of properly scrutinising the extension of powers. There is a significant extension of immigration officers’ powers to use reasonable force, despite the fact that whether the Border Agency previously used reasonable force has been a matter of constant dispute. It is completely within the culture of the Home Office, it seems, always to assume that force is the only way to manage any situation, which was precisely the culture within Government when I was negotiating the details around the ending of child detention. We sought to try to change that so we did not always go to the maximum end of force in enforcement procedures to get a family to understand that they had exhausted the appeals process. I cannot see how an organisation so psychologically addicted to the use of such powers should properly be given more powers until it has learnt how to use the powers it already has well, and certainly until it has learnt from the work that has been done elsewhere within its vast structure to try to change the culture.
Staggering, too, are the proposals on bail for immigration detainees, which would effectively allow the Home Secretary repeatedly to issue removal directions in order to prevent an application for bail. No account would need to be taken of changes in circumstance, or of the health of the detainee or their family. There was an earlier intervention about criminal bail. I want to make the point that some of the detail of that intervention was not fair because, within criminal procedures, one automatically eventually comes up for bail, whereas within immigration detention there is no automatic right to have one’s bail application considered.
We detain more people than any other European country except Greece, and Greece detains people only for very short periods. We effectively operate indefinite detention. The UNHCR has made clear its profound concerns about UK policy on detention and made it clear that bail hearings ought to be automatic. The removal of appeal rights was spoken about by the Chair of the Select Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz). That effectively removes appeal rights for all areas of managed migration, an area that has traditionally had very high rates of success on appeal. Given the appalling nature of decision making in this area, it seems to be particularly absurd to remove appeal rights. It is also likely to result only in more claims under judicial review or under article 8, which the Government say they want to try to reduce. It seems utterly nonsensical.
It was perhaps the redefinition of article 8 that made me shudder particularly. It completely ignores the test around the best interests of children and ignores all case law in this area. No doubt this is a deliberate attempt to overrule case law, but certainly it flies in the face of our obligations under the United Nations convention on the rights of the child. It ignores children under the age of seven—those children who have been here for fewer than seven years—and will of course apply not just to adults in terms of their right to family life with any of their children, but to unaccompanied migrants in decisions on their immigration cases. I find it very difficult to see how the courts are going to interpret this, but certainly it will have a chilling impact on the Home Office’s own decision making in this area. I am rather frustrated that the careful work we did on the ending of child detention, on the culture within the Home Office and on how we treat families seems to have been completely cut across by this very political statement in the Bill. It also cuts across the Children and Families Bill, which is still making its way through the Lords as we speak.
Perhaps the most absurd proposal in the Bill is that on landlords’ checks. I have listened to some of the discussion on that and there is some naivety about the property market in London in terms of understanding what it means to try to rent a property and the difficulty of getting in there first. If there is any doubt whatever about someone’s immigration status, there is no way they can rent in my constituency. Many people find it difficult to prove their documentation. The claim that this will all work well because a similar system involving employers has worked well flies in the face of our experience of the employers’ checking line, which often gives out inaccurate information resulting in people being unable to get or keep a job. It is extraordinary to propose a similar system that could affect someone’s right to live somewhere.
The catch-all term “illegal immigrants” is being used to describe the people who will be caught by the Bill. I remind the House that some of those people have no status because they are stuck in the black hole of the Home Office’s legacy system. Others might not quite have achieved the definition of “refugee” under the terms of the Geneva convention, yet cannot be returned to their own country because it is not safe to do so. I would count people from Syria among those affected in that way, and I saw many people in that situation during the Iraq war. Unless people are on section 4 support, they will find themselves falling foul of many of the Bill’s provisions.
The NHS levy will apply to in-country applicants, some of whom will have been working here for many years. Some of my colleagues have said that they are prepared to give the Government the benefit of the doubt on the Bill. Personally, I am not prepared to do so. I see very little in it that is worthy of a Second Reading. In fact, it was extremely difficult to find anything in it that I could support or that I found well thought through. I shall vote against Second Reading this evening, and I encourage others who disagree with it to join me in the No Lobby, rather than just adding to the impression that we are all happy for a Bill as ill thought through as this to pass on to the statute book.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather). I shall be doing the same as her at the end of the debate, and I shall make my remarks shorter simply by agreeing with her remarks about children and about bail detention. Those are critical issues that need to be addressed during the debate.
I have campaigned for more than 30 years against injustice in our immigration laws. Indeed, one of the reasons that I stood for election in Slough rather than anywhere else was that I wanted to follow the tradition of Slough Labour MPs who had voted against the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968. That legislation had the effect of making whole groups of people stateless, and I was proud that that injustice was remedied in the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002.
I recognise that we can achieve change and get justice even when the debate on immigration is as toxic as it is at the moment. I also recognise that people feel deep anxiety about immigration, particularly in an era of austerity when they are feeling insecure about their jobs, their pensions and about their families’ futures. However, this Bill is operating the worst form of dog-whistle politics in blaming migrants for problems that are not of their construction. I know how much migrants bring to Britain. Slough, a migrant town, is the third most productive wealth-producing town in Britain outside London.
After years of campaigning, I am pretty familiar with issues such as the Wilson committee’s report of 1967, which stated that it was
“fundamentally wrong and inconsistent with the rule of law that power to take decisions affecting a man’s whole future should be vested in officers of the executive, from whose findings there is no appeal.”
Yet that is in effect what the Government are proposing to do in this Bill, 42 years after the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968.
In introducing the Bill, the Home Secretary told us stories about cases of repeat applications by criminals and abuses of the appeals system. I suppose this is why the Home Office loses cases so frequently! We are not talking about a load of radical Trotskyist judges; we are talking about judges who decide that the Home Office is wrong almost half the time. The Home Office is now saying that the judges will not make those decisions in future, and that it will resolve those matters through administrative appeals.
Let me tell the House about the administrative reviews that already exist in parts of the system. A judicial review in the upper tribunal involved a case in which an applicant had given the Home Office their credit card number, and—guess what—the Home Office had typed it out wrongly. The consequence was that the application was not treated as a proper application because it was not accompanied by the full fee. The case had to go as far as the upper tribunal before a judge decided that it was a proper application, and that the Home Office had written down the credit card number wrongly.
Such cases are not rare. I have a constituent whose husband wrote the cheque to accompany her application, but instead of putting £865, he put 865p, because he is a twit. The consequence is that her application is now out of time, and she has no appeal. Another case involved a response from an entry clearance officer who, having stated that the immigration rules require a spouse to have good spoken English and to have passed a speaking and listening test, said that the applicant had passed that test but failed the English writing test and was therefore refused entry. We have asked for reviews of all those cases, but—guess what—we have been told that there will be no review or that the review has upheld the original decision.
Those of us who deal regularly with the Home Office know that it is incapable of doing what it is supposed to do now. Yet through the Bill, it is grabbing a whole lot of work for itself from the appeals system. The result is that it will break. It might have got rid of the UK Border Agency, but the Home Office will break if it tries to do all those things.
We need to heed the words of the Wilson committee report. On decisions as serious as whether someone should be allowed to live with their husband, everyone should have the right to have that decision subjected to an independent review. That is why we need an appeals system. There are groups of people who currently have no right of appeal, but the Home Office admits that it cannot do anything about them. There is a large Zimbabwean community in my constituency, but the Home Office is not returning any of its members to Zimbabwe because of the situation there. They are hard-working people who are desperate to work, yet they are in limbo. In passing responsibility for immigration control from those previously responsible to other bodies such as landlords and the health service, the Home Office is putting those people at greater risk. They are already at horrible risk. I have spoken to constituents who turn to illegal activities or to prostitution in order to feed their children, because they are not allowed to work.
The Government say that it will be easy for landlords to check out the status of applicants, but any of us who deal with employers know that the current Home Office advice service for employers is gummed up: they can never get through on the phone and the process takes ages. Many of my constituents who are allowed to work here perfectly legally have been unable to prove it because of Home Office inefficiency, and therefore lose their jobs. A similar advice service is now going to be offered to landlords. It might be fine in an area where landlords have to try hard to find tenants, but that is not the way competition works in the south of England; it is all the other way. Large numbers of people will therefore be refused housing to which they should be entitled.
That is why the Residential Landlords Association—not noted for its lobbying of Parliament—has written to say that it is
“seriously concerned that the proposal depends on untrained landlords doing the work of UK Border Agency staff without support and with the threat of penalties if they get it wrong.”
A programme on television recently highlighted a number of landlords in London who were already operating a racially discriminatory rental policy. They do not need much encouragement to continue with that, or to do worse. That is the risk that the Bill will create.
On health, the Bill also suggests that there should be a prior payment. People should pay, if they are here temporarily, for health care—there is no problem with that—but the choice optioned in this Bill is the wrong choice. There is a reason why the consultation, the details of which I have been requesting for more than a month, has been published this morning. Let me quote the analysis we heard about in Health questions:
“The analysis is a top-down estimate based on data from the Census 2011, the International Passenger Survey 2012 and Immigration and other statistics from the Office of National Statistics…These are the best available data in the public domain”.
What that means is, “We licked our finger and put it up in the air. We are guessing.”
Many countries have a requirement that migrants should, for example, have an effective health insurance system. That would not be a bad thing to do and is a more popular response in the Home Office consultation than the proposed levy, yet the Home Office has rejected that idea and proposes to introduce a levy that will burden particular nationalities more than others.
The Bill shows the arrogance of the Home Office by refusing to have its decisions appealed. It shows that the Home Office, in an island nation where it is possible to have effective border controls, does not care about the racially divisive consequences of increased internal immigration control. It shows that the Home Office has ignored its lack of capacity for doing this and, shockingly, includes proposals that were not prefigured in the consultation and that will bear down on victims of human trafficking.
The consultation on health payment contained a specific commitment about victims of human trafficking. Until now, overseas domestic workers have not been charged for health care. There is a reason for that—they are vulnerable and exploited. Frankly, the National Crime Agency is not making a priority of tracking down that particular form of human trafficking. We know how hard it is for those people. There are shocking stories of people with chronic, often infectious diseases who are prevented from getting access to health care by their exploiting employers. Under these proposals, they will be more vulnerable than they were before.
I am very glad that the Home Office is planning to introduce a modern day slavery Bill, but I am truly shocked that through this Bill they will reduce even the pathetic rights that modern day slaves have today. We have to chuck it out. There are some good things in it, but as a whole piece of legislation, it is truly unacceptable and we should reject it.
John Howell (Henley) (Con)
It is a great pleasure, as always, to follow the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), although I shall not be agreeing with her. It was also a great pleasure to hear from my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr Syms), who is no longer in his seat. I agree with him about the reasons to support the Bill. He spoke of the impact immigration has on the streets and it is true that this is a matter of great concern. The immigration rules have been reformed to cut out abuse where it is rife, but there is still more to do, particularly on landlords.
Let me start with the report by the Migration Observatory in Oxford entitled, “Migrants and Housing in the UK: Experiences and Impacts”. It is a very short report that sets out some key findings, one of which is that the foreign-born population has significantly lower home ownership rates than the UK-born population. The detail shows that the foreign-born population is three times as likely as the UK-born population to be in the private rented sector. If we drill down further, we can see that recent migrants are more than twice as likely as the normal foreign-born population to be renters—76% are more likely to rent. Foreign-born individuals have lower ownership rates than UK-born individuals and have greater representation in the private rented sector.
Recent migrants have very different accommodation standards. The report states that
“new migrants moved into temporary accommodation upon arrival…However, after realising that their stay in the UK could be permanent it is common for migrants to look for better housing choices”.
The evidence from that statement is clear: if we want to look for new migrants and potentially illegal immigrants, we need to look at the private rented sector. It is a key part of trying to ascertain where they might lie within the system. The evidence so far suggests that that is what is happening.
The UKBA and Ealing council recently visited six properties and the agency found that 22 out of 39 individual tenants, a large percentage, were illegal immigrants. Of those 22, 19 were detained. Of those 19, nine entered the country without leave, eight were overstayers, one was a failed asylum seeker and one was working in breach of his visa conditions. In such circumstances, the correct duty should be for the landlord to check for residence status. There is a long list of excluded tenancies in the Bill and the Secretary of State has the right to grant such a right to a person who would otherwise be disqualified.
The obligation on landlords—the choice of words is crucial—is to make “reasonable enquiries”. Private landlords are not expected to be experts in immigration; they are expected to make reasonable inquiries. They are not supposed to know the details of all the 400 or so immigrant visas that were mentioned earlier. They are merely meant to make reasonable inquiries. We are looking to secondary legislation to include a list of acceptable documentation.
Mr Stewart Jackson
My hon. Friend is making an important point. He will no doubt be aware of a 2006 study by Cambridgeshire constabulary that considered crime trends arising from the 2004 accession, particularly in houses in multiple occupation in Peterborough. That showed the disproportionate impact of crime on women living among largely male occupants of such houses as a result of poor landlord stewardship. Is that not an important issue that the Bill will address?
John Howell
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for mentioning that. I was not aware of that valid point and I am sure it adds to our debate.
The penalty payment is £3,000 per individual. A public consultation ran over the summer and the majority of landlord representative organisations opposed and disagreed with the principle of the policy. Most of the comments related to untrained British civilians undertaking the work of immigration officials, but the policy is a positive way of landlords contributing to British society given the proven link between migrants and rented accommodation. That contribution to British society will also involve freeing up the housing stock.
The policy will not conflict with landlords’ contractual arrangements. Indeed, if we ask the members of the organisations rather than the representative organisations we find that many members undertake such checks anyway—63%, I think. The Minister is nodding. The Bill is simply asking that all landlords do what the best landlords already do.
There is no reason why the system should not be clear and easy to comply with, and I accept that it must be. However, I do not accept that landlords will be confused about who is caught by the provision and I do not accept that any substantial cost burden will be passed on to tenants. I accept that publicity is important, and that we have to let landlords know what is happening. There is a need to be precise if we are to get the message out. I received calls from constituents on the matter when it was first mooted, as they were confused and wanted assurances about what was right. I was able to give those assurances. The issue of potential discrimination, which the hon. Member for Slough raised, is a real one, and I look forward to guidance from the Government to overcome that.
I shall conclude, as other Members wish to speak. This is a simple process for landlords, and it is something that they already do in the main. I urge the Government to make it simple, so that we can keep a check on migrants.
Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)
It is a convention to say that it is a pleasure to follow the preceding speaker. I shall not go as far as that, but it is probably appropriate for me to follow the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell). He focused on provisions relating to new regulations for private landlords, and I, too, shall focus the substance of my remarks on that aspect of the Bill.
Before I do so, however, I want to make a few general observations about the Bill as a whole, which is a combination of the good, the bad and the ugly. Tightening the law on sham marriages, improving our ability to deal with dodgy immigration advisers, and speeding up the deportation of foreign criminals are good ideas. Addressing the length of time it takes to deal with immigration applications, thereby reducing the number of years in which people have to live in limbo, literally not knowing whether they are coming or going, is a reasonable aspiration. However, I am not convinced that the right checks and balances exist in the new decision making and appeal process outlined in the Bill. It is a complex area. The hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) is right to draw attention to the fact that briefings on this part of the Bill were issued late in the day. The Government cannot be confident that the review that they wish to implement on immigration decisions will be any better or of higher quality than the initial decision-making process in the Home Office. There should be an independent review mechanism for appeals on immigration decisions.
Where the Bill is undoubtedly ugly is in its unworkable and unrealistic proposals to outsource the job of immigration officials to letting agency staff and private landlords up and down the country. Such a change in the law may or may not contribute to creating the Home Secretary’s “hostile environment”, but it undoubtedly risks inflaming racial tensions and smacks of the era in which landlords in the UK put signs above their doors proclaiming “No blacks, no Irish”. I for one do not want to return to those days. I want an immigration system that is firm and fair, and which is in the best interests of everyone in our country. I want a system in which the rules are enforced properly and in a timely fashion. No matter what Ministers say, the immigration arm of the Home Office—the former UK Border Agency—is a total mess. No amount of nasty rhetoric turned into sentences on the statute book will make up for the basic failures in administration, efficiency and competence that have characterised the Home Office for far too long.
I said that I wanted to focus on the Government’s proposals for private landlords. Part 3 introduces a new duty on landlords to check the immigration status of prospective tenants before properties are let, with hefty fines if flats and houses are rented to people without leave to remain. There are already tight rules about who can access homes rented from councils and housing associations. On a superficial level, I suspect that many people would say, “What’s the problem with asking private landlords to do that? It sounds like a good idea.” However, there is a serious problem with the proposals because of the way in which that would work in practice.
I have been a Member of Parliament for three years, and in that time I have dealt with my fair share of immigration cases. When people come to my surgery with reams of paper from the Home Office I sometimes find it difficult to ascertain exactly what their status is. It can be complex and confusing: people do not always fall into neat, defined categories. Sometimes three people in a family have indefinite leave to remain, but one, inexplicably, is still waiting to hear from the Home Office. Sometimes a Home Office decision to refuse an application is overturned by the tribunal, but then there are inordinate delays in sending individuals new documentation to confirm their status. Perhaps all small private landlords and letting agents have an insight or training in the immigration system, or a special link to the Home Office, which I do not have, but I think that is unlikely.
What is going to happen? Let us imagine a busy letting agency in south-east London, where demand for rented property routinely exceeds supply. Two people turn up to rent a flat that has just been put on the market. One is a woman of Nigerian heritage—someone who came to this country as a child, went to school here and now works as a nurse. She has indefinite leave to remain and she has become a British citizen. The other person is also a British citizen—a white woman, a nurse too, but with an English-sounding surname. The admin person in the letting agency is presented with Home Office papers by one, but not the other. They know that if they let to an “illegal immigrant” they might be fined £3,000. They are confused by the papers. They have a stream of people waiting to be seen, and they have other things to do. Which of the two people do they go for? I do not think that I need spell out to hon. Members what might happen in that set of circumstances.
Heidi Alexander
I entirely agree, and I believe that what is proposed will lead to racial profiling in the letting of properties that could end up on a scale reminiscent of the 1950s.
We are told by Ministers that they will set up a hotline to provide a 48-hour checking service for landlords. It will have to be a Home Office hotline like no other. Confusion, procrastination and obfuscation characterise Home Office hotlines at the moment. Why will this one be any different? How will landlords and letting agents know who is living in a house apart from the individual who signed the tenancy agreement? What happens when someone’s leave to remain expires during their tenancy but they submit an application for renewal that is caught up in intractable delays and administrative chaos? How will the Home Office even know if properties are let privately if the Government refuse to set up a register of private landlords?
Recent migrants often rent a room from a friend of a friend. Sometimes whole families live in one room in a house. There is no tenancy agreement, and they do not go to a letting agent. Anyone would think that these people are going to letting agents on the King’s road to secure their properties, but that is not true: these transactions take place in the shadows of our economy. This policy is unworkable and unrealistic, and it is deeply unpleasant. Last week in London, the headlines were of racial discrimination in the letting of property—people being told that flats and houses were no longer available because of the colour of their skin. Those headlines made me feel ashamed to be a Londoner. Does the Minister really think the proposals will make the situation better? Of course not. They will make it worse—much, much worse.
I have lived in London and in Lewisham for more than 10 years. I love it. It is a bit lively at times, but I am pleased that I live there. I love being able to go to Lewisham market on a Saturday morning and thumb through African fabrics for sale, buy jerk chicken from a van in Catford or go to the beautiful presentations and performances of the local Tamil supplementary school. I am pleased that I do not live in a monocultural place where everyone looks the same, sounds the same and has the same views and life experiences. People generally get on with one another in Lewisham but tensions do exist, often simmering beneath the surface. Some young black men feel that the police do not treat them fairly. Some people tell me of problems in getting work because they have a foreign-sounding surname.
When in May this year the BNP wanted to march from Woolwich to the Islamic centre in Lewisham, it made me feel sick and worried—worried about my home, my neighbours and my community. The Minister may not have to worry about such things in the Forest of Dean, but let me tell him and the Home Secretary that they are playing a dangerous political game which I am not prepared to participate in. I believe our immigration system must be firm in order to be fair. I believe its enforcement needs to be timely, professional and effective. I do not think outsourcing immigration control to private letting agents and landlords is the answer, and I have grave concerns about the impact of this policy on community cohesion in areas such as the one that I represent.
So I go back to what I said at the beginning. I have not talked about the things that I think are positive in the Bill. There are some things which I believe should happen and which I can support, but because of what I have explained in the past 10 minutes, I cannot support the Bill tonight, but neither will I oppose it.
Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) on raising some very important points about which she spoke with great knowledge, and I respect her decision on this important but difficult matter. If I may, I will not follow her down that avenue, as I want to make a more general speech about the importance of the Bill.
Several comments have been made in the House today about why there seems to be an immigration Bill every two years. It is a fair point, but it is perhaps worth saying that it has been some time since Governments have felt able to deal with this matter in a serious way. It is inevitably a long march in a civilised country when we have to take steps to remedy something that has gone very badly wrong for our country. I welcome the Bill as a further step forward along that path in this Government’s determined effort to get immigration down to a sensible level that is acceptable to the public and above all serves the interests of our country.
I warmly congratulate my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and my hon. Friend the Minister for Immigration on their relentless focus on what needs to be done to restore long-overdue order in our immigration system. Let us not forget why we are here today. Regrettably, the dysfunctional Labour Government lost control of our borders. Net foreign immigration on their watch was nearly 4 million, while roughly 1 million British citizens left in that period. This is an extraordinary scale of immigration, absolutely without parallel in our history. We now face the massive task of integrating these huge numbers into our society.
The Balanced Migration group, which I co-chair with the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), is especially concerned about the impact on our population of continued immigration on anything like this scale. On current projections, based on net migration of 200,000 a year, immigration will account for two thirds of our population growth—not, incidentally, one half, as the BBC repeatedly and erroneously tells us. Such immigration would add a further 5 million people to our population in the next 15 years. This is completely unacceptable to the British public. According to a recent opinion poll, two thirds of the public want to see drastic action to reduce immigration and three quarters of the population want to see it reduced.
The Government have already had considerable success, for which they have not been given due credit. Non-EU migration—that part of the equation which is subject to Government action—has been substantially reduced from 217,000 in 2010 to 157,000 in 2012. This has been achieved without constraining access for business to the skilled migrants that it needs if it and we are to prosper. There are no limits on the transfer of international staff. The only cap is on work permits, and only half the 20,700 available work permits have been taken up. There is much to be done to improve delivery, but the policy is clearly right. Nor has there been any significant effect on our universities, which have seen student visa applications increase by 10% between 2010 and 2012. As I said in an intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr Syms), the fall in student numbers has been at the colleges where much of the abuse of the system had been taking place.
It is sometimes claimed that the Government are sending out mixed messages; in one week they are encouraging business and tourism, in another they are clamping down on immigration. In fact, there is no contradiction between encouraging legal migration and discouraging abuse of the system, as is the purpose of this excellent Bill. It is right that we should seek to encourage tourists, business visitors and genuine students, while reducing the scale of permanent migration. That is how we in this country should reap the benefits of a globalised world, while ensuring that we are not, as a nation, overwhelmed by it. It is that fear which drives so many people’s anxiety about immigration.
The Bill tackles a long-standing weakness in our immigration system—namely, the relative ease with which those who originally come quite legitimately can stay on illegally once their visa has expired. These overstayers frequently work below the minimum wage. Those who do so undercut the wages of British workers. They also allow unscrupulous employers to undercut employers who offer decent wages and conditions. Overstayers also add to the pressure on our public services, so it is right that they should be firmly but fairly discouraged from staying on. An important consequence of such illegal immigration is the added pressure that it generates on our housing, which already faces a crisis. I therefore welcome the proposal in the Bill for landlords to carry out checks similar to those now required of employers, although I recognise that the nuts and bolts may need some examination. I note the points that the hon. Member for Lewisham East made in this regard.
The proposals to close off access to driving licences and to bank accounts to those who have no right to be here are entirely sensible and I hope they will be widely supported. I remain concerned, however, that we still await news of any effective measures to ensure that our national health service is no longer wide open to all comers, whether or not they have contributed to its enormous costs. The proposals in the Bill are, to put it mildly, extremely modest.
I recognise that we cannot and should not look to medical staff to carry out what are essentially immigration functions. That is why we have suggested that joint Home Office/Department of Health offices should be established entirely separately from GP practices in order to decide on eligibility. We keep being told that there is no evidence of significant abuse of the NHS. That is simply because there are no effective checks in place. If we were to turn off all the speed cameras, there would be no evidence of any significant speeding. So, with the exception of this important lacuna concerning the NHS, I warmly congratulate my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and my hon. Friend the Minister—
The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for giving way. I would like to draw to his attention the detailed, independent and peer-reviewed research that our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health published this morning, which shows that the NHS fails to collect some £500 million a year. We are not proposing to withhold treatment from people, but trying simply to ensure that people who are not entitled to free health care make a fair contribution towards it.
Nicholas Soames
I have seen that, and I welcome the appointment of a senior figure as chairman of the NHS body that will look further into this. I simply say that if my hon. Friend really thinks that the amount of money involved is only £500 million, he is well wide of the mark. Part of my group’s concern about that paper is that it simply does not go far enough. It makes too many heroic assumptions on the most enormous margins, and I and the right hon. Member for Birkenhead will be making available to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and my hon. Friend the Minister further important details from the NHS that we have been given and which show that these figures are well south of the figures that need to be dealt with.
As I say, having regard to that important lacuna in the Bill, I nevertheless wish to congratulate my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and my hon. Friend the Minister on their courageous and successful efforts to tackle one of the foremost concerns of the British public. I wish my right hon. Friend every continued success as a Conservative Government move towards a system that has the confidence of the public.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
I am proud to speak in today’s debate. The speeches of my hon. Friends the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) and for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) were quite magnificent. They dealt with this issue from their own experience, as did my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, who always speaks so eloquently on these matters. I would even say—those who know me will know how much it costs me to do so—that the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) also made a very good speech.
The quality of the speeches comes from the nature of Members’ constituencies. It was instructive that the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell) should say that when the Bill was published he received correspondence from his constituents who, of course, are the landlords, while the constituents who wrote to my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East and to me are the tenants. Each of us in this place is properly reflecting the views of our constituents, but, on behalf of those against whom the Bill will be so penal, I hope that hon. Members who do not share the same constituency issues and problems might take note of some of the speeches that have been given already.
I want to focus on the heart of the Bill, which is that the Home Office argues that the immigration appeals framework is flawed. To whom will it give the work? An internal Home Office review estimated that approximately 60% of the volume of allowed appeals are due to casework errors. The Home Office believes that the appeals framework is flawed, but part of the problem with that framework is the poor quality of its initial decisions, which then clog up the appeals process. How can the Home Office believe that an administrative review process will properly go to the heart of the problem? It will not.
As the Bill stands, refused applicants will be required to apply for administrative review within 10 days of receiving the decision. All of us who have extensive correspondence with the Home Office know that most of the decisions come back to lawyers. So lawyers will be required to make that administrative review application within 10 days, but the Home Office must know full well that that simply will not happen. It is not happening at the moment. Many of our constituents do not receive notification from their lawyers until several weeks after even a positive response has been received from the Home Office. The very idea that such a review could be made within 10 days is quite simply incredible. Those officials who have told, written to and persuaded Ministers that this can be done know only too well that that is false.
Under clause 11, where there is right of appeal to the first tier tribunal, refusal decisions made on erroneous grounds or without reference to highly relevant information simply cannot be challenged. The option to raise challenges to unlawful decision making before the High Court in judicial review proceedings will remain, but that means that the time of the High Court judges will be used in pointing out basic errors in Home Office decision making. The Home Office states that the immigration appeals framework is overtly complex, slow and expensive, but reducing the number of appeals will cause the number of applications for judicial review to soar. That will be more expensive, slower and less effective, but it will be the only lawful option left for many cases. The High Court is likely to become the first port of call for those opposing deportation decisions. Again, immigration officials in the Home Office know that. They know that they are taking a bottleneck from one part of the system and putting it in another part where it will be more costly to the public purse.
In the light of the proposed reforms to judicial review funding and challenges to legal aid, including the proposed adoption of a residence test, judicial review will not be practically accessible for a number of cases, leaving individuals without any form of redress and the Home Office with no imperative to improve its processes.
Barry Gardiner
In one moment.
I listened carefully to the right hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames), who made the interesting point that without the speed cameras we cannot see things going wrong. On the same principle, if we take off the monitoring, the Home Office will not improve its processes. The light that judges can currently shine on what is going on in the Home Office to show where it is incompetent, where it is taking arbitrary and flawed decisions, will no longer be there. According to the Home Office’s own statistics, 32% of deportation cases and 50% of entry clearance applications were successfully appealed last year. That means that the initial decision was wrong. We need the judges to be able to keep that focus on those wrong initial decisions. Yet the Government’s response to this high margin of error is not to seek to improve the quality of their decision making, but rather to reduce the opportunities for challenge. Instead of improving the bad administration and inefficiency at the heart of the Department, the Government are shifting the responsibility and attacking due process.
The administrative review process already exists for overseas applications, but my own experience of entry clearance manager reviews is that they are slow and of little better quality than entry clearance officers’ decision making. It is difficult to believe Ministers’ estimation that an administrative review would be processed within 10 working days of an application given the historic backlogs that already exist in the Home Office.
The Department has included in its impact assessment a summary of the ongoing costs and benefits of the changes to appeals. It has come up with a figure of £261 of benefits through a decrease in appeal costs. Interestingly, however, it has not included administrative review costs in the cost side of the analysis. It acknowledges that those costs will exist, but it has put in that column the word “unknown”. They are unknown, but the Home Office could have estimated them and did not, because that figure would have made the cost-benefit analysis come out in a way that the Minister did not wish. That is shameful.
In response to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) made about the problem of landlords having to check people’s status, the Home Secretary said that we already had such a system for employers. We do, and I will read a letter of 14 December last year from an employer to an employee, whom I will call RS. It states:
“I am writing to advise you that we have received notification from the UK Border Agency regarding your entitlement to work in the UK and would like to invite you to an investigation meeting to discuss this and other aspects of your right to work in the UK…I must advise you that you are currently suspended (no payment) pending further investigation as we have liaised with you and unfortunately you have not provided us with the necessary documents to confirm your eligibility status within the UK.”
A week later, the employer wrote to RS again, stating:
“I am writing further to the investigatory meeting held on Tuesday 18th December 2012…We have received notification from the UKBA to advise us that they cannot confirm your status to work within the UK. We advised you of this notification and requested that you provided us with further documentation…I am therefore writing to you to confirm that you are required to attend a formal disciplinary hearing”.
That was on 21 December. I had become involved in the intervening period and written to the UKBA about the case. It confirmed to me on 19 December that the case had been logged on its computer system, and that from that date the employer should have got a positive response when phoning the employer checking service. I understand that a manager checked on 7 January, but again, the system showed a negative response.
On 9 July, seven months later, I got a letter from the Home Office, which read:
“Thank you for your letter of 18 June with enclosure on behalf of”
RS. It stated that it had received her application on 27 July 2012—a year previously—
“and it is now still awaiting consideration…I am sorry to hear that”
Ms RS
“is experiencing problems with her employers. She may be interested to know that employers can check the eligibility of prospective employees to work in the UK by using the online Employer Checking Service”—
which was precisely what her employer had done the previous December, when she had not been logged on it, and every week and month since. The Home Office has done nothing, and a woman has lost her job and livelihood. The Home Secretary holds that up as an example to show that the system is already working. I think not.
Let us not be down on the landlords, though. I have a letter to the Home Office from a landlord, Mrs Patel, which states:
“I can confirm that”
Mr KA
“is my tenant. He lives at the property with his wife and three children. I understand that he is in great financial difficulties”—
that is because his case has been in limbo with the Home Office for 15 years—
“and I have accommodated this only because he has three very young children. However, I am unable to continue with this arrangement as I have a mortgage and other bills to pay. I would appreciate if his claim could be dealt with urgently so he is able to get help, as I am no longer able to let him stay at the property without paying his rent. I don’t wish to see him homeless, as he has three young children.”
That is a landlord who is acting like a human being. The Bill asks that she instead act like an immigration officer. Tenants often have limited leave to remain in this country and apply for additional leave to remain. During the pending period, what can a prospective landlord do? If they do not know their prospective tenant’s immigration status, they will not take them on.
I have to respect your wish for others to be allowed to speak, Mr Deputy Speaker, although there are of course many cases that I would like to cite. I must finish, however, by talking about the racist van that affected my community so dreadfully this summer. The Government claim that the objective was for people to realise that they could get assistance in going home. However, every person whom the Government could deport has received a letter telling them that. Mr KN has been signing on every single month for 12 years, and on every one of those occasions an immigration officer could have detained him and taken him for deportation. They have not done so. They know where every one of the people targeted by the van lives, but they have not bothered to go and ensure that they are detained and deported, because they do not want the costs. The idea that the racist van was sent out to remind people that they could go home, when thousands of people are not being deported with the full knowledge of the Home Office, shows that that Department is the most dysfunctional in government.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. If we seriously want to get everybody in, we will have to average about 10 minutes a speech. If we carry on in the same way, a lot of Members will drop off the end of the list.
Jeremy Corbyn
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I heard what you said, but would it not be more useful to put a time limit on speeches so that we can all get in?
Mr Deputy Speaker
That is up to me, but I thought that hon. Members would have enough respect for each other to ensure that everybody gets in. I thought that they would help each other by taking a little less time in order to allow others to take part, which is why I did not want to be dictatorial about it.
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
It is 16 years since the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) and I stood in the same hall in Wembley, he winning his seat and I losing by 19,000 votes, and his speech felt like every one of those 16 years as it passed by.
I welcome the Bill and want to talk about the general issues it deals with. I think that it is courageous and principled, because what we are talking about is one of the most important functions of any Government: to protect the country’s borders and, most importantly, to allow the public, of all creeds, colours and religions, wherever they come from, to have faith, trust and confidence in those borders. This is a dividing line between the Government and the Labour party. I think that it is the height of cowardice that Labour Back Benchers have adopted this mealy-mouthed, curate’s-egg approach yet, for purely political reasons, will not have the courage of their convictions to oppose the Bill in the same way they “rubbed the right’s nose in it” during their time in government. If they really believe that this is a bad Bill, why will they not vote against it tonight? They will not do so because they know that that would be unpopular with voters.
Opposition Members say that the Government should be ashamed of the ad vans, but where was the mandate to inflict unmediated, unmitigated, uncontrolled and unplanned immigration on this country? There were between 2 million and 3 million European Union migrants to this country, when the LSE assessment was 13,000 to 15,000, and unprecedented levels of non-EU migration. There was no mandate, and the Labour party should hang its head in shame for never going to the British people with an honest prospectus for that policy.
I will take no lectures from a representative of the Scottish National party about the poison of chauvinism and nationalism. If it is all right to aim that at English people in order to propagate the ridiculous policy of breaking up the United Kingdom, it would be best for the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) not to say anything about it—
Mr Jackson
No, I am not saying that, but if the hon. Gentleman is attacking the Government side for being racist, as he did in his Westminster Hall debate, I say that chauvinism and nationalism are bad and that he should be mindful—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I think that I need to help a little bit. In fairness, we are on immigration, but independence for Scotland has not happened, so the immigration part will not apply at the moment. It will obviously help us all if we can carry on with the debate.
Mr Jackson
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.
With regard to the rationale for immigration, the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee found in 2008, as indeed did the National Institute for Economic and Social Research, that large-scale immigration had a minimal impact on the economy holistically. I pay tribute to the Government for having the guts to listen to people and take appropriate action in a responsible, reasonable and measured way. They have taken action before on things that have caused real problems for all communities. The hon. Member for Brent North is not the only one who represents a diverse, multicultural society; I have 10,000 eastern European migrants in my constituency and 10,000 voters of Pakistani heritage. The question is what is good for the whole community. We all know that when we go to those wonderfully moving citizenship ceremonies at the town hall there is a feeling of cohesiveness about being a British citizen. Those people who have followed the correct route and done the right thing are just as angry and concerned about the impact of illegal immigration as anyone else, irrespective of their race or ethnicity.
Mr David Ward (Bradford East) (LD)
The hon. Gentleman started his speech by saying that the number of new arrivals in this country had been vastly underestimated. Presumably he was talking about migrants from eastern Europe. How many of them would have been captured by the Bill?
Mr Jackson
I will move on to EU migration later, but the hon. Gentleman makes a fair point, and we have discussed the issue before.
The Government have taken action on sham marriages, bogus colleges, seasonal agricultural workers—a controversial decision a few weeks ago, but I think that the Minister made the right call—and access to the NHS. I think that that is absolutely right. We can be proud of having reduced net migration towards the tens of thousands, as we heard in the earlier exchanges between the Home Secretary and the shadow Home Secretary. Given that, it is not unreasonable for us to wish to have in this country good quality new people from around the world who want to be British citizens, people who speak English and make an economic contribution to our society. We want a colour-blind scheme whereby we attract highly skilled people who can make a serious impact on society, not least in terms of improving themselves and their family.
I welcome all the powers in the Bill, particularly the review of article 8 of the European convention on human rights. I put my cards on the table. I make a straightforward declaration to the House that I would vote to leave the European Union. I am a member of Better Off Out. I would have us out of, or at least suspend us from, the European convention on human rights, like Sweden, because of the perverse decisions the European Court has made. I do not believe that a foreign legal entity should be second-guessing our sovereign Parliament and our courts, and I will take that message to my constituents in due course.
I have two slight general criticisms of the Bill. It might seem strange, but I agree with the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart): I do not believe that the robustness and veracity of the data collected under both Governments —this one and the previous one—are sufficient for us always to make rational decisions on immigration. The Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions, in particular, need to be making a better fist of collecting data. Too much of this debate is based on anecdote and on historical figures that do not make much sense when looked at in terms of real life and the particular pressures caused by mass migration. There needs to be a proper cost-benefit analysis of the displacement of mass migration, historically and in future, particularly as we look towards the situation with Romania and Bulgaria.
It is hard to countenance the fact that this is the Labour party of Keir Hardie, Clement Attlee and the Labour Representation Committee, given that it imported 2 million to 3 million low-paid, low-skilled eastern European migrants, some living in slum housing, at the same time as consigning 5 million people to out-of-work benefits, seemingly for the benefit of capitalists and big business. Had the Conservative party presided over such a record, the Labour party would rightly be deeply critical. We need a cost-benefit analysis of the young people in pockets of this country who remain on welfare and who are unskilled, untrained and on low wages because of Labour’s deliberate policy of mass migration while in power.
The Bill misses an opportunity to cover EU migration. I have previously rehearsed for the House the issues in my own constituency, with 34,000 national insurance numbers created for eastern European migrants in just seven years, a tripling in the number of GP registrations, and 19 schools with more than 40% of children speaking English as an additional language. Those are real pinch points in different geographical areas across the country. They may not exist everywhere across England and Wales or the United Kingdom, but they are certainly major issues in my constituency. The situation in Peterborough is acute. Having said that, we were the city that welcomed the Ugandan Asians when they were expelled by Idi Amin in the 1970s; we have a very proud record in that respect.
The Government need to look again at the non-contribution-based benefits regime. That is a vital issue. If we are to keep within the confines of the free movement directive of 2004, we must consider aligning our benefits regime with the regimes of other countries that do not the have large-scale benefits tourism that we have potentially had. The European Union Free Movement Directive 2004 (Disapplication) Bill, a ten-minute rule Bill that I introduced in October 2012, contained some very important measures about registration of EU migrants, access to benefits, deportation, criminal activity, housing waiting lists, GP registrations and so on. Unfortunately, only some of those have been taken up by Ministers.
This Government have taken the right decision, not particularly because they want to be electorally popular but because they have listened to people. They have understood the great sense of resentment and anger out there among very many people—people who are not part of a social liberal elite, who do not read the right newspapers and did not go the right schools but feel an inherent sense of helplessness and resentment. My warning is this: if we do not give vent to the legitimate concerns of the vast majority of decent people who pay their taxes and are kind and neighbourly, then we give an opening to fascists, racists and extremists like the English Defence League and the British National party. In the mother of Parliaments, we can debate these issues because we are not afraid to do so. It might be uncomfortable for the Opposition or for some Government Members, but it is right to have that debate. I commend the Bill and will enthusiastically give it my support.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
I wish I could say it is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson), but I cannot. The only thing I will say is that when it comes to a world view and political values, he and I are probably on the opposite sides of the spectrum. His intemperate remarks about Scottish independence do him no credit whatsoever. He wants to pull up the drawbridge and leave the European Union and other institutions, whereas we want to join the world and we welcome the fact that the world will welcome Scotland as an independent nation.
The Government’s stated aim with this Bill is to make the UK a more “hostile environment” for illegal immigrants. I give the Minister 10 out of 10 and say to him, “Well done and pat yourself on the back,” because the Government have most certainly achieved that with this Bill. They have just made the UK an even more intolerant place for the rest of us to live in.
This Government have also achieved something I never thought I would see in the 12 years I have been a Member of Parliament: an Immigration Bill that is even nastier and more pernicious than all those that have gone before. All these right-wing immigration Bills have to achieve is two simple things: kick as many people as possible out of the country and prevent as many people as possible from getting in in the first place. That is what every single immigration Bill we have had from right-wing Governments, whether they be Blairite or Conservative, has done: kick out as many people as possible and prevent as many people as possible from coming in.
Sometimes Governments have to be inventive. This Bill relies on some of the traditional routes, such as making appeals harder, enforcement more difficult and life more miserable for people living in this country who should not be here. However, it is also inventive, because it covers social services and health and tells landlords to become immigration officers. This Bill will turn race relations into a nightmare, bringing suspicion based on ethnicity into our social services and the housing market.
Like most right-wing parties, the Tories’ pre-conceived idea about immigration is that it is a bad thing that has to be dealt with and managed. To them it is a burden. Right-wing Conservatives such as those in this Government want to get the numbers down. That has been the case throughout history. Conservatives would probably have tried to stop the Normans and the Vikings coming here on their boats in the 9th and 10th centuries. Theirs is a world view of barriers and of preventing people from coming here.
We live in a globalised, interconnected world in which the transfer and movement of people have never been greater. We are standing in London, for goodness’ sake! This is one of the greatest cities, if not the greatest city, in the world. One third of the people who live and work in London come from outwith the United Kingdom. It is they who built this magnificent city.
We should listen to what the Mayor of London has to say about these issues. He wrote a fantastic article in The Daily Telegraph the other day—I wish the Conservatives would read it—under the headline, “It’s mad to blame our housing crisis on ‘blooming foreigners’”. I would not put it that way, but the Mayor of London is spot on. He recognises the value of and contribution made by high-end and low-end migrants to London. I recommend that my many Conservative friends in the House take a look at what the London Mayor has to say about this issue, because they will get some sense from him, unlike the hon. Member for Peterborough.
Yes, this country has changed. My country, Scotland, is changing, too. We do not vote Conservative. We approach these issues differently. Debates such as this show that we are pulling apart politically. We would not have such a debate in Scotland; we would not discuss such themes. We are drifting apart as a political culture.
This place is living in the early days of UKIP UK. That is where we are in this country. It started a little while ago, but it really came through with UKIP’s success in the local elections. That changed everything. We now live in UKIP UK. The party does not have one member in this House, but it is pulling all the Conservative party’s strings and dominating political debate. Everything is predicated on UKIP and Nigel Farage.
UKIP’s victory was closely followed by the hate vans and the ridiculous texts trying to get people to go home. I secured a debate on the hate vans last week. Perhaps I should get a bit of credit for getting rid of the appalling things. It took ages for the Minister to respond to me about them, but a week after the debate, we have got rid of the hate vans. That is a result.
Even this Conservative Government realise how ridiculous it was to drag a billboard around the streets of London, ranting at people to go home, with a telephone number and a text number. That is what they were reduced to. It could not get more ridiculous. What would have been next? The Minister was one of the few people in the Home Office who was prepared to defend the hate vans. He was in the studios all last week saying that, with a bit of refinement around the edges, they might be okay. He was prepared to put son-of-hate-vans on the streets. Thank goodness that has been ruled out by the Home Secretary. Let us be sure that it does not happen.
Are the Opposition opposing the Bill? I do not know. They do not like aspects of it, but they are compromised. If they are to win the next election, they have to win votes in the south. That brings us back to UKIP UK. They are aware that immigration is a hot issue in seats that they have to win, so they are having to be very careful about what they say. The Conservatives are right to point the finger at them because they are not doing a thing, but they should not let the Conservatives bully them. The Conservatives are saying that the seven to nine years of high immigration when Labour was in government were a waste. One of the best things that Labour did was to get people into this country. It built cities such as London and rejuvenated cities such as Manchester and Leeds. Labour Members should not let the Conservatives bully them into thinking that they did the wrong thing on immigration.
Pamela Nash (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)
I would appreciate some clarity on the SNP’s position. I presume that the UK Government will need help from the Scottish Government on the landlord checks and on the NHS proposals, as those areas are largely devolved. What is the SNP line on that?
Pete Wishart
I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for reminding me to talk about Scotland. There are proposals that relate to devolved services that we are in control of. We do not like them—we do not like them at all. We are in charge of the health service in Scotland. We would need to be convinced that these measures were in the best interests of Scotland before we would go through with them. Scotland is a different country. The hon. Lady knows that, and I think she would agree that we would not do these things.
Dr Huppert
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his debate last week. I agree with him on that issue. I also share his concerns about landlords. Is he as pleased as I am that there will be only one pilot in one location and that the policy will not be rolled out without a vote? Does he take some comfort from that, even though he might not be totally reassured?
Pete Wishart
I take a little comfort from that, but not a great deal. I do not know what the hon. Gentleman is thinking, but I am sure that he will not vote for this nonsense tonight. I know what he has said. I can see all the Liberals sitting there thinking, “Uh-uh! This is not a liberal Bill.” It is one of the most illiberal Bills that we have seen from this Government. It will be an absolute disgrace if even one Liberal goes through the Aye Lobby tonight. When I sat on the Opposition Benches with them, I heard them rant against new Labour immigration Bills. This Bill is 10 times worse than anything new Labour concocted.
Scotland has had the “go home” project. The UK Border Agency office in Glasgow was telling people to go home before they had even sat down. Now that we have got rid of the appalling hate vans, I want the Minister to guarantee that we will not have “go home” messages at UKBA offices. We do not want that in Scotland. We do not have UKIP in Scotland. Nigel Farage had to get a police escort out of Edinburgh. We hate UKIP to the bottom of our ballot boxes. It has not secured one deposit in Scotland. We do not want to take part in the appalling race to the bottom that the Conservatives are engaged in with UKIP—a race to the bottom that they can never win. They will never out-UKIP UKIP. It is the master of right-wing gimmickry. If the Conservatives enter a race with UKIP, they will only get beaten. I think that the Minister knows that.
This matter is important for Scotland. The hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Pamela Nash) is right about that. We have our own demographic issues and population requirements. I will tell Members the difference between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom. When the Scottish Government received the latest population figures, they put out a press release welcoming the rise in the Scottish population. Could you ever, Madam Deputy Speaker, imagine a UK Government welcoming a rise in population? That is what distinguishes us as a Government from them—we welcome the contribution of immigration. We have our own population requirements, but we are stuck and burdened with a set of immigration policies that are almost the exact opposite of what we require. That is why we must wrest control of our own immigration requirements.
Our population has gone up and that is good, but there are concerns that it might still fall. Even 10 years ago, we were worried that our population might fall below the 5 million mark. Thankfully, that did not happen. The health provisions will cut across our responsibility for devolved services, and we will have to look at them carefully before we do anything.
There is one thing I want to say about immigration, because we do not like any of this stuff—it is just rubbish. The UK Government’s immigration policy is having an impact on Scotland’s great universities. We have three universities in the top 200 universities in the world. We have fantastic world-class universities and this Government are hurting them. Just stop it. We want to ensure that we get the best possible students to our universities. All this rubbish that the Government are proposing puts more and more people off. We have to compete with other English-speaking nations around the world to ensure that our universities stay world class. We just wish the UK Government would get out.
This issue is simple. Let us admit that Government Members seem to be going in one direction—the emerging UKIP UK has its own set of values, culture and political direction—and in Scotland we are going another way. We do not like this stuff. We do not vote Conservative and we hate UKIP, so we are not going to go in that direction. Here is a novel solution: why do they not do their own thing and we do our own thing? It is called independence and it works for most countries. Next year, thank goodness, we will achieve it.
Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)
It is important that we adopt a moderate tone, as immigration is an issue that can all too easily inflame passions. I agree strongly with the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson). If we do not debate the difficult issues on immigration in this House, we cede the territory to nasty extremist groups and we must never do that. We must be prepared, albeit with our different points of view, to debate and discuss these issues in this House in a measured and reasonable manner, and that is what I hope to do.
If we look back over the 20th century, we see that for much of that time the numbers migrating into and emigrating from the United Kingdom were roughly in balance. From the 1960s to the early 1990s, the number of emigrants was actually often greater than the number of immigrants—a net population decline. What has happened in the past two decades? Immigration has exceeded emigration by more than 100,000 every year since 1998—a significant historical departure from the 20th century and many periods before then. It is important for us to recognise that.
Turning to the Bill, I am in complete agreement with the need to speed up the removal of illegal immigrants who have absolutely no further basis to stay in the United Kingdom. That is important, both for the credibility of the immigration system and for the people themselves. It is no life at all to live in a type of limbo not knowing one’s status, or, if one does know one’s status, carrying on being in the United Kingdom when one cannot really make a life or plan for the future. If someone has no basis to stay in this country, it is right for them to return voluntarily to their home country or, if necessary, be forcibly deported by the Government. I know that the Government will take greater steps in this area: frankly, the delays are often too long. As the Home Secretary said in her opening speech, we need swift enforcement. That is very important.
I agree with the point made in an intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury St Edmunds (Mr Ruffley), who mentioned the original predictions about immigration from the A8 European Union countries—13,000 was the original figure, I think, but the reality was many hundreds of thousands, and people lost confidence in the Government’s ability to predict immigration numbers. I welcome what the Home Secretary said about dealing with the pull factors regarding Romanian and Bulgarian immigration, which will become an issue from the start of next year.
One measure in the Bill will deal with people accessing the national health service when they have no right to do so. Many of my constituents come to me and say, “We have a national health service, not a world health service.” Last January, the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Local Medical Committee—the group that represents GPs in my area—wrote to the Immigration Minister. I will quote briefly from that letter to show the type of issues they were begging the Minister to deal with, and to which he has now provided an answer.
“One very typical recent case is where a local Pakistani-born resident, registered with a Luton GP, had his parents, visiting on a six months visitor’s visa, staying with him. Both parents have a number of on-going chronic illnesses that include diabetes and coronary heart disease; they had arrived in the country with far too few tablets to cover the duration of their stay. Because they have moved in with their son, who was well known to the GP concerned, the GP not only felt that she had an ethical duty to provide further care and medication for the parents, but she knew that the doctor/patient relationship with the son would be destroyed if she refused. Another local GP has thousands of patients on his list who entertain friends and relatives from Pakistan, India and other…countries and who come to England for the sole purpose of accessing free health care.”
That comes not from me but from the leader of local GPs in my area, who are asking the Government to take action on this issue. I am glad that the Minister and the Government have responded to that concern; they were right to do so.
Under the previous Government, one of my constituents who was unemployed and looking for work sent me a very angry e-mail. She was angry because during her job search she had come across an advertisement for a picker-packer job on the minimum wage. There was a condition, however, because she—or any applicant—had to speak Polish. At the time I raised the issue in the House with the then Solicitor-General, the former Member for Redcar, and various actions were taken. People agreed that such advertisements were not right, and I would have liked clear action to have been taken to state that such actions were illegal. I think such a condition was absolutely wrong for a minimum wage job—a picker-packer—when there was no requirement to deal with Poland. How can our constituents find work fairly if they have to compete with such issues?
Two years ago, the UK Border Agency mounted a raid on a major factory in my constituency. It found a number of illegal immigrants and that employer was dealt with. Again, our constituents have to deal with such issues daily. They are competing for jobs in the labour market against people who either have no right to be here, or, in some cases, their employers make an utterly unreasonable—and frankly disgraceful—requirement that they should speak a foreign language to do a minimum wage job.
This is about being fair to British jobseekers of all races. That is important as we are all concerned to ensure that our constituents have a fair chance of getting into the labour market.
I support the measures in the Bill on proper checks to ensure that illegal immigrants—people who have no basis of stay in this country—cannot carry on living here. That includes checks involving landlords, banks, the NHS, which I have mentioned, and the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency. Most of my constituents would say that the measures are right and express incredulity that they have not been taken before, as my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Henry Smith) said in an intervention on the Home Secretary.
I give the Bill a strong welcome. Many of my constituents raise immigration issues regularly. They want them debated in the House of Commons. They want their views and concerns to be expressed. I believe that the Bill goes some way to restoring faith and credibility in our immigration system, which is very welcome.
Pamela Nash (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on Second Reading. The debate has been, and will continue to be, wide ranging, but I shall restrict my comments to three specific matters, the first of which is the potential unintended consequences of the immigration health charge.
Clauses 33 and 34 introduce the immigration health charge, but offer no clarity on the administration or policing of it. That leaves the presumption and fear that checks will be in place before people access primary care, even if there are no measures to that effect in the Bill. I am concerned that that will create serious risks to public health, including an increase in HIV infection. That is not only my view, but the view of many charities and organisations working in the field that have contacted me, as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on HIV and AIDS. They have serious concerns.
Currently, 100,000 people living in this country have HIV, a quarter of whom are undiagnosed. Half of new infections are passed by people who are undiagnosed. Evidence shows that the migrant communities are less likely to go to sexual health or specialist clinics to be tested because of the increased stigma for them and their communities. They are much more likely to go to a general practitioner because it is not as obvious that they are attending to be tested—the stigma is not related to GPs.
My fear is that any sort of barrier erected between migrant communities and GPs and primary care access will be another contribution to the shameful increase in HIV infection in this country in recent years. GPs carrying out any sort of immigration check sends out the wrong message entirely. I urge the Government to listen to the experts. I have a lot of information and letters on the subject to show that the measures could have a grave effect on tackling infection numbers and late diagnoses in migrant communities in the UK.
Mr Harper
To reassure the hon. Lady before she continues, nothing in the Bill refers to GPs. Even the proposals my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health has set out today make it clear that provision for public health conditions such as HIV will remain free for everybody, because that is the right thing for public health purposes, as she has set out.
Pamela Nash
I appreciate the Minister’s intervention, but the fact is that there is no clarity in the Bill—it leaves that fear for communities seeking primary care. If they believe they will be kicked out of the country for going to the doctor, they might not go and therefore might not be tested.
Public health experts agree that increasing the offer of HIV testing to a wide range of facilities is key to tackling the UK epidemic in all communities. In addition, the purpose of primary care is to assess the broadest range of health needs and identify how best to meet them. Anything that delays or prevents anyone with an infectious disease from seeking medical advice denies them the opportunity to be diagnosed and increases the chance of them passing on the infection to someone else. Someone on HIV treatment is 96% less likely to transmit it to others. Therefore, the Bill clearly risks unlimited and unintended consequences to UK public health.
The Bill may increase the risk that we will fail to tackle HIV in our communities, and it may also be costly. According to the Department of Health’s review of overseas visitors charging policy, referred to in the explanatory notes, a comparison of the administration costs of the current system with the amount actually recovered showed that it barely broke even. The Home Secretary failed to address that point, and I hope that the Minister will do so in his closing remarks. The new system may not be cheaper and we may fail to reclaim any money.
According to the review, in order to recoup the money and achieve the Government’s aims, the NHS structure would need to be radically changed. It said:
“Only a fundamentally different system and supporting processes would enable significant new revenue to be realised.”
I would be grateful if the Minister provided more clarity about the administration of the proposals and the collection of the money from those who have entered the country.
I am also concerned about the effect that the proposals will have on reciprocal arrangements with other countries, which has not really been mentioned today. The Bill refers to our EEA partners, but we have arrangements with 27 countries that are not in the EEA, including Australia and New Zealand. Many of our students go backpacking in those countries or to work on short-term visas, and they access health care free of charge, like the people who come here from those countries. Can the Minister clarify how the Bill will affect reciprocal arrangements? Has he had discussions with representatives of those countries? Will we have new reciprocal agreements, or will they not be affected?
The final area of concern is the devolved aspects of the Bill, which I mentioned in an intervention earlier. I am surprised by how vague this issue is in the Bill. There is no detail on how charges for devolved public services will be made, or on how landlord checks will work in the devolved nations.
Pete Wishart
The hon. Lady is probably aware—and if not, she is now—that there was no consultation whatever with the Scottish Government in the lead-up to the publication of this Bill.
Mr Harper
I do not wish to interrupt the hon. Lady again, but the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) has—inadvertently, I am sure—misled the House. What he says is simply not true. I wrote to several Ministers in the Scottish Government, and my officials liaised with their officials over the summer, before the publication of the Bill.
Pamela Nash
I thank the Minister for that intervention. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) was extremely animated and angry earlier—understandably so—about some of the aspects of the Bill, but when I asked about the SNP’s position, he simply replied that he remained to be convinced, instead of saying that it opposed it. I ask the Minister to provide some clarity about the discussions and agreements reached with the Scottish Government and the devolved Administrations in Wales and Northern Ireland. What impact assessment has been conducted on the cross-border issues that the Bill could bring about?
John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)
Obviously there are countries outside the EEA with which we do not have reciprocal arrangements. On a point of principle, is the hon. Lady of the view that if someone visits from those countries we should provide them with free health care—or perhaps only in Scotland?
Pamela Nash
I would always advocate that the NHS should be free at the point of need—
John Hemming
Is the hon. Lady saying that the NHS should be free to people from around the world, so that they can visit here and have free health care, regardless of whether they make any contribution towards it?
Pamela Nash
As I said, I am disappointed at the lack of clarity on the details, so I do not feel able to say if I am—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Mr Hemming, sit down. This is not a personal discussion between you and Pamela Nash of the points you might want to make later. May we have a bit of order? Pamela Nash, you have the Floor. If you give way to John Hemming, could you indicate accordingly, so that I can call him?
Pamela Nash
Apologies, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will not let anyone intervene again.
I strongly believe in an NHS free at the point of need. Arrangements are in place for people to pay, when that is required, but we have had no clarity about how the provisions will be policed or expanded. I agree that we need an immigration policy that protects our constituents from increasing global financial pressures, but we do not want them coming up against unintended consequences as a result of measures in the Bill, on which there has been a lack of consultation. I worry about the risk to public and private health. Moreover, this debate has thrown up areas of contention in the referendum debate and problems with having different arrangements in Scotland and England. If the Bill removes long-held reciprocal agreements with countries that we are friends with and to which our constituents wish to travel, I would be very concerned. Finally, I am concerned that the Bill will cost constituents more than it benefits them.
Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)
It is a pleasure to speak in the debate and to welcome the Bill.
Immigration remains among the issues that most concern my constituents; that was the case in the run-up to the last general election, and it is still the issue most raised on the doorstep. Not totally surprisingly, perhaps, my constituency does not experience huge immigration—according to the last statistics I saw, I had two of the five most ethnically English towns in the country—but there remains a fear of immigration. What people see, perhaps in neighbouring towns, causes them concern, perhaps over and above the real extent of the problem. Nevertheless, they are concerned—and they express their concerns regularly—that too many people are coming here illegally and not being sent back home. They are especially worried that serious criminals who complete their prison sentences are not being deported, and they are worried that our public services and housing cannot cope with the population increase.
It is right that the Government address those issues and try to restore confidence in the system; we all want an immigration system that people can have faith in. We want to get this right so that “asylum” can cease to be a dirty word and we can be proud to take people who are in desperate need. I am not sure that most of my constituents think that way now. Rather, they are concerned that the system is being abused and that everyone who arrives here has no reason to be here.
While welcoming most of the Bill, I want to focus on some of its key areas. From my relatively limited immigration casework, I know that this can be a byzantine system that sometimes produces bizarre results. Reading some of the verdicts, I find it hard to work out what the facts of the case are or how the verdict bears much relation to those facts.
Dr Huppert
The hon. Gentleman is right to highlight the byzantine complexity and the errors in decision making. Does he agree that the Government’s priority should be to ensure that decisions are made correctly?
Nigel Mills
That should be a priority for every Department. I serve on the Work and Pensions Committee. Sadly, the DWP’s administration processes too often come up with the wrong decisions, but the problem is often fixed by a mandatory reconsideration process within the Department.
It would be interesting to hear from the Minister how the review process would work. I think it is the right idea, however, because we do not want to be troubling the courts and tribunals with mistakes in the system. If they can be corrected within the Department, that must be a more cost-effective, fairer and quicker system for all involved. We need to know that the person doing the reconsideration is independent, and not just defaulting to the previous decision—because he knows the guy who took it and so it must have been right. We all want a system that gives clear, quick, fair and accurate decisions first time around, avoiding a labyrinthine process that subjects people to an awful wait while trying to establish their status, which makes them miserable and gets them stuck in the system for longer than necessary.
That is a genuine concern for my constituents: why is the system still so slow? Let us get it right first time. If the person has no right to be here, let them be told that so that we do not have to go through multiple different appeals down different routes. The proposal that those with no right to be here no longer need a separate removal notice has to be right.
I also agree about article 8. We need to get the balance right between the interests of the public in this country and the interests of the person making the claim. I am not sure our courts have been interpreting that correctly. We have a right to be protected from serious criminals. I speak as someone who generally favours deregulation and does not favour imposing new burdens on people, so it is with some caution that I welcome the proposals to ask landlords to start checking the immigration status of their prospective tenants. I have an interest, as I rent out a house in Nottingham where I used to live. I use an agent, so I am pretty certain I will be safe from these rules as long as the agent is competent.
There is a real public interest in trying to make sure that it is harder for illegal immigrants to avoid the system and stay here without a right to do so. One of the ways we can do that is to ask landlords to make sure that the person they are renting out to has a right to be here. In my constituency, most letting agents go through some hugely extensive and complicated processes, and take a lot of money off tenants, to check their credit history, references from previous landlords and all manner of things. I am not sure that it is that much of an extra burden to ask them to check a person’s status as well. Clearly there are some whose position is so complicated that it will not be easy for a landlord or agent to come to a clear understanding. That is why we need a service from the Home Office that gives a clear and quick answer and says, “Yes, you can rent to this person. No, you can’t rent to that person.”
Having worked with clearance mechanisms in my previous life, I know that getting that to be quick and accurate will not be straightforward, but it has to be the right thing to do. We need a system that is clear enough so that not every landlord seeks a clearance every time to be 100 per cent. safe. We need a clearance system that works and is used only where there is some doubt and not where there is clearly an easy situation to determine.
Most of us would think that it is ridiculous that someone who has no right to be here can get a UK driving licence or a UK bank account. That should never have been the case and it is right to stop that so that someone cannot build up a life here that they are not entitled to have, because that can make it harder for us to deport them.
I have no need to detain the House at great length. I welcome the Bill, which represents a real step forward. I am sure my constituents will welcome it, although there are things that sadly we cannot do which they would have liked to see in it. There is a great deal of concern about what will happen next year when restrictions on Romania and Bulgaria are lifted. We need to understand what can be done to make sure we do not repeat the mistakes of the past. But this is a welcome Bill, and I look forward to it having a speedy passage through Parliament.
Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)
I am very grateful to make a contribution to this debate and of course my remarks are informed by the experience of being the son of immigrants; my father arrived in this country in the 1950s, but is no longer alive. The remarkable greatness of Britain that allows me to be here representing my seat in a sense conveys the importance of the debate; it is what is great about this country. In discussing immigration, migration and, indeed, emigration, we balance and underline that greatness, which gives us the diversity that we all cherish.
I am also informed by two particular experiences over the past few years. One was an experience that many hon. Members will share, particularly those representing so called “safe seats” or those who have ministerial office in government. During general elections, we end up out of our constituencies, travelling around the country, holding balloons in shopping centres and persuading people to vote for our parties. I found myself in North West Leicestershire with our candidate Ross, campaigning in Coalville. We were greeted—well, not greeted; many people tried to avoid us—and I got stuck in a conversation with a young man called Scott. He supported Leicester City; I support Spurs. We had a long conversation about this and then I plucked up the courage, not to ask him to marry me, but to ask him who he was going to vote for. At that point, I was set back because he told me he was going to vote for the British National party. I said, “What do you mean? Why are you going to vote for the BNP?” He described himself as a brickie, and he told me that eastern Europeans—“the Poles”, as he called them—had come to that part of the country and undercut his wages. He said they were preventing him from being employed. He pointed to his four-year-old son and said, “I’ve got to feed this boy. That’s why I’m voting for the BNP.” That is a difficult argument to counter, just as it was for my right hon. Friend the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), who so badly fumbled it at the last general election, and for all hon. Members across the House.
Another factor was the riots. People talk about them starting in Tottenham, but they spread to very different areas. I have strong memories of members of the English Defence League on the streets of Enfield Town, just two miles away, chanting “England, England, England” and handing out leaflets saying that we had to do something about the African gangs. That is the context of this debate, and these subjects have to be handled very sensitively indeed.
Why was that young man in Coalville, Scott, so concerned about immigration? His wages were being undercut and he often could not get a job. Was it not the job of the Government properly to enforce the minimum wage? Was it not the job of the Government to be tough on unscrupulous employers? In London at the moment, we have a crisis involving school places, and people are voicing their concerns about the situation. Surely it should have been the job of successive Governments to deal with that. People complain about housing and about the benefits bill, but successive Governments have failed to build sufficient housing in this country. There is concern out there, but that concern should fall right back on us here. Successive Governments have failed to deal with the issues that stoke those concerns.
Before I came to this place, I had the privilege of taking a law degree at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, and I then made it to Harvard law school. I learned a lot about our constitution and about the constitution that was forged in the United States of America. In both those places, it is important to remember that the foundation of our democracy was the Magna Carta; I am not quoting this for the sake of it. It states:
“No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled. Nor will we proceed with force against him except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land.”
Why then, in 2013, are we returning to the subject of appeals and denying civilised human beings the right of appeal? Why do we tell people that it is okay for them to go back to Afghanistan? Why, after the debate we had on Syria, are we telling people that it is okay for them to go back and launch their appeals from there? Why, given the debates that we have on international development, do we expect people to go back to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and launch their appeals from there? Just a few months ago, we were having a debate in this place on the residence test and the changes to judicial review. Those changes will mean that far fewer people will be able to exercise their rights.
The sense that we are choking our democracy is coming from a number of different directions; it is not exclusive to this debate. It places a stain on all that we have achieved in this place, and all that we expect our young people to understand about our democracy, if we are not honest about why our services are feeling the pressure. Our Prime Minister says that he wants to see an end to the something-for-nothing culture, but if we are not honest about what fosters that, we give the wrong impression.
Let me go back to the period when my father arrived in this country, the 1950s. It was a period of austerity, with the country just coming out of rationing, a period in which we celebrated the coronation of our current Queen and a period of crisis, the Suez crisis, but it was also a period during which it was typical and usual to have on landlords’ doors in this country, “No Irish, no blacks, no dogs.” We forget that at our peril. That is why I will absolutely not vote for a Bill that encourages landlords to go down that road again and that does not have the necessary understanding, restrictions and knowledge of our history. Believe me, anyone in this House who knows anything about the Irish community will know that “No Irish need apply” has been a consistent phrase in our country’s history, and we are now going back to a place where we hand our landlords the power to make such decisions without the necessary experience to determine the validity of a stamp in a passport.
Mr Lammy
I will not give way.
Many people in this country from poor and working-class backgrounds do not have a passport. They have not applied for one. They do not go off to France or southern Italy on holiday every summer, or save up to go to India or the Caribbean. They are lucky if they get to Skegness at best. They have no passport and now they will be forced to buy one because landlords cannot always determine where somebody is from and will want to be sure. Those people without passports will be passed over and others will get preferential treatment.
My father would be rolling in his grave and I can tell Members who would be smiling: Peter Rachman, that famous landlord in Notting Hill who caused so much damage to so many people. It is an absolute shame that we are going down this road.
Despite all the Government’s discussions of the importance of our global economy, anyone who believed in the importance of trade and our export market would do nothing to damage the higher education sector, which brings in £14 billion from the students who come to this country. Every vice-chancellor would say that this Government have got things wrong in their treatment of students and higher education, just as 82% of landlords are asking, “Please do not give us this power. We do not want the power, we are not policemen and we do not want to do this. The Government should do this.” What is the Government’s record? What about the UKBA? How effective is it as an agency? How does it stack up on the list of effectiveness? It is one of the most appalling agencies we have ever seen in this country and that is why the Government have had to tinker with it, change it, get rid of it and take it back into the Home Office.
Why, when 70,000 appeals are being made, 50% of which succeed, would the Government deny people the right to appeal? It is because of the race to the bottom, because of the UK Independence party and because we have failed to have the honest discussion with the British public about what we have failed to invest in. Yes, the last election was marked by this issue, but in 2005 I had to canvass across the country while looking at the posters with that scribbled writing, “It’s okay to talk about immigration—it’s not racism.” I remember those Conservative party posters. We will have that debate again and I hope that the British people will recognise the nastiness at the core of the discussion. In the end, we do down our country when we walk down that road.
Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)
It is a privilege to follow the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy). He knows that I have great respect for him and his huge experience. He and I, like every other Member of Parliament for Greater London, come to this debate representing a huge number of people from all over the world. That is also reflected in the experience of my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather).
I should declare an interest, which can be found in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. My brother and I inherited from our late mum, who died a couple of years ago, a house that we rent to non-Brits, as it happens, through a letting agency. I will come back to the question of lettings later.
I come to this debate from two perspectives. First, I regularly do a huge amount of immigration and asylum work, which is consistently about 40% of the work in my constituency. The overwhelming experience of that casework, which is frequently acute, is that far too often the wrong decision is made at the beginning. Of course, some people abuse the system, but many do not, and come here perfectly properly. I am talking not about asylum seekers but about immigrants who come here legally but may overstay and so on. When they go to officials to put their case, we often have an enormous struggle to try to deal with that. The Minister, to whom I pay tribute for his courtesy in always dealing with matters I bring to him, as did his predecessor—and whom I rarely trouble, because I seek to deal with his officials—knows that in the end many colleagues become hugely frustrated because the most deserving cases imaginable are not understood or dealt with properly in the system.
The overwhelming concern—I have checked with the person who leads in my constituency office on immigration and asylum work—is not to introduce lots of new legislation but to provide a system that works well by making administrative improvements. That has always been the case, but sadly there is still a huge backlog of cases both in immigration and asylum, and a huge number of cases that go to appeal.
There are some really good people working in what was the UK Border Agency and is now part of the Home Office again. I pay tribute to them, and I am grateful for their courtesy, but there are some poor people who do not understand immediacy and the way in which things should be dealt with. There are some very good people in our outposts around the world who deal with cases, but as the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), the Chair of the Select Committee, said, it is illogical to ask the same person to review a decision that they have made and expect them to think that it is the wrong decision only a few weeks later.
Secondly, we must proceed carefully when we seek to legislate yet again on immigration and asylum. When I served in opposition, for too long I saw Governments introduce immigration Bills, few of which sorted out problems to the extent that people could say that they were a great success. However, there are real issues, and our constituents and the country are concerned. Of course, people are fair-minded, I hope, and would always realise that we are a country of immigrants—they are from around the UK, from outside the UK and Europe, and from all over the world—and that in London and many cities, and most of the UK, immigration has enriched our culture hugely. None the less it needs to be controlled, and there has to be a limit. We also need to make sure that those who are here illegally do not remain here illegally.
One of the things that my party tried to do at the last election was put this issue on the agenda. It was difficult, because the issue of addressing illegal migration has over the years been something that the public have found hard to come to terms with. President Obama has sought to do so in the United States in a brave way with Churches and faith groups across the parties, and in this country the issue has not gone away.
We need a firm but fair immigration system, and we need firm processes for policing it. I also believe that, because we are a country of islands, we should not opt into the Schengen agreement, and that we should have our own border controls. It is not a view that all the colleagues in my party take, but it is an advantage in managing migration to deploy that tactic. Irrespective of other European controls we should have our own. I have always taken the view that we should check people out as well as check people in, and that when we admit other countries to the EU we should have gradual admission. The right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) made the wrong decision to allow mass admission in one go from the eastern European countries. In the end, everyone accepts that that was the wrong decision. Again, I think I was in a minority in my party at the time in arguing that the process should be phased.
We should be clear that the Bill does not deal with asylum. Asylum cases will, I hope, always be dealt with compassionately. We must be seen to be a country that is always willing to receive people who come to us fleeing persecution because of their politics, faith, gender, sexuality or whatever else it might be. I hope the Minister will say amen to that.
I hope, too, that we will always be positive that any changes that we make have been tried and tested and will not have disproportionate or unfair outcomes. That is why I am troubled that yet again we are dealing with a Bill that has not had pre-legislative scrutiny, that was not preceded by a Green Paper or a White Paper and that has not been the subject of full consultation. This is bad legislative process and there is no need for it. There is no immediacy that means that we have to get the Bill on to the statute book in two minutes. We must do better. We had the same problem with the Transparency of Lobbying, Non-party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill. This Government, whom I support, have said that we will do these things better. Well, we must do them better consistently. Whatever view we take of the Bill, there is no disadvantage in pre-legislative scrutiny and going through the proper processes to make sure that unintended consequences are avoided. I regret that that has not been done and as a result I may not be able to support the timetable motion. We need much more time to examine the Bill and I am sure the Joint Committee on Human Rights, on which I serve, will want to look at it too.
I have three other quick points. Colleagues on the Opposition Benches—they include the right hon. Member for Leicester East, whose speech I entirely agree with, and others—have made the point that we have not looked at the Bill in the context of the changes that we are making to legal aid and judicial review. They are all interrelated issues. I have outstanding promises from Ministers on the Front Bench that they would review previous changes. If we reduce the chances of people going to court to challenge decisions, then reduce the chance of an appeal at all and then insist that people go back to countries from which it may be very difficult for them to appeal, we are denying the right of appeal altogether. We must be extremely careful about that, but we need simpler appeal systems. I welcome the fact that that is on the agenda of the Bill. We have too many different processes and they need to be brought together, but they must be simplified in a way that makes them both workable and understandable.
We must make sure that we do not breach international conventions, especially in relation to children. I am not satisfied that the Bill does that, and the Joint Committee on Human Rights has not been satisfied in relation to other legislation. We have obligations nationally and internationally that we must fulfil. The Government have done well. Our Government ended the detention of children for immigration purposes, which I welcome. My hon. Friend the Minister was party to that, as were other Ministers, and we must not now undo the good work that we have done in relation to children.
On the parts of the Bill that deal with marriage and civil partnerships, nobody wants to condone sham marriages and sham civil partnerships. We must have robust processes for dealing with that, and in principle those changes are welcome. I have no objection to people from outside this country being required to pay for public services. It seems to me that that is the proper principle, and therefore the proposal that the national health service has a charge is one of principle. I support the principle. The question is whether it is practical and how it is going to be implemented. It also seems proper to have a bank account control mechanism that means that people who are legally not meant to be here cannot process their moneys around and be supported in doing so. The same principle, for me, applies to driving licences. I have severe problems, however, believing that the residential tenancy plans will work. I know that that is a pilot scheme and that it will be trialled only, but it will be very difficult for honourable, perfectly respectable landlords to carry out that process properly, and I would prefer that that part of the Bill were not included.
I indicated earlier to the Home Secretary that there are sufficient good things in the Bill to make it worth taking on to Committee stage and looking at carefully, but I hope the Government do not try to push us to rush things. I hope they will be responsive to constructive criticisms from those of us who deal with this sort of work in huge volume every day of our lives. I hope that at the end we can get the message out that we should have tough immigration policies, we should be firm but fair, but we must make sure that we have a better system that works behind those policies, and we should be clear that another set of legislative changes will not solve all the problems that are a legacy of poor, incompetent Home Office government over many, many years.
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)
I am glad to be able to speak about the Bill. I have taken an interest in immigration policy for very many years, first as an administrative trainee in the Home Office, and secondly as somebody who year on year is in the top 10 of MPs processing immigration casework. I have also, of course, taken an interest because I represent a constituency with very many immigrants from all over the world, and, finally, because I am the child of immigrants. I say from my knowledge and experience of the immigration system that it is bedevilled by poor administration and rushed and incoherent legislation, motivated by short-term political advantage—and I do not except the Labour party from that. I am afraid that this Bill is more of the same.
I say right at the beginning that there are many details in the Bill that I agree with—which is not surprising, because some of it merely puts into legislation matters that were regulations under the Labour Administration—but I deplore the rhetoric and I deplore the political direction of travel. I remind the House that immigration as an issue has been freighted with emotion since the days of Enoch Powell, and since those days immigration has been a synonym for black, Asian and foreign-looking people—for “the other”. Any Member of the House who pretends that immigrant, immigration and anti-immigrant rhetoric does not have that underlying narrative in British politics is being naive.
If people do not believe me, I urge them to read the report of the royal commission on alien immigration in 1903 and the subsequent Aliens Act 1905, which deal with exactly the ideas that those on the Government Front Bench are trying to push forward today. What people say about east European migrants today is what was said about east African migrants in the ’60s, what was said about west Indian migrants, what was said about Jewish migrants to the east end after the first world war, and what was said about Irish migrants in the 19th century: driving down wages; living in terrible housing conditions; assaulting our women. It is always the same narrative, which should be a clue to the House that it is always the same issue.
I remind Government Members who think that they can get away with all this anti-immigrant rhetoric and not pay an electoral price that the Republicans in the United States thought that. They went to town with anti- Hispanic, illegal migrant rhetoric; they thought that anti-illegal immigrant rhetoric was a huge vote winner. But at the election they found that perfectly legal migrants ran, not walked, away from Republicans. Not just Hispanic migrants but Chinese, Japanese, Indian migrants—every migrant community—voted in unprecedented numbers for the Democrats, in what was a difficult election for them in many ways, because when people of immigrant descent hear that anti-illegal immigrant rhetoric they think, “Actually, they are talking about me, my dad, my mum, my auntie, the people on the landing.” Government Members should not think that they can continue down this anti-illegal immigrant path and not pay a price with the votes of the children and grandchildren of migrants. The danger with the Bill is not just that it will create the hostile environment for illegal immigrants that the Home Secretary was boasting of, but that it will tend to create a hostile environment for all of us of immigrant descent and our children.
I know as much about the UK Border Agency and abuse of the system as anyone. I worked in the Home Office and I knew about Croydon. People say that the Government inherited a shambolic immigration department from the Labour party, but as long as I have known the immigration department it has been dysfunctional and shambolic, and there are systemic reasons for that. It was always seen as an outpost of the Home Office in Whitehall and no one wanted to work there, so it was allowed to remain in a welter of administrative confusion. I bow to no one in my knowledge and my disapproval of the chaos, unfairness, inefficiency and poor administration of the immigration department. I also know—this has not been mentioned—of the abuses practised on my constituents by so-called immigration advisers. People talk about abuses of the system, but they are often triggered not by people who are simply looking for a better life for their family but by a class of so-called immigration advisers who systematically rip them off. My constituents come to me years later and I have to try to pick up the pieces of a case that was mishandled right from the beginning by people motivated only by profit.
I agree with what my long-standing friend and colleague, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), said about administrative problems, and I give him every credit for his work on the matter over the years. I also agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra) said about people who are left in limbo, even though they are here legally, because the UKBA has not sent them their paperwork. There are systemic problems with the UKBA, but that does not justify trying to turn doctors and landlords into immigration officers on wheels. We need to deal with what is wrong with the administration before we ask untrained people to pursue matters that the Government and a state agency should deal with.
I want to say a word about what people hear on the doorstep, which keeps coming up in this debate. I hear about that from Government Members, and I am afraid that I hear about it from some hon. Friends. First, let us kill the myth that Labour had an open-door policy on migration. I have an office with filing cabinets stacked full of files about the thousands of cases that I dealt with year on year under a Labour Government. There was the issue of the miscalculation of the number of people coming from the eastern European accession countries—no one denies that—but if there was an open door, why did so many of my constituents have to wait years and years, divided from their family, to bring their children in? There was no open door. Far from apologising, the Labour party should make that point more clearly and more often.
What do we hear on the doorstep? I can believe that Members hear people complaining about immigrants. I have the children of West Indians complaining to me about eastern European migrants. However, in an economic downturn people always complain about the other, and want to blame the other for their economic circumstances. Of course we as politicians should deal with the underlying issues when people complain, whether about a lack of housing or job insecurity, but we must not allow public policy to be driven by people who are frightened of the changes they see around them, of economic insecurity and of the fact that the so-called upturn is not helping their living standards. We are now in danger of passing yet another ill thought-out Bill to go on the pile that has been heaped up since the 1960s.
Let us not forget that much of what we hear on the doorstep about immigration is simply not based on fact. It may be easy to say to people, “Oh, yes, you’re so right, we’re going to have fewer of them; we’re going to do this; we’re going to do that”, but politicians should deal with the facts first rather than pander all the time to urban myth, which leads to a downward spiral of rhetoric.
Turning to the content of the Bill, other Members, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander), have dealt with the issue of landlords. Even landlords’ organisations are against the Bill. Richard Lambert, the chief executive officer of the National Landlords Association, has said:
“Existing referencing will pick up immigration issues anyway”.
Gavin Smart of the Chartered Institute of Housing has said that the measures will
“make it much harder for non-British people to access housing even when they have a legal right to live in the UK. Checking immigration status is complicated so landlords may shy away from letting to anyone who appears not to be British.”
That is landlords speaking. The effect of the Bill will be that when people such as my son and the children of some of my colleagues go to see a flat, they will be told that the flat is taken. Landlords will not want to take the chance of letting to someone who “might be” an illegal immigrant. I do not believe Ministers understand how it feels to knock on a door and be told, blatantly wrongly, that the flat or room is taken. That is what will happen as a consequence of the Bill.
Ministers like to give the idea that the problems in accident and emergency and the health service are caused by illegal immigrants. That is quite extraordinary. Even if their figures are true—I believe that they are scare figures based on the assumption that every person who comes here and gets treatment came only for the treatment in the first place—we are still not talking about the systemic reasons for problems in the NHS.
My mother was of that generation of West Indian women who came here in the ’60s to build the health service. Whether people like it or not, without immigrants we would not have an NHS. For as long as I am in this House, I will not allow Members to get up and say without challenge that the NHS’s problems are caused by immigrant workers. I owe that at least to my parents’ generation.
Also, there is already legislation about people who are not legally entitled to NHS health care. Why do the Government not get on with collecting money under that legislation, rather than introducing new legislation to do the same thing? It is because they are trying to make a political point and pander to UKIP voters.
We have already heard that 60% of successful appeals are due to administrative error. Why can we not move towards a more robust system for making decisions, rather than cutting people’s appeal rights, which currently are the only guarantee they have of some kind of recourse against administrative error? There is also the way the Bill would undermine article 8 of the European convention on human rights, the right to family life.
In drawing my remarks to a close, let me say this: it is simply not true that immigrants, illegal or otherwise, are responsible for the current pressures on public services. To say that, or to imply it, is to slight the millions of people of immigrant descent who keep all our public services, not just the health service, going, and they will take it as such.
It is also not true, as some people seek to imply, that immigrants cause low wages. That has been the anti-immigration attack since the 19th century. Immigrants do not cause low wages; predatory employers, insufficient workplace protection and weakened trade unions do that. That was true in the 19th century when people accused the Irish of driving down wages, and it is true today when people make the self-same accusation against the eastern European community.
Mr Harper
I just want to draw the hon. Lady’s attention to a quote from the hon. Member for Dagenham and Rainham (Jon Cruddas), who is now the Labour party’s policy co-ordinator. At the end of 2010, just after the Labour Government had been kicked out of office, he wrote:
“At the macro-economic level, we’ve been using migration to introduce a covert 21st century incomes policy.”
It is people on her side of the House who think that the previous Government used migration to keep down wages, not people on the Government side.
Ms Abbott
People on my side of the House say a lot of things, but I do not necessarily agree with them. As Labour Front Benchers have pointed out, the Bill does not address the labour market issues properly.
We have to be honest about what the anti-immigration narrative in British politics has always been about. The Bill has more to do with political advantage, with demonstrating to UKIP supporters that the Government are cracking down on immigrants, as with the racist van, and with Lynton Crosby’s dividing-line politics than it has to do with good administration. I will believe the Government on immigration when they come forward with practical policies to improve the working of the UK Border Agency and when I see them cracking down on the employers who benefit by employing people off the books.
This is a very difficult issue, and it is confused by all sorts of urban myths, fears and worries. Generally speaking, immigrants are not the most popular group of people in politics today. Not a day goes by when we do not open the tabloid newspapers and read about some immigrant woman living in an eight-bedroom house in Knightsbridge paid for by the British taxpayer. The test for this House is how we deal with difficult subjects and speak up for people who are not necessarily popular or liked and who do not have a voice. By any test, this Bill is about short-term political advantage. It is of no real benefit to Britons, black or white, or would-be immigrants, black or white. Nobody on the Opposition Benches believes that people who are not entitled to NHS care should be able to get it for free, or that we should have a completely open-door immigration policy. We believe in speaking the truth about immigration, because if some people do not do that, we will see a race to the bottom, both in rhetoric and political practice.
Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), who was right to make the points she made. Lots of urban myths are going round about immigration, notably fanned, dare I say it, by some of the emerging nationalist parties. That makes it all the more important for us to restore confidence in our immigration system. I, too, speak as someone of immigrant descent—in my case, Irish on both sides of my family.
I have always been proud of Britain’s open borders and proud that this country has always been welcoming to people who want to work hard and make the best of themselves and to those who have sought asylum. That is a source of great pride and something that is very British. Having established that record, however, we have been taken for a soft touch by people who have contempt for our laws and liberties and have used them against us. Thankfully, some of them have been removed, but not until after a very long battle.
As the hon. Lady mentioned, there are also the so-called immigration advisers who are exploiting people who want nothing more than to make the best of themselves and make a good living. We can and should do a lot more about those advisers, who, in my experience, take £500 off my constituents and then just send them to see me—nice work if you can get it. The more we can do to expose these thieves’ dubious practices, the better. As I say, they are exploiting people who just want to make the best of themselves, and that is totally unacceptable. There is also exploitation by some pretty nasty organised criminals and gangmasters who take advantage of people by trafficking them into what can only be described as modern-day slavery. It is big business. It is important that we have a legal system controlling our immigration that clamps down on these abuses. We do that by making sure that there is no opportunity for illegal immigration to continue.
I am pleased to see so much in the Bill about tackling sham marriage, which is also big business. My constituency is now very ethnically diverse. There has been quite a significant influx of Nigerians and Ghanaians, in particular. An organised criminal gang recently took advantage of that by targeting a church in Tilbury where sham marriages were being organised for Nigerians because the emergence of a large Nigerian community had made it easy to do that. One of the local priests participated in a sting with the police. He was very brave in taking this on because, as he would articulate, once the licences have been issued, the priest is under an absolute obligation to undertake the marriage. However, having seen the same ill-fitting wedding dress a number of times, he smelled a rat. Having on one occasion recited a list of train stations on the District line and had them recited back to him by the bride and groom, he definitely smelt a rat. It was a very scary concept for him, because this was an organised criminal gang and he felt very intimidated, as did many of the brides. It was clearly a great money-making business. We owe people like Father Tim Codling of Tilbury a great debt of gratitude for participating in that police sting to bring the perpetrators to book. It is estimated that they had organised over 30 sham marriages in that church in Tilbury alone. This is a shining example to everyone involved, showing that we should bring these people to book when these things happen.
Of course Government Members have no problem with people who abide by immigration rules and are here legitimately. However, my position on these matters has hardened since I became a Member of Parliament. I say that because since being elected to this place three and a half years ago I have handled 383 immigration cases, and in half those cases people who had come to see me had broken the immigration rules in some way, so there is real abuse out there.
I would add that the figure of 383 is actually larger in practice, because many of the people involved are repeat customers. As has been said, there are so many opportunities to make appeals and reapply on different grounds that we tend to see the same people over and over again.
The changes made by the Bill will not affect anyone who wants to come here legitimately and work. The changes made to the student visa regime have not made a difference to people who want to come to our good universities, but they are hitting bogus colleges. That is evidence, if needed, that we are on the right track.
The real problem is that we need to tackle overstayers who, frankly, should not be here. Once they have been told that they have no leave to remain, they should not expect to be able to make a fresh application. Many of them have been here for years. When I say to them, “You have no right to work here. How are you supporting yourself?” they reply, “Friends and family”, meaning the same family who are here with them. It is clear that they are earning their money in the black economy. The Bill includes provisions to tackle the work situation and increase the fines for those who employ people illegally, but I also think that Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs needs to undertake a bigger task. It is clear that many of the people involved are working in the self-employed sector. We need to clamp down on that black economy and remove their ability to work. This is all about establishing an environment that makes it clear that once someone has been told that they cannot remain here, they should not expect to be able to stay.
The issue of bank accounts is important. A gentleman from Ghana came to see me after receiving his third rejection and said, “I can’t possibly leave. I’ve got a mortgage.” He took that mortgage out at his own risk. He knew he had no entitlement to stay here and he cannot expect to be able to overstay his welcome. I welcome the fact that the Bill’s measures on bank accounts will actually protect people like him.
Some of the concerns that have been raised about housing are legitimate, but we should also be looking at social housing. I know of at least two cases where people who were already subletting a council house made a tidy profit out of subletting it to people who were here illegally. We can add that to the list of abuses inflicted on our immigrant population.
The issue of health provision has been well rehearsed. Although it is fair to say that there are already restrictions on the ability to access health provision, the fact is that often our health service does not pursue those who should pay. More than anything else, we need to give a clear message to all health providers that from here on in we expect them to do that.
On social landlords, we need to be aware of the ingenuity that people will employ to try to get access to housing. Some people take an elastic approach to the law and make up good tales in order to get such access. In one particular case, a lady who was an overstayer came to see me and said she was a victim of domestic violence. She was put in a women’s refuge, which she subsequently left because she alleged that she had been abused there. I asked her why she did not report it to the police, but I did not get a satisfactory answer. The local authority gave her access to a flat, because she had three children under 10. I was more than a little surprised when I got a call four months later from another lady who claimed she was being harassed and abused by her landlady, who happened to be the lady in question. We are dealing with people who have an elastic interpretation of the law and who will not abide by it. We need to be vigilant with regard to all access to public services.
As I have said, I represent a constituency that is very ethnically diverse. Perhaps the most vocal critics of the current immigration regime are migrants themselves. We all recognise the hard work and values that the people who came here in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s brought. As the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) said, they are keeping our national health service and our other public services going. It is that group of people more than any other that resents the behaviour that we are witnessing. We should not let anyone suggest that this is about race. We are pandering to the nationalist parties if we let people think that.
Ms Abbott
It is my experience that the last but one immigrant group always slags off the latest one. Whether it is West Indians, East Africans or eastern Europeans, it is almost a rite of passage. They do it because they are insecure. The fact that we hear the children of immigrants complaining about more recent immigrants speaks to their insecurity, rather than proving that their critique is based on fact.
Jackie Doyle-Price
The hon. Lady makes a good point. She observed in her speech that such messages surface when people feel more economically insecure, so we should expect to start hearing them at times of economic difficulty. Where she and I part company is that I think that we need to reassure the public that we do not have an open-door immigration policy and that we will take measures to control immigration. Unless we are seen to be doing that, the situation will fester and the only beneficiaries will be the nationalist parties.
On that basis, I do not think that there is anything to object to in the Bill. The British public would expect us to do many of the things that are in it. For most law- abiding people, including immigrants, nothing in the Bill should cause them any disadvantage. I wholeheartedly recommend the Bill to the House.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
I oppose the Bill and will vote against it because I think that it will be defined, in practice, as a racist Bill and that that will have implications for society. I believe that the Bill is the result of electoral positioning; it is not about good governance or the long-term interests of the country. I fear for our long-term interests if we are to be governed by prejudice in this way. I abhor the society that the Bill seeks to create.
Like many Members, I represent a diverse, multicultural constituency. My west London constituency contains Heathrow and two detention centres, Harmondsworth and Colnbrook. I am often the last representative voice that detainees have recourse to before they are removed from the country. I have been visiting Harmondsworth for nearly 40 years. I remember when it was just a couple of Nissen huts with a dozen people in them. There are now two prison-like institutions that detain 1,000 people, most of whom have committed no crime whatever.
For many, the migrant’s story is one of desperation. People come from war zones or, like my Irish grandfather, areas of poverty simply to work and lift themselves out of poverty. I am fearful of what the Bill will do to the society that greets those people. In effect, it begins to echo some of the pass laws of apartheid South Africa. It is a society—
John McDonnell
No, I want to get this on the record. It is a society that echoes those pass laws, a society in which people can be confronted—stopped in the street—and asked for their documentation.
John McDonnell
No, I want to get this on the record. It is society in which people can be asked for their documentation to prove their identity and status.
Under the Bill, immigration officers will be able to use physical force for all their powers. I have been involved in cases that concern the exercise of physical force. In one case a person was killed, and in others people have been seriously injured as a result of the physical force used in removals. Time and again, concerns have been expressed to the Government about the lack of training for those staff and about the brutality that has taken place as a result, and yet in this Bill we are extending the use of physical force to all immigration officers in exercising their powers.
Many fear, and I do too, that with the removal of the directions notices, so there is no clear process of informing people when they are to leave the country and what their destination is, we are going back to the process of dawn raids where vans turn up and drag people and families out of their homes. One of the first cases I dealt with after being elected as a Member of Parliament involved an elderly lady who came to my constituency surgery because the family next to her had been dragged out of their house at 6 o’clock in the morning, children and all. She went into the house, obtained the children’s teddy bears and followed the van to Harmondsworth so the children at least had their toys. Is that the society we are returning to as a result of this proposed legislation?
I believe that the Bill will result in the escalation of detention. It will make it more difficult to challenge detention, to obtain bail and to secure appeals. As was said earlier, a third of appeals usually win, with nearly 50% winning entry clearance appeals. The Bill will mean that more people will be detained.
What is detention like? I refer people to the report of the independent monitoring board of Harmondsworth. These are volunteers appointed by the Minister, reporting to the Minister. Its latest report, from April 2013, is worth reading. It says that many people handle detention stoically, but that many others suffer intense distress. Many are mentally ill. They self-harm. We have had suicide attempts time and again in Harmondsworth and in Colnbrook. At the last count, last year 125 people were assessed under rule 35 by doctors who found that their health was suffering so badly that they should not be detained. Many Members know what rule 35 is: it means that the person should automatically be released. Of the 125 people so designated by doctors in Harmondsworth last year, only 12 were released. One was released because of ill-health, went to Hillingdon hospital and died soon after. That is what detention means. That is the type of suffering the Bill will increase, yet 20% of people in the detention centre get released back into the community. Some have been detained for a long time. I refer back to the report published in April. Two of those people had been detained since 2008, and 38 had been detained for more than a year. For many people, detention is not just a short-term measure before removal.
I am concerned about what the Bill will mean for the wider community. Nearly 50% of my constituents are black or people of colour. The Bill will mean that any person who is black, is of colour or who just looks foreign will be challenged. They will be challenged by bank managers and landlords, and by the vicar if they want to get married. They will also be challenged if they apply for legal aid. I find that offensive. I voted against identity cards in this House when my own Government brought them forward. The Bill will yet again bring the process of ID cards forward. There will be no ID cards for white people; it will be ID cards for black people, people of colour, or people who look slightly foreign or who have a foreign accent. That is what the Bill will do.
I find it offensive that the Bill will push more people to the margins. In my constituency, I have enough problems with Rachmanite landlords as it is, with people living in appalling overcrowded conditions and being charged too much. The Bill will create a shadow market, where people who are unable to secure accommodation through some landlords will have to go to others with higher rents. There will be a system of blackmail for those rents by those landlords.
What if people cannot get a roof over their heads? Where do they go? They go to the streets. This is an immigration policy of destitution, isn’t it? Let us be frank about that. If people cannot get a roof over their heads, they go on to the street or are forced out of the country. I deal with many people who would like to leave the country, but cannot even get their papers out of the black hole of the Home Office.
The banks, the landlords, the driving licence agency and so on will be only the first step in this process of introduction of these pass laws. We know from leaks from the Department for Education, which were exposed in The Guardian earlier this year, that the Government wanted to introduce this sort of system by having teachers check the nationality of their pupils.
John McDonnell
No. I am not giving way.
What happens now for people who are sick? They go to their GPs, and, yes, they will be treated, but what about the next stage as a result of this Bill? This is the first step. Charges are being introduced and people will be checked to see whether they have a visa and have paid the charge, but the next step will inevitably involve GPs. What happens if nurses and doctors want to fulfil their Hippocratic oath? Will they be fined or imprisoned as landlords will be?
I am concerned about the society we are creating, and about the premise on which the Bill is being introduced. When it comes to the reality, as MP after MP will demonstrate—particularly London MPs—a documentation check will take place, but many of our constituents have no documentation, and, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) said, many have not applied for passports. Others live chaotic lives, and many, as a result of going through the system, have mental health problems and do not have control of their documentation. As I have said time and again, that is a result of not even being able to get their papers back from the Home Office.
The Bill will create a society that is lacking in compassion, brutal, and lacking in humanity and respect for civil liberties, a two-tier apartheid society that flies in the face of, and is incompatible with, everything that British people associate with their country: compassion, rights, mutual respect, and, yes, support for the underdog. The Bill is derived from the gutter politics of Lynton Crosby; it is an attack on immigrants because supposedly that plays well in British politics. I think that is a fundamental misjudgment of the British people, their values and their decency. I will vote against the Bill because I believe that bringing it forward in this House degrades this House.
Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)
I listened to the remarks from the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) about an apartheid society and South African pass laws, and was disappointed that he did not give the Minister the opportunity to intervene on that point. He also said that his grandfather was Irish, and I think the past three speeches from Opposition Members have had that theme, and I would like to reply.
The hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) referred to anti-immigrant and anti-Irish policy, and the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) said that any Member of the House who had an Irish background would understand and have experience of the points he made. My mother is Irish. She came to this country in the early 1960s, just like the mother of the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, to help in the NHS. She became a nurse, trained here, developed a career and raised her family. I do not believe that she has ever had the experience of feeling discriminated against, or felt the prejudice that has been described. Many Irish people over many generations have come to this country and had nothing but welcome.
Mark Reckless
The hon. Lady says that such things were very common. I cannot comment on the 19th century, although she did mention cases that were more up to date. Whether during the depths of the worst of the de Valera regime in the ‘30s, or after what we have seen in the past five years with the move to switch away from a link to sterling and experiment on the Irish people through the imposition of the euro, which has destroyed so much of the Irish economy, I feel that this country—England, the United Kingdom—has stood ready to welcome people who have come from Ireland, often in large numbers. It has welcomed them and they have found work here that they were not able to find in Ireland.
Other Members have referred to their experiences, history, or what some of their constituents have said, but I do not believe that my mother experienced that prejudice or discrimination as an Irish citizen and passport holder. She has felt welcome in this country.
I was astonished by what the hon. Lady said. As if a large number of people who are prepared to work harder for less money coming here would have no impact on wages! Other things being equal, it will have a significant impact. The debate has changed in that the most recent large-scale immigration—from central and eastern Europe since 2004—has not been of black, Asian or foreign-looking people, as she described them, but of the white Caucasians. She is so insistent that the immigration debate must be about race but, in a way, that immigration has de-linked race from the debate. It is clear that the debate is not, or largely not, about race.
Whatever the overall costs and benefits of immigration, the fact is that the impacts are different. People who are well off often buy goods and services produced by people who have come to this country. The people who have come here have, at least initially, competed for some of the less-skilled jobs. If wages are lower than they otherwise would be in those categories, that allows better-off people to get a better or cheaper service—they understandably welcome the people providing it. However, it is less understandable and not right for better-off people who benefit from immigration to look down on those who do not have the same view of those coming here and think that it is because they have antediluvian or even racist attitudes.
The reality is that less well-off people are competing with those coming in and it affects their wages or how hard they have to work for their wages. Their situation is less good because they are subjected to a large amount of competition from significant numbers of people who have recently come into the country. Sometimes the competition will be between people with skills, but it is often at the lower-skilled end. They will compete with those who might otherwise have those lower-skilled jobs or receive better pay in those jobs. It is not surprising that people are unhappy with the scale of immigration. It is quite wrong for those who benefit from immigration to look down on those people and suggest that their attitudes are racist when what we are seeing is the economic effect.
One other important context of the Bill is this country’s system of eligibility for benefits, which is different from that in most other EU countries. The UK, Ireland, Estonia, Finland and, importantly, Germany, do not require a significant contributory period prior to eligibility for unemployment benefit. That leads to the possibility of people who do not have a long-term connection with this country benefiting without having paid in. I am not suggesting that that is the most significant part of the immigration pull into this country, but it causes concern among my constituents.
The more significant pull within the benefits system is the possibility of family benefits. The payment of child benefit to children who are resident overseas, be that in Poland or, in greater numbers, in Romania or Bulgaria, is wrong and should be stopped. I believe it could be stopped, even under current EU law, but I am not sure whether Ministers agree. Another pull is child tax credits. Our system of in-work benefits for people in some of the not-so-well-paid jobs is very generous compared with the system prevailing in, for example, Poland, particularly if they have children. That is a significant draw and my constituents are not terribly happy with it. They have paid into a system for a long time and see people who do not have that link with the system immediately taking significant benefits from it.
Those two problems are the basis and context of the debate. The recent large-flow immigration de-links race from the immigration debate, although some people would like to preserve the link. In addition, when more recent immigrants compete for jobs with people from a previous migration, the latter understandably object. We will either have to change our benefit system, or leave the European Union.
Fiona Mactaggart
Some of the hon. Gentleman’s points make sense. There is a case for ensuring fair competition on wages and that benefits are not paid to children who have never seen the UK and never intend to, but none of those points will be addressed by the Bill. Why is he speaking about them?
Mark Reckless
One area within the broad range the hon. Lady describes is the charge for the use of NHS services. If someone comes to this country for a considerable period, say as an overseas student, it is right that they should make a contribution. She is right to say that in many of these areas we are not able to make the changes that I would like within our domestic legal system, because of the European Union. It is right, therefore, that my party has said that it will give the people an in/out referendum so that they can decide whether they want us to be an independent country or whether they want to continue to have these rules set by the European Union.
One impact of the scale of the immigration we have seen to this country is the linking of those issues in a way that people understand. If people want to control immigration and reduce the numbers coming from the European Union, we once again need to be an independent country. Over the next year as people from Romania and Bulgaria gain the ability to come here for employment, rather than self-employment—or purported self-employment—or other reasons, I hope that we do not see a huge influx of people from those two countries, which might get in the way of the very good progress that the Government have made towards our target of cutting immigration from the hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands. Were that to happen and to reflect on the Government—perhaps unfairly, given that it was the previous Government who signed up to that treaty of accession—it would be unfortunate if in any way that were to prevent the referendum that we have promised coming to pass in 2017.
The Bill will bear down on several channels for immigration, and some of the issues it addresses are quite technical. The Home Office has looked at all the issues and made progress in many different areas to reduce the overall scale of immigration. Part 2, on restricting the right to appeal, strikes a good balance. I have referred to the NHS charge in part 3, but it also addresses the need to ensure that people have the right to be here before giving them a driving licence. That is clearly a good thing. In the United States, that is a massive political issue, and states have very different policies on it. In this country, it seems to have gone by default, but at last we have a Government who are waking up and ensuring that people get a driving licence only if they have a right to do so by virtue of their eligibility to live in this country.
I welcome the Bill’s approach on article 8. We have heard some excellent proposals recently from my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab). I thought that they were very sound and it was a shame that they did not make it into the Crime and Courts Bill, and his approach may have further benefits over and above those in the Bill. Nevertheless, the provisions in the Bill are very sound. For example, and crucially, clause 14 would insert into the 2002 Act a new section 117B(4) that states:
“Little weight should be given to…a private life, or…a relationship formed with a qualifying partner, that is established by a person at a time when the person is in the United Kingdom unlawfully.”
That is overdue. It continues:
“Little weight should be given to a private life established by a person at a time when the person’s immigration status is precarious.”
The fact that that will be in primary legislation will at last give us a real opportunity to rein in the courts and their overly expansive interpretation of article 8. In this instance, it is not so much the European Court in Strasbourg, but our own domestic courts that have had an excessively loose approach to the definition of article 8.
I add one caution. The provisions on article 8, which are good, will act as a restraint—although I look forward to reading them in more detail—but there remains an issue with how section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009 has been used. As a general principle of family law, it is right that the interests of the child be paramount—for instance, in a divorce case—but I am much less convinced that it is useful in considering the deportation, following a long prison sentence, of a foreign national, not least because it is not easy for immigration judges to come to a fair and proper assessment of the interests of that child. I suspect that very often the individual concerned will not be a good parental influence on the child, but even where it might have a small impact—if it might become more difficult for that child to see a parent—I am not convinced that it should always be the trump card, which is what section 55 has become. However bad the crime committed, so long as a foreign national can find a UK partner and have a UK nationality child, a reference to section 55 has come close to trumping all other considerations in the eyes of the courts. The article 8 stuff is good, but I am worried that section 55 will still be applied, even when the overall balance, including the public interest, would have individuals deported to their home country.
I congratulate the Home Secretary, the current and former Immigration Ministers and officials in the Home Office, because one thing about the Home Office is that it does respond to a lead. As we saw under the noble Lord Howard, when Ministers have a clear set of objectives and direction of travel, more often than not officials respond, and in many areas the Home Office has done good work that has not been properly sung. For instance, appeals are going a different way because of operating criminal nexus and because judges can now consider information from police short of a conviction. That has largely been upheld as proper and judges have allowed it, and some seriously bad people have left the country who would otherwise have stayed because of the excellent work by Ministers.
I think also of the work on the electoral roll. Previously, Commonwealth citizens would apply to be on the roll even though they had no immigration leave to be here, but now Ministers are insisting on immigration leave and the guidance to electoral registration officers has changed. Rather than people being able to refer to their being on the electoral roll as evidence of their legitimacy, we now have the proper checks and linkages. Those are just two examples, but an awful lot of unsung work goes on in the Home Office. I welcome that, as well as the Bill, which will assist us, at least, in bearing down on immigration, and I give credit to Ministers for their work.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
It is interesting that we started this debate by being reminded that the Home Secretary was busy distancing herself from the disgraceful ad vans. It is just unfortunate that she has applied the same school of politics to developing the Bill, which is absolutely from the ad van approach to tackling immigration. In her own words, she was trying in the Bill to create “a really hostile environment” for migrants, and not just illegal ones—before the Minister intervenes. The narrative surrounding the Bill is creating a hostile environment for all migrants and a toxic background for a sane debate about immigration.
Let us look at some of the provisions. I will not go into the detail on appeals, because many others have, but what sort of approach is this? The reason we have too many appeals is that too many initial decisions are wrong. The majority of entry clearance decisions are wrong. The appeals system is a safety valve. What approach is it to take away the safety valve, instead of dealing with the problem at the heart of it?
I find the stuff on landlords curious because I thought that this was the Government who had launched the red tape challenge. Where are we now on the red tape challenge? We are creating a needless bureaucracy for landlords who, in large numbers, have said they do not want it. Who will train our landlords to become immigration experts? Where are people to live while they wait for a decision from the Home Office? The Minister represents the party that proclaims itself to be the party of the family. What about the family waiting for mum’s spousal visa? Where will they set up home? According to the Bill, the landlord would breach the duty if he or she entered into an agreement to allow a disqualified person to occupy a property whether or not that person was named on the tenancy agreement. This is ill thought out, with very negative social consequences.
I want to concentrate on NHS charges and on the proposals to introduce a health surcharge for non-European economic area temporary migrants. This was proposed before today’s research was published on the actual cost of NHS use by visitors and temporary migrants. Sadly, it is too reflective of the non-evidence-based approach that the Government are adopting to this Bill; the prescription has been set out before the doctor has diagnosed the condition. We have some of the facts now, but there are question marks over some of the evidence in the report which I would like to share with the Minister.
The report says:
“We have reviewed the medical literature to try to find evidence of how visitors and migrants use healthcare compared to the host population…The findings suggest overall that recent migrants are less likely to use UK primary and secondary care services than UK born residents…At this time, as a starting point, we have therefore assumed in the model that migrant propensity to use NHS services is equivalent to the non-migrant population.”
What does that mean? It means, “we have found one thing but based all our modelling on something else to exaggerate the costs.”
Similarly the independent assessment says that the health surcharge will generate £230 million a year. But we understand that the level at which it will be set is £200. On the basis of information that I have received from the Library this afternoon, that will apply to 552,000 people. The cost would be £110 million a year, less than half the level suggested in the report.
The figure of £2 billion for the cost of visitor and migrant use of the NHS in England includes EU and EEA nationals of course, but it also includes workers who already pay national insurance contributions and taxes, and students, and I will come back to students in a moment. Whatever it is, it is not
“The true cost of health tourism”
as the Daily Mail described it today and as, I am sure, a number of Government Back Benches would characterise it in their contributions.
I go back to the Home Secretary’s opening remarks, where she talked about the cost of those who in the words of the research
“conceal the fact that they have come to the UK specifically to use NHS services that they are not entitled to access for free”.
The Home Secretary said that that cost was several hundred millions of pounds. I hope she will take the opportunity to correct the record because the report says that the cost is “very uncertain” but is estimated to be about £70 million within a range of £20 million to £100 million, or 0.06% of the NHS budget.
Of course there are already rules on charging people who are not ordinarily resident in the UK for using the NHS. The evidence on how the system is working is patchy, but the NHS appears to be recovering gross income of about £15 million to £25 million, less than 20% of the estimated chargeable costs. Add in the costs of administering the current system—estimated at over £15 million—and the current overseas visitor charging system may be generating a small profit, according to the Department of Health’s own assessment. Does the Home Secretary look to improve the current system? No, she introduces a new one without a full impact assessment of how much it will cost. This really is dog-whistle politics at its worst, building policy on prejudice rather than on facts and setting it in the context of a falsely constructed debate around health tourism.
That is clearly illustrated by the fact that, according to the Office for National Statistics, the majority of the people who will be impacted by the health surcharge will be students. I was fortunate enough to host a breakfast seminar before the summer recess at which the guest speaker was a former higher education Minister in one of the Australian states. He said that he was delighted to be in the House of Commons because it gave him the opportunity to congratulate the Home Office on its work, which had led to a significant increase in the number of students choosing to study in Australia rather than in the UK.
Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a powerful case. Does he agree that there is a danger that, by placing yet more strictures on potential international students, the Bill will send a signal that they are not welcome in the UK? This is such an important export industry for the UK, if I can put it like that, and it is important that the mood music—
Paul Blomfield
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. She is rightly highlighting the concern that has been expressed from both sides of the House in previous debates. UK higher education is a major export earner, contributing about £8 billion to the UK economy annually.
I remember an exchange with the Immigration Minister when he was newly appointed, at a meeting of the all-party parliamentary university group, in which he pointed out that we should be talking not only about the income that international students brought in but about the costs that were incurred, including the cost to the health service. I went back to Sheffield university and said that we needed to look into that issue. The university commissioned Oxford Economics to carry out the most rigorous assessment possible into the income involved and the costs for our city. That assessment did not just cover the NHS and education; it went to the nth degree, covering every conceivable cost including traffic congestion. It concluded that international students were worth about £120 million a year to the Sheffield economy in net terms, which probably equated to about 6,000 jobs. Measures such as those in the Bill will serve only to discourage students from coming to the UK.
The Minister will argue that the health surcharge will bring us into line with our major competitors, which require health insurance as a condition for obtaining a student visa, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods) pointed out, it comes on the back of other changes introduced by the Home Office that have done huge damage to the competitive position of our universities. This will simply be seen as another signal that international students are not welcome in the UK.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
Is the hon. Gentleman not aware of the latest university entrance figures, which show that the number of foreign students applying to and getting into our top universities has actually increased this year?
Paul Blomfield
I am well aware of those figures. In general, the defence has been that the numbers were flatlining and that there has been a slight increase this year. There has, however, been a disturbing fall in numbers in certain areas, including taught postgraduate courses, and that is a problem. The point is not that there might be a slight increase; it is that we are losing market share. Higher education is a hugely growing sector of the international economy. The Government, through the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, have estimated that the number of international students travelling around the world will have doubled by 2020. It is not good enough to be complacent about flatlining figures or about small increases, because they mean that we are losing market share.
Dr Huppert
The hon. Gentleman and I have discussed students’ concerns many times. Does he agree that a similar argument applies to the student visitor visa? Will he join me in opposing any proposal to clamp down on those arrangements, on the ground that it would also damage our colleges?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. May I point out to the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) that quite a lot of Members are waiting to get in, including Dr Huppert? Perhaps if he takes fewer interventions, we might get to the hon. Gentleman.
Paul Blomfield
I will take that advice, Mr Deputy Speaker, and take no more interventions.
We need to look carefully at the student visitor route to see how much is displacement and exactly what is going on within those numbers.
My major concern, and that of our universities, is that we are losing market share as regards university students coming to the UK. The health surcharge obviously comes on top of a number of measures that the Government have introduced, and it is not just about the health surcharge. The universities are concerned about the provisions on landlords. They are worried, as other Members have been, about what will happen and that landlords—we know that 83% of them do not want these measures—will take the easy way out. We have seen the evidence in the reports over the past couple of weeks of letting agents in London who are discriminating against people on racial and ethnic grounds and on grounds of their appearance. The danger is that that will happen in this case and that international students, often leaving home to come and study here for the first time, will be discriminated against and will find an unwelcoming environment in this country.
The Bill is the kind of measure that brings politics into disrepute. It is gambling with our economy and our reputation just for a cheap headline. People deserve better.
Mr James Clappison (Hertsmere) (Con)
I declare an interest as a landlord, as set out in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.
This has been a good debate with eloquent speeches from Members on both sides of the House, including excellent speeches from my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames), my hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless) and many others. Like my right hon. and hon. Friends, I welcome the Bill, which is—let it be said—the first major Immigration Bill of this Government and one that contains a number of sensible measures that I believe should have a beneficial effect.
I welcome the reforms to charge for national health service use, to deal with sham marriages and to reform article 8 as it relates to foreign criminals. I think that reform will strike a better balance with the public interest, for which I have called for a long time. It is worth pausing to remember that the people whose cases we are discussing have come to this country and have committed serious offences, sometimes really serious offences, which should call into question the public interest of allowing them to remain here.
I also welcome the measures that are designed to streamline the appeals system, as effective immigration control has, I believe, all too often been undermined by multiple appeals and procedures. To be fair to the previous Government, they made some well-intentioned efforts to reform the appeals system. In some cases, they made it less complex, but it remains a complex system. I can remember the expression “a one-stop shop for appeals” being bandied about under the previous Government. That was their aim, but they did not entirely fulfil it—although, to be fair to them, they did try. Some Labour Back Benchers would do well to remember that.
I welcome the fact that the Opposition are not opposing the Bill and will examine the measures in Committee. That is the proper approach to take. I would part company with the Opposition, however, on the question of net migration and effective immigration control. During the course of the debate, Opposition Members have made a big point about whether net migration has fallen by a third or a quarter, and have argued over the statistics. That shows a little brass neck, to say the least, given what happened to net migration under the previous Government. It increased from 50,000 to 250,000 per year over the lifetime of that Government. I would calculate that as a fivefold increase, yet now Labour is debating whether net migration has fallen by a quarter or a third while often opposing some of the measures needed to bring about that reduction.
I believe the issue should be an important objective of government and that we should have proper immigration control. I recognise the contribution of immigrants to society and their worth as individuals, and I believe that when they come to this country and are legally entitled to be here they should certainly be welcome. We must bear in mind, however, that demand to come to this country from less economically developed countries is almost unlimited. It is one of the major duties of a Government to impose proper immigration control in the light of that demand, which our constituents know about and can see reflected in news stories and developments in other parts of the world.
As the demand to come to this country is almost unlimited, to keep our quality of life we must have regard to population growth and population density. Immigration is a major driver of population. Our population is 62 million, and to keep it below 70 million net migration must be carefully controlled, and certainly brought down from 250,000, which is what it was at the end of the previous Government’s time in office. Otherwise the population increase—5 million, as has been said, would be due to migration—would produce a population of 70 million, which is equal to the populations of Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Sheffield, Bradford, Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol and Oxford added together, and accommodation would have to be made for that.
On the Opposition’s policy, I was not encouraged by the response from the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) to my question about whether the Labour party would have a target for net migration. The Opposition draw attention to the fact that we cannot control all the factors that relate to net migration. Of course we cannot control how many people choose to leave the country, but that does not mean that we should not control those factors that we can control, including the number of people who are permitted to enter the country. If we give way to the demand for lots of people to come to this country, net migration will run much higher than the figure to which it has been brought down by the Government.
I am not encouraged by the policy on migration adopted by the Leader of the Opposition. In his first foray into that policy area, he told readers of the Sunday Mirror that he wanted a new policy on migration linking foreign workers to apprenticeships. He said:
“We think that can create up to 125,000 new apprenticeships over the course of five years. And that is a massive boost in skills of our young people and that is really important.”
No doubt it is: many of us would say that that is something that we should do anyway without linking it to migration. The right hon. Gentleman also made the point that he wanted to link every one of those apprenticeships to the admission of a foreign worker into this country, which means 125,000 extra people, as well as their dependants, as it is the custom to admit dependants with foreign workers who are allowed into this country for work.
With other things being equal, and without any change in policy in other directions by the Opposition—there has certainly been no indication that there will be a reduction to compensate for this in other migration flows—over the lifetime of a Parliament we would see an increase of 125,000-plus in net migration, or 40,000 a year, which would go a considerable way towards doing away with the reduction achieved by the Government. That puts into context the Opposition’s quibbling about whether net migration has fallen by a quarter or a third. If he has time, I invite the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), who speaks knowledgeably on these matters, to confirm that that is the Labour party’s policy, and that 125,000 foreign workers would be admitted in line with the 125,000 increase in apprenticeships. Will he confirm that in addition to those foreign workers, their dependants would be admitted, and will he provide an estimate of how much extra net migration would result? In my calculation, that would produce at best some several hundred thousand net migrants over the course of a Parliament.
We need a much more serious approach to the question of migration control. I congratulate my right hon. and hon. Friends on their approach. This is something that is important to our constituents—certainly to my constituents—as we do not want to live in a grossly overcrowded country, with all the consequences that would flow from an increase in population to upwards of 70 million as a result of the policies that have been outlined by the Opposition. This is an important subject. I commend my right hon. and hon. Friends for their approach. “Firm but fair” is an expression used by the Opposition. I believe that this is a coalition Government with a firm but fair immigration policy, and I exhort my right hon. and hon. Friends to stick with it.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker—at last I can make my contribution.
I want to begin by complimenting a number of hon. Members on their absolutely excellent speeches, especially the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather), who brought an amazing level of humanity and intelligence to the debate; my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), as well as my good friends, the hon. Members for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott); and my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander), whom I congratulate on the way in which she made the case on housing and the contribution that migrant communities make to this country.
We are debating the Bill at amazing speed. The programme motion is ludicrous, and the lack of any pre-legislative scrutiny whatsoever is breathtaking. It seems to me a negation of our duty as parliamentarians not to have the proper opportunity to examine the Bill—but then, of course, we never were going to be able to examine this Bill, because it is all about dog-whistle politics and appealing to a particularly low common denominator now being promoted by the Daily Mail and other newspapers.
Jeremy Corbyn
No. I am going to make my speech.
I would like the House to consider for a moment the general narrative that is current in this country and across Europe—a narrative condemning people who are migrants and condemning people who try to survive in Europe, and at the same time expressing deep concern when 200 were drowned off the coast of Italy in the tragedy of Lampedusa, along with the 20,000 others who have died trying to cross the Mediterranean in the past 20 years, as well as those who have drowned trying to get to the Canary islands or to Greece. Yes, some of those were economic migrants and some were asylum seekers. Yes, some were trying to escape from human rights abuses in Eritrea, Sudan and many other countries, and we express concern at what happened.
We need to think about why people seek to move in order to survive. Do not we, as a powerful industrial country, have some responsibility not just for the economic situation that this country faces but, through our contributions to the European Union, the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organisation, and to the general agreement on tariffs and to trade and other organisations, for the sense of economic imbalance around the world?
We should be a little more sanguine about immigration and emigration. During the 1950s and 1960s, which, it is always apocryphally told, were a time of mass migration into Britain, the figures show—they are helpfully put together in the House of Commons Library briefing—net migration from Britain during the whole of that period. A very large number of British people went to live elsewhere and made their contributions and their lives in other countries. They did it for economic reasons and sent money home. Indeed, at the turn of the 19th/20th centuries, there was a regular migration of more than 100,000 people a year from Britain, mainly to the United States, Canada and Australia, but to other places as well. Migration—
Jeremy Corbyn
No, I am not giving way.
Migration is something that people do to try to survive. We should think about that for a moment. We should also for another moment—I take the point that was made so well by my Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington—have some respect for the enormous contribution to the economy of this country that has been made by people who migrated here. Had there not been migration from the Caribbean, south Asia, Ireland, central Africa and many other parts of the world into this country over the past 50 years or so, what kind of health service would we have? What kind of education system would we have? What kind of industrial base would we have? What kind of society would we be? Would London have been the multicultural capital of the world hosting the Olympics? I think not. We would be a much poorer, much less relevant society and a much less relevant country. We need to think about the contribution that has been made and respect people for it.
Members on the Government Benches got very angry when my Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington was telling it like it is about the treatment of people in detention centres, the powers of arrest that the Bill gives to immigration officers, and the circumstances in which some people are removed from this country by force. I have met the family of Jimmy Mubenga, who died when he was forced to leave this country. I remember many years ago, shortly after I had been elected to this House, telling the House about a young Kurdish man called Shiho Iyguven, who was threatened with removal to Turkey and took his own life in a detention centre. His son, who was a tiny baby at the time, came to see me and asked, “What was dad like?” All I could say was, “Unfortunately, he was told he was going to be deported and in desperation he took his own life out of fear.”
We are taking some serious measures here today. I intervened earlier on one of my colleagues about the behaviour of the immigration service in carrying out the stop-and-search policy, which my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington talked about, making Conservative Members so very angry. Imagine a dispassionate, observant visitor to London who happened upon a tube station in Wembley or in the east end, or anywhere where there is a substantially multi-cultural population, seeing non-uniformed people go up to somebody, show a badge of authority and start asking about their immigration status, and when they start protesting seeing the police arrive and say they have to answer the questions. What would such a visitor on holiday in London think if they saw that going on? I am sorry to say that that is exactly the direction that the Bill takes us in.
The Conservative party are very concerned, and have been as long as I can remember, about the European convention on human rights and the European Court of Human Rights. They are an obsession with them. Never mind that the convention was written by a Tory lawyer and introduced in 1950 and has done a great deal to give people a benchmark of human rights throughout the member states of the Council of Europe. They want to say that article 8, the right to family life, somehow undermines the British way of life. So we have this curious clause 14, which talks about public interest considerations in respect of article 8 of the European convention on human rights. It is strangely written because much of it consists of assertions of the wishes of the Government of the day; they are not requirements but a series of assertions. It is only when one gets well into the clause that one finds specific requirements.
The clause seeks to guide immigration judges in the direction of minimising the question of family life, and because of the way in which it deals with children in family life, it will often be damaging to the interests of children who happen to have parents who may be applying for the right to remain in this country. I hope that in Committee there will be a serious examination of the whole question of article 8, and that when the Bill eventually reaches the House of Lords it will be able to do something more useful, such as protecting the rights of all of us by asserting the necessity of us remaining within the European convention on human rights, and therefore enjoying the protection of the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights. I know that Conservative Members are obsessed with the idea that we must withdraw from the ECHR, but it is a treaty obligation. Once we withdraw from a treaty, we are sending out the message that everyone else can do the same. Where then is the benchmark that we claim for ourselves of justice in society?
Like many others who have spoken in the debate, I deal with a large number of immigration cases—asylum seekers, family reunion cases, student visas. People come to my office and we do our best for them within the rules and try to get answers to their questions. I have no great problem with many of the civil servants who work in the Home Office, and I pay tribute to the many who work extremely hard, particularly those who are not particularly well paid, but they have a mammoth task. In 2008, I remember showing someone who came into my office a letter saying that legacy cases would all be resolved by mid-summer 2011. He duly came back in mid-summer 2011, queued up for my advice bureau for three hours, came in, put the letter down in front of me and said, “There, Mr Corbyn. It’s now mid-summer 2011,” which it absolutely was. It was June—you can’t get more mid-summer than that. I duly wrote to the Home Office asking when he would get a response, and I was told, “Maybe two years.”
People’s lives are on hold for year after year. They cannot travel, possibly cannot work or study and cannot make a living for themselves. They are in insecure accommodation and have an insecure future. What kind of life is that to thrust on anybody? It is an uncertain situation in which to bring up children. I ask the Minister to bring a sense of efficiency to the Home Office in dealing with long-term cases, which bring people great misery and difficulties.
I shall join my colleagues in voting against the Bill tonight, partly because of the details that it contains on education, housing, some aspects of health and so on, but also because of the atmosphere that it will create and the message that it will send at this particular time. Let us start with a sense of humanity. Every case is a human story, and every human story has its ups and downs, its triumphs and tragedies. Instead we have dog-whistle politics, the mantras being that every immigrant is an illegal immigrant who must somehow be condemned and that immigration is the cause of all the problems in our society.
A shortage of housing can be dealt with by building houses—it kind of helps. The two things go together. Recognising people’s skills and their ability to contribute to our society helps us all. If we descend into a UKIP-generated xenophobic campaign, it weakens and demeans all of us and our society, and we are all the losers for that.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
I wholeheartedly support the whole Bill, but I wish particularly to address my remarks to chapter 2 of part 3, which deals with the impact on the national health service of the cost of treating foreign nationals.
Last year, I had the privilege of introducing a private Member’s Bill, the NHS Audit Requirements (Foreign Nationals) Bill. I am delighted that most of the measures that were pursued in that Bill have found their way into the Government’s Immigration Bill. In preparing my private Member’s Bill, I sent out Freedom of Information Act requests to all NHS health trusts—more than 400 requests—asking what the impact on their finances was of treating overseas visitors. I received replies from less than a quarter of trusts, and those from which I did receive replies gave haphazard information. Some recorded the treatment of foreign nationals in ways that did not comply with Department of Health guidelines. That shows that our understanding of the scale of the issue is at best limited and, in many parts of the country, virtually non-existent.
There are wide-ranging estimates of the cost of treating overseas visitors on the national health service. At the very lowest end, a figure of some £200 million is often quoted. Interestingly, the European Commission quotes a figure of £1.5 billion, and the Government quote the rather modest figure of some £500 million, which was arrived at through the Department of Health’s independent study. Of that £500 million, £388 million is identified as being spent on the treatment of foreign nationals who would otherwise not be entitled to free NHS care, and those costs should be recovered. The figure for the treatment of those who come to this country specifically for NHS treatment, which is commonly known as health tourism, ranges anywhere between £70 million and £300 million. The scale of the impact on the NHS budget, and therefore on the British taxpayer, is quite significant.
I do not think that anybody in this House would claim that those in need of medical attention should be denied it. Indeed, many people come to this country to receive the innovative and first-class health care our health system provides, and that is absolutely right. However, it is not right that the British taxpayer should have to pick up the charges for treating people who should be paying through reciprocal arrangements with other countries or through their own medical insurance.
Pamela Nash
On what evidence are the hon. Gentleman’s figures for health tourism based?
Henry Smith
They are from an independent assessment commissioned by the Department of Health. As I mentioned, I have tried to get information through FOI requests, and the figures from those trusts that hold statistics are quite staggering, but more than three quarters were unable to provide any figures at all, which suggests that the scale of the problem is probably larger than the Department recognises.
Henry Smith
I need to make progress and other right hon. and hon. Members are yet to speak, so I will not give way.
It is estimated that if we could recover just three quarters of the money spent treating foreign nationals on the NHS, through insurance or reciprocal arrangements such as the European insurance health card scheme, that would be the equivalent of being able to employ an additional 4,000 doctors or 8,500 nurses, so the scale of the issue is quite acute. This is a point of fairness, both to the British taxpayer and to the patients using the health service, whether residents of this country or people visiting it, and it is one that I think this House has taken too long to address properly. That is why I very much support the provisions of the Bill and look forward to its swift passage through the House.
Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)
I congratulate the Home Secretary and the Minister for Immigration and fully support the objectives of this important Bill. Britain must of course remain an outward-looking nation in the 21st century, but the British people do not want to become a soft touch for those arriving who are not capable of contributing and who are dependent on the state rather than self-reliant. We should enforce the law to prevent and deter illegal immigration and discourage benefit tourism, and we most certainly should remove those who commit serious crimes and abuse their right to be here.
Public confidence in the ability of the political class to grapple with the concerns over immigration is itself a major issue. I listened carefully to many Members who spoke this afternoon, including the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), who is no longer in the Chamber. He drew a moral equivalence between the Bill and apartheid. I want to put on the record how offensive I find that, and I say that as the son of someone who fled the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia. To draw that kind of moral equivalence is utterly offensive and repugnant and shows how out of touch, albeit with legitimate intentions and objectives, he and some other Opposition Members have become.
Failing to address immigration is the irresponsible thing to do. Having worked on war crimes and as a diplomat in Europe, and having seen the rise of Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, Jean-Marie Le Pen in France and Jörg Haider in Austria, I know that that is what happens when the political elite bury their heads in the sand. That is the real fertile ground for extremist politics. Of course, the weaknesses in the current system make life harder for those we want to welcome, of whom there are many. So let us ensure that this Bill does what it says on the tin; otherwise we risk exacerbating the public concern that is the real fertile ground for extremist politics.
For all the outrage among Labour Members, I recall the speech by the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) in 2007 at the Labour party conference, where he bellowed:
“let me be clear any newcomer to Britain who is caught selling drugs or using guns will be thrown out.”
With support from Labour Members, he passed the UK Borders Act 2007, which made deportation mandatory for foreign criminals jailed for at least a year—or at least that was the theory. But he paralysed his own legislation and broke his promise by inserting a catch-all human rights clause that led to the perverse results in the system that we see today. I know that the Home Secretary will be mindful of making sure that this time those of us on the Government Benches deliver on what we promise.
With that in mind, I want to focus on part 2, particularly the non-suspensive appeals procedure and the provisions on article 8 appeals. This is not some technical, legalistic issue; it affects real lives. In my constituency, a local waiter called Bishal Gurung was killed in a vicious attack, and the perpetrator, Rocky Gurung—no relation—was convicted of manslaughter. He evaded deportation to Nepal by claiming his right to family life, even though he is a single adult with no dependants. We are not talking about returning people who might face torture or real threat to life or limb on their return home—I certainly would not support that—but about serious criminals convicted and jailed here who evade removal on the basis of family and social ties that are often loose, if not outright artificial. Such cases, which are happening on some scale, warp the moral balance of the British justice system, endanger the public, and make “human rights” dirty words for many people, and that is a shame.
Cases such as the one in my constituency are not isolated. When I submitted a freedom of information request in 2010, it was disclosed that successful article 8 challenges by foreign national criminals were running at a rate of just under 400 per year—61% of all successful challenges. When I re-submitted the request in 2012, I found that the rate was 188 per year, but that that was 89% of all successful challenges. This is not about a few minor episodes or a few cases here and there reported by the tabloid media; it is a major issue.
The problem of violent, sexual and other offenders pleading article 8 to scupper deportation arises because of the rights inflation that has taken place in Strasbourg and here in the UK under the Human Rights Act 1998. In recent years, the European Court in Strasbourg has inflated the grounds for challenging deportation orders, adding tier upon tier of legal excuses which hamstring the effective operation of our border controls. Encouraged by the Human Rights Act, the UK courts have gone further still in stretching the application of article 8, so we cannot just blame Europe. It is not wholly a European issue, but it is at least partly a home-grown problem.
In June 2012, the Home Secretary sought to address the problem by changing the immigration rules, but because it was only a rule change under section 4 of the Human Rights Act, it has not been upheld by our courts. In the Izuazu case, Mr Justice Blake rather pointedly stated:
“Whilst it is open to Parliament to change the law by primary legislation unless and until it does so these decisions are binding...and will be followed”.
I am afraid to say that I warned that, because of the way in which Human Rights Act works, the rule change alone would not be enough to stop these spurious challenges. The Act requires UK courts to read down regulations inconsistent with the Strasbourg case law or the UK’s own interpretation of the convention.
We are where we are, but we should now strain every sinew to make sure we deliver on the rebalancing of the law that we so sorely need. My fear this time around is that simply spelling out the public interest considerations in favour of deportation in article 8 cases will not achieve that aim. It leaves a very wide margin of discretion for the courts to consider, decide and balance the various competing factors for and against deportation. Under section 3 of the Human Rights Act, the provisions have to be interpreted and the balancing exercise conducted in way that is compatible with the convention, which will itself be based on the existing case law stretched by the UK courts.
The risk is that little will change in practice. In my view, it would have been better to cut out all the article 8 challenges by foreign criminals sentenced to 12 months or more—the very serious offenders. That would fit the original intention of paragraph 2 of article 8 of the European convention, and such a mandatory clause could not be trumped by article 8 because of the way in which section 3(1) of the HRA works. It states that primary legislation has an overriding effect, but only when it is impossible to read it down in a way that makes it compatible with human rights law. We will have to look at that in Committee.
The second key issue in part 2 is raised by appeal clauses 11 to 13, which aim to reduce the number of appeal decisions in order to avoid the process being strung out at great expense to the taxpayer. They also seek to allow appeals to be lodged without suspending the deportation process, so they will be heard when the appellant has already been returned, unless—this is an important caveat—removal would cause serious and irreversible harm.
I wholeheartedly support that common-sense principle, but I would be interested to hear the Minister explain how it will work in practice. What is to stop an appeal direct to Strasbourg—over the UK courts—that may result in a rule 39 indication calling on the Home Office to suspend deportation pending appeal to Europe?
For these clauses to be effective, we would need the Government to be willing to reject those rule 39 indications, which used to be treated as recommendations only, rather than as binding orders. However, as became clear during the Abu Qatada case and our debate on the Crime and Courts Bill earlier this year, the Government treat rule 39 indications from Strasbourg as binding. Will that change? If not, what is to stop these clauses being thwarted by Strasbourg?
I have taken advice from counsel on both of my points—on article 8 and on non-suspensive appeals—and it has tended to reinforce my fear that the Government’s laudable attempts to rebalance the deportation regime risk being unpicked. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s response to that.
Will this Bill really do what it says? Subject to the Minister’s reply, I will consider—my hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless) has mentioned this—re-tabling my amendment to the deportation regime, which would solve the problem and which carried broad cross-party support during the passage of the Crime and Courts Bill, although we were timed out by the Leveson debate.
It is critical that we give proper effect to the laudable aims of the Bill. I praise Ministers to the hilt for diagnosing and focusing on the right issues, but we have to make sure we deliver, both to rebalance our deportation regime in favour of the public interest in removing serious criminals, and to ensure that public trust is not yet again frayed by another promise of reform that is not in fact delivered.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
I will try to fit my comments into the time available.
This country benefits substantially from immigration. We benefit economically and culturally. We are net improved by immigration, which has taken place for many hundreds of years. Are there, however, problems with illegal immigration? Yes, absolutely, and we should deal with many of them, including people who are being trafficked and held in quasi-slavery conditions.
I want an immigration system that knows what is happening in this country and knows who has come in and who has left. We need to bring back exit checks so that we know who is in and who is out. We need a system where decisions are made quickly and correctly, rather than one with the current problems. That is what I think the Minister ought to focus on, and we debated it this morning in Westminster Hall.
The Bill deals with a different set of issues. It is a shame that there was no pre-legislative scrutiny, because we could have fleshed out a lot of the details and come to understand the proposals. It is clear from today’s debate that not everybody, and I include myself, understands the details of much that is being proposed. There is still a lot to understand and that is a problem. We need the system to work properly, but that must not be at the expense of a system that is fair.
The Bill definitely has some good bits. For example, our dealing with dodgy immigration advisers will be welcomed by anybody who has repeatedly to deal with constituents affected by the issue. I am, however, concerned about certain other things. Effectively abolishing application for immigration bail is of particular concern, especially when the Home Office does not seem to have any evidence that it is a specific problem that needs to be addressed.
I continue to be very concerned, like other hon. Members, about the end of appeals. That could be dangerous when we are not making the right decisions. When we are getting the decisions right, we can look at how we can stop people prolonging the process, but when so many appeals are successful, it shows that there are problems. If we remove people before they have made their appeal, how can we be sure that we will hear the appeal properly? If somebody has been wronged, will there be a chance for them to present their case within a reasonable period of time? We have also heard about the needs of children in the UK who have been separated from their parents through deportation.
I do not think that the landlord proposal is a good idea. Indeed, I think that it is a profoundly bad idea. I am pleased that rather than it being implemented everywhere, there will be only one pilot in one location to test it. I am confident that it will fail the test, as did the vans, which I am pleased have been abandoned. If it proves not to be a good idea, we will be able to vote to ensure that it does not go ahead anywhere else. I am very pleased about that.
I am concerned about how workable the landlord proposal will be. I am concerned that it will take 48 hours for the Home Office to verify somebody’s status. I wish that it was always that fast when I ask it something. In many areas, that will be too long and landlords will not take the risk of renting to somebody who cannot prove their status on the spot. If we are to implement the proposal, the Home Office has to find an easy and clear way for people to show that they have the correct status. That must also apply to British citizens who do not have a passport. Otherwise, we will drive people into the hands of exploitative rogue landlords. This matter must be subject to the affirmative procedure so that we can be absolutely sure that we will get a vote.
On the health care proposals, visitors who are here to stay with their family or on business are already expected to pay for their health care if they go into hospital, however much it may cost. However, as we have heard, they do not always do so. The concept that paying £200 will get people free access to health care is something that one can imagine marketing overseas: “Come to Britain and get free health care for £200”. The US would never offer a deal like that.
There are many questions to which we need answers. What will that £200 cover? Will people get complete cover for that amount? Will people who stay here for year after year and who work here, pay their taxes and pay their national insurance have to pay £200 a year on top of everything that they already pay? I am pleased that there is a slight discount for students, but currently they do not pay anything towards their health care. I hope that the Minister will look carefully at that issue and, at the very least, offer a larger reduction.
Various comments have been made by Members on both sides of the Chamber about the benefits that we receive from our higher education and further education sectors. English language schools are a big employer in my area and in many others. I am pleased that the Government have clamped down on bogus colleges. None of us wants to make it easy for people who are actively cheating the system to get away with it. However, further restrictions will be even more damaging and will send a message to the rest of the world that we are closed for business.
I was therefore horrified earlier today when the shadow Home Secretary called for stronger checks on short-term student visitor visas, with no serious evidence that they are a massive problem. I contacted one of the English language schools in my constituency, Studio Cambridge. Its managing director, Malcolm Mottram, said in response to the shadow Home Secretary’s comments that
“any further visa restrictions will be seen as Britain closing its doors—even to the brightest and the best—even more tightly.”
I urge the Opposition not to progress that policy any further because I do not want my constituents to be damaged in that way. People are already being driven overseas to Ireland, the US, Australia and South Africa. Please do not make it any worse.
There are areas where I think the Bill should go further. I would like to see a system that ensures that we get decisions right the first time. That is the key that would unlock this whole problem. However, that is probably not something that can be written into a clause and slid into the Bill.
I would like a commitment to end the routine detention of children for immigration purposes to be written into the Bill. It is a disgrace that the last Government held thousands of young people. We have stopped that and we should ensure that that legacy continues by writing it into the law so that it never happens again.
I hope that the Minister will consider two other matters. First, people whose children do not share their surname often have to produce a huge amount of paperwork, including birth and marriage certificates, when they come into the country to show that they are allowed to travel with their child. That is a huge burden and I hope that the Minister will consider the options. Legislation may be required so that children’s passports are updated to include the names of the people with whom they may travel. That would make a big difference to a particular set of people and would allow immigration officers to focus on the real problems.
Lastly, as the Minister and I have discussed on a number of occasions, we could finally close a number of loopholes left in the law by the previous Government. In particular, some children born to unmarried British fathers before 2006 are deprived of citizenship. They would be allowed citizenship if their fathers had been married or if they had been born after 2006, so this is a clear anomaly and I think the Minister accepts that. His predecessor certainly did, and the Bill could be used as a vehicle to correct it. It seems that the Bill will receive a Second Reading, so I look forward to its being examined in Committee and substantially improved.
Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to have the opportunity to make a short contribution.
One way in which I have found the debate disappointing is that I had thought we had moved on and divorced the question of race from the question of immigration. There were a number of contributions from Opposition Members that seemed not to have moved on at all, in particular those from the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) and the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott). It is a great shame that we continue to have a debate about immigration in which race plays such a large part. My hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless) gave good reasons why race is no longer tied to immigration, and it is immigration we are talking about today, in particular unlawful or illegal immigration. We should be discussing that and nothing else.
Mark Reckless
I am grateful to my hon. and learned Friend for his comment. I wonder if I might distinguish the remarks by the right hon. Member for Tottenham to the extent that he referred to a bricklayer he had met. He told a story that I thought at least showed that he began to understand that what was leading to the loss of votes for Labour was economic competition, which the bricklayer faced, rather than race.
Stephen Phillips
I am grateful for that intervention, and I am sure that when the right hon. Member for Tottenham has finished his private conversation, he will read it in Hansard in due course.
The hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington referred to the 1905 royal commission on alien immigration. During the course of that commission, as she will know, one of the larger pieces of evidence was given by the then Member for Stepney, Major Evans Gordon. He had written a book two years before the royal commission, and in the preface he wrote:
“The Alien Immigrant has been the subject of prolonged and bitter controversy, in which both sides have been guilty of some exaggeration. On the one hand, there are those who uphold the newcomers as an unmixed advantage in this country; on the other, there are many who denounce their advent as an unmitigated evil.”
I have to say to Opposition Members that that is a debate from which we have moved on. There is no doubt, in 2013, that we have welcomed those who have come to this country to benefit the United Kingdom, and that we have always welcomed those who have had to come here as a result of threats to their health and safety because of events in their home countries.
It is impossible to be a constituency MP in 2013 without those we represent, on whichever side of the House we sit, talking extensively about immigration. They do so because of the damning record of the previous Government, who effectively had open borders and let 3 million people into this country. Three times as many people entered this country between 1997 and 2010 as came here between the Conquest and 1950. [Interruption.] If Opposition Members would stop shouting and actually listen to me and their constituents, they would learn why this is such an important issue. It is so important because of the pressure it has put on public services and because of the way the people of this country have reacted to that open border immigration policy, which has resulted in much of the tolerance for which this country is famed going out of the window. [Interruption.]
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
I am sure the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) did not mean that and will withdraw the comment.
Stephen Phillips
The hon. Lady has a reputation for robust debate. I did not hear what she said, but I am grateful—[Interruption.] I will not ask her to repeat it. Indeed, it is quite unusual in this House not to hear what she has to say from a sedentary position. Be that as it may, when the Government took office in 2010, immigration was an issue that we all knew—having fought the general election—needed to be tackled. The Government have in part attempted to tackle it through secondary legislation, but not always effectively, as my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) pointed out. It was therefore clear to many Members—certainly Conservative Members—that primary legislation was needed, and it is to be greatly welcomed that the Government have brought forward this Bill to attempt to deal with many of the problems that the broken immigration system we inherited suffers from.
What are the problems and how can they be described? There are two principal problems. The first is the complexity of the regime and the lucrative industry that has grown up among immigration practitioners, which makes a mockery of both common sense and the law. Most importantly, that has resulted in constituents of Members from across the House paying large fees to achieve precisely nothing in terms of immigration advice. The second problem is that in the minds of many people overseas, this country has become a soft touch and an easy immigration route into the European Union. Even worse, it has become that in the minds of its own citizens —the very people who sent us here to represent their interests. Those of us who have pushed the Government in this area know that those issues must be tackled, which is what the Home Secretary and her team intend to do with this excellent Bill.
I will turn briefly to the Bill, but before that—if I may in the time available, Mr Deputy Speaker—I will make a few other comments. As I have said, tough action was necessary and I am pleased that we are seeing that in the Bill. Of course we want to welcome the brightest and best people to this country—we should always recognise that—and we want all that they offer to our economy and society. We want to recognise the contribution of many of those who have come here in the past and who run our NHS, as the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington observed, and other public services, and who have given so much to this country. It is interesting, however—we did not hear this point from the hon. Lady or any Opposition Member—that it is those who have come to this country during the past 30 years who most resent the open-door immigration policy pursued by the previous Government. That policy saw a number of people come into this country that was equivalent to the population of a major city such as Birmingham.
What does the Bill do and what must we welcome? The Opposition seem to welcome it since, as I understand it, they are not going to divide the House on Second Reading. First, we all know that the appeal system is not only abused but is broken and not fit for purpose. Unmeritorious appeals are used to delay, obfuscate and prevent that which common sense decrees, where people are here unlawfully. All the provisions in the Bill are therefore to be welcomed.
Why on earth—before the Home Secretary rose to explain I suspect few of us knew this—do we currently have a system in which decisions on immigration status and removal are made separately? Are we really so stupid that we think those who come here illegally will always voluntarily leave without a removal decision? If we have been so foolish in the past, thank goodness we are no longer.
Why did the previous Government countenance a system that permitted bail to be applied for again and again by those to be deported, so that they could abscond? Why are abusive bail applications made day in, day out, which tie up immigration judges, and as a result lead to long periods during which those who have legitimate rights of appeal are denied a hearing in court? What on earth—I will not echo all the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton—were the courts doing in the past in interpreting article 8 of the European convention on human rights in a way that made a mockery of common sense and immigration policy, as enshrined in law and passed by this House? This is a good Bill. It is necessary, as those on the Opposition Front Benches recognise, and has certainly not been brought forward in haste. If the House divides I will vote to give the Bill a Second Reading. I hope that all right hon. and hon. Members, wherever in the House they sit, will do the same.
Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
As usual, we have a had a wide-ranging and thoughtful debate on a serious and complex issue. Even in this complex and differential issue, there are areas of agreement. We agree that the immigration system should work well, and that it has not done so and does not do so now. My hon. Friends the Members for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) and for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) mentioned that, as did the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes).
We accept that we need effective border checks to stop illegal immigrants from entering at source—Members on both sides of the House agree on that. We need to identify overstayers and take action in the interests of the whole country. As the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) has said, we need to ensure that we deport at the end of their sentences foreign-based prisoners who have committed offences.
I recognise that there is a benefit to immigration, as does the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) and, in part, the hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips). Hon. Members spoke of the benefits of tourism. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North, and even—dare I say it?—the right hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames), said that there has been and is a need to bring skills to help create wealth in this country. We need to ensure we maximise the wealth genuine students can bring, as the hon. Member for Cambridge has said. We also need to maximise the good will they feel about the UK when they leave.
I was struck by the excellent speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander), who spoke of the cultural benefits and pointed to the strong support in her community for many cultural changes.
Hon. Members even appear to agree on—dare I say it?—ad vans. I want to put on record my thanks to the Minister of State, Home Department, the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker), for his strong intervention in the past 48 hours. According to the Evening Standard, it was the Liberals what did it. I would be grateful for confirmation of that in due course.
Nicholas Soames
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it was extraordinary that the shadow Home Secretary devoted the greater part of her speech to a discussion about an advertising van? Is that matter so profoundly important to the interests of this country?
Mr Hanson
I have a lot of respect for the right hon. Gentleman, but if he reads the record, he will see that my right hon. Friend devoted the bulk of her speech to positive measures, which I will talk about at the end of my speech.
We need to deal with this complex issue in a measured way. We do not need to ramp up the rhetoric—I was struck by the contribution of the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) to that effect. No one is saying that immigration is easy. It was complex for Labour in government and mistakes were made. It will be complex for the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in government. However, when I look at the Bill, I ask whether it achieves any worthy objectives, and whether it develops and deals with the concerns of the EU, which were mentioned by the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) because of the pressures he faces in his constituency. Does it deal with the problem in a way that does not increase tensions, which Labour Members mentioned? That is what we need to test in detail when we deal with the Bill in Committee.
Let us look at the Bill in detail. Part 1 deals with removals. The Opposition have supported that principle and will support it again, so I do not wish to deal with it now, but part 2 has generated the most discussion in the House today. My hon. Friends the Members for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), for Lewisham East, for Sheffield Central, for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) and for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), and the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather), made extremely valid points on the implications of part 2. I happen to believe—the Opposition will test this in Committee—that the right of appeal is a fundamental tenet of British values. We need to deal in Committee with the fact that we are removing it—[Interruption.] The Home Secretary says we are not removing the right of appeal. We are giving the right of administrative review, but we are not currently giving a right of appeal. If that is so important for the Home Secretary, I should tell her, as Opposition Members have, that approximately 50% of appeals are currently successful. If part 2 stands as drafted, without clarity of examination, detailed discussion and the real concerns of my hon. Friends being reflected by Members in the Committee, what will happen to the 50% whose appeals are currently upheld? It suggests that they will no longer be upheld. That is an issue that we want to look at in detail in Committee to ensure that the provisions will work effectively, but we will also want to return to the real concerns expressed by my hon. Friends.
The provisions on landlords were supported by the hon. Members for Henley (John Howell), for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) and for Poole (Mr Syms). We do not have an objection in principle, because we have already supported similar measures on employment. But concerns were raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East and the hon. Member for Brent Central on bureaucracy, on changes in immigration status during the course of a tenancy and the costs to landlords of implementing the policy. While the principle may be good, the Committee will need to examine in detail how the policy will work in practice. The concerns of the landlords themselves, and of hon. Members on both sides of the House, will need to be considered in detail during the passage of the Bill.
Nor do we oppose the health charge in principle. It was supported by the hon. Member for Crawley (Henry Smith), but my hon. Friend the Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Pamela Nash) made some very pertinent observations on it, not least of which was that health is devolved in Scotland, as it is in my area in Wales and in Northern Ireland, but we have had no clarity from the Government about how any charge raised will be distributed, whether it will go to the Consolidated Fund or to the health service or to regional Administrations. We will need to test that in Committee.
The driving licence provisions will enshrine in law what the Labour Government did. I still think that someone who is here illegally is not going to worry too much about not having a driving licence, but we can test that idea in Committee. Sham marriages, enforcement of borders, biometrics and bank accounts are all issues that we should look at in Committee and may potentially support. Whatever the outcome of the vote tonight—if there is one—we will seek to amend parts 2 and 3 in Committee.
I have not yet mentioned the issues that the Bill does not deal with. Opposition Members have recognised that immigration is an economic issue, but right hon. and hon. Government Members made no positive suggestions as to how we could tackle the issues of European immigration that are having an impact on labour market issues. I welcome the fact that my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary signalled that Labour will table amendments, which we hope will be accepted, to make it illegal for recruitment agencies to target and recruit only foreign workers; to make it illegal for employers to deliberately run shifts only for foreign workers; to increase civil penalties to up to £50,000 for not paying the minimum wage—which, by the way, the Conservatives opposed in the first place; and to treble the fine for employing foreign workers illegally.
As my right hon. Friend said, and in answer to the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Mr Clappison), we will also table amendments to ensure that the aspirations of my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition are put into play on the question of EU apprenticeships—
Mr Hanson
I cannot give way now because of the lack of time. The points that the hon. Gentleman has made are worthy of debate, and I assure him that we will have an opportunity to discuss the issue of apprenticeships linked to foreign employment after we have tabled our amendments.
We need to look at banning unsuitable accommodation from being used as tied housing to offset the minimum wage; at giving local councils powers to enforce the minimum wage; at extending the Gangmasters Licensing Authority; at changing tier 2 regulations to ensure that companies take on apprentices; and at setting higher and minimum fines for employing illegal migrant workers. Those proposals are clear blue water between the Opposition and the Conservative party, which it will never ever bring forward measures to ensure labour market regulation of that sort. I was here when it voted against the minimum wage and other measures to improve workers’ conditions. This is about fairness, and we will table amendments to test whether the Government are serious about those matters.
The Government’s record is one of reduced border controls, reduced numbers of foreign criminals being deported, reduced numbers of people being fined for employing illegal immigrants and just two prosecutions over the minimum wage. There is a real difference between the Opposition and the Government. The Opposition will give the Bill a Second Reading today, but we will table amendments in Committee to deal with its inequities.
The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)
In the limited time available—the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) could not help taking slightly more than half the time left—I will do my best to deal with as many of the points raised as I can. I welcome the contributions from Members on both sides of the House in what has been a good debate. I listened carefully and shall try to deal with the main issues.
Listening to the right hon. Gentleman, one would never know that Labour left behind a legacy of 450,000 asylum cases, border checks that were frequently relaxed to deal with queues and out-of-control net migration—and the latter was not just from eastern European countries; under Labour, twice as many people arrived from outside the EU as from within it—and of course it was that record which made our constituents rightly concerned about the issue, as many of my hon. Friends said.
The Government are firmly on the side of the vast majority of law-abiding migrants who play by the rules and contribute much to our society. We have a proud history of lawful migration, and this Government will continue to welcome the best and brightest to the country—
Mr Harper
No, I want to deal with some of the points. I listened to the debate, and if the hon. Gentleman will give me the opportunity, I will deal with the points raised.
The Government will continue to welcome the best and the brightest, be they skilled workers, the number of which is increasing, or students going to our universities, whose number is also increasing. For those who have overstayed their visa or were never here lawfully in the first place, however, there must be consequences for unlawful behaviour.
Mr Harper
No, let me make some progress.
We always prefer migrants who have had an application refused or who have overstayed to do the right thing and leave the UK under their own steam, and we will promote that compliant behaviour, but the Government want to put the law squarely on the side of people who respect the law, not those who break it. The Bill will deliver several important reforms to do that, cutting the number of immigration appeal rights, enabling us to require foreign criminals—not migrants in general—to leave the UK before appealing, ending the abuse of article 8 and introducing important measures to prevent illegal migrants from accessing services or the labour market.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) has made his point—he wants to get in—but it is up to the Minister to give way, and quite obviously he wants to make some progress.
Mr Harper
I am trying to do justice to the many Members who spoke in the debate, including the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart).
I particularly enjoyed the remarks from my hon. Friends the Members for Peterborough (Mr Jackson), for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) and for Crawley (Henry Smith), all of whose constituencies I have had the opportunity to visit in my current role, and the contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills), from whom I am sure I will receive an invitation in due course.
The right hon. Member for Delyn is right about the issues that we will not have a chance to debate in the remaining seven minutes; I want us to have a good debate in Committee and to go through the issues in detail, and I am confident that when we lay out our aims, we will take Members with us, having first tested their concerns. We want the Bill to leave Committee and this House in good shape. As Members will know from my previous roles and challenges, I do not think we should leave it to the other place to put Bills in good shape. I want to ensure it leaves this House in good shape, and I look forward to the debate in Committee to do so.
In the time remaining, I shall try to deal with some of the issues raised. A number of Members raised important points about the proposals on health. To be clear, we are not talking about denying access to health care. We are talking about making sure that those who have no right to free health care have to make a contribution towards it. One of the points raised by the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Pamela Nash) was about public health and access to health for HIV treatment. I intervened on her to say that public health access will still be available for free. What I did not remember at the time was that this Government abolished treatment charges for HIV for overseas visitors exactly to protect the sorts of public health concerns she raised.
We are talking about making sure people pay a fair share. For those temporary migrants coming to Britain either to work or to study, we will collect the money before they come into the UK. It will go into the Consolidated Fund, and it is well above my pay grade, Mr Deputy Speaker, to tell colleagues in the Treasury how to do public spending. But if money is then distributed, any funds that go to the NHS in England will of course be distributed to the devolved Administrations in the usual way according to the Barnett consequentials. I hope that that is clear. We are not proposing to change the way in which the devolved Administrations can charge under the overseas visitors arrangements. Those aspects of charging are of course devolved. We will talk to the devolved administrations to make sure that there are no unforeseen consequences from different parts of the UK having different regimes for visitor charging.
As I said earlier in response to the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), these are significant sums of money. She asked my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary how much we thought was not collected from health tourists. In the report that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health published today, we say that we think that between £20 million and £100 million is the cost of deliberate health tourism for urgent treatment and between £50 million and £200 million for regular visitors taking advantage. Clearly there is a range, but this is an independent report that has been peer-reviewed and it is the best information we have. The hon. Lady is right; it is not a massive proportion of the overall NHS budget but £500 million that we are not collecting is a significant sum and it would make a real difference if we were able to collect it.
The Chair of the Select Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), made some points about landlords, and we will test those issues in Committee. He also referred to e-Borders. He deserves a reasonable reply since he shared the blame around with the previous Government. We do already collect a significant amount of information on those coming into Britain and those leaving and we are working on improving that. I know that he will continue to question my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and myself when we appear in front of his Committee.
The hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) and I do not always agree, but she made an important point about refugees. The reason I think it is important to deal with people who have no right to be in Britain is that I want Britain to continue to be a welcoming place for those genuinely fleeing persecution. I fundamentally believe that we will only carry the public with us and have the public support a system where we protect genuine refugees—those fleeing persecution—if where we decide someone does not need our protection, and an independent judge does not think they need protection, those people leave the UK. By the way, we are not removing appeal rights for those where there is a fundamental right involved. If they abuse our hospitality by trying every trick in the book to stay here, they are damaging the interests of genuine migrants. It is our duty to make sure we do that.
Mr Harper
I do not have time to deal with the hon. Gentleman’s points.
There were many issues around appeal. Administrative review is a better way to deal with caseworking errors than forcing someone through the appeals system. I also listened very carefully to the genuine concerns raised about landlords. There will be a chance in Committee to deal with the practical implications of that. We have thought through the issues that colleagues have raised and we will be able to deal adequately with them in Committee and take colleagues with us. If there are things that we have not thought about, we can deal with those. I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) dealt with that issue very well.
I am looking forward to debating the issues in Committee. The Bill continues our reforms of the immigration system, and it will ensure that the public’s expectations of a fair system are delivered. I commend the Bill to the House.
Question put, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
Business without Debate
(11 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
European Public Prosecutor’s Office
(11 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (James Brokenshire)
I beg to move,
That this House considers that the Draft Regulation on the establishment of a European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) (European Union Document No. 12558/13 and Addenda 1 and 2) does not comply with the principle of subsidiarity, for the reasons set out in the annex to Chapter One of the Fifteenth Report of the European Scrutiny Committee (HC 83-xv); and, in accordance with Article 6 of Protocol (No. 2) annexed to the EU Treaties on the application of the principle of subsidiarity and proportionality, instructs the Clerk of the House to forward this reasoned opinion to the Presidents of the European Institutions.
It is a pleasure, Madam Deputy Speaker, to see you in your place for this debate and to serve under your chairmanship this evening.
In July the European Commission published a proposal for the establishment of a European public prosecutor’s office—an EPPO. It is the Commission’s answer to a problem known as
“fraud against the Union’s financial interests”.
The EPPO proposal was published alongside a parallel legislative measure to reform the existing EU agency, Eurojust. These two proposals, the EPPO and Eurojust, will together be the subject of a separate debate in a week’s time as part of the so-called Lidington arrangements. I look forward to it, following my letters to the Chairs of the relevant Committees yesterday with the Government’s recommendation that the UK should not opt in to the new Eurojust proposal at the outset of negotiations, but should actively consider its position following a thorough review of the final agreed text.
The purpose of the debate is specifically for the House to decide whether the Commission’s EPPO proposal breaches the principle of subsidiarity, and that is what we should focus on tonight. I recognise that I am in an unusual position tonight in moving a motion on a course of action to be taken by the House, not the Government. I am aware, too, that the issue of who should move a motion in a subsidiarity debate such as this is a matter that the Procedure Committee has examined and on which the Government have responded. Although there may be differences of view over the procedure, I hope we can agree on the substance of the debate.
It is the shared view of both the European Scrutiny Committee and the Government that the EPPO proposal does indeed breach the principle of subsidiarity. If the whole House agrees, it can, under the EU treaties, send a democratic and political signal to the presidents of the European Commission, Council and Parliament in the form of a reasoned opinion to that effect. Moreover, in this case, if one quarter of the votes allocated to national Parliaments are cast, the so-called yellow card would be triggered meaning that the Commission would be obliged to review its proposal.
To update the House on how matters stand, both chambers of the Dutch Parliament, the Hungarian National Assembly and the Czech Senate have already taken this step, and others are actively considering it. This is a real opportunity for all national Parliaments to exercise, as democratic representatives, their views on what the Commission has proposed.
Before I say more about the reasoned opinion process, let me summarise the Government’s view on the EPPO proposal. The House will be aware of our long-standing position in the coalition agreement not to participate in the establishment of any EPPO, and the details of the proposal serve only to reinforce that position. While of course fraud must be tackled at all levels, including when it involves funds that form part of the EU budget, we do not agree that the establishment of a European public prosecutor’s office is the right approach.
The Commission’s proposal would establish a new supranational EU body with responsibility for criminal offences affecting the financial interests of the Union, as well as so-called ancillary offences within participating member states. The EPPO would exercise the function of a prosecutor within the courts of the participating member states for these offences and instruct their national authorities over the conduct of investigations.
This proposal is unnecessary, unsubstantiated and unwelcome. In the Government’s view, the best way to tackle EU fraud is through prevention. The UK has a zero-tolerance approach to fraud, with robust management controls and payment systems in place that seek to prevent incidences of EU fraud. Additionally we should continue efforts already happening to strengthen the current system.
For example, reforms to the European Anti-Fraud Office—OLAF—are currently being introduced to improve information exchange between OLAF and national authorities, and to improve OLAF’s own internal quality control. Indeed, a new regulation governing the work of OLAF entered into force only on 1 October 2013. These changes need time to be implemented fully before any further action is contemplated. Against that background, one of the many criticisms we have of the EPPO proposal is that the subsidiarity principle has not been met.
Without getting into too much technicality and legalese, the principle of subsidiarity means that decisions should be taken as closely as possible to the citizens whom they affect, and that the European Union should act only when outcomes can be better achieved at European Union level. It is important to note that subsidiarity is different from the principle of proportionality, under which any action taken by the European Union should not exceed what is necessary to achieve the stated objectives.
Under the protocol on the application of the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality in the treaties, the Commission must demonstrate that the objectives of the proposal cannot be sufficiently achieved at member state level—the first limb of the test—and then, that the objectives of the proposal can be better achieved at EU-level by reason of their scale and effects, which is the second limb and so-called EU added-value test. There is a requirement for the Commission to include a detailed statement in all legislative proposals on compliance with the principles of subsidiarity and proportionality, and some assessment of its financial impact. This detailed statement should be
“substantiated by qualitative and, wherever possible, quantitative indicators”.
In the Government’s view, the Commission has not presented a convincing case, and we do not believe that the principle of subsidiarity has been met. The Commission has not allowed time for current reforms to take effect, nor has it adequately considered options to strengthen the current system. For example, it has not considered enhanced incentives or other options for reform at regional or national level in any detail or in a rigorous manner, and it has not demonstrated what value an EPPO would add. We should recall that the relevant legal base in the treaties—article 86 of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union—says that an EPPO “may” be established. The treaties do not say it “shall” be created. The Commission has not, in our view, provided robust evidence to justify the creation of a supranational body with extensive and harmonised powers.
As I have said, under the treaties national Parliaments have the opportunity to put forward a reasoned opinion when they do not consider that a proposal complies with the principle of subsidiarity.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
As the Minister has just made a point about harmonised powers, may I remind him that one of the consequences of giving the EPPO the power to direct investigations would be to create a power for prosecutors that does not currently exist in England and Wales, although it does in Scotland? That perhaps illustrates the level of change that would be required to satisfy the idea of having a public prosecutor at European level.
James Brokenshire
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, the Chair of the Select Committee on Justice, for highlighting the seriousness and significance of the European Commission’s proposal and why, in our view, it is not appropriate for the United Kingdom to opt in to the measure. As I have indicated, we made that abundantly clear in the coalition agreement in advance of the proposals being published. I am sure that we will examine in detail the impact of the Commission’s published measure in our debate next week on the in-principle decision as to whether the UK should opt in. That is the right avenue for exploring the detailed issues, whereas today is about subsidiarity. However, I take his points seriously.
Although there have been a number of reasoned opinions since the opportunity to provide them came into effect, there has only been one occasion on which the yellow card threshold has been reached. That was on a Commission proposal about the posting of workers and the right to take collective action, also known as Monti II. In that case, the Commission withdrew the proposal fully, even though it maintained that the principle of subsidiarity had been met. It conceded on the grounds that it was clear that there was no political will among member states and national Parliaments to take the proposal forward.
The Monti II case highlights the fact that the continuing use of the reasoned opinion procedure and resulting yellow cards represents a powerful political signal and an important way for national Parliaments to intervene directly in the EU’s functioning. Even when the yellow card threshold has not been met, the views of national Parliaments have been influential on a wide range of issues, as member states have used reasoned opinions to support their negotiating positions. They have often secured amendments on the salient issues on the back of them.
Achieving the threshold requires a great deal of co-ordination between national Parliaments. I am sure the European Scrutiny Committee and other interested parties in Parliament, in both this House and the other place, are making best use of their contacts with other national Parliaments in that regard. I look forward to hearing the debate and urge the House to support this important motion.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
This is the first time that I have spoken while you have been in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker, and I congratulate you on your appointment. It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair this evening.
I start by thanking the Minister for setting out the Government’s approach to the draft regulation. There is considerable history to the idea of an EPPO. Back in 2002, the European Scrutiny Committee scrutinised the 2001 Green Paper in which the European Commission first proposed the idea of establishing the EPPO. It found that the EPPO was unnecessary, particularly given the existence of Eurojust. It also identified a number of concerns, such as the combination of prosecution and investigative functions; the power of the EPPO to commit a person for trial and determine the location of that trial; the creation of differing standards of criminal responsibility for fraud depending on whether it related to the Community’s financial interests; the lack of democratic accountability for the prosecution function; the breach of the subsidiarity principle; and the dilution of member states’ responsibility for the prosecution of fraud.
The prospect of a specialist EU prosecution authority has been raised again since then and was one of a range of initiatives that the Commission considered in 2011. Again, the European Scrutiny Committee investigated those initiatives. In 2011 the Committee echoed its 2002 concerns and cautioned against the “inappropriate and unacceptable” use of national criminal justice systems in acting against crimes against EU finances.
The Opposition believe that this proposal seeks to address a real problem. Chapter 1 of the 15th report of the European Scrutiny Committee, to which the motion refers, makes it clear that the levels of suspected fraud against the EU budget are estimated by the Commission to have been around €500 million, or £425 million, in each of the last three years. That is clearly unacceptable and should be condemned by all Members of the House. We should of course seek new ways to ensure that that fraud, which costs us all as British taxpayers, can be stopped and the perpetrators brought to justice.
However, as we repeatedly made clear when we were in government, we do not believe that an EPPO is the solution to these problems. We agree with the European Scrutiny Committee’s recommendation that the EPPO proposal breaches the subsidiarity principle and that a national-level approach, supported by existing EU mechanisms, would be more appropriate.
Although the Labour Government signed the Lisbon treaty, which enables the creation of an EPPO, we argued in government that we were consistently against the formation of the office and put in place measures to “double lock” against its creation. The double lock we secured ensured, first, that the UK would have to opt in; and, secondly, that even if a future Government were to opt in, they would still need unanimity, which is retained for any decision to establish a prosecutor or extend its powers. As the Lord President of the Council at the time, the noble Baroness Ashton of Upholland, made clear in a debate in 2008:
“We have secured legally watertight safeguards in the treaty against any move towards a European public prosecutor or subsequently, and just as important, towards extending that prosecutor’s role. It is what we would call a double lock.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 9 June 2008; Vol. 702, c. 454.]
Therefore, in government we put in place a system in which an opt-in procedure applies. Parliament could let its views be known and the Government could put forward their proposals. The Government would then, if they so chose—we always believed this to be very unlikely—have the discussions and determine by unanimity if they did not wish to participate.
We agreed with the Minister when he told the European Scrutiny Committee the following: that the creation of an EPPO is not the appropriate response to tackling EU fraud; that for participating member states the proposal will transfer responsibility for tackling fraud against the EU budget away from national-level decision making and towards a supranational authority whose European delegated prosecutors would have to prioritise EU fraud above other crime at a national level; that it is a flawed approach for member states not to be able to determine their national priorities, and the consequent use of resources, in tackling crime; that the EPPO would disrupt the current system for tackling fraud against the EU budget at a time where the Commission has reported two consecutive years of decrease in fraudulent and other irregularities affecting the EU budget and their estimated financial impact; that the proposed EPPO system would result in a duplication of established national-level efforts, including specific bodies, to protect member states and EU financial interests, including work against organised crime; that the best way to tackle fraud is through prevention, as reflected in the UK’s zero-tolerance approach to all fraud, which it takes “extremely seriously” and which has resulted in low levels of fraud, and by using robust management controls and payment systems and requiring all agencies with responsibility for distributing EU funds to have processes in place to monitor and report fraud; and that creation of the office would cause a shift from prevention to reaction after crimes have been committed, as it would make each member state less responsible for anti-fraud work at a national level
We agree with the Government on the principle that it would be wrong to proceed with an EPPO, and it is refreshing to see them for once getting something right on Europe. For far too long we have had the Government’s laboured decisions on whether they would be part of European co-operation on crime and justice, saying they want to opt out and then opt back in. That has led the Home Secretary to this untried strategy which risks harming effective police action in all our communities.
It has appeared for some time that the Government have been putting internal party management and coalition horse-trading ahead of crime fighting and the interests of victims. As the Leader of the Opposition made clear earlier this year, the Government’s strategy on Europe has not been to sort out the crisis of growth, it has not been to tackle youth unemployment, and it has had nothing to do with the national interest—it has all been about managing the divisions in the Conservative party. This type of party management as our European policy is not good for the country; nor will it keep the Minister’s party quiet. On Europe, the Government should be acting now to deal with the issues that really matter to people rather than navel-gazing to keep the coalition parties happy. The Government should be looking, for example, at how the UK in Europe can stop the exploitation of migrant workers and at reforms at the EU level so that family benefits such as child tax credit and child benefit are not sent abroad.
We agree with the Government on the motion. However, it is crucial that they start to take European issues seriously rather than simply shying away from anything with the word “Europe” in it. They must begin to come forward with genuine options for developing greater integration to stop EU fraud, and they must make it clear how they expect the UK to play its part as an EU member state in co-operating as closely as possible on cross-border crime, particularly drug trafficking, people trafficking and international fraud, rather than pursuing the Home Secretary’s untested and risky approach.
Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)
I add my congratulations to you on your election, Madam Deputy Speaker.
It is important that we retain some sense of proportion in this debate. We are, after all, discussing an idea which, in practice, would tackle the simple issue of crime against the EU, particularly fraud against the EU budget. While I welcome the Minister’s fairly practical approach, I think that the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) doth protest a bit too much in painting such a cataclysmic picture of the complete collapse of the European criminal justice system were this to go ahead. That is completely out of proportion, and I think she is just trying to prove her Eurosceptic credentials. This is not quite the massive issue that some might imagine. I recognise, however, that there is a thin end of the wedge argument in that the proposal sets out a different principle in creating a new kind of European competence, albeit one already recognised in treaty. I also recognise the specific acknowledgement in the coalition agreement that Conservative Members, in particular, do not want to pursue such a solution to the problem.
In this case, on balance, the Government are right in their interpretation of the subsidiarity principle. The Commission has not demonstrated that the proposed path has to be taken because nation states are incapable of tackling fraud against the EU budget, and it therefore fails the subsidiarity test as currently presented. There is an important role for pro-European Members of this Parliament and other Parliaments in applying the subsidiarity principle properly. We should not allow any kind of drift towards dealing at a European level with competencies that are really better exercised at a lower level.
Kelvin Hopkins
Yet again the hon. Gentleman talks about Europe rather than the European Union. Many of us love Europe in all sorts of ways but do not necessarily love the European Union.
Martin Horwood
I had picked up that impression from many hon. Members, but I understand the point that the hon. Gentleman is making.
However, there is a problem. As the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North rightly said, it is estimated that there is a vast amount of fraud against the European budget—some €500 million a year—and that is unacceptable. National law enforcement against that is fragmented across the member states. While the UK may have a robust record on tackling it, that is not always true of all member states. In fact, only one in five of the cases transferred by the European anti-fraud office—OLAF—to the national prosecution authorities leads to a conviction, and those conviction rates vary considerably among member states. There is, therefore, a problem that needs to be tackled. I accept what the Minister has said about improvements to OLAF, but the European Commission and European Union authorities also need to take a more proactive stance against EU budget fraud. I do not think, however, that a European public prosecutor’s office is the solution at this stage.
The Commission’s proposal has an additional problem, in that it suggests locating the EPPO in Eurojust, but that would seriously muddy the waters of the role of Eurojust, which is a very effective and important organisation. I am pleased that the coalition has agreed that, with certain reforms, we should opt into it. Eurojust is important in stimulating investigation and co-operation on judicial and prosecutorial matters. The impetus for it emerged after 9/11, when the importance of tackling cross-border terrorism was made very clear. It helps European authorities to tackle serious organised crime, people trafficking, drug trafficking, the smuggling of illegal immigrants, illicit trade in human organs, kidnapping, trafficking works of art and computer crime. The list goes on and on and it is a very good example of how European Union institutions help us to tackle cross-border crime in a way that would be impossible for 27 different countries trying to co-operate on a bilateral basis.
To confuse the role of Eurojust, which is one of encouraging co-operation and stimulating investigations, with that of a prosecutorial authority would change the role of Eurojust and create an additional complication, which might, in the domestic political context, reduce support for opting back into Eurojust. Practically, politically and in principle, I think that locating the EPPO in Eurojust would be the wrong step to take.
I will not detain the House any longer. The Liberal Democrats support the Government’s motion. The problem of serious fraud against the European budget needs to be tackled, but the proposal oversteps the mark in terms of the principle of subsidiarity, so I am happy to give my support to the Government tonight.
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
May I add my congratulations to you on your election, Madam Deputy Speaker? I am very pleased to see you in the Chair.
I support the motion. As a member of the European Scrutiny Committee, I am pleased that we are winning an argument and making a point. It is good to see both Front Benchers in agreement and taking a robust stand on matters to do with the European Union.
The ESC is concerned that, over time, the British legal system is being chipped away at by EU reform. The proposal would be another step away from our own legal system and rights. The legal system on the continent—this is particularly true of France—tends to combine prosecution and investigation, but our legal system is very different and follows a different route. It is very important that we retain our great legal traditions and our legal system, which I think works extremely well. Of course, we also do very well in investigating fraud compared with some other member states.
I support what has been said by the Minister and my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson), who spoke so well. I also apologise for missing the first part of the Minister’s speech because I was detained elsewhere. Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing me to say these few words on behalf of the European Scrutiny Committee.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
I would like to join the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) in giving credit where credit is due. This debate is taking place on the basis of the report and reasoned opinion of the European Scrutiny Committee. The Government agree with that reasoned opinion, but it is very much that of the Committee. In my capacity as Chairman of the Liaison Committee and the Justice Committee, I think that the European Scrutiny Committee is entitled to the credit. If there is something wrong with our procedure, it is that it does not fully recognise that process. However, the outcome is a happy one because pretty well everybody agrees that the reasoned opinion is correct, and it accords with the Government’s view.
The proposal for a European public prosecutor offends against the subsidiarity principle. One of its primary objectives is to strengthen the protection of the European Union’s financial interests. That is a perfectly reasonable objective to pursue, but it does not have to be achieved through the creation of a European public prosecutor. Indeed, it would not necessarily be best achieved in that way. The other limb of the general argument in favour of the European public prosecutor is that it is a further development of the area of justice. That provides the hint that subsidiarity is in danger of going out the window.
There are many ways in which the European Union could improve the way in which it deals with fraud. If national Governments fail to take the actions that they should take, they should be shamed into doing so. We also have to be a little careful about using percentage figures on the success of prosecutions. There is considerable danger if anybody thinks that the target of a justice system is to have 100% success in prosecutions. Courts will sometimes find people not guilty because the evidence has not been brought forward or sustained. The 100% target is a rather dangerous principle to import into this debate.
It is often pointed out that the European Union could do a lot more to resist fraud if it designed its schemes and its disbursement of money in ways that lent themselves to fraud a great deal less. Nothing is fraud-proof, but schemes can be designed that are less susceptible to fraud than many of those that have been developed over the years by European institutions.
Many elements of the proposal offend against subsidiarity. The European public prosecutor would have investigative powers, search and seizure powers, and interception and surveillance powers. To have those powers in operation at a supranational level would be a pretty significant change.
The proposal would take away the role of the Director of Public Prosecutions in prosecuting decisions in matters relating to EU fraud. It would have a similar effect on the roles of the procurator fiscal and the Lord Advocate in Scotland. The proposal would ignore the deliberate separation of decisions on investigation from decisions to prosecute in England and Wales, which is a long-standing element of our system. We can argue about whether that barrier should be retained, but we should have that argument in the context of our legal system and not allow it to be forced on us by the introduction of the European public prosecutor.
I am convinced that in the minds of some people, the creation of a European public prosecutor is a route to a prosecution role that goes wider than EU finances. I am not always tempted by slippery slope or Trojan horse arguments, but some of the same people have advanced the case for a prosecutor to deal with EU finances and a wider role for such an office.
Kelvin Hopkins
The right hon. Gentleman must accept that there has been constitution creep for decades in the European Union. Surely that is what we are trying to stop.
Sir Alan Beith
There have also been many advances in the way in which European nations use the European Union to achieve highly desirable objectives, such as through co-operating to deal with international crime. An intrinsic problem with the way in which the European Union was constructed, which is quite understandable given the way in which it was constructed, is that there is a belief in the Commission that the way forward is always to create further powers and jurisdictions. We have created a system that has that element within it. However, those who worry about Britain’s membership of the European Union have a tendency to underestimate the benefits and the value that have been achieved through many of its processes.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) pointed out that there is a close relationship between this proposal and the issue of Eurojust. Unhelpfully, it would compromise the acceptability of Eurojust to many people if the European public prosecutor was located within Eurojust. There are other aspects of interrelationship between the two issues. I regard Eurojust as an extremely valuable institution that has many processes that are of great advantage to British citizens. It has an important role in the prevention and detection of crime against British citizens and British interests. But again, even within the Eurojust proposals that we will be looking at again shortly, the role of the national members of Eurojust in the Commission’s proposal to order investigative measures changes the relationship between law enforcement and prosecution that is so firmly a part of our system.
There is, of course, another feature of the proposals that I am glad has not attracted the attendance of some of my hon. Friends on the Conservative Benches: if we went ahead with it, it would trigger a referendum. That might make it attractive to them to vote against the motion tonight, or whenever we have a deferred Division. I should not really tell them this, because it might inflame them in a way that I do not want. Basically, I think we all agree that establishing a European public prosecutor’s office is not the direction in which we ought to go and that it offends the principle of subsidiarity, as is extremely cogently argued in detail by the European Scrutiny Committee.
Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)
It is a huge pleasure to see you in the Chair this evening, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is the first time I have had the opportunity to say, “Congratulations.” I congratulate you on your position.
I am a member of the European Scrutiny Committee, so it is a pleasure to witness the report being debated and accepted on all sides of the House. It is also a pleasure to see other members of the Committee—the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) and my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Andrew Bingham). I am sure the Minister is delighted that unfortunately my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) cannot be here this evening, so I intend to fill in for him to a certain extent by taking the next 45 minutes of his life away from him. [Laughter.] No, I do not intend to detain the House for too long.
It is obvious to all who have read the Committee’s report or listened to the speeches this evening that the creation of the European public prosecutor’s office would breach the principle of subsidiarity. In fact, it is so obvious that my good friend the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) has noticed that there is a breach. Blimey, it must be bad—if there is a breach that he can spot, most of us could drive a coach and horses through it. We should therefore be very aware of what the Committee is highlighting.
The European Commission proposal to establish the European public prosecutor’s office has been around for quite some time. I can remember as a Member of the European Parliament being stuck in a debate in the early 2000s listening to a fantastic German lady, Diemut Theato, who I think was the head of OLAF for a short period and then my chair of the Committee of Budgetary Control, argue vociferously for the office of European public prosecutor and everything that goes with it. This new regulation, however, would create a slightly different beast—it has morphed even since then. This would be a new EU body with a head, the European public prosecutor, and at least four deputies, with powers to conduct investigations and prosecutions in member states against people suspected of crimes against the EU budget—fraud. I heard the Minister say that there will be a further debate next week and I look forward to speaking in it, if I am called. . However, if I may, I would like to spend a few seconds on what the proposal might mean.
Each member state will have a representative of the EPPO, known as a European delegated prosecutor, who will be empowered to direct national investigative and prosecuting authorities when it comes to crime against the EU budget. There is an interesting question about what constitutes a crime against the EU budget and how that would be defined. They will have exclusive competence to investigate and prosecute suspected offences against the EU budget. The investigative measures include surveillance, search and seizure, and even the summoning of witnesses. These would be significant powers. The EPPO would also be able to act as prosecutor in national courts.
The possible creation of the EPPO is enabled via the Lisbon Treaty, and I recognise the work of the previous Government to ensure that we were not swept up at that time. It can be created through this new regulation, but we are not bound by it: we can choose to opt in thanks to the justice and home affairs arrangement. However, the Lisbon treaty actually discusses the public prosecutor’s power being extended to other serious cross-border crime, such as computer crime, money laundering and a host of others. In itself, that could make the EPPO more powerful than even the FBI, and it would hold the power to investigate and prosecute in nation states. That looks like the creation of a federal European criminal justice agency, which is not something that anybody in Britain would like to see.
The EPPO does not fulfil the “principle of subsidiarity”, by which
“the Union shall act only if and in so far as the objectives…cannot be sufficiently achieved by the Member States”.
As the Minister outlined, I am aware that this is possibly only the second time that the yellow card will be used, and member states have an eight-week opportunity—which closes this coming Monday, I am told—to use that yellow card. As a football referee, I very much like the yellow card and believe we should use it more often when it comes to European regulation.
There are three aspects to why the European Scrutiny Committee says that the EPPO does not comply with subsidiarity, and I think they are worth highlighting. First, the European Commission has not adequately considered options for alternative means for improving the fight against fraud, such as preventive measures at the point EU funds are given out—that point was well made by the Chairman of the Justice Committee. Secondly, the Commission has not waited to see the impact of the proposed new directive on criminal offences and sanctions relating to fraud against the EU budget—indeed, I believe that that directive has not yet been properly agreed, so perhaps we are putting the cart before the horse on this occasion. Thirdly, the Commission used questionable data and flawed assumptions when assessing the proposal, such as unreliable convictions data from member states—it is questionable how much money the prosecutor would get back, and no one knows how the figure in the proposal was reached.
When becoming Members of the European Parliament, all are given jobs—that is part of the deal—and being the most junior of the juniors when I got elected in 1999, I was given the job of rapporteur for OLAF. That came on the back of the fraud of the European Commission in 1999, and the report of the committee of wise men that said what should be done.
Kelvin Hopkins
I am most interested in the hon. Gentleman’s experience of the European Parliament. May I ask whether one is paid extra for these jobs?
Chris Heaton-Harris
If only that was the case. My wife questions the sanity of my move across to this place anyway. We were well rewarded for what we did; it paid exactly the same as for Members of Parliament at the time, but Members of the European Parliament now have their own salary, and pay a different tax rate on most occasions.
OLAF came out of the report of the committee of wise men. It was mainly to investigate Commission fraud and crime, which was one of the things that brought down the European Commission in the first place. It also had plenty of powers to protect the EU’s financial interest. In the debate next week I intend to highlight what can be done in the reform of OLAF to allow us to prove to the European Commission that the whole new power grab of having a European public prosecutor’s office is not required. If the Commission used the powers and bodies it already has—already well funded and in general relatively well run—we would not be in this position in the first place. I wholeheartedly support the motion.
James Brokenshire
With the leave of the House, I thank right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions. This has been a useful debate, and from what we have heard it is clear that the House supports the motion before us, and identifies that there is an issue of subsidiarity with the Commission’s proposal for a European public prosecutor’s office. As I said at the outset, this is a matter for Parliament and not the Government. Therefore, in the light of the mood of the House this evening, I hope that the European Scrutiny Committee will take this issue and work with other interested parties in Parliament, the House and the other place, and make best use of their contacts with other national Parliaments in that regard, given the interest and focus that I know are being directed to this proposal by Parliaments around the EU.
The coalition agreement makes it clear that the UK Government will not participate in any European public prosecutor’s office. As we have heard from hon. Members, that is because a centralised European prosecutor with harmonised powers to initiate investigations and order investigative measures is incompatible with the division of responsibilities in the UK between law enforcement and prosecutors, and the role of the independent judiciary. In many ways, that reflects a number of the comments made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith)—the Chair of the Justice Committee—the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins), and my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris). May I say that the last of those is filling in for my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) admirably this evening in ensuring that the will and views of the European Scrutiny Committee are properly represented in the debate? I look forward to him standing in on future occasions.
I want to underline and respond to some of the points made by the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson). I welcome the fact that she agrees with the Government’s analysis of subsidiarity as it applies to the European public prosecutor’s office measure. However, it will not surprise her that I take issue strongly with her suggestion that the Government do not take transnational and serious organised crime, and working with law enforcement agencies across the EU, very seriously in ensuring that public are properly protected against organised criminality that crosses borders. I will not detain the House because this is a matter for another day, but it is interesting that the Labour Government negotiated the right to exercise the 2014 block opt-out—she described the 2014 decision as an untested approach. From her comments, I can only assume that the previous Government had no intention of exercising that right and therefore of seeking to provide those protections—it was a sham.
The hon. Lady highlighted protections in respect of the European prosecutor’s office—unanimity and the right to opt in—but it is important that the public have a say and a right to form a view in respect of such an important issue. That is why I welcome the fact that the Government have legislated to make any decision by a future Government to commit the UK to participating in the creation of the European public prosecutor’s office a matter that would require an Act of Parliament and—yes—a referendum under the European Union Act 2011.
This has been a helpful debate and I welcome the views that have been expressed. We will monitor with close interest whether the threshold is triggered to issue the formal yellow card to the Commission. We will return to matters more broadly in relation to the European public prosecutor’s office and the relationship with Eurojust when we debate the formal opt-in decision motion, when we can examine those matters in further detail.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House considers that the Draft Regulation on the establishment of a European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) (European Union Document No. 12558/13 and Addenda 1 and 2) does not comply with the principle of subsidiarity, for the reasons set out in the annex to Chapter One of the Fifteenth Report of the European Scrutiny Committee (HC 83-xv); and, in accordance with Article 6 of Protocol (No. 2) annexed to the EU Treaties on the application of the principle of subsidiarity and proportionality, instructs the Clerk of the House to forward this reasoned opinion to the Presidents of the European Institutions.
Business without Debate
(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Government Services (Websites)
(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Mark Garnier (Wyre Forest) (Con)
I suspect that no hon. Member has got to their feet today and not congratulated you, Madam Deputy Speaker, on your appointment. I add my name to the great list of people who have congratulated you on your well earned election. I wish you the best of the luck in your years as Madam Deputy Speaker.
I am grateful for the opportunity to speak this evening on a subject that, while not of vital national importance, is one that causes annoyance in the everyday lives of many of my constituents and those of other hon. Members. It is so annoying that Elliott Webb, the morning show presenter on BBC Hereford and Worcester, has asked me to help to address it. He has received many complaints from listeners across the two counties. It is also an issue that our beloved institution the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority has contacted all of us about in recent months.
As we know, the Government provide many services to citizens via websites, including applying for new passports, paying congestion charges, booking MOT tests for cars, finding replacement birth certificates, applying for driving licences and a range of other services that can, in the modern age, be accessed by the majority of people through the internet. Some of the services are free, but many cost money. Generally speaking, the process is straightforward—follow the instructions, pay the charge, job done. However, to find the websites and access the services they need, the vast majority of people will use an internet search engine, and that is where the problem starts.
If people use Google to search for “replacement passport”, they will get several pages of websites providing services for replacing their passport, but the proper official Government website will appear several places down the front page. Importantly, the official Government site will never appear in the shaded ad box at the top of the page, only in the fourth place as read by the consumer looking at a search engine result.
Andrew Bingham (High Peak) (Con)
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and I also congratulate you, Madam Deputy Speaker, on your election. My constituent Barbara Bradbury alerted me to this very problem about the passport checking service that charges £49 for a service that is available for £8.75 at a local post office. This service had a .org web address, which gave it an air of legitimacy, resulting in my constituents, particularly elderly ones, falling for it and paying £49.
Mark Garnier
My hon. Friend expresses the nub of my argument, and I will make similar points during my speech. He is right to raise this issue on behalf of his constituent and she is not alone in such problems.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I have had examples of the very same thing happening to my constituents. They have followed the process on Google and used a service that cost money, but the Government do it for free. People are annoyed and angry when they find that they have paid for something that they did not need to pay for. Does the hon. Gentleman think that the Government should have warnings on their websites about those companies that charge for something that the Government do not charge for?
Mark Garnier
There are warnings out there, and I shall develop that point as I make my speech, but the hon. Gentleman is right. It is difficult for people to tell the difference between one type of website and another.
Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to see you in the Chair this evening, Madam Deputy Speaker.
There is a way of telling that a website is a Government website—it uses the suffix .gov.uk, but most people cannot be expected to know that kind of techie detail. Does my hon. Friend agree that such problems exist for private companies as well, and the problem is not just about access to Government sites? We need a labelling system on the internet that gives some weight to intellectual property and brand owners—the biggest brand in this country is the Government—so that people can be confident that when they see a certain symbol or read a certain word they are on a genuine website.
Mark Garnier
My hon. Friend suggests action that the internet search engines can take, and I shall develop that point if I may make progress with my speech, although the interventions have shown that this is a widespread issue that affects not only Government websites, but private websites. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) raises the slightly alarming point that providers of services can be undermined by someone snaffling their place, as it were, and that is very bad for competition.
These websites, having squeezed themselves in between the consumer and the Government website trying to provide the service, offer to provide a notional service—form filling—and then charge a premium to submit the form on the person’s behalf. BBC Hereford and Worcester has many such examples. Harry from Droitwich paid £49 for a website to fill in his passport form, only to discover that he still had to pay £72.50 for the actual cost of the passport. David from Kidderminster tried to apply for a driving licence online, filling in a form that he believed was his application, but the website just checked the information and sent him the typed-out completed form to send off to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, and charged him £50 to do so. It did not even pay for the stamp! This website was a little more helpful, however, as it advertised a number that could be used to complain about how misleading the site was, but of course he discovered that it was a premium rate telephone number. Perhaps the worst example of abuse by intermediary websites is the case of a Worcestershire resident who texted me while I was being interviewed yesterday morning complaining that she had been charged £30 for a European health insurance card, which is available free from the NHS and which ensures that British citizens get access to health care throughout the EU.
These misleading websites fall into two broad categories. The first are those that are deliberately misleading: websites that set out cynically to dupe the consumer into thinking that they are official Government websites. They look and feel like the website they seek to ape and they charge a premium for a service that is otherwise provided by the Government at a set rate. They win their so-called customers by winning the search engine optimisation game and achieving the top slot on the search engine results page—consumers naturally click on the top site, especially if its name suggests official status.
Damian Hinds
My hon. Friend is kind when he talks about their winning the top slot, because of course they pay for it, getting to the top of the search engine list by making the biggest pay-per-click bid multiplied by the biggest click-through rate—a game the Government should never get into, being funded only by taxpayers.
Mark Garnier
That is absolutely right, and again I shall be developing that point a little later, although the search engines are trying to help.
From time to time, these deliberately misleading websites are scrutinised by the Advertising Standards Authority, and prosecutions have been pursued and won, which is a good thing. I understand that more will be done, and I am sure that the Minister will share with the House what measures are coming in due course.
The second type of website is just as cynical, supposedly offering a service to help people fill in their forms. We have heard that the Post Office provides just such a service. For a fee of £8.75, it will check that a passport application form has been properly filled in and send in the application, together with the expired passport, to the Passport Office. This seems a perfectly reasonable fee, especially considering that it includes the cost of postage. What is less reasonable is the £49.50 charged to Harry from Droitwich for the same service, which did not include postage, and the case of the constituent of my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Andrew Bingham). These websites offer what they would argue is a value service, but its true value is of huge debate.
Importantly, according to the House of Commons Library, there is nothing preventing a business from offering services that provide assistance with official processes, and if the services do little to speed up the process, the law does not make them illegal, even if they are utterly worthless. In my view, they are utterly pointless and simply seek to take advantage of consumers by putting themselves higher up the search page results than the official website. We are all caught out by this. We in the House of Commons, of all people, must be more aware of how Government websites work than anyone else, yet IPSA felt it necessary to warn us that the premiums being charged by the congestion charge intermediary sites were not reclaimable. In a bulletin to Members on 21 August, the No. 1 item read:
“If you’re paying for your London congestion charge payment online, please make sure you are using only the official TfL website… Unofficial websites often levy an unnecessary administrative fee.”
It should be obvious to all which site is a genuine Government site and which is a misleading attempt to take money from a consumer. As we have heard, a proper site will end with the gov.uk suffix, an ending reserved for genuine official Government websites. Similarly, the intermediary sites are required to carry a disclaimer saying that they are not official sites. They all seem to have them. Generally, they will be found right at the bottom of a fairly long page and in minute print. Despite that being obvious to the informed, and despite occasional awareness campaigns and rulings from judges on bogus sites, however, more and more people are being duped into using these unnecessary services.
It is wholly wrong that people are misled this way for a number of reasons, not least because people on tightened budgets find themselves conned out of some of their increasingly hard-pressed reserves. I have great sympathy with the consumer. Whilst it may be obvious that there are ways of differentiating the bogus from the genuine website, why should we expect the consumer miraculously to know and understand all the subtleties of web addresses, suffixes and disclaimer protocols?
The good news, as I alluded to earlier, is that the search engines broadly speaking agree with this. Google, in anticipation of this debate, sent me some advice on how it is already tackling the issue and it is worth sharing this with the House. Google has what it calls a “sale of free items policy”, which states that Google allows the promotion only of sites that charge for services associated with products or services that may be otherwise available for free as long as a number of disclosures are presented together prominently above the fold on the landing pages. I will share the four items it talked about.
The first is that the site clearly states whether the advertiser is affiliated or not affiliated with the Government official source or free source; secondly, that the site discloses that the product, services or forms are available from the Government official source or free source either for free, where applicable, or at a lower cost than the advertiser charges; thirdly, that the site must describe the additional services offered that are available from the Government official source or free source—this is the value proposition—and that advertisers should not misrepresent the value that they add by highlighting features or services available from the official source for free; finally, that the ads and landing pages cannot promote services that provide little or no additional value to the user beyond the original official online automated application process.
It is helpful that some of the search engines do have a clear policy but it is still the case that the consumer’s eye will inevitably be drawn to the top of the page where the paid-for ads appear and where the consumer may also be under the misapprehension that if it is in a paid-for ad slot, it must be an official website.
What makes this so offensive is that the Government websites are already ours as a society. We as citizens have a stake in our Government. We as taxpayers already own these sites amongst us all. When one of these bogus service providers gets between the consumer and the website, they are getting in the way of something that is already ours by right. They are charging us for something we already own, for a service we are entitled to at the basic cost.
I am a fan of free enterprise. If there is an opportunity for an entrepreneur to make a living and it is a legal activity, I wish him good luck and every encouragement. If there is a genuine need for help to fill in Government forms because they are so unfathomably complex and a website advertises itself as providing a service where one is needed—which could of course include payment by PayPal—with ample disclaimers and no attempt to look like the official website, I think it is reasonable that the need be met. If it fills a need, it will be used.
But these websites depend on two things—winning the search engine optimisation battle and paying for the paid-for clicks, and for the consumer to think that they have found the official website they are looking for. The solution could be very simple indeed. In the first instance, it seems perfectly reasonable for the Government to come to an agreement with the search engine providers to ensure that if there is a service being searched with responses that have .gov.uk suffix, that website is placed right at the top of the search results in the No. 1 slot and at the head of the paid-for ad slot. In that way, every search will present the genuine official website first and the consumer will not find themselves being led to a wrong or a bogus site. Indeed, the search engines have already made headway on this. I spent a bit of time this afternoon checking and the .gov.uk sites seem to be at the top of the unpaid-for ads, but they are still in the fourth slot.
Should this problem persist and these bogus or dubious websites continue, it seems reasonable that a value test be put against these sites. If the site can prove that it is doing a reasonable and useful job, it should be allowed to compete against the Government on a service basis. After all, if people feel they need to spend the extra money to unravel a complex form or to pay using PayPal, it is important that the Government receive the message that they need to up their game in the service they are providing. But it is desirable for the Government to strive to provide an exemplary service to taxpayers in closing the opportunity to alternative providers of Government services. But should this problem persist and we continue to see people being duped into using these sites, even after the Government have done everything they can to reduce any chance of a value proposition for these misleading websites, surely a well policed outright ban must be considered.
We are well into the internet age and, as we develop the service that has now become a basic necessity of life, it is right that we should question and push back against some of the more unsavoury and opportunistic parts of the internet. Search engines are doing their bit, but it is vital that the Government should protect consumers from cynical and unscrupulous attempts to turn a profit while they are attempting to use services that are ours anyway. I am grateful to the Minister for his attention this late in the evening, and I look forward to hearing his comments on how we can resolve the problem.
The Minister of State, Cabinet Office (Mr Nick Hurd)
Madam Deputy Speaker, it is wonderful to see you in the Chair, and I should like to add my name to the long list of people who have stepped up to say the same thing today.
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier) on securing the debate and on the way in which he presented his argument. I thought he was rather self-effacing about the importance of the debate. This is one of the better attended Adjournment debates that I have taken part in, and the keen interest of Radio Hereford and Worcester has also been noted. This is an issue that strikes a chord; none of us wants to see our constituents being ripped off. He powerfully highlighted the difficulties, and in some cases the distress, that some users of online services have experienced as a result of the activities of some third-party websites providing access to Government services, often at a significant mark-up while providing little or no additional value.
This is an important issue, and it becomes even more important because of its context. As my hon. Friend will know, the Government are extremely ambitious to deliver more services online and to encourage more of our citizens and constituents to access services in that way, as set out in the Government’s digital strategy. Quite simply, we want the public to receive services that are simple, fast and clear and that can be accessed easily at times and in ways that suit them. We want to take full advantage of the digital opportunities. It will also please colleagues to hear that this will allow us to produce better services at a much lower cost. It is worth placing on record that the Government saved £500 million last year on digital and technology-related expenditure while making improvements to how people access information and services.
There is much to celebrate in the progress that we are making in building world-class digital services in this country, and we are ambitious to work with the private sector and civil society to help the 11 million people in the UK who are still digitally excluded to get online and close that gap. Given that context, and that ambition, it is really important that we should not allow fraud to undermine the trust in, and integrity of, the systems and services that we are presenting. Concerns about security and the potential for identity theft, confusion about which websites are trustworthy and fears about being ripped off all act as deterrents to the take-up of digital services, so this does matter to us and I thank my hon. Friend for drawing the issue to the House’s attention.
The abuse of access to Government services can take a range of forms, all of which can have a negative impact on confidence. They include: brand abuse, in which Government logos are used to imply affiliation with, or endorsement by, the Government or their agencies; phishing, when attempts are made to acquire information such as usernames, passwords, credit card details and other useful personal information by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication; and levying additional charges for access via third-party websites to Government services that are, in some cases, normally free. The justification for those charges are so-called additional services that in fact offer little or no additional value.
What are we doing about it? When we have discovered —or when the public have highlighted—the misuse of Government logos, we have ensured that they are removed from the offending sites. I am pleased to say that we have seen a significant drop in the number of reports of such misuse. However, reports relating to phishing and to third-party websites levying additional charges for access to Government websites have not fallen in the same way.
Obviously, some Government services are more impacted by this problem than others. Services that tend to involve one-off transactions, or those that citizens and businesses use only infrequently, tend to be the ones that third-party websites offer access to. Such services include passport and driving licence applications and the booking of driving tests. We are taking steps to deal with these issues, but there have been some challenges that I should like to share with the House.
The first complication is that the infrequency of use means that users of services provided by central Government Departments and their agencies are not necessarily familiar with the look and feel of those services online. The wide demographic base of the users of those services also limits the impact of a broad-based communication and education approach, in itself an expensive proposition. That does not make the problem insurmountable, nor does it mean that education about the best way to access Government services should not be part of our approach to tackling the problem. However, it does mean that we should seek creative ways of doing that, such as through the use of partners in the private and civil society sectors.
The second complication is the difficulty we have in categorising the activities of some of the websites we have been discussing as bad or misleading. In 2012, as my hon. Friend will know, the Office of Fair Trading conducted an investigation into the online commercial practices relating to Government services and concluded that it was not appropriate to take formal enforcement action. The investigation did not reveal widespread attempts by non-Government websites to misrepresent their affiliation with Government. Moreover, the OFT was of the view that the overall depiction of the sites investigated, including branding, colouring and images, did not create a misleading impression that they were official Government websites. In particular, many of the sites carried statements explaining the nature of the service provided and disclaiming any official status or affiliation with the Government.
Most of the sites subject to the complaints to which my hon. Friend referred tend to be those that, as he said, feature in search engine-sponsored ad spots. Search engines tend to highlight and prominently display such ads above the search results that are most relevant to the search terms that have been used and in general Government services that are accessible via gov.uk, the new single Government website for all information and services, top the list of relevant search results on the main search engine websites.
What are the Government doing about misleading third-party websites? The OFT’s findings and the means by which such sites promote their offerings bring us back to the subject of education and how we help users of our services to spot correctly when they are on a Government website or the site of a third party. How do we ensure that citizens and businesses enjoy the benefits and additional value that competition through third-party provision of access to Government services can bring without fear of being exploited? We want to encourage that.
Mr Hurd
If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I want to give proper time to the debate of my hon. Friend the Member for Wyre Forest.
We feel that similarity in the look and feel of Government services will help our efforts to educate users and we are achieving that through the transition of departmental websites as well as those of most of their agencies on to gov.uk. A unique typeface font is used on that site and mimicry of that font by non-Government sites will be difficult.
We do not think at this stage that legislation is the way to resolve the issue. Any action we take should be evidence-driven and the complaints we receive at the moment represent a small fraction of the total number of service users. That does not mean that we should be complacent, but it means that any action we take should be proportionate. Frankly, we need more information about how and why people use the third-party sites. At present, we have no evidence that they have all been misled. That could be the result of under-reporting, but we must also leave room for the possibility that it is not.
We do not as a Government have a single clear view of the scale of the problem of third-party sites mis-selling Government services and until recently there has been little consistency in how the Government have recorded and monitored details of complaints about the issue. The situation cannot continue, so my officials in the Government Digital Service have proposed, and Departments have agreed to, a cross-Government approach to tackling and tracking the problem. That will result in a clearer view of the scale of the issue, which currently appears to affect a small proportion of service users. Further action will depend on the scale and seriousness of the problems reported. That will also guide our engagement with the search engines on their enforcement of the terms and conditions that are supposed to guide the use of their sponsored ad slots.
I am pleased to say that in other areas we are making more headway. On phishing, the clear illegality of the behaviour has meant a more clear-cut approach to tackling the problem. Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, for example, has a robust system in place to find and shut down rogue sites engaged in phishing activity. In 2011-12, HMRC shut down 841 rogue sites and in 2012-13, it shut down 560. Additionally, the HMRC digital services security team has undertaken a cross-cutting exercise to assist Department for Work and Pensions colleagues in developing the Department’s anti-phishing capabilities by providing training and process maps for dealing with such work.
I welcome the fact that my hon. Friend has thrown a spotlight on the issue. There is clearly a lot of work still to be done, but I very much welcome the insights and challenges that debates such as this provide to help us to make sure that as many citizens as possible enjoy and trust the benefits of digital Government services.
Question put and agreed to.
Ministerial Correction
(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Energy and Climate Change
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The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)
On biofuels, I can assure the hon. Lady that they will be used only if they do not compromise pipeline integrity; currently, they are not used at all.
[Official Report, Energy Bill, Public Bill Committee, 12th Sitting, (Afternoon) 31 January 2013, c. 459.]
An error has been identified in the above statement.
The correct statement should have been:
The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Gregory Barker)
On biofuels, I can assure the hon. Lady that they will be used only if they do not compromise pipeline integrity.
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Trafficking in the Sinai Desert
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Immigration Controls
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Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)
I am delighted that this debate was granted by Mr Speaker and delighted to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby. I am also pleased that my hon. Friend the Minister for Immigration can respond to the debate, because this is quite a busy day for his Department as regards immigration. I commend him and my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary for the Immigration Bill, which will be debated this afternoon. There is no doubt that we are providing the warm-up act this morning—the opportunity for hon. Members to sharpen and master the arguments for this afternoon. On that note, I welcome the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) and congratulate him on his new role. I can assure him that I shall be supplying some facts and information that may equip him for the debate this afternoon.
Conservative Ministers in the Home Office have made great progress in the last three and a half years in tackling the problems with our immigration system and the atrocious legacy inherited from Labour. One of the biggest concerns for my constituents is immigration controls. In the run-up to and during the general election in 2010, it was the No. 1 issue raised with me in my constituency—the issue on which my constituents were pressing for action. That is not surprising, because it is a rural constituency in the east of England, so it has many issues with seasonal agricultural workers and migrants coming in. My constituents wanted, and are eager to see, a wide range of effective reforms and policies put in place to keep our borders secure and the public safe.
I want to draw attention to a number of issues, particularly the ongoing consequences of Labour’s failures; cases from my constituency in which the immigration system has not worked effectively; the need for further reforms to remove foreign criminals, prisoners and terrorists; reforms to human rights laws; EU immigration, the free movement directive and transitional controls on Bulgaria and Romania; and the need to ensure that we have an immigration system that, importantly, lets in wealth creators, entrepreneurs and people who will make a positive contribution to this country, while preventing from coming in, and removing, those who should not be here.
We can appreciate what the Government have already done to deal with many of the problems in our immigration system and understand what more needs to be done only by understanding what went wrong with the system under the Labour Government. The Minister is fully aware of the past and the appalling legacy left by the Labour Government, and no doubt continues to deal daily with many of the consequences, such as the backlog of cases and appeals. It is a fact that immigration controls were ineffective. Immigration numbers had spiralled out of all proportion. Transitional controls had not been placed on the A8 countries when they joined the EU. Labour passed the Human Rights Act 1998, which gave illegal immigrants, foreign criminals and many taxpayer-funded lawyers new excuses to block deportation. We are still living with many of the consequences of that on a daily basis.
Three quarters of the new jobs created in the UK economy after 1997 went to people born overseas, and a monumental backlog of asylum cases had built up. Almost 500,000 asylum cases, which the previous Government failed to process effectively, accumulated and, as we now know, the figures were massaged to reduce the backlog, rather than people being sent home. We now know that there were not effective systems of control over management or even the processing of data at that stage.
I have an example from Witham of a constituent who came to Britain as an asylum seeker from Albania in 2002, applied to extend his leave to remain in January 2006 and, almost eight years on, is still waiting for his case to be determined. Such delays are wrong. It should never be forgotten that under the previous Government so many cases—too many—were left unresolved. It has been estimated that more than 3 million immigrants came to live in Britain during Labour’s time in office, and illegal immigrants could add another million to that. In Labour’s 1997 manifesto, it pledged that a Labour Government would
“ensure swift and fair decisions on whether someone can stay or go”,
but, as we now know, there was an open-door policy inviting everyone to come to Britain, and our border control system was completely dysfunctional and broken.
The Office for National Statistics has estimated that the UK’s population, which is about 63 million, could reach as much as 75 million by 2035, with two thirds of that increase arising out of the consequences of immigration. In my county of Essex, between 2004 and 2012, the estimated number of non-UK-born residents increased from 69,000, which was 5% of the population, to 104,000, which is over 7.5%. Across the UK in the same period, the number of non-UK-born residents rose from 5.2 million, which is the equivalent of 9% of the population, in 2004 to nearly 7.7 million in 2012, which is equivalent to more than 12% of the UK population.
As we have seen in newspaper reports this morning, population increases and, obviously, increases in immigration have an impact on our public services and infrastructure, but the strains placed on the country’s infrastructure and public services by the numbers that I have referred to have been kept hidden. Only now is the full extent of the facts emerging. A report prepared by the Department for Communities and Local Government in August 2007, which was not cleared for circulation—it was published only earlier this year, in response to a written parliamentary question—highlighted the fact that new arrivals
“can affect resource planning and make school and classroom management difficult”,
that there is
“anecdotal evidence of recent migration placing pressure on the availability and affordability of rented accommodation”,
and that the
“number of A8 migrants claiming childcare benefits, tax credits and income support are all rising.”
Immigration is not the only cause of pressure on our public services, housing and infrastructure, but it is a factor that cannot be ignored. The previous Government tried to shut down debate on this issue, but it is valid for the Government today to have this discussion. That reflects the fact that they deserve credit for their commitment to addressing these problems. Conservative Ministers can be proud of the actions that they have already taken to regain control of the broken immigration system. Net migration is down by one third. It is heading closer to the Government’s target, which is to bring it below 100,000 by 2015. The number of immigrants coming to Britain is at its lowest since 2001. Interestingly, under the previous Conservative Government, between 1991 and 1997, the inflow of migrants to the UK ranged between 266,000 and 329,000—a modest level—with annual net migration not exceeding 77,000, but after that, under Labour, inward migration increased year on year, in five of the next six years, from 391,000 in 1998 to 589,000 in 2004. It stayed above half a million until last year.
The UK Border Agency, one of the most poorly performing and discredited Government agencies, is being abolished and replaced. Bogus colleges have been exposed and student visa abuses tackled. New controls on the family migration route to tackle sham marriages—quite rightly—and to protect vulnerable people have been introduced and are welcome. The new Immigration Bill goes further and does more to control our borders and immigration flows. I welcome the measures, as my constituents do, to make it more difficult for illegal immigrants to come to Britain and live in this country. There is also the contribution that temporary migrants will be required to make to the NHS; we are seeing that in the newspapers just this morning.
We also have to cut the appeal routes. We have to make removals of illegal immigrants and foreign criminals easier and clamp down on the abuses of article 8 of the European convention on human rights and judicial activism that we have seen across the country. I would like to come on to some constituency cases that I have experienced.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
The hon. Lady is listing a catalogue of problems with immigration, but does she agree that there are also huge benefits from migration, which companies highlight, and that legitimate, legal immigrants deserve fair and prompt access to this country, so that they can come in and contribute to it?
Priti Patel
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As I touched on earlier, immigrants are entrepreneurs and business people, and immigration touches on the skills agenda—another issue we could debate for a long time. Where people make a positive contribution, we should find the best routes—the right routes—to make them welcome and support them in visa applications and so on. We must be proactive on that front, but we can only do that and change the system in their favour once we have tackled the catalogue of problems, some of which I have highlighted.
The devastation left by the Labour Government was so great that we cannot overestimate the challenges faced by the Government and the Minister. Repairing the damage will no doubt take a long time. Labour’s legacy can still be seen across the country. I am sure that many hon. and right hon. Members see cases in their constituencies involving immigrants who have been deemed to have no right to remain in the UK, but, quite wrongly, pursue every legal avenue to remain here. In my constituency, there have been cases of immigrants who have outstayed their welcome. Such cases demonstrate the systemic failures of the controls put in place under the previous Government. I could reel off many cases, but I have a couple that I would like to highlight.
One lady from the Philippines was granted permission to enter the country in 2006 on a 48-month work permit to work in a care home. Since then, her husband, family and children, who have gone to local schools, have all come over. Once the visa expired and she was asked to leave, little action was taken, so the family remain in the UK. Last summer, the case was brought to my attention and an appeal to remain in the UK was rejected. To avoid deportation, the family lodged a further application to remain in the UK on human rights grounds in January this year, which was refused in June. The case is now going on and on. In July, they lodged another appeal, which is still pending. If that appeal is rejected, the family may undertake another appeal and prolong the process even more. Surely that cannot be right.
Another case in my constituency that has been ongoing for years involves a family from Nigeria who are here without any right to remain. They were informed that they should leave the UK two years ago, but they, too, embarked on a series of applications and appeals. Such actions are all about delay and prolonging the process for people who have no right whatever to remain in the country. That undermines public confidence in the immigration system. A stop must be put to repeated applications and appeals.
I welcome the measures in the Immigration Bill to limit the number of appeals that immigrants make. I urge the Minister to look at ways of going further in speeding up cases—the issue is the efficiency and effectiveness with which cases are determined—so that those who are deemed to have no right to remain in the UK can be removed without delay. Once someone has lost their case or appeal, unless there are genuinely exceptional circumstances, there is no reason why they should not leave voluntarily or be deported, if that has to be done, within a couple of weeks. They should certainly not be here for a prolonged period. That would obviously restore public confidence in the system and send a powerful signal to those who have abused the system. It would send a message that Britain is not a soft touch and will take tough action.
I also welcome the approach that will be taken to deporting foreign criminals before their appeals are held. I ask the Minister to consider extending that approach to other persons staying in the UK illegally and involved in repeat applications and appeals. An aspect of immigration controls that greatly concerns my constituents and the wider public is the way foreign offenders, prisoners and terrorists are able to remain in the country, despite the overt threat they pose to public safety and national security. The Abu Qatada case is symbolic of the wider problem with immigration controls and human rights laws: judicial activism and judgments from Europe that, frankly, undermine this country. We should be able to remove the likes of Aso Mohammed Ibrahim, who killed a 12-year-old girl, and serial Somali criminals Abdisamad Adow Sufi and Abdiaziz Ibrahim Elmi, without the courts and human rights laws interfering and our courts being lectured on what we should be doing.
Killers, sex offenders, violent criminals, persistent offenders and supporters of terrorists should face the automatic expectation of deportation. They should not expect to be protected by the ridiculous interpretations of human rights laws that the European Court of Human Rights, and sometimes even our own courts, provides. We should have a prison-to-plane approach, whereby foreign national offenders who have served custodial sentences are removed. When they leave prison, they should be taken to an airport and deported at the earliest opportunity. My constituents and the British public would feel greatly reassured if they knew that such dangerous criminals were not able to set foot again in our country and their communities. I welcome the fact that the Government are taking the matter seriously; that is shown in the way that they are initiating deportation proceedings sooner. As a result, the average time taken to remove a foreign national offender following the completion of a custodial sentence was lowered to 77 days in 2011. We still have 11,000 foreign national offenders in our prisons and thousands more who avoid custodial sentences.
The Minister knows of my concern about the fact that more than 3,100 foreign nationals who are subject to deportation orders are still in the country. Shockingly, that includes 2,300 people who have been on the list for more than a year, 25 of whom have been here for more than 10 years. Every day, hard-working British taxpayers are left to pick up the hefty bill for legal costs and other expenses for those individuals. We must put an end to it, and if that means going further on the Human Rights Act, reforming the European convention on human rights and taking unilateral action to defend parliamentary sovereignty from European judicial activism, my constituents and the British public would expect nothing less from a Conservative Government acting in the national interest.
I urge the Minister and his colleagues in the Ministry of Justice to look at ways to deport European prisoners to their countries to serve their sentences. As he is aware, the Council of Europe convention on the transfer of sentenced persons enables European national prisoners to be deported to serve their sentences in the country of their nationality, but unfortunately, it is a voluntary agreement. There are 4,000 or so European national prisoners in our jails, but only 138 applications were received in 2011, with 127 being referred to other jurisdictions for consideration. The numbers being deported under the convention are too small. In 2007, 111 prisoners were deported, but that number is declining and has since dropped, meaning that not even 1% of European national prisoners serve their sentences in their own countries. Slightly more than 1,000 foreign national offenders from the European economic area were deported in 2011. I hope that the Minister will make that issue a priority in his discussions in Europe and seek to secure the deportation of more European national offenders.
The final aspect of immigration controls I shall raise relates to immigration from Europe. The free movement of goods and peoples is an important principle of the European Union, but the unrestricted access given to European nationals has added significantly to our population and the strain on public services. Of the 2.7 million residents in this country who were born in other EU countries, 1.1 million are estimated to have been born in those countries that joined the EU since 2004. In 2003, more than 500,000 nationals from other EU countries and 50,000 from countries about to join in 2004 were employed in the UK. By 2011, that number more than doubled to 1.29 million, which included more than 700,000 nationals from the 2004 intake of member states and more than 500,000 from the pre-2004 accession.
On top of that, there are an estimated 600,000 economically inactive EU nationals in the UK, many of whom will be accessing public services and benefits. This morning, I read that one person in 25 claiming jobseeker’s allowance is an EU immigrant, so the pressure on the public purse and public services is clearly enormous. Meanwhile, child benefit is being paid in respect of 40,000 children living in other European countries.
It cannot be right that our country faces an uphill battle, and legal action with Europe, to reduce some of the benefits being paid to EU nationals. I encourage the Minister and the Government to consider how we can renegotiate the position with Europe to bring common sense and sanity to our immigration controls, so that they do not prevent the working of the free market but enable us to limit immigration, prevent abuses of free movement rights and remove those who should not be here and are pushing the boundaries by accessing benefits and public services.
I also press the Government to make greater use of the powers already available through the free movement directive to restrict the right of entry and the right of residence on the grounds of public policy, public security or public health. It is almost inevitable that we would be challenged by the European Commission for doing so, but there are many cases, especially involving European national criminals, where we must take a firm approach and give the public confidence.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the hon. Lady for bringing this matter before the House for consideration. I apologise for not being here at the beginning of the debate; I had problems with the tube and was 45 minutes behind time. I understand that there is a top 10 list of countries that contribute to the crime rate in the United Kingdom. Not all of them are European; they are: Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Nigeria, India, Jamaica, Somalia, Portugal, Pakistan, and our neighbour, Ireland. Does she feel that the Minister should focus on those top 10? If we can deal with the top 10, we will deal with the majority of the crime rate.
Priti Patel
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his timely intervention. I was about to come to that list. It is right that we start focusing. There has been too much generalisation in the past, so we need a focus on some countries.
I have urged the Minister to take firm action on European national criminals. I also urge him to consider the transitional controls on Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants. The transitional controls are due to expire at the end of this year. First, immigration is about sustainability, and Britain cannot sustain or cope with a large influx from eastern Europe. Secondly, criminal gangs are an issue that is well documented; the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) read out the list of countries. In the last 10 days, we have seen reports of Romanian criminal gangs committing crimes. They are flying into some of our airports daily. The experience of the last decade has led the public to feel anxious about new waves of immigration. This is an opportunity for the Government to reassure the public and give confidence about the new accession countries.
It is almost inevitable that we will feel the impact of new countries’ accession to the free movement directive. The Minister knows as well as anyone that more action is needed to establish an immigration system that is finally fit for purpose and has public confidence. The Government are taking the right steps towards creating a system of controls that enables wealth creators and entrepreneurs—those who want to make a positive contribution—to come to our country, as well as tourists, whom we invite, while keeping out people who should not be here. Once the excellent new Immigration Bill has gone through Parliament, I trust he and his ministerial colleagues will continue to focus on strengthening our immigration controls and taking action to secure our borders. As I have stated throughout this debate, we must send out positive messages to those whom we should welcome to this country and, importantly, reassure hard-pressed British taxpayers that we are fixing the broken system. We should give the public confidence in the immigration system.
Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)
It says much about 21st-century Britain that my hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) should have introduced this debate. Although I am a proud Englishman, that is only part of my story. My late mother was twice a refugee by age 15, having been born during the early months of the war in Breslau, or Wroclaw, in what was then Germany and is now Poland. By age 15 she ended up in West Germany, where a few years later she met my father, who was serving in the British Army. Immigration has had an impact on me, given that one of my parents was an immigrant to this country, and both my hon. Friend’s parents were immigrants to this country. We love this country and the opportunities that it has given us. Despite much of what she said, we do not necessarily see immigration simply as a problem; it has some very positive sides. It is important that those elements are put on the record from time to time as well, and I shall endeavour to do so in my contribution.
We are going to hear the mantra that net migration has been cut by a third. It has become a key campaigning tool in recent months for the Conservative party, and it will no doubt be heralded as one of the Government’s central achievements as we approach the 2015 general election. Undoubtedly, important work has been done to crack down on some obvious immigration abuses, and rightly, as trust in the whole immigration system has reached an all-time low among our fellow Britons.
The Government should be applauded for the work that they have done to clamp down on bogus colleges, sham marriages, fake students, health tourists and the like. I noticed only this morning that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health rightly announced that we should not become an international health service. We should be proud that the NHS is free at the point of delivery. I have been an MP for central London for the past 12 years, and I have no doubt that health tourism has become increasingly acute in some areas, such as Paddington in my constituency. My constituents are suffering, and hard-working individuals’ taxes are not being used for their own purposes.
The Government have also been striving to address some of the pull factors that have hitherto made the UK such an appealing destination for those who wish to abuse generous western welfare and benefit systems. Nevertheless, we should be wary of the notion that the imposition of a cap alone and a broader clampdown mean job done on immigration. For all the talk about the squeeze on numbers, all too many Britons experience a different daily reality on the streets where they live and read a different story in their newspapers. Meanwhile, precisely the type of person whom we seek to attract to our nation—successful business people, entrepreneurs, investors, the highly skilled, top students and high-spending tourists—have encountered great difficulties entering the UK, just as we have been rightly discussing the need to compete in the global race. I fear that the disparity between the headline figures and reality is breeding ever more cynicism while doing economic damage.
I appreciate that time is relatively tight in this popular debate, so I will focus on three key concerns of mine. The first is the entry of business people to the UK, which as one might imagine is an acute day-to-day constituency issue for me as the Member for Cities of London and Westminster. The second is student visas and the third is the specific downsides in my central London constituency of the EU migration to which my hon. Friend referred.
Let me start with new migration broadly. As long ago as January 2007, I led a debate in the House of Commons on the possible impact on London of the accession of Romania and Bulgaria to the European Union. In particular, I sought to increase funding to Westminster City council, which was, even at that stage, being overburdened by the significant increase in rough sleeping, crime and antisocial behaviour following the 2004 accession of the so-called A8 countries, such as Poland and the Czech Republic.
Unfortunately, the things of which I warned at the time have come to pass as Romania and Bulgaria edged closer to fully fledged EU membership. Many of us have seen at first hand the Roma gypsy encampments that have sprung up around Marble Arch; others appeared in the vicinity of Victoria station during last year’s Olympics. Some of the people living in those encampments were part of an organised begging operation, deliberately targeting the lucrative west end tourist market in the Marble Arch area. That encampment has since become merely the most visible example of a growing problem, with similar camps appearing outside the Imperial War museum—south of the river, near the constituency of the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey)—and around the 9/11 memorial in Grosvenor square, to name just two sites here in central London.
Meanwhile I am receiving, and continue to receive, weekly reports from exasperated constituents who find spontaneous bedrooms in the doorways of their homes, as well as litter, excrement and worse in garden squares. There is also the issue of constituents and tourists who come into central London being harassed by aggressive beggars daily. Some local residents have even witnessed such issues in broad daylight. The people living in those eyesore encampments have, in my view, no intention of legally exercising their treaty rights to be here. Nevertheless, due to international treaties, particularly the EU-related treaties, they are incredibly difficult to remove, as the Minister is well aware.
Westminster City council and our local borough policing teams are now diverting vast resources to street cleaning operations, translation services and operations to tackle begging and organised crime. They are even spending vast sums of taxpayer’s money on transport to send problem migrants back to their countries of origin. Of course, little can be done if those individuals, within a matter of days, decide to return to the UK.
It is mostly local taxpayers who are paying the financial cost of national policy decisions. Until such problems are tackled, and until we find a way of stemming the vast tide of people coming from the EU, I am afraid that many of the Government’s declarations to have got a grip on immigration will mean precious little to average Britons. We therefore risk introducing a whole lot of cynicism to the system.
A number of constituents have written to alert me to schemes in ailing southern European economies to give non-EU migrants a fast track to citizenship if they invest in their nations. They know that a prize such as citizenship is enticing because it gives the applicant the potential prospect of moving to any country in the European Union.
It is terrible. Day in, day out, we see awfully desperate people from war-torn parts of northern Africa crossing the Mediterranean. We have seen the particular tragedies, which I suspect are only the tip of the iceberg, around the coast of Italy and Malta in recent weeks. The truth, however, is that many such individuals are able to make their way into the European Union. As a result, they could end up on these shores as well as in other parts of the Union within a matter of weeks or months. That provides yet another example of how difficult it will be to keep headline net migration numbers under control without resorting to the clampdown that we have seen in the past on highly skilled people from non-EU nations.
That brings me to my other concerns. I continue to be lobbied by business people and those in the education sector about the coalition’s visa regime, which continues to deter the highly skilled from engaging with the UK. I am aware that the Chancellor has made it clear in China that he sees that to be a problem, and that he wants to try to smooth it out.
Since the coalition took office in 2010, it has rightly made building the United Kingdom’s trade and export sector a core part of its economic strategy. That must be the case. We must have a sustainable recovery, which will not be built on ultra-low interest rates and a further boost in the housing market. It will have to be through investment from abroad in the globalised world in which we live, as well as ensuring that the export sector goes from strength to strength, particularly among small and medium-sized enterprises. It is a matter of some national shame that when it comes to China and India, two countries with which we have had long-standing connections, it is the Germans and, to a large extent, even the French who are teaching us some lessons. We need to ensure that we provide export credit guarantees that make it easier for our SMEs to thrive.
Foreign investment in the UK must and will continue to remain a hugely important source of financing, helping to support infrastructure development, employment and economic growth. However, those who wish to do business in the UK face a series of unnecessary obstacles, despite the Government’s best intentions. Such barriers include the perceived complexity of the UK visa system. I know that we will get some improvements, but there will still be that perception about time lags. It deters high-value business investors, visitors and workers. Along with resourcing issues at the UK’s borders and within certain embassies overseas, and the perceived lack of capacity at UK airports, that issue is potentially problematic.
I am not suggesting that we should just make life easy for tourists who come to this country, but there are some high net worth individuals—global citizens—living in places such as China who will come to London and spend £40,000 or £50,000 in one afternoon at Selfridges or Harrods. It seems madness that we are saying, “Don’t come here. Go and spend that in the salons of Milan, Rome or Paris.” That is the message that has hitherto gone out. I know that there are some improvements, which the Minister will no doubt tell us about.
The City of London corporation, in my constituency, regularly receives complaints from business. It believes that practical steps could be taken to improve the first interaction with our visa system. They include availability of own-language application forms and Schengen equivalence. The City corporation welcomes the announcement on the latter following the Chancellor’s recent visit to China, but the ambiguity of the Home Office’s subsequent statement has also been noted. The Government must work swiftly and clearly to make that announcement a reality.
Chinese applicants may have to travel up to 500 miles to appear in person at a visa-processing centre. Even after April 2013, applicants have had to submit to fingerprinting and face a non-refundable charge of £70. They have also had to supply a letter from their employer to prove that they have leave from work to travel. It is again perhaps not surprising that one study found that nearly a third of Chinese potential visitors abandon the UK visa process and instead visit other destinations, many of which may be in Europe.
The future is not just about China. There are anecdotal reports that, in countries such as Brazil, applicants are faced with taking several days off work to get visas processed. Anyone who needs to travel regularly is understandably reluctant to hand over their passport for what might be an unspecified period. The City corporation has been told that in some centres, passports can be surrendered for up to three to six months without feedback from the UK Border Agency as to when to expect a return of documents. While I would not say that that is an acute problem, as Member of Parliament for this constituency, that issue is not entirely unknown to me.
In contrast with the UK, key competitor countries have, since 2010, sought to simplify their procedures. For example, a visa for Australia can generally be processed in just 24 hours. The United States, which has been widely criticised for its visa bureaucracy, particularly in the aftermath of the terrible events of September 2001, has also overhauled its systems since President Obama gave the State Department 60 days to reassess its visa regimes for Brazil and China.
Before I turn to student visas, I must declare an interest as I have, for the past eight and a half years, been a member of the advisory board of the London School of Commerce, which is a private higher education establishment.
Britain’s world-beating education sector draws fee-paying students from across the globe, which we should be incredibly proud of. The standards and our high regard for our exam system mean that a British degree is regarded highly across the globe. Many young students who come to study will be in this country for only a short time—a year or two, and perhaps staying for a year after graduating to embark on their first taste of employment. They will return to their home nations as tremendous ambassadors for the UK for decades to come as they build wealth in their homelands. A 2011 Home Affairs Committee report suggested that no fewer than 27 contemporary foreign Heads of State were educated in the UK.
Our universities have hitherto been exceptionally good at tapping that ever-growing market, with a 9.9% market share in 2009 and export earnings calculated at about £7.9 billion. The value of international students to London as well as the UK, on the Government’s own figures, is believed to exceed £20 billion, and there is huge potential for that to grow.
I accept that there is no cap on international student numbers, but the Government’s explicit objective has been to reduce student numbers to bring net migration below 100,000 by the next election, in May 2015. The treatment of student and post-study work visas has become a regular complaint among top universities in my constituency, not just in relation to any of the bucket shop language schools or sham colleges. At one élite central London institution in my constituency, the numbers of applications from Indian and Pakistani students for postgraduate taught programmes are down by 14% and 11% respectively, as future employment prospects are a key motivator in those markets.
Another institution faces recruitment difficulties in disciplines such as accounting, economics, finance, management and law, and is finding it increasingly difficult to obtain transfers for high-level researchers to maintain an academic staff of the highest international repute and pedigree. Prospective overseas staff now perceive that it is more difficult to get a visa for the UK, and prefer to move to the US or Australia instead. There are other complaints about what is regarded as a very bureaucratic system, with enormous forms to be completed, and extortionate visa fees, which compare unfavourably with those of our western competitors.
We should not underestimate our global talent. One reason that our universities are so strong is that some of the finest and best academics work here. They should not just be regarded as overseas employees, because the reality is that many academics have to spend time abroad. They may have a visa to come to this country, but they need to go to a range of different events abroad to lecture and to find out more, and the sheer bureaucracy that administrative departments of our universities have to go through, daily marking where academics are at any one time, is an increasingly strong disincentive.
Dr Huppert
I agree with much of what the hon. Gentleman is saying. He is raising some real concerns, but is he also aware that academics find other processes frustrating, such as the fact that to be paid a couple of hundred pounds to examine a PhD viva somewhere, they have to go through the bureaucracy of proving their immigration status? That is completely disproportionate, because nobody comes to this country to get rich examining PhDs.
Mark Field
I sincerely hope that that is not the case. The hon. Gentleman, who represents a prime university town, will be well aware of such concerns. I am sure that such matters give the impression that we are not open for business in the way that we should be if we are to appeal to the brightest and best across the globe. It has to be said that many fledgling but highly reputable universities across the world are looking to attract some of the brightest talent in this country with absolutely open arms, and they would certainly not provide the evidence of reciprocal negativity that we see in elements of a bureaucratic, tick-box culture in the UKBA and the Home Office. It is a cliché to say that a reputation may take many years to build up but can be lost in an instant, but there is a real risk that the UK will lose its hard-won reputation as a country that welcomes trade, investment and the most talented students from across the world, at a time when the need for that international expertise and capital is very high.
I believe that there is a need for a change of rhetoric, because misconceptions are as damaging as actual practical barriers. The Government rightly wish to ensure that the UK is open for business. A passionate restatement of that goal both here this morning and in the main Chamber this afternoon, combined with some practical improvements to the visa process and the operation of our borders, should help to generate significant trade, investment and diplomatic benefits.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby, and to follow the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field). I agree with many of his concerns about what our policies are doing and about many people being put off from applying to come here. The issue is not only the facts of the process, but the rhetoric and the impression that is given, as will always be true of any complicated system.
Let me give my assessment. I think that legal immigration has a substantial benefit financially and in the generation of jobs. We also benefit culturally from people coming here and bringing an international mixture, as we saw in the fantastic sporting achievements in the Olympics of people who have not, or whose families have not, been here their entire lives. We in this country benefit from immigration.
We need a system that works, that is fair and fast, and that discriminates accurately between people coming here legally and those trying to break the rules, but that is not happening. The Government must actively promote our country to the world to encourage people who would benefit the UK to come here—we have seen a bit of that in relation to China—rather than send out messages about our being so determined to clamp down on immigration and so fixated on a numerical target that we are prepared to accept the consequence of driving people away.
Like the hon. Gentleman, I find that when I talk to companies in our fantastic and world-leading high-tech centre in Cambridge, one of the two top issues they almost invariably raise is concern about the immigration system. Sometimes the issue of transport is raised first, but normally it is immigration, because those companies are trying to get staff and are experiencing delays. Bad decision making holds them up. If errors are made, they have to let people go: they simply cannot wait, because they need staff who can travel.
Companies sometimes cannot get customers to come to the UK. One company I recently visited told me that prospective clients in the US whom it wants to invite over to look at a product, which sells perhaps for £500,000, are increasingly not US citizens, but citizens from China, India or elsewhere, so they cannot come into the country. It does not help British sales and exports if the person to whom companies are trying to sell cannot get into the country in a reasonable time scale. That hits our exports and reduces our ability to sell around the world. Such issues come up time and again.
The Minister kindly came to Cambridge to meet a small selection of organisations, and I hope that he found it an interesting experience. I believe that his heart is absolutely in the right place. I am sure that he does not want our approach to cause harm to Britain, and that he would like nothing better than to get rid of the problem—the bureaucracy and other issues—but that problem absolutely must be tackled.
There are no doubt problems associated with illegal immigration, but that is a very different category. People have come here illegally, been brutally exploited by gangmasters and become stuck in a grey economy or trafficked, which is certainly not the right route. We want people to apply through the correct process, but we need to treat them correctly and make appropriate decisions, which we are not doing.
If we are to have a good debate about immigration, we need more accurate numbers, with correct information about who should be here and who actually is here. We simply do not yet have that information, or the competence required, which undermines the ability to make rational arguments or have confidence in the system. Until recently, we had no idea how many people who applied as students were here and had overstayed, let alone who they were.
We should target people who are not here legally, and not get it wrong. Some of the texts sent out by Capita, based on Home Office data, were targeted at people who are British citizens. There are a huge number of errors in those data, and there continue to be problems. The Vine report on e-borders—even the bits not redacted by the Home Secretary—have highlighted that about 650,000 alerts about potential drug and tobacco smugglers were accidentally deleted. That is not the standard of competence that we need from the Home Office.
The problem is not new. The previous Government had the problem of an asylum backlog, with some 500,000 cases discovered sitting there and awaiting a decision. Such bureaucratic incompetence is a problem for all Ministers, none of whom would want such things to be going on, but the problem is still there.
Mark Field
It is only fair to put it on the record that the redaction on the part of the Home Office should not necessarily be seen as sinister or as trying to pull the wool over British people’s eyes; some genuine security-related issues were obviously in the Home Secretary’s mind in that regard.
Dr Huppert
Indeed. I do not want to go into that issue in detail, but the Home Affairs Committee has asked the Home Secretary to let it see that document in private, but so far she has said that she will not do that. I hope that she is not suggesting that the Select Committee is a risk to national security; I am sure that she would not want to say that.
We must have exit checks back in place. We need to know who is leaving, so that we can tailor our resources more appropriately. When someone applies for a repeated visa, we have no idea whether they leave promptly every time, or whether they stay until just before they reapply. That absurd system means that we cannot tell the person who has been repeatedly breaking the rules from the person who has been repeatedly sticking to them. Exit checks were scrapped many years ago by the previous Government, and it is now a struggle to bring them back in. We must fight for their return, even though the Vine report was not encouraging on that.
The hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster talked about students, from whom we benefit massively. Education is one of our biggest exports. Students who come here to study pay very large fees. They contribute to society while they are here, and many want to stay on and work here, and it is fantastic to keep the people whom we have just trained. Those who go back benefit us in many other ways. As the hon. Gentleman said, many world leaders and company leaders have trained here. We do fantastically well from a network of people who go on to act as British ambassadors. None the less, the messages that get sent out are problematic. The hon. Gentleman spoke about post-study work. We should make it far easier for people to come here and work and use the skills that we have given them. I hope the Government will move on that matter, because there are great benefits to be had.
We also have an issue around rhetoric, which is becoming increasingly unpleasant and inaccurate. A recent headline in The Telegraph said that there were 600,000 unemployed European Union migrants in Britain. The definition of unemployed in that instance was interesting, because it included schoolchildren, pensioners and a range of other people whom one would not normally think of as unemployed. They were not a problem, but that is the rhetoric that we see. The Government have touched on that matter. I am sure the Minister and I will disagree over the appropriateness of the “Go home” vans and of some of the other messages that are put out. Today, the Home Secretary has announced that the “Go home” vans will no longer be used. I am pleased about that because they were deeply inappropriate. We must not play into that unpleasant media rhetoric that criticises the benefits from immigration.
We must fix the decision-making process around individuals, because such errors are replicated. People get concerned when they hear stories of errors being made, and there are too many. Anybody who has a constituency case load will see bizarre decisions being made and things that do not make much sense. The Home Office tries to correct such decisions when they come up. I pay tribute to the regional account manager, Saleah Ahmed, who has helped me with a huge range of cases, but it should not be the role of MPs to spot that people have got things repeatedly wrong. Those decisions make a big difference and they get around the world. A perverse decision was made in a recent case: an Indian student who was required to have a certain amount of money in their bank account ended up being just £20 short of a large sum, due to currency fluctuations just before the decision. Any reasonable system would have spotted that the reason was a drop in the rupee by a few per cent., and would have concluded that the person deserved to pass the test, rather than failing them and causing huge problems.
We must do more work on those errors, which must be the bane of the Minister’s life. The number of successful appeals is quite alarming, as is the number of cases which the Home Office ends up not even defending because it accepts that it has got it wrong. The Home Affairs Committee has detailed many examples of such cases.
On the separate issue of asylum and refugees, which none of us wants to see conflated with general migration, the Select Committee recently published a detailed report on the asylum position. We found people waiting some 16 years for a decision on what should happen. I have constituents who are waiting. They contact the Border Agency every year asking for a decision and are told, “Not yet, we will let you know later.” That is totally unacceptable. We cannot put things in a box marked “complex cases” and then leave them there. These are people who have been stuck in this country for years. One constituent of mine has been waiting for 14 years. They are uncertain of their future and of what to do. We should never do that to people. People deserve a decision, and those decisions need to be correct and accurate. One problem with appeals is that the Government lose so many of them. I am sure that there are people who are trying to delay making a decision, but there are also those who have a genuine problem and a genuine case.
One of my constituents had been sentenced to death in Iran because he had converted to Christianity. He applied for asylum and included a copy of his death sentence and was told that that was not enough evidence that he was at risk. I would love to know what sort of proof most people have. That situation has now been corrected, and it did happen some five years ago.
We need better training and a system that is focused on ensuring that decisions are right. We have staff who appear to believe that their job is to try to stop people claiming asylum. That was highlighted by the independent inspector, who said that caseworkers were selective in the use of information to support the case for refusing asylum. Caseworkers should aim to make a decision that is correct rather than one not to let people in. There have been some horrible cases. In one case, the caseworker quoted
“independent country of origin information which stated that women in Iraq could gain effective help from a local police station, but omitted the preceding sentence which stated that ‘women have been sexually assaulted by the police when reporting to a police station.’”
That somewhat undermines the support one could expect from a police station, and makes it a far more reasonable action not to go there. We are trapping many of these people in a cycle of hopelessness, leaving them very vulnerable. I suggest Members look at that report and the British Red Cross report on destitution.
Let me summarise some of the good things that the Government have done. They have ended the routine use of child detention for immigration purposes. It was one of the great shames of the previous Government that thousands upon thousands of children were detained for immigration purposes; that should not happen. I am pleased that the Government have made the change. As has been debated in this place previously, however, more constraints have been put on family migration, making it hard for many of my constituents to be reunited with their families. Families are being torn apart, and I know the Government are looking more carefully at that.
There are also the oddities in our immigration system, which I have raised with the Minister before, and I thank him for his recent letter. For example, children born to unmarried British fathers before 2006 are not entitled to British citizenship due to a loophole in the way that the legislation was written under the previous Government. They would be so entitled if they were born after 2006. I am pleased that the Minister accepts that that should be changed. I hope that there will be some legislative vehicle to do that. Will he comment also on the related question of what happens to people in that category who are raised in the UK and who are effectively stateless? Other countries believe them to be British—they have a British father and they are in the UK—but we do not allow them British citizenship.
Another matter raised with me was the effect of border controls on families whose children have a different surname from the parent with whom they are travelling. Quite rightly, when that happens, the border force asks why such children are being taken out of the country; that is absolutely appropriate. However, it is incredibly frustrating for a parent who travels constantly, because they must carry with them seven legal documents, including a birth certificate and a marriage certificate. That seems inappropriate. A suggestion has been made to the Passport Office that parents’ names should be listed in a child’s passport. That would simplify the situation and enable us to stop cases where children are being abducted, and not stop families who are trying to travel properly. I hope the Minister will consider that matter.
We must have immigration controls, but we also need exit checks to be introduced competently so that we know who is here and who is not, which will result in better data. That will allow us to have a properly informed debate rather than the anti-foreign rhetoric that is heard far too often from both the media and political parties on the left and right. I want the Minister to ensure that we have a system that works and that makes the correct decisions so that the right people who will benefit Britain can come in quickly and easily and that the people who are not allowed here also get fair, reasonable and accurate rejections. I hope the Minister gets a reputation for making our decision-making process entirely competent and not politically sexy.
Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby. I congratulate the hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel) on providing us with an interesting aperitif to what will be a very full day of immigration debates, with the Immigration Bill going before the Commons later today. This is a useful warm-up, and we have had a good introduction and debate on some of the different challenges that we face in this complex matter.
I have only been on the immigration brief for just over 10 days, having been moved to it by my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition. I have had jobs in Government in Northern Ireland, the Home Office, Justice and prisons. However, I have a feeling that immigration will remain one of the key debating issues and challenges during the next 18 months for all of us from different perspectives.
My constituents want some of the things that the hon. Member for Witham wants, and I am sure that your constituents want them too, Mr Crausby. We want effective controls at the border; we want to see foreign criminals who have committed offences in this country being deported; we want illegal immigrants tracked, picked, accounted for and, if need be, deported; we want speedy and effective appeals, so that people can have their just case looked at accordingly; and we want a crackdown on sham marriages and sham colleges. Those are issues that any sensible Government will want to deal with. Nobody has ever said that immigration was easy and those challenges are not easy, but potentially they are common ground that could be looked at.
I agree wholeheartedly with the hon. Members for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) and for Cambridge (Dr Huppert); my constituents also want some of the things they have said they want, as I am sure yours do, Mr Crausby. My constituents want people from abroad who have modern skills to come to this country to help industry, wealth and products to grow.
I have major industries in my constituency in north Wales such as Airbus, which makes one of the most high-tech products in the world today, the Airbus aeroplane system. Sometimes those industries need skills from outside the EU, which will help to ensure that 6,500 people in my constituency keep their jobs in competitive markets. The same is true of what the hon. Member for Cambridge said about the science-based technology in his constituency, and of the needs of the City of London. I attended a City breakfast only last week, which was just outside the constituency of the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster, where the issue was not immigration but positive immigration, including how we can bring in skills to Britain and develop them in this country.
The student market brings in millions of pounds in investment, not only fees and expenditure but that unquantifiable issue that was mentioned by the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster, which is good will. I still love my university town and I left 35 years ago. People will still come to this country and love it because of the investment and skills that we have given them to compete in the world at large in the future. Nobody says immigration will be easy. However, those positive signs need to be considered alongside some of the challenges that exist.
The hon. Member for Witham mentioned the previous Government. I served in that Government for 12 of those 13 years, although I did not cover any immigration post at any time. However, let me say that there were challenges, and mistakes were made. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition has said that, and we need to assess some of those challenges when we reflect on the debate on immigration.
Let me say to the hon. Lady, and indeed to the Minister, that “day zero” did not commence and end when the Labour Government left office; “day zero” happened three and a half years ago and this Government and the hon. Lady now have a record to account for, regarding their actions during those three and a half years. I hope that today, including during this afternoon’s debate, we can potentially have her standing up not only to attack the previous Government but to pose some serious questions to the Minister about this Government’s performance.
Potentially, we need to look at why the number of people being stopped at our border, including checks on people from outside the UK, has halved since the general election and since this Government came to power. Statistics from the Library show that, comparing the first quarter of 2010 with the second quarter of 2013, checks at the border have fallen by 46.4%, from 26,378 to 14,134.
The Minister needs to be aware of the serious issue of deportation of criminals. Why has the number of foreign criminals being deported fallen by 13.5% in the past three years, from 5,471 to 4,730? As a Justice Minister, I visited Nigeria to negotiate the agreement on prisoner deportations, and I did the same in Vietnam and in China. However, the number of foreign criminals being deported under such agreements has now fallen. The Minister needs to account for that fall.
One of the interesting aspects of this debate has been that only the hon. Member for Cambridge mentioned the issue of labour markets associated with European immigration, which is a big issue. Will the Minister say why the number of people fined for employing illegal immigrants has halved since the general election? Such fines act as a deterrent. I want to know why the number of people who have been prosecuted since 2010 for not paying the minimum wage is only two. The Minister and the hon. Member for Witham know that there are many cases where people are being exploited and undercut, and where such enforcement is required.
The Minister needs to respond to some of the points that the hon. Lady made about waits and competence on tier 1 visas. Why is it that it took 30 days for a tier 1 visa to be processed in 2010, yet according to the response from the Home Office to a parliamentary question the delay in 2012 was 83 days? Innocent as I am in the first week of covering this brief, I also want to know why, for example, fingerprinting of individuals entering the UK illegally at Calais was cancelled by this Government. That was one of the self-evident controls that we need to consider in relation to this issue.
What is the Government’s answer to that question? The hon. Member for Cambridge has mentioned it. What we have, rather than effective action on some of those issues, is ad vans driving around some sensitive parts of our great capital city, with the simple message, “Go Home”. I would like the Minister to pay attention for a moment, if he would, because I believe that those ad vans are just a pilot. If I had watched “Question Time” on Thursday night to hear what he said, I would know that they were a pilot that could be rolled out yet this morning, in the Daily Mail, I read that sources close to the Home Secretary have said that the ad vans will be cancelled. Perhaps the Minister will say once and for all whether what he was saying on Thursday is true—or is what the Home Secretary has been reported as saying today true and the ad vans are being scrapped?
The Minister knows that my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) has said that she does not believe that those ad vans were a positive development, and I share her view. I hope that the vans have been cancelled, but perhaps the Minister will say whether he is the source close to the Home Secretary or somebody else is. What is the position on those vans?
We need to look at all the issues I have mentioned. However, the Government’s Immigration Bill, which we will debate in detail later today, examines just some of the issues relating to the major challenges that we face. Some real concerns have been expressed about the Bill regarding the ending of appeals for certain categories of migration. I might be old-fashioned in this respect, but I think the right of appeal still remains an important issue and we will test the Government on it when we debate the Bill.
Mark Field
The right hon. Gentleman will have gathered from my contribution that I am relatively liberal on matters of immigration. However, there is also no doubt in my mind, after 12 years as a constituency MP, that the abuse by immigration lawyers and others in the legal system is nothing short of a national disgrace. The idea of streamlining this system should be wholly welcomed across the House.
Mr Hanson
We will look carefully at that issue of appeals. Part 2 of the Immigration Bill proposes ending appeals, apart from administrative reviews, for a number of categories of immigration. We must look carefully at that issue, because I want to ensure that we speedily remove people who should not be here, and that we do not speedily allow in people who should not be here. However, we must also ensure that people have an opportunity to receive a fair hearing.
Will the Minister tell me—either now, later today or in Committee—why 50% of the current appeals are upheld? If 50% are upheld, that means that the original decisions in those cases were wrong. If the appeal mechanism is removed, what guarantees do we have that that 50% of appeals will not be unfairly dealt with by the Government? That is all I am seeking in this debate—fairness. With the Minister, I will happily consider how we can streamline the appeals system and make it more effective. However, if ultimately 50% of appeals are upheld and we remove that right of appeal, that 50% of appeals will not even be considered, which means that people from abroad will not come here and potentially will not have happy marriages, employment or other aspects of life, because of a failure of initial decision making. That is where we need to go back to, rather than potentially having a debate about who should and should not be here.
The landlord issues that are dealt with in the Immigration Bill are, in theory, perfectly acceptable, but we will need to consider the practical details of how they will work and how, for example, we can expect landlords to know the 400-plus types of visa or conditions of entry that might exist. In particular, constituencies such as that of the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster have a high turnover of students and other people coming here, and the same applies in many big cities. How landlords can be expected to do that job practically will have to be tested later today. We will also look in detail at the health fee issue and give the Bill a fair wind to test such issues in Committee.
I suspect that we will need to go to the basics of all the issues I have mentioned today. I noted that, with the exception of the hon. Member for Cambridge, the labour market issues that we want to look at when considering the Bill were not discussed by the hon. Members for Witham and for Cities of London and Westminster. We need to address those issues in detail.
I strongly believe that some labour market issues also relate to where the vast majority of new immigrants to the United Kingdom come from: wider Europe. If the labour market is undercut by people forcing down wages, poorer conditions and gangmasters in areas such as the east of England putting people into multiple occupations, which drives down wages and treats people casually, there will be tensions in society because people who are indigenous to the United Kingdom will feel that they are treated unfairly.
Today and during the weeks that the Minister and I will spend together in Committee, I want to look at the Government’s response to issues such as doubling the fines for breaching minimum wage legislation, strengthening the rules covering gangmasters, introducing measures to prevent migrants from being crammed into unsuitable accommodation such as overcrowded mobile homes to cut labour costs, giving local councils power to take enforcement action on the minimum wage, extending the Gangmasters Licensing Authority, stopping rogue landlords providing overpriced accommodation, and targeting areas with high levels of foreign recruitment, particularly in relation to recruitment agencies. We will test the Government on such issues, and I give credit to the hon. Member for Cambridge for touching on them. They must be addressed.
I want to give the Minister a few moments to contribute to the debate, and I would welcome it if his opening comment clarified the question of ad vans. I do not like reading Government announcements in the Daily Mail. I am sure what it says is true, because the Daily Mail would never, ever portray as a fact something that is not. Perhaps in his opening comment, he could tell us that he agrees with the Home Secretary that ad vans should be scrapped. If that were his opening sentence today, it would be welcomed on both sides of the House, certainly by the Liberal Democrat part of the coalition and Labour. It might be a U-turn from what he said on Thursday, but it would be a good, clear policy.
I hope that the Minister will touch on how many texts were sent to British citizens—I am waiting for replies to parliamentary questions on this—and the basis of the information for that part of the campaign. Instead of looking at gimmicks and rhetoric, we should look for cross-party consensus on dealing with illegal immigration, effective border controls, removal of foreign prisoners, stopping sham marriages, closing sham colleges, and ensuring that in our rhetoric and policy we do not deter the positive people who want to come to the United Kingdom. We must make it easier to attract skills and easier to bring students here. We must use immigration as it has been used historically: as an engine for growth instead of a rhetoric for fear.
The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)
It is a pleasure, to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) on securing this debate. The right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) said that she served an aperitif, or a full plate of hors d’oeuvres. This is the first chance I have had to welcome the right hon. Gentleman to his post. He said that he has been doing the job for 10 days, and I look forward to our debate in the House this afternoon and the time we will spend discussing the Bill in Committee.
The right hon. Gentleman said that the issues are important and referred to the labour market. He also referred to the Conservative, Liberal Democrat and Democratic Unionist parties. I am astounded that no Labour MPs thought the subject worth debating. I am sure their constituents raise the matter with them all the time, and I cannot for the life of me understand why they did not want to come here. Perhaps the previous Labour Government’s record will explain that.
Mr Harper
I am sure they are wise to trust the right hon. Gentleman, but I have not noticed before in debates that because he is a Labour party spokesman, Labour Back Benchers did not believe it necessary to come along and contribute.
I want to spend some time responding to the points raised by my hon. Friends, but first I want to explain briefly why the issue is of great concern. My hon. Friends the Members for Witham and for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) put their finger on it when they said that we inherited a shambles. The previous Government had let migration run out of control at more than 250,000 a year.
The asylum system was also out of control, and my hon Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) alluded to that. When we came to office, we inherited 450,000 cases that had not been concluded; my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green), did a sterling job in sorting that out and driving the number down. The hon. Gentleman is right in saying that we have not completed that work; we are still working through some very old cases. We know from the work of the chief inspector of borders and immigration that there was a period from 2007, under the previous Government, when, when there were queues, checks were not carried out, to manage the length of the queues. That does not happen now. We have an operating mandate: everyone who arrives at an airport is checked.
The right hon. Member for Delyn mentioned the one mistake that I believe the Labour party has acknowledged. The lack of transitional controls on accession countries in 2004, which my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster mentioned, was a huge mistake and is part of the reason that immigration is an issue. Parts of the country saw significant and fast growth in the number of migrants, which put public services under pressure. However, the right hon. Gentleman did not mention something that the Labour party skips over. During its period in office, the number of people coming from outside the EU was twice as high as the number from inside the EU. Yes, the Labour Government made a mistake with transitional controls for EU migrants, but what they do not talk about is the fact that twice as many came from outside the EU and there were no legal constraints from EU rules. They let that run out of control.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster talked about the importance of welcoming people who contribute. That is absolutely right. Ministers are always clear, although this is not always reflected in what is reported, about achieving a balance. We want the best and the brightest to come to Britain and we want people to contribute. The Queen’s Speech referred to an immigration Bill and it was clear that it would have two purposes. One was to attract those who wanted to come and to contribute, and the other was to deter those who did not. We must get both parts of that story right; I will touch on the detail in a moment.
My hon. Friends the Members for Cities of London and Westminster and for Witham talked about issues with EU nationals and where we need to tighten up on those who abuse free movement, particularly when there is criminality. There are some real issues of criminality in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster. Immigration enforcement officers are working closely with his local authority and the Metropolitan police to deal with those involved in what we tend to call low-level criminality, but which has a real impact on UK nationals and visitors who want to come and spend money in our country. We have taken significant steps.
The real issue with EU nationals is that although we can remove them from the country and we have had some successful operations—for example, we removed a significant number of Romanian nationals from Hendon— they can come back. My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster should be aware that we are looking closely at the legal scope to take a tougher approach, and I hope that he will welcome that.
My hon. Friend should also be aware that because of pressure from the Home Secretary at EU level, we finally got the message home. At the Justice and Home Affairs Council on 7 and 8 October, the Commission accepted for the first time that there is an issue with abuse of free movement rights. Commissioner Reding stated that free movement is a fundamental achievement, with which I agree, but the Commission also noted that free movement rights are weakened by abuse and that it would support member states to use existing EU tools—including sanctions such as expulsion and re-entry bans in certain circumstances, with the appropriate safeguards—to fight such abuse. That is very welcome.
The Home Secretary raised those issues with the Commission and with colleagues from Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, and we have started to build a sense that there is a problem to solve. If we solve that problem and the problems of abuse, we will strengthen the benefits of free movement across the EU, from which many British citizens benefit, and make Britain a more attractive home for inward investment. I can give my hon. Friends the Members for Witham and for Cities of London and Westminster some comfort that we are addressing that situation.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster will also be familiar with Operation Nexus, on which we are working with the Metropolitan police to identify foreign nationals at the point of arrest and to consider where we have immigration powers that may be used alongside criminal justice interventions to remove people from the country who should not be here and who are potentially involved in criminality.
Jim Shannon
Operation Nexus is a campaign run by Scotland Yard, which I understand has indicated that it is seeking more resources so that it can do its job better. I understand that Scotland Yard is seeking resources from Europe, too. Have those resources been allocated? If so, are they allocated from Government funds or through European funding?
Mr Harper
On resources—I mean to present this in a balanced way—it is not surprising that about a third of criminals in London are foreign nationals, but that is not a hysterical point; it is understandable, because broadly a third of the population of London are foreign nationals. The Metropolitan police’s core job of addressing criminality involves dealing with a significant number of foreign national criminals. The number is not disproportionate; the proportion is about what would be expected, given that there are significant numbers of foreign nationals in London. The tools we are able to give to the Metropolitan police, working with our immigration enforcement officers, means that it can do that job more effectively. We have seen significant success, and we have started to roll out those resources in the west midlands, for example, and increasingly in other police forces across the United Kingdom. I think that will be helpful.
The Home Office is also leading work with the Ministry of Justice and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to address foreign national offenders. We have 16 priority countries—not 10, as my hon. Friend the Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said—including two EU member states, Portugal and Romania, which we are supporting in the use of the EU prisoner transfer agreement. We are working closely with colleagues in Romania to consider the effectiveness of Romanian criminals arrested in the UK being able to serve their sentences in Romanian prisons.
As the right hon. Member for Delyn said, we are working closely with the Nigerian Government. That work is not just the agreement, in which he rightly said that the previous Government had a role; the agreement had to be translated into Nigerian law, which has now been done. We have just signed a compulsory prisoner transfer agreement with Albania.
Mr Harper
If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I want to address some of the points raised earlier in the debate.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster talked about the importance of being open for business, and I draw his attention to an excellent one-page guide circulated yesterday by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames), who ran the all-party group on balanced migration. The document is an excellent quick guide showing some important statistics on Britain being open for business, the number of business visitors and how easy it is to get a job here after university.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster is right that there are issues, although, largely, they are not issues of perception, but that does not mean they are not important. Of course, part of the job that the Chancellor and the Mayor of London were doing last week in China was to ensure that perceptions catch up with reality. For example, in China the average time for a business visitor to get a visa to Britain is some eight days, and we are looking to make that even faster for high-value visitors. I am not pretending that there are no real issues on the business side, because there are, but, certainly for overseas visitors, we have seen very strong growth.
There are many perception issues, which is why we have to be clear about what we are doing. I regularly meet universities and businesses, and I have met the City of London corporation. We are incrementally improving the system, and my hon. Friend is absolutely right that that is important for Britain.
My hon. Friend is also right to draw attention to health issues and the pressure on St Mary’s hospital, Paddington, in his constituency. He will have seen today that the Health Secretary has published a significant independent audit, which has been peer-reviewed and shows that the NHS is failing to recover some £500 million of income that it should be getting from the foreign nationals that it treats. Frankly, I find it extraordinary that the Labour party, or at least its health spokesman—I do not know whether he talked to the right hon. Member for Delyn—has said that it will not support our proposals on that. I do not know whether that is connected to the Unite union’s opposition to those health proposals. In fact, Unite has said that health workers should not collect money from foreign migrants. I do not know whether Unite is setting Labour’s policy, but that statement is extraordinary. We have a national health service, not an international health service. We are not talking about not treating people, which is one of Unite’s scare stories; it is about charging people who have no right to free treatment.
If my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary and I go to another European country, that country is much better at charging the UK for our health treatment; we are not very good at charging for such treatment. If we went to another country, we would be expected to use private health care. In some countries we would not get health treatment before paying for it. In the UK, though, we are talking about never withholding urgent treatment but ensuring that people pay for it, which is fair to taxpayers. I look forward both to the changes that we are making in the Immigration Bill and to my right hon. Friend’s proposals for charging overseas visitors and being more effective at recovering the money.
I will forgive the right hon. Member for Delyn because he has been in his job for only 10 days, but he should be aware that the Government who stopped fingerprinting clandestines at Calais were the Government of whom he was a member. That change took place in January 2010, which, as far as I can tell from looking at the calendar, was prior to the general election. Perhaps he should check. We will consider whether that is still correct and whether we could improve the process.
In her comprehensive speech, my hon. Friend the Member for Witham referred to ways of improving how we deal with cases. She is right, and several Members have touched on there being in-country issues in the United Kingdom when assessing cases, which is why my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary broke up the UK Border Agency. We now have a UK visas and immigration operation that has a real focus on customer service for people who are paying for visas and coming to the United Kingdom to work hard, study and contribute. We want to give them good customer service. We are not there yet, but we have significantly improved on the backlogs that we saw in 2012-13. We are trying to improve both the overseas performance we deliver and the performance in-country.
I will continue meeting universities, as I did with my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge—I had an excellent meeting with his university. We have taken some of those meetings forward. I meet the Russell Group, and I meet other top-quality universities in Britain to address their real issues, so that we can continue to increase the number of university students who come to Britain while ensuring that those institutions that are selling not education but immigration permits, which my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster talked about, are put out of business and cannot abuse the immigration system.
My hon. Friend the Member for Witham talked about people who make lots of claims and delay things, and she is right. I fundamentally believe that we should offer asylum to those who are genuinely fleeing persecution, but if the system is to work and to command public confidence, the flip side is that those whom we find do not need our protection—and where an independent judge agrees that they do not need our protection—should return to their country of origin. We should not have to spend thousands and thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money detaining those people and enforcing their removal. Everyone who abuses our system in such a way is damaging the interests of genuine refugees, to whom I want Britain to give a warm welcome and to enable them to rebuild their lives. [Interruption.] With the greatest respect, this debate was called by my hon. Friend the Member for Witham and I am trying to cover all the important points.
The Immigration Bill will streamline the immigration process and ensure that for foreign national offenders, if we can, we will have non-suspensive appeals so that, as long as they do not face irreversible harm overseas, we can deport them first and hear their appeal afterwards. In many cases, I suspect that will mean that we never hear the appeal, because my hon. Friend and I both know that the appeal is a mechanism to delay their removal from the United Kingdom.
We have had a comprehensive debate that is perhaps a warm-up for the Second Reading of the Immigration Bill, which I look forward to.
Gibraltar and the George Cross
(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for selecting me to have this debate on the possibility of the Crown awarding Gibraltar a George Cross to demonstrate that gallant naval port’s loyalty to Britain. The George Cross was created on 31 January 1941 by Her Majesty’s father, George VI. It has been awarded twice to a group of people, first to Malta in 1942 for its resistance following significant bombing by the Germans during the second world war, and more recently to the Royal Ulster Constabulary in 1999. I pay tribute to the armed forces that served in Northern Ireland during recent times. In both cases, the Crown recognised that those groups of people had shown real loyalty to the United Kingdom.
I am firmly behind the George Cross for Gibraltar campaign, which is organised by one of my constituents, Kevin Kellway. Kevin has had an illustrious campaigning career. When I first met him, he was campaigning for the restoration of the art deco Tinside pool on Plymouth Hoe, which is one of the jewels in our city’s crown. Before I arrived in Plymouth, Kevin was one of the leading lights in the campaign for Gibraltar to become part of the south-west region within the European Parliament. He organised a 30,000-strong petition in the 1990s to keep the Rock British.
Gibraltar’s connection with Devonport, in my constituency, is legendary, because both have a naval dockyard and naval base. Three hundred years ago this year, Gibraltar was ceded in perpetuity by the Spanish to the British Crown at the treaty of Utrecht in 1713 following the Spanish war of succession. It is now a British dependent territory and has withstood more than four sieges over the past three centuries. Throughout that time, it has remained loyal to the Crown.
The Spanish war of succession arose over the succession to the Spanish Crown following the death of the childless Charles II of Spain in November 1700. The two candidates for the throne—who, needless to say, were not up for election—were the French Prince Philip of Anjou, grandson of Louis XIV of France, and the Habsburg Archduke Charles of Austria. Louis XIV, the Spaniards who were loyal to Philip V and the Electorate of Bavaria supported Philip of Anjou. England, the Netherlands, Austria, Portugal, Savoy and some of the German states supported Charles in a grand alliance, because they were concerned that the unification of the Spanish and French Crowns might result in France dominating not only Europe but the Americas. That was before the American war of independence.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
I have written a George Cross citation, and I always thought that one of the criteria was that it had to be awarded for something that had happened post its foundation, so retrospective gallantry awards before the second world war would be difficult. I am in total favour, and a supporter of Gibraltar, but I wonder on what criteria a George Cross could be awarded since 1941-42.
Oliver Colvile
Gibraltar has an extremely distinguished historic position and loyalty, and I will come on to that during my speech.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
The fact that Gibraltar has withstood four sieges, and that it has withstood military and economic threat since it became British, is a good reason for the country to be given the George Cross.
Oliver Colvile
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his helpful intervention. I think that that is a fair point, and I will address it later in my speech.
Since the beginning of the war in 1701, the allies had been looking for a harbour in the Iberian peninsula from which to control the strait of Gibraltar and facilitate naval operations in the western Mediterranean. The key players in that campaign for Gibraltar were our own Royal Marines. I fear that I must declare an interest here. Not only is the British amphibious capability based in Devonport, and 3 Commando Brigade in Stonehouse—both in my constituency—but I am the vice-chairman of the all-party parliamentary group for the armed forces, under the chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray), with special responsibility for the Royal Marines. Therefore, I see my role as the champion and ambassador for the Royal Marines in Parliament.
Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)
My hon. Friend gives me the opportunity to say in public something that I have often thought in private, namely that he does an outstandingly good job of chairing the Royal Marines group in Parliament, and I am extremely grateful to him for it.
Oliver Colvile
I thank my hon. Friend for that wonderful intervention. As hon. Members may know, Gibraltar is the battle honour of which the Royal Marines are most proud. Gibraltar appears on their berets, and they take a massive pride in that battle honour; indeed, it is the only one that they recognise. For me, that badge encapsulates the Royal Marines and their commando spirit.
Beneath the Rock of Gibraltar, the only landmark in the region, sits the densely populated city. It is home to more than 30,000 Gibraltarians, who in 1967 and 2002 rejected proposals for them to become part of Spain. It is a major economic motor in that part of southern Spain. In the 2002 referendum, 99% of Gibraltarians voted to remain British.
Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. He quite rightly pays tribute to Gibraltar’s fantastic past glories, especially when it comes to military capability. He and I both have a great connection with Gibraltar through our south-west constituencies. It is worth mentioning that we are not talking just about the past, even though his campaign may be about the past. I want to put on the record how grateful we are that Gibraltar is of vital strategic value in the Mediterranean and for our forward operating base capabilities. Indeed, it recently played a role in Operation Ellamy.
Oliver Colvile
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, and I welcome him back to the House of Commons after the rather difficult time that he had over the summer. He makes a fair point, which I hope to deal with. Gibraltar played a significant role prior to the battle of Trafalgar and during the Crimean war. Its strategic value increased with the opening of the Suez canal, because it lay on the sea routes between Britain and the British empire east of Suez. If Britain had not had control of those straits, we would not have been able to bottle up the French fleet in the Mediterranean during the Napoleonic wars. That would have allowed the French to come out from Toulon and run all over the Atlantic.
Gibraltar also played a major role during the second world war. The decision by the Spanish dictator Franco to remain neutral during the war, and Spain’s reluctance to allow the German army on to Spanish soil, stopped Hitler gaining control of the strategic naval port. Gibraltar has not only provided a naval base and dockyard for our Royal Navy to operate from, but has ensured that we have a Mediterranean base where ships and submarines can be repaired when out on operations.
I believe that by giving Gibraltar the George Cross, Britain will send a clear message that we want to thank the Gibraltarians for their loyalty and that we abide by the commitment that the Gibraltarians have shown in referendums to remaining a British overseas territory. Consistently, Spain has campaigned for the British Government to hand over sovereignty of the Rock. The current dispute over the fishing reef is yet another example of how the Spanish Government do not get the message. For some reason they think that if they carry on pushing they will get a result. I hope that nothing could be further from the truth.
It has always been said that Gibraltar will cease to be British only when the monkeys leave the Rock. The last time I was there was on national day last year, when I met a delightful former Miss World, and I assure you, Mr Crausby, that the monkeys were present in abundance. They stole fruit from my bedroom in the Rock hotel. I fully realise that the Government must consider proposals of this kind case by case. However, giving Gibraltar the George Cross would support its fortitude, loyalty and determination, and would emphasise the nature of the honour—an emphasis established by George VI himself. Anyone who wants to join me, the Friends of Gibraltar and Gibraltar’s Equality Rights group in the campaign for the George Cross can access the petition on http://dorcasmedia.com/gibraltar-petition or on the George Cross for Gibraltar Facebook page. In so doing they will be sending a very clear message: hands off our Rock!
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mark Simmonds)
I am pleased to be serving under your guidance, Mr Crausby. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Oliver Colvile) on securing the debate and on his articulate remarks, including a brief history lesson about Gibraltar’s importance and the significance of its relationship with the United Kingdom. He rightly explained that we have a proud 300-year shared history.
We strongly welcome the wish of the people of Gibraltar to remain British. Our relationship can be pithily summed up by saying that Gibraltar’s history is our history. We must never forget that. My hon. Friend was right to highlight the significance of the fact that 99% of Gibraltarians voted for Gibraltar to remain an overseas territory of the United Kingdom. I want to state firmly that we shall continue to respect the wishes of Gibraltarians and to protect their right to determine their political future. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister reiterated that in his message to Gibraltar marking its national day on 10 September. I urge any hon. Members who have never attended Gibraltar national day to do so. It is a stark reminder of the importance of the relationship, and of how passionately Gibraltarians still feel about the UK and Gibraltar working closely together.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for setting out why he believes Gibraltar should be awarded the George Cross. The British Government value highly the loyalty and service that the people of Gibraltar have given to the Crown and the UK during 300 years of British sovereignty. Gibraltar has been and remains a strategically important location for British defence—a key point that was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti). Through a succession of conflicts, from the war of the Spanish succession to the present day, Gibraltar has provided a vital base for our armed forces and for the Royal Navy. It has made a strategically important contribution.
Bob Stewart
Two hundred and eight years ago, Gibraltar was crucial to our winning the battle of Trafalgar, which gave the Royal Navy superiority over the seas of the world for 100 years. It was incredibly important.
Mark Simmonds
My hon. Friend makes a good historical point. Of course, he will be aware of Gibraltar’s pivotal strategic role not only in the Napoleonic wars but in the second world war—despite serious attempts by the axis powers to take it.
The Chairman of the Equality Rights group in Gibraltar, Mr Alvarez, whom I am sure my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport knows, is leading the “Thumbs Up for Gibraltar” campaign, which was launched in Gibraltar in mid-August. The commendable and worthwhile overall aim of the campaign is to generate awareness and support for Gibraltar among the British public.
Oliver Colvile
My hon. Friend may know that I have also taken part, and had my photograph taken at the Royal Naval hospital in Stonehouse in my constituency, with my thumbs up. If the Minister would like to take the opportunity to do that at some stage, we should be delighted to have him on board.
Mark Simmonds
I am sure that my hon. Friend will know that I am a dedicated and passionate advocate of Gibraltar and the other overseas territories. I work closely with the Gibraltar Government and other overseas territories Governments, to increase co-operation between those territories and the UK, and to bring about more inward investment from the UK and more capacity building from the UK Government, to help them to cope with life in the 21st century. That is all set out in “The Overseas Territories”, the White Paper published in June 2012. A key part of that was to do with increasing public awareness of the territories, and I wish the “Thumbs Up” campaign, in all its various guises, well in its efforts to do that.
I should mention that Gibraltar is an active and energetic participant in the joint ministerial council. The council convenes every year, and the leaders of the overseas territories come together in London to discuss important issues. I hope and believe that Gibraltar will continue to play an important role in that.
Mr Alvarez wrote to the Prime Minister in mid-August setting out why he believes it would be appropriate for Gibraltar to receive the George Cross; particular stress is placed on historical arguments and Gibraltar’s strategic role in the second world war. The campaign also points out Gibraltar’s steadfast response to more recent events, such as those of the Franco era, and its role as a base for military operations in conflicts in the Gulf and the Falklands. Those events cover a long period. I recognise the hardship that the people of Gibraltar have suffered in wartime. They have experienced some very difficult times as a result of political pressure from Spain. The closure of the border from 1969 until its full re-opening in 1985 caused prolonged distress to thousands of people by separating families and friends. This summer the people of Gibraltar have again demonstrated their resolve in a period of heightened tensions. The strength of their spirit was once again reflected in the celebrations in Gibraltar on national day this year.
Perhaps it would be helpful for me to say a little about gallantry awards.
Mr Gray
Before my hon. Friend does that, may I reflect on the fact that the Royal Gibraltar Regiment has done the nation fantastic service, most recently in Afghanistan, where its commanding officer was awarded the military cross? I hope that elements of the regiment will, at 3.15 this afternoon, arrive at the north door of Westminster Hall to march in with the rest of 1st Mechanised Brigade. That will be an opportunity for us all to thank the entire brigade.
Mark Simmonds
My hon. Friend is right to put on the record the significant contribution of the Royal Gibraltar Regiment. I was not aware that members of the Regiment were coming this afternoon, but I hope that as many hon. Members as possible will attend to pay their respects in view of the significant contribution that has been made.
Furthermore, the Governor-designate of Gibraltar, Lieutenant-General Sir James Dutton, who takes up his appointment this year, is the former Commandant-General Royal Marines. He maintains those strong links between the UK and Gibraltar, because the Royal Marines’ historical links date back a significant way—to 1704, I believe—which further cements and exemplifies the importance of the UK-Gibraltar relationship.
Gallantry awards are usually made in recognition of specific acts of bravery by individuals in saving or attempting to save life. The George Cross, as hon. Members know, is the highest of the awards for civilian gallantry. The hallmark of the award is deliberate self-sacrificial heroism with the imminent prospect of death. Before anyone else points it out, however, although the George Cross is intended for acts by individuals, it has been awarded on a collective basis on two occasions: to Malta in 1942, and to the Royal Ulster Constabulary in 1999.
This debate is not about Malta or the RUC, but it is relevant to point out the circumstances in which they were awarded the George Cross, because that will help to explain why such an award is so rare. Malta was awarded the honour for the heroism and devotion of her people in the face of extraordinary danger. The island experienced one of the heaviest, most sustained and concentrated aerial bombardments in history. Axis forces flew some 3,000 bombing raids over two years. From 1 January to 24 July 1942, there was only one 24-hour period in which no bombs fell on Malta. In March and April 1942, the island received twice the bomb tonnage dropped on London during the blitz. The population were forced to live in tunnels and caves, where they suffered malnutrition and scabies, and 1,600 civilian lives were lost—a huge and significant sacrifice.
The RUC was honoured for its service as a bulwark against, and the main target of, a sustained and brutal terrorist campaign. The force suffered heavily in protecting both sides of the community from danger. By the time of the award in 1999, 302 officers had been killed in the line of duty and thousands more had been injured, many seriously.
I have noted carefully the points that my hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport has made regarding Gibraltar, as well as the contents of the letter sent to the Prime Minister. I hope that hon. Members understand that what I can say today about the success or otherwise of such a nomination is limited, and I understand that no formal application has yet been made. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office has replied to Mr Alvarez’s letter to the Prime Minister with details of the criteria for gallantry awards, including the George Cross, and with guidance on how to submit a nomination. As part of any such nomination, the “Thumbs Up” campaign, Mr Alvarez and the others who are interested should put forward all the historical and contemporary evidence that they consider to be relevant in support of their case. All such information will be received.
There is a George Cross nomination committee. The form will initially be sent to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, which will discuss and consult throughout Government. Any conclusions and recommendations will then be sent to the Cabinet Office. Ultimately, the committee’s recommendations are referred to the Prime Minister, who forwards them to Her Majesty the Queen for final approval or otherwise.
Oliver Colvile
Will the Minister give some kind of time scale for the committee coming to a conclusion and making a decision? He might prefer to write to me and set it out later.
Mark Simmonds
It is difficult to set out a detailed time frame when no formal nomination has been received. To ensure against any misunderstanding, however, I am more than happy to write to my hon. Friend and place a copy of the letter in the House of Commons Library, so that all hon. Members can see the time scale for the process to reach a conclusion once a nomination has been received.
All reasonable cases for civilian gallantry awards are given serious and careful consideration by the George Cross committee. Its recommendations are referred to the Prime Minister. I urge my hon. Friend and other interested parties, who so passionately believe in their campaign, to expedite the application so that clarity can be given as soon as possible. Whatever the result of any deliberations and consultations, I hope that the huge positive significance of the UK relationship with Gibraltar—in terms of Gibraltarians being enthused by being an overseas territory of the UK and of the UK being enthused by the positive reaction of Gibraltar to the close ties—will continue in perpetuity. It will certainly continue, as long as this Government are in power, for as long as the Gibraltan people want to remain closely tied to and an overseas territory of the UK.
Teacher Training and Supply
(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
It is a pleasure, Mr Caton, to serve under your chairmanship. The training of teachers is a highly complex subject, and also an extremely important one, given the impact that the quality of teaching has on children’s life chances and on the country as a whole. When I told my 12-year-old daughter what this debate was about, she told me that training teachers was a waste of time.
Bill Esterson
That is an interesting early intervention from my hon. Friend on the Front Bench. I foresee an interesting discussion next Monday morning at my daughter’s high school.
The Government said in their response to a Select Committee on Education report that
“the quality of teachers is the most important factor in determining the effectiveness of a school system.”
The Secretary of State has made that point many times, and I agree with him, at least on that, if not on what he does to ensure that it happens.
I requested this debate in light of figures published by School Direct and concerns raised about the implications for teacher training and education. School Direct enrols unqualified graduates to teach in schools and trains them while they are teaching. The programme has been expanded this year, causing a significant change to teacher training as a whole and leading to concern about that training and the supply of teachers. I will explore the concerns raised by School Direct. Teacher training in this country is regarded as being of a high standard and improving, a point made to the Select Committee in evidence sessions.
I shall also look at some of the evidence on what constitutes great teacher training and what is considered to be going well. My comments will also cover the concerns raised about the impact on universities and their ability to continue to play their part in ensuring that the highest standards of professional training apply. I may also look at the inherent contradiction in a system of teacher training that is supposed to promote the highest standards but operates alongside an academy system in which unqualified teachers can be employed. On that note, there has been a 141% rise in the number of unqualified teachers since the 2010 election, and free schools have been allowed to award 10% of teaching posts to unqualified teachers. It is difficult to report those figures without questioning how the growth in the number of unqualified teachers can sit alongside the Government’s claim that improving the standard of qualified teachers is so important.
Kevin Brennan
I received an answer to a written question recently from the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson), who said of the qualifications of teachers working in free schools:
“Data on each qualification held by each teacher is not collected”.—[Official Report, 16 October 2013; Vol. 56, c. 746W.]
Is my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) as surprised as I was about that?
Bill Esterson
I congratulate my hon. Friend on getting an answer from the Department. I know how difficult that sometimes is. It is extraordinary that the Government do not know the details of what goes on in schools over which they have direct control. I can only imagine what their comments would be if information about what goes on in local authority schools were not available. Perhaps the Minister will respond to that. On qualified and unqualified teachers—who knows?—we may find out today just what Lib Dem policy is on the importance of having high-quality teachers.
Under the Department for Education’s School Direct programme, 9,000 teacher training places were transferred from universities to schools in 2012-13, with the expectation that schools would recruit trainee teachers who would commence training in September 2013. School Direct is led by schools, but is delivered in partnership with universities. According to the Department:
“School Direct is an exciting new training route for top graduates. Your school will have a job in mind just for you when you finish your training.”
Yet figures published in September suggest that the final numbers to be released in November will reveal a reduction in the number of new entrants to teaching. School Direct places have been going unfilled, with just 6,730 acceptances against an allocation of 9,580, unless the Minister has new figures for us today. In addition, the number being trained through the university route is down due to the lack of places being given to the institutions by the Department for Education as a result of the move towards School Direct.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important and timely debate. Does he agree not only that the figures he gave are worrying, but that the problem is exacerbated by the fact that the National College for Teaching and Leadership seemed reluctant to transfer those unfilled places from School Direct to universities, so there is a shortage of people being trained in subjects such as maths and physics, instead of them being up to complement?
Bill Esterson
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. Evidence to the Select Committee in its follow-up session was that that is exactly what has happened. Places that were not filled by School Direct were not transferred. In fact, some of the witnesses requested that that should happen, and that there should be virement between the different routes. Perhaps the Minister will respond to that.
When the application system for School Direct opened last November, the Government said there was overwhelming interest from prospective teachers, so what happened in between, given the gap between the number of places and the number of enrolments? Other hon. Members will want to address that question—so do I—but first let us look at some of the background.
In his report for McKinsey in 2007, Sir Michael Barber found that while high-performing systems such as those in Finland, Japan, Singapore and Korea had very different approaches to the curriculum, teaching methods and school structures, they all made the quality of teaching their top priority. Sir Michael concluded that the top two priorities for raising school standards are getting the right people to become teachers and developing them into effective instructors. In 2010, McKinsey published a follow-up that showed that
“building the instructional skills of teachers and management skills of principals”
is a common factor in improving school systems everywhere in the world. So far, so good; that ties in with what the Government are saying.
The Institute of Education also quotes research that shows the dramatic impact that different teachers have on pupil progress. It shows that pupils who are taught by the best teacher in a group of 50 will learn twice as fast as average, while those taught by the worst teacher make only half the average progress. The Government’s 2010 White Paper looked abroad for inspiration, noting admiringly that South Korea recruits teacher trainees from the top 5% and Finland from the top 10% of their school leavers. That brings us back to the question: how did we end up with School Direct and such a shortage of applicants?
To begin to answer that question, I go back to what the Secretary of State said: that teaching is a “craft”, best learned on the job. That statement perhaps gives a clue as to why there has been such an acceleration in the scale of School Direct this year. That in turn may explain the problems being identified by so many of those involved in teacher training. As a result of the Secretary of State’s view, the Government decided to shift teacher training from the universities into schools, creating teaching schools on the model of teaching hospitals. That all sounds very plausible.
In April 2012, the Education Committee published its report, “Great teachers: attracting, training and retaining the best”, and held a follow-up evidence session last month. Evidence to the original inquiry looked at existing good practice in the UK. The Committee found that
“the partnership between schools and universities was often the recipe for successful provision, with a balance of theoretical and practical training vital for any teacher”.
In other words, the existing arrangements were working well, and more than one witness at the Committee advised the Government to take great care not to throw out the baby with the bathwater when they set up School Direct.
Those giving evidence to the inquiry were clear that the partnership needed to remain a key part of the training system. At the time, it was clear that employment-based initial teacher training providers—EBITTs—delivered significant portions of their training through other partners, including universities. In other words, the role of universities is crucial in teacher training. Theoretical as well as practical training are important—is important; it is important to get the grammar right in an education debate, Mr Caton.
The Committee noted in its report that
“the best systems internationally—such as Singapore and Finland…have universities heavily involved in or leading the training of teachers.”
However, in evidence to the Committee, the Government made clear their intention to see a significant increase in school-led teacher training, and the Minister for Schools has confirmed that School Direct could mean a move to a schools-based commissioning approach.
To be clear, there is strong support for school involvement in initial teacher training; after all, how else can trainees learn the practical skills that they need to become great teachers? However, warnings were given about the possible downside of unbalancing the partnership arrangements. Keele university argued that
“there is little or no evidence that schools have either the appetite or the capacity to take over the responsibility for the recruitment and training of teachers”.
Remember the Government’s comment about “overwhelming” interest from prospective teachers? Well, maybe that was not quite matched by the attitude of schools.
The Committee was also told that
“the balance is fairly good at the moment”
between schools and universities, and as one secondary head told the Committee, if the landscape
“swung all the way to school-based training…a lot would be lost.”
Martin Thompson, president of the National Association of School-Based Teacher Trainers, said the sector was not
“looking for a great change”
and that there were “dangers in a lurch”. However, the then Schools Minister, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb),
“said the policy”—
the School Direct policy—
“had met with such demand that nearly double as many places as envisaged will be offered initially.”
I have my doubts about the grammar of that statement, but that was a quote. We have to wonder what happened between that apparently high demand and the massive under-recruitment in key subjects, and why the Government did not take more account of the warnings that were given.
The Committee agreed that School Direct could provide a valuable opportunity for those schools that have the capacity and appetite to offer teacher training, although I would argue that that was not the same as calling for a rapid expansion of the programme. The Committee also warned that a diminution of the universities’ role in teacher training could bring considerable demerits, and that it would caution against it. It concluded that
“partnership between schools and universities is likely to provide the highest-quality initial teacher education, the content of which will involve significant school experience but include theoretical and research elements as well, as in the best systems internationally and in much provision”
in this country.
In the follow-up session last month, the Committee was given some idea of why School Direct has under-recruited overall. Martin Thompson from NASBTT said that
“our experience, working with head teachers who have been doing recruitment and selection with us as a school-based provider for something like 10 years, is that they are finding that those schools that do not have the experience are looking for teachers and not trainees. They are not selecting, and we are getting returned to us people who we would probably have put on the course but they do not, because they clearly do not represent the finished article. If schools have not had significant experience in ITT recruitment as opposed to teacher recruitment, they tend to miss some of the opportunities that are presented to them”.
I hope that the Minister has taken full account of that—I know he was at the session and heard that statement at the time.
Mr Thompson made the point that head teachers who are used to recruiting trainees make the distinction between recruiting a trainee who has potential and finding the finished article before they have started training. Chris Husbands from the Institute of Education told the Committee that some schools are considering people whom they think would be good but who do not have the minimum entry requirements, such as GCSEs in English, maths and science at grade C or better. As the Chair of the Committee, the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), pointed out, academies and free schools are already free to do just that by employing unqualified teachers. The Minister will need to address the point about unqualified teachers, not least given the remarks of the Deputy Prime Minister.
It is perhaps not surprising that some maintained schools look at so-called academy freedoms and wonder why they, too, cannot recruit unqualified teachers. That evidence, again, came to the Committee. The Minister really needs to explain how he can say that he supports the highest possible standards in teacher training on the one hand, while encouraging the employment of unqualified teachers on the other.
I come back to concerns about the role of universities. It is clear that any threat to the ongoing involvement of universities is a major concern, given the implications for the quality of training that follow from the evidence I quoted earlier, when it comes to the importance of having equal partnerships with universities, and of theoretical, reflective learning, not to mention academic study in continuing professional development. Potentially, a key part of teacher training is under strain, according to what university teacher training departments are saying.
Returning to the setting-up of School Direct, evidence to the Committee suggested that planning for the set-up was inadequate. That included a lack of communication with universities, which made administration very difficult, and a lack of thought about how a school-based system would operate and about how schools would work with universities. As a result, universities were left with a lack of certainty, which makes planning impossible and means that they do not know whether they will be viable next year.
Chris Husbands told the Committee that schools cannot plan school places and therefore cannot plan teacher supply. In his view, School Direct has so far struck the wrong balance between schools and universities, which could lead to a shortage of teachers. James Noble-Rogers from the Universities Council for the Education of Teachers confirmed that the way that School Direct had been set up could destabilise existing high-quality provision. That would be the result of the transfer of places to School Direct from postgraduate certificates in education. According to Mr Noble-Rogers, the implication of the way School Direct has been set up is that it will become the only way into initial teacher training.
Given evidence that schools cannot plan the number of teaching places, the very real danger is that we will end up with a shortage of teachers year after year in certain subjects. Instead of raising standards, the Government could suppress them because of the way that School Direct has been set up. Some will say that universities and other teacher training providers have a vested interest in opposing change. The Minister may even say that—he is smiling at me; I wonder what that means. Chris Husbands’ reply to that point in the Committee suggested otherwise:
“I run an organisation of which initial teacher training is part of the core business. It makes up about 18% of my turnover. I think we do it well, and we do it because we are committed to high quality and standards. If someone comes along and says, ‘Here is a better and more effective way of doing it,’ I am prepared to accept that. What makes me feel uncomfortable is that we are being offered something to replace something that we know is broadly effective. The vast majority of provision in universities is good or outstanding, and we are being asked to replace that with an unknown quantity, but being told that that is becoming de facto.
I am not sure whether that is self-interest. It does not feel like self-interest to me. This is, ‘We cannot carry on; we are doing something else instead.’ But the basis on which I think it is being developed quickly does not to me make sense.”
said:
“We cannot carry on; we are doing something else instead”.
I think he was paraphrasing what the Government might have been saying.
The panel at the Committee’s follow-up session debated how School Direct had improved on existing school-led initial teacher training. I am afraid that the panel’s response will have disappointed the Minister. Its members suggested that there was nothing new. In fact, the view expressed was that the involvement of schools in the existing system was already strong enough. That prompts the question, why was that view not considered before the system was set up?
The Government say that they believe that having the best teachers is the single most important factor in ensuring high standards and good results. They also believe that we need to learn from other countries, where teachers invariably come from the ranks of the best-qualified graduates. That suggests that teaching should be one of the most desirable professions for graduates. International comparisons show that university involvement in teacher training is of the highest importance. However, serious concerns are being expressed about the viability of university teacher training departments as a result of changes made by the Government.
This year, in maths and physics—two subjects that are crucial to our economic success—we see that there is a chronic shortage of applicants. There are also shortages in other vital subjects, including computer science. Those shortages are occurring at the same time that significant changes have taken place in teacher training. They also indicate that the graduates with the best results are not applying to become teachers, including in subjects in which young people need the very best.
Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. This is a very important issue, but will he acknowledge that there have been shortages for a long time in the numbers of people coming through to teach maths and physics? That has not necessarily been caused by changes to the system. It went on for many years under the previous Government and is also going on under this one.
Bill Esterson
I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has made that point, because this has been a problem for a very long time. It is an international problem as well. However, the reality is that it has got worse in recent years, and when comparative studies were done between the applications for School Direct places and for places in existing provision, there was a bigger problem with the gaps in the School Direct system, which does not bode well for it. I am glad that he reminded me of that point, because it is a further example of where School Direct has not got it right yet.
The Government need to look at the evidence on what has happened, what works elsewhere, the importance of universities in teacher training, and how they avoid a crisis in the coming year as university teaching departments’ viability is considered. The Select Committee report’s evidence warned about rushing a change from the old system to a school commissioning system. Those warnings appear to have been ignored, and the evidence taken in the follow-up session shows that the rushed change has caused potentially serious problems in teacher training.
The Government should go back to the Committee’s original report and look at last month’s evidence session. They should also listen to the professionals who have a proven track record of delivering quality, and of improving teacher training so that it delivers for teachers and schools, ensures the long-term supply of teachers and, above all, delivers for children and young people. The Government should act quickly and make absolutely sure that teacher training is on track, involving successful partnerships between universities and schools, rather than the unbalanced approach that may have been created by their haste to grow School Direct.
Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) on securing this very important debate and on his measured and comprehensive speech setting out the problem. The Deputy Prime Minister is not in the room, and nor would we expect him to be, but I would like to thank him for his intervention at the weekend, which should make for an entertaining speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan). I shall leave the jokes to him; they are one of his many talents.
I would also like to thank the university of Sunderland for bringing this issue to my attention. Given the importance of the university to the city of Sunderland, I have a keen interest in its continued success, and I am in regular contact with the vice-chancellor, Professor Peter Fidler, to discuss any areas of concern that he may have. This is a particularly big area of concern for the university, and not just because of the financial implications. There are financial implications from losing places, of course, but the knock-on effect on the capacity of the university of Sunderland to deliver future places at the high quality that it currently provides is the most concerning impact. Sunderland is not alone in being challenged by this. In fact, because it has an “outstanding” rating from Ofsted for its secondary teacher training, it may be less affected than other universities, certainly in the short term. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central has described, this problem threatens to break the system in the medium to long term.
Colleagues will no doubt have seen the recent article on this issue by the former Secretary of State for Education and Skills, my noble Friend Baroness Morris of Yardley, who is also a former chancellor of the university of Sunderland and is still very much involved, so it cannot be said that she is speaking from an uninformed position. In that article, she sets it out clearly that the loss of guaranteed allocations and the lack of information about future numbers mean that initial teacher training providers are struggling to plan for the future. That makes it difficult for them to retain experienced staff and therefore to deliver high-quality training. In the worst cases, it could even mean that they will struggle to continue to run the courses on a viable footing. We are already seeing universities having to face up to that.
In the same article, Baroness Morris makes other valid critiques of the School Direct roll-out. She points out that there is no strategy to ensure even coverage of schools, either geographically or by subject area, meaning that opportunities may not be available to all candidates. She also points out that schools are under no obligation to fill the places that they have been allocated, meaning that we have no idea from one year to the next what the intake will be. However, the impact on the higher education sector, which, we should remember, also plays an important role in providing high-quality continuing professional development, is the most concerning.
What are the Government doing to counter the concerns? What the Minister and his colleagues have done, as in so many other policy areas, is in effect to absolve themselves of any responsibility for getting things done. There is no central planning, no assessment of the impact of the changes in the market and no accountability. In some ways, it is a remarkable contradiction of their academisation programme, which is a drive to make the Department directly responsible for an ever-increasing proportion of schools, although, as we saw last week, when failings emerge, Ministers are quick to absolve themselves of that responsibility too, so I suppose it does fit a pattern.
However, although we agree with Nick—to recycle that well used phrase—that teachers should be qualified, this particular issue of how they get that qualification is not a question of ideological or political differences. It is more a question of process and practicality. I like the idea of prospective teachers having a different postgraduate route into the profession. Provided that the schools providing these opportunities are up to scratch, particularly in terms of their special educational needs practice, School Direct should produce good teachers. Whether those teachers will be better or worse than those who gained qualified teacher status by the more traditional route is something that we do not know and may never know, so the extent to which Ministers and Government agencies appear to be championing this as a better option, rather than just an alternative option, is questionable.
A good idea is a good idea, but even the best ideas can run into problems because of a failure to think through and plan for their knock-on effects. Introducing and expanding new schemes must always be done with an eye on the consequences elsewhere, in consultation with those affected and in such a way as to support the core objectives. In this case, the Government appear to have ignored the concerns raised by universities and the Education Committee and are pursuing an implementation programme that will seriously affect other providers of initial teacher training. Worse is the potential knock-on effect of these reforms being a lack of teachers being recruited in shortage areas such as the sciences, including computer science, as we have heard. Even worse would be a shortage of teachers overall to meet the growing demand on the school system that is set to begin in a couple of years’ time because of the spike in the birth rate.
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
It seems to me that some factors that are relevant in anticipating the future demand for teachers may not immediately be apparent to schools considering their own immediate needs. Does the hon. Lady consider that perhaps we need some way in which those requirements could be factored into the demand for initial teacher training?
Mrs Hodgson
I agree, and that is why the unintended as well as the intended consequences of the programme need to be thought through. One unintended consequence is that if there is no initial demand, because the demand goes in another direction, universities will have to let qualified staff go, so the staff will not be there to pick up the slack in a couple of years’ time. How it will work in the short term, as well as the medium to long term, must be thought through.
Unless we get recruitment policy right now, there will be a shortage of not only primary school places, but secondary school teachers, especially given the number, which we are all aware of, of teachers leaving the profession due to their being completely demoralised by the actions and rhetoric of a certain Education Secretary. I do not think that universities are asking for too much when they ask for some certainty now. They accept that new schemes will come along from time to time, as we discussed, but like me, they rightly believe that the established route into the teaching profession—a route that has created the best generation of teachers we have ever had, let us not forget—will continue to be the preferred choice for many candidates.
No matter what the law says now, it is the responsibility of Ministers to ensure that those high-quality places are still available beyond the next election. I hope therefore that the Minister will listen to the concerns raised here today, and over the past few months by groups such as Million+, and ensure that his Government do not, as they are in the habit of doing, throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
I again congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) on securing the debate. It is good to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Caton.
All my 30-plus years in education tell me that well-trained teachers improve the quality of teaching and learning and the outcomes for young people. My hon. Friend demonstrated that the evidence collected by the Education Committee confirms that judgment. It would be laughable for someone who had studied biology and physiology at a high level to be deemed qualified to practice medicine with no medical training, yet the Government seem happy for people to teach with no teacher training. The clear message is that anybody can teach and there is no skill involved. I can tell the Minister that there is a lot of skill: it is taught and it is learnt. Interestingly, while the Government squabble with their schizophrenic self, parents are clear about what they want: qualified teachers teaching their kids.
I bumped into a local head teacher at the weekend and mentioned today’s debate, saying that I was concerned that teacher education and supply would be undermined if the Government did not act to put right some of the things they have got wrong.
Bill Esterson
Given his 30 years’ experience, would my hon. Friend care to comment on the importance of continuing professional development and the impact of the reforms on it, as universities have raised concerns over the viability of their teacher training departments?
Nic Dakin
My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to the overall ecology of support for teacher education and development. Other professionals work in the education industry and it is necessity for universities to provide part of the infrastructure. If the Government pull at one part of the infrastructure, other things will happen.
I told my head teacher friend whom I bumped into at the weekend that I thought things were in a spot of bother and might get worse. To my surprise, he said that teacher education and supply were already in chaos—that is from someone on the front line—adding that he did not understand why the effective graduate teacher programme had been scrapped. With a bit more digging—speaking to north Lincolnshire’s excellent lead for teacher induction, Kim Francis—I discovered that the restructuring and the reduction in staffing, with the responsibilities passed to the National College for Teaching and Leadership, coupled with systemic change in initial teacher training have resulted in widespread frustration for providers of initial teacher education. Lines of communication have become fractured and unreliable.
The Government’s single driver for policy implementation appears to be focused on School Direct, but given that schools need to be linked to accredited providers, serious confusion has reigned. Many schools are bewildered and question whether they have the capacity to implement and quality-assure initial teacher training. Locally, schools are ambivalent and lukewarm about taking on the responsibility.
Mrs Hodgson
Does my hon. Friend agree that serious confusion seems to reign not only in the Department for Education, but in the Government, between the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister?
Kevin Brennan
Does my hon. Friend welcome the clarity with which the Secretaries of State for Energy and Climate Change and for Business, Innovation and Skills declared their agreement with the Deputy Prime Minister on the need for qualified teacher status in all taxpayer-funded schools? Does he look forward to the same clarity from the Minister today?
Nic Dakin
I welcome the interventions by the Deputy Prime Minister and his senior colleagues, which made it clear that they are with us, and with parents, schools, universities and everybody who proffers an opinion, apart from the Secretary of State for Education. I am sure that that puts the Minister in a slightly difficult position, but I note that the Deputy Prime Minister’s representative on earth, the hon. Member for Chippenham (Duncan Hames), is here, so I am sure he will come down on the right side of the debate.
The new UCAS single portal for all initial teacher education applications was due to open on 1 November. All School Direct lead schools as well as all accredited providers will be listed—hundreds of organisations. North Lincolnshire has been trying to secure its registration since July. The NCTL appears to have been the problem in that it has not passed on the new school-centred initial teacher training details to UCAS. Last Friday, it was announced that the UCAS site will not open until 21 November, due to the backlog in registering organisations, thus further delaying the recruitment cycle for 2014-15. The announcement caused understandable consternation for providers, who made plans based on the 1 November date. That illustrates the chaos in the system.
In addition, the retrospective application of the new skills test, based on “three strikes and you’re out”, has made potential applicants more wary of enrolling for teacher training. The stakes for them are much higher than before. Although the rhetoric around standards is attractive, it may well have the opposite effect, because the detailed questions that should have been thought through have not been. Kim Francis comments:
“Everybody I speak with in ITE is frustrated and dismayed about the chaos that has been created—a common reaction being ‘you couldn’t make it up!’”.
That is the world of this Government at this time. A colleague working elsewhere in teacher education noted that the NCTL
“has neither the staff levels nor I would guess expertise, given the lack of background knowledge, to get out of this mess in any kind of hurry.”
Why on earth are the Government dismantling effective teacher education? If they are looking at international comparators, as my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) pointed out, they might consider Finland, where it is universally recognised that children do well. Its teacher education has universities at its heart, is pitched at master’s level and involves longer periods of study and shorter classes. Instead, the Government chose to focus only on the idea of teaching schools, adapting it so as to be unrecognisable when compared with the Finnish model. They should go back to the start.
We could look at Canada, which is sixth for literacy in the programme for international student assessment tables—PISA. Universities are right at the heart of its teacher education. Students spend two years training and cover a wide range of educational theory, which they value. They spend much less time in the classroom, even over two years, than ours do. Teacher education is more than learning on the job. It is more than “Sitting next to Nellie”. Professor Christine Jarvis, dean of education at Huddersfield university, explains it well:
“Firstly, the obvious—teachers need to learn properly (not in the form of a few handy hints) about the psychology of learning, about the implications of social deprivation and context and not just about the specific government strategies and practices in force at any one time. They must have some in-depth knowledge. Second, they need time to reflect, critically, and with support away from the school in which they are working—the school whose practices they may wish to question. Third, teachers need to think about themselves as researchers, developing the ability to create knowledge about teaching—they need to learn research skills and methodologies. Finally, I think teachers are more than classroom practitioners. They are education professionals and should have a right to understand the job they are doing in a wider context, to take a place in wider society as people who can contribute to debate about what education should be, what schools should be.”
How profound and insightful that observation is.
The partnership between schools and higher education has been crucial to the success of teacher education. Universities are reporting requests for support from schools, but an unwillingness by schools to pay for such support. That is leading university vice-chancellors to question whether they can afford to be involved in this work. Schools are told by the NCTL that they must lead. They keep most of the income, design the curriculum and do most of the training, but because the university is the accredited provider, the university gets inspected by Ofsted. The university has little control and no power over the quality, but it will get the poor rating, while the school’s Ofsted grade will remain unaffected even if it messes up. It is not surprising, given the comparatively poor record of school-led teacher training in the past according to Ofsted judgments, that universities are worried about their reputations under the new arrangements. It is not surprising, therefore, that they are already beginning to cut their losses and pull out of teacher education.
The Government are presiding over a crisis in teacher education and supply that will get worse unless they act quickly. The limited opportunity to transfer allocations between different routes, which my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central has highlighted, has exacerbated the problem, impacting significantly on key subjects such as physics, mathematics and modern foreign languages. Overall, recruitment is 43% down in physics and 22% down in mathematics. Absurdly, the NCTL would not transfer unfilled School Direct places to universities, which consequently had to turn away good physics, maths and modern foreign languages candidates.
The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)
I do not want to abuse my position, but surely the hon. Gentleman is aware that because of the allocations that we gave to higher education institutes and to School Direct, higher education institutes were not turning away physics and maths graduates; they had unused space.
Nic Dakin
That is not what higher education establishments are saying. Only last week, I met Universities UK, which made it very clear that according to surveys of the universities that are part of its ambit, many universities had to turn people down. Universities had asked for School Direct places to be reallocated to them, but that did not happen. That demonstrates some of the confusion in the system. The Minister may be right, or Universities UK may be right; I am not sure. I am just listening to the noise.
Universities UK is calling for the Government to ensure that sufficient core allocation is granted to universities to enable them to sustain provision, including the support that they can offer School Direct partnerships. My hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West drew on the experience and testimony of Baroness Morris to illustrate how necessary that is for the stability of the system. Any rapid movement away from the current ratio of HE-led training and School Direct-led training will imperil that.
Confidence about future allocations is equally necessary for all proven initial teacher training partnerships, such as that in north Lincolnshire. As one school-centred initial teacher training programme manager recently said in exasperation,
“we still await confirmation of final allocations for both Core and School Direct places. Details of bursaries and scholarships were announced after the requests for places were submitted! Securing timely responses to our many and frequent enquiries to UCAS, Student Loans Company and NCTL is proving very difficult and making life extremely challenging and stressful for colleagues.”
Here are some questions for the Minister to focus on if he wants to turn the tide against this self-created crisis. In the light of current difficulties, will he resist the ideological temptation to increase School Direct allocations, and instead allow the system to stabilise? Will the Government provide greater certainty about the core allocation over the next few years to enable providers to plan and invest? Will the Government make it easier to transfer unfilled allocation between different routes to ensure that good candidates are not turned away? I note from the Minister’s intervention that he is, properly, concerned that that should be happening, and I hope that he is right about that. Will the Government take positive action to make HE equal partners in teaching schools by making it clear that HE partners should be invited to NCTL meetings and included in any correspondence about the teaching schools where they are partners? Will the Government look at getting Ofsted to inspect the lead organisation, whichever that may be, thereby better assuring future quality and putting accountability in the right place?
It is not too late to put the situation right, but teacher education is hurtling towards a shipwreck. If the Minister agrees with his party leader, the Deputy Prime Minister, that every child in a publicly funded school should have the right to be taught by a qualified teacher, he needs to say so today. He needs to take the necessary action to guarantee the quality of teacher education and secure future teacher supply. I am more optimistic—I am naturally optimistic—than the head teacher I bumped into at the weekend, but I do not have to run a school any more. I do not have to recruit the staff and secure the students’ future. I look to the Minister to act on those students’ behalf and take the actions that are clearly needed to avoid the rocks.
Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Caton. I congratulate my colleague and fellow member of the Select Committee on Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson), on securing the debate. It is a pleasure to follow my colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), who, like me, spent several decades of his career before coming into this place teaching and working in the education sector.
Until recently, the system of initial teacher training in this country was relatively simple and worked relatively well. I am the first to accept that schools have complained to me for decades that students coming out of university have to be taught how to teach, but when I have pressed them on the matter, they will accept—reluctantly, sometimes—that things have improved, that HE providers work well with schools, and that student teachers spend most of their final training year in classrooms teaching.
Until 2010, it was the job of the Department for Education, through the various reincarnations of the Teacher Training Agency, to decide each year how many teachers were needed and in what subjects. It was the job of the university-led teacher training institutions and schools, working together, to make sure that teachers in training had the right skills, knowledge and professionalism to work in our classrooms. Newly qualified teachers’ satisfaction with their courses was at an all-time high in 2010-11, which is the last year for which data are available. They rated their university courses as good or very good in 90% of cases. The proportion of graduate entrants holding a 2:1 or a first-class degree had been increasing steadily for years, prior to 2010. That is not perfect, and nor is there room for complacency, but it is a reasonably good picture, overall. There is recognition across the profession and, I think, throughout the House that we have a better, more qualified, knowledgeable and skilled teaching work force than at any time in our history. That is down to many things, not least of which is the quality of our ITT, which was recognised nationally and internationally as outstanding.
The Education Committee, on which I serve, looked into and reported on the issue of teacher training in some depth in the spring of 2012 as part of its “Great teachers” inquiry and report. I am sure that the Minister has studied it. We recognised the various and diverse routes into teaching and the role of the higher education institutions as well as school-based providers. It was clear to us that a sharp move from higher education and school-led partnerships to largely school-led provision was highly contentious and fraught with difficulties, not least because the school-led sector was not yet robust enough and did not have the capacity to replace the higher education sector. The Minister will no doubt say that he does not intend to replace the higher education ITT sector with school-led ITT, but that will be the outcome if the higher education-led ITT sector is not sufficiently funded and supported. Universities will simply reduce or withdraw from the market, closing their schools of education. As the Minister knows, that is beginning to happen.
As part of the inquiry the Select Committee visited Finland and Singapore, countries that are recognised as among the best in the world for ITT, and which the Secretary of State regularly cites as jurisdictions from which he wants to learn. They both have university-led teacher training and recognise that a knowledge base in education and child development, with a research-based dissertation through a university, are required to produce the best teaching force. In 2012 the Select Committee cautiously welcomed the extension of School Direct, but it had serious reservations that it wanted the Government to consider.
University-led ITT in England is recognised internationally as outstanding. Ofsted has confirmed that through its own inspection. If we truly believe that we need to learn from what is internationally outstanding, why would we not hesitate before putting the quality of that provision at risk? The Committee welcomed more school involvement in ITT, but we had reservations about whether schools are equipped to deliver the programme on their own and, in many cases, to lead it. We were particularly concerned about the time scale. Change is a fact of life, but to change too swiftly the balance from higher education-led to school-led ITT is to run the risk of damaging what is already a good—even outstanding—system. In the long run it will create a teacher shortage, which is exactly what appears to be happening.
Pat Glass
I entirely agree. If the Government had attended to the warnings of the Select Committee in spring 2012 we would not be facing the crisis that my hon. Friend’s colleague and friend spoke about at the weekend. Since the Committee considered the issues it has been apparent that there is a worrying future for ITT in England, and for the future sufficiency of the teacher work force. The historical context is that every recent Tory Government has left office with a teacher shortage.
Some but not all School Direct places will offer an academic qualification such as the postgraduate certificate in education alongside qualified teacher status. However, accredited providers are accountable and responsible for the conferring of any academic qualification and QTS. In view of that, it is not surprising that students prefer to have an academic qualification including QTS from a university, rather than from a school, albeit one that is linked to a higher education provider. That is, if nothing else, an issue of status. All things being equal, what good maths graduate is going to choose school-based QTS over that awarded by a prestigious university? In that matter, I have some experience.
The problem is that Government policy is shifting funding from universities to school-led provision so quickly that, while universities may not be short of students applying for their teaching courses, they no longer have the funding to deliver courses of the quality and in the numbers that they have in the past. Universities are particularly concerned about the impact of the next round of ITT allocations on their ability to sustain teacher training. That includes the ability to sustain support for school-led routes such as the School Direct programme.
In 2013-14, as we have heard, ITT allocations and acceptances by Government have shifted by 25% to School Direct. More than 90% of postgraduate and undergraduate courses through universities were filled across the country and, in some cases, across subject areas, but only 66% of places allocated to School Direct have been met—well below the target allocation. In addition there has been over-recruitment in subjects including chemistry, history and PE, and that has masked much larger shortfalls in subjects such as maths and physics. Overall recruitment is 43% below target in physics and 22% below target in maths. The shortfall has been made worse because the Government have chosen to reduce allocations to HE institutions and universities, the bit in the system that we know works well and that has already been judged outstanding, while significantly shifting allocations to the School Direct programme, the bit in the system that is new, in many cases experimental and, as we now know, falling well short of targets. I understand that they have refused to shift the under-filled ITT places in School Direct to universities.
Duncan Hames
The hon. Lady mentioned the core allocation provided to higher education institutions. Bath Spa university, which provides ITT for many in my constituency, has outstanding status and therefore still enjoys some core allocation. Does she share its concern that, with changes in the Ofsted regime, the number of higher education institutions with a guaranteed core allocation will decline?
Pat Glass
I agree entirely. I and others in the profession are extremely worried that the next round of ITT allocations will result in some universities cutting back further, or closing their education departments as they become financially unsustainable. If that happens, an even greater burden will fall on school-led provision without the support of the higher education element that everyone recognises as vital to the provision of good teaching.
Like other hon. Members who have spoken, I cannot understand the Government’s insistence on employing unqualified teachers in schools. I have an MSc and I think that, certainly in the past, I was qualified to teach mathematics, but a working knowledge of maths and statistics does not make a teacher. Without the benefit of a Bachelor of Education degree, I would not have had the necessary skills and knowledge of child development. I would not have known how children learn, or about differentiation and delivering a syllabus to a range of abilities. I would not have known about assessment, or understood what each child could or could not do, and what they needed to do next. I would not have been able to manage behaviour in a classroom, or to identify and meet the needs of children with special needs. Probably just as importantly, I would not have had credibility, or the trust of my colleagues, the parents, and the pupils. Pupils know who is or is not experienced, and they can quickly tell who is qualified. Often that will determine not only their willingness to listen and learn, but their classroom behaviour.
The Government need to step back and consider their future allocation for ITT carefully. They run the risk of irreversibly damaging a system that has worked well and served us well, that has provided us with the best teaching force that the country has ever had, and that is internationally recognised as outstanding. To plough ahead regardless is to risk destabilising the whole system, damaging it irreversibly and leaving the country with yet another Tory-made teacher shortage.
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)
This must remind you, Mr Caton, of your election to the House of Commons in 1997, for a Welsh constituency, because we seem to be in a Tory-free zone in the Chamber. Is that a Tory on the Bench behind the Minister? [Interruption.] No, he is a Liberal as well—so it is a Tory-free zone.
I congratulate those who have come to take part: my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson), who secured this important debate; my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson); and my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), who once again drew on his experience. I visited his college when he was a head teacher and I was a Minister, and a fine and well-led college it was. I congratulate him on delivering his speech to the accompaniment of the Household Cavalry outside; it was impressive how he kept going despite the drumbeat. My hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) also contributed, along with the occasional chipping in from the hon. Member for Chippenham (Duncan Hames), which was welcome. I found very little to disagree with in his interventions.
At the root of this debate is the fact that the Secretary of State for Education does not believe that teaching is a profession at all. He has made it clear that he thinks it is a craft to be picked up on the job, which is why he does not really care whether teachers in taxpayer-funded schools are qualified. That is his policy: teachers in academies and free schools need not be qualified. Bearing in mind that more than half of secondary schools are now academies, that represents the majority of schools in the country for children over the age of 11.
As far as the Secretary of State is concerned, as long as teachers have good subject knowledge, that is sufficient. Knowledge is important, but as the great Peter Kay said, knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad. Let me make it clear that Labour believes, just as we now know the Deputy Prime Minister believes, that it is wisdom to ensure that teachers in our taxpayer-funded schools have or are en route to gaining a teaching qualification, and that they enhance those qualifications throughout their career through continuing professional development. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe, I did a postgraduate certificate in education many years ago. They were not always of the highest quality. We must always be trying to improve the quality of teacher training. During my teaching career, I went on to do an MSc in education management. It was an important part of the structure of a career.
I will not dwell on the disastrous recent news about the Al-Madinah free school, or from Pimlico, but the Government should reflect on some of those lessons during the next few weeks and months. In this debate, I will talk a little about current problems.
Kevin Brennan
Of course I will give way to the former Chair of the Select Committee on Education.
Mr Sheerman
I apologise for not being here earlier; I had soldiers returning today, and I had to greet them downstairs. I am sorry that they made a bit of noise.
The Education Committee of which I was Chair did a thorough investigation into the quality of teacher training. It can be improved, but there is a whole culture out there. I am a visiting professor at the Institute of Education. This is the week of the professions, when 15 professions have come together to say how important the professions are in setting standards and creating the culture of a profession. Does my hon. Friend agree that is more important in teaching than in almost any other profession?
Kevin Brennan
I certainly do. The distinguished former Chair of the Education Committee makes a powerful point. The mood music from Government is important too in whether teaching is regarded as a profession, and it is highly important that teaching, of all professions, should be. We have worked hard in recent years, including through the efforts of my hon. Friend and his former Committee, to raise the status of teachers to the point where we could say with confidence and Ofsted’s support that we had the best ever generation of teachers in this country. That is in danger of being undermined by the current Government’s approach to the issue.
On the current problems, we support and have supported the trend for student teachers to spend more time in schools. We started the support of Teach First when we were in government—to listen to the Secretary of State, one would think that he invented it—and we supported its expansion. However, the trend should be managed properly. The problem is that in their eagerness to propagandise and oversell the School Direct policy, the Government have abdicated their role in securing enough teacher training places, they are not ensuring an even geographical subject spread and they are destabilising university teacher training. We heard about the example of Bath, an institution rated outstanding in teacher training, is considering giving up its teacher training programme next year due to the uncertainty created.
Duncan Hames
I know that the hon. Gentleman did not find much to disagree with in my earlier remarks, but I certainly did not suggest that they were considering abandoning initial teacher training, although it is fair to remark that in its partnerships with schools, they rely on the talent that they can bring to its institutions with the certainty that their core numbers allow.
Kevin Brennan
I agree that the hon. Gentleman may not have said so, but they have said it themselves, in evidence to the Education Committee. It is on the record if he wants to check it.
We say yes to a diversity of routes into teacher training and a greater role in teacher training for good schools, but no to leaving the supply of teachers to the vagueness of an imperfect market, generating greater uncertainty and possibly leading outstanding higher education providers to close down courses. Will the Minister listen to the concerns, ensure that core allocation to good universities is sufficient, bearing in mind that they also supply support to School Direct partnerships, and give enough certainty to allow them to commit to future investment in teacher training? I am sure that, as an economist, he will understand the importance for future investment of having some certainty within the market. Will the Minister also make it easier, as my hon. Friends have asked, to transfer or vire allocations between different routes, so that good candidates are not turned away from teacher training unnecessarily?
Mr Sheerman
Will my hon. Friend bear in mind that when my former Committee investigated the training of teachers, we also considered the training of social workers? Social worker training is an interesting warning sign. When we destabilised the training of social workers, many of the finest centres, such as the London School of Economics, said, “This is too much bother,” and withdrew from training social workers. We are in danger of doing that to the teaching professions. Good institutions will leave the market, as will some of the leading research institutions that also train teachers.
Kevin Brennan
Once again, Ministers would do well to heed my hon. Friend’s words.
Should properly trained and qualified teachers be required at all? The Secretary of State says no, in academies and free schools. The Deputy Prime Minister says yes, as we learned this weekend, along with the Liberal Democrat Business Secretary and Environment Secretary. We all want to know what the Schools Minister says. I know that he has a first-class degree from Cambridge—
Kevin Brennan
A double first-class degree! I hope that he will not choose to engage in sophistry in his answer. Heaven forfend that he would.
I want to wipe the slate clean after the Minister’s remarks in the House last week. I am sorry to disappoint my hon. Friends, but I think that the current situation is beyond satire. I have thought about it, and I cannot quite do it. They can look at Nick Robinson’s blog on the BBC website tomorrow if they want to see an attempt at satirising the position in which the Schools Minister finds himself, but I will not check it.
Will the Minister give us a clear answer today? Does he agree with the Deputy Prime Minister, his party leader, that teachers in academies—which are now the majority of secondary schools—and free schools should have a teaching qualification or be on a path to acquire one? I will give way now. Does he want to take this opportunity to say that he agrees with his leader?
Kevin Brennan
There was a deafening silence in response to that invitation, as the record will show.
Kevin Brennan
I have six. It will only take a second to say yes.
I want to help the Schools Minister out of his painful position. I have here the coalition agreement. It is a much spoken-about but rarely read document. I have performed a careful textual exegesis of the document, which says many things about teaching and schools. I accept that the Minister’s party is pledged to support what the agreement says about teaching; it signed up to the agreement, after all. I know, having been involved a little bit many years ago in helping to set up a coalition with the Liberal Democrats in the National Assembly for Wales, that they will want to try to stick to what they have agreed in the agreement. However, unless the Minister intervenes on me to tell me that I am wrong, I cannot find any mention at all of a commitment to allow free schools and academies to employ teachers without a teaching qualification or a pathway to one.
The Minister is not twitching to intervene to tell me that I am wrong. I am sure that he will refer to the coalition agreement in his speech on whether the commitment is in there, but as far as I can see, it is not.
Nic Dakin
My hon. Friend is, as always, very effective on the Front Bench. Does the coalition agreement not say that no education system can be better than the quality of its teachers? The evidence provided by members of the Select Committee shows that that is in peril at the moment.
Kevin Brennan
Indeed. The agreement says:
“We will support Teach First, create Teach Now to build on the Graduate Teacher Programme, and seek other ways to improve the quality of the teaching profession”
et al., but I cannot see the policy anywhere in there. I am sure that the Minister will tell me I am wrong, because I cannot believe that he would support the policy unless it was in the agreement, because it seems to go against all previous Lib Dem pronouncements and is something with which the Deputy Prime Minister does not agree.
The Minister and his colleagues could have joined us when we tabled an amendment against the policy. Clearly, from what the Deputy Prime Minister has said, when the Lib Dems supported the Tories on the policy in the vote, it was not because they believed in the policy; it must have been because they believed that it was in the coalition agreement, and therefore they had to support it. However, the policy is not in the agreement, so they do not have to support it.
Kevin Brennan
In a moment.
If the Minister supports his leader, he should say so now to the House. This is his opportunity. Let us pass a motion in the House to show that the will of Parliament is against allowing unqualified teachers to teach in taxpayer-funded schools. Let us get it on, shall we? Let us get it done now. There is no need to wait until the next election. It is not in breach of the coalition agreement. It is a chance to show that the Deputy Prime Minister’s words were real, that they were meant, and that they were not just a political stunt, because that would be to betray parents, pupils and the electorate, and to take the electorate for fools.
I challenge the Minister: stand up, show some spine and give us a straight answer. Does he agree with his leader—yes or no?
The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Caton. May I say how delighted I am to have a debate today on teacher training and supply? I congratulate the hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) on securing this debate on an important and topical issue, and on putting his case and concerns in a measured and informed way. I also pay tribute to other hon. Members who have contributed and commented on the important issues.
I will focus my comments primarily on School Direct, which is what the hon. Member for Sefton Central talked about. However, I will not disappoint the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), and I promise him that, before the end of my comments, I will have answered directly his questions on qualified teacher status.
Before I begin the main part of my speech, I ask hon. Members to put in a little context the important changes that we have been talking about today, particularly those on School Direct. If I understood the hon. Gentleman rightly, the Labour party supports School Direct and would not end it—he was challenging the method of allocation, not the policy direction.
One would get the impression from some of the debate that there has been a vast lurch away from a university-led or university-involved system, but the reality is that higher education institutions deliver 86% of all teacher training places. In absolute terms, HEIs will deliver more places in 2013-14 than in 2012-13. Obviously, many School Direct places are in partnership with HEIs; they are not stand-alone organisations. One good thing about School Direct is that schools often have a more constructive dialogue with HEIs, rather than getting whatever they are given.
Mrs Hodgson
Before the Minister moves on to the main part of his speech, will he give way?
Mrs Hodgson
I was saddened to hear that my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) was going to wipe the slate clean and not mention the comments made by the Minister last week. I am not as generous. Last week, the Minister said that Labour’s criticism of the lack of qualified teachers in the Al-Madinah free school was
“nothing other than total and utter opportunism”—[Official Report, 17 October 2013; Vol. 568, c. 889.].
and that our policy on this area was “complete and utter incoherence”. Does he stand by those comments?
Mr Laws
I certainly stand by the comments about Labour’s policy on free schools. However, I will respond to the points made by the hon. Member for Sefton Central on School Direct, and then—I assure the hon. Lady—I will return to the issue of QTS before we finish the debate.
As the hon. Member for Sefton Central knows, the 2010 White Paper, “The Importance of Teaching”, set out our ambition for a schools system that can compete with the best in the world. Improving teacher quality is at the heart of the plan, as he mentioned, in both attracting good applicants and ensuring a good supply of teachers in all subjects over time.
To improve teacher quality, it is vital that the teaching profession can attract and retain the best people. As the hon. Gentleman and some of his colleagues mentioned, top-performing education systems around the world, such as those in Finland and South Korea, draw their teachers from the most academically able candidates who demonstrate the right mix of personal and intellectual qualities. Candidates then go through high-quality training, often led by schools, focusing on the skills and knowledge that they need to become successful teachers.
By making teaching a highly attractive profession, we are seeing high-quality teachers enter and stay in teaching. More top graduates and career changers than ever before are coming into teaching. In spite of the economic upturn that we are now seeing, we expect to hit 96% of our recruitment target this year, after a period of recruiting above the target. There is currently no evidence of teacher vacancy rates rising.
Data published before the Select Committee hearing on 11 September provided an accurate picture of where we were with recruitment at that stage in the cycle. The picture is mixed across subjects, as the hon. Gentleman acknowledged. The data showed that we had exceeded our targets in some subjects: chemistry, where we achieved 110% of the target; English, 114%; and history, 137%. However, they also showed that we were likely to miss targets in subjects such as maths and physics. Final recruitment data will be published at the end of the year.
Importantly, we over-allocated—I will return to that point later—the allocations, particularly in this first year of School Direct, to ensure that we did not lose high-quality people across the board, particularly in physics, maths and computer sciences. The under-recruited areas referred to by a number of hon. Members were those where both higher education institutions themselves and School Direct did not fill up their full quotas; they both had shortages. It would be a far greater concern if HEIs had filled up their quotas but School Direct had come in under target, but they both came in below their allocated numbers.
Mr Laws
I am happy to write to the hon. Lady with the exact figures, which I do not have to hand, but there were considerable undershoots on both, so we have not been suppressing demand for places in higher education institutions, particularly in those shortage subjects. As she will know, maths and physics are subjects that have traditionally been challenging to recruit for, although we recruited a record number of physics trainees last year. We would need 37% of all physics graduates to come into teacher training to meet our target for physics teachers alone.
We recognise that we need to do more to improve recruitment in shortage subjects, and to increase the number of people taking A-levels, which is likely to increase the pool of people who can be drawn into those subjects. That is why we announced last week that we will make more scholarships available and change bursaries to help recruit the most talented graduates in key subjects. Scholarships awarded by respected subject organisations will be made available to the top maths, physics, chemistry and computing trainees, which will build on the existing scholarships that have proved highly popular. Since the Government introduced scholarships in 2011, 425 high-quality graduates in maths, physics, chemistry and computing have been attracted to teaching through the scheme.
Mr Sheerman
The Minister for Schools is yet again articulating the shortages in maths and physics. Does he subscribe to the view that universities ought to have a much greater specialism in training teachers so that there is a culture in which teaching is attractive to science and maths graduates generally?
Mr Laws
Yes, I strongly agree. We must also do more to get more people to take both A-levels and degrees in those subjects.
A further 680 teacher training scholarships will be available for trainees starting in the 2014-15 academic year, with scholarships increasing to £25,000 in September 2014. Bursaries will continue to be available in maths, physics, chemistry, computing and languages, as well as in a range of other subjects, and we will increase some bursary payments for maths, physics and computing to reflect the challenges faced in recruitment to initial teacher training this year. Hon. Members will be aware of the new bursary figures that we published last week.
Furthermore, A-level results published in August by the Joint Council for Qualifications show that there has been a big rise in the number and proportion of young people taking A-levels in maths and physics. More students—both the number of entries and the percentage of the cohort—now do maths, further maths and physics at A-level than ever before, which means that we expect to have a bigger pool of potential shortage subject candidates.
Shortfalls in recruitment are mitigated by the fact that newly qualified teachers make up only about half—23,500—of the 45,000 new teachers in English state schools in 2010-11; of the rest, a third of the total or 14,700 people had qualified in previous years, and a fifth of the total or 8,200 people were returners. Initial teacher training targets are set in the context of longer-term recruitment patterns and anticipated need over a number of years, so over-recruitment in previous years, including in maths and chemistry, is taken into account in the targets set for future years. Therefore, over-recruitment in previous years gives some protection against under-recruitment in one year. We have over-recruited in some areas over the past few years.
Alongside getting teachers into the key subject areas, we must still maintain our strong focus on teacher quality in all subjects. We know that we have the highest quality of trainee teachers ever. In 2012, more than 70% of graduates starting teacher training had a 2:1 or higher, which is the highest proportion ever recorded. We are increasing teacher quality through a number of reforms. We have provided schools with increased flexibility to decide how much they pay a teacher and how quickly pay progresses, which will enable schools to target school-level recruitment and retention problems. We are reforming initial teacher training so that schools play a greater role in the selection and training of teachers, through the expansion of School Direct and with more schools becoming accredited ITT providers. That will provide schools with greater choice and influence over the quality of both training and trainees.
The introduction of School Direct marks a sea change in how schools are involved in the recruitment and training of teachers. It effectively gives head teachers more influence over training and recruitment issues. Many of them welcome that, which is why schools are so keen to participate in the School Direct programme, albeit that they have proved themselves, in the first year, to be highly discriminating about the applicants whom they decide to take on. That is a good thing, although it is a challenge to ensure that we get the allocations right. The director of the leading Arthur Terry teaching school in Birmingham has said:
“It is very much the vision that all future appointments will be from our pool of training teachers and reduce the need to advertise nationally.”
Over time, many teachers and head teachers will want to take more responsibility for managing initial teacher training. The number of schools that are interested in taking part in School Direct shows that there is an appetite for that, and it is right to respond positively to this enthusiasm. Although it is still early days, School Direct is proving a highly popular means of recruiting great candidates into high-quality school-led training. For 2013-14, more than 9,000 places were requested by 850 schools, more than a third of which were from teaching schools, and by May, about 22,500 people had applied for the 9,400 places available. Recruitment shortfalls cannot be attributed to the introduction of School Direct. So far School Direct has recruited 67% of the places it was allocated, and—I made this point earlier—the subjects that have struggled to recruit through School Direct have also struggled to recruit to core places in HEIs, which is why we are introducing more scholarships and increasing bursaries.
Bill Esterson
I merely encourage the Minister to answer the question whether he thinks that unqualified teachers are a better answer to our teaching shortage than qualified teachers. Does he agree or disagree with the Deputy Prime Minister? Will he deal with that in his remaining four minutes?
Mr Laws
I will certainly answer that question if the hon. Gentleman gives me the time to do so.
Schools are quite rightly setting the bar high and are looking to recruit the best possible candidates. Where possible, we have over-allocated places to ensure that sufficient candidates of the necessary calibre can be recruited. There has been a healthy interest in School Direct for next year. Requests for places in 2014-15 from schools, school-centred initial teacher training providers and higher education institutions are being processed, and we shortly expect to make announcements on initial allocations. We look forward to building on the enthusiasm of schools that have requested places, and we continue to welcome new schools into the School Direct programme.
School Direct is not about removing the role of universities in initial teacher training. Many teachers will want to go through a traditional university route, and many schools are developing healthy partnerships with universities. We are moving to a system of greater choice and diversity, which is welcomed by most schools and potential teachers.
Along with School Direct, we are continuing other programmes that aim to ensure that teaching is attractive to the country’s most able people. We have committed to supporting the expansion of Teach First by giving more top graduates the opportunity to teach in challenging schools by providing 2,000 places by 2015-16. We have developed a Troops to Teachers programme, with the wider aim of attracting and recruiting high-quality service leavers into schools.
I want to turn to the issue of qualified teachers that has so excited the shadow Minister for Schools today. I recall that the late, great Robin Cook once said, “If you want to keep something secret, the best place to say it is the House of Commons.” I now say that the best place to keep secrets from the Labour party is on the floor of the Liberal Democrat conference. Today, we heard all this material from the shadow Minister, who has been beavering away: he has looked in the coalition agreement and searched through the press cuttings. It is all very impressive, but all he had to do was to listen to what went on at the Lib Dem conference in March, when we passed a motion, which I think I proposed, that was voted for by the Deputy Prime Minister and the Prime Minister—[Hon. Members: “The Prime Minister!”] The Deputy Prime Minister, certainly. The motion set out our position on qualified teacher training, making it clear that we want it for every school. [Interruption.] It is not a secret, so what has happened to the research capabilities of the Labour party? Why is this such great news? [Interruption.]
Kevin Brennan
On a point of order, Mr Caton. Is it in order for the Minister to engage in sophistry rather than answering the question?
Mr Laws
Thank you, Mr Caton. The shadow Minister for Schools is just grumpy because he missed the public news about the debate that took place at the Liberal Democrat conference. He has not been reading his press cuttings and keeping up with the news. I make him a genuine offer of free tickets to attend the Liberal Democrat conference each year so that he can follow our debates, see the motions we pass and keep up with the news to enable him to understand the differences—we see them across the board, and I thought that he would understand them—between the responsibilities exercised by any Minister in a coalition Government at the Dispatch Box and each individual party’s policies. I extend that free offer to the next conference.
Coventry City Football Club
(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Bob Ainsworth (Coventry North East) (Lab)
I thank you, Mr Caton, for presiding over our debate, and I welcome the Minister to her role. I was greatly helped by her predecessor, the right hon. Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Hugh Robertson), and I can only hope that she is as capable and willing as he was. I pay tribute to him for the job that he did as Minister with responsibility for sport.
Over the past 18 months, the most vicious and destructive battle has been waged at Coventry City football club. Sadly, it has not been about football; it is a fight for land and property. The Ricoh arena was built and paid for by local and national taxpayers and a highly thought of local charity, the Alan Edward Higgs Charity. It was built to create jobs and economic activity in a deprived part of the city, and because the football club was not financially capable of building it itself. The club’s hedge-fund owners and its boss, Joy Seppala, want the stadium, the freehold and the surrounding land, but they do not want to pay more than a pittance for it, and have moved the club out of the city and nearly destroyed it in order to achieve that.
Part of the club was put into administration seven months ago. The owners have repeatedly claimed, through solicitors and direct statements, that the company owed rent to the stadium but had no assets. Documentation has now come to light that shows that to be untrue. Since 1 June 1995, this company, now in liquidation, has owned the club’s rights, title, and assets, all its playing staff, its good will, and the right to play in the league. Why did the administrator, Mr Paul Appleton of David Rubin & Partners, fail to discover that? He claims that he spent thousands of hours conducting his investigation. He possesses the full powers of an officer of the court. He is supposed to have ability. He charges more than £300 an hour. Despite protests from bidders, creditors and me, as MP for the local area, he sold the company that was in his charge without finding out what he was selling, thereby ensuring that the owners were the successful bidders. I ask the Minister why those who put companies into administration are able to avoid scrutiny and loss, at the expense of creditors, by choosing their own administrator. Now the appalling error has come to light—let us call it an error—can we ensure that an independent liquidator is appointed to look at the situation in Coventry?
Let me ask about the role of the Football League in this sorry tale. It told me that it acted to prevent another Milton Keynes Dons by changing its rules. I asked representatives to put that in writing, and they e-mailed me saying that the Football League board would not allow the club to move away from Coventry without demonstrating a clear plan to return within a prescribed time frame. The Football League then allowed the club to move to Northampton. Did the club show the league a plan, as it said it would require it to do, before it agreed to the move?
The Minister’s predecessor asked the league that question for me. My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) and I went to see him in July, and he agreed to write to the Football League on this and other issues. Has the current Minister received a reply to that question?
The Football League has admitted administrative errors in the registration of players, but it has refused to say for how long that error continued, or to give any details of the error. With the new evidence about the structure of the club coming to light, will it look again at that decision? Will it give us the detail of those errors that it admits it made? That would show a little good will to the Sky Blues fans who feel that the league has let them down badly on this issue. Will the league uphold the conditions that it said that it had placed on the club when it returned the golden share to it?
Finally, and most importantly, I want to talk about whether we can get the club back to Coventry. This lunchtime, there was a small demonstration outside Council house. Fans are understandably desperate to see the club back in Coventry. Joy Seppala admits, however, that she is not interested in football and is not a fan. She is interested in her investors and describes herself as the shepherd of other people’s money. She says that she is £60 million down. She claims she was not involved in the catastrophic decision to buy the club in 2007. If I were a Sisu or a Sconset investor, one of her sheep, I would ask questions about that, but she says that she wants a return for her investors.
It is repeatedly claimed that a new stadium will be built near Coventry. It is said that it would cost around £25 million—nothing like the Ricoh arena. As Joy Seppala cannot get the fans to go to Northampton, it is estimated that she and her organisation are losing at least £3 million a year for at least the next three years as a result of playing their home matches in Northampton. If we add the £25 million to the £9 million probable losses from the club’s current course of action, that is £34 million. If she wants, as she has said, the stadium, the surrounding land and the freehold of that land, why does she not make a bid? Why is she incapable of making a bid of around £34 million? If she made a bid of that magnitude, she would be getting a casino and a conference centre thrown in for nothing, but she has not made that bid, and she will not do so. The question is why.
Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con)
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way and commend him for securing this debate. Many of my constituents and I are long-term supporters of the Sky Blues and are absolutely devastated at what has gone on. Does he not agree that, in regard to having a successful football club in Coventry, the club must own a greater stake in the Ricoh arena if it is to make the business viable, wash its face, and give us the sort of success that we are looking for, bearing in mind the council tax payers in Coventry and the money that they have put in? Does he agree that all parties need to get round the table, and that it is imperative that Sisu look to open negotiations with Coventry city council?
Mr Ainsworth
I broadly agree with the hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones); I have never disagreed with him. In the past, under previous leadership, perhaps members of Coventry city council have not agreed with that line. However, if the club needs to own its stadium, it needs to pay for it, does it not? Does it expect the stadium to be given to it for nothing? That is what I am asking, because I believe that what we are looking at is an attempted land grab. Figures such as £7 million are being floated by Sisu’s fans for a stadium that cost more than £100 million to provide. Property markets have gone the way that they have, and the economy is not in the same condition as it was, so people will make a loss, but to float derisory figures such as that is an indication that there is an attempt at making a killing at the taxpayer’s expense.
Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)
I am glad to hear my right hon. Friend speaking with such passion on an area that we have not seen him taking an interest in at all for many, many years. Where he and I would utterly agree is that we want to get the club back to Coventry. That means that we have to create a new sense of good will between the various parties that, at the moment, are locked in the most antagonistic struggle that I have seen in many years, and that I have certainly never seen in Coventry before. It cannot be just one-sided—there are always two sides. I ask him this: does he really think it helps to get the atmosphere that we want, and to get the club back, when he launches these bitter personal attacks on Joy Seppala on one side, as opposed to seeing—
Martin Caton (in the Chair)
Order. That was another very long intervention; I think that we have got the picture.
Mr Ainsworth
My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson), by saying that I have paid no attention to this area in the past, provokes me into letting people know that he was the steward of the club. His stewardship may have been part of the reason why I was silent in the past, but I am relieved of that responsibility now that he is no longer connected with the club, and I am free to speak on a matter that concerns a major business in my constituency.
I am not “bitter” about Joy Seppala. Most of the things that I have said, she has said herself on the record. I am bitter about the Football League, which has allowed this to happen. I think it is outrageous and unforgivable that it has done so, and its governance of our national game needs to be looked at because of what it has allowed these owners to get away with.
Mr Ainsworth
I will not give way, because I have agreed to give my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South some time to speak, and I need to try to finish up, if I can.
I was asking why, if this is not a land grab, the owners are not prepared to make a reasonable offer. If they did, nobody would be happier than me, the fans and those who were outside Council house today. However, I fear that that will not be the case—that the owners will not make that reasonable offer, and that we will not get our club back until Joy Seppala tires of her losses and sells up. I sincerely hope that I am wrong.
I ask the Minister, what is it that attracts this kind of owner to our national game? Is it time to look at the special insolvency regulations that football enjoys, and to legislate for good governance, as the Football League is proving in this case to be incapable of taking decisions in a consistent way? Or maybe even more radically, but even more productively, we should, in the end, look at the Bundesliga model of fan ownership, instead of the ownership model that applies in this country.
Martin Caton (in the Chair)
I will call you to speak now, Mr Cunningham, because I understand that both Mr Ainsworth and the Minister have agreed to your making a contribution. Obviously, we want to hear the Minister’s response to the debate, so if you could be as brief as possible, it would be very helpful.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
Thank you very much for calling me to speak, Mr Caton. I will try to be as brief as possible, because I understand that this is a short debate. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth) for allowing me to speak in it, and more importantly I congratulate him on securing it.
There have been a number of debates on this issue—what has happened to Coventry City football club? I will not go back over those; I think that my right hon. Friend has made adequate representation and adequate queries over a number of debates. However, I would like to pick up on one or two points.
The first thing that people have got to understand, and the people of Coventry certainly understand it, is that the site of the stadium was derelict for more than 40 years because there was an old gasworks on it, and at the time the conventional wisdom was that there would be a long period before the site could be cleaned of fumes and that sort of stuff. So, it took a long time and if I remember correctly—I am sure my right hon. Friend will put me right if I do not—to clean that site up before it was even built on probably cost about £16 million. I may have got that figure wrong, but I cannot be too far wrong. So the site lay derelict for many, many years.
We had representations over the years from Coventry City football club, because originally there was talk of siting it where Coventry airport is now, at the Baginton site. That never got off the ground, but eventually the present location—the Ricoh arena—was looked at and decisions were made about the location of the arena, but more importantly it was part of a regeneration scheme for the whole area, if I remember correctly. So we have to put these things in context.
I accept that a lot of sharp practices have gone on; there is no doubt in my mind about that and I will not repeat them here again today. However, I have always taken the view that we can deal with those sharp practices separately. The most important thing is to get the club back to Coventry. That is my view, and I have always taken the view that the best way to do that is through conciliation. In fact, I have said on one or two occasions that the only way to deal with the situation is probably to get an independent arbiter.
I am not necessarily impressed by the present liquidator, if people want to call him that, and by the way he has handled things, but that is for another time. It is more important that we get some sort of consultation going. It can be led by an arbiter or anybody, but somebody who can try to resolve the situation.
The second point is that my right hon. Friend and I certainly met the Minister. The Minister certainly wrote to the Football League, but I do not know the outcome. I hope that this Minister will tell us today.
This situation goes a lot broader, because to deal with the situation at Coventry we have to look at the Football League and consider some sort of regulation or some legal framework. It has had a free hand for many years now. We have seen what has happened to other clubs up and down the country. That is not satisfactory. The fans have been taken for a ride by some of these football clubs and some of these football owners, and it is about time that the Government stepped in.
The problem is not just with Coventry. I am aware that almost every football club in the country has its own problems. I believe that what has happened in Coventry has been exceptionally inadequate, but there are a huge number of cases of poor football governance. It is clear that what has happened in Coventry is not an anomaly. The institutions of our domestic football governance are inadequate and out of date, and they need to be seriously reformed.
The Culture, Media and Sport Committee launched its report on domestic football governance in December 2010, publishing it in July 2011. It was very clear that the Football Association was in need of urgent reform; that the leagues, particularly the Premier League, have too great an influence over the decision-making processes of the FA; that the game has seen increasing commercialisation; and that there is a distinct lack of financial regulation, which has led to significant financial risks being taken by football clubs. Indeed, billionaires seem to treat football clubs as investment accounts or assets; they are not, and they should not be treated this way. The Select Committee urged the industry to take the opportunity to reform itself and said that if it did not, there should be legislation. Football authorities made proposals for reform but their proposals simply did not address the key problems.
What needs to be addressed is the fact that the structure of the FA leads to too much responsibility being delegated away from the main board and towards committees, which are dominated by the Premier League and Football League. We need proposals that are far-reaching; we need improved financial stability and reform of the licensing model. We need to ensure that membership of the main board, council and influential committees is fully representative, and balances different interests; and we need to improve the way supporter engagement operates at club level. When will the Government accept that the time has passed for the industry to make its own reforms?
Something must be done now. We have a situation where, in a way, we have practically a civil war in Coventry, between the fans and the owners. That cannot be allowed to continue. We need to get somebody independent to look at that, but more importantly to deal with the situation in Coventry and to prevent it from happening in the future we need to look at the Football League and do something about it.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mrs Helen Grant)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Caton. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth) on securing this important debate. The contributions that he and others made have been valuable, powerful and emotional.
There is no doubt at all that the preservation of football clubs up and down the country remains a matter of great importance. I assure all hon. Members present and the right hon. Gentleman that football governance and the collective determination to improve the way that our beautiful game is run continue to be extremely important to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
Mr Scott
Will the Minister ask the Football League, because it has been complicit in the problem, whether it can mediate in the dispute around getting Coventry City back to where it belongs, which is in the city of Coventry? I say that as a Leyton Orient fan, against which Coventry City will be playing in three hours’ time.
Mrs Grant
I will deal with my hon. Friend’s latter point first. At the end of my speech, I was going to wish luck to Coventry City against Leyton Orient, but that sentiment still holds and I am aware that the teams are playing tonight.
The Football League is involved. I know that the right hon. Member for Coventry North East has been in touch, that it wrote to him today and that it is keen to chat with him. I also know that the organisation had a fruitful and positive discussion with supporters on Friday 18 October. I hope that important dialogue continues.
It is sad that the famous name of Coventry City football club—the Sky Blues—can be added to the list of football clubs, including Leeds United, Portsmouth and Crystal Palace to name but a few, that have suffered serious financial difficulties. It is worrying that more than half the Football League’s 72 clubs have been insolvent at one time or another over the past 10 years. At the same time, however, match attendances and TV revenues are higher than ever. If football today is that popular with supporters, advertisers and broadcasters, we must ask why so many of our clubs are faced with the prospect of not owning their grounds, why they are carrying such high levels of debt and why there are so many sporadic changes in ownership. Coventry City, unfortunately, is the case in point.
When the Football League chairman, Greg Clarke, gave evidence to the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport, he stated that debt is
“the single biggest problem for football”.
He believes that if football clubs can ensure that any debt is genuinely sustainable, transparency of ownership, supporter buy-in and co-operative ownership will also fall more easily into place.
I have probably had only 10 to 12 working days in this new job, which is not an awful lot, but I have already had considerable dialogue with football authorities. I am looking forward to getting stuck in, to dealing with the issue and to helping and working with them to drive through much more quickly the much-needed reforms to the game.
Mrs Grant
I need to make several points and I am running out of time, so I will not.
The three key areas where we need real progress are the licensing system for clubs, the introduction of empowered—that word is important—and balanced boards and improved supporter engagement at club level. My Department continues to urge the football authorities to introduce full transparency around club ownership. The licensing system should set out stricter criteria both around owners being fit and proper and around the requirement to have clearly defined business plans for how they will safeguard clubs’ futures. Taken together, those would provide greater clarity for clubs’ supporters.
Having said all that, the football authorities deserve some credit for the rules introduced in recent years, including an early-warning system with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs around tax returns, transfer embargoes that help to curb club spending, a new means-and-abilities test and a strengthened owners and directors test. I also welcome the fact that the football authorities and all 92 professional clubs have now adopted the financial fair play principles, the implementation of which should lead to reduced spending by clubs and, I hope, fewer incidents of club insolvency. We hope the licensing model being developed will strengthen the relationship with fans, who should be better informed about a club’s activities, such as its financial standing and owners’ identities. Supporters should be consulted as part of a club’s decision-making process.
I am also pleased to hear that the Football Association is setting up a new separate implementation body, the football regulatory authority or FRA, to oversee the implementation of on and off-field regulatory policy. The new club licensing system and the financial rules that underpin it will be key to ensuring the long-term sustainability of clubs, but further detail is required from the football authorities on the content of the licence and the new FRA’s role in monitoring and enforcing FA rules and regulations.
I want to attempt to respond to several of the issues raised by the right hon. Member for Coventry North East. Regarding the activities of the administrator and the liquidator, I genuinely suggest that he discuss such matters with the Football League, hopefully in the not-too-distant future. If he is not satisfied with what he hears, he may have to take independent advice.
The right hon. Gentleman also asked, as he had done outside this Chamber, whether my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Hugh Robertson), received a response to a communication that he apparently sent to the Football League in July this year. I have spoken with officials and I understand that no letter was sent, but a conversation may have taken place. I will certainly look into whether that conversation happened and what the outcome was and get back to the right hon. Gentleman.
Regarding supporter ownership, owning football clubs is a challenging and risky business, but fan ownership has seen several successes abroad. It is for the football authorities to agree what works best for this country, but there is a place for all types of ownership. Supporters will always have the best interests of the club at heart and I am delighted that AFC Wimbledon, Brentford and Exeter City are now owned or part-owned by their fans.
Finally, the right hon. Gentleman mentioned the club returning to Coventry, a topic which is important to him and others. The Football League wants Coventry to return to its home city and will do what it can to assist in that process, but the matter is also one for the owners and administrators.
I genuinely hope that Coventry City’s issues are resolved very quickly. I want to see the club return to the city as soon as possible and be given the chance to regain its position in the league. Notwithstanding the points penalty imposed at the start of the season, the team is playing like a top-six side and doing well. Coventry City is a great club—no disrespect to Leyton Orient—that does not deserve to be in its current position and I wish it well.
The stark reality is that many clubs and companies will experience periods of financial difficulty, with some enduring the pain of administration. The focus for the football authorities, however, must be on doing all that is possible to avoid clubs ending up in this dreadful position. The Government’s hope and expectation is that, following the Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s inquiry, recommendations are pursued and the football authorities will be able to make such changes themselves.
My Department will continue its dialogue with the football authorities in the coming months to ensure that the necessary action is taken to deliver these important governance reforms, but if they do not, the Government have made it very clear that we will look to introduce legislation.
National Security (The Guardian)
(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
In the wake of the stolen Snowden files on America’s National Security Agency, it is right and proper that Parliament—both the House in general, and Select Committees in particular—debate the balance between national security and freedom of the press, and limits to and oversight of the power of our intelligence services.
This debate, however, focuses on a narrower and darker issue: the responsibility of the editors of The Guardian for stepping beyond any reasonable definition of journalism into copying, trafficking and distributing files on British intelligence and GCHQ. That information not only endangers our national security but may identify personnel working in our intelligence services, risking their lives and those of their families.
In August 2013, the Brazilian citizen David Miranda was stopped at Heathrow airport under schedule 7 to the Terrorism Act 2000. Initially, The Guardian claimed that he was targeted merely because he is the partner of Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian reporter writing about the leaks. Mr Miranda had been held for hours, The Guardian said, and denied a lawyer, but within hours that story had unravelled. When challenged, the paper first added to its story that it had paid for Mr Miranda’s flights, but did not note in its story that that correction had been made. Later that night, after all the print deadlines had passed, The Guardian admitted that Mr Miranda had been offered a lawyer and had refused one, and that The Guardian had known that all along yet had allowed its false account to stand.
Following the Heathrow stop, a judge ruled that police were entitled to copy and analyse the documents and files carried by Mr Miranda that were in the national security interest. There is to be a court case later this month on the detention and whether the Act was used appropriately. That issue, of course, will be for the court to determine.
Oliver Robbins, deputy National Security Adviser in the Cabinet Office and security adviser to the Prime Minister, has described in a witness statement to the court case on Miranda the direct threat to the life of Government employees posed by the documents held and communicated by The Guardian, together with the grave threat to UK national security should they be released. In his statement, he lays out the careful, proportionate steps that Her Majesty’s Government have taken to engage with the newspaper and to agree protocols for future reporting, be it direct communication or the defence advisory notice system.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
If my hon. Friend really is concerned about risks to British security, is he not concerned that UK Government secrets are accessible to hundreds of thousands of US Government employees? Perhaps that is why Mr Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old contract employee of three months’ standing, was able to access GCHQ files from Hawaii.
Julian Smith
I agree that the NSA placed itself in a very odd situation.
The next step was to secure the documents and data, as there was a real fear that terrorists would seek to access that information by targeting The Guardian, and the Government had no confidence in the paper being able to protect the information it held. Unfortunately, the Government were not the only people making that assessment. The WikiLeaks hacker Jacob Appelbaum, who has worked with Glenn Greenwald, has tweeted repeatedly about the non-existent security under which Guardian editors held those files. Last week, he pointed out that laser microphones are routinely used as listening devices through windows and that The Guardian’s so-called secure room has floor-to-ceiling windows ideal for such remote listening by any interested foreign power or terror cell.
On 3 October, Mr Appelbaum tweeted:
“I’ve seen the horrible operational security at the Guardian over the last three years—it makes the New York Times look solid.”
And he scoffed:
“They shipped Top Secret documents by FedEX.”
Hackers have heavily implied on social media that they can access The Guardian’s US files.
Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)
I understand my hon. Friend’s points. He is thoughtful on such issues, so I carefully heed what he says. One issue I have never understood is that, for all the scaremongering about national security, if either Mr Miranda or The Guardian has impaired national security in any tangible way, why has nobody been charged?
Julian Smith
If my hon. Friend looks at the witness documents for the court case, he will see that charge may be likely, but I do not think it is appropriate to comment on that in this place.
The Guardian agreed to the Government’s request to destroy the data it held in its London office, but soon after it not only revealed the confidential discussions that took place with Her Majesty’s Government but advertised to the world that it had sent copies of the files, including information on GCHQ, to The New York Times in an article titled “Guardian partners with New York Times over Snowden GCHQ files.” In its various discussions with the Government during August, The Guardian did not reveal that it had made copies of the files and sent them overseas.
Today’s debate is not an argument to muzzle the press. As Oliver Robbins is at pains to point out in his witness statement, there has been significant sensitivity to the fact that The Guardian is a newspaper. Like the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), I am deeply uncomfortable that a left-of-centre axis is driving us toward press regulation. Newspapers should be free to report, and they should be punished under existing laws if they commit crimes.
The Guardian was right, having received the NSA files, to report on them in some way. If journalism—receiving and reporting on leaks—were all that The Guardian had done, Parliament and MI5 would not now be involved. Indeed, when the full tale of the damage done to British security is revealed, our Government might be criticised not for how much it interfered with a newspaper but for how much it trusted one.
Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, circuitously, he is attacking not The Guardian’s journalism but the paper itself? By mentioning press regulation in the same breath, he is potentially in danger of being misinterpreted as joining the war of the Daily Mail and others against The Guardian, all because of its pursuit of phone hacking.
Julian Smith
I hope that by the end of my speech I will not be misinterpreted at all.
This debate is also not an argument against whistleblowing. Mr Snowden revealed NSA spying that may have been outwith the reach of Congress. It might be argued that that was whistleblowing, but as we know, he did not selectively take files on the matter; rather, he stole tens of thousands of files on legitimate and necessary spying, including by allies such as Britain.
Julian Smith
I will not for the moment.
The Guardian has done no whistleblowing on GCHQ, and it has exposed no illegality. Story after story in the paper has been forced to concede that The Guardian has found no evidence whatever that our intelligence forces have broken the law.
Nor is this debate an attack on the politics of The Guardian. I enjoy the paper. I am a regular reader of certain sections, and I would be making exactly the same argument today if the paper in question was The Daily Telegraph or The Times.
Julian Smith
Finally, this debate is not an attack on the campaign to reconsider the extent of intelligence gathering and the concerns raised by the NSA, WikiLeaks and other intelligence revelations. The role of Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee has only recently been strengthened.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con)
As a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee, I leave the Chamber in no doubt whatever that if I had done what The Guardian has done in relation to the classified material that we see, I have no hesitation in saying that I would expect to be charged. My hon. Friend mentioned the D notice system. Does he know whether The Guardian used or was approached under the terms of the D notices?
Julian Smith
I will address that point shortly.
I believe we have some of the best oversight in the world of our intelligence services—judicial, ministerial and parliamentary—but we are right to keep testing, keep questioning and keep challenging.
My intention today is to highlight where The Guardian has crossed the line between responsible journalism and seriously risking our national security and the lives of those who seek to protect us. If action is not taken, there will be direct results for our national security, now and in the future.
I pay tribute to our ex-colleague, Louise Mensch, who through her blog, social media and columns has ensured that this major national security issue has been kept alive throughout.
Julian Smith
I will not, sorry. No one has applied to make an intervention, which is usual in this sort of debate.
Martin Caton (in the Chair)
Order. If someone wished to make a speech in a half-hour debate, they would have to seek your permission and that of the Minister, but whether you allow an intervention is completely up to you.
Julian Smith
I am not taking any more interventions.
We are in unique times since 9/11, and the intelligence game has changed. Thousands of people—
Mr Winnick
On a point of order, Mr Caton. An orchestrated campaign is being launched against The Guardian, to undermine that newspaper and to give the totally false impression that it is giving ammunition to terrorists. I also ask that the hon. Gentleman gives way in the usual manner—
Martin Caton (in the Chair)
Order. As the hon. Gentleman knows, that was not a point of order—but a point was made.
Julian Smith
Thousands of people working for British intelligence, GCHQ and other Government bodies have worked tirelessly over the years to repress attacks, in particular after 7/7 in London. With technology changing apace, they have kept track of and repelled many potential terrorist attacks. Think of where we were after 9/11 and where we are now: still vulnerable, but with much stronger awareness of the threats and much damage done to those who seek to hurt us. I want to pay tribute to all in our intelligence community, who work so hard and who have done so under pressure and bearing a great burden of responsibility. The fact that those women and men are unable to speak out is one of the reasons that I have initiated this debate.
It seems highly likely that The Guardian has risked our nation’s security several times over: first, in the detail that it has gone into in many of its reports, revealing the minutiae of programmes, showing PowerPoint images and laying out to those who seek to harm us in great detail the techniques that we use to counter them. Reports in The Guardian earlier this summer went way beyond responsible journalism, giving away key details of UK intelligence strategy and operations. Take a look at the detail in those reports in June—parading as public interest, it was in fact commercial interest.
Moreover, The Guardian often seemed to publish not only for commercial gain, but out of fear. Jacob Appelbaum, angered that The Guardian’s story on the Tor network was being held up, threatened to publish compromising e-mails between him and Guardian reporter James Ball. Days later, The Guardian published details of the GCHQ attempt to decrypt parts of the Tor network, which is used to trade child abuse images, hardcore drugs and arms—
“an intelligence technique which should have remained secret”,
according to David Omand, ex-head of GCHQ.
In an online question-and-answer section, The Guardian claimed that it checked with US authorities before each of its reports was published. That did not happen in the UK before the Government’s intervention.
Secondly, and more chillingly, The Guardian has taken detailed security files and information and sent them all over the world. US editor Janine Gibson boasted that by far “the hardest challenge” has been the “Secure…movement of materials” and that
“we’ve had to do a great deal of flying people around the world”.
Where now is the earlier pretence to other British papers that David Miranda was merely a journalist’s husband?
In spite of the actions taken by Her Majesty’s Government in August to destroy the files held in The Guardian’s London office, those files are out there, highly vulnerable to terrorist infiltration. Not only that, those detailed files on GCHQ operations are now being handed to an infinite number of extra eyes via American journalists and even bloggers. Each person multiplies the risk to this country. It is unclear whether the information contained names, but it seems a strong possibility. From the reports on GCHQ, we know that The Guardian had detailed information about staff there, including the clubs and organisations that they were part of, and even reported on the sexuality of GCHQ gay and lesbian staff and on internal network chats.
Over the summer, The Independent also saw the Snowden files and wrote a highly damaging report on a middle eastern UK base. Similar to The Guardian, The Independent did not adequately balance journalism and the national interest. Unlike their Guardian colleagues, however, the Independent journalists soon stopped, stating:
“In August, we too were given information from the Snowden files. It pertained to the operation of the security services, was highly detailed, and had the capacity to compromise Britain’s security.”
Glenn Greenwald explained on Twitter on 10 September: “As for” The New York Times,
“I had no role at all in that—those were 1 set of docs only about UK that G”—
The Guardian—
“had. They made that choice without me.”
I must underline that point. The Guardian focused on sending abroad revelations not about the American National Security Agency, or whistleblowing; it chose to distribute information on our own intelligence agents at GCHQ, on programmes and people that it had admitted over and over again were legal—programmes that protect Guardian employees and their families.
To the Daily Mail last week, The Guardian denied only that it had revealed the names of spies, not of any GCHQ personnel. To communicate—not only to publish—any identifying information about GCHQ personnel is a terrorist offence under the Terrorism Act 2000. Mr Rusbridger has boasted that he is above the law, and said of co-operation with the Government:
“But once there was an explicit threat to go to law something changed”,
adding that he would not allow reporting to be limited “by judges”.
Finally, as if all that was not enough, The Guardian continues to threaten national security months after the Government intervened. It boasted online about how it has taken protections to avoid penetration by intelligence services and, as far as I know, has been far from helpful in assisting the intelligence services in their quest to work out what the damage potential is. That is not press freedom; that is The Guardian’s devastating impact on national security. The Guardian wrote its initial stories without any consultation with Government; The Guardian trafficked files on GCHQ around the world; and The Guardian has dragged its feet as the Government, police and intelligence services seek to limit the damage.
The 2000 Act is clear about the illegality of communicating information about our intelligence staff and, specifically, GCHQ. The Official Secrets Act is equally clear about the illegality of communicating classified information that the recipient knows, or has reasonable cause to believe, to be to the detriment of national security. Last week, I wrote to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner to ask him to investigate whether The Guardian has breached those two Acts. I urge the Minister to do everything possible to ensure that the police expedite their investigation. In particular, I ask him to ensure that The Guardian has been asked for a decrypted copy of all files to which it has access, so that we may protect our agents and operations.
For the sake of Britain’s national security and for those who protect it, we must pursue the issue that we have discussed today. If we do not, we risk grave consequences, major risks for those who seek to protect us and the setting of a terrible precedent—that hiding behind the cloak of journalism gives carte blanche to risk the state’s most important secrets, free of consequence and outside the law. In an age of the internet, blogging and self-publishing, that is a serious precedent to set.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (James Brokenshire)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith) on securing the debate. I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the discussion and to respond to a number of the points made, albeit I shall struggle to take interventions, given the time available. I also want to respond to allegations that the Government’s response to Edward Snowden’s leaking of stolen classified material represents an attempt to stifle the press, that GCHQ misled Ministers to strengthen the case for the draft Communications Data Bill, and that oversight of the intelligence agencies needs to improve. Those allegations are, respectively, misleading, wrong and unfounded.
I will start by highlighting the huge damage to national security caused by reporting attributed to the highly classified material stolen by Edward Snowden. My hon. Friend will understand why I will not comment on specific allegations in the press, or provide a full assessment of the damage; that would exacerbate the harm already inflicted. There is no doubt that Snowden’s actions and the publication of material stolen by him have damaged UK national security. As the Prime Minister noted last week, in many ways, The Guardian admitted that when it agreed to destroy files when asked to by the Cabinet Secretary, Jeremy Heywood.
The Prime Minister endorsed the excellent speech given by the new head of MI5, Andrew Parker, on 8 October, in which he explained the risk associated with revealing intelligence capabilities. It is worth repeating what he said:
“What we know about the terrorists, and the detail of the capabilities we use against them together represent our margin of advantage. That margin gives us the prospect of being able to detect their plots and stop them. But that margin is under attack.”
Publishing details of intelligence capabilities not only damages the Government’s ability to protect national security, but
“hands the advantage to the terrorists. It is the gift they need to evade us and strike at will...that is why we must keep secrets secret, and why not doing so causes such harm.”
Media reporting is compromising essential work done by the intelligence services and the police.
Mr Winnick
On a point of order, Mr Caton. I seek your guidance. I know that in half-hour debates there is often not a lot of interest other than from the hon. Member whose debate it is and the Minister. However, on such a controversial issue, whatever the rights and wrongs of the speech we have just heard from the hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith), would it not be appropriate for the Minister to give way from time to time?
Martin Caton (in the Chair)
Order. That is not a subject for me to rule on. As a very experienced Member, Mr Winnick, you know that it is entirely in the gift of the person speaking to give way. The Minister has said that he has limited time and wants to make progress.
James Brokenshire
In his witness statement to the High Court during the judicial review of the police’s decision—
Paul Flynn
On a point of order, Mr Caton. You are the guardian of the reputation of this debate, and so far it has demeaned Parliament’s reputation, because we have had two speeches that were written and read with no attempt to engage us in debate. This is McCarthyite scaremongering that disgraces Parliament.
Martin Caton (in the Chair)
Order. My response is exactly the same as the one I gave to Mr Winnick.
James Brokenshire
In his witness statement to the High Court during the judicial review of the police’s decision to stop David Miranda at Heathrow airport in August, deputy National Security Adviser Oliver Robbins also spoke of the damage caused by the disclosures. He noted that the material seized from Mr Miranda is highly likely to describe techniques that have been crucial in life-saving counter-terrorist operations and other intelligence activities vital to UK national security. If those techniques were compromised, it would do serious damage to national security and ultimately risk lives. Those releasing this material would do well to understand that the types of capability they are writing about are those we have relied on in recent years to stop terrorist plots, disrupt organised crime and put cyber-criminals, including those exploiting children or illegally proliferating arms, behind bars. Once an adversary knows if and how we can read their communications, they will change their behaviour. When it was revealed that the US could read Osama Bin Laden’s communications in the late 1990s, we did not hear from him again until September 2001.
I cannot go into more detail of the damage done and the future damage, but we expect to lose coverage of some very dangerous individuals and groups. The threat remains very real, and only through the tireless efforts of the police and intelligence agencies do we keep at bay those who wish us harm. If we are to protect the British public, we need to be a step ahead of the terrorists and the criminals. Secret intelligence gives us that edge and, regardless of whether Snowden is thought to be a whistleblower or a traitor, revealing our capabilities destroys it.
James Brokenshire
I am grateful for my right hon. Friend’s intervention. It is right to say that it is obviously not for Ministers to direct the police to arrest or investigate anyone. He will understand that that would be inappropriate. It is for the police and the Crown Prosecution Service to determine whether a crime has been committed and what action to take. Given the ongoing police investigation after Mr Miranda was stopped at Heathrow, it would be inappropriate to comment further. Ultimately, it is for the police and the Crown Prosecution Service to assess the evidence.
I want to comment briefly on the Government’s approach to The Guardian, which claimed to hold highly classified Government material and made clear its intention of reporting it. Of course, we were concerned about such material being held insecurely without any of the controls that would usually protect it. We were also concerned about the consequences of more of this material becoming public, and the grave risks that that would pose to operations, individuals and capabilities. That is why we asked the newspaper to return or destroy its files.
I appreciate and respect the fact that journalists may spend significant time weighing up whether an issue is damaging to national security, and genuinely believe that they are doing the right thing. However, I respectfully suggest that they are simply not in a position to make national security assessments. The Government strongly support a free press. We have never denied the possibility of a debate on privacy and security or the work of the intelligence agencies, but we cannot condone the way in which others sought to bring this debate about and the damage it caused. Any leak of security material is serious. It can put the lives of our agents at risk and give valuable information to terrorists and others who wish us harm. As we have heard, there have been calls to prosecute, but that is not a matter for me; it is a matter for the police and the Crown Prosecution Service to assess.
James Brokenshire
I need to move on, as I have only three minutes left. I want to respond to suggestions that there is no need to improve the police and intelligence agencies’ ability to acquire communications data. That is wrong. There is a pressing need to ensure that the capabilities of our law enforcement and intelligence agencies keep pace with ever-changing technology if they are to maintain their ability to tackle terrorism and serious crime.
We remain absolutely committed to ensuring that law enforcement and intelligence agencies have the powers they need to protect the public and to ensure national security. Nothing that has been alleged about GCHQ’s capabilities changes that. Communications technologies continue to change, and we need to move with the times.
Two parliamentary Committees have considered the matter and said there is a need for legislation. It was recently alleged that the Government wilfully withheld information from those Committees. I reject that. I hope that hon. Members saw the letter from my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) in The Guardian last week, in which he explained that the Intelligence and Security Committee took full, detailed evidence from the intelligence agencies during its inquiry on the draft Communications Data Bill, as well as its recent inquiry on GCHQ’s activities. The Committee’s report on the draft Bill concluded that a need remains for legislation in this area.
I hope that hon. Members agree that there are essential advantages to be gained from intelligence-gathering and staying one step ahead. Some have suggested that the UK’s intelligence agencies are somehow listening in to all our phone calls and storing details of all our private conversations. That is simply not true. They have neither the interest nor the capability.
As the European Court of Human Rights has confirmed, the legal framework governing intelligence agencies’ work is fully compatible with the European convention on human rights. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary rightly stated earlier this year that the UK’s system of political, parliamentary, independent and judicial oversight of the intelligence agencies represents one of the most robust and comprehensive systems of oversight anywhere in the world. The system works well, and we should be proud of it.
Hon. Members will recall the Justice and Security Act 2013, which we were debating only nine months ago. The Act extended the remit of the ISC, strengthened its ability to provide robust oversight of the agencies, including of operational matters, made even clearer the ISC’s independence from Government, and almost doubled its resources.
Paul Farrelly
On a point of order, Mr Caton. I seek guidance from you, as the Chair of such an important debate, on how parliamentarians may put on the record words spoken by none other than President Obama today about the disclosures. A White House statement said that some of them
“raise legitimate questions for our friends and allies about how these capabilities are employed”.
Martin Caton (in the Chair)
Order. The hon. Gentleman knows as well as I do the various ways of putting things on the record in this House.
Mr Winnick
Further to that point of order, Mr Caton. How can we make the point that much of what appeared in The Guardian, which has been the subject of this debate, has led, certainly in the United States, to a wide-ranging inquiry into intelligence-gathering? What The Guardian published was certainly in the national interest.
Written Statements
(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Infrastructure Guarantees
(11 years, 2 months ago)
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The Chief Secretary to the Treasury (Danny Alexander)
UK Guarantees was announced in July 2012 with enabling legislation, the Infrastructure (Financial Assistance) Act 2012, receiving Royal Assent on 31 October 2012.
Today I am announcing that 40 projects, worth £33 billion, are now “prequalified” for the UK Guarantees scheme. A robust assessment and due diligence process is required before final approval of a guarantee can be given, but this means that these projects are eligible for support. The Government have already announced that the guarantee scheme is being offered to help support the Northern line extension, the Mersey gateway bridge and Hinkley Point C. In addition, the following projects have agreed to be listed on the gov.uk website:
Able Marine Energy Park, Humberside
Chinook Energy—Renewable Energy from Waste
Countesswells Development, Aberdeen
Five Quarter Energy Holdings Limited—Deep Gas Winning
Gasrec plant and refuelling stations
Melius Energy—Avonmouth biomass power generation
Intergen UK Development Ltd—Gateway Energy Centre
Intergen UK Development Ltd—Spalding Expansion
Islandmagee Gas Storage Facility
Neart na Gaoithe Windfarm
Tilbury Green Power—waste wood-fired power generation
University of Northampton
University of Roehampton
In April 2013, the Government approved a guarantee for £75 million to Drax Finance Ltd to finance the partial conversion of a coal-fired power station to biomass.
UK Guarantees was launched to address constraints in the long-term debt markets by providing a sovereign-backed guarantee to help infrastructure projects raise debt finance. In exchange for a guarantee the borrower will pay a fee, determined by the nature of the guarantee and the risks inherent in the project. Guarantees for up to £40 billion in aggregate can be offered under the initiative.
The Government will report to Parliament on the financial assistance given as guarantees in line with the requirements set out in the Infrastructure (Financial Assistance) Act 2012.
Central Advisory Committee on Pensions and Compensation
(11 years, 2 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence (Anna Soubry)
On 15 September 2011, Official Report, column 53-54WS, a written ministerial statement announced the commencement of the triennial review of the central advisory committee (CAC) on pensions and compensation, an advisory non-departmental public body (NDPB) which I chair. I am now pleased to announce the completion of the review.
The CAC plays an important role in providing me with expert advice on the pensions and compensation schemes that my Department operates. In addition, it acts as a single formal consultative body that can assess proposed changes to schemes.
The review therefore concludes that the functions performed by the CAC are still required, but that it does not need to be classified as a NDPB in order to carry out these functions. The report recommends that the CAC be reclassified as a stakeholder advisory group and my officials will take the necessary actions to make this change in due course.
A copy of the full report is available on the gov.uk website and copies have been placed in the Library of the House.
North Liverpool Community Justice Centre
(11 years, 2 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Shailesh Vara)
I am today announcing the Government’s response to the consultation on proposals for the future of the North Liverpool Community Justice Centre (NLCJC).
Having reviewed analysis of responses to the consultation, the Lord Chancellor has decided that the proposed closure of the NLCJC should proceed and that the majority of its work be transferred to Sefton magistrates court. In consideration of the responses received, the original proposals have been revised. Youth and education welfare cases will be dealt with by Liverpool youth court and Liverpool and Knowsley magistrates court respectively.
The consultation response document is published on the Ministry of Justice website at: www.justice.gov.uk.
The written ministerial statement made by the hon. Member for Maidstone and the Weald (Mrs Grant) on 17 July 2013, Official Report, column 113WS announced that future local consultations on court and tribunal closures would typically run for six weeks. Given the focus of these, the procedure for announcement of any court closure consultation will be made by HM Courts and Tribunals Service writing to MPs whose constituencies are within the catchment area of the court. I will place a copy of the published documents—both the consultation document, and the Government response to the consultation—in the Library of the House of Commons. When I do so, I will write to the Chair of the Justice Committee to notify him of the fact. As is currently the case, HM Courts and Tribunals Service will also notify local stakeholders and criminal justice system partners when publishing the consultation.
This process will apply for the consultation on the future of Neath magistrates court, which is currently open and due to close on 7 November.
Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council
(11 years, 2 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions (Esther McVey)
The Employment, Social Policy, Health and Consumer Affairs Council met on 15 October 2013 in Luxembourg. The Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, my hon. Friend the Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson), who is responsible for employment relations and consumer affairs, represented the United Kingdom (UK).
The main discussion focused on the posting of workers enforcement directive. The UK emphasised the importance of building a stronger economy to restore growth by keeping burdens, especially on small businesses, to a minimum. Having shown considerable flexibility the UK was disappointed that a general approach was not agreed between Ministers. The UK will continue to aim to ensure that the directive strikes the right balance between protecting posted workers’ rights and the effective functioning of the single market.
There was an exchange of views on youth employment in which the presidency highlighted the significant challenge of youth unemployment across the EU. The UK outlined the successes of the youth contract and discussed the importance of vocational training systems. The Council adopted its declaration on the European alliance for apprenticeships, and the minute statement outlining UK concerns on the prescriptive nature of aspects of the text and the need to respect member state competence in this area was noted.
During the lunchtime discussion, Ministers discussed the key lessons learned from last year’s European semester process. Many member states shared UK concerns over the need for greater European Commission transparency in terms of sharing the evidence base underpinning the CSRs much earlier in the process. The Employment Committee (EMCO) and Social Protection Committee (SPC) reports on the evaluation of the European semester were endorsed. The SPC report on their contribution to the annual growth survey 2014 policy priorities was also endorsed.
There was also a policy debate on the social dimension of the European monetary union. Most member states agreed in principle with the proposed scoreboard and indicators but some called for this to remain voluntary for those not in the eurozone. There was broad agreement that the European semester should remain the primary instrument for pursuing this work. The Commission concluded that there was clear support for the principle of a social dimension of the EMU but recognised that they needed to do more to explain what it means in practice for member states and what indicators needed to be included in the scoreboard.
Ministers adopted Council conclusions on the European Court of Auditors’ special report on the added value of the European globalisation adjustment fund. The Council conclusions recommend improvements in efficiency and effectiveness, and to explore alternative schemes. The UK agrees with much of the analysis in the Court’s report and with its recommendations.
Under any other business, the presidency provided updates on legislative issues and reported on the upcoming tripartite social summit meeting.
Second Reading Committee
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The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Skelmersdale) (Con)
My Lords, since there are no votes in the Chamber today, I can dispense with the normal rigmarole. However, I have a new piece of rigmarole to put before your Lordships. Before the Minister moves that the Bill be considered, I remind noble Lords that the Motion before the Committee will be that the Committee do consider the Bill. I should perhaps make it clear that the Motion to give the Bill a Second Reading will be moved in the Chamber in the usual way.
Inheritance and Trustees’ Powers Bill [HL]
(11 years, 2 months ago)
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The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally) (LD)
My Lords, it gives me great pleasure to introduce this Bill and to remind the Committee that we have had the invaluable help of Professor Elizabeth Cooke of the Law Commission, the law commissioner who led on the initial Law Commission project. I am a great supporter of the House using its powers in this area to get Law Commission reports into law. There was a period when, for far too long, they gathered dust on the shelves. The process that we have adopted enables us to do some useful work. We are always very grateful to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, for volunteering to chair proceedings on these Bills.
The Inheritance and Trustees’ Powers Bill is a fairly short but technical Bill to amend certain aspects of the law of England and Wales as it relates to inheritance and trustees’ statutory powers. The fundamental issue at the heart of much of the Bill—arrangements for disposing of a person’s property after their death—is not one that many of us relish engaging in. It brings unwelcome thoughts of our own mortality. However, these issues must be faced by most of us in some form during our lifetime. In an ideal world such arrangements would be set out in a will—and I repeat that as the first message from this Committee: in an ideal world, the most sensible thing that individuals can do is set out their intentions in a will. However, we do not live in an ideal world. Many people, for one reason or another, do not leave such a document. It is only right that the law, in the form of the intestacy rules, makes appropriate and fair provision for the disposal of their property.
I know that several noble Lords present today have had the advantage of attending the briefing on the Bill by Professor Cooke which we held last week. The Government are very grateful to the Law Commission for the help that it has given in the preparation of the Bill for introduction and its continuing support for the Bill as it goes through Parliament.
The Bill will implement, with some modifications, the legislative reforms recommended by the Law Commission in its 2011 report Inheritance and Family Provision Claims on Death. The project that culminated in that report was prompted by a 2005 government consultation on increases to the statutory legacy. Responses to that consultation included calls for a wider review of intestacy rules with almost all consultees agreeing that such a review was necessary. The Law Commission was asked to examine this area of the law and duly published a consultation paper in 2009, followed by the report, which was accompanied by a draft Bill, in 2011. The Ministry of Justice then carried out a public consultation on the draft Bill earlier this year and then published a response in July, explaining the changes it proposed to make to the Bill. This extended and comprehensive consultation process has resulted in a measure that I believe has broad support and is suitable for the Law Commission procedure in your Lordships’ House.
Noble Lords will be aware that the Law Commission’s previous work in this area included recommendations regarding rights for cohabiting couples on intestacy. The Government decided that it would not be appropriate to take these proposals forward in the Bill now before us. Indeed, the Law Commission recognises that its work on cohabitation raised issues that do not apply to the Bill. The issue of legal rights for cohabiting couples is complex and potentially far-reaching. I believe that there is already more than enough to occupy this House in the Bill as it stands. In addition, the family justice system is already in the middle of a comprehensive reform programme and I do not believe that it would be wise to consider further reform in this area until that process is complete.
The first seven clauses of the Bill deal with two aspects of the law on inheritance: the intestacy rules and family provision. The former dictate the division of property when a person dies without leaving a will. The latter permits certain family members and dependants to apply to the court to vary the distribution of a deceased person’s property, whether that is under the intestacy rules or the terms of a valid will. The Bill will streamline and modernise the intestacy rules, reducing the cost of administering intestate estates and bringing them into line with public expectations. It will also correct some technical deficiencies in the operation of the family provision legislation.
Clause 1 amends Section 46 of the Administration of Estates Act 1925 and, most importantly, makes changes to the entitlement of a surviving spouse or civil partner of a person who dies intestate. The Bill proposes that in a situation where the intestate leaves no children or other direct descendants, the surviving spouse or civil partner will be the sole beneficiary of the estate. This changes the current law under which a surviving parent or full sibling or sibling’s issue is entitled to share whatever is left in the estate after the spouse or civil partner has received the deceased person’s chattels and what is commonly called the “statutory legacy”—in this case, the first £450,000 of the estate. This brings this part of the intestacy rules into line with public expectations. Empirical research has shown that the majority of people favour giving priority to a surviving spouse.
Clause 1 also proposes that where the intestate does leave children or other descendants, the surviving spouse or civil partner is absolutely entitled to the deceased’s personal chattels, a statutory legacy of £250,000 and half of whatever remains of the estate. The other half of the remainder will be shared between the children and other descendants. Under the current law, a surviving spouse or civil partner is only entitled to a life interest in his or her half of the remaining estate. Life interest trusts can be a source of confusion and cost, often for only marginal gain, and the Bill removes them.
Finally, Clause 1 makes several technical changes to the rate of interest which accrues from the date of death of the intestate on the statutory legacy. Clause 1 simplifies the sharing of assets on intestacy in a way that is fair to those who have been closest to the deceased: the surviving spouse or civil partner and any children or their children. Our aim here is to ensure that spouses and civil partners are appropriately provided for. By focusing solely on those closest to the deceased, we aim to simplify the current law on intestacy so that it can better reflect the arrangements that an individual is likely to have made had he or she executed a valid will.
It is impossible to design intestacy rules which satisfy every view of what is right or fair. The rules stand as a legal default position. They should reflect the shape of contemporary society and replicate what most people think is an appropriate division between family members. The changes in the Bill are intended to reflect real-life expectations of what provisions the intestacy rules should make.
Clause 2 and Schedule 1 make a number of changes to the way in which the statutory legacy, or fixed net sum as it is more properly called, is determined. Under the Bill, this sum is, of course, the amount to which a surviving spouse or civil partner will be entitled where the intestate deceased has also left children or other descendants. The most important of these changes impose a new requirement on the Lord Chancellor. At present, the Lord Chancellor has the power to set the level of the statutory legacy but is under no obligation to do so or to keep the level under review. The Bill proposes to change this state of affairs by requiring the Lord Chancellor to make an order setting the level of the statutory legacy at least every five years. As to the actual level to be set, the Bill provides that, unless the Lord Chancellor determines otherwise, the level should be set according to a procedure specified in legislation. The procedure will index link the statutory legacy by increasing it by an amount that reflects any increase in the consumer prices index measure of economic inflation. The legacy can therefore only increase; in the event of no inflation or deflation, the level of the legacy will not change.
Clause 2 enables the Lord Chancellor to set the level of the statutory legacy without using this index-linking mechanism such that he is at liberty to set a level that is equal to or even lower than the pre-existing figure. However, in such circumstances, he will be required to report to Parliament to explain why the mechanism has not been used. These provisions create a legislative framework that will govern the level of the statutory legacy and will ensure that it does not slip behind inflation and lose its real-world value. The changes will benefit surviving spouses and civil partners.
Clause 3 deals with the statutory definition of personal chattels. Under the current law on intestacy, a surviving spouse or civil partner is entitled to all the deceased’s personal chattels that are not otherwise disposed of under a will. The Bill does not change that but it does propose to amend and update how these chattels are defined. Personal chattels are defined in the Bill as “tangible movable property”, replacing an anachronistic and arbitrary list of property and categories of property in the current law. The Bill also includes three defined exceptions to this definition.
The first is money and securities for money. This is not new. The second exception is for property used, at the death of the intestate,
“solely or mainly for business purposes”.
The words “solely or mainly” are new and will ensure that property—for example, a vehicle such as a van that was regularly used in the course of a business—would be excluded from the definition. The third exception is wholly new and relates to property which is held, at the death of the intestate, solely as an investment. This is a narrow exception that would only apply to property owned as an investment and which had no personal use whatever. For example, valuable jewellery which was worn by an individual, even if only occasionally, would still qualify as a personal chattel and would pass to the surviving spouse or civil partner, even if it was also bought and kept in the expectation that its value would increase.
The remainder of Clause 3 provides that where personal chattels are referred to in a will or a codicil to a will, the current pre-Bill definition of personal chattels will be used if the will itself is executed before Clause 3 comes into force. This will be the case even where a codicil is made after the date that Clause 3 takes effect. However, it is also still open to the person making the will or codicil to expressly state that the new definition of personal chattels should apply.
Clause 4 seeks to protect the position of children who are adopted after the death of a parent. The general rule in these matters is that after adoption, a child is regarded as the legal child of the adoptive parents and has no other legal parents. However, Clause 4 ensures that a child whose parent has already died before the adoption takes place will not lose, as a result of adoption, a contingent interest that he or she already holds in the estate of the deceased parent. This provision is relevant where a child is adopted, perhaps by other members of his or her family, as a result of the birth parents’ death. Adoption in these circumstances is typically open, involving no secrecy. The child has been tragically orphaned, and an aunt, uncle or other relative adopts the child. No one intended, in that situation, that the orphaned child should lose his parents’ estate; yet that is what will happen in cases where inheritance—as a matter of sensible estate planning—is contingent on the child reaching a particular age.
It is important to note that this provision affects only children who are adopted after the death of a birth parent. I believe that this is an important distinction and it is right that the law preserves the rights of children who, at the date of the adoption, already hold a contingent interest in the estate of their birth parents. The law already preserves vested interests held by a child at the point of adoption and ensures that those interests are not lost. Clause 4 simply adds contingent interests into that existing provision. It is wrong that the law can strip away a child’s inheritance simply because she has been adopted. Clause 4 will correct that injustice.
Clause 5 proposes to disapply Section 18(2) of the Family Law Reform Act 1987 in certain circumstances. This section provides that where a person dies intestate and his parents were not married to each other at the time of his birth, the administrators of his estate may presume that he was predeceased by his father and any other person to whom he may be related only by virtue of his father. In the case of a person who has a female parent other than his mother as a result of Section 43 of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008, his administrators may presume that he was not survived by this second female parent or by anyone related to him through this parent. This is a pragmatic rule which derives from a time when it was common for the identity of the father of a child born out of marriage to be unknown. Tracking such parents down could present real difficulties to those administering intestate estates. The rule discriminates against unmarried fathers and, in practice, can make it less likely that the deceased’s estate will pass under the intestacy rules to such a parent. Nowadays, it is quite usual for both unmarried parents to be identified as such, and the practical justification for the rule is much reduced.
Clause 5 disapplies this presumption if a person is recorded as the intestate’s father or as a parent other than his mother in a specified formal register of births. In such a case, the estate’s administrators will have the same responsibility to the deceased’s father or other parent as they would to any other relative entitled under the intestacy rules. This amendment clarifies that where such a parent has been formally acknowledged as such, irrespective of the absence of a marriage certificate, that parent should, in general, have the same rights as his married counterpart.
Clause 6 amends various provisions in the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act 1975 by way of Schedule 2. Noble Lords will know that it was formerly the Government’s intention to create an additional ground of jurisdiction for family provision claims in this Bill. This was to enable claimants who were habitually resident in England and Wales to bring such a claim, regardless of the deceased’s place of domicile. Scottish Government colleagues have raised significant concerns about how this additional ground would operate in practice, particularly its potential to displace Scots law to the possible detriment of those who had inheritance rights under that law. We have carefully considered these concerns from our colleagues across the border. I do not now believe that it is possible to engineer a compromise on this point that would answer these concerns and retain the benefits of our original proposal. I am also aware that there has been a previous lack of consensus on the nature of the additional ground of jurisdiction—the relevant provision is at variance with both the Law Commission’s original proposal and the majority view expressed in response to the Government’s public consultation.
On that basis, my intention is to bring forward an amendment to the Bill prior to consideration by the Public Bill Committee which will delete the additional ground of jurisdiction in its entirety. I hope that, by doing so, parliamentary consideration can be better focused on the Bill’s other, equally important and worthwhile provisions.
The first of the remaining changes to the procedure for family provision claims is to extend one of the categories of person who can apply to the court for adequate provision from a deceased’s estate, whether distributed by will or intestacy. We wish to clarify that a “child of the family”—not a biological or adopted child, but a person who was treated as such—should now be understood by reference to any family in which the deceased had a parental role. Such a family need consist only of the deceased and the potential applicant. Currently, such an individual could bring a family provision claim only if they could prove themselves to be a child of the family in relation to the deceased’s marriage or civil partnership. This provision reflects the Bill’s attempts to modernise the law of succession to better reflect the realities of modern family life, and ensures that a claim by a deserving child will no longer be barred simply on the basis of the status of his or her parents.
Clause 6 also amends the wording of the 1975 Act, which defines a person who may make a family provision claim because they are considered to be a dependant of the deceased. The interpretation of the current law requires that when deciding such status, the court must balance the deceased’s contribution towards the applicant’s needs against any benefits flowing the other way. If the applicant is found to have contributed more to the deceased than vice versa, the applicant cannot be deemed to be a dependant. The Bill proposes to remove the “balance sheet test” while preserving the other, fairly strict requirements imposed on a person applying for family provision as a dependant. This reflects the important understanding that “dependency” can be mutual, and its benefits need not all, or largely, flow one way.
The remainder of Clause 6 makes a number of fairly technical changes to the procedure for family provision claims. I do not propose to set these out individually, but they include changes to arrangements governing a court’s power to make an order following a successful claim and changes to the way in which the net estate of the deceased is calculated. These changes, though technical in nature, have a significant practical effect and form part of a package of changes designed to modernise and generally improve the current arrangements for family provision claims.
Clause 7 makes various amendments to provisions which require certain types of grant to be left out of account when one is determining the date when representation with respect to the estate of a deceased person was first taken out. These are important changes, but technical, and they will be relevant in only a minority of cases. Again, I do not propose to go through each in detail. There is some uncertainty under the current law as to which grants start time running for these purposes and others and which do not. Clause 7, by way of Schedule 3, aims to clarify these uncertainties by replacing all the current provisions in this area with provisions that clearly and comprehensively set out which grants start time running and which do not.
Clauses 8 to 10 deal with trustees’ powers. Clause 8 concerns a situation where a trustee is able to use income from a trust for the maintenance, education or benefit of a beneficiary who is under 18. The Bill proposes that the amount of income that can be used for such purposes should be a matter entirely for the trustees’ discretion. Currently, an objective test of reasonableness is applied, together with a proviso listing factors that the trustees must consider—for example, a beneficiary’s age—and a specific restriction on the amount that can be paid out. These requirements are not necessary. They are sterile technical burdens and are commonly written out when trusts are professionally drafted. Clause 8 removes them. Given that the trustees must still comply with their fiduciary duties, the reform presents no threat to the interests of beneficiaries. It is right that trustees should in future be able to exercise their discretion flexibly and free from unnecessary restrictions.
Clause 9 deals with a similar situation in which trustees are able to use their power of advancement to make payments of capital to beneficiaries where this is thought necessary. Currently, such payments are limited to one-half of a beneficiary’s future share. The Bill removes this limit so that trustees could, if they think fit, pay out the whole of a beneficiary’s share under this power of advancement. This gives the trustees the flexibility that they would almost certainly be given if they were acting under a professionally drafted will or trust. It has no effect on their fiduciary duty to act in a beneficiary’s best interest, which is imposed by the general law. However, any such payments may still not amount to more than that beneficiary’s future share. Clause 10 sets out, in some detail, transitional arrangements for Clauses 8 and 9.
That concludes my brief description of the substantive provisions of the Bill. The Bill will modernise and simplify the law in a number of areas for the benefit of many people at particularly difficult times of their lives. It is a technical piece of law but no less important for that.
Finally, I must add, as I have done in introductions to previous Bills of this nature, that a Bill such as this demonstrates the importance of having a body like the Law Commission that can prepare expert recommendations for reform of the law in areas that would otherwise remain unchanged and possibly out of date. The Bill also demonstrates the advantages of having in your Lordships’ House this procedure that allows appropriate Law Commission Bills to be scrutinised as far as possible off the Floor of the House. This is the sixth Bill to be introduced under that procedure and I commend it to the Committee.
Lord Henley (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord McNally for introducing the Bill in such a comprehensive manner. In my innocence, I thought that this was a relatively simple Bill that was not going to cause us too many problems. However, I was naive in that approach, and I suspect that when we get into proper Committee, Report and the other stages of the Bill under the Law Commission Bill procedure, we might have to spend slightly more time on it than I originally thought.
I also thank my noble friend for arranging our meeting last week with Professor Cooke and the Law Commission, which was very useful. It helped us to get some understanding of the Bill and explained to us some of the problems. However, having listened to my noble friend’s opening speech, I wonder if we did not spend quite as much time on it as perhaps we should have.
The important point, as my noble friend made clear, is that the Bill deals largely with intestacy. He said, “In an ideal world, such arrangements would be set out in a will”. I would remind the Committee of what I am told is a convention among Quakers. Once a year they say to each other not just, “Have you got a will?”, but, “Have you got an up-to-date will?”. There is no point in having a will if that will no longer reflects your views. Similarly, it is a fairly bad thing if you do not have a will at all. So we all want to see people taking the trouble to make sure that they have a will so that large parts of the Bill need not come into effect, other than those parts that refer to looking after dependants who quite rightly should be allowed to get something if the will has excluded them.
I am very grateful, as well as for that remark from the Quakers, for a quotation sent to me by the Law Commission. It is from Cato the Elder, as quoted by Plutarch. I am going to give it in English, not in Latin—the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, can probably translate it back. He said:
“And as for repentance, he said he had indulged in it but thrice in his whole life: once when he entrusted a secret to his wife; once when he paid a ship’s fare to a place instead of walking thither; and once when he remained intestate a whole day”.
I think that it is important that everyone remembers the importance of making a will and making sure that that will is kept up to date, and for that I am grateful to my noble friend.
As one who believes in property and the freedom of testation, I am also grateful to my noble friend for covering another matter at the meeting that we had last week, and that is the fact that, other than that it makes provision for dependants, the Bill does not impinge at all on that freedom of testation. Obviously there has to be some protection for individuals, for partners, spouses and others, but I still believe that it is right that everyone should have the right, subject to what they own and whether there are trusts and others, to leave their property as and how they wish; whether it be to the cats’ home, to a political party or to their own children or whatever. I make that point because I think that it is important that we all remember that freedom of testation is a very important part of everything that we believe in in this country.
Sadly, some people will die intestate and therefore there is a necessity for rules in this area. It is a long time since I did my Bar exams and I cannot remember what the precise rules were, but having looked through the Bill, it seems to make a pretty good fist of allocating those resources on the occasions when there is a spouse or a spouse and dependants. However, there is something that I cannot quite see. The first question I want to put to my noble friend—again, I am grateful for the diagram that he provided at last week’s meeting which set out the rules before and after reform—is whether I am right in thinking that for those estates where there is no surviving spouse or children, the rules continue as they were. I cannot remember the precise details of these, but those who are more learned in law will no doubt be able to advise us. So my first question concerns intestate estates where there is a surviving spouse, civil partner or children.
My second question relates to the fixed net sum, as set out in Clause 1. There seems to be an indication that this is going to be set at around £450,000, that the Lord Chancellor will have the power to amend it and that he will have to look at it at least every five years. However, I think that we would all be very grateful if my noble friend could say a bit more about the thinking behind that sum—how they selected it and what they think is likely to happen in the future. Having said that, I would be grateful for some statistics on how many intestate estates have more than £450,000 in the bag. I suspect that it is a pretty small number, because I think that most people who have assets of that sort will have taken the trouble to take some advice. I might be wrong in that, but I would grateful to know from my noble friend just what the statistics say.
The third question I want to put to my noble friend relates to the changing definition of chattels. I listened very carefully to what he said about jewellery and whether it was something that had been, say, worn by the spouse and was therefore part of her property rather than some other asset. I have some small personal experience of this and have to say that I see trouble ahead. It is an issue that might be worth exploring in greater detail on a later occasion.
The last point—I want to be relatively brief in this—is about procedure. I understand that this is the fifth or sixth Law Commission Bill that we have had since the procedure was agreed, and I think that most noble Lords will agree that it has worked pretty well. I remember being involved in the first one that we ever had; it was of such a technical nature that I do not think I understood a word of it from beginning to end, but there were wiser people than me in the Room on that occasion. All I want is an assurance from the Government that they will ensure that this procedure is used only for uncontroversial Bills of the sort that are appropriate, as set out by the Procedure Committee. This is an area where we do not want to see any drift or growth in how these matters work.
I hope that I have been appropriately brief. There are a number of questions for my noble friend and I look forward to later stages of the Bill in due course.
Lord Wills (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, congratulate the Minister on his magisterial introduction to the Bill, which I welcome. I also congratulate the Law Commission on the quality of its work, which laid the foundations for the Bill. I am delighted to see this procedure in place for ensuring that Law Commission reports do not, as the noble Lord, Lord McNally, said, gather dust on the shelves. As a Minister in the previous Government, I was responsible for putting in place this long-overdue reform of process. It is good to see it working so well and to see all the excellent work that is done by the Law Commission, in this area as in many others, being given practical effect in this way.
The Law Commission’s work in this area set out to ensure that the intestacy rules,
“strive to reflect the needs and expectations of modern families”.
Behind that work and behind the Bill lies the imperative of ensuring an equitable distribution of the estate of the deceased. Underpinning that must be the need for such distribution to reflect, as far as possible, the wishes of the deceased. Society must strive to protect the delivery of such wishes—it is a debt that each generation owes its predecessors.
The changing nature of modern families has created a situation where such protections can be illegitimately thwarted. The Bill offers a rare legislative opportunity to mitigate such mischief. That mischief can arise, in particular, in the case of vulnerable, lonely and elderly people, where an enduring or lasting power of attorney has been granted and the attorney abuses their powers to plunder the assets over which they have power. The official line of defence against such abuse is the Office of the Public Guardian but informal lines of defence are also provided by family and friends and by those who might legitimately expect to be beneficiaries of the estate in due course.
However, these defences can be of little value in the cases—which are, sadly, increasingly common—of vulnerable elderly people without close family or friends to monitor their situation. It is impossible to know how prevalent a problem this is because it is, by its nature, often concealed. However, because it is concealed, the Office of the Public Guardian can often do nothing about such abuse. Even when it does come to light, it is often after the death of the person concerned, and the Office of the Public Guardian has no jurisdiction after death.
The mischief can also arise even when no power of attorney has been granted but when there is a fiduciary relationship. The problems here can extend beyond the obvious one where the person drawing up the will becomes a beneficiary of it.
For example—and I set out this example solely to illustrate the nature of the problem—an elderly person, perhaps in a care home, asks for advice on making a will and the care home refers them to a local solicitor. In drawing up the will, the solicitor and the elderly person strike up a close relationship. The solicitor begins to pay regular visits to discuss the will and other matters. The solicitor might, quite properly, point out that they need to charge for the visit, and the elderly person, glad of the company, is glad to agree. However, the elderly person may not be aware that the solicitor is visiting far more often than could be justified professionally and that, instead of charging a normal hourly fee, they might be charging double that and then paying themselves those fees out of the estate that they are administering.
It might be argued—and I think that the noble Lord, Lord Henley, would agree with me on this given what he has just said—that if an elderly person wishes to spend their money on company from a solicitor or anyone else, the state has no right to interfere with that wish. That is an area where the state should not trespass. However, disproportionate charges for that solicitor’s visits and a disproportionate number of visits might, unknown to that elderly person, exhaust the estate and deprive the beneficiaries, who will often be charities, of the legacy that the testator wished them to have. If that had been fully explained to that elderly person, they might well have decided not to have quite so much company from the solicitor.
If the situation is not made clear and there is a breach of fiduciary duty, there appears to be very little remedy in practice. Again, this is by its nature often a concealed mischief and will rarely come to light. In this situation, the beneficiaries of the will, who might be expected to take a close interest in the administration of their future inheritance, are charities and will not necessarily be aware of the will.
The Solicitors Regulation Authority operates, understandably and prudentially enough, on a risk basis. It investigates only after a number of complaints, and the nature of this mischief means that a significant number of complaints are unlikely to emerge. It therefore seems that professionals—this will usually be solicitors but not necessarily exclusively so; it might involve others such as accountants and doctors—can operate to milk the estates of elderly, lonely and vulnerable people with a high probability of impunity.
This risk has been acknowledged by the Solicitors Regulation Authority, which has said:
“Theft and serious overcharging by solicitors acting in a representative capacity such as executor of an estate (but also under powers of attorney) continue to pose a high risk. The numbers of reports to the SRA of possible irregularity in probate cases increased from 6 in 2004, to 31 in 2005, 52 in 2006 and 65 in 2007. This problem is particularly insidious because it can take place over many years without detection. Beneficiaries, especially charities, are unaware that their money has been stolen. Sometimes solicitors or their employees take a long-term view by drafting wills to enable them to steal money from estates in later years”.
It is therefore clear that this problem has come across the radar of the SRA. The numbers are not great, but they may be only the tip of an iceberg. The problem is compounded by the fact that, as I understand it, if an estate is of nil value, it does not have to be published. A sufficiently calculating solicitor or other person in a position to do so can then time the plundering of the estate to such an extent that it is exhausted by the time of death. Therefore, there is no public record of the depletion of the estate. In the circumstances that I have described, there will be no close family or friends to be beneficiaries who might question the exhaustion of the estate. The charities, which are often the beneficiaries in these circumstances and which, as I understand it, scrutinise published wills to check out their legacies, will have nothing to scrutinise. Such a lack of transparency fosters a culture of impunity which can only encourage the plundering of estates of the elderly and vulnerable by those who are malignly intentioned and are in a position to do so.
There is clearly a problem here, and the Bill offers a rare legislative opportunity to tackle it, although I fully accept that the main thrust of the Bill is in a completely different area from the one that I have just described. Before the Minister decides to tell me that I may be straying too far off course here, I should say that I have sought advice from the clerks on the amendment that I intend to put down and they have advised me that what I have in mind is admissible.
Of course, no legislation can ever guarantee to remove any mischief completely, but it can often mitigate its incidence and its extent. I believe that greater transparency can do just that in this case. I tell the Minister now that I intend to put down an amendment in Committee to promote such transparency. I am very happy to share this with the Minister and his officials in advance in the hope that all their greater experience, wisdom and judgment can improve my amendment and make faster and securer progress towards tackling a problem that I hope we can all agree should be tackled.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames (LD)
My Lords, I, too, welcome this Bill. As my noble friend has explained in his lucid and comprehensive introduction, it implements some of the proposals in the Law Commission’s 2011 report, Intestacy and Family Provision Claims on Death.
Particularly welcome is the improvement of the position of spouses and civil partners as compared with the position of remoter relatives. It is entirely right that where a deceased leaves a spouse or civil partner but no children, the spouse or civil partner should take the entire estate. It is also right that where there are surviving children as well as a surviving spouse or civil partner, then that survivor should take not just the statutory legacy absolutely but also his or her half of the residue absolutely. The complication and the capacity for encouraging disputes that was inherent in the existing arrangement, whereby the survivor’s half interest was held on a life interest only, should be done away with. I believe that these and other changes in the Bill chime with contemporary views of family life. They also accord more readily than do the present arrangements with the economic realities of dependency. These changes will help avoid the difficulty, the expense and the time involved in bringing claims for family provision under the 1975 Act as well.
In the case of family provision, my noble friend has stated that the Government intend to abandon the provisions presently in the Bill to reform the domicile threshold for bringing a family provision claim. Families and family wealth are increasingly international, and not only among the wealthy. I would suggest that there are cases where claims against the estate of non-domiciled deceased persons ought to be capable of being brought. It may be that habitual residence of a potential claimant is not an appropriate test for the reasons of Scots law and practice that my noble friend gave. But in this respect, as he reminded us, the provisions in the Bill differ from the Law Commission’s original proposals. The Law Commission report recommended that the existence of real property in England and Wales, or property to which domestic succession law applied, should be the alternative threshold condition apart from domicile of the deceased, whereas, as my noble friend has said, the Bill in its present form would have established habitual residence of the potential claimant as the alternative threshold condition.
I wonder whether the existence of real property here, or property to which domestic succession law applies, should, as the Law Commission proposed, even in the absence of domicile of the deceased or habitual residence of the claimant, justify a financial provision claim. I hope that the Government, rather than simply abandoning the position by amendment, will consider whether there is an alternative way of effectively widening the present threshold.
In connection with family provision claims, it is plainly right that we should add as an eligible person a child treated by a parent as a child of the family; that change is plainly welcome.
The Bill, however, implements only one part of the recommendations of the Law Commission’s 2011 report. As my noble friend also pointed out in his introduction, the other part comprised its recommendations for provision for cohabitants to take under the intestacy rules after five years’ cohabitation, or two years if the cohabitants had children living with them. Those proposals were incorporated in a separate draft Bill, the Inheritance (Cohabitants) Bill, which was annexed to the Law Commission’s report.
The Government have not sought to implement those provisions either in this Bill or in any other Bill. I differ from my noble friend and the Government in my assessment of the wisdom of this. It was left to my noble friend Lord Lester of Herne Hill to bring in a Private Member’s Bill in the terms of the Law Commission’s draft in the previous Session in an attempt to secure the implementation of these recommendations relating to cohabitation. That Bill fell for lack of time and government support after Second Reading in this House. Its provisions are now included in my Cohabitation Rights Bill, which was introduced in this House earlier this month.
The fate of those provisions is not my only concern in this area. The Law Commission in 2007 produced a lengthy and detailed report entitled, Cohabitation: The Financial Consequences of Relationship Breakdown. In that report, the commission recommended a limited scheme of financial relief to adjust economic disadvantages arising out of cohabiting relationships and to share the benefits derived from such relationships.
Again, my noble friend Lord Lester of Herne Hill introduced a Private Member’s Bill in 2008 which would have introduced reforms which were not the same as but similar to those proposed by the Law Commission. The Labour Government did not support that Private Member’s Bill, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, then the Attorney-General, saying that the Government wished to await the outcome of research into how the Scottish legislation to similar effect, passed in 2006, was working.
In September 2011, four years after the Law Commission’s 2007 report, when I asked an Oral Question of the Government on this issue, they announced the same day by Written Ministerial Statement that there would be no action taken by the Government in this Parliament to implement the Law Commission’s proposals. Those proposals on financial relief on relationship breakdown are now the central part of my Cohabitation Rights Bill. However, in the nature of things and despite any optimism on my part, it may be some time before that passes into law.
Meanwhile, more and more cohabiting couples in England and Wales—nearly 6 million people now cohabit in the United Kingdom—go without the legal protections on breakdown or death that the Law Commission has firmly recommended that they should have. This is against the background of widespread public confusion about the position in law of people who choose to cohabit. In a British Social Attitudes survey in 2006, no less than 58% of respondents thought that cohabiting couples who split up were probably or definitely in the same position as married couples. The myth of the common law marriage is widespread, but it is just that, as your Lordships know: a myth without any foundation in law.
Reform of the law relating to cohabitation enjoys widespread judicial support. Scotland has had a cohabitation law similar to that proposed by the Law Commission since 2006. Ireland introduced similar legislation in 2010. This is what the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale, our one woman Supreme Court judge—and how regrettable it is that she is the only one—said last July, in a major case on the Scottish Act in the Supreme Court, Gow v Grant:
“The main lesson from this case, as also from the research so far, is that a remedy such as this is both practicable and fair. It does not impose upon unmarried couples the responsibilities of marriage but redresses the gains and losses flowing from their relationship”.
She concluded:
“‘The Act has undoubtedly achieved a lot for Scottish cohabitants and their children’. English and Welsh cohabitants and their children deserve no less”.
This is not good enough. The Law Commission’s proposals on separation were made in 2007 after a long and detailed consultation, and on intestacy in 2011. They were thorough and carefully considered. The Law Commission is the independent body set up by Parliament to recommend to the Government necessary law reforms, with a mission to keep the law fair, simple and modern. Yet in spite of repeated pleas from the professions and the judiciary at all levels to implement the commission’s proposals, no action has been taken.
I am not saying that any proposal of the Law Commission should automatically be implemented without parliamentary scrutiny—far from it. Of course it is for Parliament to determine what proposals it will implement and what it will decline to implement. However, the point of having the Law Commission is to achieve reform of the law, and that central function risks being thwarted by the failure of government at least to bring legislation before Parliament to implement the commission’s proposals. I suggest that the default position at any rate should be that the Government should bring forward legislation for consideration by Parliament when the Law Commission makes detailed proposals for law reform.
As a result of a decision taken by the conference of my party in Glasgow this autumn, the implementation of the Law Commission’s proposals on intestacy and on relationship breakdown is now Liberal Democrat policy. However, that in a sense highlights the problem. Proposals of the Law Commission for law reform should not have to be the stuff of party politics. I do not disagree with my noble friend Lord Henley that this fast-track procedure should not be available for every controversial proposal of the commission, but that does not mean that the proposal should not be brought before Parliament to be debated in the usual way. Governments of all parties should regard it as incumbent upon them to bring legislation before Parliament to implement Law Commission proposals.
Under the protocol set out in the Law Commission Act 2009, agreed between government and the commission, the Lord Chancellor is under a duty to report annually to Parliament on progress in implementing Law Commission reports. The Government must take that protocol seriously and indicate a high duty in this area. The progress on cohabitation reform suggests that such a duty has not been taken sufficiently seriously to date. The Bill is welcome but does not go far enough. One is left with an uncomfortable sense that we are implementing the easy and non-controversial proposals and ducking those that are more controversial. I adapt the words of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Hale: the Law Commission’s proposals deserve better than that.
Lord Shaw of Northstead (Con)
My Lords, I am no lawyer and do not propose to go into the detail of the Bill. My sole objective is to show my welcome—and, I believe, everybody’s welcome—for its introduction.
The Bill introduces amendments to legislation some of which goes back as far as 1925. They seek to correct shortcomings in existing legislation that have appeared. I was prompted to take an interest in the Bill by my recollection of a family incident some years ago. Our solicitors suddenly produced a number of short documents for each of us, including uncles, aunts and the rest, to sign. My immediate response to all this was, “Why the devil should we sign them?”. So the solicitors came back to me and I was told that if certain highly unlikely but entirely possible happenings took place concerning intestacy—including sudden unexpected deaths and so on—the intentions of our wills or trusts would not fulfilled. Having been told that, I did not go into the matter any further—I just told everyone to sign as quickly as possible. Presumably all is well and, anyway, I do not think that there were any sudden deaths or whatever in the family.
In looking at the changes outlined in the Bill it is very important from our point of view that they have all been carefully and thoroughly considered and approved by the Law Commission, which has itself sought full public comment before arriving at its conclusions. In supporting the Bill, I express my thanks to the Law Commission for its work and its conclusions, and I hope that these will lead to a speedy, welcome and successful passage of the Bill.
Baroness Hamwee (LD)
My Lords, I had friends—not Quakers—whose favourite activity of a long winter’s night, when we were all students and young lawyers in practice, was to make and remake their wills. I do not know whether they filled in the odd half an hour with the odd codicil as well. Many of us, like them, at some point in middle age, go from, “I am immortal” to, “I cannot face thinking about it”. It is no surprise that the Nuffield study used by the Law Commission reported that family circumstances and the wish to avoid family arguments, as well as having assets, is the prompt to make a will. I say “assets” rather than “wealth” because there is also awareness, particularly of the cost of housing and the positions of one’s children and grandchildren.
I was fascinated by some of the information at the back of the Law Commission report. I have to say that when I picked it up last night I thought, be careful what you wish for. The jump in the number of intestacies in the three years in the middle of the 2000s—or, as the Law Commission explains, probably deaths five years previously, when the grant was in those years—is very puzzling. The report is impressively thorough; one would expect no less.
Many people think that the law must automatically reflect what they perceive to be sensible and right, but, as other noble Lords have already said this afternoon, what you think is right may not coincide with what I think is right. I was taken by the emphasis the Law Commission put, and which the Minister has analysed and repeated, on rules, without affecting freedom of personal decision. The aim of bringing the law into line with needs and expectations reflects exactly what the law should do, but there are, as has been explored, new forms of family and some very complex permutations, given sequential marriages, step-relationships and so on. I could tell from the Minister’s speech that that is well recognised. I knew that with my noble friend Lord Marks taking part in the debate there would be no need for me to linger on the issue of cohabitation, but I agree with him on the complexity and importance of international aspects too.
I was particularly interested in the provisions for adopted children who are part of a new family. I was lucky enough to take part in the recent work of the Select Committee looking at adoption legislation. It highlighted for us the importance to many adopted young people of their sibling relationships and of the maintenance of contact with their birth siblings. The issue of different rights in the case of children of deceased birth parents, where some interests are vested and some are contingent, had not occurred to me, but I realise that it must be very difficult, both for adopters and for adoption agencies, to handle this issue. I suspect it may also be pretty difficult if adopters who have a child whose interests are contingent have children who have significantly less wealth than their adoptive sibling but, as the Minister said, this is typically a very open arrangement.
The provisions about maintenance and advancement seem eminently sensible. Given what applies to which trusts created when, I did wonder whether this might be some sort of job creation scheme for lawyers, who will all be advising their clients to make new wills. However, in defence of the profession, I did not recognise the scenario painted by the noble Lord, Lord Wills, although I accept there are bad apples in every profession. I did have a parallel thought in that I object to the market that the banks have created in wills and probate. The noble Lord, Lord Beecham, is nodding. It is a good thing that they are not as creative in their timing as the noble Lord, Lord Wills, has suggested is possible. I would be intrigued to see his solution to this. It is in the interest of solicitors—I am a solicitor, despite not having practised for some time—as well as of clients that there is simplicity. Dealing with a client at war with his family after a death in that family is stressful for everyone, including the solicitor. Some arguments can never be solved.
There will be points to probe in Committee. Along with the noble Lord, Lord Henley, I wondered about assets which are classed as investments if they are only narrowly investments. I was thinking about works of art—what a pity if they cannot be enjoyed as well as being investments. I know people who collect works of art who justify it to themselves as being an investment, but a lot of people enjoy seeing the works on their walls. I have not thought this through but I wonder whether there is any interaction here with the inheritance tax provisions, which are different for personal assets and for the assets of a trade or business. That comes from having been a partner in a firm that acted for a lot of people in the arts world.
There will be points such as that to probe but there is one that I should like to raise now. I should be glad to know before we reach Committee whether it is intended that different provisions of the Bill will come into force at different times. I appreciate that the commencement sections of a Bill really are for the geeks but it is important here to understand this, because a lot of the provisions work as part of a complete package. No doubt, along with other Members of this Committee, I soon will be off to add remaking a will to my to-do list.
Lord Lloyd of Berwick (CB)
My Lords, I am glad to have the opportunity to speak during the gap. I do not intend to deal with any of the provisions of the Bill, which have already been very well covered in the debate but want to say something about the procedure that we are following.
I remember the time not so very long ago when the Law Commission would study an area of the law that was badly in need of reform. Very often it would be doing so at the request of the Government. It would then take all the trouble and all the care to produce a report such as the one we have here—I refer not just to the cover but to the contents, some of which I have read—but nothing would happen. The Government may have accepted all the recommendations of a report and thanked the commission warmly for all its hard work, but still nothing would happen. The reason always given was that there simply was not time for a Second Reading in the Chamber.
Therefore, the matters covered by these reports, urgent though they might be, would accumulate from year to year. It became almost a scandal and must have been extremely frustrating for the Law Commission. Then came the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, like a sort of deus ex machina. As Leader of the House, she was determined to do something to speed up the process, which is exactly what she did. I remember well the discussions that we had at that time, and I can say that without her we would not be here today in the middle of this Second Reading debate. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Wills, who spoke on this, can confirm that view.
Lord Wills
I am sure that this is not courteous but I should like not only to place on record the work done by my noble friend Lady Ashton but to put the history straight. When I came into position in 2007, this was not a work in progress. The person who deserves most credit is no Minister but the then chair of the Law Commission, Sir Terence Etherton—now, I think, at the Court of Appeal. He was indefatigable in badgering me as the responsible Minister and all the officials to make sure that something happened. I am sure that the Ministry of Justice will remember this. As we are paying tribute, I say with all respect to my noble friend Lady Ashton that if there is one person who really deserves the credit it is Sir Terence Etherton. I hope that the noble and learned Lord will agree with me on his central role in this important reform.
Lord Lloyd of Berwick
I entirely agree with the noble Lord—I can remember Lord Etherton badgering me in exactly the same way—but it was the noble Baroness, Lady Ashton, who in the end got it through. It seems to me that we owe a huge debt of gratitude. By “we”, I mean the law and not just us around this Committee.
Perhaps I may couple just one other name: that of the noble Lord, Lord McNally, the Minister in charge of this Bill. I hope that he will not be too surprised by my saying that. As I think I have been involved in all the Law Commission Bills—I was surprised to hear that there were six; can it be as many as that?—I know from my experience that having a Minister who is himself keen on law reform makes all the difference.
Finally, I want to mention Professor Elizabeth Cooke, who has been in charge of work on this Bill from its very inception. In the old days, Acts of Parliament were sometimes named after the person who had drafted them; Lord Tenterden’s Act comes to mind. I would like to think that at some time in the future this Act might become known as Baroness Cooke’s—I say Baroness; she is not a Baroness yet—or Professor Cooke’s Act. This is an admirable report; it is very well set out, very clear and ideally suited for this procedure. I hope that it will find favour with the Committee.
Lord Beecham (Lab)
My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking the Minister for the clarity with which he went through this very technical Bill. He has made it comprehensible, I think, to all who have heard him address these issues today. Before we began today’s debate, the noble Lord, Lord Henley, inquired whether I had any more Dickensian quotations—we tend to bandy them across the Chamber at one another. I confess that I have not come up with anything, except perhaps to note that this is after all a Bill about expectations great and modest.
The noble Lord also said that he was pleased that the Bill did not interfere with the freedom of testation, which of course it does not. It is perhaps worth reminding your Lordships that the Inheritance (Provision for Family and Dependants) Act allows for applications to be made in respect of an estate where a dependant feels that his or her interests have not been adequately reflected in the will that has been made or, indeed, under an intestacy. However, this measure does not deal with that particular set of events.
The noble Lord inquired into the numbers involved. The impact analysis of the Bill refers to there being something like 1,045 estates valued at £450,000 or more; that was the figure he was looking at, which currently applies for cases where there is no surviving spouse. However, although there are 1,000 such estates or thereabouts, the estimate is that only 5% to 10% of those are intestate estates. We are therefore dealing with pretty modest numbers, although they are obviously significant to anyone involved with one of those estates.
I have to congratulate my noble friend Lord Wills again on the ingenuity with which he manages to bring into legislative debates matters about which he is particularly concerned. I am tempted to throw in a slightly Dickensian reference to King Charles’s head, but will not pursue that at any length because, of course, he raises a legitimate and interesting point, which we will no doubt have the opportunity of debating further. However, when it comes to exploitation of vulnerable people or misconduct by any adviser—be it a solicitor, bank or anyone else whose responsibility clearly ought to be to act in the interests of those to whom an estate has been left—the numbers are again pretty small. The noble Lord mentioned 65 cases. There are 240,000 grants of representation every year; that figure appears in the commission’s report. It is a minuscule proportion, but of course any one case is too many. Not far from where I used to practise in Newcastle—I declare my interest as a now-unpaid consultant in a firm in which I was formerly senior partner—there was a serious case where, I recollect, a £90,000 bill was levied on a £100,000 estate by a solicitor who was, of course, subsequently struck off and also visited with criminal sanctions. I think the office where he carried out this misfeasance remains to this day unlet and unoccupied. That is not to say that my noble friend is not right to raise the issue. It will be interesting to see what proposals he has to make about it.
The noble Lord, Lord Marks, made some interesting points. He referred to the fact that dealing with the issue of cohabitees is to be Liberal Democrat policy, which must of course give great heart to cohabitees, bearing in mind what happened to things like student loans and nuclear power. Nevertheless, hope springs eternal in a Lib Dem’s breast. We might see some action—possibly—along those lines. I share the noble Lord’s concern about cohabitation. The commission argues a strong case for dealing with what is now a growing number—the noble Lord referred to 6 million although I think the documentation suggests 7.5 million —of people, about 15% of families, living in that state. I am not sure why the Government choose not to proceed—not necessarily in this Bill but in this Parliament—on a matter which I would have thought would command support. The consultation responses to the commission’s report were fairly limited. Although I recall there were some in the part about cohabitation, they were a relative handful.
If I have a confession to make, it is that I did not quite struggle through the entirety of the Law Commission’s report, but did look particularly at the section on cohabitation—which, appropriately enough, comprises about 15% of the report. There were obviously those with particular religious views who were concerned about the cohabitation proposal but there did not seem to be great hostility beyond that. I would have hoped that the Government would look more sympathetically at that. It need not be in this Bill but they could, at least, pursue further consultation with a view to bringing forward legislation, whichever Government assumes office after the next election.
I agree with the noble Lord on that issue but am not entirely convinced about his references to the desirability of the half-share—which, under present circumstances, may be held on a life interest—becoming absolute. In many cases that would be absolutely appropriate, but it might be a bit hard in a situation where the total estate is not that much more than the statutory amount of £250,000 but where there are children, particularly if they are from a first marriage or civil partnership, for example. Such children might see their inheritance reduced effectively to a quarter of the estate; whereas ultimately, under the existing framework, it could be a half. If there is a lot of money, that is less relevant, but if it is a relatively modest estate there might be some potential hardship to children, particularly in the case of a second marriage or second civil partnership. Having said that, I suppose that it is always possible to revisit these matters in due course, but it would be interesting to see how that plays out.
Two other matters occurred to me. The first comes from the left field, as it were, and relates to the position where a testator or intestate with English domicile had two wives. That may be the case if someone of a certain religion had come from a country where it was possible to have more than one spouse. I am not sure what the current situation is, let alone how that would apply in these circumstances. I do not know whether the Minister, his colleague or those behind him can advise about that. It is not going to be a huge issue but it might be an issue.
I mentioned the second issue—the potential impact when a joint tenancy is part of the family’s assets—at the meeting that the Minister helpfully organised. A joint tenancy is one in which there is an undivided share of property. A husband and wife, or any two people, hold the property, which automatically passes on death to the other. It is not included in the estate and is not therefore taken into account under the present arrangements. That is as opposed to a tenancy in common, where you have a distinct share that can be left by will or would pass under the intestacy rules. I suppose it is possible that the inheritance family provision legislation could apply in that context; someone may feel that they have been significantly bypassed and could make an application. I do not know what the prospects of success for such an application would be. Perhaps I am overcomplicating things but I wonder whether some notice ought to be taken of the potential impact of a joint tenancy absorbing perhaps a significant part of the estate and taking it outside of the regime that the Bill helpfully provides. Perhaps one might consider that in Committee or perhaps the Law Commission might want to advise the Minister before we get to Committee as to whether anything might be done in that respect.
Basically, we are supportive of the proposals. Subject to possible minor adjustments here and there, they represent a way forward. I join the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, and others in paying tribute to the commission and particularly to Professor Cooke for the amount of work done and the clarity with which the case has been made, both in documentation and in the helpful session that we had. We look forward to completing the work on the Bill fairly rapidly. It will certainly provide justice for many people and improve on the current situation. In principle, therefore, we support the Bill.
Lord McNally
My Lords, we have had a good debate, which I am sure bodes well for very interesting discussions in the Public Bill Committee. I again put on record my thanks to the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd, for taking on the responsibility as chair of that Committee. As noble Lords will have gathered, I am also much reassured by the presence close by of Professor Cooke as I try to give answers to matters raised by noble Lords.
The first of my noble friend Lord Henley’s questions was about the situation where there is no surviving spouse or children. In such a case, the law remains the same. As to how the fixed sum was reached, that came out of a study in 2005, which made me think that it might be ripe for looking at again. On the question of whether this is a surprisingly large sum, one of the factors is housing, which makes it relatively easy for an estate to have quite large sums in it. Nevertheless, I am told that it affects at the moment only 2% of estates, partly because, as was mentioned, people who have a house and realise that its value is rising have the incentive to make a will.
The point that my noble friend raised about chattels is one that we may well explore in Committee. As I think my noble friend Lady Hamwee said, it is in respect not just of jewellery but of paintings and other things where there might be a wavy line between investments and chattels. That is certainly something to look at. For the same reason that I will refer to when I come to the interventions of my noble friend Lord Marks, I assure my noble friend Lord Henley that this procedure will be used only for non-controversial reforms. That is its strength and why Parliament has confidence in it. We should keep to that kind of discipline.
As the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, said, the noble Lord, Lord Wills, took us to interesting areas. However, the noble Lord was right to point out the danger of mischief and of the abuse of elderly and isolated individuals. Much of that is the responsibility of the Office of the Public Guardian, which also comes within my ministerial responsibilities. Allegations of theft or overcharging by any professional are serious and concerning but I do not believe that this Bill is the right place to tackle such misconduct. The Inheritance and Trustees’ Powers Bill does not directly deal with wills but instead focuses largely on situations where no will has been made. Dealing with the concerns raised by the noble Lord would not only expand the content of the Bill to deal with wills but would mean taking it into the territory of professional legal regulation, which would be a very significant step and is already dealt with under the auspices of the Solicitors Regulation Authority and the Law Society. However, the Committee will undoubtedly consider the points made by the noble Lord, Lord Wills, carefully unless the chairman rules that out. Not that I am not suggesting that will happen—we look forward to an interesting debate on any amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wills.
My noble friend Lord Marks gave us a glimpse of the detail into which Liberal Democrat conferences go in making policy. I cannot quite remember the debate myself, but I am sure there were many speeches from the floor that dealt with our policy on this. I have to say to my noble friend that he used a good deal of his speech to talk about things that we have not done and were not in the Bill. These are very relevant and may well need to be brought before Parliament, but he gave the game away at the end of his peroration when he described the issues that we have left out of the Bill: he will see when he reads Hansard that several times he used the word “controversial”. It is because they were controversial that they fell foul of the request of the noble Lord, Lord Henley, that we stay clear of that.
Lord Marks of Henley-on-Thames
My Lords, I draw my noble friend’s attention to a distinction that I hoped I had made between controversial proposals of the Law Commission, which I suggest ought to be brought before Parliament for legislation, and non-controversial proposals, such as are included in the Bill, which are suitable for this procedure. I hope I was making it clear that I do not suggest that this fast-track procedure is suitable for controversial legislation, but I do suggest that the Law Commission should not be frightened or intimidated away from introducing controversial proposals. Indeed, when considering its new, 12th—I think—programme of law reform, it has made it clear that it does not propose to steer clear of controversial proposals. I believe that that is thoroughly laudable.
Lord McNally
I could not agree more. I also say that I take very seriously my responsibility to bring the non-controversial parts of the work before the House.
Whether we should take the non-domicile question out of the Bill can be looked at in Committee. It seems to me that what we have done is no more than to recognise the realities we face in our relations with our Scottish colleagues, but I take on board the point made by my noble friend Lord Marks that in an increasingly international world some of this might have cross-border dimensions.
My noble friend Lady Hamwee made the point about housing now being a big part of any inheritance. She also raised the question of inheritance tax implications. We can look at that in Committee if necessary, but on her specific question about the commencement provision, there is no precise timing as yet, but the intention is that commencement will be all at one time.
I was extremely pleased by the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Shaw, both for his welcome for the Bill and for the personal example that he gave, which was extremely helpful to the Committee. I shall treasure the compliment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Lloyd; I shall tuck it away. We will have to leave it to the historians to decide whether it is Wills, Ashton, Etherton or one of the joint parentages we were talking about earlier in the debate. Nevertheless, the fact that the noble and learned Lord has been willing to take on the chairmanship has given an impetus and confidence to this procedure.
I was greatly sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, did not take this opportunity to give us a quote from Bleak House. Surely there is one somewhere here.
Lord McNally
It is the classic. There is an old joke of which I saw a picture in a bar in Scotland: one farmer was pulling a cow’s horns, another farmer was pulling its tail and underneath was a lawyer milking the cow. However, the noble Lord, Lord Beecham, made a spirited defence of his profession and put into perspective some of the suggestions made about malpractice. As I mentioned when I dealt with the contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Wills, this is looked at elsewhere in the law.
On the issue of two wives, only the wife of a marriage that was legally recognised under English law would be relevant as regards intestacy rules. However, if noble Lords would like to pursue this in Committee, we can look at it in more detail. You do not have to be a Muslim or a Mormon to have some interesting domestic arrangements; this is not personal, but I can think of one or two which might come into this category.
That just shows why it is extremely sensible to use this procedure and the careful research and advice of the Law Commission in carrying this forward. I hope that we can now move into Committee and do this work, which is one of the more satisfactory exercises in Parliament. As the noble Lord, Lord Shaw, pointed out, we manage to pick up pieces of the law that have fallen out of date and address them in an extremely practical way.
House of Lords
Introduction: Lord Purvis of Tweed
Introduction: Baroness Hodgson of Abinger
Foreign Languages: European Institutions
(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Harrison
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to encourage the study of modern foreign languages to maximise the United Kingdom’s influence in the European institutions.
The Senior Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government & Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Warsi) (Con)
My Lords, the Government recognise that a lack of modern language skills is a barrier to anyone who wishes to work for the EU institutions. We are addressing this at two critical points, by encouraging school pupils to study languages and providing intensive, targeted training for those applying for an EU career. We have also prioritised higher education funding for modern language courses to ensure the continued availability of language study in higher education institutions.
Lord Harrison (Lab)
My Lords, given the British brain drain from Brussels in European Union institutions, which has seen a drop of some 24% of British people working within the European Commission, and given that no fewer than two out of three jobs notionally available to the United Kingdom are left idle by this Government or filled by others, what more can be done on the language front? Will the Minister please study the report of the British Academy, and can she, within her own party, douse the Tea Party Tories, whose constant Europhobia inhibits young people, diplomats and British people from taking the opportunities to be found within the single European market and the wider European Union?
Baroness Warsi
The noble Lord makes the important point that the number of Brits in the European Union institutions is low. It is right that it has been falling over a number of years, from long before 2010—and I am sure that the noble Lord would accept that. The UK represents 12% of the EU population but we have only about 5% of EU staff. Not having a second or a third language, which was also required for some of these jobs, has been the largest barrier. We are putting in place a number of things. I hope that the noble Lord will join me in congratulating my right honourable friend the Foreign Secretary on reopening the language school at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in September this year, which was sadly closed in 2007. I am sure that he will also join me in congratulating the Secretary of State for Education on putting an emphasis on languages in schools and making them one of the performance indicators for the EBacc.
Baroness Coussins (CB)
Is the Minister aware that only 2.6% of the total of last year’s applicants to the European Civil Service were from the UK? Does the Minister agree that our Civil Service recruitment process should collect information on the language skills of new recruits and that an audit should be carried out across the whole of the current Civil Service to establish the extent of the language skills that we do or do not have? If she agrees that that might help to target the individuals best placed to boost our numbers in Europe, will she see that it gets done?
Baroness Warsi
There are a number of reasons why we have problems in relation to that kind of recruitment. One is availability; graduates here are just not as aware, as they are in other European countries, that there are these great opportunities in the EU institutions. Therefore, we have spent a huge amount of resource and energy in 2011 and 2012 in having a road show at graduate fairs to encourage people to apply for these jobs. That has included ministerial involvement. We are investing in language schools, as I have said, and we have also set up an EU staffing unit, which specifically brings together civil servants from across Whitehall, not just the FCO—the FCO hosts this—who can be trained to fit into these institutions. When people get beyond the first stage, we provide some intensive training to get them through to the second stage.
Lord Brittan of Spennithorne (Con)
Does my noble friend agree that it would be helpful if, in the course of speeches made by Ministers on European issues, the availability of such positions in the European Commission and other institutions was mentioned, as a ministerial reference would carry much more weight than just making it available on paper?
Baroness Warsi
I will certainly make sure that we try to incorporate the opportunities which exist for civil servants in the European Union institutions as part of the reform of the European Union because the more Brits that we have fighting for British interests within the European Union, the better it is for the country as a whole.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)
Does not the Minister think that this will be an increasing problem, particularly with the growth of free schools, approved by the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats, where staff do not need any qualifications and we cannot be guaranteed that they are proficient in English, let alone any other language?
Baroness Warsi
I am not sure that I can answer education questions as well. However, what I can say from this Dispatch Box is that I am a huge supporter of free schools and the opportunities that they present to some of the most marginalised. I can give examples of communities that I work incredibly with where children who have been let down by much of what was available to them in the education system previously are now being offered the best education—the kind of education which some parents can pay for but which is now being offered to these children and is paid for by the state.
Baroness Falkner of Margravine (LD)
My Lords, my noble friend may be pleased to hear that my 16 year-old daughter is being taught German by a teacher who is not a qualified teacher but is a German national and mother-tongue speaker. The emphasis must be on having a good teacher rather than on whether the teacher has formal qualifications. My daughter is on course to get a very fine grade indeed. As regards the re-established language school that my noble friend mentioned, what level of interest has there been from across Whitehall departments in taking up the opportunity offered by that language school?
Baroness Warsi
My Lords, 80 languages, 70,000 hours of training and 1,000 full and part-time students—that is the language school.
Lord Liddle (Lab)
Does the noble Baroness agree that we face an extremely serious situation in relation to British influence in the European Union given that the number of British staff working there has declined by a quarter in the past seven years? Are the Government serious about doing something about that as I see no mention of it in the Foreign Office report or in its statement of priorities yet it should be a top national priority? Are they just sleepwalking out of the European Union?
Baroness Warsi
I think the noble Lord will take great comfort from the fact that since 2010 the number of British applicants has increased by 50%.
Lord Tebbit (Con)
My Lords, did I hear my noble friend say that British civil servants going to the Commission lobby for British interests? Surely, that is contrary to Community law. Surely, my noble friend would agree that those who serve the Commission are required to serve its interests even after they are retired as a condition of continuing to get their pension.
Baroness Warsi
Those who serve the Commission, whatever their nationality, bring to the table their expertise and their experience from within the British Civil Service. Any civil servants who bring their experience of the British Civil Service to European institutions bring something additional and special which is good for the British Isles.
Millennium Development Goals
(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Chidgey
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what new millennium development goals they would prefer to see introduced post-2015.
Lord Dholakia (LD)
My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Chidgey, and at his request, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in his name on the Order Paper.
Baroness Northover (LD)
My Lords, the MDGs have provided an important framework in helping to reduce poverty, but there is still much more to do. The 12 successor goals recommended by the high-level panel offer practical targets which tackle the root causes as well as the symptoms of poverty. We are particularly pleased to see a proposed stand-alone goal focused on women and girls.
Lord Dholakia
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply and look forward to the debate on this matter tomorrow. Does my noble friend accept that poverty reduction must be the top priority for the development agenda as 70% of people who were within the millennium development goals have not benefited from the programme, almost all of them women? What indicators does my noble friend have in mind to measure over time where the discrepancies that discriminate against so many women and girls appear in the development agenda?
Baroness Northover
My noble friend is absolutely right. As he will know, the new goals will focus on eradicating extreme poverty within a generation. Central to this, as we all recognise, is reaching women and girls, many of whom were left behind by the MDGs. That is why we are very pleased that there is a proposed stand-alone gender goal and also that there is a lot of emphasis on disaggregating data—only if you have good data can you move things forwards.
Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead (Lab)
My Lords, will the Minister clarify where things stand on the leave-no-one-behind principle included in the 2015 framework which, of course, focuses on social justice and equity? Is the Minister aware that when asked at a press conference in Liberia whether the UK would prioritise inequality over economic growth the Prime Minister replied no, that economic growth was the priority? Surely we can agree that progress achieved will not be sustained unless there is a strong focus on equity within and between countries.
Baroness Northover
My Lords, the noble Baroness will, of course, know the range of goals. Taken together they include all the areas the noble Baroness is talking about. Obviously we need economic growth to try to pull people out of poverty but, as she also knows, leaving no one behind is included there. The aim of the new MDGs is to eradicate extreme poverty. One will not do that without addressing both social justice and economic growth.
Baroness Jenkin of Kennington (Con)
My Lords, I welcome the focus on the post-2015 agenda, but will my noble friend agree that finishing the job of the existing MDGs is also crucial? Will she also inform the House what progress she hopes will be made in the next two years?
Baroness Northover
My noble friend is right and it is important to take forward the current MDGs. However, one of the most important things now is to make sure that the proposed new MDGs, or something very similar to them, are adopted in 2015 so that the progress made in the past 13 years is built on. As noble Lords know, DfID is committed to 0.7% of GNI going to aid. For example, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State has just announced £1 billion going towards the Global Fund. All this will help to deliver the original MDGs.
The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds
My Lords, will the Minister press for tax justice to be a distinctive international goal in ensuring that major corporations pay appropriate taxes and in channelling taxes to the countries where profits are actually made?
Baroness Northover
The right reverend Prelate is right to highlight that and he will know that the UK Government are emphasising the importance of tax being collected appropriately within the developing countries. This will be transformative. Corporate transparency is one of the aspects required and he will know that my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for BIS, Vince Cable, is working very hard on that. BIS has just consulted and is considering responses, and DfID is trying to ensure that tax regimes in the developing countries are strengthened and built on.
Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)
My Lords, evidence shows that investing in a child’s earliest years makes the biggest difference to their lives and to the country’s social and economic fortune. Will the Minister support calls to put early childhood development at the heart of the new post-2015 development framework?
Baroness Northover
Again, if the noble Lord looks at the proposed new MDGs, he will see that that kind of approach can be assumed to be there. There is new emphasis on, for example, good nutrition, which is so important in the first 1,000 days of a child’s life, as well as education—not just primary education but covering a wider scope. Therefore, if the noble Lord looks down the list, he will see that concern for young children is built into a number of the goals.
The Earl of Sandwich (CB)
The noble Baroness mentioned our progress towards 0.7% of GDP, but does she agree that our European neighbours are getting nowhere near that target? What are the Government doing to encourage them?
Baroness Northover
As the noble Earl knows, the northern European countries are stronger in that regard than the southern and eastern ones. However, there has been progress among some of the new EU countries, and that is encouraging. We do, and will, continue to argue this case to make sure that that is a high priority.
Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting
(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what are their priorities for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Colombo on 15 to 17 November.
The Senior Minister of State, Department for Communities and Local Government & Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Warsi) (Con)
My Lords, our priorities for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, CHOGM, include discussions on the post-2015 global development framework and enhancing Commonwealth values. CHOGM also provides an opportunity to raise further international awareness of the need to end sexual violence in conflict. UK Ministers will also engage with their Commonwealth counterparts and pursue relevant bilateral issues with Sri Lanka, including reconciliation, human rights and consular concerns.
Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale (Lab)
My Lords, the Commonwealth charter, agreed by all member states in the Commonwealth last December, states quite clearly that participating in free and fair elections is an inalienable right of the populations of every country in the Commonwealth today. Despite that, the election held in the Maldives on 7 September has now twice been delayed. First, its second round was delayed and, subsequently, a rerun ballot was cancelled this weekend following police intervention. As a result of that, it is likely that the Maldives will now not even be represented in Colombo because they will not have a head of state when the CHOGM takes place this year. The Commonwealth Secretary-General has called for all involved to take speedy action to ensure an outcome for this election that represents the popular will. Will the UK and the other member states of the Commonwealth assist him in trying to make that happen?
Baroness Warsi
I am always grateful for the noble Lord’s intervention in these matters; he has great expertise in relation to the Maldives. As he said, the rerun of the presidential elections has now been cancelled at short notice. The Maldivian Elections Commission announced yesterday that this will now take place on 9 November and, in the event of it going to a second round, we are still hopeful that it will be concluded by about 16 November. The Foreign Secretary released a statement outlining the importance of the democratic process and of the elections concluding in accordance with the Maldives constitution, which says that a President should be inaugurated by 11 November. We have consistently pressed for this. If that is followed, there may be a representative by 15 November, when CHOGM takes place.
Lord Howell of Guildford (Con)
Does the Minister accept that, while all human rights issues are extremely important and should be raised with great vigour by our leaders when they go down to Colombo, one of the major focuses will be on the vast expansion of Commonwealth trade and investment organised by the Commonwealth Business Council and Commonwealth Business Forum in Colombo? Is she aware that the Chinese are planning to send a very large delegation—said to be 70 strong—to this conference, as are Japan, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, demonstrating their commitment to the possible expansion of trade with the Commonwealth? Can she tell us how many delegates the UK Trade & Investment agency will be sending there?
Baroness Warsi
I am not sure what the precise nature of the final delegation will be, but I will certainly write to the noble Lord with details of what representatives of UKTI will be there. Of course, we encourage trade not just between Commonwealth countries but between Commonwealth countries and other nations, but I will write to the noble Lord with more details.
Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)
Does the Minister agree that one of the most distressing features of the Commonwealth is that in 41 out of the 53 countries, same-sex relationships are a criminal offence, and that in some countries, such as Uganda, they carry the possibility of life imprisonment or even, sometimes, a capital offence, if the present law gets through? Will there be any opportunity to raise this distressing situation at the conference?
Baroness Warsi
That is, of course, a matter of concern. Indeed, it was raised in a debate only last week. The Commonwealth charter says clearly that there will be opposition to all forms of discrimination, but the human rights situation in all the Commonwealth countries still leaves a lot to be desired. That is one issue. The noble Lord will be aware also that 38 Commonwealth countries retain the death penalty.
Lord Bach (Lab)
My Lords, we all agree that the Commonwealth is a vital and positive partnership between countries. However, does the Minister agree that there is growing evidence both of a severe deterioration of human rights and a move towards authoritarian government in Sri Lanka itself? Does the Minister agree that it would send a powerful and necessary message to the Government of Sri Lanka if the British Prime Minister were to follow the lead of his fellow Conservative Prime Minister in Canada and decline to attend? If she does not agree: why not?
Baroness Warsi
My Lords, the Government believe that CHOGM will, among other things, provide an opportunity to shine a light on Sri Lanka and to question it in relation to the many commitments that were given as part of the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission. Some recommendations from the commission have been implemented, but many more remain on the table. We will deliver an incredibly tough message to the Sri Lankan Government that they need to make concrete progress on human rights, reconciliation and political settlement, and that when we attend at CHOGM we expect to have unrestricted access to NGOs and to the media. The Government believe that the best way forward is to go there, engage, have tough conversations and shed light on the challenges still presented in Sri Lanka.
Lord Steel of Aikwood (LD)
When my noble friend wound up the debate on the Commonwealth last Thursday, she made the point that such a heavyweight delegation going to Sri Lanka would have a good effect on the human rights situation there. Could she say what she had in mind, and what effect we have had so far?
Baroness Warsi
I have been looking at the programme of the Prime Minister and of the other Ministers who will be attending. It would be inappropriate at this stage for me to detail that programme and where they will visit; probably it would be in breach of some security provision. However, from what I have seen, I am confident that this will be an opportunity for us to deal with these issues incredibly robustly, to travel, see, engage and shine a spotlight. The Sri Lankan Government should be aware that it will not be just us; the world’s media will be there and questions will be asked.
Lord Wills (Lab)
My Lords, if the Sri Lankan Government persist in ignoring the incredibly tough messages that the Minister says the Government are going to send them about the human rights record in Sri Lanka—as they have ignored all such representations, from the United Nations and from respected human rights organisations, for the past year or more—at what point will the Government decide that constructive engagement with this regime is not the only way forward?
Baroness Warsi
My Lords, all I can say is that at this moment in time the Government believe that constructive engagement is the right way forward.
Royal Mail: Pricing of Shares
Lord Donoughue
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether any shares in Royal Mail offered at 330p were issued to any of the banks involved in advising on the flotation price, or to any of their employees; and what are the total fees to be paid to those banks for advising on the offer pricing of the shares.
Lord Popat (Con)
My Lords, no individual employee working on the transaction or investment bank division was allocated shares. Other divisions of our banking advisers, separated from the investment banking divisions by the information barriers, were allocated 13 million shares. This is standard practice. The underwriting banks will share a maximum fee of 1.2% of the IPO proceeds, or £16.9 million. That maximum includes the potential discretionary fee of £4.2 million. The actual fee will be finalised shortly. Lazard will receive £1.5 million, as the Government’s independent adviser.
Lord Donoughue (Lab)
I thank the Minister for that reply. Is he aware that this morning the share price of the Royal Mail reached a peak of 507p, which is an advance of more than 50% on the offer price? In light of that, does he agree with the comment made in the Financial Times on Saturday? It said:
“The only loser is the taxpayer, whose furniture has been flogged—but at a fraction of its market price”.
Will the Government not try to recover something for the ripped-off taxpayer by at least insisting that they do not pay those exorbitant fees to these inadequate advisers?
Lord Popat
My Lords, we were given advice on the price for the shares by a large number of institutions. We took into account a recent flotation of a similar organisation in Belgium. We also took a view on the price determined for recently quoted companies in the UK. The price range was between £2.60 and £3.30. We pitched at the higher amount of £3.30. This flotation was very successful despite the difficulties happening in America and the impending strike by the union.
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean (Con)
My Lords, will my noble friend confirm whether any of the advisers on the share sale were the same advisers who advised the previous Government to sell our gold at the bottom of the market at a loss to the taxpayer of more than £10 billion?
Lord Popat
My Lords, I do not have that information. Our advisers were robustly looked into. Some 21 advisers made a pitch to us. Nine were selected and they advised us at a different stage of the flotation.
Lord Sugar (Lab)
My Lords, I assume that the hiring of Lazard, Goldman Sachs and UBS was for their so-called expertise in understanding the correct timing and pricing of the flotation of the Royal Mail. Will the Minister comment on why these so-called experts sold the stock at such a low level and got it totally wrong, to such an extent that the stock rose by 33% the day after and now sits at 54% higher than the issue price? Bearing in mind that other reputable banks had come on record giving a valuation of £5 billion, why were these banks ignored? What will the noble Lord do by way of an inquiry to find out who the lucky institutions were that underwrote this bargain basement sell-off?
Lord Popat
My Lords, our key objective has been to secure value for money for the taxpayer and to develop a strong business. The taxpayer still has more than 30% of the shares and the universal service will be secured for a long time. The proposal included an indicative valuation of the company based on many instances and solely on information already in the public domain. Banks made their own assumptions of the Royal Mail’s future performance. Hence we agreed a price of £3.30.
Lord Elystan-Morgan (CB)
Presumably those who were invited to advise on the flotation price were not required to pluck a figure out of the air but would have been instructed to arrive at their conclusion on the basis of certain criteria. Will the Minister confirm that that was the case and will he spell out those criteria to the House?
Lord Popat
My Lords, as I said, our key objective was to secure value for money and to make sure that this flotation was successful. The nine banks that we appointed set out the criteria and gave us advice as to the value of the shares that we should pitch at. One criterion was to make sure that the future of the Royal Mail continues to be strong. The most important criterion was that institutional investors were able to invest money for the future of the Royal Mail.
Lord Razzall (LD)
My Lords, perhaps I may follow the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, in extending the Question. Does the Government have a view as to what steps the regulator should take regarding the irresponsible actions of the colleague of the noble Lord, Lord Donoughue, in another place in his public comments, which had the effect of encouraging small investors to buy shares without explaining the risks involved to them?
Lord Popat
My Lords, the prospectus was very clear about the risks involved in acquiring these shares. With regard to small investors, we allocated around 18% to retail investors. Ninety per cent of the retail investors who applied for shares up to £10,000 took up the shares knowing what the risks would be.
Lord Young of Norwood Green (Lab)
My Lords, can the Minister explain the contradiction between the Secretary of State’s claim that value for money was central to the Government’s strategy, given the current share price of over £5, and the view of many respected analysts that the offer price was seriously undervalued and 20% oversubscribed by banks? Can he give the House an assurance that the remaining 38% of shares will not be sold at another knockdown price?
Lord Popat
My Lords, the remaining 30% of shares is being held by the bank. We have an agreement with the Royal Mail that this will not be sold for a period of six months. The sale of shares thereafter will depend on the market circumstances and how the Royal Mail is performing in terms of its business profit and in terms of the cash that the business generates.
Lord Dobbs (Con)
My Lords, would my noble friend please spend a moment today celebrating the success of this exceptional privatisation, which has placed the Royal Mail on a footing for the future that was undreamed of four years ago? Would he further express and extend his best wishes not only to the management and employees of Royal Mail but also to their customers and of course their new shareholders, many of whom I suspect are sitting on the Benches opposite?
Lord Popat
I thank the noble Lord for those encouraging comments. This sale should be welcomed by all sides of the House. It guarantees that the universal service will remain and helps to provide the funding needed to modernise the Royal Mail. It provides a good solution for the taxpayer, for the Royal Mail employee and for customers. This is about ensuring the long-term success of the Royal Mail and securing the universal service. This privatisation is a positive step. The future of the company is now much brighter than it was. Had we pitched the price higher than £3.30 and it had failed, I am sure that the Benches opposite would have blamed us for the failure. I am glad that it was a great success and I agree with the noble Lord.
Legal Aid (Information about Financial Resources) (Amendment) Regulations 2013
(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord McNally
That the draft regulations and draft order laid before the House on 20 May and 8 July be approved.
Relevant documents: 2nd and 8th Reports from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, considered in Grand Committee on 15 October.
European Parliamentary Elections (Amendment) Regulations 2013
(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Wallace of Saltaire
That the draft regulations laid before the House on 9 July be approved.
Relevant Document: 8th Report from the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments, considered in Grand Committee on 15 October.
Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill
(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Viscount Younger of Leckie
That the Bill be read a second time.
Relevant document: 5th Report from the Joint Committee on Human Rights.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Viscount Younger of Leckie) (Con)
My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire, I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time.
This Government have made a commitment to increased transparency in public life so that we can offer the public greater confidence in our political system. The Bill will build on the transparency measures which we have already put in place. This Government were the first to publish details of the meetings that Ministers and Permanent Secretaries hold with external organisations, and we also publish details of ministerial interests, hospitality, departmental business plans and a wide range of raw data relating to the business of government. This Bill will now extend those themes of openness and accountability to our political system.
I would like briefly to say something about the progress of the Bill to date. The Government are committed, wherever possible, to publishing legislation in draft with a view to pre-legislative scrutiny. While it was not possible to publish a draft Bill in this case, the measures it contains have been subject to considered and expert scrutiny. The proposal for a statutory register of lobbyists was analysed by the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee prior to the Bill’s introduction. Since then, the Bill has also been considered on the Floor of the other place in Committee. Ministers and officials have continued to meet stakeholders regularly in order to take account of their views as the Bill progresses, and noble Lords will note the amendments which were made in the other place. I therefore believe there has been and will continue to be considerable scrutiny of this Bill. I value in particular the considered input made by the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, the Constitution Committee and the Joint Committee on Human Rights. I very much look forward to the further analysis that this House will bring to the Bill today. I turn now to the principal measures in it.
The Bill has three main parts. First, it will fulfil the coalition’s commitment to introduce a statutory register of lobbyists. Secondly, it paves the way for greater clarity on how much money organisations spend on campaigning at general elections. Thirdly, it will give the public greater assurance about the completeness and accuracy of the membership register which trade unions already keep. This House has long had a history of shining the light of transparency on our political system through open and challenging debate. No doubt noble Lords have followed the debates in the other place on the measures within this Bill. I and my noble friend Lord Wallace of Saltaire greatly look forward to debating the detail of what the Bill does and does not set out to do, and it is an occasion for noble Lords to apply their usual thorough scrutiny.
I shall summarise briefly the measures in the Bill. Part 1 introduces a statutory register of consultant lobbyists. The Government believe that lobbying is an essential part of our democracy and plays a vital role in the policy-making process. It ensures that Ministers and senior officials hear a full range of views from those who will be affected by government decisions. It is important that everyone’s voice is heard in Westminster and Whitehall. No one should be discouraged from making their views known to decision-makers. There has been some concern, however, that some lobbying activity is opaque and there is a perception that certain powerful organisations and individuals could exert a disproportionate influence on government. The Government have already taken steps to address those concerns by increasing the transparency of decision-making and the accountability of decision-makers, such as Ministers and senior officials. We are the first Government to proactively and regularly publish details of ministerial meetings, government procurement and other items of public interest. I am sure that noble Lords will agree that the interests of those who seek to influence decision-makers should be equally transparent.
For the first time, details of all Ministers’ and Permanent Secretaries’ meetings with external organisations are published on a quarterly basis. The statutory register of lobbyists is designed to address a specific problem within that context, which is that it is not always clear whose interests are being represented by consultant lobbyists. That is the specific policy gap which the register is intended to fill. It will do so by requiring those who are paid to lobby Ministers and Permanent Secretaries on behalf of a third party to disclose the names of their clients on a publicly available register. Our objective is to ensure increased transparency without discouraging engagement by those who will be affected by policy and legislative decisions, such as businesses, charities, community groups and members of the public. Our provisions for a statutory register constitute a pragmatic and proportionate solution designed to address a specific identified problem. The coalition Government made a commitment to introduce a statutory register of lobbyists and to increase transparency in public life. Part 1 will fulfil that commitment.
Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab)
My Lords, can the Minister explain how Mr Lynton Crosby and his tobacco industry interests will be covered by this Bill?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I do not intend to go into that at this particular stage.
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I note, however, the point that the noble Lord has made.
Let me now turn to the second part of the Bill. Part 2, put simply, requires those who want to influence the outcome of a general election to be transparent in doing so. The changes proposed update a system of regulation which has been in place at the past two UK parliamentary general elections.
Noble Lords will no doubt be aware of the influence that third parties can have on elections. This influence is often very positive, but we believe it should be proportionate. Despite existing controls, there is a real risk of distortion by those who seek to unduly influence the outcome of the election. The Bill takes forward a number of important measures to prevent this occurring.
Expenditure will now be more fully recorded and disclosed. Donations to third parties will now have to be published in advance of an election, rather than after. Certain third parties will also have to provide a statement of accounts. The spending limit for third parties will be lowered. Thirteen years ago, the existing spending limit was fixed in legislation at 5% of the maximum campaign expenditure limit for political parties. This amount was considered quite generous by the organisation that recommended it, the Committee on Standards in Public Life. The committee also noted that groups of third parties could outnumber expenditure by candidates or political parties. That argument remains valid today. Reducing the limit to 2% of the maximum campaign expenditure limit for political parties combats the risk of third party expenditure being used to influence elections. The reduction to a lower, but still very significant, sum is justified. To that same end, the Bill also introduces a measure that will prevent third parties directing the entirety of their spending limit at a single constituency or local area. It will become more difficult for large, well-funded campaigns to overwhelm the local political landscape.
The test for determining if a third party’s expenditure is in fact controlled expenditure is the same in both the Bill and existing legislation. Only expenditure that can,
“reasonably be regarded as intended to promote or procure electoral success”,
of parties or candidates will be regulated and count towards a third party’s spending limit.
Currently only expenditure on election material is regulated. This Bill extends the range of activities that are regulated to other activities such as public rallies and organised media events. This is the same list that applies to the activities of political parties. It implements a very sensible recommendation by the independent regulator, the Electoral Commission.
I should also make clear what this Bill does not do. Noble Lords will be aware that some charities and other organisations have expressed concern that the Bill will prevent campaigning on policy issues. I can reassure the House that only those campaigns that promote electoral success will be regulated.
It is the Government’s belief that the vast majority of charities or other groups campaigning for their preferred policies will not be affected by the Bill. This belief is based on the guidance of the Electoral Commission and its experience of regulating third parties at the 2005 and 2010 UK parliamentary general elections. At those elections charities and other campaign groups were not prevented from engaging with, commenting on or influencing public policy.
No elements of this Bill will deprive third parties of the ability to make a contribution to political debate. The regulatory requirements strengthened by this Bill are proportionate. Third parties will not be precluded from campaigning. They will simply be brought into an enhanced spending and donations reporting regime. As a result, the process as a whole will become more transparent.
I now turn to Part 3, which addresses a gap in enforcing existing duties. Section 24 of the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992 requires unions to maintain a register of their members’ names and addresses, and, so far as is reasonably practicable, to keep it accurate and up to date. I hope noble Lords will agree that this measure always was, and remains, reasonable.
Under the Act, however, union members, employers and the public cannot be wholly assured that a register is up to date. The Bill therefore requires unions to provide an annual assurance to the certification officer. Those with more than 10,000 members will be obliged to appoint an independent assurer. The Government are keen not to inhibit the operation of small unions—
Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)
I thank the noble Viscount for giving way. Does his last comment imply that certification officers have had problems with the current regime?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
One of the issues that we wish to address is the fact that the certification officer has a passive mode so that anybody who wishes to make a complaint can do so, but only if he is a union member.
As I was saying, the Government are keen not to inhibit the operation of small unions, so those with 10,000 or fewer members will be required to submit an annual self-certification that their membership list is up to date.
The Bill will also enable the certification officer proactively to investigate possible discrepancies in the register. He will be able to require documents to be submitted and to appoint an inspector. If a union is non-compliant with the duties in Section 24, the certification officer may make a declaration and a civil enforcement order. Unions will always be given an opportunity to make representations before a declaration or order is made.
I look forward to these measures benefiting from the scrutiny of noble Lords. The Government are committed to implementation which is both effective and proportionate, and we will support the transition by producing guidance. I am aware of concern regarding the impact of the proposals, and I hope to reassure noble Lords now. First, I reiterate that the Government are not challenging the vital role that unions play representing their members’ interests and contributing to public debate.
Secondly, I reassure noble Lords that these proposals do not breach human rights to privacy or freedom of association. If a union is non-compliant with duties under Section 24, it is important that every opportunity is given for that to be remedied. The investigation powers will be proportionate: the certification officer can require information only where he deems there is good reason to do so. Existing safeguards in the Data Protection Act and the Human Rights Act will apply as they do elsewhere. The Bill also includes additional protections to prevent the unauthorised disclosure of member data. These provisions will not allow employers unauthorised access to such information.
I believe that these proposals are reasonable. By proactively providing an annual assurance, unions will give even greater credibility to the important voice that they have in public debate. I also hope that unions themselves will recognise the benefit: many unions have up-to-date registers but there is anecdotal evidence of doubt that that is always the case. The annual assurance process will bring greater credibility in future about the result of ballots; for example, in electing a new general secretary.
This Bill will shine the light of transparency on those represented by consultant lobbyists as they meet key decision-makers in government. This Bill brings further clarity on the influence third parties have on the outcome of elections. This Bill will provide assurance that trade unions have accurate membership records, given that their influence extends far beyond their members. This Government believe that transparency generates accountability.
Lord Martin of Springburn (CB)
I thank the noble Viscount for giving way. I am just seeking clarification. I do not need the answer today, but perhaps the Minister can look into this. I recall there were some cases where lobby journalists who held credentials as journalists doubled up as lobbyists and perhaps serviced some all-party groups. That is a very bad practice and something that should not continue. Can the Minister tell the House whether this practice would be allowed under this legislation?
Viscount Younger of Leckie
I thank the noble Lord for that very specific question. I think that it makes sense for me to come back with a full answer.
To conclude, the Government believe that transparency generates accountability and that accountability allows the public to hold public bodies to account. This Government want to be open, transparent and clear on who influences the political system. I commend the Bill to the House, and I beg to move.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his brave attempt to introduce this bad little Bill and certainly look forward to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Horam, who has been in both my party and that of the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, but now resides on the Conservative Benches. I may end his career by saying that he gets 12 positive mentions in my book on the Labour Party in the 1970s.
Alas, the Bill will get no positive mentions in anyone’s memoirs. Three years ago, we were promised a statutory register of lobbyists. Instead, we have a skeleton register of only consultant lobbyists, exempting 80% of the industry. The word “transparency” in the title is a misnomer. It misses most lobbyists—HS2, Heathrow, the trade associations, the ABI, the BBA, British Gas, npower and the pharmaceutical, defence, tobacco and sugar manufacturers—as they all have in-house lobbyists; and it misses most of those being lobbied. It covers only Ministers and Permanent Secretaries, not senior civil servants, spads and chairs of Select Committees—the name Tim Yeo comes to mind—so defence firms can continue to lobby senior civil servants behind closed doors, untouched by the Bill.
The Bill contains no code of conduct, so any sanction would be only for non-filing of returns, not for unethical behaviour. Without a code and effective sanctions, the Bill will fail to drive up standards.
Furthermore, the Bill is just silly. Anyone who wants to use a lobbyist has only to employ that person directly rather than through a consultant, and then that person does not have to register. The leader of the Commons says that this is to know, when a Minister meets a lobby firm, who its clients are, but he could do that by a flick of the wrist. He simply has to tell Ministers, as they publish their diaries, to name not just the lobby firm but the client on whose behalf the meeting took place. He could do that by 10 o’clock tonight. Instead, as the CBI says,
“any register must go hand-in-hand with strengthening existing reporting of ministers’ and senior officials’ meetings”.
There is nothing in the Bill on that.
Perhaps most pernicious, the Bill hits the small body, not the big. The House knows that I had a certain interest in minimum alcohol pricing. Drinks companies can lobby via their own public affairs staff, but tiny Alcohol Concern, too small for an in-house lobbyist, must use an agency, which must then register. The same is true with plain packaging of cigarettes: Forest can lobby in secret, but should ASH want to use a PR firm, it would have to register and report. That is nonsense.
Just about everyone considers this to be a non-register and that it should instead include paid, professional lobbyists, not simply third-party consultants. As the Law Society of Scotland put it, to apply different rules to different levels of lobbyists may obscure transparency and give rise to confusion by the public, who are unlikely to differentiate between consultants and in-house lobbyists and, because it does not cover lobbying of MPs or civil servants below Permanent Secretaries, it would dilute the objective of true transparency. The Law Society of Scotland is hardly a suspicious, left-wing organisation.
Indeed, the register would list only a tiny proportion of those already on a voluntary register and undermine the good work of professional organisations, such as the Chartered Institute of Public Relations, which states that the Bill,
“shows a clear lack of understanding of what the practice of lobbying actually entails”,
and will leave out a majority of lobbyists. The Bill fails to support the existing PRCA industry code of ethical conduct and will tell us nothing about who is lobbying whom on what.
Turning to Part 2 of the Bill, there was no prior consultation with the Electoral Commission which will have to police it, or with the organisations concerned. The Electoral Commission, the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, the Joint Committee on Human Rights, your Lordships’ Constitution Committee and the chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission all criticise the rush, the absence of pre-legislative scrutiny and the potential impact on rights to freedoms of expression and of assembly. Is this to stop charities campaigning, because if so what is the mischief that it seeks to end? The chair of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee calls it a solution in search of a problem, for there is no evidence of any problem. Or is this simply about Mr Clegg, afraid of the NUS in Sheffield in 2015, given his broken promises on tuition fees? In that case, perhaps we can rename the Bill the “Sheffield Hallam Retention Bill”.
Or is it the British Legion that the Government have not forgiven for defeating their attempt to abolish the chief coroner? Maybe it is the Association of Medical Royal Colleges, which will no longer be able to print its manifestos in Welsh thanks to the ridiculously low limits. Given that the Electoral Commission says that policy campaigns could be covered, the Law Society is concerned that its comments on legal aid, access to justice and the Human Rights Act will be caught by the Bill. The BMA is similarly deeply concerned, as, should tobacco control become an electoral issue, its campaign could be caught, silencing serious public health arguments. Not for nothing has Tom Burke, chair of E3G called Part 2,
“misconceived in intent, carelessly drafted and being promoted with such indecent haste as to call into question the motives of its promoters”.
Our own Constitution Committee warns that it will affect the fundamental common law right to freedom of political expression, and the ability of people and organisations to engage with the Government and to participate in political and electoral campaigning.
A large number of faith-based bodies, including the Salvation Army, World Jewish Relief, the Methodist Conference, Islamic Relief and the Quakers wrote to the Prime Minister, not only about the rushed timetable but about their fears that it might,
“curtail our ability to express deeply-held beliefs in the political arena”,
as it,
“does not adequately safeguard the activities of religious organisations, and that there is a very real risk”,
to “non-biased political activity.”
Why is there all this additional red tape, and costs on charities? The Heavy Reporting Requirements will start in May 2014, and include weekly returns during the short campaign. This is hard enough for a political party with all the procedures set up to do this and challenging for a large charity with a big back-office function. It is impossible for charities with volunteer treasurers.
The Government, we thought, wanted to encourage the big society and active citizenship. Yet, as the Hansard Society has said, when public interest in politics is at its lowest point and fewer than 1% are members of a political party, this is hardly the time to throw an ambiguous rulebook at organisations whose activities might actually interest the public in the political process. The RSPB reckons that it is illogical to halve the threshold and caps at the same time as widening the activities that count towards them, and that this could seriously curtail legitimate charitable work. The National Trust fears that it could undermine its ability to perform its statutory role to promote the preservation of places of natural beauty and historic interest. It is concerned that this law could restrict the contribution that charities make to public policy debate. Oxfam, which would probably have to identify donors and the reason for their donation, says the Bill could have a severe impact on its work. The Newcastle Council for Voluntary Service fears the Bill is trying to gag it. It is involved in the Living Wage Campaign, studying the impact of government policy on local charities, and working with disability charities to minimise the impact of welfare reforms on users. All fall within its charitable objectives, yet all could fall subject to the Act.
The Bill’s uncertainty and its chilling effect will dampen the enthusiasm of local groups for campaigning since, as soon as they consider spending more than £2,000, or £5,000 in England—including voluntary and staff time, and travel—they will have to enter the nightmare of registration. Furthermore, any mistakes and we are talking criminal not civil sanctions, although whether this places trustees or staff at risk has yet to be clarified.
The Bill fails to live up to the aims of the Open Government Partnership, whose conference I understand that Francis Maude will chair next week. It is committed to freedoms of association and expression, and to the opening up and safeguarding of space for civil society to engage with government. This Bill does exactly the opposite. It seems designed to stifle engagement and make it harder for civil society to play a role.
Finally, what on earth is Part 3 about? It arrived with no prior consultation and following no complaints. The Leader of the Commons admitted that there is no evidence of inadequately kept trade unions records, so is this part simply trying to bankrupt unions by giving them an extra level of audit? This comes from the Government who are promoting a deregulation Bill. What have this Government got against working people and their representatives? They will do anything for business, announcing this month:
“Form filling for companies ditched in red tape cut”,
which a Minister trumpeted was about:
“Cutting unnecessary bureaucracy and red tape for businesses”.
But if there is any chance to clip the wings of employees’ representatives, they simply cannot resist. Perhaps the Minister can explain why, out of all the myriad professional, trade, social, legal, civil society, medical and other membership organisations, the unions alone are picked out by the Bill.
The Bill allows companies unfettered access to Ministers and Parliament but imposes restrictions and red tape on charities and unions. It has managed to unite the TaxPayers’ Alliance, the Countryside Alliance, the National Secular Society, faith groups, Business for Britain, the Peter Tatchell Foundation, the Women’s Institute and the Woodland Trust. They are all in opposition. I congratulate the Government on that achievement.
Part 1 fails to deal with the lobbying problem, Part 2 deals with a non-existent problem and Part 3 deals with a made-up problem. The Government would be well advised to pause as recommended by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, by the churches and faith groups which wrote to the Prime Minister and by just about every commentator. They should think again, consult, listen and then come back with a much better Bill. If they fail to do so, we will work in Committee and on Report to make this Bill better and workable.
Lord Tyler (LD)
My Lords, in many years of public life I cannot recall a set of proposals that have been so misunderstood and, to some extent, misrepresented. I hope that during this debate, and particularly in Committee, we will be able to reassure the many charities and smaller campaign groups that have been in touch with us that the Bill is not about stopping them contributing to our democracy. As my noble friend the Minister said, the target is the very wealthy and powerful interests that would seek to influence executive decisions and our elections, and which evidently feel threatened by greater transparency. I am interested to see that some charities that have been in touch with me now see that they have more of a problem with charity law than with the Bill. They may have to look carefully at the intentions of the Bill and at the detail of the charity law with which they may have a problem.
The Bill is a first, essential step towards taking big money out of politics: an issue that has been with us ever since Bernie Ecclestone, the tobacco lobby and Formula 1 was brought to our attention in the early years of the Blair regime. That has obviously increased our awareness of the threat to our democracy. I recall that the noble Baroness, Lady Royall, urged the Government to introduce a lobbying Bill in her contribution to the debates in May—and I endorsed her request. Ironically, she referred specifically to the tobacco lobby and to the Murdoch empire. Her colleagues in the previous Government have good reason to remember both those organisations.
I think that it was the present Prime Minister who said that sunlight was the best disinfectant. As the Minister said, important steps have already been taken to increase transparency in Whitehall about who is meeting whom. However, the Bill will take that a step further, and if we can improve it further again by building on the register, as I will come to in a minute, that will be a very important step forward.
Part 2 deals with the considerable potential threat from “super-PACs”, which are now so evident in the USA. We have to face up to the fact that the capacity of millionaires to set up organisations that could each spend £793,500 in England—and do so in just one constituency if they chose to, under present law—could have a major impact in distorting results.
I am alarmed to note that I have contested some 12 elections, and on each occasion have been advised, on pain of serious penalty, to watch every penny spent in support of my candidature. On one occasion, however, when I was defending a majority of just nine votes, I was targeted by a shadowy pro-apartheid group that helped to secure my subsequent defeat. I want to see that type of activity brought into the light of day, and the Bill will start that process.
On Part 1, if I may go into a little more detail, I also have some practical experience since at one time, before politics took over, I had a real job as the head of a public affairs consultancy advising NGOs, environmental organisations, local government and trade associations—what I suppose would now be described as lobbying. The Government’s intention—rightly, in my view—is not to regulate lobbying but to ensure that the sunshine is very firmly imposed on it. We need to know who has the ear of Ministers and other decision-makers. To my mind, including in-house lobbyists would be a red herring and would create a huge telephone directory-style registry, including a huge number of people who would actually be irrelevant to greater transparency. It would not improve the extent to which we could see what was actually going on, because it would lose the wood for the enormous forest of trees, and hide in plain sight what was being done in the name of those paying for it to be done.
Meeting data about interactions with in-house lobbyists are already published, as my noble friend said, and if Oxfam or even Tesco meet a Minister, we know whose interests they are promoting. However, this could of course be greatly improved with a central database, an easily accessible online front end, through which anyone—the media, individual citizens, Members of your Lordships’ House—could establish who has met whom in Government, and indeed what the subject has been at what stage, without, as is currently the case, having to go through 60 different Excel spreadsheets, each parcelled away in different obscure parts of departmental websites. The key to transparency is easy access and simplicity, and the register is a very good first step in that direction.
During the passage of the Bill I will examine two key areas for the improvement of Part 1. First, as has already been referred to, we have to ensure that the meetings of special advisers, who are not directly responsible to the Permanent Secretaries in the same way as other members of the Civil Service, with any consultant lobbyists who have interacted with them are appropriately registered. We should remember that two of the most dramatic scandals involving privileged access in recent years involved ministerial advisers rather than Ministers themselves. Secondly, we have to look very carefully to see how the new statutory register can complement existing voluntary arrangements. The register that the Government propose is deliberately a statutory minimum, but surely it would be perverse if lobbyists then departed from their responsibilities under existing codes put in place by the UK Public Affairs Council.
As I said earlier, there has been a great deal of understandable misunderstanding, but some mis- information as well, about Part 2 of the Bill. I suspect that other Members of your Lordships’ House over recent weeks—in my case, over recent months—have been receiving e-mails referring to a supposed threat to freedom of speech. This is not a gagging Bill; it concerns itself not with what people say but with what they spend. That is the critical issue.
Those of us who have experience of electoral law know that that principle has been there since 1883, since people back in the 19th century were very concerned about buying votes. I cannot see why anyone who is attempting to influence the outcome of an election—to buy votes, if you like—who happens not to be standing as a candidate, should be able to spend unlimited sums on,
“promoting or procuring electoral success”.
As has already been made clear, that definition has stood four-square in two general elections, and MPs have done the right thing in returning to it.
The current definition in Clause 26 of activities that,
“can reasonably be regarded as intended to promote or procure electoral success”,
for a party or candidate, has been in place since PPERA 2000. The Commons rightly agreed to take out the rather vaguer phrase about “otherwise enhancing the standing” of parties or candidates.
I absolve the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, of any responsibility for the 2000 Act, since I do not think that she was directly involved then. However, many of us at both ends of this building were involved. We should assure her that it has stood the test of time. We took infinite trouble in both Houses to get the definition right. Surely it is ridiculous to say at this stage that the definition is defective, as she implied. If it had been so defective, surely the Electoral Commission, with its practical experience, would have recommended over many years that it needed updating, and, presumably, the Labour Government of the day would have implemented the recommendation. Can we at least accept that the definition stands four-square and is accepted on all sides?
I accept that there is quite a different issue when we come from the definitions to the spending limits, which are at present probably indefensible. The total limit for the United Kingdom is just shy of £1 million. The English limit of £793,500 could be focused on just one constituency. What if the oil companies decided to target a certain Brighton constituency to remove a Green MP, or other interests piled into a few seats held by Members of Parliament opposed to the review of the Hunting Act—which is a practical proposition—or piled into constituencies of prominent Conservatives who happen to favour continued United Kingdom membership of the European Union? The Americans have been teaching many people in this country how to target with big money.
In the past few days I have met representatives of the RSPB, Countryside Alliance, Transparency International, 38 Degrees and Friends of the Earth, and have discussed the situation with many others, through the good offices of the commission of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, to whom I pay tribute. All the organisations seem to agree that the existing regulations may be flawed, so the question is how to get the revised regulations right.
For example, the threshold for registration is obviously a big concern for these organisations. You could plot on a graph transparency on the one hand and bureaucracy on the other in very many areas of life. If transparency is low, the regulatory burden tends to be low, too. If accountability is strong, it is likely that the regulatory burden will be significant. The threshold is a question of where we plot this legislation on that graph. The lower thresholds proposed by the Government will improve and increase the accountability of campaign spending. Conversely, they inevitably increase the burden on smaller organisations. It will be our responsibility in your Lordships’ House to get the balance right when we come to Committee.
The second area of concern among a number of organisations is Schedule 3. These provisions flow directly from the Electoral Commission’s recommendation that the activities for which non-parties should have to account should be the same as those for which parties have to account. In that, it is perfectly reasonable to question how staff costs should be applied in the schedule. We will all listen to what the groups say about this and will probe the matter in Committee.
Reference was made to the way in which the Government’s proposals have been examined. Obviously, I think that we would all agree that if timing had permitted, pre-legislative scrutiny would have been desirable. However, the cross-party talks—of which I have direct knowledge—between the three major parties on the area of political funding effectively prevented this. It may well be a criticism that the Deputy Prime Minister should have realised that he was being strung along by the other two parties—that they were not serious about getting a result. However, given that they could not come to an agreement, it was obviously important to move on this particular issue, which was also agreed between the three parties.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon (Lab)
My Lords, can I nail the myth that is going around that was perpetuated by the Deputy Prime Minister in the Commons last Tuesday? There were no substantive talks at all on third-party funding in the talks to which the noble Lord refers. Far from the current proposals being discussed extensively, they were never raised, never proposed and never discussed. Also, the talks did not break down; they ceased but they did not break down. I wish the noble Lord would not keep perpetuating that myth.
Lord Tyler
My Lords, my information is different on both points. We can have a further discussion after this debate. There was, of course, agreement between the three major parties that there was a need to address the issue. I hope the noble Baroness will agree on that, because there certainly was. Since then, unfortunately, there has been a tendency to jump on the bandwagon.
Meanwhile, there has also been a repetition of the idea that somehow the Electoral Commission was never involved in the exercise. As I have previously told your Lordships’ House, I have served on an informal all-party advisory group for the Electoral Commission for some years. It is simply not accurate to say that the commission has made no contribution to the thought process that led to this Bill. I will quote two warnings given by the commission in February 2013, under the heading, “Regulating Third Party Campaigning in the UK”. The first states that,
“the rules on general campaigning that is intended to influence voters should reflect the rules for political parties by covering events, media work and polling, as well as election material”.
The second states that,
“the Government should have order-making powers to update the rules on general campaigning, in order to deal with changing campaign methods in future”.
In the months that followed, between February and the publication of the Bill, there was indeed a continual dialogue, and I have a letter from the chair of the commission to confirm that. It is perfectly true that it was not consulted over every single part of the Bill, but a general dialogue continued about the necessary modernisation of the regulatory regime. I think that most Members of your Lordships’ House would say that it is preferable to have full scrutiny of a statutory process than to have a change in ministerial order-making powers.
Our duty now is to get the detail of the Bill right and to reassure those charities that have been unduly concerned. In particular, we will have to be satisfied that registration thresholds, the scope of Schedule 3 and the expenditure limits strike the right balance between transparency and bureaucracy. Delay will not help those who are concerned with this detail. Campaigners need time to assess their plans for the run-up to the May 2015 general election—and, of course, the Electoral Commission needs certainty so that it can give good advice. That is why it recommended opposition to the delaying tactics proposed in the other place.
Your Lordships’ House has an excellent reputation for detailed scrutiny. I hope there will be agreement today that we should get on with that job. This can be a good change in the law that will shine a light on a small but significant area of opacity in lobbying and will prevent the distortion of our politics by wealthy interests.
Lord Ramsbotham (CB)
My Lords, the Joint Committee on Human Rights has already said that this is a very bad Bill, querying why it is being rushed through without proper pre-legislative scrutiny or scrutiny in the other place, and, I would add, without consultation with an affected contributor to the life of the nation, whose contribution is needlessly and avoidably being put at risk.
The Government allege that the aim of the Bill is to restore trust and confidence in the political system by ensuring that the public are able to see how third parties seek to influence it. Other noble Lords will speak on other aspects, but I intend to concentrate on what I hope are the unintended consequences of what is being proposed in Part 2 for one part of a sector that has never sought to influence electoral law but, rather, works hard to try to protect the public. I will not mince my words, because, given the indecent haste with which the Bill is being processed, there is no point in doing so. I believe that the Government should withdraw Part 2 of the Bill now or, at best, submit it to the consultation that has hitherto been denied before bringing in whatever legislation they then feel appropriate. In terms of the voluntary sector, I suggest that need be nothing more than minor amendments to existing arrangements.
I shall try to illustrate my reasoning by referring to those charitable and voluntary organisations that work in the criminal justice field. At present, the Secretary of State for Justice is seeking to implement what he calls a rehabilitation revolution. At the heart of this, he seeks to reduce the appalling reoffending rate, which is impossible to measure, by awarding contracts to private and voluntary organisations that will be paid by their results. The work that they do with and for offenders will be funded either by social impact bonds, taken out by investors, or the private and voluntary organisations themselves in the hope that they will be successful and so earn payment.
Contracting the voluntary sector is not something new to this Government, but the method is deeply troubling some members of both parts—foundations and trusts, which fund organisations, and the organisations themselves, some quite large and some tiny, which do the work up and down the country, for which they seek funding, either from foundations or trusts or from private donations. The Government call this a partnership, but one ingredient of a successful partnership is mutual trust. The Government must bear in mind that, as at least 50% of rehabilitation work is done by the voluntary sector, they must not do anything that undermines its ability or willingness to contribute to that work. Above all, the Government must avoid giving the impression that they think they own the voluntary sector—nor must they forget that donors do not give money to fund a contracting process; they give it so that the work that they wish to support can be conducted.
While some organisations may involve themselves with policy—indeed, some exist to conduct and publish research and recommendations—that is directed at whichever political party is in power, and in no sense can it be described as electioneering. Even if they were tempted to involve themselves, they are prevented from doing so by the current system of checks and balances, with regulation by the Charity Commission, including a document called CC9—Speaking Out Guidance on Campaigning and Political Activity by Charities, which sets out clear, sensible and balanced rules; guidance by the Electoral Commission on campaigning in the run-up to elections, including rules about supporting candidates and parties; and the fact that all charities must prepare accounts, which they must make available on request. Therefore, I believe that the restrictions on this most important activity by those in support of the criminal justice system that are implied in Schedule 3 of the Bill are not only inappropriate, because they are already more than adequately covered, but potentially damage the protection of the public.
When it is looked at logically, I am amazed that the Secretary of State for Justice did not seek to have Part 2 of the Bill suppressed because of its potential impact on his revolution, not least in the damage that the proposals are doing to the very trust and confidence that the Government seek to promote in the voluntary sector, which has always enjoyed the precious freedom to speak out on key issues, injustices and public concerns. So bad is this part of the legislation that it is unclear which work is classified as electoral campaigning, as opposed to publicising the public nature of work being done on behalf of the public. It is unclear before which election time limits are to be imposed—and there are elections of some sort in different parts of the country almost every year. It is at best difficult to attribute staff costs to different work streams, and small organisations find existing regulations time and money consuming enough now, every penny being spend on bureaucracy being denied to actual work.
I will not go on, because I have no doubt that other noble Lords will add to this catalogue during this debate. Whatever they may feel about lobbyists, I implore the Government to think again before they inflict unnecessary damage on one of the jewels in our national crown, our charitable and voluntary sector.
The Lord Bishop of Derby
My Lords, I, too, want to comment on Part 2 from the perspective of charities and faith groups and the scoping out of a framework in this debate for further work. I declare an interest as a trustee of Christian Aid and as chair of the governors of the Churches’ Legislation Advisory Service, the secretariat service of which comprises Central Lobby consultants who will have to register under Part 1 of the Bill.
I recognise that the Government are trying hard to listen to concerns about Part 2. Like others, I have been in correspondence with the Leader of the Commons and his team. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, and others have said, the Constitution Committee noted:
“The provisions of Part 2 directly affect the fundamental common law right to freedom of political expression”.
That is a very serious challenge to these proposals. As has been said, concern has been expressed by the Electoral Commission and the Joint Committee on Human Rights. Therefore, this question is raised not just by people like me from the faith and charity sector but by some very weighty, much more expert people. I ask the Minister to comment on three of the major tests for regulating transparency: the test of influencing electoral outcomes; the test of levels of financial expenditure; and the test regarding the constituency as a measure—three of the key tests.
First, as regards the test of influencing electoral outcomes, what is at stake here is not the transparency of lobbying but the danger of trying to control politics and standardise political debate on the single model of political parties, which are only one part of the mix. The Bill is part of a process whereby politics has been professionalised. This House is part of that process as many Members are full-time professional politicians. That has led to high standards and enormously sophisticated legislation, but at the same time politics has taken an inward turn to the pragmatic and is less guided by the big visionary ideologies of the past. The result of politics becoming professionalised and pragmatic has been disastrous for democratic politics because the demos, the people, have just walked away. It has become so professional, detailed and dominated by experts and expert groups wanting smart outcomes, that the great public, as we know, have retreated into personal space to get on with life and cannot even be bothered to turn out at elections. Democracy is in crisis in our culture and we need to read these proposals within that framework.
Professional lobbying groups with sharp, smart outcomes are filling the space of working politics and ordinary people with political instincts are being excluded. What we lack in politics, it seems to me, is a space for the amateur, those with occasional engagement and people interested in particular issues. Very few people are members of political parties or of the professional lobbying groups that pursue political lobbying in a smart way, but millions of people are involved in charities and faith groups. The importance of all those millions of people is that we gather together in faith groups and charities to pursue goodness for ourselves and others, and that is a political energy. People want to do good for their neighbour, community and country. That is political energy. It is often concerned with big issues and principles and is often vague and unformed, but surely the task of a Government and their legislation should not be to close all that down and put it in a box that looks like another political party but to listen, interpret and help shape that energy so that it can create goodness appropriately and people can be encouraged to be part of a nation and its political culture.
We should be delighted that people from the charitable and faith sectors are making all this fuss. They are interested. They have political energy for goodness. My concern is that the proposals under the test of influencing electoral outcomes are predicated on a very narrow, party-political approach to how politics works. Under this test, will the Minister comment on free speech and freedom of assembly? Does the Minister accept that charities and faith groups bring a different kind of political energy? One that is vital and needs encouraging and cannot be bureaucratised into processes and ways of operating that have suited political parties—in the past at least—but do not suit this particular kind of energy.
Secondly, what does the Minister say about charities and faith groups convening hustings—meetings—to discuss political issues? The proposed regulatory framework might make this subject to registration, putting in accounts and all that kind of thing. There is a great aspiration from this Government for a big society, which I believe in. The danger of these proposals is that we are bringing into effect a Big Brother society where all the little details are imposed on people from a very narrow model sapping political energy and making it more difficult for people to contribute.
Thirdly, under the test of influencing electoral outcomes, will the Minister comment on the space that will be given to religious leaders to make statements and put things out on the web in an election period? Will there be controls on that kind of proactive engagement?
More rapidly, on the second test of levels of financial expenditure, can the Minister give a rationale for the level of financial controls that have been set for the charitable, voluntary and faiths sectors? Why is there a financial measure for energy that is so often less focused but equally vibrant? Charity law provides a well established regulatory framework for the political engagement of this sector. Why have we brought in these lower thresholds that bring a bureaucratic control and pressure on the free-flowing energy of political concern among the wider public? What is the rationale for extending the scope of controlled expenditure on third parties? Why has the financial tool been used when we could have explored current charity law and how to develop that in terms of responsible and transparent operating?
The third test is the use of constituency as the measure. This may just show my ignorance of how politics works. I can understand the need for a constituency to order voters in a particular mass so you can count them. However, in an age of social media how are you going to measure the geographical influence of anybody, even if they are in somebody’s constituency? How are you going to measure whether it affects people over the border or has come from somewhere else? Freedom of association has a very different meaning in the virtual age. I would have hoped that this legislation would have thought about that creatively but the test of a constituency and its effect is a rather crude and simplistic measure. Will the Minister give a rationale for the constituency test and the criteria that can really be used to make an informed judgment when all this stuff flies around the internet all the time?
We need transparency for professional lobbying and for political parties but we need transparency, and that is openness, in political debate. We should rejoice that so many charities, faith groups and voluntary groups want to be involved. They are subject to regulation in the political sphere through our tradition of charity Acts. Politics needs this political energy for the common good and all the signals—as we can tell from our e-mail inboxes—are that this source of political energy is being closed down and discouraged at the very time we are wringing our hands because the great public are not interested in political parties, elections or the democratic process. So I, too, hope that there will be a pause, and that the Minister will be willing to sit down with representatives of charities, faith and voluntary groups to look at proper controls and accountability. There must be accountability. How can it come out of the existing charity law, and how can we minimise bureaucratic, financial and geographic tests?
We must encourage and celebrate political debate and commitment. The task of politicians is to enable that and to listen to and interpret it, helping it in all its wild generality and off-beamness to find a way of contributing and helping the country to get a proper sense of direction and a proper buy-in from its citizens.
Lord Lang of Monkton (Con)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby. As we are debating a lobbying Bill, I suppose that I should declare my interests. I had the honour to chair the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, which is much concerned with lobbying, and to be a member of the Select Committee on the Constitution. Both, in a sense, are marginal to the central debate surrounding this Bill, but the Select Committee criticised, with good cause, the unnecessary speed and lack of advance consultation with which the Bill was introduced in another place. I believe that undue haste is bad government. The matter was three years in gestation with no draft Bill, no White Paper and no consultation, and unsurprisingly therefore the content has been widely criticised. This, I believe, should be, as the committee said in its report, a matter of significant concern. Indeed, it baffles me that Governments should behave in this unnecessary but highly provocative way.
I know that, because of that, Part 2 of the Bill has aroused great concern—we have heard much of that already in this debate—especially among charities. Of course, Part 3 was always bound to attract a certain amount of interest from the party opposite, but in the time available I propose to confine my remarks to Part 1.
While the Bill aims at professional consultant lobbyists, the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments focuses on individuals. We are concerned with Ministers leaving government and senior civil servants leaving or retiring from the Civil Service, and that embraces ambassadors and senior military personnel. One of our tasks in considering their applications to us is to prevent them, when taking up subsequent appointments, whether with industry, commerce or even charities and consultancies, lobbying their former colleagues or government in general for up to two years. We are concerned with a different part of the lobbying spectrum. It is a broad and divisive spectrum, and therefore we have a different definition of lobbying.
The Bill has another definition because it has a different focus: on corporate lobbying consultancies, rather than on individuals. I believe that definition is all in these matters, and a single, comprehensive definition of lobbying is elusive—indeed, perhaps impossible. As the Government’s briefing note says, and as the Minister said today, its aim is to,
“shine the light of transparency on consultant lobbying”,
not to act as a complete regulator of the industry. That creates anomalies, which I shall come to, but it is probably wise to concentrate on that category in the Bill rather than to seek a comprehensive solution, because lobbying comes in all shapes and sizes and from many different sources. They are not all malign or dangerous to parliamentary democracy. Indeed, the taint that has begun to fall on some aspects should not be allowed to be got out of proportion.
Lobbying in one form or another has been around for centuries. Plantagenet kings held their Parliaments in all parts of England, and they summoned those Parliaments not just to raise taxation for their foreign wars and crusades but to hear the pleas, complaints and concerns of their citizens, to entrench their kingship and, indeed, to enact Acts of Parliament and thus to give form to the rule of law over a period of time.
Ever since then, lobbying has been, and is, part of the life-blood of our parliamentary democracy. We cannot and should not seek to choke it off. Therefore, the Bill is surely right not to try to do that but to focus on the main areas of concern. However, shining the light of transparency, in the best Nolan tradition, on one aspect underlines the lack of transparency in others. It may be that the parameters are too tightly drawn, and that needs to be explained because a spotlight on one sector casts a shadow around about it. For example, the Bill does not include in-house public affairs departments or multiclient firms, such as lawyers pursuing the legal interests of their clients. What of consultant lobbyists who do not themselves lobby government, but who train their clients and advise them on whom to lobby and how to go about lobbying?
On the persons who are lobbied, the focus is put on Ministers and Permanent Secretaries or the equivalent, but does not cover special advisers, who are often well placed to influence government policy. What about those civil servants who are below Permanent Secretary level, but are highly expert and influential in particular sectors of, for example, industry, defence or health and may work closely with major companies in those fields? Ministers and Permanent Secretaries are already required to disclose on a quarterly basis the names of those outside government whom they meet. Has the Minister considered whether an easier, and perhaps more effective, approach to the lobbying issue might be to require anyone in government, whether parliamentarian or civil servant, who is lobbied by discernible commercial interest to declare that in a lobbying register?
I welcome the provisions approved in another place and the clarification in Schedule 1 of the position of parliamentarians. In this House in particular, there are many noble Lords with distinguished careers from which they have derived immense expertise and wisdom who could feel inhibited from speaking on their specialist subjects in this House for fear of being thought, quite wrongly, to be lobbying in some way. I hope that the Bill may help to lift that particular shadow.
In courtesy to the many remaining speakers in this debate I have been relatively brief. I conclude by saying that the Bill as it stands, with its register, registrar and enforcement powers, has a net, but one that will probably catch few fish. It may be enough to draw the sting and the taint from the lobbying issue. I hope so; but if not, it will be something to build on.
Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)
My Lords, it is important that we retain some clarity about why there were calls for a Bill to regulate lobbying. It was to deal with the damage to our democracy caused by the introduction of professional lobbyists and the toxic effect of big money. There was general concern that our democracy should not fall into the grip of rich men or commercial interests. I am afraid that both our Houses came under scrutiny because of the ways in which wads of cash and other inducements seem to be waved at politicians to secure favourable policy, or even promises of places on boards at the end of political careers.
There were good reasons, therefore, why there should be calls for a Bill. As citizens, we seek the attention of our politicians to persuade them of our cause, so that the interests and concerns of all sections of our population might be better served. Lobbying is vital to our democracy: it is how we change policy and push for different legislation; it is how we see society evolving and how democracy ultimately works.
Many people in this House have lobbied for change, and without being paid for it. We were active citizens; and active citizenry is what this is about. It is about adding to the social capital that has helped to keep our democracy strong and in good heart; that is why it has had the respect of the world. This Bill grew out of concern that a poison was leeching into our politics.
I am a member of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. We are seriously alarmed that this Bill has been rushed unnecessarily through Parliament and that there has been inadequate time for the proper scrutiny and consultations that are vital for the improvement of any Bill. A whole set of amendments has come from the Government that require scrutiny, but we have not had time to deal with it. There should be further consultations with the Electoral Commission, the Commission on Civil Society and Democratic Engagement, and other relevant stakeholders. We are urging that there should be a pause at some stage to allow that to happen.
The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee has also made recommendations which should have a response from the Government before we go forward. It really is unacceptable that a committee such as the Joint Committee on Human Rights, tasked by Parliament to analyse the human rights implications of legislation, should not be able to report on a Bill until it has left the first House, all because of unnecessary speed, especially when there are issues in this Bill that go to the heart of our democracy—for example, freedom of expression and freedom of association.
This is not emergency legislation or law that requires fast-tracking. It is wrong that the Government have timetabled this Bill in a way that does not allow us to do our job properly, whether on Select Committees or as Members of this House. This is not the first time that the JCHR has had to raise concerns about the inadequacy of time available to scrutinise the human rights compatibility of significant government amendments in relation to Bills. It is a recurring problem, which I am raising so that this House hears it and because it has constitutional implications.
Our concerns with this Bill are serious. It currently is not fit for purpose. More time is needed to ensure that proposals are proportionate and do not have unintended consequences for campaigners’ rights to freedom of expression and freedom of association. The protection of electoral process is a clear, legitimate aim of government. We do not want a United States style system of election spending by third parties. It is important that single-issue campaigners do not have the ability to distort outcomes unfairly by mass injections of money and nor should rich businessmen.
However, we are concerned that lack of understanding about any new rules and arrangements might dissuade charities and campaigning groups within our communities from participating in campaigns, with the potential chilling effect on free speech and freedom of association. Reform of non-party campaigning regulation requires careful consideration and we need time for that. That is why we are recommending a pause in the legislative process, as has been suggested by other Members of this House. We are asking for more time to be allowed for further consideration of the measures.
The pause could take a number of different forms. It could take place before or even after Committee stage. That can be debated. This Bill is being rushed through Parliament and the consequences could be very serious. The law, when it creates unintended consequences, is bad law. One of the roles of this House is to ensure that we do not create bad law. The Government should listen to public clamour—indeed, there is a clamour out there—and I hope that the Minister will act accordingly.
Lord Harries of Pentregarth (CB)
My Lords, perhaps I may say on behalf of the House how much we are looking forward to hearing the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Horam. He brings to the House a great wealth of experience from the other place. He has been a Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State in two departments and a member of a number of influential committees. He also brings a very interesting political trajectory, which indicates his capacity to enter into the point of view of other people and an independence of mind, both of which are characteristics of this House. We very much look forward to hearing more of those characteristics in his maiden speech and in further speeches in the House.
I declare an interest as chair of the Commission on Civil Society and Democratic Engagement. This commission has been set up with the backing of more than 50 churches and campaigning groups. However, due to the extreme speed with which this Bill is being pushed through, the commission has had only very limited time in which to act. Hearings have taken place in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales, as well as in London, but our report will not be published until next Tuesday. It will be in time for Committee stage but not for today. Today, therefore, I speak in a personal capacity, although obviously drawing on some of the evidence that has been put to us so far.
My concern, as is that of so many, is the sheer speed with which this Bill is being pushed through. It is a major concern of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, the Select Committee on the Constitution and the Electoral Commission. There is total agreement—no disagreement at all—that big spending campaigns should be properly regulated. But the changes made in this Bill, compared with what was in place for the two previous elections, mean that charities and campaigning groups feel that their fundamental right to free speech will be severely curtailed. They have not been consulted and nor has the Electoral Commission, which has to offer guidance on the implementation of the law. They have grave doubts about the Bill as it stands.
Part 2 of the Bill, as we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, has united an extraordinary number of organisations. I am not going to go through the list but will just mention the National Trust. It argues that its campaigning, which has brought about so many benefits in relation to the countryside which we now take for granted, would simply not be possible under the Bill.
One of the reasons why charities and campaigning groups need to be consulted is that they are key players in keeping our democracy alive. With the drastic fall in political party membership and the indifference of so many to professional politics, it is these groups that arouse people’s interest and help to focus their concerns. At election times it is the churches and charities that organise the hustings. The CARE organisation, for example, was responsible for facilitating more than 300 hustings during the last election. It is the charities and campaigning groups that educate the electorate about particular issues so that they can put intelligent questions to the candidates. Overall they have had a huge influence. It was the churches and aid agencies which combined together to mount one of the biggest campaigns that we have ever seen, on dropping third-world debt. That was followed up with campaigns on the millennium goals and overseas aid generally. These campaigns have influenced all the major parties in a very positive way—how much poorer the world would have been without them. Because of the key role that these bodies now play in democratic engagement and in keeping democracy alive, Parliament needs to be particularly careful about any legislation which affects their ability to do this.
It is said that there are those who resent the role now played by charities in our society. Some apparently would like to confine them to service provision, leaving the formation of political policy to politicians. Whether or not this is the case, it does raise a fundamental question at the outset. Why has Part 2 suddenly appeared? What is the problem it is trying to fix? We are told that it stems from a worry that American-style big-money campaigning such as Citizens United might come over the Atlantic. If that is so, however, it would be easily caught by the present regulations. As far as the United Kingdom is concerned, in the 2005 and 2010 general elections only two third parties exceeded the new lower limit for the election year. In 2005 it was UNISON and the Conservative Rural Action Group and in 2010 it was UNISON and Vote for Change.
No problem has been identified and no reason has been given for this reduction or the rationale for this figure or any other. For the vast majority of charities and campaigning groups, it is the new threshold at which they will they have to register which has given rise to the widest concern. This has reduced from £10,000 to £5,000 a year in England and from £5,000 to £2,000 a year in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. As if this was not limiting enough, the range of activities which will count towards the sum has been greatly widened. Until now it has only been the cost of election leaflets and posters. Now, according to the long list in proposed new Schedule 8A to the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, it will include all advertising and all costs involved in this, all unsolicited material addressed to electors and all associated costs, all expenses concerned with market research, canvassing and provision of services for the media or conferences, transport, travel costs, rallies and public meetings generally.
The scope is exceedingly wide and concerns expenditure over the whole year before an election as well as the immediate run-up to it, including staff costs in so far as they are connected with activities for election purposes which we know, according to Clause 26, are activities which can reasonably be regarded as promoting or procuring electoral success at any relevant election for a registered party or candidate.
There is a huge range of questions raised by this but the overall effect of reducing the limits at which a charity will have to register and the increased number of activities that will have to be taken into account when calculating the cost means that charities and campaigning groups which regard trying to influence public policy as one of their core activities will be seriously inhibited. It is not that they will be spending big sums; on the whole, they will not. However, from the beginning of an election year, if the Bill is approved, they will be very frightened of quickly going over the limit and doing something illegal. Many trustees of charities feel that it is part of their fiduciary duty—or they will do—to curtail severely, if not stop altogether, a range of activities that might be seen to be on the borderline for fear that the charity would subsequently be regarded as acting illegally.
If, however, they decide to take the risk and register, the paperwork needed to subdivide the elements of expenditure and people’s time could be a huge bureaucratic burden on small charities or campaigning groups, especially during the actual election period itself when they will have to produce weekly accounts of any expenditure. The impact assessment calculates that the cost will be only between nothing and £800 for any one organisation, but many charities think that this is a major underestimate of the kind of costs that might be involved.
Lord Judd (Lab)
My Lords, I am very struck by what the noble and right reverend Lord is saying. Does he not agree that the ground he is now covering brings into the light the fundamental contradiction that under charity law, charities are expected to make the best possible use of every penny that is available to them in fulfilling their purposes? This Bill is going to force them to waste it on bureaucracy.
Lord Harries of Pentregarth
That is a valuable point and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Judd.
There is a whole range of other problems. If groups campaign on a particular issue, the total costs involved will be attributed to each charity. Some of the most effective campaigns in recent years have come about because charities have combined. There are particular problems in relation to Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, where the sum has now been reduced to a paltry £2,000 in the year. I am not going to deal with that now, but it might emerge in subsequent days.
Time and again we have heard the phrase “chilling effect” being used. Some people say that they cannot understand why charities are worried about it because there will be no curtailing of their freedom. It is the combination of these elements, the lower limits and the increased range of activities that count towards them, together with a continuing fundamental uncertainty about the definition of an electoral activity in practice that is making so many charities feel that their freedom to engage is in fact being threatened. The Government are worried about a large fish across the Atlantic called Citizens United and fear that it might swim over here, but instead of waiting for it to come, they have sent out a deep sea trawler which has thrown up a huge amount of sand and confusion from the bottom of the sea and put a net over charities which have been swimming quite legitimately in the waters of democracy. It seems quite absurd.
There is a case for including a number of activities in what counts for electoral purposes. I think that we can agree on that, although the question of staff time raises all sorts of difficulties, particularly in the case of voluntary time and whether it is workable at all. But what is strange is that all these activities are being brought together—the lowering of the threshold and an increase in the activities that count towards it. Will the Minister explain what the problem is that has given rise to this severe curtailment? It is rather like offering someone a sum of money for a piece of work and then telling them that the amount is being halved while at the same time they will have to complete a number of other tasks in order to earn the money at all. Surely if there were no reported problems before, and the number of activities is to be increased, the thresholds should in fact be raised, not lowered, in order to account for the ordinary activities that charities regard as part of their core duties.
As I have said, there is a logical case for including a lot of these activities, but will the Minister say something about how these charities are to assess volunteer time? The National Trust, for example, has thousands of volunteers. Are they to be taken into account?
Lord Phillips of Sudbury (LD)
I am sorry to interrupt the noble and right reverend Lord, because I agree with every word that he is saying. May I just shoot one canard? It has been raised more than once. Section 87(2)(c) of the 2000 Act says,
“the provision by any individual of his own services which he provides voluntarily in his own time and free of charge”,
shall not be controlled expenditure.
Lord Harries of Pentregarth
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Phillips. I hope very much that the Minister will agree with that.
There is just one other point I would like to make. The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, has suggested that the present definition of an electoral activity promoting or procuring electoral success at any relevant election is accepted by virtually everyone concerned. I think that charities have not in fact been quite so happy about that as he suggests. There is still genuine uncertainty because this is a genuinely difficult area. If, for instance, a campaigning group on climate change looks at the policies of the different parties and assesses them according to whether it thinks that their policies are desirable as far as climate change is concerned, does that count as an activity for promoting or procuring electoral success at any general election? It seems to me that people of good will could argue that either way. Therefore, is there not a need for government lawyers, Charity Commission lawyers and the lawyers of charities to get together to see whether this really is the best definition or whether we can come up with something better?
Lord Tyler
I agree precisely with what the noble and right reverend Lord has just said. As was said earlier by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, it is charity law that has restricted many of these activities in the past. We have to make sure that these particular forms of legislation are mutually compatible so that everybody is clear where they stand.
Lord Harries of Pentregarth
That highlights the final point I want to make. Before this Bill proceeds any further, would it not be sensible for the Government to get government lawyers and charity lawyers together to see if we can get total agreement about the definition of the key phrase in this Bill?
This highlights the final recommendation of the Joint Committee on Human Rights that there should be a pause in this legislation. The committee says that,
“our primary recommendation is to urge the Government to 'pause' the Bill's passage through Parliament in order to allow for further consultation and scrutiny”.
It would be much better to have a Bill before the House which unites the Joint Committee on Human Rights, the Constitution Committee, the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, the Electoral Commission and the charities—bodies which at the moment appear to have very severe doubts about it.
Lord Horam (Con)
My Lords, I rise to make my maiden speech in this House. First, I thank the staff of all departments of the House of Lords for their unfailing helpfulness and kindness over the past few days. Secondly, I thank all those Members who have welcomed me here in the Chamber and outside, including the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter of Kentish Town, and the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth. I was delighted to find from the remarks of the noble Baroness that I was mentioned positively 12 times in her book. I can think of no other book where I am mentioned 12 times positively. I must pop out to buy a copy and thumb quickly through the index—perhaps that was her intention all along. I also thank the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, for his kind remarks. It is good of him to think that after 31 years in the other place I am still capable of independent thought. That is a wonderful idea and I shall hold it to my breast.
The reason I have elected to make my maiden speech today is that Part 2 of the Bill places many additional tasks on the Electoral Commission, and for 18 months or so I have been one of the 10 electoral commissioners—although I should say immediately that today I am speaking for myself and not for the commission. The commission has sent out a very comprehensive and succinct brief to everybody, which I think noble Lords will possess.
The other commissioner in the Lords is my good friend, the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark. There are four commissioners nominated by the political parties, as he and I are, and six without any background in politics. Obviously we are there for our splendid independence of judgment, as has just been mentioned by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, but also because we probably know a few of the dodgy things that go on in politics. Of course, he and I are both saints in that respect, but no doubt we are aware of some things that are done by other parties in general elections and are there for that reason as well.
As I have discovered in my 18 months on the Electoral Commission, it is a well run organisation, with a dedicated staff, and I know that the Government will pay attention to what it is saying during the course of this Bill and the discussions around it. The Electoral Commission regulates all elections and referenda held in the UK. That covers the whole business of monitoring what parties do with funds: how they raise them and how they spend them within the compass of electoral law. It does not have anything to do with parliamentary boundaries or local authority boundaries, which many people think it does. It does not have anything to do with those issues and I think that it is rather glad about that. However, the UK is fortunate to have two such organisations as the Electoral Commission and the group of Boundary Commissions to monitor and regulate matters in this area.
If one looks across the Atlantic to where they have no such organisations, one sees absolute gerrymandering of seats, which produces the sort of extreme politicians who have led to such difficulties in Washington over the past few weeks, and the super-PACs, which distort politics in the USA. It is this final point which is addressed in Part 2 of the Bill. I agree with the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, that the UK is nothing like the United States. Obviously, that is so; the political climate is wholly different. But the fact is that spending in elections by third parties, whether they are single-issue campaigners, trade unions or voluntary organisations, has become an issue. Therefore, just as political parties are limited in what they can spend and how they can spend it, so should these other organisations be. This is the principle behind this Bill.
Nevertheless, as has been said on many occasions in this debate already, there is a balance to be struck. It is important not to damage civil society or freedom of speech. In my view, the original Bill cast its net too wide as regards Part 2. My noble friend Lord Lang of Monkton said it cast its net too narrowly in relation to Part 1, and the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, put forward an effective analogy about the trawler, which was rather interesting. Clearly we are swimming in rather deep waters here, and the Government are as well. None the less, the net was cast too wide in relation to Part 2. Sensibly, therefore, the Government have already recognised this and made some amendments in the other place. The definition of controlled expenditure, which was a matter of contention, is now back to what it was in the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, which has worked well in two general elections, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, mentioned.
I remain concerned about Clause 27 and the lowering of the threshold for registration. This seems unnecessary. The big spenders—the Bill is about them—already register and are caught by the reduced cap and the wider scope of what is to be controlled, but why go so far down the route to seek to register groups that are spending £5,000 in England and £2,000 in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland? You do not get a lot of campaigning for £2,000 these days. These are the “little platoons” that Edmund Burke talked so evocatively about, and they must be treasured. It is in everybody’s interest that my noble friend the Minister looks at this again. If the Government went back some way, at least, towards the Act of 2000 in this respect, as they have with the definition, they would attract a great deal more support than they have at the moment. It would be a wise move. It would not detract from the central purpose of the Bill and would reassure many people who currently are unnecessarily worried.
I hope that the Bill becomes law, because it will improve our electoral arrangements—and they need improving. Only in the past 18 months, we have legislated for the first time in this country to have individual electoral registration, as opposed to household registration. We will remain way behind most other western countries in that respect until that comes into place—hopefully, if the work can be completed in time, for the next general election.
The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, has put out some interesting proposals in an all-party draft Bill on party funding—which, I remind the House, is an unresolved and difficult issue. Again, if I may skirt around an area of controversy without actually entering it, I hope that before too long I will see the day when every vote cast in a general election is of equal value.
That is what I wanted to say on this occasion. I look forward to contributing to other debates on these matters.
Lord Wigley (PC)
My Lords, it falls to me to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Horam, on an excellent and thoughtful maiden speech. We were, of course, fellow Members of another place—at least, intermittently so—between 1974 and 2001, during which period he had the highly unusual record of serving as both a Labour transport Minister and a Conservative health Minister. I respected him as someone who followed his personal convictions and was brave enough to do so when that meant reconsidering his party affiliation. He brings a breadth of knowledge with him to the Chamber and has done so today. He will undoubtedly contribute considerably to our debates in future. If he were ever again, in the fullness of time, to feel restless, there is always a warm welcome on the Cross Benches.
Turning to the Bill, I declare an interest as a patron or vice president of a number of organisations involved in campaigning on disability issues, including Mencap Cymru and Autism Cymru, details of which are in the register of members’ interests. I have grave misgivings about several facets of the proposed legislation, which seems to be a jumbled assortment of half-cocked ideas being rushed through Parliament without adequate consultation with those bodies which will be affected by it, particularly in the voluntary sector. It also seems to have a party-political agenda in the way that it aims to impose rules on trade unions in a manner which is perhaps geared to creating some mischief.
I first focus my remarks on the lobbying aspect of the Bill. Let me make two things clear. First, lobbying undertaken in an open, transparent and responsible manner is an essential ingredient of the democratic process. Secondly, it can be of great assistance to those in Parliament who have to address issues about which they may not have detailed personal knowledge or experience. Any restrictions placed on the ability of those affected by government decisions to present their case to decision-makers in the most effective manner is, I believe, an infringement of liberties. In the same way as those wishing to access justice through the courts need the help of professional lawyers, so those wanting to convey to Parliament and the Executive their opinions about proposed government action may need the help of professional consultants who know, from experience, the best way to get a message across to those in power.
I was a Back-Bencher for 27 years, and I know how valuable it was for me to have information presented coherently and concisely from both sides of an argument. It helped me to make an informed judgment on those many matters about which, inevitably, I did not have detailed personal knowledge. For example, when I was serving on a Standing Committee scrutinising European Commission proposals which impacted on economic, environmental and social dimensions in these islands, I could not have done my work without the help of such a consultancy, about whose assistance I obviously had to make a declaration, but that would not be permissible under today’s rules. Without that help, I could not have continued as a member of that committee, as the volume of paperwork that had to be scrutinised each week was enormous. I benefited from its research support, but I always made my own judgments, sometimes contrary to its perspective.
MPs are generalists. If they have specialist knowledge, it will be in only a small area of the wide range of policy on which they have to express an opinion. Responsible lobbying is an essential ingredient to make the legislative system work. However, it has to be responsible, and while the majority of lobbying consultancies no doubt undertake their work in a scrupulous manner, there is clearly scope for abuse. That is why we need a legislative framework within which they can operate, a framework which is open and fair to those wishing to influence decisions, one which applies to all lobbying organisations, one which is fair to the Executive and legislators who have to take decisions, fair to those who work in the lobbying industry and fair also to the general public, including those interests which may not command the resources to access professional lobbying but whose viewpoint may be equally valid. It is against the background of those considerations that I shall approach the details of the Bill at a later stage. However, I make it absolutely clear that I support a rigorous, transparent system of registration, provided that it is equitable and comprehensive. I believe that this is in the interests of lobbyists themselves as well as of the democratic process.
At this point I want to flag up two or three matters which cause me concern. First, there is a differential in this Bill with regard to the constraints placed upon Ministers and Permanent Secretaries on the one hand, and on MPs on the other. What is the position of a Minister who is approached in the context of his or her responsibility as a constituency MP? Again, do these constraints apply equally to Ministers and senior civil servants in the devolved Administrations? I support the point that the Bill should be wider in its application with regard to civil servants and, most certainly, policy advisors—the infamous spads.
Secondly, my main misgiving relates to the way in which voluntary organisations may seek to influence decisions so as to safeguard those on behalf of whom they campaign. To my mind it is unacceptable to regard these bodies as acting in a party-political manner and to constrain their freedom when they put forward a strong opinion on a matter which is in the political limelight, particularly at election time when policies are rightly under scrutiny. The testimony which many of us have received from the Royal College of Nursing is a case in point. I served for three years on its parliamentary panel, which was scrupulously balanced: two Conservatives, two Labour, one Liberal Democrat and one “odds and sods”, which included me. The RCN had a strong opinion, on behalf of its members, on government policy which impacted on the delivery of healthcare and associated services. It is not affiliated to the TUC, nor does it take any part in party-political arguments from a political viewpoint. It says in a briefing document which I imagine has been provided to most of us in this Chamber:
“We are deeply concerned by the provisions in Part 2 of the Bill, which will restrict the activities of organisations that seek to legitimately comment on and influence public policy in the run-up to a general election … As currently drafted, the provisions in the Bill may prevent us from raising important issues on behalf of our members if we reach the spending limit during the regulated period … The legislation would significantly restrict on the freedom of speech of organisations that have an essential and a legitimate role to play in a free democracy”.
Those are telling words that we should most certainly be taking on board.
The NCVO has stated,
“the Bill is incredibly complex and unclear. It may be difficult for charities and other voluntary groups to understand if any of their activities would be caught, and this runs the risk of discouraging campaigning activity”.
I urge the Government to suspend progress on this Bill after its Second Reading in order for there to be serious discussion on the advisability of progressing with Part 2 as it currently stands.
There are also sins of omission in the Bill. I see nothing here that will prevent political parties rewarding generous supporters with honours or even—it is alleged—appointment to this Chamber. When the two parties in government bring forward legislation to hamper voluntary organisations in the manner I have described, I believe it is quite cynical that there should be no tightening on those abuses within the political system. Parties plead that they cannot otherwise raise money to fight election campaigns, but there is a simple answer to that, which is to restrict the amount parties can spend on general campaigning in the same way as there are tight restrictions on spending on constituency levels, but that is not adequately covered in legislation.
Some would even advocate state funding of political parties as the answer to their cash-flow problems. To my mind, that would be an absolute outrage. At a time when vital services to vulnerable people are being cut because of the financial squeeze, it would be quite wrong to divert taxpayers’ money to prop up parties which cannot generate enough enthusiasm among their own supporters to fund their campaigns. Equally, there is a valid case to be argued that we must avoid having individuals and organisations buying influence from hard-up parties by contributing huge sums towards their campaigning costs. That is the balance that has to be struck and to which we shall undoubtedly return at later stages.
There are also questions relating to the way that this legislation impacts on the political process in the devolved legislatures of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland and the degree to which there has been political consensus with political parties and campaigning organisations in those territories in regard to the Bill. Is it the Government's intention to invite the National Assembly for Wales to introduce its own legislation in this field and, if so, will the Government ensure that the National Assembly benefits from a transfer of powers order to give it the necessary legislative power to deal with those matters? I hope that this House will improve the Bill significantly during its passage and that the Government will listen, particularly with regard to Part 2.
Baroness Jay of Paddington (Lab)
My Lords, I echo the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, in welcoming the noble Lord, Lord Horam, and congratulating him on his maiden speech. I rise to report briefly on the scrutiny of the Bill undertaken by your Lordships’ Select Committee on the Constitution, which I have the privilege of chairing. The House has already heard some powerful points from one member of the committee, the noble Lord, Lord Lang of Monkton, and a further speech will be made by the noble Lord, Lord Hart of Chilton. I hope that between us we will cover the major points that the committee has given in its report.
We reported on this Bill last Friday, 18 October, having discussed it at our meeting on 16 October. Somewhat unusually, we decided to publish our report rapidly and before Second Reading, rather than wait as we sometimes do to propose specific areas for amendment at the next stage. The committee felt that in this case the House should be made aware immediately of our significant concerns about the content and overall handling of the Bill.
The Constitution Committee accepts the view, widely promoted this afternoon, that there is general cross-party support for achieving greater transparency—a greater showing of the light, as it has been called—on lobbying, a matter that has been discussed for many years. We also welcome the amendments that have been made in another place to establish a clearer view of the position of Members of both Houses.
Overall, however, we are unsure that the Bill will achieve proper improvement in the immediate concerns of the general policy. We have specific doubts both about the clarity of the Bill’s provisions and about the potential effects of aspects of the Bill. Some of these might have been addressed if, as has been repeatedly said this afternoon, the Bill had not been introduced in what we describe in the report as “undue haste”. That obviously led to difficulties of scrutiny, with no pre-legislative scrutiny and an inadequate concern for time in the other place.
As your Lordships will be aware, over a number of years the Constitution Committee has published a series of reports—under different Governments, I point out—stressing the importance of effective scrutiny in legislation not only to enhance the reputation of Parliament but to improve the quality of legislation. Perhaps I might take two minutes to quote, as we do in our current report, from those previous reports. For example, in Parliament and the Legislative Process, we noted that,
“subjecting … measures to rigorous scrutiny is an essential responsibility of both Houses of Parliament if bad law is to be avoided … Parliament has a vital role in assuring itself that a bill is, in principle, desirable and that its provisions are fit for purpose”.
In another report, from the Session of 2010-12, The Process of Constitutional Change, we reiterated that,
“if Parliament cannot be seen to be scrutinising proposals with the thoroughness they deserve, public confidence in parliamentarians is likely to be further undermined”.
The committee feels that this is particularly important when dealing with matters that affect the constitution. We have emphasised that point in a succession of reports, which I have quoted from very briefly.
Here we come to the nub of the problem with the current Bill that the Constitution Committee is most concerned about. A Bill that directly affects the electorate’s ability to engage with the Government and to take part in political campaigning must challenge the fundamental common-law right to freedom of political expression. There could not be a clearer constitutional principle and, as the committee report states, given these factors it is essential that the process accords with the highest standards. However, the committee concludes that, given the lack of external consultation, the absence of a White Paper or a draft Bill and the hasty proceedings in another place, the handling of the Bill to date is a matter of significant concern.
To move to our scrutiny of the policy substance of the Bill, in Part 1 we share the generally expressed concern about the narrow scope of provisions on the work of lobbyists. Again, I quote from our report, which in turn mentions the report by our fellow committee in the other place:
“The Government’s lack of engagement with the industry is reflected in a poorly drafted and narrow definition which does not accurately reflect the work undertaken by lobbyists”.
As with many speakers this afternoon, though, it is of course Part 2 that has most concerned the committee as far as the policy is concerned. I remind your Lordships that the proposed amendments to the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act that tighten and extend various controls, including financial controls, are in Part 2. We have heard a series of vivid examples and explanations from various speakers today about the impact of these controls and extended financial regulations on the charity sector and on the voluntary sector in general. The potential limits on their campaigning activities have been described as “chilling” and as a chilling threat to their constitutional rights. Your Lordships’ Constitution Committee notes that the House must ensure that the Bill gives absolute and appropriate justification for interfering with that right. In the committee’s view, the Government had yet to offer such a convincing justification for extending the control on third parties and I suggest to the Minister—although obviously this is a personal view, as the committee has not met to consider today’s speeches—that that justification still has yet to be heard.
We conclude that your Lordships will wish to consider whether extended control is really necessary, given the particularly serious implications for a basic constitutional right. This is the question of achieving the balance that several noble Lords have referred to today. In consideration of the Bill, as the House has heard, the House has the advantage of several relevant parliamentary reports, including the very trenchant findings of the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee in the Commons, the report of the Joint Human Rights Committee, which my noble friend Lady Kennedy of The Shaws has referred to, and that of the Commons Committee on Standards. All these reports share a similar disquiet about the way in which the Bill has been handled and serious concerns about its content. I hope that the combined authority of those committee reports, together with your Lordships’ own Constitution Committee report, will give the Government pause and encourage Ministers to listen very carefully to the debates in this House.
The Earl of Clancarty (CB)
My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Horam, on his maiden speech, which was an extremely useful contribution to this debate.
My comments will be directed mainly at Part 2. This Bill has been driven by two engines, self-absorption and self-regard—self-absorption because it wilfully misunderstands and ignores both the way in which campaigning works and its meaning to society, and self-regard because it assumes that government and party politicians are more important than public discussion. I fear that the Bill will put Westminster further into a bubble.
There is a huge difference in kind between lobbying carried out on behalf of commercial industry, which ought properly to be the subject of Part 1, and campaigning on issues of public concern without thought of financial gain, which becomes a target in Part 2. The Government need to recognise that the spectrum of charities, pressure groups, demonstrators and the like together represents one of the significant voices by which the public are heard. To curtail these activities, as many campaigning groups fear will happen, will curtail the people’s voice, as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby has already suggested.
Politics does not stop at Westminster Bridge, yet with the Bill the Government are acting as though that were the case. Governments always say that ordinary people should be more involved in politics, but they already are—just not necessarily in party politics. As Justine Roberts of Mumsnet said, commenting at the launch of the Commission on Civil Society and Democratic Engagement, chaired by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries,
“ordinary people speaking up and getting involved in the political process makes for a healthier democracy”.
The Government need to recognise that most charities and campaigners are political—sometimes with a small “p”, but often with a large “P”, because party politics can be the means by which issues raised by charities are dealt with and sometimes resolved, which is what makes the critical wording,
“reasonably be regarded as intended to promote or procure electoral success”,
of parties or candidates so problematic for every charity.
It is a natural part of the process that all campaigning groups will wish to find supporters in Parliament who will promote their cause. However, the big difference between parties and their associated organisations on the one hand, and charities and campaigning organisations on the other, is that campaigning organisations follow the issues and support for the issues that they would wish to raise in Parliament, not the party. Incidentally, that is why the Cross-Benchers, who are independent of parties, play an important role in bringing so many of such issues to the attention of Parliament.
The ideal, of course, would be that support for a cause has cross-party support, although this is not always possible. The great majority of campaign groups will be rightly resentful of being tethered through registration to a party political post when in reality, in the longer term and in the broader context of a campaign group’s aims, this is invariably not the case. Friends of the Earth put this very well when they say,
“we never support one party or candidate over another, and never tell supporters or the public how we think they should vote. But we do say what we think about important environmental policies that politicians and political parties also have an opinion about”.
One of the problems with Part 2 of the Bill appears to be not just fears about whether you will be caught out by it, but the uncertainties about what it is intended to achieve. Big Brother Watch, English PEN and others have said that for many charities,
“self-censorship is an inevitable consequence of the bill as it stands”.
If the Bill goes through as it is, it will be destructive both for groups and for our democracy. A year is a hugely long time for campaigning organisations to be effectively out of action, when in the lead-up to an election precisely the opposite ought to be the case.
What about the role of the press during this period? Presumably it will then have a free hand in this regard, although to be consistent the Government ought to restrict the press as campaigning organisations as well. I am not in favour of that. In the lead-up to an election there should be a properly healthy public discussion of issues and policies, including the views of both a diverse press—ideally—and campaigning bodies, running alongside each other.
Campaigns develop and grow organically, often starting from small groups. For some organisations, artificially to stop campaigning for a year would be a body blow, because campaigns are built on momentum. Other campaigns are time-sensitive, and one can all too easily see the Government of the day pushing through contentious decisions during this period—for example, beginning construction work on a nuclear reactor—under the radar, as it were, without public discussion or protest.
There is a part of me which says, perhaps against my better instincts, “Bring on this silence for a year”—which is what will happen if the Bill passes as is. Perhaps we would see the emergence of quieter voices, more non-professionalised campaign groups staffed by volunteers operating at low cost—except that volunteers are to be counted towards costs, and it will be very difficult for any organisation to operate within the extremely low thresholds that the Bill sets. What we would more likely see is more direct action and more and more outrageous ways in which some groups will draw attention to themselves.
I cannot help but think of the group Femen, which we learnt last week is setting up a London branch. Without suggesting in any way that that or any other group has any intention of breaking the law, I suspect that such a group would never contemplate registering with the Electoral Commission. It would argue that to do so would be to defer to a patriarchal and authoritarian system. Many might think that it would have a point. The key point here is that no Government should try to put a lid on the public voice, which the charities and campaigning groups represent. Indeed, it is, in the long run, unrealistic to do so because you cannot put a lid on boiling water without the steam somehow, in the end, finding a way of escaping.
Many of the great social reforms of the past have come about thanks to the tireless work of people outside the mainstream, who felt that this was how they could best serve their country. Politics at Westminster is not a one-way street and campaigning organisations are an important part of the process. Indeed, their role within the political process is often underestimated by Governments and sometimes wholly ignored—I can think of one recent example during the passage of a Bill.
My strong preference would be to see this Bill paused. Part 2 should certainly be rejected because it is unnecessary and fundamentally misconceived. Any reform that the Government wish to undertake should be far more considered and consulted on.
Baroness Pitkeathley (Lab)
My Lords, I begin by congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Horam, on his maiden speech, and by drawing your Lordships’ attention to my interests in the register, especially to my roles as vice-president of Carers UK and as chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Civil Society and Volunteering. I hope that I might be permitted to record my disappointment that neither of the Ministers on the Bill is currently in the Chamber.
I will concentrate on Part 2 of the Bill, and I will speak personally. As far as I am aware, none of us knows how we become a Member of your Lordships’ House—the reasons we are chosen and so on. However, I have a pretty good idea why the honour was conferred on me. It was because I was a campaigner and lobbyist—rather a successful one, I would suggest. I was chief executive of a charity whose raison d’être was lobbying and campaigning in pursuit of policy changes for carers.
Let me take noble Lords back to the mid-1980s. The word “carer” was unknown; it was frequently misspelt as “career”. Nothing of what we now take for granted about the issue was known. We had no numbers. Estimates were not believed. We had no idea about the range of activities that carers undertake, or the distress that caring can cause. There were few organisations that dealt with caring, no helplines and no legislation. No attention was paid to carers at all. It is hard to believe now, when the word “carer” is added to practically every document coming out of every government department—and sometimes, I think, every sentence of every document coming out of every government department. Think of the Care Bill and the focus on carers’ rights. Think of what we now know about carers for o1der people, young carers, parent carers, carers in the benefits system, carers in employment and so on. It is hard to imagine what it was like 20 or 30 years ago.
All that we have achieved for carers has been achieved by lobbying and campaigning by a registered charity, or by several charities working together. No Minister or department suddenly woke up and said, “Oh, sorry. This is a group of people whom we have been ignoring for years. We had better do something about it”. Of course they did not. They took notice because we drew attention relentlessly to what the situation was by focused campaigns, getting the media on side and getting carers to be willing to speak out rather than being a silent and hidden army. Figures on how many carers there are and how much money their contribution is worth did not come out of the blue. In fact, I remember successive Secretaries of State denying that the numbers of carers that I was suggesting even existed. We got the numbers because we ran a concerted campaign to have a question about carers included in the census, and then we used the figures, which surprised everybody—6 million, since you ask—at every opportunity.
Our campaigns for policy change were never more concerted and active than during election periods. I first attended party conferences in the late 1980s—all the party conferences, of course—and at the 1992, 1997, 2001 and all elections since, a carers manifesto has been produced and all political parties have been lobbied to make concessions for carers. A very important aspect of this work was the alliance that was formed to give the lobby the strongest possible voice. Originally, more than 20 carer, disability, older people and patient organisations came together to produce a manifesto. This made the call and the demands of the manifesto so much more powerful. Many of us have recently been in contact with the Care and Support Alliance, which played such an important role in both last year’s Health and Social Care Bill and the Care Bill currently being considered by this House. If each of those many organisations had had its costs counted, including its overall admin costs, I doubt whether they would have come together in such an effective way. Indeed, I am sure that they would not. The effectiveness of such coalitions has already been mentioned by several noble Lords.
What would have been the situation of carers if all these campaigns had not taken place? Eventually, what was a private trouble might have become a public policy issue—the one that we know so well today—but not as quickly or effectively, I would contend. Three Private Members’ Bills, a national carers strategy, the Standing Commission on Carers, and the Law Commission report that led to the Care Bill all came about as a direct result of regular lobbying and campaigning, much of it focused in election periods. I might add that the tradition in the United Kingdom of campaigning charities effectively lobbying for changes in policy is the envy of the world—and I do not exaggerate that, as I know it from my contact with emerging carers movements in many other countries throughout the world.
Of course, we have to emphasise that this is politically neutral campaigning, which requires a degree of political sophistication to bring about. Is it that political sophistication and political nous that frightens the Government and makes them put in place this sledgehammer of a Bill to crack what is, at worst, a very small political nut as regards charities. The Bill surrounds charities with an unwarranted amount of bureaucracy, as noble Lords have pointed out, while at the same time not being nearly strong enough with the real culprits, who should be addressed in Part 1 of the Bill.
I use the issue of carers as an example of what will be lost if the Bill goes through in its current form, because it is the one I know best. But there are dozens of others, as is apparent from the huge amount of correspondence that your Lordships have received on the Bill—from climate change to child abuse, through every variety of charity. That would not have come to public attention if it had not been for the efforts of charities, acting singly or in alliances. I am baffled as to how any Government who have sung the praises of the big society and repeatedly placed emphasis on the importance of the charitable sector can put before us a Bill so ill thought-out and with so much potential to stifle the voices of the disadvantaged, and ignore groups and issues that are the very essence of democracy.
If you really want to engage with charities and the voluntary sector, as this Government constantly assure us that they do, you cannot simply put them into the role of service providers, effectively gagging them because they are too dependent on contracts to utter a breath of criticism. What has happened to the Minister’s call, made so trenchantly before the election, that the charities should,
“keep our feet to the fire”?
I quote him directly. Is that to be interpreted as keeping their feet to the fire except in an election year—and only if you keep the costs down to the level that they have set?
Will the Minister take this opportunity to answer the many questions that are being asked? For example, what exactly constitutes campaigning? Does it include taking part in policy discussions or doing research on issues such as poverty, and publishing the results? How are partnerships and alliances to be defined, and their expenditure costed, without huge administrative burdens on already cash-strapped organisations? What is the Government’s reaction to the legal opinion that says that the Bill will restrict organisations’ ability to engage in campaigns or policy debates and will insulate the Executive from criticism? Above all, why the rush? There are so many problems with the Bill, and so many possibilities of unintended consequences—I give the Minister the benefit of the doubt and do not accuse him or the Government of sinister motives, though many might—that surely the right thing to do is to start again, or at least to pause and put the Bill through the sort of scrutiny that a pre-legislative process would have provided. Starting again would be a sign not of weakness but of a Government who have the courage to seek and take notice of the opinions of the society that they represent.
Lord Norton of Louth (Con)
My Lords, I start with two general observations about the Bill. The first concerns process and the second concerns construction.
The Bill is the product of the “something must be done” response to a particular problem. There is a problem, not least in terms of public perception of illicit or unethical lobbying of policy-makers, but that problem requires a considered response, one that both addresses the problem and is seen to do so. This Bill, as I shall argue, fails on both grounds. My principal point here, following other noble Lords, is that the measure has been rushed. I share the concerns expressed by the Constitution Committee of your Lordships’ House in its report on the Bill. As it noted, the Government had announced that there would be a White Paper and a draft Bill. There has been neither. As has been said, this places a particular responsibility on your Lordships’ House in scrutinising the measure.
In terms of construction, this is a Christmas tree Bill. The previous Labour Government brought in Bills that were essentially two Bills in one and sometimes three Bills in one. This Government have continued the practice. The title of the Bill is something of a giveaway. The relationship between the three parts is tenuous, to say the least. This practice places particular strains on the other place in terms of detailed examination in Committee. This House can adapt its examination to the discrete parts of the Bill somewhat more effectively, but it is none the less a practice to be deprecated.
I turn to the substance of the Bill. Like my noble friend Lord Lang, I shall focus on Part 1. Much that I say will reinforce the points that he made. As the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, said, there is general acceptance that there should be more transparency in lobbying. This Bill, though, is too narrowly drawn to correct the mischief that has motivated its introduction. The Bill is concerned to identify those who engage in lobbying on a commercial basis, and do so as free-standing entities. I am not sure what that adds to our knowledge. The more one reads the exclusions in the Bill, the more one recognises the limitations of the exercise. It excludes small-scale commercial lobbyists, those for whom lobbying is not the principal purpose of their business and in-house lobbyists. Some companies have sizable lobbying teams. One suspects that their activities may at times be as much a concern to the public as are the activities of dedicated lobbying firms. Will the Minister tell us why the Government differentiate between lobbying of Ministers on, say, the duty on cigarettes by in-house lobbyists of tobacco companies and lobbying by commercial lobbyists bought in by tobacco companies for the purpose of lobbying Ministers? From the perspective of the exercise of lobbying, and how it is perceived by the public, what is the salient distinction?
That brings me to another crucial limitation of the Bill. The focus is one of status and, as I have explained, a rather narrow one. It is not directed at the actual activity, other than indirectly. It seeks to influence behaviour through making public who engages in commercial lobbying. There is no statutory code of conduct and no stipulation of principles that should govern the behaviour. In so far as the Bill influences behaviour, it may be to encourage lobbyists to avoid making representations in a way that brings them within the scope of the Bill but, as most are not presently caught within the ambit of the Bill, it will not make that much difference anyway. All that the Bill does is to introduce a new layer of regulation for no obvious public benefit. It tells us, at some cost, what is largely already known.
The Bill, in short, is fundamentally flawed. The point has been well made in the other place by Members on both sides that it is based on a lack of understanding of how lobbying actually works. It was expressed especially well by a former student of mine, Tracey Crouch, who spent several years as a lobbyist. As she pointed out, the lobbying industry today provides a very different service and is a very different industry from what it was 10 or 15 years ago. Consultant lobbyists are more likely to advise clients on how to undertake lobbying of government rather than undertake it themselves, and if they do undertake it, they are not likely to be lobbying Permanent Secretaries. The Government appear not to understand the industry as it now is, most of which will not be caught by the provisions of the Bill.
The Bill is neither one thing nor the other. Either it should go the whole way and introduce a comprehensive register of lobbyists or it should be abandoned and the Government should instead address the problem from a very different, and I believe more effective, perspective. The case for a comprehensive register has been made by others. I am not persuaded of the need for a register, comprehensive or otherwise; it may prove counterproductive with lobbyists using registration as a seal of approval. More importantly, I do not believe that it would assuage public concerns about the lobbying of government.
The other approach, which I commend to the House, is to shift the emphasis entirely and build on existing practice. In opening the debate, my noble friend Lord Younger made the point that there is now more transparency about policy-making meetings, with a quarterly publication on those meetings. My noble friend Lord Lang also referred to that. Why not build on that? When Select Committees produce reports, they publish the names of those who have given evidence, that is, who made representations to them. It is normal practice to publish the material submitted to them. Why not require Ministers, when making policy announcements or publishing Bills or draft Bills, to list the names of all those who have made representations to the department on the issue? Listing all those who have lobbied on the subject would be transparent and comprehensive. It would not matter whether it was an in-house lobbyist, a paid or unpaid lobbyist, or simply individuals writing in. It avoids the need to define lobbying, and we would know who had made representations.
There may be a case, building on existing practice, for publishing the notes of meetings and written representations, similar to the evidence volumes published by Select Committees. If this was routine practice, drawing material together on a particular measure, it would properly address the problem. There may also be a case for extending it to non-decision-making: that is, when a Minister decides not to pursue a particular policy under consideration. I appreciate that there may be, indeed no doubt are, flaws in this alternative proposal, but I have yet to find any that render it a less desirable approach than that embodied in the Bill. Perhaps the Minister can explain why my proposal is not to be preferred over that advanced by the Government. If he cannot, the Government may wish to reflect on the wisdom of continuing with a flawed Bill.
Lord Hart of Chilton (Lab)
My Lords, there will be many echoes and repetitions this afternoon and evening, and I make no excuse for joining in because the issues are so important. As has been mentioned, I am a member of your Lordships’ Select Committee on the Constitution, whose report was published last Friday. On the same day, the Joint Committee on Human Rights published its report and prior to that on 5 September the House of Commons Political and Constitutional Reform Committee published its report. All are cross-party committees and all are agreed on their conclusions and recommendations. All are highly critical of the Bill.
Three common issues emerge. First, once again, the Government have introduced a Bill without adequate consultation and scrutiny, not least without pre-legislative scrutiny. As my noble friend Lady Jay of Paddington pointed out, the Constitution Committee has repeatedly stressed the importance of proper scrutiny and consultation. That is important for the reputation of Parliament and the quality of legislation itself. Any failure to do so undermines public confidence, particularly in the case of Bills of constitutional importance. This is such a Bill because it directly affects the ability of people and organisations who wish to engage with the Government and participate in political and electoral campaigning to do so. Freedom of expression and freedom of assembly are rights which lie at the very heart of our constitution. Any threat to these would not only infringe Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights but be contrary to fundamental common law. Some say that this Bill does just that, and I have seen a leading counsel’s opinion which states that there are grounds for a legal challenge on grounds of incompatibility.
A second but connected theme emerging from the reports is that throughout the Bill there are problems of definition, both individually and collectively, which have caused great uncertainty and could lead to unforetold consequences. For example, broadening the scope of controlled expenditure and at the same time lowering its cap, the definition of consultant lobbying and the scope of the Bill have all raised fears and concerns which the lack of proper scrutiny and the speed with which this legislation is being catapulted forward have made worse.
A third theme, which has already been mentioned, is whether, in the absence of a clear rationale, Part 2 is necessary at all, and that what is being proposed is quite disproportionate. The Joint Committee on Human Rights states at paragraph 60 of its report, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Kennedy of The Shaws, drew attention:
“We are concerned that the lack of understanding and clarity about the practical effects of the Bill has led to widespread concern that third parties may be dissuaded from participating in campaigns with a potential ‘chilling effect’ on free speech and freedom of association of third party campaigners”.
Judging by the letters and e-mails that I have received, I believe that it is quite right. For example, legal aid, access to justice, human rights and examples of unjust law are all likely to be election issues. Under current definitions, a third-party campaigner on any of these issues is exposed to the risk that his or her campaigning activities could be regarded as intended to promote or procure electoral success for a party or candidate even though it is accepted that he or she had no such subjective intention to do so or that he or she did not name any party or candidate or that he or she was engaging in the campaign for its own sake. Such a result cannot be intended, but that is an example of the uncertainty which has been caused.
The Constitution Committee also drew attention to Clause 35 extending the regulatory duties of the Electoral Commission, which has expressed concerns about the rationale for it and whether it has the resources to fulfil the extended obligations effectively.
As to my personal view, I regret to say that I believe this Bill, and the way it has been processed, is a rather shoddy piece of work which has caused in its slipstream much concern and uncertainty. The noble Lord, Lord Tyler, seems to think that it is a giant torch shining light on dark cupboards. To me it brings dark clouds and obscurity. I believe that it requires far more scrutiny than the speed of its planned parliamentary timetable will permit. Accordingly, I agree with the Joint Committee when it suggests that the Bill should be paused and submitted for more extensive scrutiny and greater consultation. Alternatively, of course, Part 2 could be dropped altogether. There is a need for a Bill, but this is not it.
Lord Aberdare (CB)
My Lords, I will try to outline my thoughts on the Bill without going into too much detail since most of the points I wish to make have been made already and may well be made again. I will address Parts 1 and 2. I have no problem with the principles of the Bill. I believe that a register of lobbyists is important to ensure the openness and transparency of lobbying activity, and I also support the aim of Part 2 to take the big money out of politics, as we have heard it described. However, I have two broad concerns about the Bill as drafted. Does it risk going too far and actually taking the politics out of politics and will it achieve its laudable aims in a workable, effective and not too burdensome manner?
On Part 1, I start from the principle that lobbying is a vital part of our democratic system. I worked in IBM’s government relations departments in both the UK and the USA and was then a partner in a public affairs consultancy, so at times I engaged in lobbying myself. However, I, and perhaps other noble Lords, might not be able to contribute to debate on this Bill in an informed way if it were not for the lobbying efforts of numerous organisations interested in or concerned by it. It is important that lobbying should be open, transparent and above board. The system to achieve that should be clear, fair, workable, reasonably straightforward and comprehensive, so I have considerable questions about how the proposed register is to be set up.
First, why are only consultant lobbyists covered? What about in-house lobbyists, other corporate advisers such as management consultants, law firms and accountants, trade associations and other such representative bodies? Consultant lobbyists represent a very small proportion of total lobbying, perhaps not much more than 10%. In my experience they generally accompany their clients in lobbying situations, if they take part in them at all, and it is the client who has the most direct interaction with the person being lobbied. It is hard to see how the omission of the bulk of lobbyists and their activities from the register will achieve the aims of increasing transparency and public confidence.
Secondly, why does the Bill extend only to lobbying of Ministers and Permanent Secretaries? A huge amount of lobbying takes place at lower levels, including with special advisers, for example, both before and after any direct contacts with Ministers or Permanent Secretaries. Moreover, as we have heard, Ministers and Permanent Secretaries are already supposed to publish details of their meetings with external organisations. If the public need to know who those organisations represent, why could this information not just be added to those reports? After all, if Ministers or Permanent Secretaries do not know who the lobbyists they meet are representing, the lobbying effort seems unlikely to be effective. In this context, I was quite attracted by the proposal from the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, about turning the whole thing around and looking at it from the point of view of the people being lobbied.
Although I welcome the evident desire of the Government to adopt a minimalist approach, I wonder if there is not a danger of ending up—and here I echo what the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, said about Part 2—with an overlarge sledgehammer to crack a small, though admittedly irritating, nut. If we are to have a register and a registrar should they not be a little more comprehensive in their coverage without, of course, imposing undue burdens on lobbyists or their employers? Perhaps something can be learnt from existing systems elsewhere. For example, I have heard the European Union system described, with some approval, as a “coerced voluntary register”.
Finally, should there not be some encouragement for lobbyists to sign up, preferably on a voluntary basis, to codes of conduct such as that of the Association of Professional Political Consultants, which has been in existence for some 20 years? Could the system not make some sort of allowance for lobbyists who show that they adhere to a recognised code of conduct, as was suggested by the noble Lord, Lord Tyler?
I find myself in a similar situation with Part 2. The aim may be worthy, but its implementation falls far short of being as clear, workable and proportionate as it should be. I have been very struck by the number of significant and reputable representative organisations expressing concern about this part of the Bill. To pick just a few, there are: the NCVO, with some 10,000 members; its Welsh equivalent, the WCVA, with more than 3,000 members; Bond, which represents 400 international development bodies; 13 faith groups; and the Commission on Civil Society and Democratic Engagement, chaired by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, which was formed by some 50 very diverse third-sector organisations specifically in response to concerns about this Bill. Numerous bodies have added their voices to these concerns such as the CBI, Citizens Advice, the Countryside Alliance, the National Trust, the National Federation of Women’s Institutes and the Royal British Legion, to mention just a few. No doubt briefings are still coming in from further organisations as we speak. Then there is the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee in another place, the Joint Committee on Human Rights, your Lordships’ own Constitution Committee and even the Electoral Commission itself. Such a breadth of concern, with little or no countervailing opinion, should surely raise serious pause for thought.
The definition of “controlled expenditure”, even after the amendments made in another place to bring it more in line with the previously existing situation, remains complicated and unclear. One thing that is clear is that Clause 26, combined with Schedule 3, considerably extends the range of expenses covered, for example to include staff costs, if not even volunteer time, although I was reassured by what the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury, said on that matter. While the scope of controlled expenditure is widened, the thresholds for registration to be necessary are significantly lowered in the Bill, by half in England, and more than half in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The limits on the maximum amounts that can be spent are also reduced, again by more than half. I have seen no rationale or justification for these reductions. Several organisations have said that the previous regime under PPERA was tolerable only because the thresholds and spending limits were sufficiently high not to affect the great majority of campaigns.
The reduced thresholds and limits are likely to bear down particularly hard on third-party organisations in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. For example, no allowance is made for the fact that in Wales much of the material now classified as election material has to be produced in two languages, with significant extra costs. Nearly all organisations commenting on the Bill, including the Electoral Commission, believe that the Government’s estimates of the number of bodies likely to be affected are unrealistically low.
The rules on coalition campaigns, where each member of a coalition has to include the full amount of coalition expenditure as part of its own controllable expenses, seem likely to have a strongly discouraging effect on campaigns of this nature, although in most other respects they seem positively desirable, as well as effective. Given that charities are already regulated by the Charity Commission under charity law, which prohibits them campaigning on party-political issues, I can understand why the question of whether they should not be specifically excluded from coverage under this new system has been raised.
I will not go into questions of why the Bill was not subject to greater pre-legislative scrutiny and consultation, as it surely should have been—and indeed should still be—or why there is such an unseemly rush to get Part 2 in place before the next general election, so that all the third-party organisations newly brought within its scope will have to have their future campaigning plans in place as soon as next May, despite all the issues raised in today’s debate.
The Bill in its current form seems likely to represent a significant burden on organisations, many of them small, which could by no stretch of the imagination be regarded as the sort of big money that could realistically distort elections, and to drive a coach and horses through this Government’s claim to be committed to deregulation and the big society. Even worse than that, it could risk causing significant collateral damage to the workings of our civil society as a whole. I hope the Bill will emerge from your Lordships’ House with significant improvements so that it fulfils its worthwhile aims without such undesirable side effects.
Lord Rooker (Lab Ind)
My Lords, the note handed out by the Minister on 10 October stated:
“The Bill takes forward the Coalition Government’s agreement to enhance transparency around the interaction of certain ‘third parties’ with our political system”.
I did a search of the coalition agreement and no such thing is in there. The best I could find was in Chapter 16, “Government Transparency”, which states:
“We will regulate lobbying through introducing a statutory register of lobbyists and ensuring greater transparency”.
Elsewhere in the coalition agreement, I found lots about social action and,
“the creation and expansion of mutuals, co-operatives, charities and social enterprises”,
and about encouraging involvement in social action. The coalition agreement also boldly claimed that,
“our political system is broken”.
In fixing the broken system, the coalition now seeks to fix the system in a way that Putin in Russia would be proud of, by fixing the date of the general election and then snuffing out civil society in the year before it. That is the reality. It is quite clever: make the law imprecise so that civil society has no certainty, and give the policing of the law to a commission, which said of the Bill when it was first published in the Commons:
“We do not think it is appropriate for us to have the sort of wide discretion over the meaning and scope of the regulatory regime that the Bill as drafted appears to provide”.
The replacement wording now needs very rigorous testing in your Lordships’ House because new activities are covered for the first time.
As part of the government “fix” of civil society, the Bill introduces a major change in the Electoral Commission’s regulatory remit. This was not forewarned to the commission. No consultation took place with the board or the accounting officer and no rationale has been given. The House will need to test this when we debate Clause 35.
I say to the House that the same group of Ministers in charge of this Bill in the other place changed part of the remit of another regulator, the Food Standards Agency, in 2010—overnight and without warning—as regards food adulteration. Since then, we have had the horsemeat adulteration scandal, and in recent weeks the 2010 changes have been condemned by both the National Audit Office and the Defra Select Committee. We have been warned.
Of course, this worried Government believe that the Bill will not curtail freedom of expression by campaign organisations. That was in the note from the Minister, but those affected by the Bill must have another version of it. The Bill was not just rammed through the supine House of Commons by the coalition Government; it was printed and published the day before the Summer Recess. There was no consultation prior to publication and it was slipped into Commons Committee in the black hole of the two-week September sitting. The Government exercised bad faith by promising government amendments a week before Report but delivering them only two days beforehand.
The bodies affected by Part 2 of the Bill, which is all I am speaking about, will in the main be registered charities. This means, as has been said, that they are already regulated regarding all activities that they undertake, including during the election period. They claim that the Bill will place extremely tight restraints on their work 12 months before the election. It is also a direct threat to some of the most valued democratic principles, such as freedom of expression, and it undermines democratic participation by restricting civil society involvement in debates. Even now, we do not know whether charity or community volunteers’ time will be costed and included in the new time limits. There is still doubt about that. Assurances given by Ministers in the Commons regarding the ability to support specific policies have not been met.
The Bill rigs the financial limits by effectively counting twice the money spent if organisations are in coalition. This is a massive deterrent to, say, a charity for the homeless working in conjunction with an environmental charity to seek a new housing development—or it might stop two or more charities working together and joining their back-office functions to save money. Furthermore, the Government broke the national compact regarding consultation on matters affecting the third sector, and they cannot deny it. As has been said, the Bill creates a chilling effect on campaigning activity.
The Commons was treated with contempt, says the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee. At paragraph 3 of its report, it says:
“This is an object lesson in how not to produce legislation”.
It is the case that any and every organisation that seeks to influence public opinion, whether through campaigning or advocacy, in the 12 months before a general election, either directly or as a consequence of its actions, is now going to be covered. What a gift to those who conduct sham democracies around the world. Christian Aid cannot run its Make Poverty History campaign again in a general election year; the Royal British Legion’s Time To Do Your Bit campaign in 2010 cannot be repeated; and the Countryside Alliance will likely not be able to function at all in the 12 months before a general election. We are informed by NAVCA, the National Association for Voluntary and Community Action, whose members support 160,000 local charities and community groups, that the campaign it ran, Real Powers for Communities, could also not be run. That campaign, believe it or not, was designed to highlight the support that the coalition Government’s Localism Act could give to charities and groups. Is this all a mistake? Actually, I do not think so.
The Bill makes virtually no change regarding commercial lobbyists but punishes charities and other civil society groups. As has been said, we need to be mindful that those belonging to charities and civil society groups far outnumber those belonging to political parties. I wonder why that is.
For all the rhetoric, many members of the coalition have little or no regard or respect for civil society. The big society is okay when it is running a park or volunteering for the Olympics but not when it wants to speak up. That is the reality. If our political system is broken, this is not the way to mend it.
I suspect, and certainly hope, that this unelected House has more concern about freedom, plurality, good governance and, indeed, the rule of law than the Commons at the present time. Given the lack of pre-legislative scrutiny, the inadequate scrutiny that the Commons gave and the concerns of the regulator, if this House does not now do a decent job, we might as well ask Clegg to come back and abolish us, as he was planning to do in the first place.
It appears that the new constituency controls may be completely unenforceable, as we have heard, because of the combination of the lower registration threshold and spending limits, new constituency limits and the wider scope of regulated activity. Far more allegations of breaches of the rules will come forward in the heat of an election, as has happened in the past, yet the Government have still to explain how they think the Electoral Commission will enforce these new constituency controls. That was not even debated in the Commons.
I realise, of course—and I am not trying to win friends and influence people in the coalition at the moment—that the coalition has rigged this place to create a government majority for the first time, but it is not too late to make this a better Bill. We have not yet been given a list of issues from the previous general election, where there was concern regarding civil society, to justify this draconian measure. In fact, 33 non-campaign groups registered at the previous election. In total, they spent £3 million in the year before the election. The three main political parties spent £31 million in that year. Where is the problem? I repeat: £3 million was spent in the year before by those non-campaigning groups that registered. Indeed, the only issue that caused me concern at the previous general election was when I obtained a copy of the Conservative manifesto and saw on page 14 a full-page portrait of a named charity chief executive, who extolled the policies set out on the following pages.
In fact, at the last election I was, as is known, working for the Government as chair of a non-ministerial department, the Food Standards Agency. I was not on the Labour Whip and, as such, I did not undertake canvassing or any public speaking. So when I saw the Tory manifesto at that time, I was actually shocked. It was certainly a major lapse in the acceptable standards of conduct that one would expect from a registered charity. The person who signed off that manifesto also fell below the required standards. Frankly, I am not prepared to take any lectures about the moral high ground of non-party campaigning from this governing coalition when it pulled a stunt like that at the previous election.
Part 2 will have to come out or be substantially modified. From my three years’ experience of the coalition and of the way that we have been treated over some Bills, I am not going to trust any offer until I see it on the Order Paper.
Lord Hardie (CB)
My Lords, I refer to my entry in the register of interests as president of Capability Scotland. I will not repeat the concerns about the effect of the Bill upon the voluntary sector, which were so ably expressed by my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby, the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, and other noble Lords. I agree with those concerns.
I support the intention behind the provisions in Part 1 about the transparency required from lobbyists, but I fear that they do not go far enough to restore public confidence in our political system. Like many noble Lords, I consider that the provisions confine themselves to the registration of consultant lobbyists and their dealings with Ministers and civil servants at the highest level, and they fail to address in-house lobbyists. Are the public not also entitled to know of these possible influences in the formulation of policy? The duty on Ministers to disclose, on a regular basis, meetings that they have with individuals and the subjects discussed is no answer to that omission. Should that disclosure not be contained within a central database of all activity and be available to the public for inspection? In that regard, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Tyler. However, what sanctions exist for the failure of Ministers and civil servants to comply with such obligations?
The provisions are also inadequate in another respect. The obligation of disclosure is confined to lobbying of Ministers and Permanent Secretaries, Second Permanent Secretaries or persons serving in the offices listed in Part 3 of Schedule 1. As has been observed by other noble Lords, the reality is that lobbyists will also have dealings with civil servants of a lower grade as well as political advisers to Ministers. Can the Minister tell the House why the need for transparency has not been extended to people in those positions?
I share the concerns expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Hayter of Kentish Town, the noble Lords, Lord Ramsbotham and Lord Lang of Monkton, and other noble Lords about the lack of any consultation about this part of the Bill before its introduction in the other place.
Part 2 includes various provisions restricting the involvement of third parties in elections by altering the definition of controlled expenditure and by reducing the level of such expenditure contained within the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000. I accept that, where non-party campaigning takes place on a scale that could have a significant effect upon elections, it is important that it is transparent and controlled. However, we must guard against imposing arbitrary limits that will have the unintended consequence of discouraging electors from engaging in the democratic process. Any controls on third parties must be reasonable and a proportionate interference with the right to freedom of political expression. The Bill expands the definition of controlled expenditure in the manner already mentioned by noble Lords and I will not repeat that. At the same time, it reduces the limit on controlled expenditure from £10,000 in England, or £5,000 in each of Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, to £5,000 and £2,000 respectively, at which point registration is mandatory, with all the regulatory and administrative burdens that that entails, not to mention the risk of criminal sanctions.
I, too, wish to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Horam, on his maiden speech. I share his concern about these reduced financial limits. Will the Minister tell the House the evidential basis for reducing the limits set in 2000, given that it is now proposed that the scope of the activities to be controlled is extended? I agree with the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, that the passage of time and the expanded definition of controlled activities suggest that an increase in the limits would be more appropriate.
I have similar concerns about the substantial reduction in the national limits of controlled expenditure. Since 2000 those have been £793,500 for England, £108,000 for Scotland, £60,000 for Wales and £27,000 for Northern Ireland. Clause 26(2) reduces those to £319,800, £35,400, £24,000 and £10,800 respectively. Has any assessment been undertaken on whether the revised figures would permit a reasonable opportunity to non-recognised third parties to campaign on issues that they consider to be of national importance? I question whether those limits would permit a national rally, for instance, if groups wish to campaign against government action, such as occurred in relation to the Iraq war or might occur in relation to climate change or other environmental issues.
The Minister sought to give us reassurance on that and emphasised that expenditure would not be controlled expenditure unless it could reasonably be regarded as promoting or procuring electoral success for one or more parties. The Minister is correct, of course—that is what Clause 26 says—but what is the practical implication of that? Let us suppose that a local action group has formed to oppose the closure of a local hospital in the constituency or to support or oppose HS2 or fracking. Expenditure on relevant activities, such as advocating the views of the group, would be controlled expenditure if those views were opposed by one candidate but supported by another. Is that consequence not an unacceptable interference in the democratic process which is disproportionate and which crosses the line of legitimate control?
There is another difficulty with this part. There are inconsistencies in the statutory regime that risk confusing third-party campaigners. I refer to Scotland, where the proposed limit of £35,400 includes expenditure during the year before the general election. In contrast, the spending limit for a Scottish parliamentary election, which has been fixed by this Parliament, is £75,800 for similar activities, but the relevant period is four months. The current proposal in the Bill before the Scottish Parliament for the referendum in Scotland is that there will be a spending limit of £150,000 for similar activities during the four-month period before the referendum. Such variations will confuse third parties in that jurisdiction who wish to engage in these campaigns. Will the Minister tell the House how he can justify the inconsistencies that exist in affording the electorate the opportunity of expressing their views?
Finally, the changes to the scope and financial limits of controlled expenditure will have an effect upon the enforcement regime operated by the Electoral Commission. Will the Minister confirm that the Government expect the commission’s regulatory regime to continue to focus primarily upon retrospective action and that its use of stop notices will be confined to cases where there is a significant risk of seriously damaging public confidence in the statutory controls? What assessment has been made of the likely increase in actions of judicial review against the commission as a result of the Bill? Will the Minister also advise the House whether additional resources are to be provided to the commission to enable it to meet its obligations?
Like other noble Lords, I urge the Minister to withdraw the restrictions that Part 2 imposes upon the freedom to participate in elections that has existed since at least the 2000 Act.
Baroness Donaghy (Lab)
My Lords, I have three reasons for wishing to speak in this debate. First, I am a former member and acting chair of the Committee on Standards in Public Life. The noble Viscount, Lord Younger of Leckie, and the noble Lord, Lord Lang of Monkton, referred to the work of that committee, which spent considerable amounts of time looking at the well-being issue. There is no doubt of the importance of that area. I remember chairing a meeting in which a number of professional associations connected with lobbying were proposing a voluntary code of conduct. The real problem is to identify what constitutes lobbying or a lobbying group. During the meeting it became clear that those who abused the process would never volunteer to sign up. We were talking to the good guys. I do not underestimate the problems that the Government have in establishing clear criteria and an effective registration system: it is not easy. However, this Bill will not stop the big players or catch the bad players. It needs a major rewrite and a cross-party approach.
My second reason for speaking is as a former chair of ACAS. The certification office, which is referred to in Part 3 and has not had very much attention up to now, was part of the ACAS family. I know the excellent work that it does and I regretted that it was listed in the bonfire of the quangos. Was that only one or was it two years ago? I fully accept that it was a merger of two tiny organisations with the loss of one photocopier and that it was done for PR reasons so that the Government could claim that they were cutting red tape. The certification officer was and is required to submit an annual report to the chair of ACAS and to the Secretary of State at BIS. Just as I received them when I was chair, the new chair of ACAS will similarly receive those reports. I wish Sir Brendan Barber a very successful tenure as the new chair of ACAS.
Having claimed to scale down the certification office, the Government are now going to increase its role substantially. I understand that Ministers are setting aside £160,000 for this, so at least they recognise the increase in administration. Whatever the Government decide to require of the certification office, I am confident that it will deal with it in its usual competent way. However, I have to ask for an assurance from the Minister on a number of points. Nothing in the Bill will give the certification officer extra powers to stop industrial action or to issue injunctions. I am assuming that this will continue to be dealt with by the courts and is not an extra role for the certification office. I want a categorical assurance that trade union members in sensitive occupations such as prison officers will not be at risk of their home addresses being exposed, particularly those prison officers who work in Northern Ireland.
I also want an assurance that it is not the Government’s intention to politicise the post of certification officer. It enjoys a good deal of trust and confidence, which, once lost, would be difficult to regain. I remind the House that the certification office registers employers’ associations as well. It does not have a political fund, just like the majority of trade unions do not have a political fund. Political funds are clearly the focus of this Government’s attention. For example, if you are an employer in the nuclear power industry and you succeed in having a full-time secondment to BIS, as has happened and probably will continue to happen, who needs a political fund? In fact, who needs to lobby at all?
It is not my intention to spend time on the legal aspects of Part 2. Others are far better qualified than me to cover this. However, the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee, as has been said, in its comments on the Bill has said that it is “seriously flawed”. It calls for the Bill’s withdrawal and for a special committee to be charged with improving the Bill within six months,
“because it is in all our interests … to produce an Act that works”.
I certainly support that recommendation.
I am also grateful to Citizens UK for its briefing on Part 2. It is a civil society organisation bringing together faith groups, community and educational institutions, trade unions and other membership-based organisations to campaign on issues such as social care, the living wage, street safety or the civil status of immigrants. It seeks to achieve change by dialogue and consensus, rather than by confrontation. Citizens UK has written that,
“the Bill represents a severe curtailment of democracy and the right to campaign”.
If peaceful, official organisations are silenced in the year running up to elections, that may well lead to a spate of spontaneous or unorganised activity, to which the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, has already referred. That could be highly effective but possibly unsafe.
If Part 2 were to prevent the National Union of Students, for instance, and individual student unions from campaigning on higher education fees, what is to stop individual students from driving around university towns with a large van with a screen on top showing a DVD on a continuous loop of Nick Clegg saying, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m very, very, very sorry” for the change of policy on fees? We may see some interesting initiatives.
My third and final reason for contributing is as a former president of NALGO, now UNISON, and a former president of the TUC. I was a lay activist and not a full-time official. I was in a trade union which did not affiliate to the Labour Party or have a political fund. It was only when NALGO was prevented by the courts from campaigning for public services that we decided we should have a political fund. The vote in favour was overwhelming. The general political fund, as it was called, gave money to various causes and political parties and groupings, and continues to do so. It produces an annual report which is summarised in the union journal so that 1.3 million members can read it.
Only when the merger between NALGO, NUPE and COHSE took place did we have to come up with a solution about party political affiliation as the other two unions were affiliated to the Labour Party. The solution was elegant. Members could choose to join the general political fund, the Labour Party affiliated fund, both funds or neither. There were four choices. If noble Lords will excuse the pun, I am labouring this point because every union has a varied history and traditions. Some 166 unions send returns to the certification officer and only 15 unions are affiliated to the Labour Party. Part 3 will affect all those unions if they have more than 10,000 members. Those with below 10,000 members constitute a mere 2.7% of the total. This fishing net—fishing was referred to earlier—has such a small gauge it would probably be banned by the EU.
The Minister in the House of Commons acknowledged that maintaining an accurate register of members is already difficult. Workers move from building site to building site—that is, if they have not been blacklisted by some hidden lobby group. Workers drive around the country or their town. They do shifts and hot-desking. They are volunteers and they do a substantial amount of the work in their union. Adding to their burden could be seen as anti-trade union. The Government should be very careful not to focus all their attention on a few trade union full-time officials. The effect on lay members will be the test. It will not undermine confidence in the union. It will be seen as part of the package of pay freezes, changes in pensions and loss of job security.
In many cases, employees and their trade union rely on the employer for up-to-date membership lists. Apart from giving more work to the employer, the proposed legislation could see a situation where the employer provides a list and then complains to the certification officer about its accuracy. Part 3 is an unnecessary and irritating diversion from the real issue of lobbying, which is where the power really lies and who abuses that power.
Baroness Hanham (Con)
My Lords, I am very pleased to take part in this Bill, even from one row back, and to have had the opportunity of hearing the excellent maiden speech from my noble friend Lord Horam. As has been said, the experience he brings from the other House will be invaluable, and I know and hope that we will hear from him frequently.
As the Minister said when he introduced the Bill, it has been a prime concern of the Government to ensure that as much of their activities as possible should be open and transparent. This Bill, with its emphasis on openness, is intended to complement the current moves towards transparency where Ministers and Permanent Secretaries must publish on the web details of those they meet on a regular basis. However, they can do that only if they know to whom they are talking and on whose behalf those people are speaking. Therefore, it seems eminently sensible that where this is not immediately obvious there should be ways of ensuring that those companies are known about.
Mention has been made of in-house lobbying and there was a general emphasis on companies like British Gas. This is not relevant because a company like British Gas will come to see a Minister on the basis of being British Gas, unless it is going to go for a big public relations company, in which case it will then have to be registered. So that is not a problem and there has been no intention in this Bill to deal with what someone called management consultants.
So the Government work on the basis that the electorate have the right to know what has been done in its name by whom and for whom. The aim of the measures in this Bill is to do just that. The requirement that those large organisations whose business it is to lobby senior members of the Government and Civil Service on behalf of their clients should have to be registered and declare the names of those on whose behalf they have made, or are making, representations is long overdue. Whether, as has been suggested, this should go further down the pay scale will be discussed during the passage of the Bill.
That those working on their own or others’ behalf to influence candidates or parties at elections should be regulated, and thus transparent, could be seen as providing more openness to such influence, as also ensuring that trade union members’ records are up to date. So the three elements of the Bill are all directed towards the same outcome—that any influence, or attempted influence on the democratic process should be out in the open.
The other side of the coin is that legislation should also be transparent to those who are affected by it, or believe themselves to be so, so that people can understand not only what is intended but that the legislation is being made to work. Often this has to be left to secondary legislation or guidance. However, from all the briefing we have received and from today’s contributions, it is clear that despite amendments made in the other place there is still a perceived if not an actual lack of clarity about whom the provisions in Part 2 will affect and how. There is concern on the part of charities in particular and the voluntary sector about the interpretation and implementation of the regulation of third parties’ activities during the purdah year prior to elections. The Government specifically tried to satisfy concerns in this area by the amendments and reassurances they gave in the other place but it is obvious from the contributions that we have heard today that it is still an issue.
At least because of the fixed-term Parliament it is obvious where the year starts, which is not the case under the current provisions in the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act. It may be that one of the things we should address is the length of this purdah. I remember well the passing of the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act. There was a great deal of consternation about the fact that there was a year, particularly relating to constituency associations, in which everything had to be declared and there could be virtually no political activity within that year. I think that, as the noble Lord has said, we might need to look at whether this year the whole year is too long or whether that should be curtailed. Nobody has briefed me on this; I suggest it entirely by myself as it appeared just as a thought as we were going along.
I have been briefed, as have other noble Lords, by various bodies and organisations, including the Electoral Commission and also by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations. As a percentage of that is now made up by Volunteering England, I should declare my former presidency of that organisation because I have read its brief very carefully and the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, and I have shared in the work of that excellent organisation.
NCVO is particularly alarmed at the changes being made to the Political Parties Elections and Referendums Act which it feels make it more or less impossible for charities and other interest groups to campaign, even on non-political issues—I know this is not the point of the Bill and I am sure that the Minister will make that clear—during the election purdah for fear of breaching the proposed provisions in the Bill on their interrelation with political parties or candidates and the reduction in allowable expenditure, the wider regulation of what has to be included in that expenditure and the interpretation of what could be considered electioneering or trying to influence a particular outcome by projecting their policies.
I agree with my noble friend Lord Tyler, who is not in his place, that it is essential that we tease out the relationship between this Bill and the charities law to ensure that they are compliant. Charities and similar organisations have already been excluded from the provisions in Part 1 of having to register as lobbyists, so they are not affected by that aspect of the Bill. I have also noted the long briefing from the Electoral Commission, which in effect supports many of the concerns which have been made by other bodies as well as how it is to operate in its new extended remit. It has indicated in the Appendix A to its brief how it would interpret the likely regulations and provisions but it does consider that some if not all of the concerns being raised are justified.
In principle, I support the aims of the Bill. Greater transparency is something for which we should all aspire but there is more work to be done to ensure that there are as few ambiguities, unintended consequences and unclear provisions as possible because the more of those that remain the more this Bill can be misrepresented. So I hope that we will be able to clear those up as we go along. I am sure that there will be amendments laid to try to deal with these, most of which are essentially practical, as noble Lords have said, but which can be open to misinterpretation. I believe that the Electoral Commission is still having discussions with the Government and I look forward to the report being compiled by the new commission of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries.
I am sure that many of these issues can be ironed out while the Bill is in this House. I know, too, that even in the short time left between now and further stages, representatives of the organisations which will become non-political third parties would want to put their anxieties directly to Ministers. I know from having dealt with previous legislation that it is amazing how quickly this House can move. So I do not think that it will be at all necessary for the Bill to be delayed and we can work within this timetable.
In conclusion, at least some of the concerns that have been raised seem to be justified and I hope that through further discussions, reassurance from the Ministers or government amendments we will manage to allay some of them. Knowing the Ministers leading the Bill, as I do, I am certain that they will be doing just that. At the end, while all organisations may not be happy, they may at least feel that their issues are understood, that many have been dealt with and that they have been listened to.
Lord Monks (Lab)
My Lords, I join the chorus of critics of this blunderbuss of a Bill. It is quite a big chorus, who expect to be heard with their many concerns and, although it is a very diverse one, stretching across many organisations whose views have been reported by other speakers, there is a remarkable degree of harmony in its view of this Bill.
Critics of Parts 1 and 2 abound, but I shall speak mainly about Part 3. I remind all noble Lords about what the three committees in the other place have thought about the process adopted so far. They have been extremely and uncharacteristically critical—and united across all parties in their criticisms of the way the Government appear to be making it up as they go along at different stages on different issues. In those circumstances, there is a heavy responsibility on the House of Lords, and I hope that we will accept it. I hope that we will do our duty as a revising Chamber that seeks to express its wisdom on the way that legislation is made. On this Bill, more than on many others, we have a duty to do so.
As I mentioned, others have dwelt on the weaknesses of Parts 1 and 2. I will not repeat their points because I shall move on to Part 3, the trade union bit of the Bill. I think it was Joseph Heller who wrote in Catch 22 that:
“Just because you're paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you”.
In the trade union ranks, we feel that somebody is certainly after us. That sums up the mood of many people in the movement. We are to be enveloped in new and expensive red tape, and we are being singled out for a kind of special treatment that no one else is being singled out for. Is there some supporting evidence of what we have done wrong in this area? Do we have some flaw that needs public intervention? Is there any evidence that our membership records are dodgy?
Unions will be required to employ a new, independent assurer—that is a new word for me in this circumstance—and those with more than 10,000 members will have to submit a membership audit certificate prepared by the assurer. In addition, the certification officer will be able to make copies of membership records. Let us remember that: a public official will be able to make copies of union membership records. That is a feature of societies that are a lot more repressive than ours. It is an intervention in the internal affairs of a union. I think that what is developing in this country will alarm people in the International Labour Organisation. It is not a small point, it is a big one.
I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord King, is not in his place at the moment, because he knows well the range of existing requirements that unions have to meet in terms of their administration. They must make an annual return to the certification officer and they must have an independent scrutineer on secret ballots, which we very much accept. Anyone can complain about maladministration in the union. It is not easy to keep union records in areas like construction, retail, hotels and catering, which have rapid staff turnover.
What is the situation? Between 2000 and 2004, the certification officer received six complaints. Five of them were thrown out and in the sixth case, the declaration that was sought was not issued. Since 2004 no complaints have been made to the certification officer. Where is the evidence to justify a major legislative intrusion into union administration? There is no evidence for it. People talk about the need for transparency, but transparency for whom? Who wants this information and who is going to get it? As the basis for a new law, it really is ridiculous.
We have these existing obligations and we want to make sure that the way in which we carry them out is for the benefit of union members and is exemplary in terms of our administration. We do not want to open a door so that our records may become available to those who blacklist union activists. We have seen recent evidence of that in the construction industry. Once individual membership records are distributed more widely, where will they end up? If transparency is such a brilliant idea in this area, why do we do not do it for political parties? That would be quite interesting to a lot of people. Why not put them in the glare of the sun? We would then know for sure what the true membership figures are. Surely we have not reached the stage where we have to legislate to remedy an assumed problem for which there is absolutely no evidence. This is red tape gone mad.
The cost to the unions of the assurer and all the rest of it has been estimated, according to the Government’s own figures, at a minimum of around £460,000 a year, while the Government will be required to fork out another £130,000 to £150,000. I will just say this: going down this route is a waste of union members’ money and a waste of taxpayers’ money. If the Government have evidence, they should bring it forward. If they have not, I suggest that they should at least pause and think again about this provision.
Are there darker motives behind these provisions that are not being revealed? Is it a way of opening up union membership records so that employers can check industrial action ballots? I would be grateful if the Minister would comment on that tonight. Is it simply to put a tribal spanner in the union works so that we have something else to wrestle with and waste our money on, rather than tackling the kind of agenda referred to by my noble friend Lady Donaghy: the living wage, job security and all the other things that we will want to talk about in the run-up to any general election? This is a bad part of a not very impressive Bill and I hope that the House as a whole recognises that Part 3 is a waste of time, a waste of effort and a waste of money. Those are good reasons for a pause.
Lord Griffiths of Burry Port (Lab)
My Lords, I need not detain your Lordships for long because so much that needs to be said has already been said, and I shall try not to repeat it. The reports of the various committees have been adequately quoted and they are now on the record. I would simply say that I, too, want to stand by the thrust of them all. Observations have been drawn from the Bill itself, especially around the key points set out in Part 2. They have been repeated so, once again, I need not address the ambiguities and the lack of clarity in some of the phrases at the very heart of the proposals. The question that has been asked more than once is one that I will repeat without addressing it: what is the problem to which Part 2 is supposed to be an answer? In repeating the question, I hope that the Minister who is to reply from the Dispatch Box will do his best to see if he can provide an answer, since it has been raised several times.
At the outset of the debate, the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, declared that this Bill was a most misunderstood piece of legislation to which he sought to bring clarity. Pretty much all the speeches that have followed have shown just how misunderstood the Bill is, so he is to be congratulated on his prescience in getting the mood of the House right. I would like simply to piggyback on some of the methodological ways in which the cases have been built. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, drew on his extensive experience in the criminal justice system to explain how he felt that the proposals in this Bill will impact on organisations working for rehabilitation and restoration within that system. We then heard magisterial speeches from my noble friends Lady Pitkeathley and Lady Donaghy on their respective cases, once again drawing on a wealth of experience and suggesting what might well be, at least prima facie on looking at the Bill, its impact on the activities that they have spent their lives addressing. We heard the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, talk about how the committee that he chairs is drawing its own uneasy conclusions from the legislation as proposed thus far: its haste, its ill judged nature, the way it has been put together so thoughtlessly with no pre-legislative attention, and so on.
I have been thinking about the year-long exclusion zone when all these bodies, agencies and the rest of it are not supposed to indulge in overt political activity. I remember being the victim of just such an exclusion zone myself. I used to do the “Thought for the Day” piece on Radio 4. Since I was at the time the vice-president of the Christian Socialist movement, as soon as an election of any kind drew near, I was withdrawn from the list of contributors because it was obvious to everybody that those two and three-quarter minutes between a quarter to eight and ten to eight in the morning could constitute a real undermining of the political process in this country. I just wish that I could have had the opportunity, if it was acknowledged that I had that power.
It is ridiculous for bodies that are set up to achieve certain objectives to be denied the opportunity to campaign and advocate for the realisation of those objectives. That is their raison d’être. I pick up on the intervention of the noble Lord, Lord Judd, in an earlier speech. There is a contradiction between charity law which requires a charity to do all it can to maximise income to address the objectives for which it is set up as against the way some of the provisions in this Bill just might work out.
I draw a couple of things from personal experience, after which I promise your Lordships I will sit down. For many years, as some of you know, I was living in Haiti. While there, we did everything we had to do to address the dire poverty. We sank wells, we organised co-operatives, we arranged microfinance, primary healthcare, education, literacy and we planted trees. We did everything, and my little outfit looked for collaborators and people of good will with whom to work. We found them in the NGOs and agencies from Britain and from other places around the world.
When I came back from Haiti to live in England, I was burning with the desire to continue with this work. I knew, although we had barely slept some nights because of the work there was and the depth of the poverty we were addressing, that all we had done was dip a toe into the waters. I came back wanting to advocate, wanting to campaign, wanting to get British public opinion onside for what remained to be done. We formed coalitions of interest; we campaigned on the streets; I put together a support group for Haiti; and so it went on.
It becomes natural when the fire burns deep inside the soul for people with common interests to put their energies together in order to knock on the door of government—in order to knock down the door of government, if necessary—so that it can be seen that something needs to be done and that the complacency with which people in countries such as ours live is not to be tolerated.
When I was working as the president of the Methodist Conference and touring the country, I made homelessness the charity that I wanted to support. I was briefed at every point by Shelter. I had been the director of a housing association, also working closely with Shelter. When Occupy did its stuff in the graveyard of St Paul’s Cathedral a couple of years ago, it had quite a lot of my sympathy—as well, at the end, a little bit of my frustration. If housing charities, whose work it is to try to alleviate homelessness or to draw attention in the public domain to the evil nature of the homelessness and the suffering going on because of an inadequacy of supply and an incapacity to meet the rental charges that young people and others are facing, do not take to the streets, knock on the doors and stir up public opinion in the year before an election, I will be very disappointed. If this Bill does anything to stop that, I will be very angry indeed. I wish it were withdrawn. I would like to hear what the Minister says about that.
Baroness Hollins (CB)
My Lords, despite government attempts to allay fears about this Bill, as we have been hearing today and as our mailboxes confirm, there are still grave worries from charities, voluntary organisations and other third-party organisations—worries that their everyday activities will be seriously affected by the excessive bureaucracy required by the legislation. I believe that all non-party political organisations should be allowed to continue their usual work in raising and campaigning on issues relevant to their aims and objectives—even in an election year.
We have been told that the Government do not intend the Bill to prevent non-party political organisations supporting, engaging or influencing public policy, and that the new amendments were intended to address misunderstandings about its intentions with respect to third-party campaigning. But despite these amendments, anxieties about what third-party campaigners can and cannot do are unabated. I will give a couple of examples in a moment.
There is considerable uncertainty and ambiguity in the wording of the Bill. It is still unclear whether third-party campaign groups will fall foul of the rules if they support specific policies that might also be advocated by one or another political party. For example, in healthcare, would organisations concerned about alcohol, tobacco or mental health issues be able to debate, comment and campaign on these matters without being so restricted by this regulation that they are prevented from carrying out these core activities? These are the questions that people are asking.
There are other questions too. It is currently not clear which expenditure limits amount to “controlled expenditure” and thus fall within the applicable limit. For example, the Government amended the Bill to exempt the costs of annual conferences, but the costs of public rallies, meetings or other events are still included. I therefore have a question for the Minister. Which category would apply for a membership organisation that organises a conference for its members, but which also has a public element with non-member observers and with an invited media presence?
The summary of all this uncertainty is that many organisations share massive apprehension that the Bill could severely limit their day-to-day activities by introducing what some see as an over-the-top regulation. It is not just charities and voluntary organisations that have concerns about the changes; politically non-affiliated trade unions, such as the BMA and the RCN, are concerned that the new amendments do not go far enough. An excellent briefing from the Royal College of Nursing explains that during the general election campaign of 2010, it campaigned on behalf of its members on healthcare issues, such as maintaining investment in services, improving care for older people and a focus on public health. Candidates from all parties were asked to support these priorities and their responses were shared online. Campaigns such as these, aimed at raising standards of care in the NHS, would not be possible if this Bill becomes law. In the eyes of the RCN, the reduction of spending limits and the bureaucratic burden imposed would render this type of activity impossible.
In the other place, the Government offered assurances to charities and voluntary organisations, but I would welcome assurances that they have fully considered the impact of the legislation on other types of third-party groups, such as politically non-affiliated trade unions like the BMA and the RCN. These are trade unions which play key roles in campaigning on issues in the public interest. I declare an interest as the chair of the BMA Board of Science, which raises awareness of public health matters.
The legislation feels rushed. The lack of adequate pre-legislative scrutiny and consultation with those affected is likely to result in a disproportionate and unworkable regulatory regime with damaging consequences.
I add my voice to those calling for Part 2 to be removed from the Bill, or at the very least for a pause for the Government to reconsider. I am sure it is not the Government's aim to limit debate and freedom of expression in this way. I hope the Minister will fully address the concerns that have been raised during this debate.
Lord Haskel (Lab)
My Lords, as the Minister has said, we would all like to know who is buying power and influence and, yes, we would all like to see the light of transparency shining into this murky world. The trouble is that this Bill does not do this, as many noble Lords have demonstrated. Let me briefly say why.
Part 1 calls for a register of lobbyists. In order to deliver transparency, surely a register must include all those who are lobbying and who is employing them. At present, there is a voluntary register that tells you this about some organisations—those that register. The register in the Bill, however, is so narrow and so full of loopholes that it frustrates responsible firms while encouraging irresponsible firms to profit from the loopholes. It muddies the voluntary code. The acting chair of the UK Public Affairs Council, speaking about the register, said:
“People will be able to construct their business never to be on it”—
so much for those who say that a full register is unnecessary.
What are these loopholes? As my noble friend Lady Hayter, the noble Lord, Lord Norton, and many noble Lords have pointed out, only political consultants are required to register, but we are told that 99% of the contact between Ministers and Permanent Secretaries is not by political consultants but by representatives of corporations or special interest groups, and they are not on the register; nor are those who advise on how to lobby, a major activity of modern lobbying. This can be an individual or a small organisation, but small organisations are to be excluded. “Small organisations” means those not registered for VAT. The Minister does not need me to spell out the loopholes in that.
The Bill requires transparency only when you lobby a Minister, a Permanent Secretary or other senior staff. But, like all of us who have worked in government, the Minister knows that most briefing comes from lower down, usually from experts in a particular field. Moreover, this is not the level where most public concerns lie and where much public money is spent. The NHS, local enterprise partnerships and public services provided by the private sector inevitably involve more junior public servants—again, often experts in their fields—but it is here that many members of the public would like to see the shining light of transparency. Also, what about special advisers? As we have heard, their influence has even brought down a Minister.
Part 1 of the Bill does little to support the public interest. Property developers and planning, banks and regulation, education and free schools are all areas where lobbying affects the public interest, yet most will fall outside the scope of the Bill. Instead of giving people confidence in our political system, Part 1 just provides loopholes. We all know that loopholes attract the irresponsible; they lower standards and the public interest suffers. Talking about standards, are the Government satisfied that Part 1 of the Bill will deal with unethical behaviour by lobbyists? The voluntary register has a code of conduct. Surely the Government’s register should also have a code of conduct; otherwise, there will be little pressure to raise standards.
Part 1 of the Bill is not only poor legislation, it is unfair. If a small organisation wishes to campaign against tobacco packaging or alcohol pricing, its consultant lobbyist would be far more tightly regulated than the in-house lobbyists of the drinks or tobacco companies. This applies in many spheres—for example, in health, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, has just told us. All this does is protect vested interests and make it more difficult for the weak to stand up to the strong.
How can we put this right? First, by defining lobbying properly. We should respect the existing lobbying registers and give them more force. If there is to be a Bill, everybody involved in lobbying will have to be drawn into the net. Figures given in another place estimate that some 350 companies will be caught by the Bill. The UK Public Affairs Council estimates that 100 would be caught—from about 15,000 people and firms that operate as lobbyists. That is why Part 1 of the Bill is pointless.
As many noble Lords have pointed out, this is a difficult area for lawmaking, partly because lobbying is difficult to define, as the noble Lord, Lord Lang, explained. I will give your Lordships one more example. It has been known for lobbyists to work as researchers for noble Lords and to provide a secretarial service to all-party groups. Some firms second staff for particular projects to Ministers and government departments, and to the Opposition. Are they lobbyists?
It is hard to separate lobbying from campaigning. However, I agree with the Minister and most noble Lords that lobbying is valuable. The noble Lord, Lord Wigley, explained how it informs debate because we are all influenced by logical argument and genuine knowledge. Getting this into the Bill is difficult. Yet, as your Lordships’ Constitution Committee tells us, the Bill is being rushed through without pre-legislative scrutiny and with little debate in another place. The Political and Constitutional Reform Select Committee in another place unanimously described it as skimpily scrutinised and deeply flawed—so much for the Minister’s assurances in his opening remarks. That is why it is bad legislation.
Our duty is either to improve the Bill by amendment or to reject it. We will try to amend it to more closely define lobbying. We will try to draw the net much more widely. We will try to remove the loopholes. We will try to respect the standards of the industry set by the voluntary code. Otherwise, it is our duty to reject the Bill and ask the Government to think again.
Lord Whitty (Lab)
My Lords, like many noble Lords who have spoken, I regard Part 1 of this Bill as being probably well intentioned but very perverse in its effect. Part 2 may or may not be well intentioned but is certainly pernicious in its effect. Part 3 is just pernicious. I have some critical points to make on all parts of this Bill. Many of them have been made already, but that will not prevent me from repeating some of them; there are some things that I wish to underline in all three parts of the Bill.
I also want to say something to Ministers and noble Lords opposite, particularly those of a more liberal disposition in either of the coalition parties. I think that there is a feeling in government that the objections to this Bill of the committees of both Houses, of all the organisations in civic society that have been cited and of noble Lords today is due to oversensitivity, suspicion or even paranoia. But, frankly, the Government have done little to overcome that paranoia. They hope that during consideration of this Bill they will manage to do so, but I doubt it because it is part of a wider problem for this Government.
Looking at the wider issue, when the Westminster Foundation or other human rights bodies promoting democracy in Africa or the former Soviet Union visit these emerging democracies, one of the key elements that they wish to develop is the voice of intermediate democratic representative bodies—local government, trade unions, faith bodies, co-operatives, charities—all the kinds of bodies that will be hit by one or other of the provisions of this Bill.
Let us think about this Government’s record. In the third week of this Government, an instruction went from the Cabinet Office to all quangos and arm’s-length bodies that they were no longer allowed to campaign or to try to influence legislators. Then we had the instruction from DCLG to local government that it had to drop or cut dramatically its campaigning activity. Then we had the various restrictions on access to justice, to tribunals and courts, and the cuts in legal aid. Ministers can defend every single one of these moves individually, but the totality adds up to an attack on or at least an undermining of essential elements of our civic democracy. Democracy is not all Westminster or the big issues; it is what goes on in civic society down the line and how people express themselves collectively and individually through those intermediate organisations. The Government need to reflect on that. I particularly ask the noble Lord, Lord Wallace of Saltaire, to do so, for I know him to be a liberal person of great democratic credentials. I am not saying anything different about the other Minister sitting on the Front Bench, but I say that today, because it is worrying.
Most of my points on the Bill have been spoken to. On Part 1, we need greater transparency in lobbying, but, as my noble friend Lord Haskel and others said, we are attacking the wrong target at both ends. The only register and requirements are for consultant lobbyists. Consultant lobbyists are a relatively new operation in our democracy. Some of my best friends are now consultant lobbyists, partly because it has been a bit of a job creation scheme for the wannabe, has-been and never-were politicos of various sorts, but, as my noble friend said, they are not the major part of the lobbying industry—far from it. Some organisations see a need to use consultant lobbyists; some do not really need to. The really big, effective lobbyists do not need to. Rupert Murdoch does not need a consultant lobbyist; EDF and the Chinese Government do not need consultant lobbyists; pharmaceutical companies and defence contractors do not need them. Some of them use them occasionally, but they do not need them because they have the power to address Ministers and senior civil servants directly.
I do not know what the solution is to that huge area of lobbying. As the noble Lord, Lord Lang, said, it is very difficult to have a single definition of lobbying. As I remarked the other day, sadly, anybody who wants to talk to a politician is not really there to enjoy their sparkling conversation, their erudition and wisdom, still less their erotic allure; people are there because they want something. In one sense, almost every encounter that a politician has with a member of the public or a representative of an organisation could be defined as lobbying. We have to pin it down—I understand that—but the fact is that Part 1 does not tackle that problem. We are hobbling the minnows while we let the sharks swim free.
It is also about the other end of the process. We all know from being in or anywhere near government that it is very difficult to get the ear of the Secretary of State or the Permanent Secretary, but it is much easier to buy lunch for the person who has their ear—the spad, the private secretary, the assistant secretary or the grade 5 who is actually drafting the legislation or assessing the contracts. They are completely excluded from the Bill, so the Government have got it wrong at both ends of how we are to introduce transparency in the lobbying sector.
On Part 2, a lot of points have been made both in the House and outside, in the literature that we have all received. It is right that there should be restrictions on third parties in electoral situations. It is right that we should be worried about an American-style super-PAC development here. That is why the Labour Government introduced PPERA in the first place 13 years ago, but Part 2 restricts the activities of third parties beyond the degree that is necessary to protect democracy. It reduces the threshold, so that very small organisations have huge burdens placed on them; it widens the definition of what is to be electorally relevant or regulated expenditure; and it cuts significantly the amount of money that third parties can pay over a period of 12 months before an election, not just the four or five weeks of the election campaign itself.
Obviously, third parties’ campaigning activities can be said to be aligned with one party or another, or with one candidate or another, either locally or nationally. The cutting of expenditure and the widening of the activities that are covered by it will have a drastic effect on many local campaigns—and very soon, if the Bill goes through. We are only 18 months off the general election; we know when it will be these days. Within six months or so, the £5,000 limit on a constituency basis—we need a limit at that basis—will prevent a number of local campaigns against the closure of hospitals, for or against wind farms, for or against particular developments, or campaigns against HS2. All of those local campaigns could fall foul of the constituency limit.
At a national level, several major political events over the past few years could not occur in future in the 12 months before an election, because they would be too expensive. In that, it is not just one organisation’s limit that must be taken into account. If several organisations are in coalition for an event, it is the aggregated cost that is controlled, which includes such things as staff costs of the organisation. In those circumstances, for example, at no time in the 12 months before an election could the TUC organise another March for Jobs. It is highly probable that the BMA would find it difficult to organise a campaign about health service reforms. I see my noble friend Lady Mallalieu here. It would be very difficult for the Countryside Alliance to organise a march of previous proportions against a foxhunting ban. God forbid, if we were engaged in some new military intervention, it would be very difficult for a coalition against the war to organise a march against it. All such events would come up against a limit for 12 months. That is a serious limitation on our democracy and something that this House should not allow through without serious objection. That is not a healthy democracy.
Part 3 has trade unionists specifically in its sights. My noble friends Lord Monks and Lady Donaghy have already pointed out the absurdity of that and others have queried why we are doing it at all. Of course, in my paranoid mood, I think that there are two or three potential reasons. One is that it might make strike ballots even more challengeable in the courts than they already are. Another would simply be to impose additional costs on trade unions, limiting their activities. A third is that it is primarily directed at the political funds of trade unions and therefore has an effect on the finances of the major opposition party.
To intervene in this way 18 months before a general election in some emerging democracies would rightly provoke serious condemnation around the democratic world. I will return to Part 3 at later stages. I ask the Government to stop demonising trade unions and to stop the other interventions that this Bill represents, which seriously limit our democracy and the involvement of a whole range of different sorts of organisations in democracy. Ministers may think that our reaction is an exaggeration, but part of the duty of this House is to be vigilant. We must be exceptionally vigilant about this Bill.
Baroness Kidron (CB)
My Lords, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby, in his evocative speech, described the voluntary and charity sector as a source of political energy. I will address my remarks to the subject of political energy.
I know that I am not alone in your Lordships’ House in my concern that young people are increasingly unmotivated to participate in the conversations and campaigns of public life. The Bill exacerbates their disengagement. As we have heard repeatedly, Part 2 simultaneously extends the scope of what is considered electoral campaigning and lowers the threshold of spending, at the same time as introducing double accounting for the spends of organisations that work in coalition. The cumulative effect of that creates the possibility of silencing the voices of campaigners and of charitable organisations.
Many of us know that a commitment to a single issue or principle is the start of a broader political understanding: a broader political journey. To curtail the voice of the third sector, which has from all quarters expressed its fear of falling foul of the Bill, is to curtail one of the most important places in which young people traditionally find their voice.
The National Union of Students is just one of many organisations that fear that the Bill will curtail the important job of introducing young people to the world of public debate and political discourse. It is concerned that the Bill’s lack of clarity and need for legal opinion will price many of its poorer branches out of politics altogether—particularly further education colleges, which noble Lords will know have a high number of students from backgrounds not adequately represented in elite sections of society. Conrad Grant, president of Goldsmiths Students’ Union, is worried about how the legislation will impact on its voter registration drives that are linked to affordable housing and a living wage for part-time work. These are two issues of increasing concern to students, particularly those faced with the London rental market.
What better way can we find to engage young people than a national debate about lowering the voting age to 16, and who better to propel that debate than the NUS? Yet NUS President Toni Pearce says that she worries greatly that the entirely legitimate and important work that student unions undertake in engaging students in politics will no longer be possible if Part 2 passes in anything like its current form. Noble Lords should bear in mind that the NUS, in complying with child protection laws, has to provide staff supervision for the under-18s, the costs of which under the new legislation would be attributable to their election spend.
The noble Baroness, Lady Donaghy, referred to the issue of student fees, and the NUS believes that its 2010 Votes for Students campaign against raising student fees would fall foul of the new legislation, were it to happen at the next election. I hope that I am not alone in feeling that it is the democratic right of students—possibly their responsibility—to take a view on legislation that has such a profound effect on their education and then on the remainder of their adult lives. In this instance, the election of individual MPs was not their primary purpose, but it could in retrospect be argued that it could reasonably be regarded as looking to influence electoral outcomes, since the campaign helped to secure the election of a number of MPs who signed the pledge not to raise fees. Is it not legitimate in the ecology of our democratic processes that students take into the next election the lessons of the last?
In the new year we will see the introduction of individual electoral registration. This legislation will disproportionately affect young people as they move to educational institutions or to new towns and cities in search of work. To whom shall we turn for a campaign to put the young on the electoral roll? Perhaps to a coalition of youth-facing organisations, each of which—under the terms of this Bill—will find themselves having to account for the spend of the whole. Is it not the case that creating any barrier for organisations who work to engage young people in politics, and who encourage them to participate in our democratic processes, is doubly concerning in the context of IER? If we truly want an engaged electorate, as I believe we all do, if we want to encourage young people to feel that the political class is not disinterested, if we want a new generation to come to the table with their concerns and needs, we must drop as many barriers as possible—not reduce the ways and circumstances in which they can engage and pull up the drawbridge behind us.
Like others, I have been overwhelmed by representations revealing the anxieties of the third sector, including from a number of trade unions, mostly unaffiliated to the Labour party, which feel that the Bill creates punitive administrative burdens on ordinary working people. Noble Lords have spoken in detail about the provisions of the Bill that will curtail legitimate campaigns from charities and NGOs. As well as the practical aspects, there is the message of this Bill, which is that politics is owned by politicians—and that does untold damage to the public engagement of young people.
The purpose of the Bill, as described by the Government, is missing on the page, and I ask that they take the advice of the multiple committees whose concerned opinion we have heard this afternoon, pause the Bill, and, in doing so, take the opportunity to make more equitable the burdens on the third sector, trade unions and business. Above all, I hope that Ministers will agree that it will be a bad day for politics in its broadest sense if, instead of harnessing the political energy of the young, the Bill that they propose denies the voice of the young.
Lord Stevenson of Balmacara (Lab)
My Lords, I declare an interest as a retired member of Unite.
The briefing circulated about Part 3 says that it is simply intended to change,
“the legal requirements in relation to trade unions’ obligations to keep their list of members up to date”.
In fact, as we have already heard today, the Bill introduces additional requirements to the existing duty placed on—and long accepted by—the trade unions to maintain an accurate and up-to-date register of members. Union membership is already regulated by the Trade Union and Labour Relations (Consolidation) Act 1992, and Section 24(1) puts a duty on unions to maintain a register of members’ names and addresses, so far as is reasonably practicable, that is accurate and up to date.
We are not aware of any calls having been made to the Government to extend this provision. I understand that BIS, the certification officer and ACAS have all confirmed under FoI requests that they have received no representations to introduce such a measure. No one has campaigned publicly for such a change. They will not be able to in future. The proposed legislation will place on unions onerous and unjustified additional administrative burdens that often duplicate existing regulations. The legislation also appears to violate fundamental rights to privacy and freedom of association which are safeguarded by the European Convention on Human Rights.
Like many other noble Lords, we are unable to work out exactly what problem the Government are trying to remedy. Unions already have a legal duty to keep accurate membership records, and it is in their interests to do so. Not only do good membership records increase income and minimise expense, any union involved in an industrial action ballot knows that an employer is likely to legally challenge the ballot if there is a suspicion of inaccurate records. Unions also need accurate membership records in order to carry out their internal democratic processes, such as elections. Most people would probably agree that people should not have to reveal whether they are members of a political party to members of the Government. Yet this is what the Bill proposes for trade union membership.
If this Bill is passed, each large union’s assurer, the certification officer appointed by government and an investigator appointed by the certification officer will have access to private membership data. As my noble friend Lord Monks said, at a time of growing revelations about blacklisting of trade union members, obviously we need to be concerned about how this might breach members’ privacy.
The TUC believes that if this change to the law is to be made there ought to be similar specific requirements in the legislation for employers to give unions the most recent data on those employed, those on sick leave, et cetera. Unions otherwise have no way of knowing to the necessary degree of accuracy who is currently working in the firm or business. I would be interested in the Minister’s reaction to this rather ingenious suggestion for symmetry.
The basic role of trade unions is overwhelmingly supported by voters. According to a recent MORI poll, 78% of people support the statement that trade unions are essential to protect workers’ interests. However, this extra red tape can only hinder unions carrying out their proper role. The new regulations will significantly increase their workload and costs for the certification officer, but it is far from clear what benefits the increased regulation will yield for the wider public—including businesses—and how the increased cost to the taxpayer can be justified.
At Second Reading in the other place, the Leader of the House of Commons said of these clauses:
“It will require trade unions visibly to demonstrate that they know who their members are and can contact them. The principle that unions must be able to contact their members is well established in legislation”.—[Official Report, Commons, 3/9/13; col. 184.]
Well, he is right; it is well established in law already. The facts bear this out. The certification officer’s annual report for 2012-13 says that 166 trade unions submitted annual returns recording a total of 7,197,415 members. The annual return has to include a copy of the auditor’s report in the accounts, allowing the certification officer to compare revenue from dues with the numbers reported, so the information is already available in the public domain for anybody to dig into. I would have thought that any reasonably independent person looking at these publicly available reports would agree that the Government already have quite extensive information-gathering powers on the finances and membership of trade unions.
The trade unions have complied with the current legislation every single year since it was introduced and the published figures are, as I said, available to the public. We must wonder whether the certification officer needs any of these powers, given the extremely low level of activity which others have reported. Indeed, people will be asking themselves whether the powers being proposed are unnecessary and disproportionate. The answer is clearly yes, so we on this side of the House are opposed to the proposals in Part 3.
In his reply, perhaps the Minister can answer some questions about the detail here. Has the certification officer asked for additional powers or approached the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to say that these powers are necessary and that he would like the Government to legislate to ensure that they are introduced? Has the department consulted the certification officer, trade unions and other relevant organisations on whether the powers are required and, if so, can he make available to us what evidence they relied on? Have the Government any proposals for regulations that will be removed to alleviate the additional burden of regulations they wish to place on trade unions? I thought that we were in favour of one in, one out. Lastly, I assume that an estimate has been made of the additional resources which will be needed by the certification officer. Can the Minister set out what the spending commitment is in this area?
We believe in the right of working people to organise and to stand up to unfair treatment in the workplace. Free trade unions are part of a vibrant democratic society and the partisan use of the law in an attempt to disrupt their efficient administration is as wrong as it is unwelcome. This is a bad Bill. At Second Reading in the other place, the shadow Leader of the House of Commons said:
“It is a Bill that the Government should be ashamed of. It is incompetent. It is rushed. It has been developed in a high-level meeting between the Prime Minister and his deputy, but with no other consultation”,
in crucial areas.
“It is a sop to vested interests, an illiberal attack on democratic debate and involvement, and a cheap, partisan and cynical misuse of the legislative process for the Government’s own ends”.—[Official Report, Commons, 3/9/13; col. 199.]
The Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister forget that the people they attack are the people who deliver the mail, serve in the shops, teach our children, care for the sick, look after the elderly, clean our streets, assemble our cars and build our bridges. They deserve better than to be subjected to yet another piece of the Tory ideological jigsaw.
Lord Lea of Crondall
My Lords, the Bill takes us back to the insulting doctrine that trade unions are the enemy within. When I first saw it, I was rather shocked—but then I thought that it must be some sort of spoof written by the provisional wing of the Committee on Public Safety. The first point which I ask the Minister to comment on is that it is very asymmetrical so far as trade unions and employers are concerned. How can he say that all these requirements should be placed on trade unions, at vast cost, without parallel requirements being placed on employers?
In the published material that one finds, with difficulty, in the Printed Paper Office as the Part 3 financial assessment, we have a fascinating set of paragraphs on pages 3 and 4. It is headed:
“Evidence Base … Problem under consideration”,
and it is worth reading. It says:
“An increase in an individual union’s membership diversity and membership turnover is a key reason why managing a large database of members is complex. It means that the information held in the unions’ registers will decay rapidly. In addition, the information held on the registers will decay for other reasons: changes of addresses; and deaths, divorces, and marriages … All of these changes may undermine the accuracy of union registers, unless adequate and relatively frequent management procedures are in place to resolve inaccuracies and maintain the register. Some of the reasons for inaccurate data are explored in more detail below”.
We get fantasy piled upon fantasy as we come to that more detailed explanation, which goes into gross and net flows by work status, the high degree of churn in the UK labour market, and the flow estimates of the size of movements between the three main labour market statuses of employment, unemployment and economic activity. So it goes on.
Then the material comes to the “Rationale for intervention”. I wonder how all these people came to be so readily brainwashed, but I have to read it. It says:
“Given the complexity of maintaining up-to-date registers there is a danger that trade union members, employers and the general public will not be confident that unions are complying with their duty to maintain an accurate and up-to-date register. And, as trade union activity has the potential to affect the daily lives of members and non-members, the general public should be confident that voting papers and other communications are reaching union members so that they have the opportunity to participate, even if they choose not to exercise it”.
It then goes on to the division between unions with more than 10,000 members and those below that figure.
As my noble friend Lord Monks pointed out, it says that,
“the Certification Officer will … be given powers enabling him to both act on his own authority to appoint inspectors and require documents to be produced to help investigations. The powers will provide a mechanism by which the general public and employers can ensure that trade unions are complying with their duty to maintain an accurate and up-to-date register”.
After all that, we come to the policy objective. I will read out one more passage. It says:
“The policy objective is to give greater assurance that unions comply with the existing duty to maintain a register of members’ names and addresses. However, we wish to do this in a way which minimises the burden on the union in providing this assurance and is not prescriptive … the intended effect of the policy is to ensure that members, the general public and employers are confident”,
et cetera. My reaction is, “You must be kidding”—but then it dawned on me what was going on here. There are two groups of civil servants being instructed by the Secretary of State to provide a case for this. One set of civil servants, job team A, is asked to write one set of arguments. In the next paragraph, job team B is asked to demonstrate the absurdity of the arguments presented by job team A.
Having cracked the code on this, I realised that it is all very logical—right down to the detail of why the sum involved is an extra burden on the trade unions of £420,000. That has been arrived at by using the salaries of trade union officials from the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings, which says that the basic hourly median pay for officers of non-governmental organisations —that obviously implies voluntary organisations—who are the closest match to a trade union official, is £12.03 an hour. The basis of all this is that union officials doing all this stuff are paid that, on average, but I suppose that the people who have to provide all this stuff in Whitehall have telephones and might ring up any trade union to find out more directly.
I return to the main theme that many of my colleagues have brought out: why are we picking on the trade unions and making them keep their lists up to date for transparency, which we simply do not do for shareholders’ lists, boards of directors or banks? We are now insisting that we have to do even more for the most openly democratic and transparent organisations of any size in the country—the trade unions.
I will use a different word from that used by my noble friend Lord Whitty: I say that this is just party-political vindictiveness. I am very sad to hear that, because over many years of my working life we have had very good working relations with Conservative Governments, such as those of Mr Macmillan and Mr Heath. We had acceptance from them as social partners, and they would not have dreamt of this nonsense. I hope that in Committee we will have time to move away from the idea that a Secretary of State can say to Whitehall, “This is what we want to do; find reasons for it”. They have failed in that, because there are no good reasons—it is absurdity.
As my noble friend Lady Donaghy said, you do not need a lobby if you are chairman of a company in the energy field, whether it is a nuclear power station or anything else; you are probably president of the CBI and talk to the Prime Minister every day of the week anyway. To take another, more practical example: KPMG’s employees are scattered around Whitehall. Does it need a lobby? Of course not.
This is a quite extraordinary development, but I have reached the 10-minute limit so I will leave the issue there. As far as I can see, though, there has to be much deeper consideration by the Government. As things stand, my view is that the Bill should simply be withdrawn as an outrage to democracy. When I go to do work for the Westminster Foundation for Democracy in Congo or Mozambique, these are some of the practices that we state that you do not do—and we should not do them here.
Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts (Con)
My Lords, I begin with an apology to my noble friend on the Front Bench and to the House for having been unable to be present for the first few minutes of his opening speech. I hope that the House will forgive me if I pray in aid that it is not every day that you introduce your own wife to your Lordships’ House, and that the family photographs in the Robing Room took rather longer than was anticipated. I apologise for any discourtesy to the House.
I turn to the Bill. Like many other noble Lords who have spoken, I share the view that it is an unfortunate but undeniable fact that public trust in our great institutions, particularly our political institutions, has declined in recent years. We can speculate about the reasons for this. Some say that in some cases it is exaggerated by journalistic supposition and not always based on fact. Others say there is an increasing public appetite for conspiracy theories. Last but perhaps not least, there is the increasing unreadiness of people to accept the inevitable unfairnesses in life, seeing them instead as the product of a system that is biased against them. Whatever the causes, the decline is there, and this is the challenge that we now face.
Other noble Lords have used the phrase, “sunshine is the best disinfectant”, and I share that view. A Bill that includes “transparency of lobbying” has my instinctive sympathy and support. Moving on from that very general statement, and changing my metaphor, if I may, we have to ask whether it does what it says on the tin. This is an area where I and a lot of other noble Lords have some questions.
When I have been considering the Bill, I have been applying a series of yardsticks by which I adjudge its efficacy: its comprehensiveness, its comprehensibility, its consistency and its proportionality. First, by “comprehensiveness” I mean: do the provisions of the Bill catch a sufficiency of the target group? If not, we all know how quickly organisations can and will reconfigure themselves to get around statutory provisions. Secondly, the Bill will sweep up a range of organisations hitherto unaffected. By “comprehensibility”, I mean: will such organisations, especially small ones, be able readily to understand what is required of them without devoting a fantastic amount of management time and/or professional fees and advice to their interpretation? Thirdly, a number of bodies will be concerned with enforcing this legislation. They include, obviously, the new registrar of lobbyists, the Electoral Commission and the Charity Commission. By “consistency”, I mean: will all the policies of the bodies be joined up? In other words, will they be consistent one with another? Fourthly, by “proportionate”, I mean: can we avoid the creation of yet another huge bureaucratic process-driven machine, so that while boxes are ticked judgment is forgotten?
I need to remind the House that I have undertaken two inquiries into the charity and voluntary sector for the Government, focusing, inter alia, on the regulatory burdens that have affected that sector, and that until about 12 months ago I was president of the NCVO, so it will not surprise your Lordships that most of my comments are focused on Part 2. Before I turn to that part, however, I would like to raise a couple of points in relation to Part 1. I note many of the concerns that other noble Lords have raised about the competence of this measure and its inability to catch a sufficiency of the target population, and no doubt we shall explore this in Committee.
I want to raise a point about the position of the registrar. The registrar will surely have an important, indeed key, role to play in this new system. From the legislation it seems to me that he will be its linchpin, and it will be very important that he carries out his task properly if we are to move towards restoring public trust. This may require him from time to time to take actions that are disobliging, certainly to lobbyists but sometimes to the Government of the day, of whatever colour it may be. Indeed, some may argue that if he was not occasionally disobliging, he probably would not be doing his job very well. Yet when you look at Schedule 2, you see that his position is very weak indeed: he may be dismissed by the Minister on the grounds that he is unable, unwilling or unfit. That seems to be a pretty peremptory way to be able to treat this official, particularly when you compare it with the protection that appears to be given to members of the Charity Commission, let alone that afforded to members of the Electoral Commission. I would appreciate a few comments from the Minister on that point.
I turn to Part 2. Early in the proceedings on the Bill in another place, we received some pretty heated comments from charities and voluntary organisations about the impact of Part 2, suggesting, sometimes in terms, that it represents the end of the world as we know it. This is some of the substance that illuminated the background remarks by my noble friend Lord Tyler. Recent comments seem to have been more moderate in tone, and I welcome that because in my view merely to have passed a public benefit test does not excuse an organisation from the need for some level of scrutiny—rather the reverse, since charitable status carries with it many privileges, not least an element of subsidy from the taxpayer through gift aid.
I, for the reason mentioned above—my work with the sector—am a passionate supporter of the charity sector and all that it stands for. However, it needs to keep its credentials burnished bright, particularly in the eyes of the general public. Its reputation remains high among the general public, but we are all aware of how quickly reputations can be lost and of how, once lost, they are extremely hard to recover. The glory of the sector is that it is of all political parties but of none. That must be a distinction that we should try to preserve as we consider the provisions of the Bill.
Having said that, the sector has some very reasonable concerns about aspects of Part 2. Many noble Lords have talked about the confusing nature of Clause 26 on controlled expenditure. Noble Lords raised the particular issue that the cost of volunteer time is included. My noble friend Lord Phillips got up and said that he would shoot this canard; I am not quite sure if you can shoot one, but he dealt with it very effectively by quoting from the PPER Act. I hope that he is right. He is a very eminent charity lawyer, while I am not a lawyer at all. However, reading Schedule 3 to the Bill, which amends qualifying expenses, in connection with that section of the briefing from the Electoral Commission which is entitled:
“What the changes mean for campaigners’ plans”,
I feel a scintilla of doubt. I will be delighted to be put right and to be told that I have got it completely wrong, but I seem to feel the ground shifting under me slightly. Therefore, this and other questions raise the issue of the comprehensibility test. We need to spend quite a bit of time in Committee getting the Government to explain in detail the practical implications of what is intended here.
When he comes to wind up, my noble friend may be inclined to say that a great deal of guidance is already available. Of course, that is absolutely for sure. CC9, which I believe the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, referred to, which is the Charity Commission guidance, Charities, Elections and Referendums, runs to 35 pages, with a three-page addendum published in January 2011. The Electoral Commission’s guidance for non-party campaigners runs to eight pages, with a further eight-page addendum. To put it no higher, there are four documents and if noble Lords read them—and I am sure that many noble Lords have done so—they are not easy to synthesise. At their heart is the problem of differentiating between policy work and campaigning, and the different interpretations put upon those two very important words by the two different bodies, the Electoral Commission and the Charity Commission.
That takes me to the point about consistency. We need to find some joined-up thinking between the Government’s lawyers, those of the Electoral Commission and those of the Charity Commission. Perhaps at least a proportion of the steam could be taken out of these issues if some joint guidance could be agreed between the two commissions and published. I do not underestimate the difficulties of getting the two commissions to collaborate—I have been trying for some three years to get Companies House and the Charity Commission to agree a common standard form for charitable companies. To describe my progress as “glacial” would be altogether too rapid a description. However, my noble friend would do a great deal to reassure people if those two bodies could be brought together and made to produce something that made sense and which did not require charities to produce two separate sets of guidance and pull them together.
Finally, I turn briefly to proportionality. I share the view that the reduction of limits is unreasonable, particularly that to £2,000. The £2,000 limit, applied to Wales, is a figure that would exclude almost any activity. The hire of a hall, some staff costs and publicity could go over the limit. In his very interesting remarks, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby talked about the importance of local campaigns. This is where that particular low level will be most keenly felt. I invite my noble friend to reflect on how we would deal with Kidderminster Hospital. That was a single issue, fought in a single constituency; how would it be dealt with under these provisions, and what would be the impact? I am not quite sure what it would be, but I am sure that it would have some important things, and maybe some challenges, for the people of Kidderminster, who passionately want their hospital preserved, and that these regulations might make that much more difficult.
There is some important work to be done on coalitions of charities working together and the way that they have to report separately. It is incredibly bureaucratic and burdensome for every charity member of a coalition to have to report about all the other members of that coalition, not only every quarter but every week during an election campaign. Can we not find some way to create a coalition leader that could undertake this work on its behalf?
I have overrun my time. To conclude, I do not doubt that there are important issues and challenges here, and the Bill seeks to address them. However, we will have a lot of work to do in Committee and thereafter if we are to avoid the rather dismal outcome predicted in that leader in the Financial Times on 9 September, entitled:
“A rushed bill will deliver bad law”.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, like many other noble Lords I have an interest in the Bill through my involvement with a number of organisations that stand to be affected by Part 2. Moreover, I spent the first half of my working life working for the Child Poverty Action Group and am therefore very sympathetic to the concerns raised by myriad voluntary sector organisations. Part 2 is the focus of the report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, of which I am a member, and its report lists my relevant interest. It will also be the main focus of my comments. I will first make some general remarks about process and the overarching aim of enhancing transparency.
The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee states bluntly that,
“this is an object lesson in how not to produce legislation”,
as it is informed by neither proper consultation with stakeholders nor pre-legislative scrutiny. The JCHR has protested at the,
“unnecessary speed at which the Bill is being taken”,
when there are no grounds for it being treated as emergency or fast-track legislation, as my noble friend Lady Kennedy of The Shaws has already underlined. This has impeded the committee’s ability to fulfil its scrutiny function in a timely manner, an unacceptable trend about which we had already complained in our Legislative Scrutiny Update report earlier this year.
Proper human rights scrutiny is not some optional extra to be fitted in when it suits the Government’s timetable. Indeed, as the committee points out:
“Laws that are passed following proper pre-legislative scrutiny, and after adequate timetabling for scrutiny and debate of the human rights implications of the Bills, are more likely to withstand subsequent judicial scrutiny of their human rights compatibility”.
This is particularly important with regard to the Bill because of its significance for the democratic process. The Government’s human rights memorandum to the committee accepts that Part 2 of the Bill engages the rights to freedom of expression and assembly. It acknowledges under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, that,
“political expression attracts the highest level of protection because freedom of political debate is at the heart of the creation and development of a democratic society”.
It also accepts the link with Article 11, for, as the Strasbourg court has said,
“The protection of opinions and the freedom to express them is one of the objectives of the freedom of assembly and association as enshrined in Article 11”.
We therefore now have a particular duty in this House to impress on the Government the importance of getting the Bill right.
The watchword of the Bill is “transparency”, and the overarching aim of increasing transparency in the democratic process is admirable. However, organisations which have campaigned for a statutory register argue that Part 1 of the Bill risks making lobbying less—not more—transparent. That is because it will cover only a fraction of lobbying and lobbyists and because the register will include no meaningful information on the activities of those it covers. That is about as transparent as mud. The dictionary definition of “transparent” is not just,
“able to be seen through”,
but also,
“easily detected, understood; obvious, evident”—
the very opposite of how the charitable and voluntary sector perceives Part 2. Instead, “uncertainty” and “ambiguity” are the words used to describe it. The noble Baroness, Lady Hanham, made a similar point.
The NCVO goes so far as to warn of,
“unbearable amounts of uncertainty for organisations”.
Indeed, I, too, have had an e-mail from Newcastle CVS expressing just such anxieties about what the Bill will mean for it and the local charities which it supports. As a number of organisations have warned, this uncertainty will have a “chilling effect” on legitimate campaigning at both national and constituency level at the expense of healthy democratic engagement.
Moreover, organisations such as the Association of Chief Executives of Voluntary Organisations—ACEVO—and the Quakers are fearful that small civil society groups will not be able to comply with the increased reporting requirements, which the Electoral Commission warns constitute an increase in,
“the regulatory burden for registered campaigners”.
As a result, they could be discouraged from democratic involvement in the pre-election period. Is it not odd that a Government who are so obsessed with reducing red tape for small businesses are now happy to tie up small civil society groups in red tape, as my noble friend Lady Hayter has already pointed out?
In so far as the government amendments to the Bill addressed these concerns, they are welcome. However, the widespread view conveyed to us, and based on legal advice, is that they do not go far enough. The NCVO and ACEVO both refer to problems with the existing test of controlled expenditure. These, it would appear, were manageable for many organisations within the context of the other rules that have applied, although even then, according to ACEVO, many smaller and less experienced campaigning organisations,
“were put off from pre-election campaigning activity”.
However, in the new context of the significantly expanded list of activities covered and lower spending thresholds, simply reverting to the test in the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 may not be enough to remove the feared chilling effect of the Bill. The JCHR has called on the Government to consider these concerns about how the existing definition will interact with key changes in the Bill. I would welcome the Minister’s response to this point.
As the Electoral Commission has advised, it is the “cumulative impact” of Part 2 on non-party campaigners that we need to scrutinise closely. It has told the Government:
“Because the Bill brings some kinds of activity into the regime for the first time … the wording of the amendments needs further consideration and testing”.
The JCHR has pointed in particular to fears about the combined impact of the much expanded list of controlled activities, the reduction in maximum spending limits and lowered registration thresholds. Furthermore, it has criticised the failure of the Government to explain satisfactorily the rationale for the change in spending limits and registration thresholds. It therefore recommends that these should remain at their present level pending further detailed work on the appropriate level, echoing the Electoral Commission’s recommendation on registration thresholds.
Others have raised worries about new constituency-level spending limits, which will add to the regulatory burden on civil society groups, and about how the new provisions could aggravate the already inhibitory effect of the existing rules regulating groups working in coalitions. All these issues need close scrutiny.
When I worked at the CPAG, I recall that the pre-election period was a crucial time for us to try to get poverty on the political agenda. It is a time for holding up to scrutiny a Government’s record on a non-partisan basis. It is a time for trying to wring commitments out of political parties and their candidates with a view to influencing not the election result but the agenda of the incoming Government, whatever their political complexion. If this kind of important work is inhibited by this Bill for fear that it will be wrongly construed as,
“intended to promote or procure the electoral success of a party or candidate”,
in the context of more stringent financial rules, as civil society fears, our democracy will be the poorer for it.
Some may give the Government the benefit of the doubt and attribute this,
“dog’s breakfast of a Bill”,
as the chair of the PCRC has called it, to cock-up rather than conspiracy. Others believe that it is a conspiracy to gag campaigners. If the Government do not want to give credence to the conspiracy theorists, mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, it is time that they face up to the breadth of the opposition and think again. From a human rights perspective, the JCHR concludes that the deeply unsatisfactory legislative process makes it,
“difficult to assess whether the specific measures proposed in Part 2 constitute a necessary and proportionate means of achieving the Government’s aim in order to justify any interference with free speech rights”.
As already noted, our primary recommendation, therefore, is to pause the Bill's legislative process to allow more time for proper consultation. I hope that, even at this late stage, the Government will heed our advice and that of countless others. The rights to freedom of speech and association are too important for our democracy for them to steam ahead regardless.
Lord Greaves (LD)
My Lords, it is always a privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, and, indeed, it is today. I speak with slightly less enthusiasm for the Bill than my noble friend Lord Tyler. I agree entirely with the objectives of transparency of lobbying and of the prevention of big money distorting electoral politics. However, asserting that there are problems and dangers in these areas and that something must be done does not necessarily mean that the details of the proposals in the legislation are the way forward. In one respect at least, this is an awful Bill; it is badly written. I often judge new Bills by whether an intelligent person with an interest in the subject, picking it up and reading it, could understand what it is all about. I do not believe that anybody picking this up and reading it could do that. I look forward to my noble friend the Minister explaining lucidly and clearly in Committee the intricacies of Clauses 28 and 29, which seem to be a nightmare.
I declare that I have a lifetime interest in electoral law because I am a lifetime election agent. It is more than 40 years since I started running election campaigns, and I do not suppose that I have finished yet, so I know about election law—and this is election law. We have had a stream of lobbying, ironically, on the Bill from all sorts of people. It seems that the whole of civil society in this country is up in arms. In particular, we have had a focus on the effects that Part 2 might have on charities. However, this Bill is not actually about charities. It is about all the third-party campaigners and campaign bodies. Nevertheless, charities say it will seriously affect them.
The Government’s response is to assert that it will not, but assertion is not enough. When a whole sector is up in arms like that, simply telling it that it is wrong is not good enough. There should be argument and explanation and, I humbly suggest to my noble friends on the government Front Bench, a willingness to look at changing the Bill to clarify it, to amend it and to improve it, is what is required. At the moment we simply have a pantomime argument going on, one side saying, “Oh, yes, it does”, the other side saying, “Oh, no, it doesn’t”, and so it goes on—and as we know from pantomimes, that does not get us very far.
In your Lordships’ House we are often told that our job is to scrutinise, revise and improve legislation. In order to do that, we also need a substantial willingness on the part of the Government to listen and discuss with us around the House how best to revise this legislation—the need for which, it seems to me, is absolutely certain. As I have just said, this is election law, not charities law. What charities can and cannot do is not per se the concern of the Bill. That is defined by charities legislation and regulated by the Charity Commission, as the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, discussed in detail. This Bill is about regulation of what all third-party bodies can and cannot do in relation to election campaigning.
One problem is that it is all part of election law, which is complex, obscure and widely ignored. Those of us who know a lot about it know how to get around it in many cases—not that I would ever do that. But the Bill specifically amends the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000, or PPERA. Having gone back and read that part of the Act again in detail, for the first time in a long time, I think that it is poor legislation. I hope that the Labour Party will not get too much on its high horse about this Bill, because one of the real problems with it is that it is based on the structure and system set out in PPERA, which is frankly not fit for purpose. We are lumbered with it and have to do our best with it—but it will be legitimate in these circumstances to look in Committee not just at what the Bill says but at what PPERA says, to see whether a lot of the vagueness, obscurity and the problems in this area do not actually come from the original wording in that Act. We are told by the Government, or by my noble friend Lord Tyler, that over the past 13 years Part 6 of PPERA has been tried and tested—but it has not. It has largely been ignored; it has never been tested in the courts; and I think that we should subject some of that to scrutiny in Committee. It is complex and difficult to understand; it is full of vague expressions, when clarity is needed; it is untested in the courts; and it is subject to unsatisfactory advice by the Electoral Commission over the years. Those comments apply to PPERA, not just the Bill that we now have to amend it.
The whole thing is poor, flawed legislation. Whether we can make anything sensible out of it, we will find out in the next few weeks. This part of PPERA and these issues have really come to prominence only as a result of the present Bill—because the thresholds and spending limits are being reduced and what is defined as controlled expenditure is being substantially increased. That has put considerable fear among the campaigning organisations, whether or not they are charities, and that is what is causing the problems before us today. I suggest to the Labour Party that the Bill has reached Second Reading and, no doubt, it will pass Second Reading—although it is fair enough to make political points in this debate. But all of us—the Opposition, the Cross Benches and the two government parties, as well as anybody else in the House who is interested—need to get together and try to thrash out a way in which to make this legislation a great deal better than it is now.
I want to talk about constituency campaigning, which has a new emphasis in this Bill. It is a very difficult issue in relation to third-party campaigning, because it is within the confines of a particular electoral area, which is obviously considerably smaller than one of the nations of this country. It is considerably easier, if people have a lot of money, to throw money at a particular constituency and seriously affect the election result. This is a serious problem, and it is no good us pretending that it is not. Yet we live in a changing world, in which political and campaigning energies are more and more being directed into single-issue and themed campaigning groups. At the same time, coming from a different direction is the threat of a large amount of money and corporate power being used in this country; it is not necessarily exactly the same as the super-PACs that are so distorting politics in the United States of America, but the same kind of problem is occurring. It is not easy to find a way in which to regulate all this, and to fit that into the traditional system of controls and regulation that is based on political parties and candidates being regulated. These are difficult areas at national levels; they are most difficult at the level of individual electoral areas, constituencies or even local government wards.
In the past, the system was much stricter. When charities or local groups called all-party meetings and one candidate dropped out, they usually cancelled the meeting, because it was thought that spending money at all in a way that was in any way partisan was contrary to electoral law and should not take place. That is in the past now—but any of us who have been in politics for a long time have scars from individual contests when third-party campaigning has made a difference. We may not have the scars—we may have the victory medals as a result of it—but in our party we tend to have the scars.
I remember in the Nelson and Colne constituency in February 1974, nearly 40 years ago, there was a very tight contest in which David Waddington, now the noble Lord, Lord Waddington, was defending his seat; he held it by about 135 votes. The candidate who came second was Doug Hoyle, now the noble Lord, Lord Hoyle, and the Liberal candidate was myself. That election was considerably affected by two lots of third-party campaigners. There were people from the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children, who managed to divert a lot of Catholic votes away from both of us—certainly from me. The others were the local unions, who used their base in what was then a very strong manufacturing area, with all the local mills and the factories, to make sure that the main opposition to David Waddington was the Labour Party and not me. I am not complaining about it, in retrospect, although at the time I thought that it was pretty underhand. I have changed my mind about these things. I have been out on the streets delivering Hope Not Hate leaflets in Pendle against BNP candidates, and I have contributed funding to those leaflets. So there has to be a balance. Third-party campaigning cannot be done away with or forgotten about. It is here to stay. What we have to do is to get the balance right, and we can do that in Committee.
It is rightly said that this Bill has had a disgraceful lack of scrutiny, and I agree with that. But we are where we are; the Government are not going to withdraw it, and it is not going to stop. So the task before us is to test the Bill rigorously, line by line and clause by clause in Committee. We have to look at workability, which is crucial, as well as proportionality and unintended consequences, and one or two of the principles in it. If we can work together as a House and the Government can work with us, we can make a much better fist of this Bill than we have at the moment.
Baroness Mallalieu (Lab)
My Lords, I shall speak only on Part 2. I must first declare some non-pecuniary interests. I am a member of the Commission on Civil Society and Democratic Engagement, which was set up under the chairmanship of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, who spoke earlier. We will produce our report next Tuesday in time for the Committee stage of the Bill. I very much hope that all noble Lords will make a little time to have a look at it because during the past few weeks we have listened to a vast amount of evidence, including from the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, and we have taken, as it were, views from all parts of the United Kingdom.
What I am going to say tonight is a personal view because the report is not yet finalised. However, having listened to and read all the evidence, there have been times when my reaction was very much that of Victor Meldrew in “One Foot in the Grave”: that is, “I don’t believe it!”. How could a Government, any Government, make such a hash of an issue on which we are almost entirely united—that of transparency at election time? None of us wants money to be able to buy votes. We agree that there should be clear limits on spending and the public should be told who spends what. If anything, we should be looking tonight at a short Bill with all-party support, which makes some amendments to the Political Parties Act to improve its clarity. That would have all-party support. Instead, undue haste has produced a quite dreadful piece of legislation which has managed not only to divide the political parties but has united charities and organisations of every kind against it. How do you manage to alienate the Women’s Institute, Mumsnet, the National Trust, Greenpeace, the British Legion, the Countryside Alliance, the nurses, the RSPB and so on against you so that they combine together? You could not do it if you tried, but this coalition has managed it. When listening to the evidence, I did at times wonder whether someone with a sense of humour had slipped Part 2 into this Bill to test whether anyone in this House was awake, but the 40-strong speakers list shows that we are. If there are notably few Back-Bench coalition speakers, I can attribute it only to a number of those who normally stand up for free speech having adopted the maxim, “If you can’t say anything good, then say nothing at all”.
Part 2 is not wholly useless. It could serve a professor of politics very well as an example to his students of how not to legislate. It contains just about every error that a Government could make. There is not time tonight to detail them all, so I will take a selection of the major ones. The first thing you do is legislate in haste. Part 2 seems to have its origins in a meeting between the Prime Minister and his deputy in July, when they realised that unless something was done pretty quickly this autumn, a Bill would not reach the statute book a year before the fixed date of the next general election. There was no real urgency whatever about Part 2. We have been told by Members in the other place that Members of Parliament were not clamouring for it, and neither was anybody else.
Although the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 had its critics, and various improvements could have been made to it, it has worked reasonably well in two general elections. We were told that there has been no raft of complaints about it. There has been no formal investigation or inquiry and no prosecutions. It is not perfect: there is some lack of clarity and the Electoral Commission’s review has suggested improvements, but it is workable. Nevertheless, Part 2 was shoved into this Bill and, as we have heard, it was put before the Commons just as the House rose for the Summer Recess—indeed, the very day before.
The second error the Government made was not to consult those directly affected. They did not consult charities or campaigning organisations. Indeed, they did not consult properly those with responsibility for setting up and policing the new legislation. The Electoral Commission were, it seems, told what to do, not asked. Of the 50 recommendations it made in its review, only one was put into the Bill, and that was done in the opposite way to that which it had suggested. The Electoral Commission advised that staff costs should come into the equation, but suggested that if it were done, the limits should be raised. The Government have, indeed, included staff costs but are now trying to lower the limits.
Others have commented on the next error, which is particularly strange coming from a coalition which speaks of making “a bonfire of regulation”: that is, a massive increase in the regulatory burden and, by lowering the limits, an increase in the number of those to whom it applies. We should not forget that criminal sanctions will be applied, which are wholly disproportionate given the sums involved in many cases.
A further error is to try to push through a Bill which is so badly drafted that a specialist lawyer giving evidence to us told us that she could not conceive that it had ever been seen by a parliamentary draftsman. Lack of clarity and the sheer incomprehensibility of its wording mean that any organisation without an in-house specialist will have to seek expensive legal advice simply to understand what it means. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, referred to that issue. I treat your Lordships to a few lines by way of a sample. Clause 28 on constituency limits at page 17, line 5 of the Bill, says:
“Subject to sub-paragraphs (5) to (7), the limit applying to controlled expenditure which is incurred by or on behalf of the recognised third party in the relevant period in any particular parliamentary constituency is the relevant proportion of the limit mentioned in paragraph 3(2A) … For this purpose “the relevant proportion” means— A/B where— A is the number of days in the relevant period; B is the number of days in the period which is the relevant period for the purposes of paragraph 3”.
How is somebody sitting in a small charity to make head or tail of that? The result, of course, is that they will be frightened off—they will be terrified of doing anything that puts them over the limit—
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
Does the noble Baroness not realise as a lawyer that this is a goldmine for lawyers?
Baroness Mallalieu
That is the other possibility, which I had not considered. It will undoubtedly increase the work of people who advise charities, such as the noble Lord.
Where are we on the rest of the so called clarification brought about by the amendment to Clause 26 in the Commons? I am the president of the Countryside Alliance. We have no idea what we might or might not be able to do as the Bill is currently worded. At the previous election we produced a rural manifesto that outlined our policies. It was widely distributed and not aimed at a particular party. We are told by the Electoral Commission we could not do that. It is clear that we could not organise a march, but could we organise hustings or have pledge cards? What of all the other public events where campaigning organisations put forward their views and express their wishes to their elected representatives? Who can tell? It is not only badly drafted; it is not readily understandable by those who need to know.
Yet another error was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker—putting forward legislation which is bound to increase the number of complaints made to the Electoral Commission during an election period but providing no extra resources to enable the commission to investigate or deal with them. The Electoral Commission has had something to say on that and has asked the question and, as far as I am aware, has not received a satisfactory answer.
I could go on but I will not. I will just turn to the Government’s biggest mistake of all, one which the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby mentioned. At a time when there is a deep mistrust of politics and political party membership is falling, trying to scare off the political involvement of the public who in their millions—literally in the case of some charities such as the National Trust and the RSPB—have turned to supporting extra-parliamentary campaigns is an affront to democracy. The voluntary sector’s involvement in public debate is to be encouraged, not stifled. It informs MPs and candidates. It informs the electorate. It enriches debate and very often, and perhaps most importantly of all, it provides a voice for groups that are otherwise powerless. Campaigns can at times, I have no doubt, be irksome to Governments but they are positive for democracy. Freedom of expression should be protected, not gagged.
This is a bad Bill, which I suspect in its present form is incapable of being corrected properly by amendment. We are, of course, giving it a Second Reading tonight. It misses the point. It is a wasted opportunity. It does not even begin to deal with modern ways of campaigning such as Facebook and Twitter, because nobody has consulted the people using those tools now. The Government, or whoever drafted this Bill, have not taken them into account. In common with others who have already asked for it, I hope very much that the Government will see the sense of taking this Bill away, consulting and then returning with a Bill which we could all support. After all, that is the way in which constitutional changes should properly be made. If they do not do so, I hope that Peers from all parts of this House will raise their voices and, if necessary, walk through the Division Lobby to make sure it happens.
Lord Adebowale (CB)
My Lords, to be honest I was going to go home, because I am number 30 on the list and I have listened to all the speeches—well, most of them. I was going to stand up and declare my interest as the chief executive of a charity and a social enterprise and the chair of another charity, as well as my membership of many others, and then speak in favour of the Bill to provide some light relief.
I think that what is at stake is really quite serious. I have been involved in the not-for-profit sector, lobbying, for about 30 years and I struggle to understand what the Bill is about. In those 30 years, I have yet to come across a member of the not-for-profit sector who would breach the intent even of this Bill. I would be fascinated to know examples of where that has occurred other than the one referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, who pointed out that there was a picture of a fellow charity chief executive in the Conservative Party manifesto. So there is a real problem with justifying what the Bill is about.
Part 1 has been referred to as being about transparency. There is an over-hackneyed phrase about sunlight being the best disinfectant. That may be true, but partial light creates shadows, and Part 1 creates too many of them. We all know that if you want to get around this you create in-house lobbies. The fact is that Permanent Secretaries and Ministers can list their meetings—we know how it works. The one thing that I find really quite disturbing and which makes me angry is having my time wasted and seeing people being treated as though they are not intelligent enough to know that. Then I sit here and listen to the speeches, many of which have been absolutely brilliant. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, just about said it all when he mentioned the £3 million versus £30 million. I would love to have the kind of money that I see in the hands of many of the major companies that march through this House lobbying Ministers and civil servants. It is nonsense to argue that we are somehow at risk of tipping up democracy.
More to the point, let us have a look at social history. Do noble Lords really think that the suffragettes, the people who campaigned against slavery or, for that matter, the Tolpuddle Martyrs would have asked themselves, “How much can we spend in Wakefield on lobbying our local Lord”, who then was the only person with the right to vote, “to try to persuade him”—and it was a him—“to take notice of the interests of the poor and the disenfranchised?”. Let us be real. It never happened and it should not happen now. It is ridiculous. Social change occurs because of people outside these Chambers taking up concerns that we do not yet know of and lobbying people such as us and those in the other place precisely when the local and national elections are in the minds of the public and the lobbyists. And so they should. Why? Because they pay for it all.
The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, gave an example of local interests. It must have been a terrible experience but I sat here and thought, “Tough”. That is democracy; that is how it works. People either are or are not persuaded and, frankly, the amount of money spent by people who wish to persuade candidates in a local area is neither here nor there. I can tell noble Lords that people in middle-class areas do not spend a penny, but they use their elbows and persuade people, and they change what happens in local elections. I knew that the noble Lord would want to say something, so I shall sit down.
Lord Greaves
It was not a terrible experience at all; it was all part of the fun of local politics and local campaigning.
Lord Adebowale
Spoken like a true democrat.
The point is that the Bill is confusing. People cannot see the point of it. The NCVO, the Countryside Alliance and the National Trust are not organisations prone to hysterical statements about government policy; they are considered organisations that think very carefully about what they are going to say in support or in critique of government policy, and not one of them is for the Bill—not one. My e-mail account is full of people saying that this is wrong. It sends the wrong signal about how we value the opinions of people who do not have the privileges that we have to pontificate about the nature of democracy. It insults those people who gather, with or without money, to influence the people whom they put in the other place and who are paid to sit here. It does not create an understanding of how public policy works and how social change should happen in a civilised country and it does not shed enough light on the true nature of lobbying in this country. That is the truth of it.
Frankly, I think that we should start again. I do not think that it is so much a case of a pause or a chilling effect; it will be a freeze, let us make no mistake about that. There will be people who will be frightened by the contents of the Bill. We may well joke about the cost of lawyers. I happen to run an organisation that employs 3,000 people—some people would call us large and well resourced. I tell you now, with all due respect to noble Lords, that lawyers frighten me, not just because they are expensive, but because they do not always bring clarity. You think twice about whether you are going to campaign when you are faced with the complexity of Part 2. Part 1 will, frankly, provide plenty of loopholes—as has been pointed out by a number of noble Lords—and therefore an industry in advice to industry. We know that.
I do not want to hold up the House any further, other than to say this. My concern is not whether charities or not-for-profit organisations are held back; they have more organisation than the people I am really concerned about. I am not that concerned, even, about whether the Bill will impact on the industry of lobbyists. They will find a way around it—certainly as the Bill is drafted, they will have a field day. My concerns are for the people who do not have access and do not understand how this place or the other place works but who have concerns about how their community and how society work, who want to make a difference and who deserve to be heard. Those are my concerns and they should be the concerns of this House, the Government and society.
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
My Lords, I declare an interest as a charity lawyer of long standing and founder of the firm Bates Wells and Braithwaite, which does as much charity work as any firm in the country.
I hope that the Minister will not be too dismayed by what I have to say. I do not view this as a partisan Bill; it is a Bill that all sides should, classically, deal with as they best think fit, as they are doing. However, the problem of dealing with this as Back-Bench Peers is as intense in relation to this Bill, more or less, as to any that I have come across. It is not so much the length—it is a mere 62 pages—but that it is mostly written by reference to the 2000 Act, and there is no Keeling schedule. How on earth are we Back-Benchers, with no assistance whatever, supposed to get to grips with the fine print of a main Bill of 201 pages and a supplementary and amending Bill of 62 pages? It is outrageous: I wanted to say that. I hope that in Committee the Minister will put in hand a Keeling schedule right away because without it we cannot do our job.
I note also that as we got in this morning there were three documents, totalling another 94 pages. One was the excellent Library note, one was the report of the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the third was the Constitution Committee’s report. They were available only this morning. Again, how on earth are we supposed to do our jobs and take into full account the very careful work done by those various bodies? That merely emphasises the fact that a Bill of this importance should not be dealt with in this helter-skelter way, whether or not it comes out of the wash in time for the 2015 election. In my view, that is of secondary importance to the need to get this Bill as right as we can. It is difficult enough if we do that in the right way.
I happen to agree with much of what has been said in criticism of Part 1, although I want to concentrate on Part 2. I do not want to see Part 2 wholly scrapped, because with regard to non-charitable entities—particularly commercial third parties seeking to influence the outcome of an election by plugging, sometimes with huge resources, a particular line or point of view—we need Part 2 although, again, it should be heavily amended. I am wholly unpersuaded that we need charities in Part 2 at all. They should be exempt from Part 2 and from the 2000 Act. I shall come to that in a little detail in a minute.
A number of Peers have mentioned the importance of the charity sector, but there are one-third of a million charities in this country, 95% of which are run entirely by volunteers. It is no good the Minister saying, “They will not be caught by this Act”. Lots and lots of them jolly well will because we have the provision about coalitions. I am damned if I fully understand the coalition arrangements, but certainly they will catch tens of thousands of small charities in their tentacles because so many of them are part of a national body, albeit that they are independently and separately registered as charities, and we know all the rest.
There has been a good deal of exaggeration and quite a lot of charities, frankly, were not even aware of the 2000 Act where a lot of this stuff resides. None the less, the charity sector as a whole is up in arms about this Bill. Broadly, the charities are absolutely right. The noble Baroness, Lady Hayter, used the rather nice expression that this is a solution without a problem, which is right. We have no evidence from anywhere or anyone that the last election or the one before was subverted by charities. When have we ever in this House had a Bill like this which deals with a problem that does not exist? It is bonkers. It is not even as if, if we take charities out of this Bill, there is nothing that contains and controls them: they have the Charity Commission, as my noble friend Lord Hodgson and others have said.
The Charity Commission is not a pushover. I have grappled with it for the past 45 years. Sometimes, it is pretty tough going. It has a job to do.
Lord Judd
Very few people know more about charities and their activities than the noble Lord, but is he not being a little naive? Even if he can sustain his argument that there is no evidence from previous elections, is not the point that there could be—for example, in Sheffield—in the next?
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
My Lords, I think that the Charity Commission can do the job. Perhaps I may read a couple of passages from CC9, which was mentioned by my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham and others. It is a long and detailed guidance for charities which has evolved over 40 or 50 years. I have been quite closely involved with it. It gives an absolutely well thought through, pragmatically based series of yardsticks. The summary of campaigning and political activity by charities states that,
“political campaigning, or political activity, as defined in this guidance, must be undertaken by a charity only in the context of supporting the delivery of its charitable purposes”.
There is no equivocation. It can engage only in activities pursuing its “charitable purposes”. It continues:
“However, a charity cannot exist for a political purpose, which is any purpose directed at furthering the interests of any political party, or securing or opposing a change in the law, policy or decisions either in this country or abroad. In the political arena, a charity must stress its independence and ensure that any involvement it has with political parties is balanced. A charity must not give support or funding to a political party, nor to a candidate or politician”.
That is as clear as clear can be. They are not empty words, and there are a lot more to go with them. The Charity Commission enforces this, and the charity world is remarkably free of any abuse of these guidelines.
The noble Lord, Lord Judd, may remember that when he was director of Oxfam we had a major battle with a statutory inquiry instigated by the Charity Commission into Oxfam having had activities outside the range of what was permissible under charity law. Fortunately we ended up convincing it that we had not, but these are not empty words. If the Minister says that they are not quite strong enough then give the Charity Commission more resources. It has had a great deal of its people power taken from it. If we remove it from this Act, it would be a big load off the back of the Electoral Commission. It would be a saving of manpower, not a waste of manpower. It would be an economic measure to give the Charity Commission a little more assistance and not to put the burden on the Electoral Commission.
Others have said it, but the charity world as it is is the jewel in the crown of our culture. More than half the adult population is engaged in charity in one way or another. Charities are the engine of civic engagement at a time when in other respects we are in dead trouble. They exemplify organic life, volunteerism, communalism, philanthropy and trust. They are cherished. Can we claim those characteristics for the body politic? I fear not. Can big business claim any of those virtues? I fear not. Yet we are on the brink of putting into force an Act which will damage the sector, particularly the smaller part of it. It will demoralise charities, it will cause bureaucratic overload and it will waste money that is hard obtained and can be used better elsewhere. I do not see that we have anything remotely approaching a justification for shackling the charity sector in the way we are when there is no proven evidence of abuse and when the Charity Commission is there to do a job which it is already doing.
I have probably said more than enough, but I hope that when we get to Committee I will not have to put down 100 amendments because it would be a waste of time compared to a much more fundamental review. My last word is to remind the Minister that charity law is severe. A charity can exist for charitable purposes only. It can act only to pursue those charitable purposes. It can act only in the public benefit. We do not need this.
Lord Judd (Lab)
My Lords, I begin by declaring my interests. I have worked both as an executive and as a volunteer in a number of charity and voluntary agencies. I was director of VSO, director of Oxfam and more recently I am a trustee of Saferworld. My activities have mainly been in the international realm but also very much nowadays in the environment role as well.
I think that we are in a grave situation tonight. My noble friend in winding up what I thought was a very good opening speech, promised that we would work constructively and hard to try and make this a better Bill. I hope that that is possible; I have some doubts. The Government will have to do a lot of work to persuade us that we can make this a better Bill because there is tonight’s well argued issue about the complete incompetence and failure to think through and to analyse the consequences, and the unintended consequences, and how they will be dealt with. There is also a question about the underlying purpose of the Bill. At best that could be crudely party political and at worst it could be quite sinister. I have done a lot of work in the North Caucasus region and Russia in recent years and I am horrified to be looking at what is being proposed here and seeing how it relates to what is happening to civil society in Russia.
At times like this it is important to go back to the grassroots and listen, and I am going to ask the House to bear with me while I do that. In all the plethora of representations that have been made to us, there is one that has registered strongly with me. It is from the Newcastle Council for Voluntary Service, and other noble Lords may have seen it. I shall quote from what the council says:
“It isn’t clear which elements of our work could be classified as campaigning. For instance, we are involved in research on the impact of welfare reforms. Is that campaigning? We regard campaigning as one of our legitimate efforts, as our focus is about using voluntary and community action to improve the lives of people in Newcastle. It would be impossible to designate/attribute an economic value to this element of our work. There would be potentially disproportionate amounts of administration involved. The Act would effectively be a deterrent as there could be confusion over what was classified as campaigning. Obviously we are bound by Charity Law and do not engage in party political campaigning, but we have signed up to campaigns previously which want to change or strengthen policy during election time, eg support for housing homeless people”.
At this point I want to make my own intervention and say that I really do not understand this nonsense about the election period. If there is a valid role for voluntary agencies and charities in informing the public, it can be particularly important in an election year. The parties have to take into account the realities that are being beamed at them from the voluntary sector. I shall continue the quote:
“(Shelter Campaign) or addressing Child Poverty (Child Poverty Action Group) and general anti-poverty work”,
are all among the council’s concerns. It goes on by saying:
“It is sometimes difficult to attribute exact staff costs to different workstreams. Would we be deterred from joining in partnerships and working in collaboration with others as it wouldn’t be clear if a joint piece of work was subject to the new Act and we could be unintentionally drawn into this? As part of our general work, we try to engage in public policy discussions, this could inhibit us from doing so in future. For instance, we promoted the hustings sessions around the election of the Police and Crime Commissioners locally; in particular the sessions aimed at the voluntary sector. Would this count as campaigning under the Act in the future? … currently we are involved in the Living Wage Campaign; the Who Benefits campaign; doing studies on the impact of government policy on our members ie other local charities; working with disability charities looking at how to minimise the impact of welfare reforms on their users; doing studies on local organisations to improve the case for funding voluntary and community organisations. All these pieces of work fall well within our charitable objectives. All of these could fall subject to the Act”.
I see the noble Lord, Lord Tyler, shaking his head. The noble Lord and others have to face reality. Whatever was intended, the perception is that this is going to happen, so to rush this Bill through without having had any consultation with the organisations concerned is a political and constitutional disgrace. What these remarks indicate is how important it is to consult, so that you have the good will and involvement of the people who are doing the work at the front line; not pontificating in this House, but actually doing the work at the front line. I am absolutely dismayed that this Bill is before us without consultation, but I am not surprised. It is all too characteristic of the arrogance which is around: “We know and we can do it”. I am afraid that for a sane, decent, modern society, we must have a government approach which says, “Here is a problem that deeply affects people. Here are real issues of proper accountability during elections and the duties and responsibilities of trustees”. How can we sit down together and find a solution that we are all happy with and which we see as constructive? That is the mature and self-confident thing to do, not this lack of self-confidence which means that things have to be driven through rather than gathering up and involving people in a solution that is wholesome and rooted in our society.
This issue of campaigning and charities is not new. I was director of Oxfam and I wonder how many people remember where Oxfam started. It started in the university church in Oxford in 1942. There was the threat of invasion, with everyone geared up to defeat the enemy. I was a youngster at the time and I can remember the signs and slogans for victory. There was a great atmosphere. A cross-section of society came together: academics—Gilbert Murray among them—trade union leaders and church leaders. They were deeply disturbed about the appalling famine which they knew was happening in Greece. They went to the Government and said, “We want to get relief to Greece”. The Government said, in effect, “You must be mad. Greece is occupied by the Germans. How can you talk about doing that in this context?”. They said, “It’s not the Germans we’re concerned about, it’s the Greek people”. The Government said, “Look, there’s a blockade of Greece. How can we break a blockade to get assistance through?”. So in 1942 they went out with a petition and gathered thousands of signatures in Oxford and beyond. They got the public’s support and went back to the Government and said, “We want to do something about these people in Greece”. The Government caved in and said, “Well, if you can organise something with the Red Cross and you do it through the Red Cross, we will let you do it”. How would that have happened if there had not been a determination—a conviction—to drive through the objectives which they thought were there in the organisation they were forming and to take whatever action was necessary to garner public support for what they were doing?
More recently, when I was director of Oxfam, I went on a visit to Latin America in the bad and ugly years—sinister and horrible years in many ways with the things that were happening. I was meeting our own people and the brave partner agencies with which we were working. I ended up in San Cristobal in Mexico. I met the brave Roman Catholic bishop of San Cristobal. He was a tough guy. Open-necked shirt, wooden crucifix, but my God, he was a strong man. He was frequently in conflict with the Government of Mexico because he was standing by the Indians in their terrible predicament in Chiapas. He was being threatened physically and verbally all the time.
We got into a very good conversation. I asked him whether he had a message he wanted me to take back to Oxfam and to the British people and he said that he had. He said, “You talk of your partners here. You talk to people here. You talk about them. How often do you talk with them and speak for them? I believe that solidarity is the real meaning of charity. You cannot be neutral. You have to stand up and be counted. You have to tell it as it is”.
That is an historic, inescapable duty and responsibility for those of us doing serious charitable work. Otherwise we are caught up in a conspiracy in which we are satisfied with treating symptoms; in doing so perhaps masking what is really wrong and failing to speak out on the underlying issues that arise out of our work. Of course, any charity and any voluntary agency campaigning must ensure that what it is saying is rooted in its own experience. That is not only right in principle but it brings strength to their campaigning because it brings the strength of experience.
If, intentionally or not, we are doing anything that is quenching the spirit of charities at their best—because advocacy can become the best way to serve the poor—we are doing the country a very serious disservice.
Lord Jay of Ewelme (CB)
My Lords, I follow the noble Lord, Lord Judd, with as much trepidation as I did some 40 years ago when as a young civil servant I followed him round some rather poor parts of west Africa on a ministerial swing, a trip that I suspect may have influenced both him and me in spending a good part of the rest of our lives in dealing with development issues.
I would like briefly to comment on Parts 1 and 2 of the Bill, and on procedure. On Part 1, first, I echo what some others have said this evening: lobbying, whether by NGOs, churches or companies, can be a valuable, necessary and, indeed, inevitable part of our democracy. In my own experience, much legislation and some policies with which I have been involved have been brought forward without consultation and as a result have been flawed. I have to say that Part 2 of this Bill is rather a good example of that.
However, such lobbying must be open and transparent and must be made public. I am not talking about just lobbying by consultant lobbyists. Like others, I am puzzled by the Bill’s exclusive focus on consultant lobbyists. The coverage surely needs to be wider than that. I am also puzzled by the exclusive focus on Permanent Secretaries and Ministers. I have a certain respect for both Permanent Secretaries and Ministers but I am not naive and the focus surely needs to be much wider than that, and include political advisers, directors-general, directors and, for example, anyone in a team working on a new Bill who might be instructed to report any approaches from lobbyists to their director or director-general. The important thing is that this is done.
Baroness Williams of Crosby (LD)
I apologise for interrupting the noble Lord but does he agree that the Permanent Secretary is probably almost the last civil servant to be lobbied in a controversial situation?
Lord Jay of Ewelme
I entirely agree. Indeed, any lobbyist worth his or her salt is going to make quite certain that they lobby somebody slightly lower down the scale, and by the time the piece of legislation or the policy gets to the Permanent Secretary or the Minister, the damage may well have been done. I entirely agree with the noble Baroness.
In this context, I particularly liked the idea of the noble Lord, Lord Norton—if I have understood him rightly—of shifting the focus in this part of the Bill from the lobbyist to the person being lobbied, with some mechanism to ensure that that lobbying is made public when the Bill or the policy is made public. That seems a rather simpler approach than that in the Bill at the moment. I look forward to the Minister’s comments on that and I hope that that idea can be considered further.
On Part 3 of the Bill, if the aim is to catch the transatlantic political sharks of the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, as they approach our shores, as seems to be the case, we must find some way of ensuring that our NGOs do not get caught in that net. I recognise that the Government have tried to reflect some of the concerns that NGOs have expressed but, as our e-mail inboxes have shown in the past few days, they have not succeeded. To leave open the possibility that NGOs decide not to continue their activity in a full year before an election or have to spend on complying with new bureaucracy time and money which donors rightly expect should be going to the front line—to the poor, the sick, the elderly and the homeless—is quite simply wrong and contrary to some basic constitutional principles of freedom of expression and freedom of speech.
On procedure, I much regret that the Bill was not subject to pre-legislative scrutiny. A Bill with clear constitutional—indeed, electoral—implications is just the sort of Bill that deserves and requires full and proper pre-legislative scrutiny. It is perhaps too late for that to happen now, but I ask the Minister to think seriously about ensuring that Part 2, at least, even at this late stage, gets the kind of proper consultation with those whom it may seriously affect that it so badly needs. That would surely be time well spent.
Baroness Smith of Basildon (Lab)
My Lords, this is the Bill that the Government told us would restore faith in politics, regulate and tackle abuses in lobbying and enhance our democratic processes. As we have heard so often in the debate today, it fails on all counts.
I am the last to speak in this debate before the wind-up speeches, so I am conscious of the old saying that everything has been said, but not yet by everybody. I hope that I can say something that will contribute to the debate, even with all the excellent speeches that we have heard this evening.
My last role in the Labour Government was as a Cabinet Office Minister with responsibility for these issues. I am clear that most lobbying involves citizens and organisations engaging in the democratic decision-making process of society; that should be encouraged rather than constrained. From the discussion I had with the lobbying industry in 2010, we were clear that all lobbying must be conducted appropriately; it must be open, transparent and accessible to all; and that either the industry took meaningful steps to regulate itself or the Government would do so.
Despite welcome progress, my view remained that the industry had not got far enough and that more significant changes would have to be introduced by government. Instead, we have in the Bill a backward step from the lobbying industry’s voluntary register. The Government proposals hinder and fetter the good and do little to regulate what could be bad. Are the public really crying out for changes to hinder or stop charities and campaign organisations from making their case and lobbying for their causes, or are the public deeply concerned about the access to government of large corporations and lobbying companies which do not even declare their clients?
The Bill does absolutely nothing to ensure greater transparency in the latter’s relationship with government. Despite great promises, there are so many exemptions in Schedule 1 that just a tiny minority of the huge lobbying industry will be included. Even for those few who are captured, there is no code of conduct for behaviour, no sanctions and no requirement to declare clients. The Government even failed to acknowledge that lobbying is a wider activity than lobbying just Ministers. What about special advisers? What about civil servants other than Permanent Secretaries? At times, all can be appropriately lobbied, and there is nothing automatically wrong in an outside organisation seeking a meeting with a senior civil servant on a policy issue or with the Minister’s special adviser, but any such meetings should be open, declared and not available only to a select few over a glass of champagne at the cricket, as some may recall from episodes of “Yes Minister”.
However, Part 2 is a deliberate and, as we have heard, chilling curtailment of the democratic rights of those with greater public support and trust: charities and wider civil society organisations. I chair a not-for-profit organisation and I am involved with a number of charities and other voluntary organisations that provide services but also undertake campaigning. Despite amendment, it is clear that the Government are seeking to curtail the activities of such organisations against the interests of the big society about which we used to hear so much from the Government, although I do not recall hearing much recently. If we want a vibrant and engaged civil society it must be one in which members of the public can engage freely and not be told by the Government where the barriers and boundaries are.
At the Cabinet Office, I made it clear that a Labour Government would continue to be a strong advocate for the campaigning role of civil society organisations. Their role as campaigners provides a voice for some of the most disfranchised, disengaged and vulnerable in society.
However, in the lead-in to the previous general election, the writing was already on the wall. Criticisms that,
“so much of the effort in some parts of the voluntary sector is devoted to campaigning”,
became part of the sniping from the then Opposition before the election. In his speech to the NCVO conference in February 2010, Oliver Letwin stressed that what he treasured about the wider sector of civil society was not its campaigning role, but its special contribution to change things and to solve problems. How can the sector change things if the Government stop and restrict its campaigning? That kind of view fundamentally misunderstands and misrepresents the inextricable link between changing things and solving problems, and campaigning to do so.
It is not that as a Labour Government we tolerated that challenging campaigning role—we actively encouraged it. I have to be honest—it is not always comfortable or easy for Government to do so, but I am absolutely convinced that in many cases it makes for better government and better decision-making. Indeed I would go further and emphasise the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Adebowale. If an organisation that provides services of support considers that changes to government policy could resolve or even just alleviate the problem it is dealing with, it has a responsibility to its service users, its supporters, donors and to taxpayers, to address that and to campaign to do so. To go even further, it has an obligation to not just spend money to deal with the problem—if it can identify ways to alleviate or end that problem, then it should campaign to do so. The idea that the Government should tell that organisation not to campaign but to shut up and spend the money, is totally obscene.
It was the Brazilian archbishop, Dom Hélder Câmara, who said:
“When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a Communist.”
I wonder what he would make of this Bill.
This Government talk about the big society on one hand, and seek to squeeze it smaller and smaller with the other. They must not curtail legitimate campaigning activity, or provide the opportunity for councils and governments to issue bad news and unpopular policies before an election, thus preventing campaigning against that policy; they must not stop organisations making their views known on party manifestos. The Government speak of engagement in civil society yet they are taking away the freedom and rights that strike at the very heart of our civil society.
Before the last general election, numerous charities and civil society organisations organised a series of hustings; I spoke as the Minister, as did my opposite number, the now Minister, Nick Hurd, and the Liberal Democrat spokeswoman Jenny Willott. We all went along to these meetings. They were challenging, they were campaigning, they pressed their views on us and they wanted to know our views. Would those hustings be allowed under this Bill, or would those organisations not be allowed to hold those hustings because that would be seen as campaigning too close to an election? What could be more democratic than engaging with campaigning and information at election time, with the hope of encouraging people to vote?
We have heard suggestions tonight, but we really have to wonder what this coalition Government are so scared of that they are desperate to use every possible measure to rush this Bill through before the next election. With no consultation and no draft Bill, as we have heard from our constitutional experts in the House, the Government have already been forced to make several amendments and they have not reassured the charities.
This is an undemocratic Bill and it is a sadly wasted opportunity. Instead of increasing transparency and restoring faith in the political system, instead of trying to encourage engagement, the Government have taken a giant step backwards. This Bill does the Government no credit and it goes against so much of what the Government used to claim they believed in. No wonder people do not trust politics.
Your Lordships’ House this evening has been almost entirely unanimous in its concern about, opposition to and dismay at this Bill. I hope that the Government have been listening to the very serious and heartfelt concerns that have been raised and that we are going to see some serious changes to this Bill. It will take a lot to make it acceptable to those organisations that do so much for our society and are being denied their right to influence Government.
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, I warmly welcome the noble Lord, Lord Horam, and I congratulate him on his maiden speech. He has certainly participated in a brilliant debate on a bad Bill that is badly drafted and, as my noble friend so dramatically demonstrated, not easily understood.
The Bill does not deal with the problem it was designed to address and has a chilling effect on civil society organisations and charities, which are a cornerstone of our society, while purporting to solve a problem with trade unions that does not exist. Furthermore, as this is a constitutional Bill, it should have had pre-legislative scrutiny, and due process should have been followed, including proper consultation, as demanded by governmental procedures. I must ask the Minister: why the unseemly haste, which so many noble Lords mentioned? Why was there absolutely no consultation with the organisations that will be most affected by the Bill—the myriad organisations up and down the country which are the basis of our thriving civil society? Could it be that the Government were so sighted on their goal of silencing organisations that they might regard as potential critics before the next general election that they simply abandoned the processes upon which government and good governance depend?
The Minister cannot accuse me of taking a political stance because these points have been made by noble Lords on all Benches. That must be a strong signal to the Minister that there is something drastically wrong with the Bill. Out of 38 speakers, the Bill has only one fervent champion—the noble Lord, Lord Tyler—and perhaps three or four lukewarm supporters. In relation to process, we heard powerful speeches from my noble friend Lady Jay, chair of your Lordships’ Constitution Committee, the noble Lord, Lord Norton of Louth, other members of the Constitution Committee and others of my noble friends who are members of the Joint Committee on Human Rights. When parliamentary processes are abused, especially in relation to constitutional Bills, Parliament itself is abused. To repeat the words of the Constitution Committee,
“if Parliament cannot be seen to be scrutinising proposals with the thoroughness they deserve, public confidence in parliamentarians is likely to be further undermined”.
The Dalai Lama said:
“A lack of transparency results in distrust and a deep sense of insecurity”.
I suggest that lack of transparency, especially where access to power is concerned, is one of the reasons that people feel alienated from politics. Lobbying is a normal and an essential part of an active democracy; that includes commercial lobbying. However, it has been clear for some time that the professional sector of the industry needs to be regulated. Indeed, the Prime Minister, when he was Leader of the Opposition, said that lobbying was,
“an issue that exposes the far-too-cosy relationship between politics, government, business and money”.
He was right. My party strongly supports a statutory universal register of lobbyists that covers all those who lobby, not just those working for consultancies. Sadly, the Government’s proposals in the Bill not only fail to deliver such a register but are a step backwards. As my noble friend pointed out, the proposed register would cover fewer lobbyists than the existing voluntary register set up by the UK Public Affairs Council.
I would be grateful if the Minister could tell the House why the register that the Government propose is intended to apply only to those lobbying on behalf of someone else: that is to say, to consultant lobbyists rather than to all lobbyists. The consensus in this House, in the lobbying industry, in the voluntary sector, in the trade unions and among transparency campaigners is that this approach is too narrow. Why should in-house lobbyists, who represent around 80% of the industry, not be required to register along with all other professional lobbyists? Not only is this wrong, it is unfair; it discriminates against different types of lobbyists. The cosy relationship between government and the tobacco and energy industries will continue, one reason being that there is a fundamental lack of understanding in the Government about lobbying.
Furthermore, the proposals before us create loopholes that will be exploited by the unscrupulous. I share the puzzlement of the noble Lord, Lord Jay. Why is it that someone will count as a lobbyist only if they lobby Ministers or Permanent Secretaries directly? As many have said, anyone who has been in government, in the Civil Service or a lobbyist would agree that the best results often come from lobbying MPs and Peers, more junior civil servants—including those who work in UKRep—and, of course, special advisers. One just has to cite the case of Adam Smith and the News Corporation lobbyist, Fred Michel, which would not have been touched by the Bill. Of course, who is lobbying whom is important but the subject matter is also of importance.
Too many people in this country have lost trust in politicians and the political system. The noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, spoke of the importance of young people taking an active part in campaigning as a path to engaging in democracy. In the most recent election, of the 18 to 24 year-olds who were eligible to vote, only 44% voted. A healthy democracy needs to be nurtured in order to thrive, and voting is crucial for legitimacy. It is a key part of a healthy society in which all citizens, not just the privileged few, have a say.
As the right reverend Prelate said, democracy is in crisis, and professional politics has meant that political energy has been quite rightly taken over by faith groups and by charities. As the noble Earl, Lord Clancarty, said, the Bill puts politics further into the Westminster bubble instead of opening it out to the whole population.
We all recall the Prime Minister’s big idea, the big society, which seems to have disappeared from the Conservatives’ lexicon. It was not a big idea, of course, because millions of people in this country have always been active citizens. Charities are part of our DNA, and my Government worked closely with civil society and NGOs. Nevertheless, apart from concern about the increased burdens on civil society as a consequence of government cuts and withdrawing some of their obligations, I was glad that the role of civil society was being celebrated, and that participants were no longer regarded merely as service providers. It is astonishing that the coalition Government, whose Members in this House have strong links with hundreds of charities and faith groups, should seek to curb the work and to silence the voice of charities and others who wish to campaign, for a year before the general election. There has been much concern about this.
As my noble friend said, the Government are hosting the annual summit of the Open Government Partnership in London on 31 October, where participants will share experiences from their respective countries and provide real examples of how openness can improve public service, drive economic growth, reduce poverty and corruption and restore public faith in government. One of the sessions, possibly attended by the right honourable Francis Maude MP, is entitled, “Empowering Citizens: Transforming the Relationship between Citizens and Government”. Presumably this will follow the partnership’s vision of ensuring that Governments become more transparent, more accountable and more responsive to their citizens. That is contrary to the ethos of the Bill before us.
My noble friend Lady Pitkeathley gave the most stunning example of the beneficial results of campaigning by charities—that is to say, apolitical campaigning, which would not be possible under the Bill. My noble friend Lord Griffiths spoke with a passion that I feel.
Many organisations have been cited today with regard to Part 2 of the Bill, and I am grateful for the vast number of briefings received. My noble friend Lady Jay encapsulated many of the fears expressed by those organisations when she said that the Constitution Committee is concerned about the restrictions on the right to freedom of expression that will result from the proposal to limit third-party expenditure at general elections. We think that this constitutional right should be interfered with only when there is clear justification for doing so.
The Opposition requested and received two legal opinions on the Bill from a pairing of eminent barristers specialising in this field: James Goudie QC of 11 King’s Bench and Fraser Campbell of Blackstone Chambers. The damning conclusion of the legal opinion is that the Bill infringes both Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights on freedom of expression, and Article 11 on freedom of assembly and association. The lack of clarity surrounding Part 2 means that it is not sufficiently precise and accessible to enable an individual to foresee to a degree that is reasonable in the circumstances the penal consequences that breaching them would have. Furthermore, the provisions are judged,
“not necessary in a democratic society”,
because they are “disproportionate” and both,
“unduly burdensome and too wide”.
Large organisations are concerned about complexities, the tangle of red tape and the chilling effect, but the smaller organisations are terrified—for example, about the reduction from £10,000 to £5,000 of the threshold at which they would need to register with the Electoral Commission in England, and to £2,000 in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. On its own, £5,000 is a lot of money for a small charity to spend, but, as has been pointed out, charities often work in partnership with others, and all organisations in a joint campaign are responsible for declaring all the spend above the threshold. The British Legion, writing about the cost of the increased regulatory burden, said:
“Even the Legion, which is a relatively large charity, has no dedicated administrative support within its campaign team, and we do not believe that members of the public purchase Poppies in order to fund the servicing of such requirements”.
This is a costly bureaucratic nightmare, and charities and communities may either unwittingly break the law or be inhibited from campaigning in the public interest.
The excellent organisation cited by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, HOPE not hate, which does so much to promote peace among our communities and provides information about candidates standing for the far right in elections, would be restricted to a fraction of what the BNP could spend in any election period. Are the Government trying to suggest that this and similar organisations should form a political party in order to be able to campaign?
The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, chair of the Commission on Civil Society and Democratic Engagement, raised a vast number of questions on behalf of charities and campaigning groups, and explained their fears and complexities. I warmly welcome the initiative taken by the noble and right reverend Lord, and his colleagues, including my noble friend, which fills a yawning gap in the Government’s own procedures. They were able to consult a vast variety of NGOs and experts up and down the country, so why could the Government not do that? I very much look forward to the commission’s report and its recommendations before Committee. The lack of consultation is compounded in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, where neither the organisations affected nor the devolved institutions were consulted. That is of particular importance in Northern Ireland, where civil society engagement is a cornerstone of the peace process, and is one reason why such great progress has been made and must be sustained.
As my noble friends have said, there is no evidence for why Part 3 of the Bill is needed, and no Minister has been able adequately to explain the reason. I almost feel sorry for the noble Viscount. He had to defend the indefensible on the shares-for-rights Bill, and now he has to find a reason for Part 3. As my noble friend Lord Monks said, since 2004 there have been no complaints to a certification officer from trade union members about the registration of their details, and from 2000 to 2004 there were just six complaints, of which five were thrown out. What, then, is the problem?
Seldom can a Bill have had so few friends—the only friends it has sit on the coalition Benches; or rather, the only friend—and seldom has a Bill had so many opposed to it. Seldom has a Bill raised common concerns and united the whole of civil society, including charities and community organisations large and small, trade unions, professional organisations, lawyers, professional lobbyists and their associations, the Joint Committee on Human Rights, the Constitution Committee of your Lordships’ House, the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee of the other place, the Financial Times and the Guardian. The vast majority of the committees, organisations and individuals have asked the Government to pause and think again. As the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said, the Government should do so before they inflict unnecessary damage on one of the jewels in our crown: the voluntary sector.
It is clear from most of the speeches made today that there is strong support in this House for the Government to withdraw the Bill, consult and return with a Bill that is fit for purpose. The lobbying proposals should be revised and Part 2 should be the subject of cross-party agreement. These issues are too serious to be used as a political football. The problem that Part 3 is designed to answer must be identified before solutions are proposed.
There are fundamental lessons to be learned from the Bill. Pre-legislative scrutiny should be standard practice; Bills—especially constitutional Bills—must not be rushed through Parliament in order to fulfil a political objective; and consultation with those affected absolutely must take place. I trust that the Minister will give his assurance that this lack of respect for parliamentary procedures and the people with whom they should consult will not be repeated.
Most importantly, on behalf of all of the organisations and individuals affected, all of our citizens who lack trust in Parliament, politics and politicians, and the majority of noble Lords who have spoken today, I urge the Minister to pause, to withdraw the Bill, to consult and to return to Parliament with a Bill that commands the respect and support that these issues of fundamental importance to our democracy deserve.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, this has been a vigorous debate with a wide range of opinions forcefully expressed around the House. First, the Government are listening and consulting, and we will continue to do so. We will take this carefully through Committee, and we are concerned to make sure that the Bill as it emerges from this House reassures the very evident concerns, particularly from the charity sector. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, rightly said that the charity sector perceives this as an attack. That is, by and large, a mistaken perception. However, of course we have to reassure people and make sure, as we take this Bill through the various stages, that we have a Bill that we are all happy with as it emerges from this House.
Let me take the three parts in order. First, on the lobbying issue, as a number of noble Lords said, lobbying is a legitimate activity. Indeed, it is central to any thriving democracy and is an almost universal activity. Almost every working day Parliament is being lobbied. Those who had offices on the West Front particularly enjoyed the London Gay Men’s Chorus lobbying us several nights in a row. We wished that they would come back more often. It was one of the most enjoyable bits of lobbying that we have had so far.
Part 1 is intended to focus on professional lobbyists, the skilled and the well paid, those who provide their services for hire. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith, talked about lobbying companies which do not even declare their clients. That is precisely what Part 1 addresses to make sure that lobbying companies declare their clients. That is where we started out in our consultation in 2010-11. I regret to say that the various respondents to that consultation came back with a whole range of discordant and dissentious responses. The Government have decided to take the Australian approach to a lobbying register, which is to have a register of professional and consultant lobbyists, not a universal register.
Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town
Will the Minister accept that if a Minister meets lobbyists of that sort, although there may well be a list on a website with their 40 clients, it will not tell anybody which client that Minister was meeting? All it will say is that those are their 40 clients. Anyone will still be in the dark about which client had set up that meeting with the Minister.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I take the point that the noble Baroness makes. She has said to me off the Floor of the House that this ought to be reinforced by making sure that in the notes of the meeting there is a reference to the subject of the meeting so that those in the press and outside who want to understand what happened are informed which of the clients the meeting was about. This is therefore a step towards transparency. It does not claim to provide complete transparency on all contacts between outside proponents of particular policies and Ministers or officials. If we were to do that, we would find ourselves with a huge amount of information of the sort that the NSA loves to collect for the United States, but might not be beneficial to British politics. If we were to include all lobbyists, as some of the answers to the consultation wished, and included all charity lobbyists, I think that the answer from the charities sector would also be very negative. However, charities do have lobbyists. For example, Oxfam has people who actively lobby the public and the Government. Therefore, we have to be a little careful over how universal one needs to be. That is the importance of starting—perhaps others will want to go further—with a register of consultant lobbyists and of their major contact with the Government.
The noble Lord, Lord Norton, suggested that we should start at the other end by asking all officials and Ministers to register whom they have met. I see no reason why, in a sense, as transparency develops, the two should not come together. I have just filled in my quarterly return of whom I have met, including a number of people who could be described as lobbyists. Indeed, Saferworld was one of those that I reported on for obvious reasons: as I represent the Foreign Office, I talk to Saferworld and other such charities. That is part of what we already do.
The question of how far down the list one should go and whether it should include special advisers has also been raised. That clearly is a question to which we will return in Committee, and I look forward to that debate. However, I am conscious that the major concerns are on Part 2, to which I now turn.
I assure the noble Lord, Lord Phillips, that a Keeling schedule will be available well before Committee for everyone who wishes to look at it. I say with due confidence that, since he first asked me that question, I have discovered what a Keeling schedule is.
Lord Rooker
With respect, that is a worry, because that is the kind of thing that the Minister should have been advised about before the Bill was introduced. For the Minister to say now—and I am not being personal about this—that he did not know what a Keeling schedule was when we have a major constitutional Bill, and it is the norm to do it this way and has been for a long time, shows a failure of those who have been advising Ministers.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
It shows my ignorance more than anything. The Bill team has a Keeling schedule, and it will be distributed. Of course, the Bill team has a Keeling schedule—it is part of what Bill teams have to do in preparing the Bill. Since this is a rather complicated amendment of PPERA, that is what we are into.
I stress, as has been stressed by a number of noble Lords, that this is an amendment to PPERA. It is about election law, not about charities law; charities are not the main target and not those mainly affected by it. The most recent Electoral Commission report on this said:
“The Commission believes that, where significant non-party campaigning takes place, this should be transparent and properly regulated ... We think these controls on campaigning that is not explicitly ‘party political’ are a necessary part of the regime. Without them, it would be easy to evade the rules by framing political campaigning in terms of policies. For similar reasons, we do not think the rules should exclude particular types of organisations, such as charities or voluntary bodies, as this would create opportunities for political campaigners to evade the rules and would reduce transparency. However, the necessarily wide scope of the definition of controlled spending makes it particularly important to consider the overall impact on campaigners of Part 2 of the Bill, including the registration thresholds and spending limits”.
That is what we will focus on in Committee—but it is correct that we should include this in the scope of the Bill.
I was quite surprised—
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
As the Minister has just said, rightly, that it is important to look at the effect on charities and campaigning organisations affected by the Bill, why did the Government not consult those bodies before bringing the Bill forward? The Minister said just now that now that they had had their Second Reading they were going to consult. Why did not the Government consult beforehand?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I am conscious of a number of meetings with ACEVO, the NCVO and a number of other organisations over the past few months—and we are continuing to consult them. So we are not just about to start; we have been consulting.
I was quite surprised that no one had looked at the list of registered third parties for controlled expenditure for the 2010 general election, which seems to be a relevant part of the background. There are 30 of them on the list that I have here; six of them are in the field of animal welfare, which is hardly surprising—and the noble Baroness, Lady Mallalieu, is nodding at me as I say this. There are two major unions. Among others, there is an interesting body called the Young Britons’ Foundation. I Googled several of these bodies just to discover them, and perhaps I can read something for those noble Lords who think that American campaigning has not yet reached Britain. It says that the foundation,
“was launched in July 2003 at a conference of the Young America’s Foundation in Washington, D.C., and it has said that it aims to ‘import American political techniques into the UK’”.
On the most recent knowledge that I have, its advisory board included,
“representatives of the Heritage Foundation … US Competitive Enterprise Institute and American Conservative Union”,
and a number of other, similar bodies.
Lord Greaves
I was very confused by the quote that my noble friend read from the Electoral Commission, which refers to “political campaigning”. The existing PPERA and the proposed wording as amended in the House of Commons on Report in this Bill do not refer to political campaigning at all. Clause 26(2)(b) now says that,
“the expenditure can reasonably be regarded as intended to promote or procure electoral success at any relevant election for … one or more particular registered parties … one or more registered parties”,
and so on. This is about electoral campaigning. It seems to me that the dividing line is between general political campaigning on the one hand and electoral campaigning seeking the success or non-success of a particular party or candidate on the other. What my noble friend has just read out seems to muddy the waters. This will be an absolutely crucial discussion in Committee.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, I was about to come to precisely that distinction because it seems to me to be the nub of what we will have to discuss when we deal with Part 2. There is a line to be drawn between the promotion of policies and the promotion of the success or defeat of particular parties or candidates. Policing the line between informing and educating the public during a campaign, promoting particular policies during a campaign and, on the other side of the line, supporting or opposing particular candidates or parties during a campaign, is the point on which we need to focus during Committee and Report. I am concerned that this is not an easy line to define. We want to make sure that there is as small a grey area as possible. At the all-Peers meeting, the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, quoted a leaflet which had been put round his constituency the day before he lost an election which had a very large headline saying, “We are not telling you who to vote for”, and then a lot of small print which did. That is the sort of thing that we will have to look at in detail.
This measure is not aimed primarily at charities. Indeed, of the 30 organisations on the list, three are the campaigning non-charitable associated bodies of charities, but none is a charity. Charities should not be caught by this measure. After all, charities law limits how far charities can become involved in partisan campaigning. Charities should be involved in political campaigning. I recommend that noble Lords look at the list to see how far we can come to an agreement on the borderline. The noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, talked precisely about the borderline between current activities and controlled activities, and the chilling effect of having an uncertain definition of that. However, that is where we are. From the discussions I have had with people over the past few weeks, I have the slight impression that a large number of charities had not actually read the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act until this Bill was produced. Having looked at the language of that Act, a number of charities are telling us that they are not happy with that language as it stands. We have entered a discussion that we should perhaps have had earlier. The Government started on the assumption that the language of PPERA was fine because we had—
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
May I just finish my point? We had been through two elections with that language and charities do not appear to have found it difficult. If charities are now telling us that they find that language difficult, clearly we need to have a rather different discussion. I give way.
Lord Lea of Crondall
I thank the noble Lord for giving way. He may not be able to answer my next point tonight. However, as I understand it, charities registered with the Charity Commission cannot be so registered if they have political purposes. Therefore, will the noble Lord comment on, or write to me, about what he means when he talks about charities having political purposes?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I hesitate to go into a definition of politics as the noble Lord, Lord Norton, will immediately correct me. The promotion of particular policies, particularly broad policy areas, is a natural and accepted part of what charities and faith bodies do. That is a normal part of civil society. Part of my puzzlement, in listening to one or two of the speeches tonight, is that civil society is itself broader than the charitable sector. There are campaigning bodies in civil society which are not, and should not be, charities. Charities promote particular ideas, developments and social objectives which are also unavoidably political objectives, but they are not necessarily partisan objectives. That again is the line that we need to draw. I note that the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries, said that charities are already unhappy about PPERA. Having looked at it, there are a number of difficult questions that we need—
Lord Phillips of Sudbury
It might be beneficial for all of us if the Minister and his advisers were to say how far the Charity Commission guidelines fall short of what the Bill is intending to do. If there is no significant air between the two, we might all need to know that.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I accept—and have also had it said to me in the Corridors—that we need to make sure that the guidance from the Electoral Commission, the Charity Commission and the Government are all in very close harmony. That is another area that we are, of course, now looking at.
The time is late. I will come very briefly to Part 3. Again, I recognise what has been said powerfully by a number of noble Lords here with trade union experience. We will come back to this in Committee, so I will say simply that unions are a major and extremely valuable aspect of our economy and our society. They have changed through a number of amalgamations over recent years and the Government consider the question of how accurate the membership lists of major unions are—we are talking about unions with 1 million or more members—is an appropriate point to be regulated. However, I take all the points—
Baroness Royall of Blaisdon
My Lords, we are talking about unions with a membership of more than 10,000, as I understand it; that is what is in the proposal, not 1 million.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
However, we are not talking about the smallest unions.
I take the point from, I think, the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, about whether information given to the assurer or certification officer might fall into other hands. That is a large issue of data privacy—this was raised by another noble Lord—which raises broader issues that concern the Government across the board. I will give him my assurance now but I will also check back and make sure that there are cast-iron assurances that data privacy issues will be resolved. We will have—
Lord Whitty
I think it was my noble friend Lord, Lord Monks, who raised that point. The Minister has not yet said why the Government are proposing Part 3 of this Bill. There are all sorts of suspicions out there, some of which have been voiced tonight, including by me, but the Government have not told the House why they are proposing this part of the Bill.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, the Government are concerned that there is insufficient public understanding when, for example, a union calls a strike vote, that those being polled are those who are currently working. They wish to assure the members and others in society that the lists are accurate. This is not just for unions. Companies are also expected to maintain an accurate register of their members and shareholders and to keep it up to date. This will cover a range of different bodies. I give way once more and then we must finish.
Lord Lea of Crondall
Is the Minister aware that that is not the reason given in the explanatory document?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, we will return to the explanatory document at a later stage. This has been an extremely vigorous evening. We look forward to several days in Committee and on Report. The Government will consult a range of stakeholders between Second Reading and Committee, and we will continue to consult between Committee and Report. This House will, as the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, assured me very vigorously, look in detail at the language of the Bill and also look back at the language of PPERA, and, we hope, produce something of which we can all be proud at the end of the day.
Lord Hardie
I wonder whether the Minister will address the concerns of local action groups, as opposed to charities.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
I am sorry; I did not hear the noble and learned Lord.
Lord Hardie
I was asking about local action groups as opposed to charities.
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
My Lords, local action groups, if they are not campaigning for or against a particular candidate or a particular party, will not fall within the terms of the Bill.
Lord Hardie
The Minister obviously did not hear my speech. I referred to the situation where a local action group had a particular interest—for example, against the closure of a hospital or against, or in favour of, HS2, or other environmental situations. If one candidate supported that view and another candidate was opposed to it, that would be controlled expenditure. Is that to be stopped?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire
In the case of Kidderminster Hospital, which I think was one of the examples quoted, there was indeed a candidate who was the Kidderminster Hospital candidate. That of course then becomes a much clearer case.
The hour is late and I should like, if I may, to continue these discussions in the Corridors between Second Reading and Committee.