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Oral Answers to Questions
(9 years, 7 months ago)
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Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)
1. What steps his Department is taking to protect children who are at risk of grooming.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
6. What steps his Department is taking to protect children who are at risk of grooming.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Simon Hughes)
We have taken action to enable the police to intervene earlier to protect children where there is a suspicion that grooming has taken place. As a result of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015, which amended section 15 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, we have reduced from two to one the number of initial occasions on which the defendant meets or communicates with a child considered at risk before prosecution can take place. I hope the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) believes that the Government are absolutely committed to making sure the law is as tough as it needs be to deal with this very serious evil.
Bob Blackman
I thank my right hon. Friend for that answer. I am not sure if he has had a chance to study the report published today by the Communities and Local Government Committee on child sexual exploitation in Rotherham. What is clear from that report is the catastrophic failure of all public services to protect vulnerable young girls. It is also clear that Rotherham is not an isolated case. What is apparent is that the victims have not been provided with the support they require and they were not believed by the authorities and were not protected when issues came to court. What further action can my right hon. Friend propose that will ensure that the victims are given support and protection through the justice system?
Simon Hughes
I am very clear that the point the hon. Gentleman raises is centrally important. I am aware of the report that has come out today, but I have not read it in full. The failing in the past has been that the young people have not been listened to and heard and, when they have spoken out, people have not believed them. Public authorities, the Crown Prosecution Service and the rest of the prosecuting authorities must work on the presumption that when young people say something, it is true and not false, and we should work on that basis.
Tim Loughton
In 2011 the child sexual exploitation plan issued by the Government tasked the Ministry of Justice to do certain things in respect of child sexual exploitation, including having a more practical and effective response to witness intimidation, supporting witnesses throughout the criminal justice process, for the CPS to promote within its organisation examples of good practice in relation to child sexual exploitation and work to increase the use of special measures in appropriate cases. Will the Minister give us an update on what progress has been made against those specific measures?
Simon Hughes
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his continuing interest in this issue. As well as the working group he mentioned, which found that there were gaps in the availability of services and commissioning, the Government have strengthened the non-statutory services and put more money in to make sure they are able more competently to deal with this. The figure I have is £7 million—that was an announcement we made in December—which includes increased funds for the existing female rape support centres and greater support for organisations supporting victims in areas where there is a high prevalence of child abuse, such as Rotherham. Secondly, as well as the new offence of sexual communication with a child, we are legislating to remove references to child prostitution and child pornography from the Sexual Offences Act and making sure that the offence of loitering or soliciting for the purpose of prostitution applies only to adults. We have to protect children.
Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)
The right hon. Gentleman will know that many of the victims in these cases have been profoundly damaged by their experiences and need a great deal of support, including mental health support. Will he ensure that prosecutors do not deter them from accessing that support, as has often happened in the past, but work to ensure that they are supported through the ordeal of going to trial, because that is not only beneficial to them, but ensures that more cases can be prosecuted?
Simon Hughes
There are two points. First, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and all Ministers are very clear that when vulnerable individuals go into the criminal justice system we must identify whether in fact the issue that needs to be addressed is a mental health issue or is a drugs issue or something else. So we try to prevent people from going through the criminal justice system because it is not user-friendly, particularly for young people. If there is no alternative, we need to make sure that steps are taken, for example that youngsters do not have to come to court but can appear from a distance, such as by video-link, and that they are supported through the whole of that process, not just through the court case but a considerable time thereafter.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
Has the Minister considered closer co-operation with the Department for Education to make this matter a staple subject in the curriculum? Would he further consider training for voluntary groups so that they can be aware of the telltale signs of grooming?
Simon Hughes
The hon. Gentleman is right to raise that issue. NSPCC research has shown that six in 10 teenagers have been asked for sexual images or videos online. That is an extraordinary figure, and many of them feel compelled to provide those images as a result of peer group pressure. We are absolutely convinced across the Government, including in the Department for Education, that personal, social, health and economic education—of which sex education is a part—is an important strategy. We need such an education process in the curriculum in every school to warn youngsters of the dangers, so that they know how to deal with them.
Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)
2. What assessment he has made of the performance of new providers of rehabilitation services in the rehabilitation of short-term prisoners.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Simon Hughes)
The coalition is committed to transforming rehabilitation in order to reduce reoffending and, consequently, to reduce the number of people who are victims of crime. Since 1 February under the new system, providers from the public, voluntary and private sectors have been providing the new transforming rehabilitation services. The crucial thing is that all those people who are currently sentenced to less than a year in prison will have support when they come out. They are the people who reoffend most and who cause the most victims. Payments to providers will be dependent on results.
Mr Speaker
I realise that the Minister is not a prisoner, but I am not sure that being forced to answer so many questions will aid his rehabilitation when he is obviously struggling with a very sore throat. That seems to be a considerable unkindness.
Gareth Johnson
I welcome the measures that the Ministry of Justice has taken to work with short-term prisoners. I think that this is the first time we have ever seen that happening, and it has become possible only because of the pioneering approach of the Ministry. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is vital to work with short-term prisoners, who often have more deeply rooted offending behaviour than many other types of offenders?
Simon Hughes
I am grateful to you for your concern, Mr Speaker. The Secretary of State offered me the chance to opt out, but I volunteered to come here and do my duty, so I hope I am forgiven. I might have to curl up and hide in the corner in a minute, however.
I would say to the hon. Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) that in the year ending last March, 57% of all adult offenders released from custody after serving a sentence of less than 12 months reoffended within a year. They are the largest group of reoffenders. They are the people who cause the most victims the most grief and the criminal justice system the most cost. We have never had a Government who have dealt with this issue, but we have been determined to do so and I believe that the way in which we rehabilitate those people will be transformational.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
I welcome the Government’s decision to introduce drug scanners into prisons. As the Minister knows, 51% of prisoners report a drug dependency. Can he tell me how many have entered a rehabilitation scheme in the past year, and how many have been successfully rehabilitated in relation to their use of drugs?
Simon Hughes
I do not have all the details, but I will ensure that the right hon. Gentleman has a detailed answer, which I will put in the Library. Yesterday, when I was visiting a women’s prison in Yorkshire, I was looking at how we might improve the way in which we detect drugs. It is difficult because they are often hidden in very private places. We are absolutely determined to stop drugs coming into prisons over the wall, but also to stop them coming in on the person, which is a serious issue. I will give him the detailed figures on what progress we are making.
Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)
I, along with a small group of colleagues from the House, visited Brixton prison towards the back end of last year. We saw the benefits of the work that is being undertaken in two facilities there: the Clink restaurant and the Bad Boys bakery. Those benefits include a reoffending rate of only about 3%. That is the kind of work that short-term offenders need to give them the chance to restart their lives in a positive way.
Simon Hughes
Within the Department, I have particular responsibility for all female offenders. I have visited every single female prison and I am clear that the schemes that rehabilitate people through engaging with them and planning for training, work and housing are absolutely central. We are committed to using such schemes. May I also take this opportunity to say that there are some phenomenally excellent leadership teams in all our prisons, as well as many other people who are assisting with this project? The hon. Gentleman is right to suggest that we need to give people incentives so that they can see their route out of prison and understand that life outside is better. That will give them hope for the future.
Mr Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)
3. When he next plans to meet representatives from (a) the Law Society and (b) the Bar Council to discuss legal aid.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Shailesh Vara)
Throughout the development of the “Transforming Legal Aid” package of reform, my officials and I regularly met the Law Society, the Bar Council and other members of the legal profession. Officials from the Department and the Legal Aid Agency continue to be in regular contact with the representative bodies as we implement the reforms.
Mr Bellingham
I thank the Minister for that reply. Is he aware that I represent a number of constituents involved with family law cases, including one young mother who is contesting adoption proceedings? She received legal aid for the substantive hearing, but she is now appealing and, unfortunately, cannot get legal aid. Has he made any assessment of the impact of the cost in respect of litigants in person within the family division? Without increasing the overall legal aid budget, will he consider some reallocation of resources within it to solve this particular problem?
Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)
In a previous Question Time, I raised the problem of victims of domestic abuse apparently being deterred from going to law because of the cuts in legal aid. Has the Minister discussed the matter with representatives of the law authorities? Does he have any statistics to confirm these reports?
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
Following on from that, on how many occasions have victims of domestic violence had their legal aid funding stopped because of the rule changes for evidence now being more than two years old? The Minister must have that information to hand.
Mr Vara
What I will tell the hon. Gentleman is that this issue has been the subject of a huge amount of misunderstanding among the wider public, not least because of the misinformation imparted by people such as himself. On two occasions we have increased the criteria on the required evidence, once during the passage of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 and subsequently when we found that more evidence was required.
David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)
4. What progress he has made on reducing the legal aid budget
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Shailesh Vara)
In 2009-10, as this Government took office, £2.2 billion was spent on legal aid. Following our two major reform programmes, spend has fallen to £1.7 billion in 2013-14 and is expected to fall to about £1.5 billion once the reforms have fully worked through the system.
David Mowat
I thank the Minister for that answer. A month ago in the High Court, Lord Justice Laws described the Government’s proposal to have two-tier contracting as reasonable, “proportionate” and a “proper way” to proceed. The case has now gone to the Court of Appeal and a decision is expected imminently. Can the Minister confirm that, subject to that decision, he will be proceeding in this Parliament with a tendering process and not be constrained by what appears to be legal time wasting?
Mr Vara
Having successfully defended a challenge in the High Court, we robustly defended our position in the Court of Appeal and are awaiting judgment. If the appeal is dismissed, it is our intention to continue the tender that is currently subject to an injunction as soon as possible.
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
Access to justice is one of the cornerstones of our democracy. Given the reductions in legal aid, can the Minister say whether there has been a rise or a fall in the number of litigants in person?
Mr Vara
I believe there has been a rise in litigants in person, but the Government have also made a huge amount of provision to cater for that. I also say to the hon. Lady and Opposition Front Benchers, who have never said that they are going to reverse the cuts that we have made, that we need a legal aid system that is sustainable, for the people who need it, for the legal providers and for the taxpayers who pay for it.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
Has the Minister noted the Justice Committee’s conclusion that although the Government had achieved the cost reduction, there was some transfer of cost to other budgets and far too little availability of the exceptional cases fund, and that mediation, far from increasing, had actually dropped?
Mr Vara
May I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question? As far as exceptional funding is concerned, the giveaway is in the title. The fund is meant to be exceptional, but some people have seen it as a discretionary fund. Not surprisingly, therefore, the numbers involved in it have been few.
I understand that the right hon. Gentleman is retiring at the end of this Parliament. Let me say what a pleasure it has been to work with him. I may not always have agreed with him, but working with him has always been a pleasure, and I wish him well for the future.
Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
Perhaps the Minister should listen to the Chair of the Justice Committee and read his report that found that the Government had failed in three of their four objectives for legal aid: they have not discouraged unnecessary litigation; they have not targeted legal aid to those who need it the most; and they have not delivered better value for money for the taxpayer. That is what the report says. Does the Minister agree that that abject failure is a fitting epitaph for the least competent Lord Chancellor since the Reformation?
Mr Vara
It is always helpful if shadow Ministers do their homework. The proposals to which the hon. Gentleman refers were achieved by the previous Lord Chancellor. As far as his comment on the Justice Committee’s report is concerned, I do not hear him or his boss saying that they will be reversing any of the cuts that we have made. If they want to do that, the shadow Chancellor will have plenty of opportunity so to do in due course.
John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
5. What assessment he has made of the effectiveness of his Department's oversight of claims-handling companies.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Shailesh Vara)
Tackling bad practices by claims management companies is a priority for the Department’s claims management regulator. Recent measures taken to strengthen the effectiveness regulation include tougher rules to crack down on malpractice and a new power to impose financial penalties on CMCs that break the rules. Since regulation began in 2007, the licences of more than 1,200 CMCs have been removed. Between April and December 2014, we stepped up enforcement action, with 338 CMCs being warned for poor conduct or having their licences removed.
John Mann
The whole country is sick of these companies ringing up day and night leaving answerphone messages and harassing pensioners. When it comes to PPI mis-selling, they are taking half the money that is due to decent people purely for writing a letter to a bank asking it to investigate the matter. We need to expose the sham of these companies more effectively, because, across the country, people are losing out and are getting increasingly sick of their behaviour.
Mr Vara
I agree that many people are very upset with the behaviour of those companies. In fact, millions of people are upset with what is happening. This is something that requires joined-up activity. The claims management regulator is working closely with the primary enforcement agencies at the Information Commissioner’s office and at Ofcom to investigate practices and take firm enforcement action against rogue companies. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that much work on nuisance calls has already been done and that the Department for Culture, Media and Sport is leading on reforms in this area. Last year, for example, the Department published a joint action plan, involving all the relevant regulators, including the Information Commissioner’s office, Ofcom and the claims management regulator.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
7. What his strategy is for supporting victims of crime.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Grayling)
The Government are committed to putting victims and witnesses first in the criminal justice system and to ensuring that they have high quality, effective and timely support to help them cope and, as far as possible, recover from the effects of crime. We published our document on commitments to victims in September 2014 and introduced a package of reforms that will provide even more support to victims, including establishing a new nationwide victims’ information service, strengthening the protection of vulnerable victims and witnesses at court, increasing transparency and accountability so that agencies are held to account for the services that they provide, and planning a victims law, setting out entitlements for victims in primary legislation. It is also worth saying that, under this Government, funding for services to support victims of crime has more than doubled to some £92 million in the coming financial year.
Debbie Abrahams
Murdered police officer Nicola Hughes was one of my constituents. Her father, Bryn, has worked relentlessly to campaign and raise funding for victims of crime, especially children, to help those who have lost a family member to violent crime and to keep Nicola’s memory alive. Bryn’s own experience of the criminal justice system was not a good one. Will the Secretary of State confirm that he will be supporting the proposals for a victims law in Labour’s victims taskforce report, which will transform the experience of victims and witnesses in the criminal justice system?
Chris Grayling
Let me first pay tribute to the hon. Lady’s constituent. We were all horrified and shocked by the terrible events that led to his loss. I extend my condolences, my gratitude to him, and indeed my gratitude to all the families of murder victims who have turned a terrible experience into positive work to help support the victims of crime, and to try to prevent these terrible events happening in future. We all owe them a debt of gratitude. It is clearly not our intention to allow the Labour party an opportunity to introduce a victims law, but it will be the intention of a Conservative Government to do just that and to continue the work we have been doing in this Parliament to extend the support provided to victims.
Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)
At the Justice Secretary’s first Question Time, he spoke of the importance of ensuring that victims get timely information. As this is the last Justice Question Time of this Parliament, will he update the House on what progress has been made in using technology to ensure that victims are put first when it comes to information about their cases?
Chris Grayling
We are making good progress towards the introduction of the victims information service, which will signpost victims to services available locally. We intend to mesh that with the current system for tracking crimes, so that we have a single point where victims can find out the situation with the case they are going through. It is really important that we do the right thing for victims, and we have done as much as any previous Government to step forward and provide that support.
Dr William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)
The Secretary of State must acknowledge that many victims of crime feel that the criminals have more rights and protection than they do. For many that is not only a perception, but a reality. Therefore, we urgently need not only a strategy to support victims through the very difficult circumstances of their trauma, but to prove through the sentencing process that crime does not pay.
Chris Grayling
I agree with the hon. Gentleman. I am pleased that under this Government sentence lengths have increased. It is absolutely right and proper that those who commit crimes should serve a proper period of recompense for what they have done. Of course, it is also important that we rehabilitate them to ensure that they do not do it again.
Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)
The whole House will have been disturbed by the story of Geraldine and Peter McGinty, parents who lost their son and have been repeatedly let down by the criminal justice system. After they heard from a judge last year that their victims’ personal statement would make no difference, the Justice Secretary met them and promised that they would be kept informed about the progress of their case. This month they were among the last to learn that their son’s killers are being released into an open prison. Does the Justice Secretary agree that the fact that victims can be forgotten like that, even after he personally intervened in the case, shows just why we need our plan for a victims law?
Chris Grayling
First of all, I have now met Mr and Mrs McGinty twice, including with the chief executive of the Parole Board, who apologised to them for the lack of information provided to them, and rightly so. This is about good practice and people behaving in the right way, and I am afraid that this kind of issue will not be solved by changes to the law; it will be solved by changing the culture in the system.
Sir David Amess (Southend West) (Con)
8. What steps he is taking to reduce youth reoffending.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Andrew Selous)
The Government are committed to reducing offending and reoffending by young people. We are placing education at the heart of detention and improving resettlement processes, which will provide young offenders with the skills and support they need to build a life free from crime. We are also working to ensure that community youth services are as effective as possible in helping young people to adopt law-abiding lives, including through their role in delivering key cross-Government programmes such as the troubled families initiative.
Sir David Amess
Can my hon. Friend reassure me that changes to the probation service will reduce youth reoffending through a new culture and direction of travel? I, for one, would not wish to see senior managers reinventing themselves in these new community rehabilitation company positions.
Andrew Selous
I know that my hon. Friend takes a serious interest in these matters—indeed, I have met with him to discuss them. The number of first-time entrants into the criminal justice system who are young people fell by 59% in the four years to September 2014. We are also focusing on resettlement consortia in four high custody areas. We have a Turn Around to Work initiative in London and Greater Manchester, which is supported by a number of employers. We are also doubling the number of hours in education.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
Obviously, the way to tackle youth offending is to tackle the causes. We know that mental health problems play a substantial role in youth offending. That is one reason that I welcome the Deputy Prime Minister’s announcement of a £1.25 billion investment in young people’s mental health, but what is the Ministry of Justice doing to try to make sure that young people with mental health problems—in or out of prison—get the support they need so they are treated rather than jailed?
Andrew Selous
I can give my hon. Friend good news on that front. Under this Government we have rolled out the liaison and diversion service—only last week, I visited the excellent scheme up in Wakefield—which is going to cover 50% of the country. It has made very good progress and is an excellent example of partnership working, and I look to seeing it expanded further.
Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)
9. What steps he plans to take to ensure access to justice regardless of ability to pay.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Shailesh Vara)
The Government’s reform programme to promote access to justice aims to deliver a justice system that is more accessible to the public. It aims to support people in resolving their disputes through simpler, more informal remedies, and to limit the scope for inappropriate litigation and the involvement of lawyers in issues which do not need legal input.
Julie Hilling
Let me give the Minister one more chance to answer a question on last week’s Justice Committee report on the civil legal aid cuts, which revealed that the Government have failed to achieve all three of their targets. Can the Minister confirm that there has been an underspend in the legal aid budget, and that exceptional case funding has failed to achieve the aim of protecting access to justice for the most vulnerable?
Mr Vara
For the benefit of the hon. Lady, let me say once again that if it were not for the Government whom she supported causing the mess that they did, we would not have been obliged to make the cuts we have had to make. Despite making them, we still have one of the most generous legal aid budgets in the world.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
Can the Minister tell the House how our legal aid budget compares internationally?
Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)
It is a fact that the Government’s cuts to legal aid have denied thousands access to legal advice. The Government’s changes to tribunal and court fees are having an additional impact on women and other vulnerable groups. The number of victims of domestic violence receiving legal aid has fallen significantly, and the number of sex discrimination claims is down by 90%. Unless the Government genuinely believe that this is an indication of significant improvements to society—that it indicates less domestic violence and less sex discrimination—women are being denied access to justice. Will the Government agree to an urgent review of the impact of the changes they have made on women and other vulnerable groups?
Mr Vara
In that very long contribution from the right hon. Gentleman, it is regrettable that not once did he say that if he were Lord Chancellor, he would reverse the cuts we have made. That sums up where the Opposition are: they are happy to object, they are happy to write articles—[Interruption.] Yes, the right hon. Gentleman points to the public. I point to the public as well, and I say that nowhere did the right hon. Gentleman say that Labour would reverse the cuts we have made. [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. Members must calm down. The right hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) is a distinguished ornament of this House, a celebrated figure, a former Minister. Decorum, I remind her.
Mr Speaker
When the right hon. Lady was a Minister, she had to answer questions. She is not burdened with that responsibility at present.
Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)
10. What steps his Department has taken to reduce reoffending rates.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Grayling)
We have opened up the delivery of rehabilitation services to a diverse range of public, private and voluntary sector providers who will be paid in full only if they are successful at reducing reoffending. Rehabilitation support is being extended to an extra 45,000 offenders on sentences of less than 12 months who have previously received little, if any, support on release and have the highest reoffending rates.
Adam Afriyie
It seems to me that there is nothing better for the economy, society and our constituents than when offenders come out of prison and stay out of prison, so my spirits are lifted to learn that across the Windsor constituency there were fewer than 100 reoffenders in the year to 2013. Does the Secretary of State agree that we must continue to do all we can to help ex-offenders back into work and to help them regain a foothold in our society?
Chris Grayling
Absolutely—this is now the only way we can continue to drive down crime to the degree we want. We have fewer first-time offenders, as the Under-Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), said earlier, and that is good news. Crime increasing is caused by people going round and round the system. I believe that for the first time in decades, we have real chance of making a serious impact on that by providing support to short-sentence prisoners who were previously left to walk the streets with £46 in their pockets, and not surprisingly ended up back in the same places committing the same crimes all over again.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
11. What steps he is taking to ensure the safety of prisoners and staff on the prison estate.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Grayling)
We are committed to delivering safe, decent and secure prisons. Reducing the number of deaths in custody is a key priority, and we are working hard to reduce levels of violence in our prisons. We have introduced a new protocol that will ensure that when there are serious assaults on prison staff, the perpetrators will be prosecuted wherever possible.
Andrew Bridgen
What does the Secretary of State believe the new protocol between the Prison Service, the Crown Prosecution Service and the Association of Chief Police Officers will deliver with regard to prison safety?
Chris Grayling
I hope that it will make a big difference to our staff. I pay tribute to prison staff, who do a difficult job. It is particularly difficult at the moment, with an upsurge in violence. A lot of that is due to the prevalence of so-called legal highs—new psychoactive substances—in our prisons. We have taken a number of steps to try to restrict access to those drugs, which are absolutely unacceptable in our prisons. When serious assaults previously took place, prosecutions might not have happened because those people were in jail. Now, they will, and I hope that will be a deterrent.
Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)
An obvious way of enhancing safety on the prison estate is by boosting morale, so why has there been a 0% pay award to prison staff and a threatened injunction from the Secretary of State if those staff dare to consider opposing this imposition?
Chris Grayling
The prison unions asked me to implement the review of the recommendations of the public sector pay body—the Prison Service pay review body—and I have done so.
Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)
17. Given prison officers’ genuine concerns about the rates of violence and suicide in prisons, is there any chance of an independent review of the impact of benchmarking and staff reductions on those rates?
Chris Grayling
We will continue to review the impact of benchmarking. There is no evidence that connects changes within the prison sector to the number of suicides in prisons, which has been much too high in recent months. Suicides have happened in prisons where there have been no staffing changes, as well as ones where there have been staffing changes, and in prisons where there have been good inspection reports and poor inspection reports. This is an issue in our prisons and a broader issue in society as a whole, and we must all work hard to deal with it.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
The Secretary of State did not respond to the latter part of the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery), concerning the injunction he has threatened against the Prison Officers Association purely for convening a national executive committee meeting to discuss how to respond to the 0% pay rise. How can he justify this legal attack on the democratic rights of a trade union?
Chris Grayling
The hon. Gentleman will be aware that, in law, prison officers are not permitted to strike. I have done what I said I would do for the unions, which is to implement in full the recommendation of the pay review body.
Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)
The situation in our prisons is dire. Many times over the years we have heard the word “crisis” used. I have to say that the situation now is as bad as I have ever seen it. The most recent quarterly prison safety report makes exceptionally grim reading, with serious assaults on staff at an all-time high. Grimmer still was an e-mail I received from an officer who said:
“I have been a prison officer for 17 years. I have never felt so vulnerable before, we have had another serious assault on a member of staff that has required treatment. Do you have any idea what it’s like to go to work feeling scared?”
Is it not an outrageous truth that violence has become an occupational hazard for our prison officers?
Chris Grayling
The hon. Lady is absolutely right that the rise in serious violence in our prisons is wholly unacceptable. It is pretty clear to me that the biggest cause of that change has been the presence of so-called legal highs—new psychoactive substances—in our prisons. Only last Friday, I spoke to a prison governor who said that it is the key problem that staff face. We have taken a number of steps, including criminalising the throwing of substances over a wall in prisons. We are about to trial body scanners in our prisons. We will take all steps that we sensibly can to protect our staff. These substances are a danger to our society as a whole. They need to be dealt with effectively in our prisons, and they will be.
Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)
12. What recent assessment he has made of the outcome of the pilots of section 28 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Shailesh Vara)
Recorded pre-trial cross-examination is designed to help vulnerable witnesses to give their best possible evidence and to spare them the trauma of being cross-examined in front of a jury and the public. The hon. Lady will know that we have been piloting the scheme in Liverpool, Leeds and Kingston upon Thames Crown courts, and that the pilots ended in October 2014. Interim findings from the evaluation of the pilots are awaited, and an announcement of the plans for any future roll-out of the scheme will be made in due course.
Ann Coffey
I recently visited the recorder of Liverpool, Judge Goldstone, who said that the section 28 pilot in Liverpool had resulted in a sea change in culture in court: cross-examinations without the aggressive barracking and repetitive questions of defence lawyers, and impressive outcomes in the reduction of stress and anxiety in children. Does the Minister agree that if the pilot was rolled out to every court, it would hugely increase the confidence of child witnesses in the criminal justice system?
Sir Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)
13. How many foreign nationals have been released from prison since May 2010.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Andrew Selous)
The total number of foreign national offenders released from prison between May 2010 and September 2014 is 38,256. That does not take into account offenders who have been transferred to an immigration removal centre, releases of indeterminate prisoners and those on home detention curfew.
Sir Hugh Bayley
Thousands of foreign criminals have been released from prison, and the Public Accounts Committee reported just two months ago that the number being deported is now 500 lower than it was in 2008-09 under the previous Government. The last Conservative manifesto said:
“We will extend early deportation of foreign national prisoners”.
What did the word “extend” mean?
Andrew Selous
I can tell the hon. Gentleman that the number of foreign national offenders in our prisons doubled when his Government were in power. This Government have brought the number down: from 11,135 in June 2010 to 10,503. He is of course right that we have further work to do. We have signed prisoner transfer agreements with Nigeria, Somaliland and Albania, and we are actively making sure that European Union prisoner transfer arrangements take place, notably with Poland at the end of next year. We are absolutely focused on continuing to make progress on this important issue.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
When a foreign national commits a crime in the United Kingdom, they should be sent back to where they came from and banned from ever returning. Should we not also compulsorily transfer prisoners from our jails to prisons in their own countries? What new compulsory transfer agreements are the Government working on?
Andrew Selous
I commend my hon. Friend’s persistence, as always, on this issue. The introduction of the Immigration Act 2014 will make a significant difference. It gives us the ability to deport people first, allowing foreign national offenders to appeal in their home country later. We have reduced the number of appeal options from 17 to four, which is starting to make a difference.
Andrew Stephenson (Pendle) (Con)
14. What steps the Government have taken to provide greater protection and support for vulnerable victims during trials.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Grayling)
Last September, we published “Our Commitment to Victims”, a key plank of which is supporting vulnerable victims and witnesses in court. We are doing so by establishing non-court locations for vulnerable witnesses to give their evidence using a live link, evaluating the pilots of recorded pre-trial cross-examination—I am very much of the view that that should be extended nationwide if the trial proves successful—and strengthening the training requirements for publicly funded advocates in sexual offence cases.
Andrew Stephenson
My constituent Jane Clough was murdered by her ex-partner Jonathan Vass while he was out on bail. I have been very fortunate to be able to work with Jane’s parents, John and Penny Clough, in their successful fight to change the law to allow vulnerable victims to challenge judge-made bail decisions. Will my right hon. Friend confirm to the House that the provision is being used, and that vulnerable victims are being protected because of that change in the law?
Chris Grayling
I commend my hon. Friend for his work in this important area. He is referring to the provision that allows Crown court decisions to grant bail to be challenged in the High Court. That exists largely through his efforts and those of John and Penny Clough, whom I also commend. The provision is used sparingly, as was intended, but bail decisions are being reversed, from time to time, as a result.
Mike Weatherley (Hove) (Con)
15. If he will bring forward legislative proposals to reduce the disparity between sentences for physical and online crime.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Grayling)
The sentences that are available for crimes that are committed online are the same as those for offences that are committed offline. Fraud or malicious communications, for example, carry severe maximum penalties, whether committed online or offline. Sentencing in individual cases is a matter for the courts. Sentencing guidelines are issued by the independent Sentencing Council to help ensure that there is proportionate and consistent sentencing.
Mike Weatherley
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the report released last week that suggested that the punishments for online and offline crime should be equalised demonstrates that education is needed to show that the two sentences should be equal?
Chris Grayling
I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I pay tribute to him, since this is his last Justice questions, for the work that he has done in this area over the past five years. He will be much missed in this place and I wish him the very best for the future. This is one area where his work has had an impact on the way in which the Government think and the way in which legislation is shaped.
Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
18. The growth in online crime suggests that many people still do not understand that what is illegal offline is illegal online. Has the time come to make websites and social media operators verify the identity of the people who use their services in the UK to make it easier for people to be held accountable for their actions online?
Chris Grayling
My right hon. Friend has also done important work in this area, including her success in dealing with the issue of revenge porn. I have a lot of sympathy with what she says. This area needs continuous scrutiny, and my Department and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport continue to work closely on it. It is an area in which the next Parliament will have to do further work.
Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)
16. What assessment he has made of recent trends in levels of prison officer recruitment, retention and training.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Andrew Selous)
The National Offender Management Service is on course to recruit its target of 1,700 new prison officers by next month. The training capacity for new officers has been expanded to meet demand. There has been a small increase in the rate of leaving by new officers.
Liz McInnes
Will the Minister answer the final part of the question regarding the training of prison officers, which he omitted to do in his response?
Andrew Selous
Very willingly. I am always mindful of Mr Speaker’s injunction to keep answers short. We have a six-week residential training course to provide a custodial national vocational qualification. In time, we want to raise that to a 10-week course, but we have not been able to do so because Newbold Revel, which I visited last week, is full to bursting with prison officers. Prison officers are taught to a very high standard. On my visit last week, I spoke to prison officers in training, and I am very pleased with the excellent work that is being done there.
Mr Speaker
The right hon. Lady’s moment has arrived. I call Fiona Mactaggart.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
19. How many women who have been victims of domestic violence applied for legal aid in proceedings relating to their children in the latest period for which figures are available; and if he will make a statement.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Shailesh Vara)
From July to September 2014, there were 3,097 applications for legal aid in relation to private law proceedings under the Children Act 1989. Due to the way in which data are collected, that figure includes applications where there was evidence of child abuse and applications that were made by men. I will write to the right hon. Lady to provide a breakdown of applications by gender.
Fiona Mactaggart
I asked for the figures because the gateway into legal aid for victims of domestic violence requires them to provide evidence that they have been victims of domestic violence in the last two years. We know that abusers use child custody and access arrangements to further abuse their victims. What is the Minister doing about that?
Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)
21. What steps his Department is taking to protect children who are at risk of grooming.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Grayling)
In the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015, the Government amended section 15 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 to reduce the number of initial occasions on which the defendant must meet or communicate with the child in question from two to one. That will permit more effective intervention by the police in relation to individuals who could otherwise have been prosecuted only when a second contact had been established.
Stuart Andrew
My right hon. Friend will be aware that the report into child sexual abuse in Rotherham highlighted the role of some taxi drivers in the town in facilitating abuse. The point has been raised with me that someone could apply for a licence in one authority and be rejected, but apply successfully in another authority. What measures are the Ministry of Justice and the Department for Communities and Local Government taking to prevent that happening and to safeguard children?
Chris Grayling
A cross-Government working group is looking at what took place in Rotherham, what lessons can be learned, and what changes can be put in place. I agree with my hon. Friend that that area should be given serious consideration.
Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Chris Grayling)
I am pleased to inform the House that last month the United Kingdom hosted the Global Law Summit. The event was a major success, highlighting the importance of the legal sector to our economy, promoting the quality of our legal services abroad, and celebrating the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. More than 2,000 delegates from 110 countries attended, and 65 countries were represented by ministerial delegations. My departmental colleagues and I had productive discussions with our international counterparts. The summit was a unique event bringing together Government Ministers, senior legal figures and business leaders from around the world, and it was probably the largest legal event of its kind ever held. I am proud that working with the legal profession, the City of London, UK Trade & Investment and a range of commercial sponsors, the Government supported that summit and the UK hosted it. It was a fantastic advert for the rule of law, our legal sector and our country.
Miss McIntosh
Can the Justice Secretary tell the House when the principle of adverse possession has been tested in the courts recently? Does he share my understanding that an owner of land can possess that land but still allow access over it, such as, for example, in the case of a village hall at Scrayingham where the villagers have used and maintained that hall and the landowner has previously allowed access to it?
Chris Grayling
I do not know the exact occasion on which that principle was previously tested, but I am aware of the case to which my hon. Friend refers. She and I have discussed it, and I am happy to work with her to consider whether there is a loophole in the law that should be changed.
Sadiq Khan (Tooting) (Lab)
In 2010 the prison riot squad was called out to prisons 118 times, which was too many. Last year it was called out 223 times—a 90% increase—and that is with 18 fewer prisons than in 2010. That is a disgrace. We have fewer prisons with fewer staff, and not enough work or training for inmates. We have record numbers of deaths in custody, and prisoner-on-prisoner and prisoner-on-staff assaults have surged. We heard a lot in 2010 about a rehabilitation revolution. Where did it go wrong?
Chris Grayling
Let me tell the right hon. Gentleman what is actually happening. The number of prisoner qualifications is up, as is the number of hours worked in prisons. On the size of our prison estate, we will go into this election with 3,000 more adult male prison places than we had in 2010, and we have done that while bringing down the cost of the prison estate to sort out the mess left behind by the previous Government. The Labour Government brought about a crisis in our prisons that led to them having to let offenders out early because they ran out of space in our prisons. I will take no lessons from Labour about how to run our prisons.
Sadiq Khan
Evidence, if it was needed, of a man completely out of touch. Most judges, lawyers, probation staff, prison officers, victims, court staff, and people denied access to justice believe that the right hon. Gentleman has been the worst Lord Chancellor since Lord Shaftesbury in 1673—the two of you have a thing or two in common, so you should check him out. In a poll commissioned last month, 82% of people in the legal sector said that they were more likely to vote Tory if the Justice Secretary was replaced. Why does he think the figure is not higher?
Chris Grayling
In the last Justice questions before the election, all I get from the right hon. Gentleman is abuse. Do you know why, Mr Speaker? Since he has no policies and ideas, all he can do is resort to abuse, and that is all he ever does.
Charlie Elphicke (Dover) (Con)
T2. Is the Lord Chancellor aware of a report by the Henry Jackson Society that shows that at least 20 foreign terrorists have used the Human Rights Act to prevent their deportation from the United Kingdom? Does that underline the need for modernisation and reform of the Human Rights Act, and its replacement with a British Bill of Rights?
Chris Grayling
Absolutely it underlines that requirement. All of us in this House will, I suspect, be debating these matters in a lively way in the next few months. I believe we need to reform. I think the people of this country need reform. It is a matter of surprise to me that the other parties in this House do not appear to agree.
Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)
T3. Everyone will support attempts to prevent drugs getting into prisons. Reports at the weekend said that £15 million is to be spent on a new state-of-the-art drugs scanner for prisons. Can the Justice Secretary say when the first scanners will be in place, and which prisons will be in receipt of them first?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Andrew Selous)
We will invest in a new generation of body scanners that will help us to detect substances being smuggled into prison. In addition, the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015 introduces powers to test specific non-controlled drugs as part of mandatory drug testing. We are providing new guidance to governors. Through the Serious Crime Act 2015, it is now illegal to throw anything over the wall, including spice or any other drug.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
T4. A couple of months ago, I asked the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government if he would speak to the Justice Secretary about the prospect of speeding up the eviction process for illegal Traveller encampments by appointing specialist magistrates who are able to sit at short notice and out of hours. Has he had that conversation and is he sympathetic to progressing this matter?
Chris Grayling
We have had a discussion on the Traveller issue. It is an area on which we both feel strongly, and one that requires attention after the general election as soon as a Conservative Government are elected.
Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)
T5. Does the Justice Secretary not sense a little bit of irony in his hijacking of the 800th anniversary celebrations of Magna Carta at a time when his Government are constantly removing people’s rights and removing access to justice? Is that not hypocritical?
Chris Grayling
We hear the same old tune from the Opposition time and time again. They oppose the changes we have made, but they will not commit to reverse them. Until and unless they turn around and say, “We will reverse the changes you have had to make because of the mess that was left behind” I will not take them seriously.
Stuart Andrew (Pudsey) (Con)
T6. Breaking the cycle of crime is crucial. Does my right hon. Friend welcome the news that Out 4 Success, a former prisoners’ social enterprise, will be holding a launch event in Parliament next week? Would he be willing to pop along and meet its founders, Grant Doyle and Mark Hirst?
Andrew Selous
I very much agree with my hon. Friend. We are blessed to have 1,300 charities working in this sector. There are many social enterprises, such as the one he mentions, doing an excellent job. I will definitely try to meet the founders he has mentioned.
Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)
T8. What powers does the Ministry of Justice have to enforce UK family court orders, such as child custody, in the Crown dependency of Guernsey? My constituent’s access to his son is being prevented. These are very difficult circumstances. Will the Minister raise this issue with his counterpart?
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Simon Hughes)
This is an issue that has exercised a lot of colleagues in the House. We do not have any power to tell other jurisdictions what to do, including in the Channel Islands or the Isle of Man. We have a mechanism of communicating the decisions of our courts to their courts, and we have ways in which the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and others support people in pursuing their rights, but there is no enforcement mechanism in international law. It is left to domestic jurisdictions to make their decisions.
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
T7. The Lord Chancellor has already referred to the Global Law Summit, which enabled the UK’s legal sector to highlight its pre-eminence as a centre of legal and business innovation. Will he tell the House about some of the benefits we will see as a result of this important event?
Chris Grayling
It is very much my hope that we will achieve two things. The event enabled contacts to be made around the world. That will enable law firms, our barristers and others who took part, to find new business opportunities to help enhance the economy of this country and the legal services sector and boost our long-term economic plan. In addition, I hope we have set a foundation that will allow the event to be held again in future and that we will continue to make London the centre of legal services internationally.
Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
People with asbestos-related diseases not only have to cope with their illness, but often have a difficult court battle to get compensation. With the proposed rise in court fees, which are totally disproportionate—for example, going from £1,300 to £10,000—many claimants will be deterred. Will the Minister look again at the scale of those rises to see if they can be reduced to a more reasonable level?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mr Shailesh Vara)
Some 90% of people will not be affected by the enhanced fees, and we have waivers for people who do not qualify on financial grounds. The fees will apply only to a relatively small number of people, and even for them we have the waivers.
Mr Laurence Robertson (Tewkesbury) (Con)
T9. Does the Secretary of State agree that burglary is a serious offence and causes great pain to victims, yet far too few people convicted of burglary offences actually receive custodial sentences? Will Ministers look at this and do something about it?
Chris Grayling
I agree with my hon. Friend. I hope that one thing we have done that will make a difference is tightening up the law on the use of cautions. We had a situation in which people could receive cautions time and again, rather than ending up in front of magistrates courts, but as a result of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015, that situation will now change, and it is necessary that it does so.
Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)
In 2010, the Government put on hold plans to rebuild Sunderland’s court complex, and answers to recent parliamentary questions reveal what we have always feared—that no decision was ever likely to be taken in this Parliament. What would the Minister say to people across Sunderland to explain his Government’s complete failure to make any progress in the last five years?
Mr Vara
I would say to the people of Sunderland: look at the record of the Labour party in government—it did absolutely nothing. We have put in place a five-year reform programme that will bring our courts into the 21st century. Her Government did not do that, but we have, and in five years, we will have the best courts in the world.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
T10. My plans for the regeneration of the city of Gloucester include a new car park and entrance to Gloucester station, but they depend on a land sale agreement between the Ministry of Justice and the city council and the land’s onward leasing to First Great Western. Ministers have been sympathetic to urban regeneration. Will my hon. Friend confirm whether the MOJ has agreed an independent local valuation so that rapid progress can be made on the sale?
Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)
The Justice Secretary has confirmed that he will plough on with his barmy idea for two-tier contracts for criminal solicitors, so it will fall to either the Court of Appeal or my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) to kick this barmy idea into touch forever after we win the election. How does the Justice Secretary expect criminal firms and solicitors to give up 50% of their client work voluntarily? We have asked that lots of times, but we have never had an answer.
Chris Grayling
The important thing for any Lord Chancellor is to ensure that if somebody is arrested and taken to a police station, there will be a lawyer to represent them. These reforms will ensure that that happens, even in difficult times financially, when fee levels have to be cut. My disappointment is that although these reforms were agreed by the previous leadership of the Law Society, the current leadership has taken a rather different view.
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
There are 6,100 tariff-expired offenders serving indeterminate sentences, at a cost, I estimate, of £200 million annually. What are Ministers doing to ensure access to courses in prisons to facilitate offenders’ timely rehabilitation?
Andrew Selous
I can tell my hon. Friend that we are improving significantly the amount of work and education in prisons. As the Secretary of State said, the number of qualifications has increased, and the number of courses is increasing as well. We will keep a focus on this important area.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
When the Lord Chancellor had the pleasure of meeting lawyers from all over the world at this global summit, how many of them came up to him and said what a great idea it was to advance the human rights cause around the world while withdrawing from the European convention on human rights, and did they offer him any advice on the need to remain within the orbit of international humanitarian law?
Chris Grayling
I had no such conversations one way or the other—[Interruption.]—because nobody raised the issue with me. The hon. Gentleman and I disagree fundamentally on this issue—I believe that change is necessary; he does not—but the difference is that the public support me, not him.
Mr Speaker
Order. We must now move on to the ten-minute rule motion. I call Mr Jim Hood.
Burial and cremation services in West Lancashire
Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)
For several years I have been campaigning alongside various community groups, including the West Lancashire Pensioners Forum. Our aim is to secure new cemetery and crematorium provision in West Lancashire, thereby rectifying the awful and unacceptable situation facing many residents. It is an issue that West Lancashire borough council refuses to address. Too many families are laying their loved ones to rest in neighbouring boroughs due to the unavailability of local burial plots. These families are incurring higher funeral costs and have to travel further to visit the graves of their loved ones—a major challenge in an area where people are reliant on public transport. I therefore present this petition to the House of Commons on behalf of West Lancashire Pensioners Forum and for the residents of West Lancashire.
The petition states:
The Petition of residents of the West Lancashire constituency,
Declares that burial and cremation services should be provided in West Lancashire without delay; further that this provision will mean that burial and cremation services are less expensive and more convenient for residents and further that a local petition on this matter has been signed by 2000 individuals.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to encourage West Lancashire Borough Council to provide burial and cremation services in West Lancashire.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P001460]
Rough Close Post Office
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
This is a petition relating to Rough Close post office. It is a petition to the House of Commons by residents of the constituency of Stone in Staffordshire. It contains more than 500 signatures which have been supplied to the Post Office and it is now coming before Parliament.
The petition states:
The Petition of residents of the constituency of Stone in Staffordshire,
Declares that residents of Meir Heath object to the relocation of the local Rough Close Post Office branch from Grindley Lane to Sandon Road in Meir Heath; further that a number of products and services will not be available at the new post office; further that the Petitioners will need to find alternative providers to carry out the banking, parcel services and travel insurance on demand; further that there are limited parking facilities at the relocated site which would cause disruption to residents, road users and post office delivery; further that the relocated site would be unsuitable and would pose increased difficulties for the elderly, including the crossing of a major road; further that given the size of the premises, residents wishing to use Post Office facilities would need to queue outside; further that the new open plan serving positions may come with a lack of privacy and security; and further that the Petitioners currently receive professional services from fully trained post office staff with many years’ experience at the existing location.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to intervene to keep the Rough Close Post Office branch in its existing location on Grindley Lane.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P001462]
Representation of the People (Candidate’s Disclosure)
Mr Jim Hood (Lanark and Hamilton East) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make provision for the disclosure of convictions and sentences etc. by candidates for election to specified public roles; and for connected purposes.
The purpose of my Bill is to impose a legal requirement on a candidate for any of the roles mentioned in subsection (2), which reads:
“Application of Section 2 shall apply to candidates standing for election to the role of…member of the House of Commons…hereditary member of the House of Lords…member of the Scottish Parliament…member of the National Assembly for Wales…member of the Northern Ireland Assembly…member of the European Parliament for a UK constituency…member of the Greater London Assembly… elected mayor, including Mayor of London…district, borough, county, county borough or unitary authority councillor…parish or community councillor…Police and Crime Commissioner”.
The current position is set out in the House of Commons Library standard note of 16 April 2014 as follows:
“An individual who is convicted of a recordable offence will have a ‘nominal record’ of that conviction placed on the Police National Computer. Nominal records will also be created for individuals who are cautioned, reprimanded, warned or arrested for such offences. An individual’s nominal record is retained until his 100th birthday.”
The police national database is used to record details of “soft” police intelligence—for example, details of criminal investigations that do not lead to a conviction. The intention will generally be to retain this information for a minimum of six years, and longer if it relates to allegations of a serious offence or if the individual concerned is considered to pose an ongoing risk.
When a person applies for a so-called “excepted position”, he or she may be required to provide details of their record by way of a standard or enhanced criminal records check from the Disclosure and Barring Service, formerly the Criminal Records Bureau. Excepted positions cover, for example, work with children or vulnerable adults and roles in certain licensed occupations or positions of trust such as police officers and solicitors. It is my contention that elected representatives of the people as listed in subsection (2) fall within the category applicable to police officers, teachers, doctors, nurses, voluntary youth workers and so forth, and should therefore be added to the professions requiring disclosure statements.
The reputation of politics in general, and of some of its elected representatives in particular, has been tarnished in recent times. We have in no small measure a collective responsibility to do what we can to restore the reputation of Parliament and all our public institutions. If a school teacher, a school bus driver, a police officer, a doctor, a nurse, a community volunteer and many thousands of other public service professionals are required to have disclosure statements as a prerequisite to their being able to pursue their profession, why not MPs, councillors, MSPs, London Assembly members and so forth?
It was a school teacher from Lanark grammar school in my constituency who, during a meeting in my office at a prearranged visit with three of her students asked me, “Do MPs need to have disclosure statements?”, to which I felt sheepish in saying no. I am presenting the Bill today thanks to that teacher’s inquiry, and I look forward to the day when my answer will be, “Of course.”
On the eve of a general election, thousands of candidates are ready for the off following the Dissolution of Parliament next week. In truth, although all political parties have their own procedures for vetting their prospective candidates, they rarely, if ever, have information about a candidate’s criminal antecedence. That is surely an impediment to our doing right by the people we represent.
Child protection must and always will be at the heart of everything that we do in the House of Commons. Legislators must subject themselves to the same scrutiny, and the same laws that we pass, that apply to members of our electorate. I am sure that those taking part in Justice Lowell Goddard’s inquiry into historical child abuse will want to identify any potential weaknesses in child protection legislation with a view to scrutinising political institutions in connection with all aspects of child protection.
In the light of all that has gone before, my Bill is an attempt to bring the political elite under greater scrutiny, and to reassure the public that the laws that we pass for them apply to all their elected representatives. I commend it to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Mr Jim Hood, Mr Brian H. Donohoe, Mr Dennis Skinner, Jim Sheridan, Mr Tom Clarke, Pamela Nash, Sir Alan Meale, Mr Frank Roy, Mr Ian Davidson, John Robertson, Ian Lavery and Mr Russell Brown present the Bill.
Mr Jim Hood accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 27 March and to be printed (Bill 189).
Modern Slavery Bill (Programme) (No. 3)
Motion made, and Question put forthwith (Standing Order No. 83A(7)),
That the following provisions shall apply to the Modern Slavery Bill for the purpose of supplementing the Orders of 8 July 2014 (Modern Slavery Bill (Programme)) and 4 November 2014 (Modern Slavery Bill (Programme) (No. 2)):
Consideration of Lords Amendments
(1) Proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion three hours after their commencement at today’s sitting.
(2) The proceedings shall be taken in the following order: Lords Amendment No. 72; Lords Amendments Nos. 1 to 71; Lords Amendments Nos. 73 to 95.
Subsequent stages
(3) Any further Message from the Lords may be considered forthwith without any Question being put.
(4) The proceedings on any further Message from the Lords shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour after their commencement..—(Karen Bradley.)
Question agreed to.
Modern Slavery Bill
(9 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
14:52 - The House divided: - Ayes: 276 / Noes: 209 - Question accordingly agreed to.
Mr Speaker
I must draw the House’s attention to the fact that financial privilege is involved in Lords amendments 20, 45 and 61. If the House agrees to any of those amendments, I shall cause an appropriate entry to be made in the Journal.
After Clause 50
Protection from slavery for overseas domestic workers
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Karen Bradley)
I beg to move, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 72.
Mr Speaker
With this it will be convenient to take Government amendments (a) to (c) in lieu of Lords amendment 72.
Karen Bradley
As Members know, there has been considerable interest in the position of overseas domestic workers during debates on the Bill, both here and in another place. We have had excellent debates on this important issue. I am grateful to Members of both Houses for raising it, and I want to address it fully today.
At this point in my speech, I was going to wish the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) a speedy recovery, because he has been so instrumental in bringing us to this point in the Bill’s passage. I had not expected to see him here today, and I am delighted that he is present. I hope that he is feeling considerably better, and I look forward to hearing from him later in the debate.
Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)
I am immensely grateful to the Minister for those comments, and Mr Speaker was nodding in agreement—so much so that I hope he may actually call me to speak in the debate.
Mr Speaker
That is a very ingenious way of signalling a desire to contribute, and the right hon. Gentleman might find that his desire is accommodated.
Karen Bradley
I look forward to hearing from the right hon. Gentleman, and it sounds to me as though you will be obliging, Mr Speaker.
Holding anyone in slavery or servitude or trafficking them is an abhorrent crime, which this Government are determined to stamp out. Such abuse of anyone on an overseas domestic worker visa is totally unacceptable. This landmark Modern Slavery Bill’s core purpose is to make sure both that law enforcement has the tools to ensure those who commit these appalling crimes are caught and punished and that victims receive the protection and support they need to recover. This is crucial to our approach to overseas domestic workers. This Bill means those who traffic overseas domestic workers or hold them in servitude can receive a life sentence and that the slavery, servitude and forced or compulsory labour offence reflects the particular circumstances of vulnerable victims.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
I applaud and understand what the Minister says about ensuring that those who enslave domestic servants should be given a life sentence. If that was to happen and the law enforcement agencies were to get involved with the employer, what would happen to the employee?
Karen Bradley
I shall address later in my remarks exactly what is envisaged through the amendment in lieu to give support specifically to people on an overseas domestic workers visa who are victims of slavery.
The Bill means that all victims of modern slavery will have major new protections such as the statutory defence to prevent them from being treated inappropriately as criminals. I understand and share the sentiment behind Lords amendment 72. When my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and I looked at it and considered how to respond to the Lords vote, our priority was to improve the protection for victims of modern slavery. I know that that is in line with the spirit in which peers passed the amendment and I am grateful for their careful scrutiny of the Bill. That common focus on supporting and protecting victims of modern slavery is why I am not simply proposing that this House should disagree with the Lords amendment. Instead, even at this late stage of the passage of the Bill, we are proposing to add additional protections for overseas domestic workers who fall victim to modern slavery.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
It is essential that we get this Bill on the statute book before the Dissolution of Parliament next week. Although the amendments coming from the other place, including amendment 72, have absolutely the right sentiment, does the Minister agree that it is vital that we ensure this legislation gets on the statute book at the earliest possible opportunity so that these fundamental and important protections can become the law of the land?
Karen Bradley
I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. He is right: we are at a very late stage and we want this Bill to become an Act of Parliament. We want the Modern Slavery Act, the first piece of anti-slavery legislation for 200 years, to be on the statute book. We must make sure we achieve that, but in a way that provides all victims, including victims on an overseas domestic worker visa, with the support and protection they need.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
The hon. Lady emphasised that she wanted, through the Government amendment, to give additional protections to domestic workers, but in fact I think her amendment has either confused her or is designed to confuse the House, because it actually reduces the protections that exist under the national referral mechanism. Has she looked at the National Crime Agency report about what happens to someone who has conclusive grounds? First, they are given 12 months’ leave to remain, but the Minister is suggesting that domestic workers get only six months’ leave to remain and cannot get access to public funds. Those two things are available to every other enslaved worker, but will not be available to domestic workers.
Karen Bradley
I am afraid that the right hon. Lady has misunderstood the amendment. The protections available to all victims of modern slavery who go through the national referral mechanism will be available to victims who have come here on an overseas domestic workers visa. That includes the discretionary right to stay for 12 months and one day if they are assisting the police with their inquiries. In addition, we are including in the Bill the provision for six months’ leave to stay and work irrespective of whether the person is assisting the police with their inquiries. That is a minimum of six months, in addition to the 12 months’ discretionary leave. It is in addition to the support that is available to all victims of slavery who go through the national referral mechanism.
Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)
The good progress in the Lords reflects the comments that were made in the Bill Committee. Will the Minister say a little more about the guidance and tell us what is going to happen on the ground to ensure that enforcement action will not be taken against overseas domestic workers who are going through the national referral mechanism? Will the guidance have proper bite to ensure that no inappropriate action is taken and that victims are properly treated as victims?
Karen Bradley
My hon. Friend and the right hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) were strong and assiduous members of the Committee that scrutinised the Bill as it went through the House of Commons, which is when we started debating this issue. My hon. Friend is right to mention the guidance, and I shall explain more about that in a moment. It is absolutely clear that all front-line professionals need to understand that the visa situation of an individual is irrelevant in these circumstances: if they are a victim of slavery, they are a victim of slavery, and they will need the support that is available. As I have said, the amendment will give additional support for victims who are on an overseas domestic workers visa, and I shall explain why that is appropriate.
Before I explain the additional protections, which seek to address the important concerns raised in the other place, I should explain to the House why I am deeply concerned that Lords amendment 72 will not protect victims, however well intentioned it might be. There is a real risk that it will achieve the opposite. I want to ensure that a provision to support overseas domestic workers who fall victim to modern slavery will help those vulnerable people get the help they need and allow law enforcement to take action to prevent their abusers from doing the same to another domestic worker. I do not believe that the Lords amendment would achieve either of those things. Members will have seen from my letter that those worries are shared by senior law enforcement officers working in this field.
I should remind the House that the overseas domestic workers visa allows visitors to the UK to bring their existing domestic staff with them when they visit the UK, for a maximum of six months. Separate arrangements apply for the small number of overseas domestic workers who work in diplomatic households. Around 15,000 of these visas are issued every year, and the data suggest that visits typically last for only about 15 days, so the vast majority of overseas domestic workers will be here for a very short time. To qualify for this short-term visa, there must be evidence of a long-term employment relationship between employer and employee.
Even before the Lords debate on Report, the Government announced that the safeguards would be strengthened. There will be a new standard contract, along with changes to the immigration rules to strengthen the guarantees that overseas domestic workers will be paid at least the national minimum wage, pilot programmes of interviews for applicants overseas and the provision of information cards at the border. Given the specific circumstances in which the visa is applicable, it is not possible to change employer during the short period that the workers are in the UK or to extend the visa as a route to settling permanently in the UK.
Lords amendment 72 would change that, allowing overseas domestic workers to change employer and stay in the UK indefinitely, potentially gaining settlement. The Government have listened carefully to the debates on this issue, and we are keen to take an evidence-based approach. As the House will know, the Government have announced an independent review of the overseas domestic workers visa, which is to report in July. The review will look specifically at the ability to change employer. It is being undertaken by James Ewins, a respected expert on modern slavery who served as a specialist legal adviser to the pre-legislative scrutiny Committee on the Bill.
Emily Thornberry
Would not the Lords amendment effectively bring us back to the position that we were in in 2012, which is when the Government changed the immigration rules? My question to the Minister is why did they change the rules in the first place? Why could we not have kept them as they were?
Karen Bradley
The hon. Lady will know that there was abuse under the old regime. We wanted to ensure that we were giving maximum protection to victims. I shall shortly give the House some information from the anti-slavery commissioner designate, who is quite clear about the abuse of workers that he saw when he was working in the Metropolitan police. Those workers were here on the visa and were able to change employer, and they were trafficked and moved between employers by organised criminal gangs.
There was abuse under the old system, so going back to the old system is not the right answer. The answer is to find out what the problem is with the visa and to ensure that we are not importing abuse. That is what I am determined to do, and that is what I have asked James Ewins to look at. The measures in the Bill today are designed to give as much protection, support and information as possible to workers on this visa. By July, we shall have a full evidence base for the best way of supporting those employees, and that is the point at which changes should be made. They should be made when we have the evidence.
Emily Thornberry
I am grateful to the Minister for her answer, but I do not really understand why the rules were changed in 2012 if there was no proper evidence to enable them to be changed properly to give people protection. Why are we debating the issue now, three years later? The Government changed the rules, and they made things worse. I do not understand why we are having this debate three years on.
Karen Bradley
The evidence is not that it has made things worse. Kalayaan, the leading charity in this area, was getting 300 victims of slavery coming through its doors each year under the old system. The figure is now 60 a year.
Karen Bradley
I want to understand what is happening with the visa and to ensure that we do not import abuse. The fact is that we need to find the evidence and we need to understand the problem. That is why we have instigated the review and why we are taking the steps that we are taking today.
Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
The Minister has just indicated to the House that the person who will look at this issue was the adviser to the Modern Slavery Bill pre-legislative scrutiny Committee. As she will know, that Committee advised the Government to accept the changes that are being proposed today.
Karen Bradley
The right hon. Gentleman is an experienced parliamentarian, but he knows that there were problems with that visa prior to 2012. We need to root out those problems. We need to find a solution, but the way to do that is not to return to the system under which the abuse occurred. The answer is to find out how to stop the abuse in the first place.
Michael Connarty (Linlithgow and East Falkirk) (Lab)
Will the Minister give way?
Michael Connarty
I have been listening to what the Minister is saying. In the past, under the Labour Government’s visa arrangements, a large number of people reported being abused because they knew that they could leave a bad employer. The Minister boasts that the figure has gone down to 60, but that has happened because people are now trapped with the same employer and can do only one of two things: they can go home, or they can run away. They are not protected under the present visa system, and that is why the number has fallen.
Karen Bradley
The hon. Gentleman will also know that we have reviewed the national referral mechanism and that we are ensuring that it is being extended to all victims of slavery, not just to victims of trafficking. An argument that was always put forward about overseas domestic workers was that they could not qualify for the national referral mechanism because they had not been trafficked. We are changing that, with the Bill and the modern slavery strategy, to ensure that support is available to all victims of slavery. I want to make it clear that anyone who is here on an overseas domestic workers visa can come forward, confident in the knowledge that they will get the support they need and that they will not simply be deported, as the hon. Gentleman is suggesting. They will be able to go through the national referral mechanism. At the end of that process, they will be able to work in this country for a minimum of six months to help them to get back on their feet. When we have the evidence from the review, we will be able to determine our final, definitive position on the visa, but I want to make it absolutely clear to anyone who is here on the visa and to any victim of slavery that the Bill, which I want to see become an Act of Parliament, is there to support and protect them.
Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)
The Minister is moving the debate on, in that she is saying that a future Parliament will decide this issue. We have before us amendments that the Government hope the Lords will accept. The James Ewins review will presumably report after the election. I want to ask the Minister and my own Front-Bench spokesman, my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), whether they will give a commitment that whoever is in government will implement James Ewins’s report.
Karen Bradley
We have asked for this review to take place and we look forward to the recommendations. I cannot commit a future Government, but the intention is that whoever is in government—I very much hope it will be the Conservatives—will implement the review’s recommendations.
Fiona Mactaggart
I tried to intervene on the point about Kalayaan, because I want to put on the record that Kalayaan would say the reason for the reduction in the number of people who sought its help was that the remedies available to them have gone away. Does the Minister share my concern that in primary legislation there is an entitlement to six-months’ leave, which may guide the courts and officers in what they do, but no entitlement to the one year she claims those helping the police with their inquiries will receive?
Karen Bradley
On the numbers, I accept and do not dispute what Kalayaan is saying. What I am saying is that through this Bill we are offering the support Kalayaan says it believes overseas domestic workers do not get. I can work only on the basis of the figures it has produced about the number of people who have come to it looking for support; that is the only evidence I have on this at the moment. I have the other evidence about people who have gone through the NRM having been on an overseas domestic worker visa, and they are far smaller in number than those going through the NRM for domestic servitude who are UK or European economic area nationals, or who are here completely illegally. I can work only on the evidence I have, which is why I have asked James Ewing to look at the point.
The right hon. Lady makes the point about the courts, but they are not determining whether somebody is given a conclusive grounds decision within the NRM. She knows we have reviewed the NRM and introduced, as we will discuss later, an enabling power to put the NRM on to a statutory basis, as and when we have completed the pilots. But it will not be the courts deciding whether somebody gets a conclusive grounds decision; it will be the decision makers within the NRM—those specialists, led at the moment by the Salvation Army, who run the care contract. So this measure will not make any difference to courts decisions or decisions about discretionary leave, but, as she rightly says, this will be the only set of victims who will have something in statute over and above what is available in policy. She should welcome that.
Mr Burrowes
We are all united in wanting to ensure that victims have the confidence to come forward, knowing that they will be supported and not deported. But should we not all share the concern that amendment 72 contains a gap and a flaw, which is that the cycle of abuse could lead to those on domestic work visas changing employers and then not coming forward to the authorities? That issue has been taken up by, among others, the Organised Crime Command. We need to look at what we have before us. We can agree that there is a gap in Lords amendment 72, which needs sorting out.
Karen Bradley
My hon. Friend sums it up perfectly—I could not sum it up better. The problem we have with a system that just allows somebody to change employer is we are brushing the abuse under the carpet; we are not bringing it out into the light. That flies in the face of what we are trying to do through this Bill, which is find the victim.
Karen Bradley
I hope the hon. Gentleman will not mind but I am going to make some progress.
The victims of slavery I have met are incredibly vulnerable people. We have a duty to give them support, look after them, and make sure that they take control of their lives and make the right decisions. I have met too many victims in domestic servitude who were not on visas and who have gone from one abusive employer to another because they were not brought out into the open—we did not find those victims—and we did not give them the support they need.
Suggesting that somebody who has been through the kind of suffering we are talking about could just walk out and find another employer and their life will be okay is disingenuous; it does not reflect the realities of this horrendous crime and the vulnerabilities of these victims. I want to find these victims and give them the specialist support the NRM offers, and I want to make sure they then have control of their own lives to move forward and do the right thing.
Karen Bradley
I said that I was going to make progress, but I will give way to the hon. Lady and the hon. Gentleman, and then do so.
Emily Thornberry
I am trying to think about this in terms of the real world. It seems to me that the best way of escape for someone who is in servitude and being abused would be to find another employer, who could then be supportive. In those circumstances, someone could explain what had happened to them. Such a person is more likely to come forward in those circumstances than they are to come forward to the police when they are still in servitude and still being abused.
Karen Bradley
Let me be clear: this is not about coming forward to the police; it is about victims coming forward to a professional first responder who will refer them into the NRM. If someone chooses to give evidence that allows the police to instigate inquiries, they may be eligible for the 12 months and a day of discretionary leave. But what we are saying is, “You don’t need to come to the police. If you are a victim of slavery, you can come forward to a first responder—a professional—and a charity such as Kalayaan can help you by putting you into the NRM. And if at the end of the specialist support you are given a conclusive grounds decision, you will be allowed to stay and work for six months while you get your life back on track.” If the matter was as simple as someone changing employer, we would not have UK or EEA nationals being victims of slavery. It is not that simple to solve; it is a far more complicated problem. We are talking about 15,000 people who are, on average, here for 15 days. How do we make sure we find those victims? That is the challenge we face and that is what I want the review to deal with.
Michael Connarty
The Minister is trying to explain a difficult subject. The difficulty I have is that she seems to be saying that, regardless of how someone leaves an abusive employer, they end up in a white van heading for some place they are put by the NRM.
Michael Connarty
That is what happens to victims now. They are transferred from a caring organisation such as Kalayaan into what people see as a sterile organisation. Unfortunately, at the moment all the evidence shows that when people went to the police under the last Labour Government’s policy—the three-year visa— the police would send them to Kalayaan and it would then find their escape route. It was something people cared about, supported and had confidence in. Sadly, at the moment the official line—the police line, which is contained in the Government’s amendment—is not attractive to people who are in these situations. Whether the Minister likes it or not, escaping from an abusive employer and finding other employment where their employer does not abuse them is the solution for many people I have spoken to—the ones I met outside, when they presented me with flowers. Their solution is not to be put into some organisation where they are in an official system they do not trust.
Karen Bradley
I have enormous respect for the hon. Gentleman, but the way that he has painted the picture of the support given to victims in the NRM completely flies in the face of what those incredibly dedicated organisations that run the refuges and safe houses I have visited do. These are not sterile environments; they are caring family homes. They are places where people get incredible support and the opportunity to get back on their feet. I want to make it clear, for the record, that where people come forward as victims of slavery, whether they are on any visa or no visa is irrelevant; they should come forward to a first responder, not to the police. The first responder will refer them into the NRM, and just to be clear, it is the human trafficking centre or UK Visas and Immigration that currently makes the reasonable grounds decisions and, of course, the conclusive grounds decisions.
The Salvation Army runs the care contract and makes sure that those individuals who have been given a reasonable grounds decision and are therefore put into the NRM are then given the support they need. It does not matter—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman talks from a sedentary position about visas, but the visa does not matter; they will be put into the NRM and they will be looked after, not in sterile conditions but in very caring, supportive environment, with specialists who make sure that they have the support they need. If, at the end of the time, they have gone through the NRM and the decision is taken that they have a conclusive grounds decision that they are a victim of slavery, they will then be given a six-month visa to work. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman knows—
Mr Speaker
Order. We must conduct this debate in a seemly manner. The hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) cannot just stand up and make his point without having secured agreement to his intervention. We will leave it there for now, but the Minister is understandably animated on the matter.
Karen Bradley
Thank you, Mr Speaker, and I do apologise for that.
It is important to make it clear that victims who go through the national referral mechanism and who have a conclusive grounds decision that they are a victim of slavery will, at that point, have the right to claim six months to stay and work here in the UK. Whether they take up that claim is entirely down to the individual. If that victim assists police with their inquiries, they will receive an additional year and a day discretionary leave.
Returning to my former point, the Government believe that, given the very different views on the effect of the visa tie, this independent review—the one being conducted by James Ewins—is a great opportunity for a careful and objective look at the issue, and we should not pre-judge its findings. It is particularly important that we allow the review to do its work, because I am deeply concerned that the approach in the Lords amendment will not encourage victims to report the perpetrators of these heinous crimes, so that they can be held to account, or help victims access the support they need to recover.
If an overseas domestic worker who has fallen victim to modern slavery on their short stay in the UK has the ability to change employer, the likelihood is that, if they can escape, they will simply look for another employer and not tell the authorities what has happened to them. The perpetrator would then remain free to go on to abuse other domestic workers either in the UK or in their home country.
If we are to catch these very serious criminals and stop them offending again, we must incentivise overseas domestic workers who suffer abuse to come forward; it is absolutely crucial that we do that. My main concern is to ensure that victims, who are often deeply traumatised and vulnerable, receive the care and support they need to recover from the abuses they have suffered.
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
Given that the Minister has said that the Government amendment requiring victims to go through the national referral mechanism is aimed at ensuring that there are prosecutions, what is the evidence to date that shows that such cases have led to successful prosecutions and convictions?
Karen Bradley
The hon. Gentleman, who was a distinguished member of the Bill Committee, knows that there are not enough prosecutions. But this Bill is designed to secure more. Increased prosecutions combined with the reviewed national referral mechanism, which we will be piloting shortly and hope to roll out nationally very soon, will mean that we will get the evidence and information that we need. This is about not just legislation but the modern slavery strategy. We want all the agencies working together to ensure that we identify victims and treat them as victims, and that those victims get the support they need, so that they can give us the information we require to find the perpetrators of these awful crimes.
A victim who manages to leave an abusive employer and who is not receiving appropriate support would be very vulnerable and at risk of moving on to yet another abusive employer, leaving the original abuser free to abuse again. There is a real danger that Lords amendment 72 will allow abuse to go unchallenged. However good the intentions, that would not protect overseas domestic workers. It risks giving a free pass to the criminals who abuse them, creating the conditions for yet more victims. Quite frankly, if eliminating modern slavery was as simple as being able to change employer, we would have no UK nationals or EU members as victims as they could simply move on. As we all know, the truth is very different, and we have all heard the traumatic accounts of those abused by unscrupulous agricultural gangmasters or tarmac gangs.
This is a complex topic, and simplifying the issue to whether an overseas domestic worker can change employer risks doing a grave disservice to victims. That is not just the view of the Government. I have taken advice from the law enforcement professionals responsible for investigating modern slavery. Chief Constable Shaun Sawyer, the national policing lead for modern slavery, and Ian Cruxton, the director of the Organised Crime Command at the National Crime Agency, have both expressed concern that the Lords amendment would inadvertently undermine the fight against modern slavery because victims will not come forward.
Mr Hanson
I welcome this debate, which is the latest in a number of debates we have had on this issue. As the Minister knows, there have been long and detailed discussions in Committee, in the House of Lords and again today. Despite her valiant attempts today to convince the House of the Government’s position, she has not yet managed to convince those who work with the victims of overseas domestic worker abuse. She has not convinced the charity Kalayaan, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, Anti-Slavery International, Liberty, Unite the union or the House of Lords, and she has not convinced me, my newly right hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart)—congratulations to her—or my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), whom I am pleased to see in his place.
Karen Bradley
The right hon. Gentleman fails to mention that I have managed to convince the Equality and Human Rights Commission. [Interruption.] It has said that it supports the Government’s position and recommends that our amendment should be accepted.
Mr Speaker
Order. I should congratulate the right hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) on her elevation to the Privy Council, despite her use of the word “shocking” three times in succession just now. She has been so elevated and is now a celebrated denizen of the House.
Mr Hanson
I wish to speak in support of Lords amendment 72 and try once again, alongside my right hon. and hon. Friends, to convince the Government that it would be in the best interests of overseas domestic workers. Today we revisit the regulations on overseas domestic workers that the Government changed in April 2012. Although the intention behind that change can be debated, I think that even the Minister would accept that the consequences have been dire. Domestic workers who come here from overseas are now tied to an employer, which in practice means that those who suffer abuse will immediately lose their right to reside in the UK if they escape the situation and seek help away from their employer. I believe that that disincentivises them from seeking help from the authorities in the first place because they fear being deported, and that allows abuse to become widespread and perpetrators to carry on uncontested.
The charity Kalayaan has done a great deal of detailed work to support overseas domestic workers, and the Minister knows of the statistics it has collated. It found that, of the workers who contacted it, 62% of the domestic workers who came on a tied visa were paid no salary at all, compared with 14% on the original visa, 96% were not allowed out of the house unsupervised and 74% faced psychological abuse. Those statistics are a small snapshot of what is a deeply difficult experience for too many overseas domestic workers in the United Kingdom.
If it was only Kalayaan saying that, it would be an indication from a respected charity, but the Minister knows—we have had this debate before—that a number of organisations have been considering this for some time. The Joint Committee on Human Rights has echoed the call for the review that Lords amendment 72 would effectively give. It states:
“We regard the removal of the right of an overseas domestic worker to change employer as a backward step in the protection of migrant domestic workers”.
The Minister and the Home Secretary produced the draft Bill and, helpfully, established the Joint Committee on the Draft Modern Slavery Bill, chaired by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead, to ensure that they looked at those issues and got the Bill right. The Committee included a number of notable peers from across the House of Lords: Baroness Butler-Sloss, the Bishop of Derby, Baroness Doocey, Baroness Hanham, Baroness Kennedy of Cradley, Lord McColl of Dulwich and Lord Warner. The Members from this House were the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty), my right hon. Friend the Member for Slough and the right hon. Members for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Sir John Randall), for Meriden (Mrs Spelman) and for Hazel Grove (Sir Andrew Stunell). That cross-section of individuals looked at the matter in detail and concluded that the overseas domestic workers visa has
“unintentionally strengthened the hand of the slave master against the victim of slavery. The moral case for revisiting this issue is urgent and overwhelming”.
It called on the Government to take immediate action.
The Opposition tried to provide that immediate action in response to the Government’s lack of response to that particular aspect of the Joint Committee’s report. We tabled an amendment in Committee and had a good discussion about it. Mr Speaker, you know how difficult it is for an Opposition to get even close to winning votes upstairs in Committee. On the day in question, the result of the vote was nine-all, so it was decided by the Chair, the hon. Member for The Wrekin (Mark Pritchard), who voted for the status quo, in accordance with precedent. The Government hand-picked a Committee but still ended up with a nine-all draw on an issue recommended on a cross-party basis by Members of both Houses. I think that shows the strength and integrity of the issue before us today.
Mrs Caroline Spelman (Meriden) (Con)
Surely the Joint Committee’s point about the moral case for revisiting the issue has been taken up, because that is precisely what the Government have just ordered because of the complexity of the issue and the changes they have made. Surely the tight vote to which the right hon. Gentleman refers is evidence of the fact that both sides of the House want the issue to be looked at in great detail in the review.
Mr Hanson
Let me reassure the right hon. Lady that we seek to support the Lords in their amendment. If the House divides on the issue later today and the Division is lost, we will certainly support the Government’s proposals to carry forward the review, because we do not wish to see that stopped. However, I think that it is important to reflect on what the right hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip, a former Government Deputy Chief Whip, said: there are too many victims for us to say that this is a matter for another day. The Government’s proposal would put the matter off for another day. I do not think that that other day should await the outcome of the general election; we should do it now. The Government have a clear view from the Lords, given the vote that was won by Lord Hylton, an independent peer, a few weeks ago, when the Government were defeated.
Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)
On the subject of waiting for another day, is there not a problem with Lords amendment 72? If a victim of slavery left their current employer and that employer was able to go on to abuse more victims, both that day and another day, the Lords amendment would do little to tackle that, whereas the Government’s amendment in lieu would do that, because it would prevent victims from being left for another day.
Mr Hanson
There is the National Crime Agency, there is legislation against abuse and, as Kalayaan has said, there is a large number of overseas domestic workers who are currently not paid a penny. If the hon. Lady found somebody who had left their employment, was able to untie their visa and move on and who could still pass on reports on the national minimum wage or other issues to the National Crime Agency, the Lords amendment would not stop that aspect being enforced. There is a national minimum wage now and it should be enforced. There is a National Crime Agency if people are undergoing abuse. The amendment would allow people to switch employers and ultimately, if they wished to do so, make a report and recommendations to a proper authority. At this point we need to get to the basics of how to untie the visa so that individuals can leave and avoid abuse.
Sir Andrew Stunell (Hazel Grove) (LD)
The evidence that we took in Committee was that these are very frightened and vulnerable people who will run a long way from the authorities. Does the right hon. Gentleman think there is some merit in a mechanism whereby, if they require to take advantage of the concession, they are also required to clock on, so to speak, with the law enforcement agencies?
Mr Hanson
I might have been able to take the right hon. Gentleman at his word, had he not joined in the recommendation from my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead in the Committee. When I tabled in Committee word for word what he voted for in the draft Bill, he voted against it. With due respect to the right hon. Gentleman, he had his chance to put his case in Committee. We did not get this measure through the Bill Committee because he chose to vote with the Government, rather than for what he had recommended as part of the Joint Committee.
Lord Hylton said in the debate in the other place:
“There can be no doubt that domestic workers tied to one employer and living on his premises are extremely vulnerable.”
Baroness Hanham, a Conservative, said in the same debate:
“In this 21st century it is absolutely unacceptable that people are coming in to this country tied to an employer, unable to do anything for themselves and absolutely under the instruction of the person for whom they are working”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 25 February 2015; Vol. 759, c. 1690-93.]
Peer after peer, MP after MP, and my right hon. and hon. Friends in their submissions to date have said that the Government’s approach is wrong-headed and that they need to rethink it urgently.
If Lords amendment 72 is defeated, we will reluctantly not oppose the Government’s amendment in lieu. We will contribute to the debate. Should I be the Minister after May, which is entirely a matter for the electorate, I will revisit the principles that we are examining in relation to Lords amendment 72. As has been pointed out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Slough and my hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry), the Government’s amendment gives someone who has been determined to be a victim of slavery or human trafficking through the national referral mechanism the ability to change their employer. It does not untie the visa for all. It means that overseas domestic workers would need to meet a high threshold to prove that they had been victims of modern slavery.
Karen Bradley
We are debating the Modern Slavery Bill, aren’t we? What we are looking at here is how we protect victims of slavery, irrespective of their visa. If we give somebody the right to come to Britain on one of these visas and then they are abused as a slave, I want to make sure that we give them the right support. That is what we are debating today and that is what I want to achieve.
Mr Hanson
I am grateful. There is no disagreement between us, but the issue for me is still the position with regard to the tied visa. I do not think that the Government’s proposal in the long term, following the review that was undertaken effectively on a cross-party basis by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead, is sufficient for the purpose.
Chloe Smith
The right hon. Gentleman’s words belie him. Just a few sentences ago he said he wanted to unpick that visa knot for others. With the greatest respect, it is not those others that we are discussing today; it is the victims of slavery, as my hon. Friend the Minister has just said. Does the right hon. Gentleman want to do more or does he want to do what she outlined?
Mr Hanson
With due respect to the hon. Lady, under the Government’s proposal an individual would have to find a way to report themselves and to activate the national referral mechanism and get involved in that, at a time when they are working for an employer. The principle that I want to support is movement on untying the visa.
Karen Bradley
If somebody is unable to get to an authority to report themselves as a victim of slavery when there are helplines in place, and first responders, such as people in public bodies and others who are available, how does the right hon. Gentleman think they can change their employer?
Mr Hanson
It is important that they have the ability to do so.
I come back to my starting point. If the hon. Lady’s position is so strong, why are Kalayaan, Amnesty International, the anti-slavery organisations, Liberty, Unite the union and other organisations involved in supporting the people whom she is trying to protect saying to her today from outside the Chamber, “The Government have got this wrong.” The Government have indeed got this wrong. They need to support amendment 72 and ensure that we deal with the issue in a fair and appropriate way.
For example, let me give the Minister one quote from Amnesty International. Anybody in the House will accept that Amnesty International is a respected organisation. Amnesty said to me in an e-mail only last night:
“We are gravely concerned at the amendment now put forward by the Government. Not only does this not provide any improvement in the position of these workers, but it would place on the statute book a regime under which overseas domestic worker victims of human trafficking and slavery would be provided with less protection than other such victims within the existing National Referral Mechanism system.”
The hon. Lady says that that is not the case. I contend that if Amnesty International is criticising the Government, if the other organisations are doing so, if the House of Lords has said that the Government are wrong and if a cross-party royal commission which has looked at the Bill has said that the Government need to change their position now, the Government need to consider that.
There will be no right of appeal against a negative decision and no legal aid. Many of the people involved have limited English, are poor and vulnerable, and are being abused by rich and powerful people. The challenges are too great to place upon them. We have an opportunity today to give the House of Lords our support, to put in place this measure which will ensure that the visa is untied and that a level of protection is available. There is still the possibility of tackling issues to do with the minimum wage and other exploitation and to take both criminal action and civil enforcement action outside this Chamber through the anti-slavery commissioner and other aspects of the Bill. The hon. Lady has the chance to do that today, and I hope she will take it.
Karen Bradley
The right hon. Gentleman is very generous in allowing me to intervene. He hits the nail on the head when he talks about the vulnerability of the victims. We are talking about people who are in an incredibly vulnerable situation and about their chances of making a reasonable and logical decision to move to a non-abusive employer, when the risk is that they will go back to more slavery, more abuse and more servitude, and with the employer they have just escaped from being able to put somebody else into servitude. I think that that risk is too great for us to take. We need to help those people. We need to find them. I fully accept the challenges of finding victims and bringing this crime out into the open, but we are not going to do it if we brush it under the carpet and just let the victims change employers.
Mr Hanson
There is a disagreement between us, as ever. That is the nature of the debate that we have in the House. I support the Government in trying to tackle long-term abuse by poor employers. I support the Government in trying to drive out abuse carried out through pay and conditions. I hope the National Crime Agency, the anti-slavery commissioner and others will work hard to do that. The difference between us today is the question of the tied visa for employment. The House of Lords, the Committee chaired by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead, and the charities and organisations outside the House that are working on this issue believe that the Government should accept the Lords amendment. So do I.
Mark Durkan
Does the right hon. Gentleman recognise that the Minister has said that the employers could go on to employ someone else and subject them to abuse? Does that not expose the risk of the tied visa system? The abuse that the Minister is referring to is an abuse that stems from the tied visa. That is what we need to eradicate.
Mr Hanson
I am eternally grateful that I allowed my hon. Friend to intervene and I am grateful for his support in Committee when we debated this matter. He has helpfully cemented the central argument that the tied visa is a wrong-headed approach. There were challenges before April 2012; undoubtedly there will always be challenges in this type of situation. However, the tied visa exacerbates it. We have to make this change. I hope that the Government will listen, but if they do not—
Emily Thornberry
Governments have been talking for years about bringing in a modern slavery Bill. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is unfortunate that in the last gasp of this Government, they have brought a Bill before the House that will still not address one of the most important aspects of modern slavery?
Mr Hanson
I remind the House that in taking the position that they have today, the Government are rejecting the cross-party recommendation from my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead and his Committee; rejecting the discussions we had in the Modern Slavery Bill Committee that resulted in a nine-to-nine vote with the Chair casting his vote in favour of the Government; rejecting the will of another place, where a cross-party group of MPs led by Lord Hylton tabled this amendment; and rejecting the advice of every organisation involved in dealing with this issue outside this House.
That is for the Government to determine. I am simply saying that if, by the end of this debate, they do not change their mind, I will ask my right hon. and hon. Friends to support the House of Lords amendment and, if that is defeated, reluctantly accept the Government’s late, compromise, dragged-out proposal.
Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to speak in this debate on amendments to the Modern Slavery Bill—a critical Bill that will have far-reaching consequences for those who seek to abuse, and indeed have abused, and those who have suffered from that abuse. I was pleased to able to serve on the Committee that scrutinised the Bill, and I can honestly say that it did so in depth and very carefully. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Minister for her commitment to this issue and her determination to get this vital piece of anti-slavery legislation on to the statute book.
I recognise that amendment 72, tabled by the noble Lord Hylton, has the very best of intentions, but as my hon. Friend said the most important thing is to get this Bill on to the statute book before Parliament is dissolved in just over a week’s time. If we leave it any later—if the Lords continue to press these amendments—I fear we will lose the Bill altogether and its important work will be undone. Abusers will be safe from the law, while the poor and vulnerable they abuse will have less protection under it.
Caroline Nokes
I thank the shadow Minister for that assurance.
My constituents who have contacted me on this issue want to know that there will be additional evidence of legal employer-employee relationships and a confirmation that employers will be forced to pay the minimum wage. The current rules stop employees changing employer, and vice versa, during the term of their visa. Amendment 72 would permit someone on an overseas domestic worker visa to change employer without having to go to the authorities.
Michael Connarty
Is the hon. Lady aware that under the previous Government, who brought in the three-year visa, people could change their employer, but her Government took that right away? Will she apologise to her constituents for that?
Caroline Nokes
I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that point. Let me make the point that his Government had 13 years in which to introduce such legislation. In fact, we have had to wait 200 years for a piece of modern day slavery legislation.
Emily Thornberry
Does not the hon. Lady agree, though, that a modern slavery Bill ought to be more than just its title and the campaign behind it? It ought to be good law that will be able to affect the lives of the most vulnerable. Does she not agree that this Bill falls down on that in some important respects?
Caroline Nokes
Of course we all want this to be good law, which is precisely what the Minister intends. We do not want loopholes that enable slave masters to find new victims; we do not want these slaves to be without the protection we are seeking to give them.
Karen Bradley
Has my hon. Friend reflected on the fact that when the Modern Slavery Bill becomes the Modern Slavery Act and we can say to employers applying for the visa, “If you bring your employee into the United Kingdom and abuse them, you will be subject to life imprisonment”, that will be a big deterrent that should prevent abusive employers who intend to bring in employees and treat them as slaves from doing so?
Caroline Nokes
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. Of course she is absolutely right—it is a massive deterrent, and we must have it on the statute book.
Chief Constable Shaun Sawyer, the national policing lead on modern slavery, and Ian Cruxton, the director of the organised crime command at the National Crime Agency, have expressed concern that the Lords amendment would inadvertently undermine the fight against modern slavery—a fight that we all agree has to be won. I therefore hope that my hon. Friend will advise the Lords to withdraw their amendment, well intentioned as it may be, to ensure that the Bill gets on to the statute book in this Parliament, that those guilty of modern slavery will not be allowed off the hook, and those suffering the misery of it will be given protection and hope.
Mr Frank Field
Despite what my hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) said, there has not been a long campaign for this Bill. That is a myth, because it started two summers ago. It is worth registering our thanks not only to the Government but to the whole House and to their lordships for getting the Bill into shape and through to this stage. Nevertheless, however slow anybody listening to this debate is, I think they will realise that there are differences between both Houses. I was immensely pleased by the statements made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson).
For domestic workers, the issue we are dealing with is 100% about how they are going to be treated and whether they escape; the totality of the Bill will mean very little to them. Yet we do need to keep our eye on the totality of the Bill, which is immensely important and one this Government will be remembered by. We are clearly going to vote on it today, but I hope that when it goes back to their lordships, they will weigh up the distinct advantages the Government have offered us today on the basis of a simple rejection of the Lords amendment. I also hope that at that stage, disagreements can cease so that the view expressed by the hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) is expressed by the whole House in wanting the Bill to receive Royal Assent next week and be put safely on to the statute book. Then, in the new Parliament, we can have an inquiry into this aspect of the law, and whoever is in government can add to the existing Act and we will not have to debate whether we need another Bill.
Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)
I approach this debate with, perhaps, a different viewpoint from some other people in the Chamber. The midlands is a thriving area—the beating heart of the economy, in my humble opinion. It is very interesting to see the aspect of modern day slavery that can show itself in tarmacking gangs and farm gangs. It is absolutely disgraceful that such things are going on in this day and age.
I thank the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) for what he said about the Bill. It will be groundbreaking legislation that any Government ought to be, and certainly my Government will be, proud of. It is crucial in all respects, because we need to put a big message out there that our country looks after vulnerable people, that it is a country of law and order, and that nobody should come here thinking they can employ people and abuse them. That will not be tolerated by my Government, my country, and my people.
I am very proud of this Bill. I disagree with the Lords amendment and agree with the one we have tabled in lieu. The important thing is that people feel comfortable and confident that they can go to first responders and be looked after. I almost wish that we did not need to have this Bill, but I am incredibly proud that we have brought it in. It will be a very special day when it gets on to the statute book.
Fiona Mactaggart
I am very sad about this debate on Lords amendment 72. For some time, we have debated the treatment of overseas domestic workers. Before the Government changed the immigration rules, I wrote a report called, “Service not servitude”, and we have debated it since then. I am glad that we are debating it in the context of modern slavery because, horrifyingly, a shocking number of overseas domestic workers have to submit to slave-like conditions.
I am sad, however, because although Government amendment (a) in lieu looks as though it gives rights to such very vulnerable victims, it actually offers them less than other victims of modern slavery, which is very distressing. There is the proposal to give someone a six-month visa. A number of my Slough constituents who for one reason or another are subject to immigration control have only six months left on their visa. The Minister will know that Slough has a pretty buoyant employment market, but it can be impossible, even for constituents in a category which means they are almost certain to have their visa renewed, to find a new employer in that six-month period. Why? Because no employer wants to employ someone who only has six months left to stay. Unless the employer is offering a tiny little temporary job, it is very unusual for someone in that situation to be able to secure new employment.
Let us look at the Government’s record. We have heard much about it in relation to the Bill’s introduction, but what about overseas domestic workers? This Government, along with that of Panama, Sudan, El Salvador, Malaysia, Singapore and the Czech Republic—think of having them as comrades—is one of very few Governments in the world to refuse to support the International Labour Organisation convention on decent work for domestic workers. Why do I bring that up? Because the exploitation of domestic workers does not always amount to enslavement: the courts have sometimes decided that people who are vilely exploited are not enslaved, and are not eligible for some of the existing protections under the regulations on trafficking. If we are ambitious for world-leading legislation, one thing we must do is to ensure that workers are not paid less than the minimum wage, or are exploited or made to work ridiculous hours or in dangerous conditions. All those things would be protected if we had signed up to the ILO convention, but——guess what?—we did not. The Government have form on that.
The Minister tells us that there will be tough guidance on interviewing people separately to ensure a sort of pre-entry protection against modern slavery. I am really glad about that, but I remember being told that there was tough guidance on people carrying their own passport through immigration control. Indeed, there is such guidance for immigration officers, but in speaking to victims who are overseas domestic workers, I have yet to find one who did so. I am afraid that the Minister’s tough guidance just does not work.
The guidance is not sufficient protection, and neither is the six-month visa, while the failure to sign up to the ILO convention is another example of inadequate protection. The Minister has cited senior police officers who believe that her proposed changes will increase the number of overseas domestic workers willing to be police narks. Well, it might, but it might not. As we know from the evidence of battered women and all other victims of abuse, the best way to encourage victims of abuse to give evidence is to focus on the support and advice they need.
Kalayaan, with which I have worked for a scary number of years, is the organisation with the pre-eminent record in doing so. It has a real record of working closely with such women, and in providing them with the kind of advice that best enables them to get their rights, such as they exist. Under the old system, it regularly helped women domestic workers to get their passports back, because—guess what?—their employers used to steal them and hold on to them.
Such support will not be provided by the Minister’s amendment (a). To suggest to people, “Oh, you get support if you become a police nark, and as long as you support this, or on condition that you do that”, is not the way to enable people to get control over their own lives, which the Minister said she wanted to achieve.
Heather Wheeler
I love the passion with which the hon. Lady speaks about this issue, but I really think she is missing the big picture. If we do not do something about this, new people will be enslaved day in, day out in such domestic situations. There has to be a change, and what she is offering will not give us that change.
Fiona Mactaggart
Actually, Lords amendment 72 would make exactly the change that the hon. Lady says we need. It would support victims and trust them to take control of their own lives, whereas, frankly, there is a real risk that the Minister’s amendment (a) will infantilise victims. I know from working with victims of abuse that the best way to make them agree to be witnesses and to give them control over their own lives is to support them in taking the lead, not to tell them that as long as they collaborate, they can get this, that or the other.
I welcome the involvement of the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Heather Wheeler) and I am glad to see other people focusing on this issue, but those of us who have focused on it for a long time and who argued that ending the ability to switch visas would produce the kind of kafala system now common in Britain have been proved right. We are very sad to have been proved right, but I am glad that Members from every party, including Conservative Members, have regretted their former decisions and recognised that what the Lords are seeking is a better way to protect such vulnerable victims than the proposal the Minister has tried to sell us. If we trust and protect the victims in such a way, we will significantly reduce the level of slavery in Britain today.
Michael Connarty
The Minister has become much more skilful at arguing her brief than she was at the beginning of the process on the Bill. We forgave her for reading her text line by line in the beginning, but we will not forgive her for what she has done today. She rose to excuse a police-drafted clause with a fixation on criminality and catching bad people. Catching bad people is fine: I totally support it, as I have in the campaign that I have run for a long time and since long before there was engagement by the Minister or her colleague, the hon. Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith), who is sitting smiling on the second Bench. The reality, however, is that if we substitute the rights of victims with the overarching demand to catch criminals or bad people, we sometimes sacrifice the victims in that pursuit. Government amendment (a) takes the that line.
If an overseas domestic worker coming forward in relation to an employment situation is not paid, are they a slave? If they are held by somebody who has their passport but does not give it back and does not pay them—perhaps feeds them, and perhaps does not beat them—they are still slaves. Are the police likely to take information from those people to pursue the employer? Probably not. Will those people be able to leave their employer and say, “I want to go somewhere where I will be paid and treated correctly; where I will be treated with respect, not as a slave, but as a worker”? A worker expects to be treated properly. If people are treated badly by their employer who has brought them to this country, it is still slavery as far as I am concerned.
Karen Bradley
I say again that, yes, I want victims to provide information that enables us to catch the perpetrators and increase the number of prosecutions. However, when somebody comes forward and is referred to the national referral mechanism, it does not require the involvement of the police at any point in the process. The UK Human Trafficking Centre and UK Visas and Immigration make those decisions at the moment. As the hon. Gentleman knows, we have reviewed the national referral mechanism and will be piloting the use of panels to make those decisions. Those will not be law enforcement bodies. Law enforcement will be involved only if people can provide evidence that will enable us to catch the perpetrator. If somebody goes through the national referral mechanism and gets a conclusive grounds decision, they will be granted a minimum of six months to stay and work in the country for any employer. That does not need to involve the police at any stage in the process.
Michael Connarty
The Minister did not answer the question that I asked. If someone is not paid and their employer holds their passport, are they enslaved? I ask her to clarify that. It seems that she is not willing to speak about that. Of course, that is not likely to lead the police to prosecute the person who kept their passport and kept them in a domestic home in the UK. We might be talking about longer than 15 days. The Minister mentioned people who live with the staff of embassies. She did not elucidate on that point, but that is where some of the worst malpractice has happened.
Amendment (a) states that leave to remain will be granted to an overseas domestic worker
“who has been determined to be a victim of slavery or human trafficking, and…in relation to whom such other requirements are met as may be provided for by the rules.”
It goes on to specify what the rules must provide for. My concern is for the victim. My second concern is to create the conditions in which the victim wants to deal with an abusive employer. It might not be someone who beats them up. It might be somebody who refuses to pay them or who gives them just a small allowance like pocket money that is not adequate to live on, which is what many domestic workers get when they come here. Will we prosecute those employers? I hope we will, because that is a breach of our laws.
Karen Bradley
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. That is a breach of our employment laws. HMRC is pursuing the employers of overseas domestic workers to ensure that they pay the national minimum wage and observe our employment laws. However, where somebody is the victim of slavery, qualifies under the national referral mechanism for specialist support and gets conclusive grounds, amendment (a) will enable them to work here for six months.
Michael Connarty
Amendment (a) is deficient. Lords amendment 72 is simple and states that people can
“change their employer (but not work sector) while in the United Kingdom”.
That is the first choice they should be able to make. If a domestic worker who comes here is a victim and is not treated properly, they should be able to move to another employer while their visa is running. That was the basis of what was put forward by the Joint Committee on the Draft Modern Slavery Bill. That was the basis of what was proposed in the Public Bill Committee. However, it was not carried. We know about the deficiencies in the Liberal view at that time. I hope that the Liberal Democrats have changed their mind. Today, we can support the simple Lords amendment and carry the spirit of what was recommended by the Joint Committee.
My second point on the protection of victims is about the way in which we encourage people to take up the right to stay. The hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) said that nothing had been done in that respect. In 2009, the Labour Government brought in a three-year visa that allowed domestic workers to leave unacceptable or abusive employers, including the kind of employer I have described who does not pay wages or respect people properly as workers. The current Government overturned that and closed that door to people.
It is unlikely that the people I have met through Kalayaan and other organisations who work with these victims will go into the national referral mechanism, because they have an aversion to formal institutions. We know that. Through the Human Trafficking Foundation, we have talked to 60 or 70 non-governmental organisations, all of which have the same problem: the victims do not trust the institutions of the state in this country. Whether we like it or not, the Government’s proposal says that if people are willing to be a witness and help the police to prosecute their former employer, they will get support and be able to stay for up to a year. That is not the way to do it. The way to do it is to allow people to move employer and to create a structure that allows them afterwards to go willingly to those organisations that are willing to give them a bit of muscle if they feel aggrieved enough about the abuse they have suffered.
Most people who have not been paid or have just been paid pocket money are not likely to want to pursue their employer, but they have the same right to move as someone who is willing to go up against an employer who has beaten or stabbed them or treated them abusively. Why should we distinguish between these two sets of people? Legally, they are not being treated as they should be as workers, or are we to distinguish between foreign workers and our workers?
Heather Wheeler
I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman genuinely misunderstands what is going on here. He is an experienced Member, but I wonder whether people really understand that what he is saying is that if somebody comes here on this sort of visa, he will give them carte blanche to go and do something else.
Heather Wheeler
That is exactly what the hon. Gentleman is suggesting. He is going into realms that are not to do with protecting people from modern slavery, which is what the Bill is about.
Michael Connarty
As I am the person who forced the Prime Minister eventually to sign up to the directive on human trafficking, which he had refused to do for several months, during which he wiggled and wriggled, I do not have to apologise to anybody and I do not need it explained to me what the Bill is about. It is a good Bill, but it could be improved immensely. I do not know whether the hon. Lady has read Lords amendment 72, but it says that people should be able to
“change their employer (but not work sector) while in the United Kingdom”.
It is quite clear that it is about people going from domestic work into domestic work. I hope that the House will agree to the amendment.
Finally, I want to question the whole idea of creating this rather tortuous process. It has always been a problem that the Government have seen the Bill as, first and foremost, a criminal Bill to chase people who abuse others through human trafficking and slavery. Many of us hold the view that we should first protect those who are enslaved or abused and then convince them to become witnesses and to help in that secondary programme. If we get the two things back to front, what happens? The victims do not become witnesses and the people who abuse others escape, as they have been escaping. I believe that if we agree to amendment (a), we will have another tortuous process that will become another barrier that makes people stay away from the institutions, because it is not about protecting the victims; it is about the Government’s obsession with catching the bad people.
Emily Thornberry
I remember welcoming the Government’s move to opt into the EU directive on human trafficking in March 2011. I learned this afternoon that that was the result of the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty). I congratulate him on that.
It seemed to me that the Government were putting themselves in a contradictory position by signing up to the EU directive on human trafficking. The European Court of Justice has said that any country signing up to the directive
“must refrain from taking any measures liable seriously to compromise the result prescribed.”
It seems to me that signing up to a directive is about more than putting our country’s name to a piece of paper; we must sign up to the spirit of it, too. As I have said, the European Court of Justice has said that we must not go backwards.
I read with interest the speech of the former Attorney-General, the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), to City university about the role of UK law as a model for combating human trafficking and slavery, in which he summarised the progress that had been made. I was very concerned that it was entirely contradictory for the Government on the one hand to sign up to the directive and trumpet the work that had been done to combat human trafficking and slavery, yet on the other hand to change the immigration rules to make life much more difficult for domestic workers. That seemed a complete contradiction, so on 30 April 2012 I wrote to the former Attorney-General to point that out. He referred me to the Home Office, which wrote back. I am glad that it has moved on from the position that it adopted on 16 June 2012, when it stated:
“The position is that, if an ODW has been granted a visa to come to the UK to work for their overseas employer while that employer is visiting the UK, the ODW will have leave to remain in the UK in line with that granted to the employer—ie, up to 6 months’ leave (the maximum grant of leave for visitors). If an ODW leaves their employer during the time of the visit to the UK, the ODW will retain whatever time remains of the original leave granted and so will not be in the UK illegally during that time.”
That did not seem terribly generous. Let us suppose an overseas domestic worker came with a visa to stay in the UK for a certain amount of time. If they left their employer because of abuse, they could remain until their visa ran out but then they had to go. The letter continued:
“The ODW will not be entitled to work for another employer, but they will not be in the UK illegally unless or until the leave expires.”
As I said, we have moved on from that, but it seems that alarm bells have been ringing about abused and exploited overseas domestic workers for many years. Many of those who have raised the alarm have spoken today in the House, and many organisations outside have done so. The Government have spent a number of years preparing such a Bill, and I am disappointed and surprised that, to try to get the Bill through the House today, they are putting this matter back for yet another review. Many people with much greater experience in this issue have been assisting the Government as best they can for some time. They have coalesced around this amendment in the House of Lords, and although I listened carefully to the Minister when she explained why the amendment is not satisfactory, I still do not understand. Not to accept the Lords amendment seems to fly in the face of the collective common sense in this place.
Perhaps I can add my ha’pence worth. We have heard a great deal about how important it is for victims to give evidence against their employers in court, and that to encourage them to come forward it is important they understand that their continued presence within the United Kingdom will be dependent on their giving evidence against their employers, or assisting the police to ensure that those employers are prosecuted. I hear and understand that point, but it makes no sense.
Fiona Mactaggart
My hon. Friend is a lawyer and has court experience of these matters. Will she comment on advice I have received from Parosha Chandran, which suggests that where leave is granted as a result of someone coming forward, a prosecution might be more difficult to secure? Although 29 victims of slavery have had conclusive decisions referred by Kalayaan, there has been only one successful prosecution for domestic worker abuse.
Emily Thornberry
My right hon. Friend—it is a pleasure to say that—is absolutely right, and in a way she predicts the point I was going to make. In my former manifestation as a criminal lawyer, we always looked for what might be the primary motivation for why a witness would be giving evidence. If we could cross-examine a victim and say, “You’re only saying that to stay in the United Kingdom. Your continued presence within the United Kingdom is dependent on you co-operating with the police. You’re gilding the lily; you are making up lies and doing what you can to remain here,” that would undermine the credibility of the witness. In the end, any prosecution for slavery will be entirely dependent on the evidence of that woman. That is why witnesses need to be empowered, and why it must be clear that a witness has come forward entirely freely and honestly, so that we can have a powerful prosecution. That is the way to combat modern slavery in the context of overseas domestic workers.
Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)
I commend the Minister for the passion with which she spoke earlier about the vulnerability of victims. I do not doubt her integrity or motives, and I am grateful for the time that she found to talk to me and the policy director of Focus on Labour Exploitation—that is one NGO in the long list cited by the shadow Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), that shares the concerns about the way the Government are approaching this issue.
A number of Government Members have spoken with equal passion about the importance of getting the Bill into statute, and the Opposition share that. The simplest way would have been for the Government not to have challenged Lords amendment 72, because it helps to ensure that our efforts to combat modern slavery are not undermined by an immigration system that ties workers into slavery.
We are now agreed across the House that the tied domestic worker visa effectively gives all power to employers and none to their vulnerable employees. It forces domestic workers who are exploited by their employers to make the unenviable choice between breaching their visa conditions or staying with an abusive employer. As was mentioned earlier, there have been three reviews on this issue: the first was by the Centre of Social Justice, which so often has the ear of the Government; the second was by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field); and the third was by the joint legislative Committee on this Bill. All reviews came to the same conclusion: the tied domestic worker visa strengthens the hand of the slave master against the victim of slavery. The Government should not ignore those reviews and should recognise that Lords amendment 72 seeks to address the concerns raised. The amendment is not a silver bullet; it simply wrestles a small amount of power back to the domestic worker from her or his employer—that is all. If accepted, however, the amendment will help to prevent many cases of abuse.
As was mentioned earlier, those with an interest in these issues struggle to understand why the Government are so unwilling to accept the amendment. The Home Secretary has suggested that the Bill seeks to be “world leading”, but that was our pre-2012 position on this issue. My right hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) cited the kafala system that has led to countless cases of abuse in Lebanon, and NGOs used the pre-2012 UK overseas domestic worker visa as an example of best practice. We were commended for immigration rules that recognised
“the particular vulnerability of migrant domestic workers to exploitation and incorporate fundamental protections as a result.”
Later that year, we lost those protections, and the amendment seeks to restore them. If the Bill is to be taken seriously as a genuine effort to tackle modern-day slavery, Lords amendment 72 should stand unchanged.
Many of us are concerned that the Government are proposing not only to reject the amendment but to insert their own amendment that would provide domestic workers with the right to remain in the UK, but—this is an enormous but—only if they are determined to be a victim of trafficking by the authorities. I understand the Government’s reasoning, which the Minister has outlined, in seeking to secure prosecutions, but the protection of victims and securing prosecutions are not mutually exclusive aims.
Karen Bradley
The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful speech, and I thank him for mentioning Focus on Labour Exploitation, which is now part of our stakeholder group working on modern slavery. I want victims to go into the national referral mechanism to give them the support they need and to ensure that those vulnerable people who have been subjected to the most horrendous abuse get the right level of expert support. I want them to go into the NRM, so that we ensure that we give them back control of their lives. We have gone through a review and I fully accept that the NRM needs changes, but the new reviewed NRM is designed to give people the support they need.
Paul Blomfield
I understand what the Minister is saying, but let me explain why I think the Government’s approach is problematic. The Government’s amendments would mean that a domestic worker will have to take the risk of presenting to the authorities to gain the determination of being a victim of trafficking. The domestic worker would have to do so without legal advice, as legal aid would be granted only once referral is made. Secondly, they provide for no immigration enforcement action to be taken against domestic workers, should they breach immigration conditions, again only if they are found to be a victim of trafficking or slavery. That will do nothing to allay the genuine fears of domestic workers that, if they put their heads above the parapet to seek assistance, they could face deportation.
My hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) has made it very clear how the criminal justice system might treat victims in that situation. Indeed, they would face deportation if they decide they do not wish to go through the NRM, which should be their right. Therefore, far from achieving the desired result the Minister seeks to outline, the amendment risks achieving the absolute opposite: stopping victims coming forward and reducing the chances of prosecutions.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
If my hon. Friend were to consider, for example, normal industrial relations, it takes a lot for somebody—an individual who is an ordinary citizen of this country—to come forward and make a complaint about an employer. It must be 10 times worse for somebody whose immigration conditions are tied to an employer to come forward. The Minister may understand that point, but she is not addressing it adequately.
Paul Blomfield
My hon. Friend makes the point very powerfully: there is enormous pressure on victims not to come forward. The Government’s position is indicative of their whole approach. It puts the responsibility on victims to come forward to secure prosecutions to end trafficking. Unlike Lords amendment 72, which places the emphasis on how best to protect victims, the Government are instead trying, with their amendments, to refocus on the need for victims to do the authorities’ work for them. It almost suggests the victims are guilty of something if they do not want to take this enormous risk. The Minister is shaking her head, but the Government’s approach does not take account of why victims are scared to come forward, nor does it recognise that trafficked people are frequently trapped in a trafficking situation because of a fear—real or perceived—of authorities. Traffickers prey on that fear to hold victims in exploitative situations.
Fiona Mactaggart
Another problem with the Government’s proposed amendments relates to people who are exploited but not enslaved. For example, a woman domestic worker is more vulnerable to sexual exploitation, because she works in the private family home and so on, but she would not benefit from these protections because she could not enter the NRM. She is not enslaved, but she might have been a victim of sexual exploitation or rape. There is no mechanism to protect her.
Paul Blomfield
My right hon. Friend makes a very powerful additional point on why the Government’s approach is flawed.
My overriding concern is that, despite the Government’s stated commitment to tackling modern slavery, the Bill is still far too dependent on the victims rather than the state to identify the perpetrators of trafficking and slavery. That is not only morally wrong; unfortunately for the Government, it is also illegally flawed. The European Court of Human Rights has held that the state has a positive obligation to protect victims of trafficking and to investigate potential trafficking situations. Lords amendment 72 brings us much closer to meeting that positive obligation. It provides victims with a clear safety net: the ability to leave an exploitative situation without hesitation.
We all need to play our part to combat the horrific crime of modern slavery, but the agencies of government are legally obliged to take a proactive role in identifying potential cases. It seems that in the absence of an effective prevention strategy to meet that aim, the Government are depending on victims to pick up the slack when they really need proactive labour inspection and enforcement. That is a point I will make further, if I have the opportunity, in relation to Government amendment 77.
Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (UKIP)
I am grateful for your indulgence, Madam Deputy Speaker. I entered the Chamber during the speech by the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), who made some compelling points. I intended only to listen to the debate before making up my mind between the Government’s and the Opposition’s approach, and I am pleased that the differences seem to have narrowed. There appears, at least in the Home Secretary’s amendment, to be something of a spirit of compromise. I am surprised by the temperature of the debate on both sides of the House, because Parliament is acting in one of its better ways.
This debate has risen up the agenda very strongly in recent years. I do not think the Government should be criticised for putting a Bill through Parliament only just before Dissolution and I do not think the Opposition should be criticised for not having acted during 13 years in government. Politicians and society as a whole have turned their minds to this issue only recently. As far as I am concerned, I do not think I turned my mind to it before 2011. I apologise if I have got this wrong but it may have been a report from MigrationWatch UK that drew my attention to the sharply rising numbers of people—I think they were referred to at that time as being in the domestic servants category—coming into the country. The report asked whether that was right and appropriate.
The Government’s changes to the visa in 2012 were, overall, positive and they reduced the time that somebody could be an overseas domestic servant. It strikes me as understandable, if not necessarily right, that a family from overseas visiting this country for a relatively short period and who have a long relationship with the people who have been working in their household might wish to bring those people with them. They may be very well-off and used to having a level of service from particular individuals. What struck me as much less reasonable was for that relationship to persist for a very long time: very wealthy families coming to this country and permanently continuing to have staff who had previously worked for them, or bringing in new staff from their country of residence and using only those staff rather than employing people domestically.
In terms of immigration control, I fear there is something about the overseas domestic servant category that is liable to exploitation. I wonder whether there are shades of grey or whether there is a lack of clarity on where precisely the line is drawn when one moves from service to servitude and then to slavery. To try to change the law to mitigate, reduce and minimise—it would be wonderful if we could eliminate it—that exploitation is the right thing for this House to do. Moving from people being employed in that way for very long periods to a maximum of six months strikes me as definitely the right thing to do.
What the Government have done is really positive. Whether it is right to see this more from the criminal justice perspective, or whether we should simply allow people to switch to different employers in a more liberal way, as the House of Lords wants, is a difficult question. However, I believe there is a sincerity of approach on both sides of the House and that we have moved on hugely.
I assume the Lords amendment will be defeated in a Division and that the Government’s alternative amendment will pass. I hope that if the Lords come back again, it may be to find perhaps even further compromise, or to take some of the positives of the Lords approach and to consider some of the criticisms that the Opposition have made of the Home Secretary’s amendment. However, I agree that what is absolutely key is to pass the Bill.
We still need to focus on the diplomatic domestic service category, where people can work still for up to five years although I think it used to be six. I think that the prospect of prison is likely to have a persuasive effect on an abusive employer who employs someone in a private household for six months, although it will be a challenge to communicate to both overseas domestic workers and the families employing them that that consequence is a real one. In the diplomatic sector, however, given diplomatic immunity, I fear that that incentive might not be so great because the period that people are in service is much longer. I worry that, given the Government’s understandable concern for our relationships with foreign countries, we might not come close to eradicating servitude, if not modern slavery, in those categories. We must continue to focus on that area not just in legislation but through our foreign relations.
Mark Durkan
Unlike the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless), having been here throughout this debate, having sat through the Public Bill Committee and having been present for all the Bill’s other stages in the House, I am not surprised at the heat generated by Lords amendment 72 and the Government amendment to it.
I will not rehearse the issues raised in Committee. Instead, I will concentrate on some of the issues heard this afternoon. It has been argued that because this is such an important and welcome Bill, it is untoward to argue over amendments. It is an abuse of the procedural requirements of this place for Government Members to suggest that anybody pressing a point in relation to these amendments threatens the Bill at large or would be happy to see it frustrated or set aside. The attempt, here in this Chamber, where we talk about being mature legislators, to create the impression of an abuse of process and a scaring process should give us pause for thought about what is at play in these amendments.
The Government amendment provides that if an overseas domestic worker wants to exit a position of slavery, they can do so only if they participate in the national referral mechanism. They will have to engage in a process they might not know about or understand, and they might have their own particular fears, misgivings or hang-ups. They will have been subject to intimidation, having effectively been employed as chattels of their employer, courtesy of the kafala-style system that operates for domestic visa workers. The idea is that these victims—people on the margins of the margin—should have confidence that their position will be transformed by the national referral mechanism. I wish that were the case.
The Minister has emphasised that the Government amendment aims to ensure that when a domestic worker leaves a situation of slavery, that can help to ensure prosecution. The national policing lead and the director of crime command for the National Crime Agency have been quoted as saying that the Lords amendment would be at fault because it would undermine the capacity of the authorities to secure more prosecutions. When I asked the Minister about the experience of the national referral mechanism in terms of the number of conclusive decisions made compared with the number of successful prosecutions, she did not answer, although the right hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) subsequently gave us an indication. In quoting the figure from the legal advice to Anti-Slavery International, she gave the example of Kalayaan, which supports victims, and mentioned that 29 conclusive decisions had been made. However, there is only on record one conviction of an overseas domestic worker employer, so the link between the national referral mechanism and successful prosecutions is not strong. For that reason, the argument used by Government Members—that supporting the Lords amendment would undermine or wash away any prospect of prosecution—is entirely false.
I understand that the Minister will probably argue that that has been the case with the national referral mechanism historically—we all accept that it has had its flaws—but the reform of the mechanism that is to be implemented follows last autumn’s publication of a review, and of course that review will be subject to pilots that will have to be implemented and then evaluated, which will probably take a year or more. Separately, as we heard from the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) and others, we know that the Government have instituted a review of tied visas by James Ewins. If the Government are conducting a review of tied visas, and if we have acknowledged that there are issues with the national referral mechanism—issues that I hope will be addressed by the reforms that are to take place but which are as yet untested and unproved—surely it would be reasonable for the Government to accept the Lords amendment and then revisit the issues around tied visas, first, following the review and evaluations of the changes to the national referral mechanism, and secondly, after the review by James Ewins has reported. At least victims on overseas domestic worker visas would then have the autonomous right to escape their victimhood.
It is interesting that in one of her interventions today the Minister said that the reason the Government amendment rested so much on the victim co-operating with the national referral mechanism was to give victims control. Surely victims would have control if they could vacate their exploitative employment autonomously and then have the right to seek alternative employment. If the Government are worried that the abusive employer might then escape scrutiny and employ somebody else, that brings us back to the hole in the bucket, dear Liza, of this whole question: the tied visa system is a licence to employers to exploit and abuse employees. If the Government’s best argument against the Lords amendment is the likelihood of employers using the device of the tied visa system simply to repeat the same abuse, the Government should be questioning their position more fundamentally, rather than relying on their amendment.
Mark Reckless
Is the hon. Gentleman not concerned that subsection (b) of the Lords amendment, which would allow workers in these categories to extend for up to 12 months each time, might create a sub-category of foreign domestic servant, separate from the domestic labour market, and that would make exploitation more likely?
Mark Durkan
As any evidence emerges, we will have to consider what it suggests about this sector of employment in general and individual employers in particular. This goes back to some of the arguments the Government have used in support of their own amendment and against the Lords amendment. If a domestic worker were to change their employer under the visa entitlement the Lords amendment would give them, it would be known to an authority, and the authority should be duly asking questions. It would then be for somebody else—perhaps not the victim—to notify the national referral mechanism and for issues to take place there.
In separate interventions today, the Minister seemed to make different arguments. On the one hand, the Government amendment was defended on the grounds that it would lead to more prosecutions of abusive employers by ensuring that victims co-operated with the national referral mechanism and therefore that their victimhood would translate into active cases. That is what we were being told by the policing lead and the National Crime Agency. Then, in another intervention, the Minister made the point that the national referral mechanism was not of itself hidebound in achieving prosecutions and not necessarily police or prosecution-driven in any way. We cannot have both arguments being used in contradictory ways here.
I ask the Government to listen to their own arguments and to think about some of the things they are relying on in respect of their own amendments. They should think again about pressing those amendments; the chances are that they will have to revise them in the light of subsequent reviews and evaluations. The sensible thing to do—and most in keeping with the spirit claimed for this Bill, as being “world-leading” legislation—would be to accept the Lords amendments and, if necessary, qualify them by revisiting the issues in the light of subsequent reviews.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
With the leave of the House, I will call the Minister briefly to speak again and answer the debate.
Karen Bradley
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am grateful that you have given me the House’s leave to respond to the points raised.
I am grateful to all right hon. and hon. Members who have spoken in the debate. I know, as do we all, that there is a shared desire across this House and the other place to protect all victims of modern slavery. I will endeavour to address as quickly as I can the specific concerns raised, but I first want to note the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman) about the pre-legislative scrutiny committee’s various recommendations. She made the important point that the vote and recommendations for the committee took place before the Bill was published and the Government amendments were framed—before the review was announced and before the amendment in lieu we are debating today. I want to put on record my thanks and to pay my tribute to the members of the pre-legislative scrutiny committee, the Bill Committee and Members in the other place who have helped the Government to amend the Bill, making it a stronger and better Bill as a result.
The right hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) talked about not ratifying the International Labour Organisation’s convention on domestic workers. She will know that we do not believe that ratifying it would strengthen the extensive measures we already have in the UK to prevent slavery and human trafficking. We believe we go further in respect of slavery and human trafficking than the convention asks for. It is important to strike the right balance between protecting vulnerable workers and ensuring that aspects of employment law which can carry criminal sanction are not extended to private households. Ratifying the convention would require the imposition of unnecessarily onerous obligations on, for example, people employing home helps or personal carers, and would be neither practical nor proportionate.
The right hon. Lady also said that she did not consider a six-month visa for victims to be sufficiently long. The Government’s initial intention is to grant a six-month visa to enable victims to earn some money and begin to rebuild their lives as they plan their return home. We believe this to be an appropriate period. It is of course the maximum time for which an overseas domestic worker visa is usually issued—they are issued for six months, and we will proceed with six months. We will of course consider any recommendations that James Ewins makes in his review as to whether the period should be varied, along with other evidence put forward. Six months is the minimum, and it can be amended in immigration law.
Sir Andrew Stunell
I appreciate the Minister’s giving way and I know she is working hard in this area. If six months is the minimum, will she describe the circumstances in which that would not be the automatic figure? In what circumstances might a period longer than six months be granted under the guidance she is suggesting?
Karen Bradley
If the right hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I would have to say that it depends on the individual circumstances. Perhaps I shall write to him with some examples, if that would be acceptable.
The right hon. Member for Slough also made a point about people carrying their passports through the border. If she has evidence that people are being treated in this way while going through the border, will she please supply it to us, because I would like Border Force and others to look at that and act on it.
The hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) expressed his view that the Bill is not victim focused. I disagree: I think it is. The Bill before us has changed significantly from the draft Bill published in December 2013, and almost all the amendments made in the other place are in support of victim protection. I thus feel strongly that we have made it a victim-focused Bill.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. Members have put many questions to the Minister during a long debate. She is now answering them, and the House should have the courtesy to listen to her.
Karen Bradley
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker.
As I was saying, I am slightly confused. It worries me that we are having a debate about immigration when we should be debating slavery, which is what this Bill is about.
Chloe Smith
Does the Minister agree that we seem to have heard the Labour Front-Bench team and the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) being what some might call soft on immigration, in the sense of opening up this debate to all workers? The hon. Gentleman said explicitly that this was not just about victims, but about everybody.
Karen Bradley
My hon. Friend makes an important point. I have been confused. I thought we were discussing modern slavery, yet I have heard that this is about opening up immigration rules.
Michael Connarty
The Minister is setting up a straw man to knock it down. In the specific case I mentioned, someone is brought to this country and not paid—or given only pocket money, which many of the Kalayaan victims tell me is what happens. They are not physically abused, locked in a cupboard and fed the scraps the dog does not want—they are just not paid. There is a kafala system, in that the domestic visa and passport are held by the employer. Is such a person enslaved or not? I would say yes; does the Minister say no?
Karen Bradley
The hon. Gentleman will know that it would depend on the individual circumstances. It is clear, however, that in the situation he describes, British laws have been broken, so I would expect action to be taken to ensure that that was rectified. The point remains that the right hon. Member for Delyn, speaking for the Opposition, said that he wants the tie to be removed for all employees, even if they are not being abused. That sounds a strange and surprising position to take, given that there is so much concern about loopholes and other ways through which immigration rules can be flouted.
Michael Connarty
In taking evidence about Qatar in the Committee I chair at the Council of Europe, I heard about a case mentioned by the Union of Construction, Allied Trades and Technicians, in which people had their passports taken off them by their employers and were not paid. The person giving evidence said that these people were slaves, and I agree. If that is happening in Qatar and the same is happening in this country—people not being paid by their employers, who are holding their passports—I would say that it is an exact example of slavery in the modern world.
Karen Bradley
As I have said, I cannot get drawn into individual examples. It would depend on the individual circumstances and on what has been said. Clearly, however, the law has been broken in that case, so action should be taken.
The hon. Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) accepted that workers were abused in the previous system—but then seemed to suggest that she wanted to go back to such a system. That is not acceptable. She also talked about the EU directive. We are confident that we fully meet all our obligations under the EU directive for all victims of trafficking, including those on overseas domestic worker visas.
The hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) made the point that this issue is very complicated, and he is absolutely right that there is no silver bullet. If there were, we would not have between 10,000 and 13,000 victims of slavery here in Britain today. That is unacceptable and shows why the Modern Slavery Bill is so important. We need to ensure that it is enacted, so that we can take action against the perpetrators and protect the victims.
The hon. Gentleman questioned the use of the term “world-leading”. Let me give the House some facts about countries with similar immigration systems. In Australia, the domestic worker visa allows a person to work only for the named employer. The employee cannot become unemployed or work for someone else. In Canada, only the diplomatic route allows a change of employer, and the change must be approved by the Protocol Office. In the United States, overseas domestic workers may work only for a diplomat, an international employee or a visitor. Those who accompany visitors must certify that they will not accept other employment while working for the employer. In Ireland, workers are expected to leave at the end of their employment. It seems to me that we are not out of step with international comparators, and that we can be proud of the fact that this is a world-leading Bill.
The hon. Gentleman also mentioned the independent review. Its terms of reference are available, and I will forward them to him if he cannot find them in the Library or elsewhere. The review will consider the issues and what the best solutions are, so that victims can be helped and further abuse prevented.
The Government acknowledge that some domestic workers may have been employed abroad with terms and conditions that do not accord with United Kingdom law and expectations. However, the requirement to prove, as part of an overseas domestic worker via application, that there is a pre-existing, ongoing employment relationship outside the United Kingdom provides the best assurance available that an established employer-employee relationship is in operation.
As for the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless), I am grateful for his support for the Bill. I am not sure whether he supports the amendment, but I will say to him, rather cheekily, that if I see him in the Lobby today, it will probably mean that I am seeing him more frequently than I did when he sat on my side of the House.
The hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) talked about prosecutions and the focus of the Bill. Its focus is on finding the victims, but we will not protect them if we do not catch and convict the perpetrators. That is absolutely vital. The two strands of this work cannot be disaggregated; they are both important, but victim protection is at the forefront of what we are doing.
I know that some Members feel that the overseas domestic worker visa should not be linked to a single employer. The Government have taken their concerns as seriously as possible by holding an independent inquiry. There will be a report by the end of July, and changes to the visa can still be made under the immigration rules without the need for further primary legislation. However, if we simply accepted the Lords amendment now in its entirety, we would be ignoring the advice from law enforcement practitioners and the designate independent anti- slavery commissioner.
I urge Members to support the motion. The amendments in lieu will encourage more overseas domestic workers who are victims to come forward, they will allow law enforcement to lead to the investigation and prosecution of more abusers, and they will help vulnerable victims to rebuild their lives.
Question put, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 72.
Karen Bradley
I beg to move, That this House agrees with Lords amendment 1.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
With this it will be convenient to consider Lords amendments 2 to 71 and 73 to 95.
Karen Bradley
These are the amendments that the Government introduced in the other place to improve the Bill. They focus particularly on strengthening the provisions on support and protection for victims. They were broadly welcomed across the parties in the other place and they also deal with many issues raised in debates in this House. I shall not go through them in detail now but will, with the leave of the House, respond to specific points at the end of the debate. I hope that right hon. and hon. Members will feel able to welcome them.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
I thank the Minister. I was a little taken aback by the brevity of her opening remarks, considering the number of amendments that have been proposed. I may not be as brief as she was, because there are several points I want to put on the record.
It is important to stress again that the Labour party has always supported the introduction of this important Bill. We recognise that human trafficking is a heinous crime and that its complex nature demands specialist legislation, but it has been a little difficult at times fully to understand the Government’s approach. When the original Bill was first published, many charities, organisations and lawyers shared the view that the Government had failed to provide the level of support for victims that we all wanted to see. There were also some large gaps: for example, at the outset it contained nothing on supply chains.
Progress has been made in Committee in this House and in the other place. I pay tribute to my noble Friends the right hon. Baroness Royall, Lord Rosser and Baroness Kennedy for their work in ensuring that we received this much improved Bill today. I also pay tribute to the work done in the Committee that considered the draft Bill. Tribute has already been paid to my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) for the work that he and all the members of that Committee did on a cross-party basis to make a set of recommendations that we have been able to consider, question and argue for as the Bill passed through the House.
I want to comment on some of the progress that has been made through the Government amendments in the other place. The position of anti-slavery commissioner has been transformed; it originally seemed to me that they would be nothing more than a Home Office civil servant with a remit exclusively covering prosecutions and with no independent overview of their work programme. Even though that change has not gone as far as we hoped—we hoped for something more akin to the Children’s Commissioner—we are pleased that the commissioner will have control over their finances, will be able to appoint their own staff and promote good practice across the world and that public bodies will have a duty to co-operate with them. Most of all, I am pleased that the commissioner’s remit will include the support available to victims and survivors of trafficking and exploitation.
There have been significant improvements in the formulation of the statutory defence for victims of slavery who commit crimes in the course of their enslavement. The original defence did not recognise the unique nature of child exploitation and the fact that a child cannot consent to their own enslavement. The Opposition therefore welcome the removal of the compulsion element of the statutory defence in relation to children, but we think that a problem remains not just in the conviction of perpetrators of slavery but in the prosecutions and charging decisions. We are disappointed that the Government have not suggested an amendment to require the Director of Public Prosecutions to issue specific guidance on charging in cases of human trafficking victims. Whichever party is in Government after 7 May will need to consider that again.
Another big area on which there has been movement is that of child advocates. Although the new system introduced by the Government is not the system of child guardians required by the EU directive on child trafficking, which was called for by the Joint Committee on the draft Bill and the charity coalition involved in the Anti-Trafficking Monitoring Group, some improvements have been made. I pay tribute in particular to my right hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), who championed child advocates forcefully in the Bill Committee.
We now have an assurance that advocates will definitely be brought in and that they will be independent of other statutory bodies with responsibility for the child; that they will have access to the necessary and appropriate information; that they will be appointed as soon as is reasonably practicable where there are reasonable grounds to believe that a child may be a victim of human trafficking; and that they will have the power to appoint and instruct legal representatives where appropriate.
I also welcome the practical moves in relation to the Gangmasters Licensing Authority and the fact that we will have a Government report looking at the GLA’s work and a possible extension of its role within 12 months.
On another positive note, we are very pleased with the significant progress that has been made on the reporting requirements placed on large firms in relation to their supply chains. The Government could never claim to be genuinely committed to eradicating slavery in the UK if we did not address slavery in the supply chains of our large companies. It was absurd that the Government did not include supply chains in the original Bill. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty), who has done so much to champion this issue over many years. I am pleased that his tireless efforts have paid dividends in changing the Bill.
The Opposition were clear from the outset that we wanted a reporting requirement that was comprehensive, that allowed direct comparability between companies and that included an enforcement mechanism. Although we welcomed the moves originally announced by the Minister on Report, we still wanted them to go further. She will remember that we were particularly critical of the Government for repeating some of the mistakes that have hampered the transparency of supply chains legislation in California. It has not always been clear which companies that legislation applies to, and it has been hard for non-governmental organisations to find out which companies ought to be complying and whether they actually are complying. Moreover, when two reports were looked at side by side, they were often not directly comparable.
That is why we made it clear that the reporting requirement has to contain clear instructions as to what a report has to have in it. A large firm may have 100,000 suppliers and it will be able to fill a report with good practice, but what we need firms to do is to create a fair evaluation that addresses the key issues, which means that we have to specify the key things to be addressed in the report.
We welcome the guidance as to what a report should contain and we hope it will encourage best practice, but we still think that that should be compulsory guidance rather than just a steer. We would also have liked it to contain a requirement for companies to report on what work they are doing to support victims who are found in their supply chains. I recognise, however, that the Bill has come a long way and I thank the Minister for the way in which she has dealt with the changes to it over the past few months.
Mr Burrowes
This is an important Bill, which the whole House can be proud of. Throughout its passage there has rightly been robust scrutiny by the Joint Committee and the Bill Committee, of which I was proud to be a member, and by both sides of the House, but I believe that it is fit for its purpose of increasing prosecutions and supporting victims.
I welcome the Lords amendments, which in many respects reflect the work in the Bill Committee and in all parts of the House to try to ensure that we did the very best we could in the limited time available to make this a world-class Bill, as the Home Secretary sought. I thank her for her lead, and the Prime Minister, and in particular the Minister for her diligence and care in dealing with these matters.
I want to draw particular attention to these because they reflect the debates we had in the Bill Committee. In many ways, we go through this process and all end up in the place we want to be. In particular, the Bill now makes it explicit that one of the personal circumstances that may make someone vulnerable to slavery is the fact that they are a child. Throughout the passage of the Bill, we have all wanted to make sure that child victims are central, that there are prosecutions when there are child victims, and that the Bill gives a proper tailored response. I therefore welcome this crucial amendment, which we have sought from the outset, and which I and others have campaigned for.
I do not accept that it is necessary for a specific child exploitation offence, however. I think the Bill can deal with prosecutions in relation to child victims, and the explicit reference to children in clause 1 now is particularly welcome.
I tabled an amendment and joined Members on both sides to ensure that exploitation measures had as wide an effect as possible, and that that was covered in clause 1. I drew attention in Committee, and others have done so since, to things such as begging or pick-pocketing and ensuring that such exploitation-type offences were covered by clause 1. It is important that such work and services now qualify as exploitation. The Government were previously concerned that the definition was going to be too wide, but in the Bill Committee we said from the outset that it was possible to use the definition set out in clause 3. Lo and behold, that is where we have got to, and the Lords and the Government have accepted that that is an appropriate addition.
We all wanted to be as clear as possible on the issue of consent, to make sure that this Bill was in step with our international obligations and case law. Also, we all wanted to make sure there was a specific understanding in the Bill that a victim’s consent to any of the alleged conduct does not preclude a finding that they have been held in slavery or were required to perform forced labour. We wanted to make sure that the wording did not have the perverse impact of ensuring that a child victim did not achieve the prosecutions they deserved, and now it is clear that a victim’s consent should not preclude any findings of their being held in slavery or forced labour.
Another area that has been mentioned is the independence of the anti-slavery commissioner. It is very welcome that the combined efforts of both Houses have led to a point where no one can be in any doubt about the independence of the commissioner, who has the word “independent” at the beginning of their title, as the Bill Committee was able to achieve. I pay tribute to those in the other place on both sides, and refer in particular—to be slightly partial—to Lord McColl of Dulwich, who played a key role alongside others in following up the hard work done by the Joint Committee and the Bill Committee. They all worked to ensure that there was the appropriate budget and staffing. Resources are necessary to make sure that this works and to make it clear—the Government amendments make this clear beyond doubt—not only that the child trafficking advocates are independent but that this is going to happen: yes, there is piloting, but this is going to happen. There is now a duty to ensure that these detailed regulations come to pass and that there is an appropriate sharing of information, and the public authorities must co-operate. All in all, this is a very welcome addition to a Bill that we can all be proud of. We can be proud of it because of the effect it will have on the ground, in making sure that there are prosecutions and that there is proper support for victims.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. Before I call the next speaker, it will be obvious to the House that we have limited time left. Three of the Members who have indicated that they wish to speak now have spoken at some length on the last group of amendments. If Members wish to hear what the Minister has to say in response to their questions, I hope they will have the courtesy to leave a few minutes for her to reply, in which case no one should speak for more than three minutes.
Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central) (Lab)
I do not intend to speak for very long at all, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I just want to touch on a few aspects, particularly around the supply chain amendments and how they relate to our commitment as a country and as a Government to our international development obligations. It is right that we seek to increase opportunity right across the world, but we have to accept that many of the systems we adopt domestically perpetuate poverty and the cycle of deprivation in some of the poorest and most vulnerable places around the world. One example of that is supply chains.
This debate comes between Fairtrade fortnight and the anniversary of the Rana plaza disaster, when 1,200 workers lost their lives putting together garments, many of which were going to be worn in Britain. That is why these amendments are so important, and I welcome many of the changes that have come from the Government, although I agree with the shadow Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), that they could have gone a lot further.
The fact that 80 billion garments a year are produced globally, that there are 168 million child workers and that 85 million of them are working in hazardous conditions and that over 4 million aged between four and 14 are working in India alone shows the scale of the challenge. If we are to be serious about our international obligations, we must make sure our domestic legislation helps to shape and fight for the right things across the world. We must ensure that everyone has access to a decent job, fair pay and the right to join a trade union.
On that point, it is unacceptable in the midst of such a debate, in which I welcome many of the Government’s proposals, that we see the ideological scrapping of central budget support for the International Labour Organisation, which helps to promote workers’ rights around the globe. If we come into government on 7 May—as I hope we will—I am sure we will reverse that funding cut, and I hope a Government of any other colour would do so, too.
I want to say a bit about the sustainability of putting not only voluntary but mandatory entitlements on companies. Companies must meet their full obligations and there should be some kind of certification mechanism for well-behaved companies to be recognised, but bad practice must be exposed and outlawed. That will give the public the same confidence that they have about cocoa, chocolate and wine through Fairtrade fortnight. We should have the same confidence about all those things we acquire from across the globe.
I see that my three minutes have arrived, Madam Deputy Speaker. In closing, I welcome the Government amendments. They could have gone a lot further, but let us hope that this is the start of an opportunity to improve life chances of workers not just here, but across the globe.
Michael Connarty
I echo the positive and cautionary comments that my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) has made today. We have done much to progress this issue, but we still have a long way to go. I want to mark the fact that we did not take the advice of Lord Judge and Peter Carter and that we will not have a cascade of serious offences, so that people will know exactly what they are being judged on and so that judges will know what we want them to do, rather than having to interpret the previous collection of crimes. That, for me, is the most important thing.
I want to talk also about the Connarty-Mactaggart clause. We might even be able to call it the Connarty-Mactaggart-Bradley clause if the Minister were to attach herself to it. If I were to put that in alphabetical order, I would have to put the Minister’s name first, but I do not want to do that as the issue was initiated by my right hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) in her ten-minute rule Bill and by me in my private Member’s Bill.
I thank the Minister for putting into amendment 73 the six areas of information that an organisation’s slavery and human trafficking statement must include and disclose. The amendment also states that the board of a company must approve such a statement and that it will have to be signed by a director. That provision came from debates in the Bill Committee and in the Joint Committee. Those provisions give strength to what we have been trying to do.
Paul Blomfield
I want to speak briefly to Lords amendment 77. I support it, but I have some concerns about how the consultation relating to the Gangmasters Licensing Authority was described by Ministers in the other place, first in relation to the consideration of changes to enforcement and licensing activity and, secondly, in relation to intelligence sharing and interaction with other agencies. On the first, it is important to emphasise that the interest shown in the role of the GLA throughout the passage of the Bill has been due to its status as a model of best practice internationally. Its strength lies in fulfilling the very letter of the new International Labour Organisation protocol and the recommendation to the forced labour convention—which this Government voted for just last year and intend to ratify shortly—calling for improved labour inspections and enforcement of labour laws as key prevention measures.
Will the Minister assure the House that consultation on changes to enforcement and licensing activity will give due consideration to the success of the GLA’s licensing and enforcement activity in its current form? I emphasise the words “in its current form”. General law enforcement is not a GLA responsibility and, should the GLA’s meagre resources be diverted into criminal investigations and crime control, as was suggested in the other place, its critical licensing and intelligence-gathering role would be compromised.
Much of the GLA’s strength lies in its ability to build relationships of trust with workers during its detailed intelligence-gathering work. Critically, that intelligence is often anonymous and relies on workers trusting that the GLA is independent of the Government. Vulnerable workers have expressed considerable mistrust for the GLA where it is considered to be too close to border security or the police. So will the Minister assure the House that the consideration of a role for the GLA in intelligence sharing will not pose challenges to its intelligence-gathering function?
At the recent GLA national conference in Derby, the Minister said that the review would ensure that the GLA would
“target the ‘right’ businesses, the ones who break the law, the ones who exploit their workers and the ones who subject them to servitude and slavery.”
I think everyone would agree that it is important to target the right businesses, but we want to ensure that the Home Office does not allow its emphasis on prosecution to obscure the complexity of the fight against modern slavery. We do not need another National Crime Agency or a new UK Border Agency; we need the Gangmasters Licensing Authority’s good practice in issuing and monitoring licences and in gathering intelligence extended to other sectors.
Throughout the debate on the Bill, businesses have made the point that many of them want to do the right thing, but that they cannot trade ethically and effectively police their supply chains here in the UK without adequate labour inspection and an enforcement framework. Recruitment agencies try to operate within the law but find their margins impossible and so undermine labour rights to save money. Gangmasters, whose business model depends on paying less than the national minimum wage, are overworking people and taking cuts for substandard accommodation. So we need a labour licensing, inspection and enforcement regime that offers assurances to good business, reduces the temptation to shave away at the corners of workers’ rights and absolutely outlaws the descent into forced labour.
Fiona Mactaggart
The Minister will not be surprised to find that I want to ask for more—I feel like Oliver sometimes—but let me start by saying thank you to all the members of the pre-legislative scrutiny Committee, to the members of the Public Bill Committee and to the Minister, because we have made real progress—I say that to Members from all parties. The Minister has often said that this is the first UK Bill to deal with modern slavery, but it will not be the last. So one thing I should like her to commit to—she has time in this debate to do so—is a review of the effect of this legislation within three years of its commencement. We are passing so much here that we need to test whether some of our anxiety about whether it will work, and some of her confidence that it will work, is well founded. Such a review would be a good foundation for looking to the future.
The second thing I want to ask for relates to Lords amendment 61, where the power to make regulations about victim care is explicit, but it is only a power to make regulations. There is a risk that for many months after this Bill victims of modern slavery in England will be less well cared for than victims of modern slavery in the other parts of the UK, which have passed legislation including powerful mechanisms for victim care. So will the Minister commit now—I believe that she is willing to do so, but it would be helpful if the commitment was made on the Floor of the House—to take the earliest opportunity to introduce regulations to ensure high standards of victims’ care following the review of the NRM.
My final point is about the Connarty-Mactaggart-Bradley issue, which is about supply chains. I really welcome the fact that supply chains are provided for in the Bill. The Minister will have noticed the debate in the House of Lords, which told us to learn from California about having no central spot where supply chain reporting happens. I have been struck by the keenness of companies on having a central spot, because good-quality companies will benefit from this legislation on supply chains. They are keen to ensure that there is proper comparability between the reports of different companies. The Minister could now say—it does not require legislation—that she will work with the commercial and voluntary sectors to try to establish a single repository for those reports, because if we do that, customers will be able to hold companies to account.
Karen Bradley
With the leave of the House, I should like to respond briefly to the comments that have been made. May I start by saying that I am pleased the Bill has been so well received by Members from all parts of the House? I am grateful to all the right hon. and hon. Members, both here and in the Lords, who have worked so tirelessly in assisting the Government to make the Bill as effective as possible. We have had some animated debates and differences of opinion, but I think all right hon. and hon. Members will agree that the Bill today looks very different from the one first presented as a draft Bill in December 2013.
I wish to pay specific tribute to my colleagues Lord Bates and Baroness Garden, who steered the Bill through the 95 amendments we are discussing today, and to the shadow Ministers, both here and in the other place, who worked constructively with the Government to make sure we get the right result: by the end of prorogation, a Modern Slavery Act—something of which we can all be incredibly proud.
Some specific points were raised. I welcome them, but do not have much time to cover them. Briefly, many of them, particularly those raised by the shadow Minister and others, were debated in the other place, and there is much on the record about our position. Let me just say that we will continue to consider those points. From my point of view, the Bill is a means to an end; it is not the end itself. It will enable us to identify more victims, using the anti-slavery commissioner and the victim support that we have outlined, but that cannot be the end. We have a long way to go, working on the strategy and working with partners, to ensure that the measures are implemented on the ground.
I pay tribute to all members of the pre-legislative scrutiny Committee and the Bill Committee, including my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes), whose work on trafficking and child trafficking advocates has put us in the position that we are now in, and he should take great credit for that. I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) and the right hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) for their work on supply chains, which they did for many, many years before the Bill was introduced. They know that we wanted to do this in the right way; we wanted to have the right evidence to get the Bill right. I can tell the right hon. Lady that we are consulting on the statutory guidance, including on how best to make statements available online. We are working with the voluntary sector and businesses specifically on a website or a comparison tool for statements.
This Bill is important and historic, and I am incredibly proud of it. For the victims of those most heinous and horrendous crimes, we have done something very good today in this place.
Lords amendment 1 agreed to.
Business without Debate
Committee on Standards (Reports)
(9 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
With this we shall consider the following motion, on the code of conduct and guide to the rules relating to the conduct of Members:
That:
(1) this House approves the Third Report from the Committee on Standards, on The Code of Conduct, (HC 772);
(2) with effect from the beginning of the next Parliament, this House approves the revised Guide to the Rules relating to the Conduct of Members annexed to that Report;
(3) the Code of Conduct for Members of Parliament be amended as follows:
(a) leave out Paragraph 2 and insert
‘The Code applies to Members in all aspects of their public life. It does not seek to regulate what Members do in their purely private and personal lives’.
(b) leave out paragraph 17; and
(4) previous Resolutions of this House in relation to the conduct of Members shall be read and given effect in a way which is compatible with the Code of Conduct and the Guide to the Rules relating to the Conduct of Members.
Kevin Barron
I am delighted to open this debate, which represents the fulfilment of a great deal of unsung and often thankless work by the Standards Committee.
I should like first to talk about the proposals for changes to the composition of the Committee. Those were recommended in the sixth report of this session, which the House is asked to note. The report was put before the Committee by the Standards Sub-Committee, which was set up in response to the reflections of the lay members of the Committee on their first year in office.
The lay members have prepared a further note covering their experiences after two years in office. That will be published shortly, and I have no doubt that the new Committee will find it as useful, if as challenging, as we found the first one.
The Sub-Committee was chaired by Peter Jinman, one of the lay members, and the House, like the rest of the Committee, has much reason to be grateful to him and his colleagues. Although the report was prepared by the Sub-Committee, it was adopted without demur by the main Committee. Contrary to any fears that may have been expressed before the lay members were appointed, this agreement between the lay and elected Members of the Committee has been typical.
The lay members were appointed to the Committee in 2012 when the Standards Committee was separated from the former Standards and Privileges Committee. Their introduction was intended to strengthen the independent element in the standards system. The first independent element, of course, was the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards. As the report makes clear, her role remains crucial and undiminished and her independence in her field is unaffected.
In the event, the lay members have changed the Committee in ways that were not all expected. By bringing their outside experience to bear, they have encouraged the Committee to rethink its working methods. They have given it the self-confidence to suggest moving away from being a largely reactive body that comes into play when it receives a memorandum from the commissioner and towards being one that seeks to play a clearer and more positive role in standards setting.
The position of the lay members is not always understood. The fact that they cannot vote or propose reports or amendments is sometimes used to suggest that they are in some way ciphers or stooges. I want to say to the House, and to the people listening outside, that that is absolutely not the case. Not only do the lay members play a full part in debate, but any one of them has, by Standing Order of the House, the right to append an opinion to any report of the Committee.
Moreover, given that it is essential that one lay member be present for the Committee to be quorate, they have an effective veto over the transaction of business. Fortunately, neither opinion nor withdrawal has ever been necessary; the lay members have gained their points by discussion and persuasion, and the Committee’s work has been greatly strengthened as a result.
We have recommended that the number and proportion of lay members of the Committee be increased. That brings the House’s system closer into line with the regulatory systems for professions such as the law and medicine, and it is way ahead of lay input in the Parliaments of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the USA, none of whose equivalent Committees has any lay members whatsoever.
At present the Committee consists of 13 members— 10 MPs and three lay members. We propose that the overall size of the Committee be increased from 13 to 14, of whom seven should be lay members. That will also give us an opportunity to have more diversity in the Committee. Instead of the current quorum of five elected members and one lay member, we propose that the new Committee’s quorum should be three elected and three lay members. If agreed to, our proposal will also permit the term of office of lay members to run over a Parliament, making succession planning smoother. All those changes should strengthen the position of the lay members even further as well as allowing the Committee to experiment with different ways of working.
We also propose that the next Chair of the Committee should be elected, as the Chairs of most other Committees of the House now are. In principle, I think that is an excellent idea. On the other hand, I must warn any prospective candidates that, if elected, they will be in for an interesting and sometimes rocky road. None the less, it is a job worth doing, and one that is crucial to maintaining and improving the reputation of the House.
The report looked in some detail at the current system. It made a few suggestions for changes in practice by the commissioner and the Committee but found that the system was generally proportionate, the process fair and the sanctions appropriate. Some Members might think that our report spends too long setting out the existing system. We did that because we found that it was often misunderstood, and not only outside the House, but within it, and we wanted to help remedy that. Understanding of the system is not helped by the media coverage of parliamentary standards issues, some of which verges on the biased. I will give one example. The House has put restrictions on the remit of the commissioner. The Committee accepts that those should be reviewed from time to time, but none the less for the time being they are in place and the commissioner must abide by them.
The sixth report pointed out that many complaints to the Commissioner for Standards fall outside her remit. This applies particularly to what might be called level of service complaints, when a constituent feels that a Member did not help them as the constituent asked. We suggested that time, resources and frustration might be saved, not least for complainants, if constituents could be helped to understand better what MPs can and cannot do, what they may reasonably be expected to do, and when some other person or institution should be approached first.
Following publication of the report, one newspaper carried the headline, “MPs no longer want to help constituents with their bin collections and street repairs”. We do live in an elected democracy. Any such suggestion is ridiculous. Insult was added to injury in this case because the Committee had held a press briefing at the time of the report’s publication and Committee staff had already explained the recommendation to the journalist concerned. The misrepresentation was deeply disappointing, if not predicted from some quarters.
Misunderstanding of the system is not restricted to the media. There is widespread ignorance even in the House on occasion about what our system is. The Committee believes that the House authorities should do more to promote understanding of parliamentary standards—for instance, by making the website clearer. The Committee accepts that it, too, could do more to help the media and the public to understand its reports, in particular the process by which they are arrived at. We have made some suggestions for our successor Committee and to the commissioner to consider how this might be done, though any Committee will be careful to avoid getting drawn into argument about specific cases.
We are glad that plans have been made to make the induction of new MPs more effective.
The House is committed to reviewing the code of conduct and guide to the rules once in every Parliament. I now come to the proposed changes referred to in the first motion before us. These have been a long time coming, as they were first proposed in the Committee’s third report in the 2012-13 Session. Indeed, it was mainly the delay in bringing them to the House that led the Committee to recommend that its reports should be debated within two months of publication. Still, better late than never, and I am pleased that any difficulties seem to have been resolved and that the Government are now able to bring changes forward. This means that the revised code and guide will be in force at the beginning of the new Parliament. This will be crucial in assisting people who get over the wire, both those who are Members of the House now and new Members coming into the House. It will be enormously helpful if the proposed changes are agreed to.
The proposed change to the code of conduct reverts to the position as it was before 2013, making it clear that the code does not seek to regulate what Members do in their purely personal and private lives. We understand that this change meets the approval of Members.
The proposed changes to the rules make the rules on registration simpler, clearer and more consistent, tighten the rules on lobbying and make it clear that previous resolutions of the House are to be read in a way that is compatible with the code and guide currently in force. In this way they allow the House to respond to the recommendations of the Group of States against Corruption, otherwise known as GRECO, a Council of Europe body of which the UK is a member. Like the lay members, the GRECO report holds a mirror up to the House, and we should consider carefully the recommendations it contains. The recommendations and the Committee’s response to them are printed in our third report, to assist the House.
As the sixth report makes clear, the maintenance of high parliamentary standards is a matter for each and every one of us, whatever parliamentary position we may hold. There are many different sorts of leadership in the House. Standards are not a matter for the Committee on Standards alone: it is important that political leaders understand the system, and do not inadvertently undermine it by appearing ignorant of the rules. These are the House’s own rules, agreed in debates like this, and we should all respect them.
The First Secretary of State and Leader of the House of Commons (Mr William Hague)
It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Kevin Barron) and to pay tribute to his work and that of his Committee. I believe that both the motions before us, if agreed, will serve to increase confidence, inside and outside the House, in the regulatory system that we work under.
Let me deal first with the motion relating to the standards system in the House. I pay tribute not only to the Committee but to the sub-Committee, which did a lot of work on this. I particularly commend its lay members, who led the review, for the production of a thoughtful and balanced report. The report proves the value of including an outside perspective at the heart of our self-regulatory system. That, in itself, makes the case for broadening that outside perspective. These matters—the design and application of the standards system—are, of course, for the House collectively. The Government are fully supportive of the efforts of the Standards Committee and others to secure a system that is transparent, clear and effective. I believe that the motion is consistent with this objective.
The Government support the maintenance of an independent parliamentary commissioner for standards with the discretion to accept or reject a complaint for investigation, as she sees fit. It is right that a complete separation be maintained between the investigation of a complaint by the commissioner and the Committee’s role in considering her report and recommending any sanctions to the House. I am pleased that the Committee did not recommend a new adversarial procedure with lengthy and legalistic procedures. That would not have served the interests of the House or its Members, or improved its reputation in the eyes of the public.
The Committee’s most striking recommendation, as the right hon. Gentleman discussed, is the increase in the number of lay members from three to seven—the same as the number of MPs on the Committee. He told us how much of an asset it has been to have the services of the three lay members. Quite apart from the value they bring to the Committee from their differing backgrounds and experiences, their presence provides an effective answer to those who criticise the standards system on the grounds that it is Members judging each other. The achievement of a balance of external and internal members of the Committee will serve to provide it with a wider range of views and greater authority in this House, and, I hope, create greater confidence in the system outside this place.
It was notable that the lay members did not see the need to have a vote to be an effective presence on the Committee. The report explains that the
“existing position of the lay members is strong, contrary to some external portrayal.”
We have to be guided by the Committee on this point. It is difficult to imagine that it will want to publish reports with which its lay members disagree. However, the ability of lay members to record a contrary view is an important part of the present system that will be enhanced in the new one. Making lay members full members of the Committee would have introduced an element of legal uncertainty into its proceedings, as has been set out by the Procedure Committee and the Joint Committee on Parliamentary Privilege.
The one recommendation directly for the Government relates to the scheduling of reports for debate. The Committee recommends that debates should take place within two months of the publication of reports. The Government have been very responsive in scheduling debates on the Committee’s reports on the conduct of individual Members. The conclusions of reports of this nature have always been brought before the House within a matter of days. I believe that any Government in the next Parliament will want to continue to bring forward substantive reports on the conduct of Members that require a decision of the House at the earliest available opportunity. I would certainly recommend that to my successor.
I am pleased that the Committee plans to take on a wider role in the promotion of ethical conduct of Members of Parliament, drawing on best professional practice and the experiences of other legislatures. The new lay members of the Committee, when appointed, will give this role added resonance. The House can look forward to the Committee’s role developing further in the new Parliament.
I turn briefly to the second motion, on the code of conduct for Members and the guide to the rules. I am very pleased to be able to bring this issue before the House before Dissolution. It is important that Members elected to the new Parliament be subject to a clear code of conduct that they can read as soon as they are elected, and that they have the benefit of a guide to the rules that is fully up to date. I am particularly pleased that by updating and improving the guide to the rules, we can implement the outstanding recommendations of the Council of Europe Group of States against Corruption in so far as they relate to the House of Commons. The successful passage of the Government’s Recall of MPs Bill also meets its recommendations for disciplinary sanctions that are proportionate and dissuasive.
Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)
On the code of conduct, the Leader of the House will be aware of the controversy in recent days about whether a Minister adequately explained having a second job. Does he feel that the Government now need to revisit the ministerial code of conduct so that Ministers, such as the Minister without Portfolio, have clearer guidance on what they should or should not declare?
Mr Hague
My immediate answer is no. Those rules are clear. The Minister concerned has said that he spoke in error, and I do not think there has been any suggestion that he broke the rules.
I believe that the updating of the guide to the rules is uncontroversial, and it should be supported by the House. The wording of the code of conduct has proved quite a difficult nut to crack during this Parliament. The debate in March 2012 revealed disquiet in some quarters of the House—let me put it that way—about how the code could be interpreted. That resulted in an amendment that, in the Committee’s view, led to a disconnect between the powers of the commissioner to investigate certain complaints and the provisions of the code.
As Leader of the House, I have been conscious of the need to secure a high degree of consensus on the code’s wording and interpretation before putting it before the House for a decision. That has taken a little more time than we all wished, but I hope and believe that we have got there in the end. The Members who have taken the time to do that have shown a good deal of forbearance, but that was the right approach. I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Rother Valley for his perseverance in chairing his Committee on this matter, and to colleagues from across the House for their co-operation. That is why there has been a delay in holding this debate, but we have been able to have it before the end of the Parliament.
I hope and believe that this debate will illustrate consensus on the wording. The new code proposed by the Standards Committee strikes the right balance between respect for the private life of Members and our obligation to uphold the code in all aspects of our public lives. I hope that the code will command the confidence of the public. On that basis, I am very happy to support the motions.
Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Kevin Barron) and his fellow members of the Standards Committee, including the lay members, on the two reports the House is considering today. I thank them for those reports, which each represent an important step forward and provide welcome clarity on the standards system and the guide to the rules.
I concur with the Leader of the House that it is important to agree the changes in advance of the new Parliament, in which the new Members will need clarity. We are all content that we have just managed to get in under the wire in doing so. The situation is complex: we have many structures of rules that Members are expected to follow, and they have become more complex and divergent over time. It was therefore important for my right hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley to be able to look at how to simplify some of the structures. We have the Electoral Commission and the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority, both of which are independent, but there are also—quite rightly—the rules of the House of Commons, which the Standards Committee has looked at.
The first motion is on the report from the lay members of the Standards Committee. It suggests some sensible changes to improve public trust in the standards system. As I said in my evidence to the Committee’s inquiry, we need a system that is predictable, simple and transparent. It is helpful if the system is intelligible to members of the public as well as to colleagues, many of whom will have seen the rules change multiple times over their years in the House. In my experience, Members tend to remember the rules as they were when they first came into the House and do not always manage to follow the myriad changes that occur as their time in the House lengthens. Many people have been caught out inadvertently by the evolution of the rules, which they have not noticed, because Members tend to respond to the rules that were in place when they first came into this place.
In my evidence, I said that we needed to remove the Government’s majority on the Standards Committee. I note that that is not proposed in the motion, but I hope that we can return to it. It is vital not only that the Committee act fairly—that goes without saying—but that it be seen to act fairly. We must avoid any perception among the public or others that Government Whips can affect the outcome of an inquiry.
I welcome the Committee’s proposal to increase the number of lay members so that there is an equal number of MPs and lay members on the Committee. I also welcome the decision to make it clear in future reports whether the lay members agree with the Members of Parliament who serve on the Committee. The use of lay members on House Committees is a relatively new innovation. In my experience of serving on Committees that include lay members—I have not served on the Standards Committee, but I have served on the Speaker’s Committee for the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority—the innovation has worked well to date and has helped the House immeasurably.
The changes in the motion will ensure that our standards system is in line with the regulatory systems of many other professional bodies, while respecting the House’s unique position. We welcome the Committee’s recognition that,
“The electorate have the right to choose their representative”
and that
“any standards system must not constrain that right”
in a democracy. That is an important part of the summary of the report. As the Leader of the House pointed out, we now have recall, which might also impact on this area in some circumstances.
The report makes the welcome suggestion of a clear description of the role of an MP in increasing public understanding of the work we do. The Committee even made an heroic attempt to describe the role on page 24 of the report. It is an interesting attempt, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley and his Committee were extremely brave to set it out. We will see what kind of dialogue ensues in subsequent Parliaments as a result of their writing down that description.
Turning to the second motion, on the code of conduct and the guide to the rules, the new guide recommends simplifying the process of registering interests, tightening the rules around lobbying, and clarifying the relationship between the code, the guide and resolutions of the House. All of those recommendations have to be welcome. As the Committee’s report notes, the guide to the rules was first published in 1996. Over time, as I hinted earlier, it has seen many piecemeal additions and revisions—or evolution, if you like, Mr Deputy Speaker.
The new guide is intended not only to be a comprehensive revision of the rules, which is certainly long overdue, but to ensure that we meet our obligations as a member of the group of states against corruption, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley said. As the Committee notes, if we do not agree to the new guide, Members who are elected in May will be bound by rules that are “not always clear”, that are “out of date” and that do
“not respond to the recommendations of a Treaty organisation of which the United Kingdom is a member.”
It is clearly welcome that we are able to have this debate today. I hope we will pass the motions on the Order Paper to bring ourselves into line with the international treaties we have signed.
The first thing these changes will do is to reform how Members’ interests are registered. The proposed guide harmonises the rules on registration and reduces the number of registration categories, with just one, rather than the current three, for outside employment. The report also recommends a lower threshold for the registration of interests. Those are welcome and sensible simplifications. Labour Members want to go much further and have a system in which registering a paid directorship or consultancy is no longer possible, in which second jobs are far more regulated than is currently the case.
The report also suggests changes to the rules on lobbying—an area that clearly needs change following the scandals of this Parliament. The proposed changes to the guide go some way towards tightening the rules, but the system of regulation the Government have put in place is fundamentally inadequate. Despite the Prime Minister promising before the last election that he would shine the “light of transparency” on lobbying, the register the Government are set to introduce would cover just 1% of ministerial meetings organised by lobbyists, and would not have caught any of the lobbying scandals that have hit this Government. The lobbying Act prevents charities and civil society from campaigning—rules that are already having a chilling effect on debate in the run-up to the general election.
If Labour wins the election we will introduce tough new limits on lobbying and an effective register of all professional lobbyists, backed up by a code of conduct and enforced with sanctions. We will also review whether lobbyists should be allowed to provide the secretariats for all-party parliamentary groups, and continue to support the ban on parliamentary passes for any APPG staff.
The report also recommends updating the basis of the rules. As the former Clerk of the House, Lord Lisvane, made clear in his evidence to the Committee,
“there is a certain amount of doubt about what actually constitutes the ‘rules’ of the House”.
As well as the code and the guide, a number of other resolutions of the House also provide guidance on MPs’ conduct. As the report says,
“defining the rules of the House through a series of Resolutions of varying antiquity, which need to be regularly amended, is unsatisfactory”.
We therefore welcome today’s motion, which clarifies that all previous resolutions on Members’ conduct should be read in a way that is compatible with the guide and the code. We also welcome the sensible proposal to revert to the 2009 wording on Members’ private lives, which I hope will assuage concerns across the House that were raised when this matter was last debated in 2012.
I welcome both reports as a positive step in the right direction, while believing that we can, and should, go further. On second jobs, proper regulation of lobbyists, and the Government’s majority on the Standards Committee, I look forward to a Labour Government working across the House for further reform in just a few weeks’ time.
Mr Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and West Devon) (Con)
It has been my privilege to serve on the Committee on Standards under the chairmanship of the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Kevin Barron) throughout this Parliament, and I put on record my gratitude to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, the registrar and the staff of those offices for the extraordinary diligence with which they have pursued their functions and roles. It has been an enormous pleasure to collaborate and work with them.
It is extremely important to remember the division of functions between the commissioner and the Committee. The commissioner is the rapporteur to the Committee. She will investigate and establish the facts and make recommendations. Ultimately, however, it is for the Committee to decide what the response and reaction to her report should be.
I remember very few occasions when the Committee has ventured to disagree, and even then it has done so with considerable trepidation and diffidence, and only in cases where the commissioner herself evinced a degree of uncertainty as to the correct conclusion. That is exactly the dialogue that should exist between commissioner and committee—a dialogue of mutual respect and collaboration, but of independence. Like the Chair of the Committee, I am not certain that the relationship between the two is always fully understood. I hope that it will be in future, and that the motions before the House will assist in the clarification of the roles and true function of the Committee.
The involvement of lay members was an innovation that some greeted with scepticism, but I have to say that having worked with them it is important to put on record the gratitude of all the elected members of the Committee for the way in which they approached their roles. It has been uniformly constructive, so much so that one of them was an extremely good chairman of the Sub-Committee responsible for one of the reports. It is a good report, and their involvement has been thoroughly constructive and helpful.
I therefore support the recommendation for an increase in the number of lay members, with some reservations. I am extremely pleased that no vote has been accorded to the lay members. There is no doubt, as my right hon. Friend the Leader of the House said, that the inclusion of unelected members on a House Committee would present considerable constitutional and legal complexities. It may well make the Committee susceptible to judicial review, with all the panoply of judicial intervention that that would mean, and I do not think that anybody in the House would really have wanted that. What I think we do need is a situation where the lay members’ influence is telling and, as it has been sometimes, decisive. That can be better done by the moral influence they exert and the constant sanction that exists—that they may append a minority report. That is, in many ways, a more compelling, more persuasive and more telling influence on Members’ thinking than any vote would be.
I commend the motions to the House. I heard the hon. Member for Wallasey (Ms Eagle) on the Opposition Front Bench express a concern that there may be a perception that the Whips have some mischievous and nefarious impact on the deliberations of the Committee. I can say two things to that. In four and a half years, I have never had a Whip try to influence me. I do not know whether that is just something to do with me or something to do with the fact that the Whips demonstrate commendable and appropriate restraint. However, I think that members of the Committee with whom I have served over this Parliament would reject with disdain any attempt by a Whip to influence the impartial and anxious consideration, which I have witnessed time and again, accorded by members of the Committee to very difficult individual and sometimes complicated circumstances in which a judgment is never right or wrong, never black or white, but can admit of disagreement.
If a Committee comprising a number of elected Members, with all their shared experience of the House, together with the one who is accused and lay members, can reach a consensus as we uniformly do, generally, I would submit, it is more likely than not that the right conclusion is reached. That is why I say to the hon. Lady that in many ways to bandy about the idea—I am not criticising her for a moment; I do understand the perception she speaks of—or even to suggest that Whips may have some influence or role on the Standards Committee is not helpful. It simply would not be tolerated by members of that Committee, in my experience. It would be, as I have said, rejected with disdain.
It has been an enormous privilege to serve on the Committee. It has caused a great deal of soul searching in many of the cases that have come before us. Some have been controversial and some have been less so, but throughout we have been assisted by the extraordinary skill, sophistication and professionalism of the officers who support us. I, for one, am deeply grateful to them, to the Chairman of the Committee and to all other members of the Committee with whom I have had the honour to serve.
Sir Nick Harvey (North Devon) (LD)
I, too, have served on the Committee on Standards in the second half of this Parliament. I found the Committee very different from its predecessor, on which I had served in the previous Parliament. In no small part, the difference was the arrival in our midst of the three lay members. I join the tributes to them that other Members have expressed. They have brought a wealth of relevant experience, offered informed opinion and intelligent insight, and encouraged and persuaded us to better practice and better judgments.
As has been explained, the report was produced in no small part under the influence of the lay members. They have encouraged us to get on the front foot, to be more proactive and to look ahead. The House was reeling after the expenses scandal at the end of the last Parliament and was still in a state of shock. The lay members have encouraged us to move on, to look ahead and to show more leadership in the area of standards, as the Leader of the House said. I hope that everyone in the House will respond to the challenge and that in future we shall approach these issues as other professions and careers do and help each other in a spirit of continuous professional development.
There was a great deal of controversy, confusion and misreporting after one of the more high profile cases dealt with in this Parliament by the Committee on Standards, but rather than lamenting the misinformation and misreporting, the lay members encouraged us to learn from the experience, to get out and better explain what we do, to be more transparent and open, and to see ourselves as having a mission to explain, so that people inside and outside the House could have a better understanding of what we were trying to achieve and of the distinction between roles to which my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox) referred. In the case I am thinking of, there was great confusion about where the role of an independent commissioner ended and the role of the Committee began.
I believe that the proposals to move to an equal number of elected and lay members will enhance the Committee’s work further, create more opportunity for more external experience and challenge, move us into line with other professions, and basically look better in the eyes of the outside world. I do not believe that it will undermine the work done. It would have been a complete red herring to divert ourselves down the rabbit hole of whether the lay members should have a vote. They do not need one for the reasons given. In any case, the Committee seldom has occasion to vote: its deliberations always aim at consensus. As has been observed, every lay member—in future, all seven—can append an opinion if they so desire, and the Committee would have to think long and hard before arriving at a consensus to which the lay members had raised any objection. It would get itself into very hot water were it to do so. The report points a sensible way forward, and I commend it to the House.
The other motion deals with the code of conduct and guide to the rules. The interrelationship between the two is tricky, and the impact of what we are doing this afternoon is potentially slightly counter-intuitive in terms of what a cursory examination of the text before us might conclude. The House got itself into a mess last time it considered this issue, in 2012, and the proposition before the House today is a pragmatic way of trying to resolve that mess. It is right to do this and to do it now, and to ensure that after the election those coming into the House have the clarity they need about what is and is not acceptable. We are not opening up the spectre of investigations into Members’ purely private lives, but it is important that anything a Member does in their capacity as a Member of Parliament should be subject to proper scrutiny and done to the highest standards.
We have two sensible propositions before the House this afternoon, and I hope very much that they will both find favour.
Question put and agreed to.
Code of Conduct and Guide to the Rules Relating to the Conduct of Members
Resolved,
That:
(1) this House approves the Third Report from the Committee on Standards, on The Code of Conduct, (HC 772);
(2) with effect from the beginning of the next Parliament, this House approves the revised Guide to the Rules relating to the Conduct of Members annexed to that Report;
(3) the Code of Conduct for Members of Parliament be amended as follows:
(a) leave out Paragraph 2 and insert
‘The Code applies to Members in all aspects of their public life. It does not seek to regulate what Members do in their purely private and personal lives’.
(b) leave out paragraph 17; and
(4) previous Resolutions of this House in relation to the conduct of Members shall be read and given effect in a way which is compatible with the Code of Conduct and the Guide to the Rules relating to the Conduct of Members.—(Kevin Barron.)
Backbench Business
Shaker Aamer
(9 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House calls on the US Government to release Shaker Aamer from his imprisonment in Guantánamo Bay and to allow him to return to his family in the UK.
I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for this critical debate at an important time in the campaign to secure the release of Shaker Aamer. By way of introduction, I pay tribute to all those who have campaigned so hard over many years to bring Shaker Aamer’s case to our attention. I pay tribute to the “Save Shaker Aamer” campaign, and all those campaigners who have stood in Parliament Square month after month protesting in their orange boiler suits with their placards until someone began to listen to them. I pay tribute to the “We Stand with Shaker” campaign, to Shaker’s family who have joined us today and to the organisations Reprieve and Amnesty International. I pay tribute, too, to the full range of newspapers that have supported this campaign. They range right across the political spectrum of journalism from the Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph to The Guardian and the Morning Star. In addition, I pay tribute to all the celebrities, actors, artists and sportspeople who have got behind this campaign. Finally, I thank the many hon. Members from all sides of the House who joined the all-party parliamentary group, which now has more than 40 members drawn from all political parties.
Why have so many people campaigned so long and so steadfastly on this case? I think that it is because the Shaker Aamer case is one of the worst examples of a miscarriage of justice during the past three decades at least. Shaker’s treatment offends against all the principles of a civilised society—justice, freedom, human rights and the rights of a family to be together. We have had several debates here and numerous questions about his case have been raised. The last occasion on which I raised the issue was at the Christmas recess debate.
Let me put on record the history of Shaker’s case, so that people are fully aware of the background to what happened to him and the various issues that we need to address now. Shaker was born in Saudi Arabia in 1968. He left home and lived in America for a while, eventually making his home in the United Kingdom. He married a British citizen and was granted leave to remain in this country in 1996. He worked as a translator for a firm of solicitors.
In 2001, he went with his family to Afghanistan, working as a charity volunteer building a girls’ school and digging water wells. After 9/11 when Afghanistan was bombed by the US, he sent his family to safety in Pakistan. Before he could join them, however, the Afghan villagers gave him up to the Northern Alliance. At that time, the US was offering a ransom to individuals, and unfortunately the Northern Alliance and others rounded people up without any evidence of their involvement in terrorist activity. What then happened was that Shaker was taken and held in the notorious Bagram jail.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
I am not necessarily sympathetic if there is any question of guilt on the part of the people picked up. However, what strikes me about this case is that the US was offering $5,000 ransoms or rewards, and it is too easy to forget that in Afghanistan at that time, $5,000 would have been equivalent to hundreds of thousands of pounds in this country. When it was a poor village that handed him over, I will not say that I do not blame them—I do—but it could be seen as understandable. What that does, however, is to call into extreme question any suggestion of Shaker Aamer’s guilt.
John McDonnell
It looks as though the ransom or reward turned the rounding up of individuals, particularly by the Northern Alliance and others, almost into a trade during that period, and it is easy to see how injustices have resulted.
According to Reprieve, which has been analysing what has been happening in Bagram and elsewhere, while detained in Bagram, Shaker was
“forced to stay awake for nine days straight and denied food. Doused in freezing water, he was made to stand in the Afghan winter on concrete for 16 hours. His feet were beaten and he was bound in torturous positions.”
After Bagram, in 2002, Shaker was among the first to be sent to Guantanamo Bay, where we know that he has endured harsh, brutal and inhuman treatment. That has been exposed by the United States authorities themselves. The CIA’s own torture memos of what happened in Guantanamo—which was authorised, unfortunately—describe
“Enhanced Interrogation Techniques endorsed by Dick Cheney for use in Guantanamo, including, yelling, slapping, stress positions, extremes of heat and cold, constant bright lights, permanent noise and constantly repeated music, food, sleep and sensory deprivation, long periods of total solitary confinement, removal of facial hair, removal of blanket, clothes, toothbrush…forced nudity, and forced feeding, sexual assault, water-boarding and suffocation in a narrow box, prolonged shackling of hands and feet, threats to family, exposure to dogs, insects etc., denial of exercise or daylight.”
We know from the prisoners who have been released so far that that is exactly what Shaker has experienced while being held in Guantanamo Bay. We also know from evidence provided by the United States guards themselves about the performance of those tortures.
Shaker has never been charged with any crime. He has been cleared for release twice but continues to be detained in Guantanamo, while many others have been released, including all the Britons and British residents. Over the past 12 months, 33 prisoners have been released in difficult circumstances. They have been released to host countries from Uruguay to Kazakhstan, which has obviously involved fairly complicated arrangements. It is hard to understand why the United States finds a transfer to the United Kingdom almost impossible; it is extraordinary that David Hicks, who had admitted to terrorist activity, was released to Australia in February, but the United States refuses to release Shaker, who has never been charged and has been cleared for release twice.
Why is Shaker still being detained? That is the question that we are all asking. Why can he not be allowed to come home to his family? We can only speculate. Is it because he knows too much about what happened in Guantanamo Bay and will ensure that the truth comes out if he is released? Is it because he was a spokesperson for the prisoners in Guantanamo when he was setting up the prisoners’ council? Is this part of some vindictive victimisation? Or is it because he can bear witness to the involvement of not just United States but, possibly, British intelligence in the illegal, criminal torture that went on in Bagram, Kandahar and Guantanamo?
The United Kingdom Government have made representations—I thank successive Foreign Secretaries, the Prime Minister and other Ministers for that—but unfortunately, those representations have been to no avail. Shaker’s Member of Parliament, the hon. Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison), who has worked assiduously on his behalf, cannot participate in such debates because of her ministerial position, but she can testify to the representations that the United Kingdom Government have made to the United States Government over the years.
In January, the Prime Minister visited Washington and raised Shaker’s case again with President Obama. The President gave an assurance that the case would be prioritised, but we now know from a recent statement by the United States Defence Secretary that no proposal for release—certainly, no proposal for Shaker’s release—has landed on his desk We also know that there have been discussions within the United States Administration, and possibly with United Kingdom officials previously, about deporting Shaker to Saudi Arabia, where his safety and human rights would certainly be at risk.
There are questions to which I would welcome the Minister’s response. Will he update the House on what further representations have been made by the UK Government to the US Government since January 2015 when the Prime Minister had the meeting with President Obama? What is the Government’s understanding of what continues to block Shaker’s release? It is very difficult to fathom why Shaker has still not been released when the closest ally of the US has made representations and a formal request and when the President of the US has said that the case will be prioritised. It is beyond credibility. Have any grounds or reasons been given for his continued detention? What assurances have the Government been given that Shaker will not be transferred to Saudi Arabia? If possible, will the Minister tell us the next steps that the UK Government plan to take to secure Shaker’s release? Will the UK Government press the US Administration, particularly the President, for a clear timetable for Shaker’s release?
In due course, we will need a full and thorough independent inquiry into Shaker’s evidence about British intelligence collusion. I would welcome the Minister’s views on that proposal. However, the most important thing for us now is to bring Shaker home. As I have said, many words have been spoken by Ministers, Prime Ministers, Foreign Secretaries and now even the President about the release of Shaker, but there has been no action. Now is the time for action, not words. That is why we have secured the debate.
Shaker’s release has now become urgent. As a result of more than a decade of detention and barbaric treatment, including extensive torture, his health has deteriorated significantly. A recent medical assessment by Dr Emily Keram states that Shaker suffers from serious ailments, including migraines, asthma, urinary retention, ear and skin problems and extreme post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of his imprisonment in Guantanamo.
I hope that today’s motion will be supported by everyone. It is very straightforward and states:
“That this House calls on the US Government to release Shaker Aamer from his imprisonment in Guantánamo Bay and to allow him to return to his family in the UK.”
The cross-party group of MPs and Lords supporting Shaker’s campaign for release numbers more than 40 and includes many senior Members of this House and ex-Ministers. It is a sizeable and active group, and we will send a delegation shortly to Washington to meet officials from the Administration over there to press for the release of Shaker. The UK Government can give us help and give this campaign significant support and momentum. I appeal to Members to pass the motion today; let us send a clear and unanimous message to the US President that we want Shaker released and returned to his family.
Shaker’s family members, in particular his sons, have joined us in Parliament today. I want us all to say to them now that we pledge that we will not rest until their father is free and back in the arms of his family.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con)
Our legal system and the American legal system are based on a very important principle, the principle of the presumption of innocence. That has not been extended to Shaker Aamer. What is more, in his case, although we are not in a position to make the judgment ourselves, a great deal of evidence, from how he was picked up on the basis of a ransom through to the statements of the US authorities that there is no case against him, shows a probability of innocence, yet this man has faced 13 years in the most unbelievable circumstances.
I make the point about innocence because it is one thing for a terrorist or soldier to be subjected to this sort of behaviour, involving the sort of treatment that the British Government gave up in the early 1970s after using it in Northern Ireland because it was deemed to be torture. In fact, what is going on is much worse than what we gave up and deemed to be torture. However, that is the basis on which Shaker Aamer is being held. The same sort of torture led the American Government to conclude that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, as they tortured someone else 83 times until they eventually said, “Yes, yes, I give in.” That means that, even if there were confessional evidence against Shaker, it would be completely untrustworthy; indeed, it would be thrown out, as Clive Stafford Smith of Reprieve has said. From the point of view of basic humanity, for somebody who is innocent to be put through that is probably 10 times as bad as it is for somebody who is guilty, and it would be bad for them, too.
Our understanding is that Shaker has been a representative in the disputes in Guantanamo, which may make him more of a target. In addition to his own torture, he is said to have witnessed the torture of others, which may be why his release is being withheld. He is the last British resident being held there.
I join the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) in asking the Minister to give an account of the Americans’ explanation of why they have not released Shaker. If they have not done so because he would embarrass them, that represents a doubling up of the guilt on their part. Frankly, this will come out into the open at some point.
The colonel who headed the unit of American military lawyers who both prosecute and defend people in Guantanamo told them at the beginning of their military commission that they should be wary of any techniques and tactics that they allowed to be used, because, in his words, in America there is no such thing as a secret, just deferred disclosure. That is eminently true in the case under discussion. The more rapid that disclosure, the better for every country.
I can understand to some extent why, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, we dropped the moral standards by which we ought to abide—that was wrong, but understandable. I do not understand, however, the continued attempt to cover things up a dozen and more years later. For that reason, too, Shaker ought to be released.
I do not want to take up too much time, so I will finish by simply saying that the west has had a moral slough of despond after 9/11. We have abandoned our own standards and fallen short of the ethical standards that we should uphold. It is now doubly incumbent on us to act to ensure that those who have suffered as a result are released to their families as rapidly as possible, before their health is completely destroyed, which is what Shaker Aamer faces. It is also important to our own nations and citizens that we confess.
Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)
What does the right hon. Gentleman think this tells us about the so-called special relationship between the United Kingdom and the United States? When our Prime Minister meets President Obama, it is unbelievable that we cannot get a straight answer about a citizen of our country being held by the US.
Mr Davis
It may say two things. The first—it saddens me to say this—is that President Obama may not be in complete control of his own country. After all, he promised to close down Guantanamo early on but then did not do so, at great political cost to himself and, indeed, to his moral standing. Secondly, when it comes down to it, America puts its own interests far ahead of those of any other country. That is the doctrine of American exceptionalism, which in one sense is understandable because it is based on freedom, but in another sense it leads to the almost colonial treatment of its allies. If that is the case, it is deplorable. As America’s longest-standing and strongest ally, we should expect special treatment, but we have clearly not been given it in this case.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
Looking at the morality of this case, and bearing in mind the fact that America—and Britain, for that matter—have lectured the world on democracy and justice, does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it is not a very good example of American justice to have a person spend 13 years in prison without ever being charged with anything and being tortured? What does that say about the west, given the way in which we look at the rest of the world, and particularly the middle east?
Mr Davis
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, which goes to the heart of what I was about to say in conclusion.
One of the great dimensions of our soft power in the world, which I used to come across all the time as a British Foreign Minister, was the expectation that we would behave differently from others and that we would not fall to the standards of the Soviet Union or of other totalitarian states. We were paid more attention as a result of that. It was less true of America, but it was true none the less. This whole exercise—involving Shaker Aamer, Binyam Mohamed and a whole series of others—shows that we have dropped from those high standards. We have fallen from the grace in which public opinion held us. Indeed, by behaving like the guy in the black hat rather than the guy in the white hat, we have essentially done what al-Qaeda would have liked us to do.
That is why I say that we have a duty to our own citizens in this matter just as much as we have a duty to Shaker Aamer. We are letting our citizens down as well as letting him down. We are betraying the standards that millions died to protect in two world wars over the past century, and we are increasing the risk of terrorism because this situation legitimises the kind of barbarous behaviour that we have seen too much of in the past few years. I shall finish by joining the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington in asking the Minister to give an undertaking that we will redouble our efforts and not give up until Shaker Aamer is returned to his family.
Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) for instituting this debate. He has described in some detail what has been done to Shaker Aamer. If such treatment were to be carried out by a foreign Government, President Obama would be the first to denounce it. The human implications of this illegal imprisonment of a man who has never been charged with any offence are horrifying, and the House expresses its sympathy with his family for what they know this man has endured.
The treatment of this man is appalling. It is appalling that, although he was signed off for release by the Bush Administration eight years ago and by the present United States Administration, he has still not been released. It is appalling that he is still being treated in a way that would be regarded as inhuman and unacceptable in any country in the world. Those are all facts about this persecuted, imprisoned, tortured individual.
While not departing in any way from our deep concern and huge anger about the treatment of Shaker Aamer, we have to look at the United States, which has imprisoned him for all these years. I am a great admirer of the United States, but I find it incomprehensible that two successive Presidents of that country—one of whom gives himself an enormous amount of credit as a liberal humanitarian—should have first opened and then maintained the kind of torture camp that is illegal in any country in the world. What would we say if Islamic State had a camp interning illegally, for years without charge, people innocent or guilty? Shaker Aamer is innocent, but this applies also to people who might be guilty. If any country in the world had an illegal camp in which torture, solitary confinement and inhuman treatment were all daily occurrences, we would regard that country as a savage outlaw.
Guantanamo Bay is illegal and its maintenance is a war crime—it is as great a war crime as any other being committed anywhere in the world. Obama, in his original election campaign, promised he would close it. He has been there more than six years and it is still open. We can have a discussion about the extent to which he has been prevented from closing it by a rogue Congress, but he has not made an issue of it; he maintains an illegal war crimes camp and has done so under his Administration for more than six years and, like a lot of the other things he does, he gets away with it.
Let us look at this man who maintains this illegal torture camp, where waterboarding, solitary confinement and inhuman treatment are daily occurrences. This is the man, the President of the United States, who sends out drones over Pakistan which have killed 3,000 Pakistanis. This is the man who sends out assassination teams to kill people of whom he disapproves all over the world. He claims to be in charge of a liberal democracy, yet, as I repeat, if this were taking place in any other country, he would be up on his feet, with beautiful eloquence, for which he is noted, saying how inhuman it was and how unacceptable it was. If this were happening under Islamic State or in Libya—I do not know whether he is going to denounce the abominable death sentences for those in the Muslim Brotherhood which have just been announced in Egypt—or in any other country in the world, he would be up on his feet saying, “This is a war crime.”
I, like my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington, the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) and others in this House, am deeply concerned about the inhuman treatment of Shaker Aamer, and we passionately will go on calling for his release. I do not in any way imply that the Government have not done their best, because they have. But what kind of a special relationship is it where one member of a relationship takes all the time and the other is regarded as a junior, negligible partner? That is what we have here: the United Kingdom loyal to the United States—perhaps too loyal, and I say that without being critical of our Government—and the United States not giving a damn. So we denounce the inhuman treatment of Shaker Aamer and demand that he be released, and we shall go on demanding that, but we also say to the United States, “Don’t be sanctimonious about other countries when you commit war crimes.”
Mr Andrew Mitchell (Sutton Coldfield) (Con)
I do not need to detain the House for long, because the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) gave such an excellent speech and because the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) set out the case with both clarity and conviction.
I wish to make it clear that I yield to no one in my admiration for the work that the British security services and others have done in addressing a very real terrorist threat, the issues of which will take a generation or more to deal with. The point at issue today is a far more fundamental one. I very much hope that the Foreign Office and the diligent Minister who is here today to respond to the debate will note that, although the House may not be particularly packed, it is nevertheless true that here on these Benches are representatives of almost every conceivable opinion that the House of Commons could hold. We are all, I believe, utterly united behind the motion that was moved by the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington. The hon. Gentleman will know very well that he and I agree on almost nothing in British politics, but on this issue we are shoulder to shoulder; we are as one.
I wish to make a point that was set out by my right hon. Friend, which is that in Britain, we respect the law; we believe in certain universal values. Sometimes, they are said to be British values, but I do not like that term. They are universal values, and the debate on Shaker Aamer gets absolutely to the heart of those values. I had the pleasure, just a fortnight ago, of going to join in Friday prayers at the largest mosque in Europe, the Central Mosque in Birmingham. It is accepted by all of us that there is considerable alarm in the British Muslim community about Islamophobia. Muslims look at this particular case and think that certain rules apply to some people, but not others. The point that this House of Commons should stand up for today is that justice is colour blind and creed blind. It should apply to everyone, but it is not applying to Shaker Aamer, and it is up to us to give voice to this view. The House of Commons must stand up today for justice for all citizens wherever they are from, and never more so than in this particular debate.
Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)
It is a pleasure to participate in this debate, and I thank my right hon. Friend for allowing me to intervene. Is not the essence of this debate the rule of law and the application of fair rule of law? The absence of proper application of the rule of law is at the heart of this issue.
Mr Mitchell
My hon. Friend makes the central case that we are discussing.
Let me add a few words to what the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington said at the start of the debate. Shaker Aamer has been detained for 13 years. He has twice been cleared for release: once in 2007 by the former US President, George Bush, and, more recently, in 2009, by President Obama. Our own Prime Minister has made vigorous representations, if one is to believe the press, in respect of Shaker Aamer, and the United States has made it clear that there is no evidence against him, and yet he is still incarcerated in the conditions that were described by the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton.
Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)
Will the right hon. Gentleman comment on another point that the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) made in his speech: that Shaker is not being released because of what he has seen in Guantanamo, and the authorities do not want that to be known more widely? If there is a mystery here about why he is still being detained, does the right hon. Gentleman think that that is the answer?
Mr Mitchell
That might or might not be so, and it is an important matter, but it is not central to the case I am making, which is this: here is someone whose release has been cleared by two US Presidents, and against whom the US authorities have made it clear there is no evidence, yet he remains incarcerated, after 13 years.
There have been numerous British requests, the most recent of which was made by the Prime Minister during his highly successful visit to America. Jacqui Smith, when Home Secretary, made the request, as did the former Foreign Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Mr Hague), and other Foreign Office Ministers, including my right hon. Friend to my right—geographically, at least—my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire (Alistair Burt), who engaged in the case energetically. The failure to make progress fuels the theories referenced in the most recent intervention. Nevertheless, those British requests cannot be treated with apparent arrogance by the American Administration and just cast aside with glib words while that man remains incarcerated with no case against him.
Alistair Burt (North East Bedfordshire) (Con)
I thank my right hon. Friend for his kind words. I am absolutely certain that the advice being given in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office today is the same as that given when I was there, and I know my hon. Friend the Minister is following it diligently. Does my right hon. Friend agree that what unites people of different political opinions on this matter is a sense both that justice for one is justice for all—that is being denied in this case—and that for those who look at it from a very practical point of view on how we deal with some of the difficult issues facing the world, from both a United States and a British perspective, none of that work is being assisted in a case in which someone has been detained for so long without trial or charge?
Mr Mitchell
My right hon. Friend makes the case with great eloquence, as he has done in government and from the Back Benches.
I will end by reiterating the points that the mover of the motion made to the Minister. I ask him to be specific in his response and to be clear about what representations on Shaker Aamer’s case have been made and what ongoing representations are being made. If he cannot give the House answers today, will he seek immediately from the American Administration a very clear explanation of why they continue to block Shaker Aamer’s release? Will he make very clear what next steps the British Government intend to take to secure his immediate release to Britain, not to anywhere else? In his discussions with the American Administration, will he press them to confirm a specific timetable for his release and repatriation to Britain?
This is a matter of great importance. As my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Bedfordshire said, it is about the universality of justice. It is about the signal we send as the House of Commons to all our citizens about the nature of justice and our determination to see that it is pursued. On that basis, I once again congratulate the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington and other colleagues on securing this important debate, and I very much look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.
Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
I am pleased to be able to support the motion this afternoon and contribute to the debate, which is notable for both the quality and the brevity of the speeches—I will try to emulate that. The speeches have been brief not because of any lack of concern on the part of those who have spoken; on the contrary, it is because the facts of this case are simple and the motion clear—and, indeed, the remedy is simple.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) set out the background, which I need not repeat. He talked about the history of Guantanamo Bay and those who remain there, the status and treatment of Shaker Aamer, the lack of due process, the questions of nationality and the statements made by both the British and US authorities. We need not elaborate on those further because they are a matter of record. Indeed, I suspect that the only person we might like to hear from at length today is the Minister, in the hope that we can have an answer to questions that remain outstanding.
I would like to pay tribute to the campaign that has been run both inside this House and, more particularly, outside it. My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington recently set up the all-party group, which is doing a good job. It has members from all parts of the House, some of whom have spoken in the debate or, I expect, are about to speak. Beyond that, the campaign in the wider country has been insistent, clear and deliberative and has used every possible means. It is invidious in some ways to mention individuals, but I will mention Joanne MacInnes and Andy Worthington, who work daily and tirelessly in every possible way—from complex legal argument to giant inflatables—to raise the matter. They have no personal association with the family, but they care so deeply that they have inspired many other people and the campaign is superb.
As part of the briefing for this debate, we were sent a statement from 278 imams and community leaders around the country. That should carry some weight with the Government, as should the petitions over the years which have accumulated hundreds of thousands of signatures. This is an issue which the Muslim community in this country cares about, as does the wider community, as a simple matter of law and justice. What it boils down to is, why? That is the question people have put and to which they have conjectured answers. As the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) said, in the absence of an answer from the Government, there will be more speculation. If it is right that, as we have heard, the US under successive Presidents has cleared Shaker for release, and if it is right that for years under different Administrations the British Government have been using their best endeavours to secure his release, why is he still incarcerated? I am putting the Minister on the spot somewhat, but the House deserves an answer to that today.
We know that there are forces out there who are clear that they wish the inmates of Guantanamo Bay to be retained there, and we have seen attempts by the Republican Congress to do that recently. We do not have the President of the United States here, we do not have the American authorities here, but we know the statements that President Obama has previously made. We have Her Majesty’s Government here, and Shaker’s family who are present, the campaigners who are present, MPs on all sides, and the distinguished right hon. and hon. Members who have spoken, including from the Government Back Benches, deserve an answer to the question why a British subject whose family are British citizens has been incarcerated for 13 years and tortured. There is no reason discernible to me, my constituents and all those who have taken an interest in the case why that remains the situation.
Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
I add my congratulations and thanks to the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) for bringing this matter to the House. The quality of speeches on all sides, the power of the points made and, more importantly, the unity in the Chamber are a source of encouragement and underline the level of frustration and incredulity that something so self-evidently wrong and outrageous should continue in the face of such incontrovertible evidence. Along with right hon. and hon. Members on all sides, I want to state our conviction that Shaker Aamer is an innocent man and is being treated unjustly. We stand resolutely with his family, who continue to endure the separation and division of their family, awareness of Shaker Aamer’s ill health and the realisation of the appalling treatment that he has unjustly and inhumanly received for all these years.
We say sometimes that a person is innocent until proven guilty. We should clarify that and say “unless proven guilty”. In this case, there is no guilt to be proven. As a number of colleagues have said, two US Presidents, Bush and Obama, have both in effect cleared Shaker Aamer for release, yet here we still are. Shaker Aamer’s incarceration, his being subjected to torture, and the length of time involved—13 or 14 years now—is an outrage. The man has not seen his youngest child. This is an absolutely immoral outrage. It is perhaps even more outrageous that this blot on our collective conscience occupies so little space in the consciousness of people in western society.
I shall be interested to hear what the Minister says about the reasons the United States has given, or continues to give, for the failure to release Shaker Aamer, yet the reality is that no excuse would be good enough. We understand that there is a dispute over whether, as the Americans want, he is released to Saudi Arabia or whether, as we want, he is released to the United Kingdom. That is not an acceptable excuse. This man belongs here; his family are here. There is no just reason whatsoever why he should not be released now, and released to this country. I hope that the United States takes some notice of what is meant to be its strongest and most loyal ally, the United Kingdom, and what is said here in the Parliament of that country. Will it take notice of the fact that, in our eyes and in the eyes of many other people in the civilised world, this is the behaviour of an extremist regime—the kind of behaviour that we would expect the United States to castigate, as the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) so rightly said?
Speaking as somebody who counts himself as a Liberal Democrat and has a habit of instinctively lionising President Obama, may we somehow communicate to him the fact that this is an appalling stain on his legacy, on his record, and even on his character? Either he is not sufficiently important and powerful to make sure that these things happen, or he is a man who is not of his word. We should be appalled by this and say to him, as strong friends, that this is a stain on his legacy and on his record. It is also a massive strain on UK-US relations; perhaps it should be an even greater strain than it is.
I want to make three brief points. First, the justice and humanitarian arguments are incontrovertible. We would like to hear from the Minister what the United States Government have been saying to our Government. Secondly, as I am sure Members on both sides of the House will testify, when one is a UK citizen, one has, all over the world, a sense of shared responsibility about the actions of other western nations. The moral authority of “the west”, if we can call it that, is undermined by the continued presence of Guantanamo Bay itself, and by the continued incarceration of the innocent man, Shaker Aamer.
Thirdly, as the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) said, there is the issue of American self-interest. This continued action is absolutely not in America’s self-interest. The Americans may well fear that Shaker Aamer has things to say that they would consider to be against the American interest if they came into the public domain. Well, tough—if those things have happened, they must be known and we must hold this United States Administration, and previous ones, to account for them. The continued incarceration of this innocent man is far more of a threat to America’s interests.
America has already—perhaps we are culpable too—acted in ways that have demonstrated a lack of understanding of some of the geopolitical problems that we face, not least the rise of ISIS. America has failed to understand what territory means to ISIS, and that it is not just another guerrilla Islamist extremist outfit but has an immense sense of theological destiny. We must understand its ideology, because if we fail to do so, it will become an even greater threat to world peace and security. We must also understand that while the motivation of al-Baghdadi and many others at the heart of that regime is theological and ideological—even apocalyptic—those who are going to help him and it have very different, much more political motivations. Many of those motivations come from the sense that western countries, and America in particular, specifically in relation to Guantanamo Bay, are acting in ways that deserve a response and a resistance—an insurgency—with ISIS as its torchbearer. It is not in America’s interests to continue to pour petrol on that fire.
The incarceration of Shaker Aamer is unjust, wicked, and fundamentally counter-productive to America’s self-interest and ours. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
I am pleased to be a signatory to the motion, along with colleagues from all parties. I draw attention to the fact that the hon. Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) cannot be in the Chamber because he is engaged in other parliamentary business. It is only right to record that he strongly supports the motion, and he is a member of the cross-party group.
The fact that we are having this debate at all is a credit to the system under which the Backbench Business Committee allocates time. More importantly, it is a credit to the campaigners and supporters of Shaker Aamer and other people who have been so wrongly and grossly detained at Guantanamo Bay. We should pay tribute to those who have worked for many years for Shaker Aamer’s release. They have stood outside Parliament, collected signatures on street corners on wet and windy Saturday mornings, and e-mailed, written to and lobbied MPs. They are the lifeblood of democracy, and we should show them some respect today: having this debate—albeit not as well attended as one hoped—is a credit to them.
Much could be said, but in a sense it has all been said. The facts of the matter are quite simple. Shaker Aamer was wrongly taken from his family and imprisoned in Guantanamo Bay, and he has been disgracefully treated. He was cleared for release by President Bush, subsequently re-cleared for release by President Obama, but he has still not been released. He has been cleared for release for longer than President Obama has been President. It does not say very much about the power of the US presidency when the President can campaign for election partly on the basis of closing Guantanamo Bay, having specifically ordered the release of those against whom there is no case whatsoever but who have still not been released.
I have been involved in numerous meetings with the Foreign Office and others on this subject over the years, and I am at a loss to understand what is preventing Shaker Aamer’s release. If there is no case against him, why is he still in Guantanamo Bay? Is he being held because he knows too much and has seen too much—the hunger strikes, the torture and the brutality—or is it because there is still pressure to take him to Saudi Arabia, from where he originates? That would be a disgrace, and I am sure that he would refuse to go there. He is a British resident, and he has a family in this country, with a young child he has never seen. Surely he should be released and brought back to this country as quickly as possible. I repeat that there is no case against him whatsoever in this country.
Many people have taken up this cause, not least the Prime Minister and successive Foreign Secretaries and Foreign Office Ministers. When Hillary Clinton wrote to the then Foreign Secretary, the right hon. Member for Richmond (Yorks) (Mr Hague), she thanked him for his letter of 21 July 2010 concerning Shaker Aamer, and went on:
“Our national security interests will continue to benefit from close consultation and mutual assistance with these issues.”
She welcomed the opportunity to meet experts from the State Department to discuss the case, referred to President Obama’s Executive order of 22 January 2009 and looked forward to working closely with the Foreign Office to resolve the issue. It does not say much for a special relationship when the President orders a release and the Foreign Secretary and the US Secretary of State agree to work closely together, but Shaker Aamer still remains in prison with no case whatsoever against him.
We have to look at the background to the human rights abuses in Guantanamo Bay. Much has been written about that in many documents, but a very interesting one put out by Amnesty International states:
“There has been little or no accountability for the human rights violations that have occurred at Guantanamo, including the crimes under international law of torture and enforced disappearance. The recently published summary of the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI)’s review of the secret detention programme operated by the Central Intelligence Agency…finally confirmed that the naval base had been the location for a CIA ‘black site’ in 2003 and 2004 at which detainees were subject to enforced disappearance.”
That is the nub of it: there has been enforced disappearance to a place that is a legal void and that knows no recognition in any form of international law in any country whatsoever.
I agree with my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) that if this had been the treatment of a US citizen anywhere in the world, we would never have heard the end of it from successive US Presidents. I do not doubt that there would have been the threat of military action and all kinds of other things against any country that held a US citizen in these circumstances. I am not advocating sending the SAS to Guantanamo Bay to free Shaker Aamer or anything like that; what I am saying is that if the close relationship with the USA means anything, Shaker Aamer must be released immediately.
If the House approves the motion tonight, as I am sure it will, it should be communicated in the strongest possible terms to the Senate and the House in the USA that the British Parliament fully supports the release of Shaker Aamer. The breadth of political support for him in the cross-party group is surprising. The right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) will not mind my mentioning—indeed, he said the same of my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell)—that he and I agree on very little, except for humanity and justice. In this case, we absolutely agree that the way in which Shaker Aamer has been treated is completely unjust and that he must be released. That, surely, has to be the message that we give tonight.
People have campaigned for justice for many years. We achieved a Parliament because people campaigned for our right to have a democracy. The essential part of a democracy is that the judicial system is independent of the political system and that everyone has the right to an independent hearing in a court of law. There is an exhibition in Westminster Hall that says just that because it is 800 years since Magna Carta. This man has never been in court, has never been charged, has never been convicted, has no case against him and has been approved for release and freedom, yet he is still in prison. Surely the message from this Parliament is, “Bring him home. Close Guantanamo Bay and end the outrage and abuse of human rights that it represents.” Otherwise, what is the message to the rest of the world? It is that we are incapable, that we do not care, or that, by our inaction, we tacitly approve of something as vile as Guantanamo Bay and the torture and ill-treatment that has gone on there.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
I add my congratulations to the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and his colleagues on securing this incredibly important debate.
As one of the last speakers, I will probably repeat a little of what has been said, but I think that it is important to do so. In particular, I want to pick up on what the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) was just saying and on the tone of bewilderment that he expressed so well. It is simply incredible that this person who has never been charged with any offence is still languishing in Guantanamo Bay. The hon. Gentleman summed up very well what we all feel: that this is utterly unjustifiable and utterly incredible, and that action is needed.
I joined other people on a delegation to the Foreign Secretary last year. We sat in a very nice office in the Foreign Office, but even after 45 minutes in that meeting, I came out no wiser than I went in. I do not think that I was alone in that. I simply cannot understand why the telephone cannot be picked up. If the US is this amazing ally, why can we not have that conversation and get this man home?
I want to say a few things about the situation in which Shaker has been held, because it is so deeply shocking that it is happening here and now. Last year, there were reports that Shaker and another detainee had been subjected to violent beatings carried out by a forcible cell extraction team. As well as suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, Shaker has a number of psychological problems such as severe anxiety and insomnia, unsurprisingly. His physical health has also suffered as a direct result of his mistreatment. An independent medical assessment concluded that he has oedema, severe tinnitus, kidney pain, severe headaches, asthma and loss of vision, yet in June 2014, the previous Foreign Secretary claimed that he was confident that Shaker had access to a “detainee welfare package” and that his health remained stable. I would love the Minister to confirm when he last had an independent update about Shaker’s physical and mental health and what that update said.
During Shaker’s 12 long years of detention, he has been tortured by US agents—for example, by having his head repeatedly banged against a wall—and has witnessed the torture of another UK resident. He has spent more than 1,000 nights in a windowless isolation cell, and when first detained, he was starved, kept awake for nine days straight, and chained in positions that made the slightest movement unbearable. In 2005, he was placed in isolation for 360 days for his role in organising a hunger strike after military police beat up a prisoner while he was praying. Prison rules permit isolation for only 30 days.
Shaker has seen other prisoners treated in gratuitously violent ways, including being hospitalised and/or rendered unconscious as a result of forcible cell extractions. He was often subjected to the same violent process used by guards against non-compliant prisoners, and claims that he suffered FCEs up to eight times a day. We know that such things have been recorded, so can the Minister tell the House why the Prime Minister has accepted the US authorities’ decision that those recordings are classified, given that they constitute evidence that a UK resident has been tortured? Is it standard UK practice to fail to press for such evidence, and does the Minister agree that that could be considered, at very least, as condoning Shaker’s torture and mistreatment, if not potentially being complicit in it?
Shaker’s lawyers have been advised by the former Foreign Secretary that the US position is to limit Shaker’s clearance for release to Saudi Arabia—the country where he was born and where he is likely to face further mistreatment and detention, as well as the prospect of ongoing estrangement from his wife and children. Such a move would hugely limit the opportunities for Shaker to speak out about what has happened and get full access to justice.
Freedom of information documents secured by human rights group Reprieve demonstrate that the US has been in contact with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia about Shaker’s case, although the context for that has been censored. They contain details of a meeting between high-level US officials and the Saudi Minister of Interior. Will the Minister say what assurance the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has sought and received that Shaker will not be transferred to Saudi Arabia?
I am concerned, as others have voiced, that the only possible reason for sending Shaker to Saudi Arabia is to stop him speaking out about his abuse—abuse in which he claims the UK authorities have been complicit. For example, it is alleged that a British operative was present while a US interrogator repeatedly smashed Shaker’s head against a wall, shortly before he was sent to Guantanamo. Can the Minister give a cast-iron guarantee that the UK has not been complicit in any way in the abuses that Shaker has suffered?
This debate is hugely important and I will end, as others have done, by thanking the extraordinary campaigns of so many tireless campaigners who have kept this issue near the top of the agenda where it belongs. I hope that this debate is one further step towards getting justice for Shaker.
Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and his co-sponsors on securing this debate on Shaker Aamer, and I apologise for missing a significant part of his contribution. He has been one of the leading parliamentary campaigners for Mr Aamer’s release, and I acknowledge the presence of the hon. Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison), who is the constituency MP for Mr Aamer and his family—indeed, this debate provides an important opportunity to follow up a Backbench Business Committee debate on the same subject that she initiated in April 2013. My right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) has also been a particularly active campaigner for Mr Aamer’s release, given that, as I understand, some of Mr Aamer’s wider family live in his constituency.
Jeremy Corbyn
I am pleased that my hon. Friend has rightly praised the hon. Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison) and others. Will he include in that praise the great work done by Reprieve and Clive Stafford Smith on this case? They have bravely unearthed so much about the horrors of Guantanamo Bay and extraordinary rendition, which is a blot on all our legal pasts in this country.
Mr Thomas
As on so many things, my hon. Friend is ahead of me. I will happily do that, although I want to return to the role of Reprieve and Clive Stafford Smith a little later in my remarks.
I strongly support hon. Members across the House in saying that the last remaining British detainee at Guantanamo Bay, Mr Aamer, should be released and returned to the UK as soon as humanly possible. Hon. Members on both sides of the House have shared profound concern about Mr Aamer’s case and, indeed, about the continued existence of the Guantanamo Bay facility. National security and the continuing drive to keep our citizens safe is the first responsibility of government, but we have always been clear that a profound respect for human rights must also lie at the heart of policy.
We remain deeply concerned that Guantanamo detainees are held without trial indefinitely. As my Front-Bench colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), has previously underlined—as others have done today—that in itself is a serious affront to international human rights standards. She has also previously drawn attention, rightly, to the concern and condemnation from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights that the continuing indefinite imprisonment of many of the Guantanamo Bay detainees was in clear breach of international law, referencing the systematic breaches of individual human rights. The Opposition remain firmly opposed to the continuation of the Guantanamo Bay facility. Through our diplomatic efforts when in government, all British citizens and all but one of those who had been resident in Britain were transferred out of Guantanamo Bay.
As other hon. Members have made clear, Mr Aamer is a Saudi citizen who was resident in the UK. He is married to a British woman and he has four British children who live in London. I understand, as others have made clear, that Mr Aamer has never met his youngest son, who was born on the very day he was transferred to Guantanamo Bay. Mr Aamer was detained in Afghanistan in November 2001, where the US authorities apparently suspected that he had been working for Osama bin Laden. He has been imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay since February 2002. He is now the last remaining British resident held there. He has, I understand, always maintained his innocence, and Clive Stafford Smith, his lawyer, claims the documents that the accusations against him are based on would not stand up in court. Indeed, his legal team state that his treatment at Bagram airfield in 2001, allegedly including sleep deprivation and physical abuse, led him to make a false confession that has been used to justify his detention without trial ever since.
There is great concern about Mr Aamer’s health. Earlier this year, I understand that a number of leading doctors wrote an open letter to raise a number of concerns about the impact on Mr Aamer’s physical and mental well-being of spending 13 years in Guantanamo Bay. I understand that a medical assessment carried out last year found he was suffering from serious psychiatric problems and a number of serious physical ailments, too. It is alleged that Mr Aamer has been beaten more than 300 times while in detention and has suffered regularly from sleep deprivation. Reports that Mr Aamer has on occasion been deprived of water and has arthritis, asthma, prostate and kidney problems and severe backache are very worrying. It is a deeply damaging allegation, aired again by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms), that he is only still being held because he has witnessed significant human rights abuses, which the Guantanamo Bay authorities fear would be revealed if Mr Aamer was released and spoke out about his experience.
As other hon. Members have made clear, Mr Aamer has been cleared for transfer out of Guantanamo Bay on two occasions—in 2007 and in 2009—yet has still not been released. I understand that British diplomatic staff are not able to visit Mr Aamer, although it would be helpful if the Minister provided clarification on that point. I understand that the International Committee of the Red Cross is able to visit Mr Aamer, and it would be helpful to hear from the Minister when the ICRC last did so.
It is clear that Mr Aamer will be released only after further encouragement—let me use those words carefully —to the US authorities, so it would be helpful to hear from the Minister when the last ministerial representations to their US equivalents about Mr Aamer took place. There has been speculation that the key US legislation determining whether Guantanamo Bay detainees can be released or transferred is the 2011 National Defence Authorisation Act, which allows the US Defence Secretary to exercise a waiver and therefore release individual detainees if certain conditions are met. Has any UK Minister raised Mr Aamer’s case with the US Defence Secretary? What prospects can the Minister offer the House that the NDAA might offer a potential route to secure Mr Aamer’s release from Guantanamo Bay soon?
Given that Mr Aamer is a Saudi national and the reports that he has, as I indicated, previously been cleared for transfer out of Guantanamo Bay but allegedly only to Saudi Arabia, what discussions have Foreign Office Ministers had with their Saudi counterparts? Do the Saudi Government support Mr Aamer’s release from Guantanamo Bay and, crucially, do they support his release back to the UK?
Reprieve and Amnesty International have campaigned for Mr Aamer’s release. Reprieve, in particular, has used freedom of information requests to establish that significant meetings have taken place between US and British officials to discuss Mr Aamer’s possible transfer, most recently, I understand, on 29 October 2013. It would be helpful if the Minister set out in a little more detail what he understands are the substantive remaining US concerns about Mr Aamer that are preventing his release. The essential question remains: why, despite being cleared for transfer out of Guantanamo Bay six and eight years ago, is Mr Aamer still being detained? There remains the question whether he was cleared for release back to Saudi Arabia only. Again, it would be helpful if the Minister clarified that issue. I understand that Mr Aamer has indefinite leave to remain here in the UK. He has family here in the UK; he is married to a British citizen; his children are British citizens; and he has not been convicted of any crime. By any reasonable consideration, he should be allowed to be transferred back to the UK, never mind to Saudi Arabia.
Guantanamo Bay is a continuing blight on the human rights record of one of our closest allies, and the whole House will empathise with the anguish that Mr Aamer’s family and friends feel at his continued detention. I look forward to the Minister answering my and other hon. Members’ questions, reflecting our concerns and reassuring the House that the Government will redouble their efforts to secure Mr Aamer’s release.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Tobias Ellwood)
This has been a helpful and constructive debate, and I join others in congratulating the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) on securing it through the Backbench Business Committee. I thank all right hon. and hon. Members for their contributions and the many right hon. and hon. Members who have campaigned in this House and outside. I am pleased that hon. Members have highlighted the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison) in supporting Shaker Aamer’s family, who live in her constituency.
I will do my best to answer as many points as I can. I spoke to the US embassy today at length on this matter, and the Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office, my right hon. Friend the Member for East Devon (Mr Swire), who deals with the United States, had a meeting with US Ambassador Barzun yesterday at which he discussed these issues. I might be the only Member to have visited Guantanamo Bay, albeit from the Cuban side—that was as close as I could get—back in 2005. When I looked over at the camp area, I wondered how long it would be before it was closed.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) spoke about the reliability of the confessional evidence and how standards dropped after 9/11. The right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) talked about the double standards created by the creation of Guantanamo Bay. My right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) paid tribute, as do I, to the difficult and often unrecognised work of the intelligence services and the importance that justice prevails. The hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) talked about the size of the campaign, which has lasted a number of years, in support of Shaker Aamer. My hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) talked about the west’s moral authority being eroded and undermined because of Guantanamo Bay.
The hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) and others talked about the number of people who had taken up this cause and referred to the Senate intelligence committee report—anyone who has read the accounts of that report will, like me, have found it deeply troubling. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) talked about the concerns about Mr Aamer’s release or transfer to Saudi Arabia. It is clear that Shaker Aamer wants to return to the UK, and that is what we support. The hon. Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas), the shadow spokesman, raised several important questions that I shall try to answer.
One aspect that I will cover now relates to the powers given to the US Defence Secretary under the National Defence Authorisation Act 2012. We have been in discussions with the US President, as I say, so we look to any measure required to ensure that justice prevails and Shaker Aamer is returned to the UK—whichever system, whichever protocol or whichever mechanism is used, including the one to which the hon. Gentleman referred.
Mr Thomas
On the point about the NDAA, as I understand it, any waivers that can be secured for the release of Mr Aamer under this legislation are controlled by the US Defence Secretary. Will the Minister tell us whether any representations have been made directly to the US Defence Secretary, perhaps by the Secretary of State for Defence or the Foreign Secretary?
Mr Ellwood
The Foreign Secretary has raised this matter, but as I say, we have called on the President to use all available powers, and this is simply one mechanism that could be used.
I certainly welcome this opportunity to highlight the Government’s commitment on this issue. The UK has long held that indefinite detention without fair trial is unacceptable. Mr Aamer has been detained in Guantanamo Bay for 13 years, yet has not been charged with any crime. As a result of the UK’s long-standing opposition to the operation of the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, the UK Government exceptionally requested Mr Aamer’s release in 2007, and that request also included four other former UK residents who have since returned to the UK. The UK Government are committed to bringing Mr Aamer back to the UK, and we have made our position very clear to the US Government. We want to see him released as a matter of urgency, and we know that they fully understand this request.
As hon. Members will have noted, the Prime Minister personally raised Mr Aamer’s case at his meeting with the US President on 16 January this year. We welcome President Obama’s commitment at that meeting to prioritise the review of Mr Aamer’s release to the UK.
Supporters of Mr Aamer often cite the fact that he was cleared for release, and this has been repeated here today. He was cleared for release some years ago, and given the President’s commitment, people cannot understand why he is still in detention. I need to clarify, however, that Mr Aamer has been cleared only for transfer to Saudi Arabia, not cleared for release either in Saudi Arabia or indeed the UK. This is an important distinction under the applicable US legislation.
President Obama’s statement means that Mr Aamer’s case has been prioritised for review through an inter-agency process. This comprehensive process undertaken by six US Government Departments involves a complex case-by-case review. We do not have a timetable for a decision, but we are confident that this review is under way. We hope, of course, that Mr Aamer will soon be released.
However, it is important to understand that President Obama’s decision to close the detention facility and release its inmates remains a contentious political issue in Washington, as hon. Members have outlined in today’s debate. Stark differences of opinion exist in Congress across the political spectrum about the wisdom of doing this at a time of heightened terrorist threats. Within that, there remain real concerns about recidivism and the actions that detainees may take after they leave Guantanamo. Let us be clear, however, that Mr Aamer has not been charged with or convicted of any crime.
Ian Murray (Edinburgh South) (Lab)
I have listened carefully to the debate and to the Minister’s contribution so far, so I hope I am not pre-empting what he is about to say. He has not yet told us, however—perhaps I have missed the clarity on the matter—what reasons the US has given to the Foreign Office for not releasing Shaker Aamer. What are the reasons behind not processing his release?
Mr Ellwood
I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman was present at the beginning of the debate. I should like to make some progress, but I shall come to the point that he has raised.
As I have said, Mr Aamer has not been charged with or convicted of any crime, but the United States Government have made it clear that any action taken to release him would have to remain consistent with United States national security.
Caroline Lucas
The Minister is making much of concerns about what will happen to Shaker or anyone else after their release. The United Kingdom is one of the safest places for such people to return to. We have one of the safest structures to deal with any risk that might exist. This simply does not add up: I do not see what the obstacles are.
Mr Ellwood
Let us take a step back from this particular case. Security questions must be asked, in the case of any inmate, about what will happen once the process has taken place. As I have said, the judicial process that is being conducted is very complex, and involves a number of Departments.
Caroline Lucas
Surely the Minister agrees that it would be safer for Shaker to return to the United Kingdom than to go to Saudi Arabia, for example—safer for all of us, indeed.
Mr Ellwood
The point has been made time and again about the manner in which many of the detainees ended up in Guantanamo Bay, and about the creation of Camp Delta in the first place. I make no comment on this particular case because it would be wrong for me to do so, but we need to ensure that every person who is processed will not be a danger to the United States or to any other country. It is a complex process, and I must make it very clear that I make no judgment on this particular case. I am about to give some numbers and a timetable, and details of the frequency with which detainees are being processed.
Mr Andrew Mitchell
The Minister is setting out his case, and he says that he does not need to make a judgment, but the United States has made it clear that there is no evidence against Shaker Aamer. Is that not the critical factor? May I encourage the Minister to share with the House, in some detail, the questions that he asked during his lengthy conversation with the American embassy this morning, and the answers that he received?
Mr Ellwood
I want to make some progress. As I shall make clear shortly, I am not privy to the very complicated process, involving six United States Government Departments, that every single detainee will have to undergo before being cleared for release. That is the process that Shaker Aamer must undergo, like everyone else who has been released so far or will be released in the future.
In supporting Mr Aamer’s release, we have emphasised to the United States Government that any individual who engages in terrorist-related activity in the United Kingdom can expect to be dealt with through use of the full range of powers that are available to us. I shall not list them here, but they are extensive, and we remain confident in the ability of our police and security services to deal with any such threats. I think that that partly answers the question asked by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion.
It would be inappropriate to comment on why Mr Aamer is in the Guantanamo Bay facility, especially as we continue to discuss the details of his case with the United States in order to secure his release. This is a sensitive issue and, as the House will understand, it has been the policy of successive Governments not to discuss intelligence matters. However, as Members well know, the United Kingdom does not participate in, solicit, encourage or condone the use of torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment for any purpose. We remain absolutely committed to ensuring that serious allegations of UK complicity in alleged rendition and mistreatment overseas are examined carefully. If any evidence of that were to come to light, we would take appropriate action. The investigation of, or prosecution of individuals involved in, any alleged torture carried out by the United States is a matter for the United States authorities.
Jeremy Corbyn
I thank the Minister for giving way; he is being very generous. In these investigations into torture and extraordinary rendition, is he getting all the co-operation he has asked for from the US authorities?
Mr Ellwood
I can only repeat what I have just said: I cannot comment on intelligence matters relating to this particular case.
Consular access is afforded to states only as regards their own nationals and, as has been repeated in this Chamber, Mr Aamer is a Saudi national. Our consular policy for non-British nationals is clear: we cannot help non-nationals no matter how long they have lived in the UK and regardless of their connections to the UK.
Although the timeline for the closure of the facility remains a matter for the US Government, President Obama was elected in November 2008 having vowed to close Guantanamo Bay. In the early days of his presidency, he said:
“There is…no question that Guantanamo set back the moral authority that is America’s strongest currency in the world.”
He recognised that, faced with uncertain threats, hasty decisions were made
“based on fear rather than foresight”.
President Obama remains determined to see the Guantanamo Bay facilities closed by the end of his Administration, and we remain committed to assisting him in this aim.
Of the original 779 detainees held in Guantanamo Bay, 122 remain, including Mr Aamer. Five detainees have been released so far this year, but in 2014 the US released 28, 19 of whom were released in November and December. That is a considerable increase in releases compared with previous years. From 2011 to 2013, a total of just 19 detainees were released.
We have already made a significant contribution to reducing the number of detainees in Guantanamo Bay by taking back nine UK nationals and, exceptionally, five former legal residents. Aside from Mr Aamer, the UK is not considering accepting any further detainees from the Guantanamo Bay facility. More widely, we have facilitated engagement with countries that have agreed to accept former detainees, and shared experience and advice on managing the return process.
In conclusion, as hon. Members have highlighted, 14 February was the 13th anniversary of Mr Aamer’s arrival at the Guantanamo Bay facility. Along with his family and his many supporters, the UK Government would like this to be the last anniversary that Mr Aamer passes in detention. Since the Prime Minister’s meeting with President Obama on 16 January, my officials and Government colleagues have continued to work to make that a reality, and we will carry on raising his case at the highest levels and at every reasonable opportunity to impress further on our US counterparts that we are looking for an urgent resolution.
Mr Slaughter
I am sorry to press the Minister, but he has still to answer the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray). In the Minister’s long conversations with the American embassy and others in the US Government, what is the precise and exact reason he has been given as to why the release of Shaker Aamer is not possible at the moment?
Mr Ellwood
I know that this will not satisfy the hon. Gentleman, but I can only repeat that these are intelligence matters on which I cannot comment in this House. I cannot do that. Following this debate, I will be writing to the US ambassador, Ambassador Barzun, to let him know the outcome, the passion expressed and this Government’s determination to see Shaker Aamer released.
Mr David Ward (Bradford East) (LD)
I understand the difficulty the Minister is in, but, as he announced, we all know that others have been released, although he cannot give any reasons. It appears that there is to be an investigation, but it seems there is a clear difference between those who have been released and Shaker Aamer. Is that the picture that emerged from the Minister’s conversations?
Mr Ellwood
Again, the hon. Gentleman will not be satisfied with my answer, but I cannot be drawn on the individual case or into dealing with intelligence matters. I am afraid that that is as far as I can comment on this—[Interruption.] Would the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) like me to give way?
Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)
Everybody has been waiting for the Minister to reply. I was saying that it is a total anticlimax. The Minister has said that, far from being released, Mr Aamer is only under review. Almost all of what he has had to say is a sop to Congress, to the Americans generally and to the President, rather than an explanation to the House that he and his superiors will try their level best to get Mr Aamer out. He is like an apologist for the American regime.
Mr Ellwood
The hon. Gentleman has made his point and he has clearly not listened to what I have said.
Mr Ellwood
If I may continue, we have made it very clear that we have listened to this debate and we stand with this Parliament in calling for Shaker Aamer to be released. If the hon. Gentleman would care to have the courtesy to listen to what I am saying, he would understand that he has not heard this Government’s passion and commitment to speak at the highest levels to ensure that we can leverage and use our relationship.
I stress that we have a strong, close and frank relationship that brings concrete benefits to both sides and that advances joint objectives. In the January meeting with President Obama, we were able to secure for the first time a guarantee that this will now become a priority. That is the first time that has been said. We will continue to press the issue, and this debate will have its place and be useful in that regard.
I hope I have made it clear that the UK Government are absolutely committed to securing the release of Mr Aamer. Today I would like to underline that commitment and join the House in calling for the US Government to approve the release of Shaker Aamer to the UK.
John McDonnell
I am grateful to the Minister for his last statement. I will deal briefly with three issues raised by the debate.
First, we now know that Shaker Aamer is in the process of a review. We welcome that, but the problem is that we are still not clear about the evidence presented against him, because intelligence is not being shared. As far as I am concerned, the concept of intelligence is yet again being used as an excuse to cover up injustice. We are not sure about the review’s timetable or the criteria on which it will make its decision, so although I welcome the Minister’s saying that a review is taking place, unfortunately the process does not give us confidence.
Secondly, I welcome wholeheartedly the Minister’s saying that the UK Government’s representations will continue, but he must take note of the sense of this House and those representations must be determined and courageous. We need to say frankly to our allies in America, “This man must be released.”
Thirdly, a number of Members have raised the issue of access. We need to ensure that Shaker Aamer’s health is assessed and properly dealt with and that he secures the full legal representation he requires. The Minister has said that we are restricted in the consular support we can provide because he is not a British national. Actually, he received the right to indefinite leave in this country, and if it were up to me I would offer him full British citizenship in order to overcome the issue of overall access.
Finally, someone said that this has not been a particularly well attended debate, but the attendance has been good for this type of debate. It has been well attended by senior Members, ex-Ministers and others with a human rights background, so I am really grateful for that and I know that the campaigners and the family will be, too. Let us all say together, in support of the motion, to the family, friends and campaigners, that we will not go away and we will secure the freedom of Shaker Aamer.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House calls on the US Government to release Shaker Aamer from his imprisonment in Guantánamo Bay and to allow him to return to his family in the UK.
Petitions
Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)
For several years I have been campaigning alongside various community groups, including the West Lancashire Pensioners Forum. Our aim is to secure new cemetery and crematorium provision in West Lancashire, thereby rectifying the awful and unacceptable situation facing many residents. It is an issue that West Lancashire borough council refuses to address. Too many families are laying their loved ones to rest in neighbouring boroughs due to the unavailability of local burial plots. These families are incurring higher funeral costs and have to travel further to visit the graves of their loved ones—a major challenge in an area where people are reliant on public transport. I therefore present this petition to the House of Commons on behalf of West Lancashire Pensioners Forum and for the residents of West Lancashire.
The petition states:
The Petition of residents of the West Lancashire constituency,
Declares that burial and cremation services should be provided in West Lancashire without delay; further that this provision will mean that burial and cremation services are less expensive and more convenient for residents and further that a local petition on this matter has been signed by 2000 individuals.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to encourage West Lancashire Borough Council to provide burial and cremation services in West Lancashire.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P001460]
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
This is a petition relating to Rough Close post office. It is a petition to the House of Commons by residents of the constituency of Stone in Staffordshire. It contains more than 500 signatures which have been supplied to the Post Office and it is now coming before Parliament.
The petition states:
The Petition of residents of the constituency of Stone in Staffordshire,
Declares that residents of Meir Heath object to the relocation of the local Rough Close Post Office branch from Grindley Lane to Sandon Road in Meir Heath; further that a number of products and services will not be available at the new post office; further that the Petitioners will need to find alternative providers to carry out the banking, parcel services and travel insurance on demand; further that there are limited parking facilities at the relocated site which would cause disruption to residents, road users and post office delivery; further that the relocated site would be unsuitable and would pose increased difficulties for the elderly, including the crossing of a major road; further that given the size of the premises, residents wishing to use Post Office facilities would need to queue outside; further that the new open plan serving positions may come with a lack of privacy and security; and further that the Petitioners currently receive professional services from fully trained post office staff with many years’ experience at the existing location.
The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to intervene to keep the Rough Close Post Office branch in its existing location on Grindley Lane.
And the Petitioners remain, etc.
[P001462]
Asbestos in Schools
(9 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Jim Sheridan (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (Lab)
I am extremely grateful for this opportunity to raise the important issue of asbestos in schools. It is an important issue not only for the people who work in the schools but for the parents of the children who are being educated in them.
The recent report on asbestos in schools is welcome, but it is unfortunate that it was not published earlier. We have been waiting more than eight months for its publication, which was always described as imminent. None the less, it provides a useful, informed and welcome background to the debate on the effects of asbestos in schools. Much of it is based on, or responds to, the publication of a report on asbestos in schools by the all-party parliamentary occupational safety and health group, which I chair. I am sure that this report would never have been produced had it not been for the work of the all-party group, the joint union asbestos committee, the GMB and the Asbestos in Schools Group. May I particularly mention Mr Michael Lees, who lost his teacher wife to mesothelioma and has campaigned consistently since?
Let me digress slightly by referring to an exclusive report in The Independent by Andrew Grice, who interviewed the Minister. The report states:
“The Schools Minister warned that Mr Cameron’s announcement of 500 more free schools in the 2015-20 parliament was ‘a number picked out of a hat.’ He warned: ‘The Tories want to scatter 500 new schools around the country, regardless of whether they will be good quality schools or whether they are actually needed. This is a barmy way to make policy.’”
The report continued:
“He added: ‘Worse still, it would mean a £4bn raid on other budgets, consigning children and teachers to crumbling classrooms and leaving some without a school place at all. It is impossible to justify.’
Mr Laws claimed Downing Street had not wanted to go public before the election about the need to tackle asbestos in school buildings, even though it was a ‘child safety issue.’”
I would certainly appreciate it if the Minister expanded on that in his response.
The Department for Education has acknowledged that children are more at risk from asbestos exposure than adults are. That is a significant step forward; it acknowledges that asbestos in schools is an issue. It includes a call for greater transparency from schools and employers, and makes it clear that asbestos training is compulsory for teachers and supporting staff. All those who are responsible for managing asbestos will receive training. That is well overdue, given the complete lack of awareness in many schools, as outlined in the report. There is also a welcome commitment to develop air sampling.
That is all a step forward but it by no means goes far enough. More than 291 schoolteachers have died of mesothelioma since 1980. They were dying at a rate of three per year in 1980, but the number of deaths has increased each year and they are now dying at a rate of 19 a year. The report acknowledges that caretakers, cleaners, maintenance staff and children are known to be at a greater risk. However, statistics do not show how many pupils have been killed by past exposure, as people often die more than 40 years after exposure, by which time they may have worked in a wide range of jobs. Let us not forget, however, that for every teacher working in a school there are 20 to 30 children and they are more at risk.
Ian Lavery (Wansbeck) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this Adjournment debate on a very serious issue. It is very important that we recognise that it is not only staff and support workers—the teachers and so on—but children who could contract asbestos-related diseases in school. Should we not be doing everything we can to take the right measures to reduce the incidence in children, rather than just looking across the board at teachers and staff?
Jim Sheridan
My hon. Friend is absolutely right about that, and again I have to congratulate the National Union of Teachers on its assistance in dealing with this issue. The genuine concern is that we do not scare parents into believing that their children cannot go to school for fear of catching mesothelioma or other asbestos-related diseases, and we have tried to follow that approach through the report the TUC has drawn up. However, we say clearly in the report that action has to be taken. We also recognised that we cannot deal with this overnight and that the process has to be gradual, with gradual investment. That should start with some of the older schools being stripped of asbestos, and we could take things on gradually from there.
The review is somewhat complacent in places. It states that the Health and Safety Executive’s view is that schools overall are low-risk health and safety environments, similar to offices and retail premises. But there is a fundamental difference between offices, retail premises and schools, which is that schools contain children. The fabric of school buildings suffers considerably more disturbance and damage than most offices and retail premises. In addition, children are in the building for long periods of time and they are more vulnerable than adults to exposure to asbestos. However, most parents would not think that 4,000 to 6,000 people dying over a 20-year period as a result of attending school was low risk.
I am also surprised that the Government are unaware of the extent, type and condition of asbestos in schools. They have just completed a two-year survey on the condition of school buildings, which deliberately excluded asbestos. The review simply states:
“Based upon the age of the school estate, we can estimate that a majority of schools in England contain some asbestos, although the exact amount is unknown.”
That is an astonishing statement after a multi-million pound audit. If when the Government first came to office they had simply asked the local authorities, they would have found that the something like 87% of schools contained asbestos.
Although this debate is principally about schools in England, this is a UK-wide problem.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for bringing this matter to the House for consideration. In Northern Ireland, a significant number of school buildings still contain asbestos. There has been a programme to address when asbestos becomes a danger, but the fact is that asbestos that has not been disturbed or damaged is better left alone. The policy in Northern Ireland is that properly managed asbestos should not cause any health problems. Has the hon. Gentleman found that that is the case in some of the schools with which he has been involved? Sometimes the best way to address the asbestos issue is not to do anything until the school comes to the end of its life.
Jim Sheridan
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. Experts tell us quite clearly that asbestos is safe if left alone, and I have vast experience of that in my own life. When I worked in the shipyards, asbestos could be easily identified. We were told that if it was left alone, it was comparatively safe. However, in school buildings, where people are banging doors, putting drawing pins in walls, and maintaining pipes, asbestos cannot be left undisturbed. It is important that maintenance staff are trained to identify asbestos and to know how best to treat it. If would be preferable if asbestos could be left alone, but not all schools can do that. Indeed, the banging of doors causes the stuff to circulate in the air.
As I said, asbestos is a UK-wide problem. A recent report in Scotland showed that 79% of schools contained asbestos. That was based on responses from 22 of the 33 councils. Since 2007, the number of schools in Scotland with asbestos in a poor or bad condition has fallen from 39% to 17%. That is because the Scottish Government have for many years collated data on the condition of the school estate and presented it online in a clear, understandable format that allows people to see how the measures that are in place to improve the school stock are succeeding.
The Convention of Scottish Local Authorities states:
“there has been significant expenditure imposed on Councils throughout Scotland through the presence of asbestos in education premises (mainly schools).”
I am reliably informed that Wales also has a major and well publicised problem with asbestos in schools.
It is the Government’s responsibility to ensure that children and staff are not harmed simply by attending school. It is good to see that the Government are finally going to ensure that those who manage asbestos are trained to do so and that the guidance to schools will be updated, but unfortunately that just does not go far enough.
What are lacking are concrete proposals and a strategic vision to introduce the long-term strategies needed to eradicate asbestos from our schools. There needs to be a proper assessment across the UK of the level and condition of asbestos in the nation’s schools so that plans can be drawn up to remove the worst of it as it continues to deteriorate. Simply leaving it in place until a school is refurbished will put millions of school kids and other workers at risk.
The Government must also introduce more inspections to assess how well asbestos is being managed and spot where children are being exposed to risk. It is simply not good enough to leave it to chance, especially as a recent trial survey by the Health and Safety Executive led to a number of enforcement notices.
In conclusion, the report should be seen not as the end of the line, but simply as the launching pad for a proper, comprehensive policy aimed at ridding our schools of this killer dust once and for all. Speaking personally, I have seen far too many deaths from asbestos-related diseases such as mesothelioma, and watching someone die from such a disease is horrendous. I remember a former workmate with the disease describe it as feeling like a tree growing inside you, eventually choking you to death. I really do not want to see our children suffering that experience in 10, 20 or 40 years’ time.
Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Jim Sheridan) on securing the debate and on chairing the all-party group on occupational safety and health. I had the honour, or otherwise, of chairing the asbestos in schools group, which has come under the umbrella of the hon. Gentleman’s all-party group, for which I am grateful. I also congratulate its lead campaigner, Michael Lees, who has received an MBE, and rightly so, for his tireless work in raising awareness and bringing about a change of heart. I think that it is quite timely to have this debate after the policy has been announced, although it might have been anticipated that the debate would be a call for that policy announcement. I think that it can be used constructively today.
I will say a little about the asbestos in schools group. It has a very wide representation, including from the teachers’ unions, independent schools, industry and local authorities that have very good practice—that has brought home to me what varying practice there currently is across the country in managing asbestos. I took on the chairmanship of the group following a very sad experience with one of my constituents, Rosie. I had known her for a long time, having met her every time I went around canvassing, and I knew that she had been a peripatetic teacher. She came into my constituency office one day and was extremely ill, and within a few months she was dead. She died of exposure to asbestos. It was incredibly sad. We know that a very high proportion of our schools—at least 75%—still have asbestos in them. We know that at least 20 teachers a year die as a result. We know from the evidence that children are more vulnerable than adults. It seemed to me that there was a real mission to try to get change. I was aware that other countries were far ahead of us and, in some cases, had had policies in place for over 30 years—a fact that is much overlooked, or perhaps people do not want to look at that issue in this country.
It had been agreed before the last general election that there would be a steering group, with representatives from the asbestos in schools group and officials from the Department for Education, but the first job after the election was to get that group agreed and reconvened, and I am pleased to say that we did so. There have been so many meetings that I have been involved in, either at the Department for Education or here in Parliament, discussing the issue that it seemed at times that we would take two steps forward and one step back.
I found it difficult sometimes to understand and respond to the approach of the Health and Safety Executive. I felt that there was a mindset that asbestos in schools was just like asbestos in any other buildings. The hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North described very well why that is not so. Usually in office buildings there are no young people boisterously charging around, which can obviously happen in schools. Schools are a totally different environment, and within that environment are those very vulnerable children.
At an early stage, we achieved agreement that there would be some online training. A significant breakthrough occurred when we pressed for the Department for Education to liaise with the Department of Health on the matter. The committee on carcinogenicity then commenced a study. That was quite a breakthrough—rather a sad one, which confirmed what everybody who had been campaigning knew: that children are more vulnerable than adults and therefore asbestos in schools must be addressed. At that point, the policy review was commissioned, for which I thank the Government.
I welcome the key proposals in the policy review. Greater transparency from schools and local authorities is vital. Measures to assist schools in the effective management of asbestos is extremely important, as is compulsory asbestos training for teachers and support staff. I welcome the introduction of monitoring to see how well people are doing in managing asbestos. Something that we discussed at almost every meeting was testing to provide evidence about the fibres released into the atmosphere. I welcome the study in 50 schools. Even though 50 schools sounds like a small sample, the study will cost a very large sum—hundreds of thousands of pounds, I believe. That evidence collecting will be all-important.
I remain very concerned about schools that remain outside local authority control. If the Minister has time, I would like him to say a little more about how academies are to be encouraged to participate. Parents should be concerned. Free schools can be set up in almost any building. That worries me. I would like to be reassured tonight that academies and free schools will have the same monitoring as other schools, for the sake of our children.
Ian Lavery
It is not just monitoring that free schools and academies might have to take on board, but insurance as well. Whose responsibility is it to insure against future mesothelioma or cancer-related illness linked to schools?
Annette Brooke
That matter has concerned the group greatly. Of course, we have discussed it with the union representation and there is a recommendation that academies should be encouraged to participate in a risk-protection scheme. It would be helpful to know a little more about that. The problem affects all such buildings, regardless of their governance. The worry is that with such a wide range of governance, the same protection may not be given to children throughout the system. That is my concern.
A good start has been made and I welcome the fact that after so many years we have a policy. I agree that long-term strategies are needed. We need a complete audit and I regret that the two-year property survey of the condition of school buildings excluded asbestos. I hope that will never happen again, because it did not make sense.
We have made a good start to take us into the next Parliament. I feel fairly confident that children will be better protected than they have been, and that is the crunch point. Given the size of the task, we need cross-party support as we look to a more far-ranging policy in future. I hope that, with Members speaking in all parts of the House, we are laying down a marker that this has to be a cross-party approach, but meanwhile the Government have given great leadership.
Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Jim Sheridan) on securing this Adjournment debate. He has been an absolutely fantastic, tireless campaigner on this issue. I also congratulate the right hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) on the work that she has been doing through her chairmanship of the asbestos in schools group, which has been incredibly important. I join them both in paying tribute to Michael Lees, a gentleman whom I have met and engaged with on many occasions regarding mesothelioma in particular. His campaigns have opened my eyes to the extent to which we should be concerned about asbestos in schools.
I welcome the recent report and agree with the right hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole that it demonstrates real leadership. It would have been helpful to have had the report a little while ago, as it is now too close to Dissolution for us properly to think through what we can do in taking it forward, but it is nevertheless welcome.
This issue is incredibly important to me because mesothelioma is a disease—a condition—that affects my constituency owing to its dockyard history. It is what is known as a mesothelioma hotspot. The disease is not just centred on traditional workers who have lagged ships or been involved in heavy industries in the past. I have spoken about mesothelioma on many occasions in the House. It is important to remember that it can be contracted by exposure to a single fibre of asbestos. Teachers and others who work in educational establishments are beginning to contract mesothelioma later on in life, because just putting a single pin in a wall can disrupt the asbestos there and lead to their exposure to it, and then, significantly, to their contracting this fatal cancer.
We need to remember that, sadly, most people die of this cancer very quickly and very painfully. It is wonderful that there are meso victims out there who are real champions and stalwarts who have fought this disease for many years, but most people die very quickly, and often without any kind of financial security whatsoever. This Government have gone a very long way towards making sure that people are compensated properly for mesothelioma as a consequence of exposure to asbestos. However, that compensation might not necessarily extend to asbestos in schools. I will return to that shortly.
I should like to say very firmly and categorically that the increased funding going into the schools capital programme is welcome. Some of my local schools have benefited from that increased funding; some have not. One particular school springs to mind whose sports hall is completely out of bounds because it is riddled with asbestos. It has applied for previous rounds of capital funding to try to deal with this but has not been successful. I shall continue to support it in future rounds to try to ensure that it can get its sports hall back into use.
One of the issues that I am particularly concerned about—the right hon. Lady raised it briefly—is the number of schools that are not under local education authority control. I am a huge supporter of our academy and free schools programmes, but they do create a bit of uncertainty when talking specifically about asbestos.
I worked in the insurance industry before I first entered the House. I campaigned very much on mesothelioma within the industry and I forewarned it that I would continue to do so as a Member of Parliament, so it is no surprise that I have maintained that position on various pieces of legislation that have been introduced. I am worried about future claims. Some schools will of course fall within public liability insurance categories, but as the right hon. Lady has just pointed out, thousands of schools have not yet signed up to the risk protection arrangement scheme. Their future liabilities may not therefore be assigned to an insurance policy, and a significant number of teachers or children exposed to asbestos might not necessarily get the compensation that they deserve. We have to remember that mesothelioma can be contracted only by exposure to asbestos—there is no other way of getting it—so people deserve compensation.
I would say very firmly that the Minister cannot do this by himself; there needs to be joined-up thinking and working with the Department for Work and Pensions on compensation issues. As I have said, under the Mesothelioma Act 2014, it has secured compensation for those who were unable to find their insurers, but schools do not fit within that programme at the moment, so there may well be room for improving it in future and for the Department of Health—particularly the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Norfolk (George Freeman), who has responsibility for life sciences—funding research on mesothelioma. Meso is a very nasty and painful cancer, so ensuring that we come up with a cure or treatment would benefit many thousands of people each year.
It might not sound like a lot for the teaching profession, but more people die of mesothelioma every year than from road deaths in the United Kingdom. Without doubt, the coming years will see an increase in the number of people who have worked in educational establishments contracting mesothelioma because of the condition’s latency. That is why I congratulate the Minister on the strategy and on the improvements in capital funding, but we need to continue to fight and to do as much as possible. Everybody realises that we do not have the money completely to rebuild all the schools that contain asbestos in this country, but we must try the best we can to mitigate the effects of that asbestos. I congratulate the Minister on what he has done, but will he please do the extra little bit more, particularly in working with other Departments and agencies and in listening to the groups chaired by the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North and the right hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole?
The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)
I am very grateful to the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Jim Sheridan)for securing this debate and for giving us an opportunity to discuss an extremely important and, with the publication at the end of last week of the Department’s review of policy on asbestos, timely issue. I thank him for his significant contribution as a member of the Department for Education’s asbestos in schools steering group, and for his chairmanship of the all-party group on occupational safety and health.
The asbestos in schools steering group has done invaluable work in developing the review of asbestos management in schools. I thank all its members for their insights and dedication, including my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke), who has been a doughty campaigner on the issue for many years and who has chaired the steering group. I am particularly delighted that we have been able to bring this matter to a conclusion and to publish the review before the end of her time in Parliament, given her retirement in a couple of weeks’ time. I know that she would not have forgiven me if I had failed to get the review out in time. I am pleased for her that she has had the satisfaction of seeing all her work produce a positive outcome.
As my right hon. Friend mentioned, with the general election coming up, it is important that there is cross-party support for this campaign. It is therefore appropriate that as well as hearing speeches from a Labour Member and my right hon. Friend on the Liberal Democrat Benches, we have heard from another long-standing campaigner on the issue of asbestos in my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tracey Crouch). I welcome her comments and pay tribute to the work that she has done to champion this issue nationally and in her constituency. There are a number of issues, even in the review that we have published, that need to be taken forward actively in the next Parliament. It is therefore important that the cross-party consensus remains and that there are Members of the House who will continue to push the matter forward with Ministers in the new Government.
I join other hon. Members in recognising the campaigning of people outside the House, including Michael Lees, who has been mentioned by everyone who has spoken. He has been a great champion outside this place for ensuring that the issue of asbestos is taken seriously.
For my Department, nothing is more important than the health and safety of children and staff while they are in our schools. The Government are absolutely committed to ensuring that those who are responsible for school buildings are equipped with the resources, information, guidance and support that they need to do their jobs effectively. I welcome this opportunity to update the House on the measures that we are taking to ensure the safety of our schools, as part of our extensive efforts to improve the condition of the school estate.
As the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North mentioned, last week we published a review of the Department for Education’s policy on the management of asbestos in schools As well as considering the available evidence, we invited stakeholders to tell us their views about the existing arrangements for managing asbestos in schools and how they thought we could help schools to manage asbestos effectively.
Based on the age of the school estate, we estimate that a majority of schools in England contain some asbestos. That is because asbestos was widely used in the construction of buildings in Britain, particularly between 1945 and 1975. The same is true of many non-school and non-education buildings that were constructed in that period, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman is aware.
If asbestos is damaged or disturbed and fibres are released, they can cause serious diseases including mesothelioma, which is a form of cancer. The hon. Gentleman explained in vivid and striking terms the effect that that dreadful illness can have on people. I am sure that the House will agree that any single case of such a disease, from any cause, is a tragedy, and that we must all do what we can to minimise the risks.
The expert scientific view, which the Department obviously has to follow, is that asbestos can be managed effectively so that it does not pose a risk. Indeed, the national regulator of asbestos management, the Health and Safety Executive, upon whose expert opinion the Government base their policy and practice, advises that provided that asbestos-containing materials remain undamaged, it is often safest to manage them in situ. The experts say that effective management is often safer than removing asbestos-containing materials, because removal can greatly increase the risk that asbestos fibres will be released into the air and there is a risk that small quantities of damaged asbestos will remain after removal.
The Government are determined to do whatever we can to ensure that all those who are responsible for the safe management of schools, whether they are local authorities, academy trusts or free school trusts—I entirely agree with the point that my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole made about such schools—governing bodies or school staff themselves, have the information, understanding, guidance and resources that they need to keep our schools, and all those who learn and work in them, safe from any risk of harm.
That is why we updated the regulations in 2012 to ensure the safe management of asbestos. It is why we have invested £5.6 billion over the Parliament in ensuring that schools and those responsible for their buildings have the funding that they need to improve their condition, ensure the safe management of asbestos and fund its removal where that is necessary. It is one of the reasons why we have introduced multi-year allocations for maintenance: we recently announced £4.2 billion of funding over the next three years, we are reforming our approach to target more effectively areas with the most need, and we are introducing multi-year funding to give those who are responsible the certainty that they need to plan ahead and manage their buildings effectively. It is why we have established the condition improvement fund, to enable academies in small trusts and sixth-form colleges to bid for funding to help with specific maintenance projects, including asbestos management or removal. Before the end of this Parliament we expect to announce another round of allocations to academies and sixth-form colleges, which in many cases will include asbestos as part of the works to be completed.
Our Priority School Building programme is removing asbestos wherever appropriate, as part of rebuilding some of the worst school buildings in the country, and the Government have long provided information and guidance on the safe management of asbestos. We undertook to review whether we could do more to tackle barriers to the safe and effective management of asbestos in all our schools, and I am grateful to all those who contributed to the review.
Ian Lavery
In the past, the issue of mesothelioma has been bogged down with missing companies and insurance companies, and we cannot have the same problem for potential claims for mesothelioma in schools in 10, 20 or 30 years’ time. Will the Minister clarify the position on insurance for free schools, academies, and those education centres outside local authority control?
Mr Laws
As the hon. Gentleman will know, that issue was not directly part of the review we published last week, so if he will allow me I will write to him before the Dissolution of Parliament to set out our thinking on those points. If he wants to make further representation on that issue directly to the Department—notwithstanding that we have only a short period before end of this Parliament—I would be pleased to receive it.
I pay tribute to the all-party occupational safety and health group, the committee on carcinogenicity, and members of our Department’s asbestos in schools steering group. I am grateful to all those who submitted evidence to the review, and to the many Members of the House who have taken a keen interest in this issue. I pay tribute to our excellent officials in the Department for Education. They have liaised directly with hon. Members on this matter, advised Ministers, and done all the really hard work on the review and the detail of the proposals.
The review that we published last week sets out actions in the following four areas that the Government are taking forward to build on our current approach. First, a key task is to ensure that all those who have a role to play are aware of their responsibilities and understand what they need to do to manage asbestos safely. We will soon publish new, more user-friendly guidance on asbestos management in schools, and we will work with our partners to ensure that it is widely disseminated. There can be no excuse for any person with responsibility for a school building not to know how to manage asbestos safely.
Secondly—as my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole said earlier, this is one of the most important conclusions in the review—as well as providing more guidance and support to those with responsibility for asbestos management, we must also ensure that they are held accountable and are doing their job effectively. Evidence from Health and Safety Executive inspection initiatives has demonstrated that although the majority of duty holders for schools manage their asbestos in compliance with the law, there is room for improvement. For example, an inspection initiative in schools outside local authority control during 2013-14 found that 13% of schools were not compliant with regulations and had to be served with improvement notices. Previous inspection initiatives produced similar results for other schools. In 2010-11, 17% of the schools inspected were served with improvement notices, and in 2009-10, 10% of local authorities inspected were served with improvement notices. None of the duty holders in that area should therefore have any level of complacency.
The inspection initiatives highlighted a number of common issues. Some schools were found to have no written asbestos management plan, or had documentation that had been allowed to go out of date. Other common faults were a lack of asbestos training for in-house staff likely to disturb asbestos, and poor communication with contractors and other visitors about where asbestos was located.
To tackle those issues, our review proposes new measures to increase the transparency of asbestos management and the scrutiny of those responsible for it. We are now consulting on the best way to collect information from schools on how they manage their asbestos. We propose to ask those responsible for asbestos management in schools to confirm that their schools have an up-to-date management plan. We also plan to ask them if they are carrying out regular management activities, such as implementing procedures to prevent the disturbance of asbestos and communicating with staff and visitors about the presence of asbestos in a school. Once the Department holds this information, it will be able to take appropriate action to ensure that cases of inadequate management are addressed. This will be a significant step towards improving awareness and compliance, and ensuring that the proper management of asbestos is a priority in all schools that contain it.
I underline that this is ongoing work and we will be consulting. Inevitably, that consultation will run into the period of the next Government. The next Government will therefore also have to take some key decisions, which is why momentum is very important. In response to the specific question from my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole, I underline that our expectations will be on all duty holders, whether local authorities, individuals schools or chains, to ensure that they are doing that job properly, and we will want to be satisfied that that is the case.
Thirdly, we want to improve the evidence base on the risks posed by asbestos in schools. The review highlights the lack of contemporary evidence about the levels of asbestos fibres present in schools. This is due partly to the limitations of existing techniques for sampling asbestos fibres in the air, but if we can design a reliable study it would be a significant step forward in our understanding of the risks and therefore how best to minimise them. We are working actively with the Health and Safety Executive to establish the feasibility and optimal design of a major new study into the background level of asbestos fibres in schools, and we expect the study to begin by 2016.
Finally, we will continue to invest in the school estate in a way that ensures asbestos can be dealt with adequately, so that over time and where appropriate we see a reduction in the number of school buildings with asbestos-containing materials. In the course of this Parliament, the Government are spending a total of nearly £18 billion on school buildings and new school places. On top of that, in February 2015 we announced a further £6.2 billion of funding to maintain and improve the condition of the school estate going into the next Parliament. Our extensive capital investment programme is targeted at those schools in the worst condition. Where appropriate, we reflect the risks posed by asbestos when making funding decisions. We give local decision makers the funding they need to prioritise asbestos-related works. By improving the condition of the school buildings in the worst condition, our capital programmes will reduce the presence of asbestos in the estate and the risks posed by the remaining asbestos.
The first phase of our Priority School Building programme is rebuilding or addressing the condition need of 261 schools in the worst state of repair. The vast majority of these schools are being rebuilt and so will have any asbestos removed when the existing buildings are demolished. The second phase of the Priority School Building programme, which we announced recently, will address condition need in a further 277 schools. We primarily used information from the property data survey to assess the scale and severity of condition need. However, we also gave applicants the opportunity to identify significant issues that would not have been identified through the property data survey, for example where the costs of safely managing asbestos are excessive and are of such significance as to affect the integrity of the building. All applications that stated that their school has a significant asbestos-related issue and provided relevant supporting documentation, were assessed by independent technical advisers. We took this assessment into account when prioritising the blocks to be included in the programme. All successful blocks within Priority School Building programme 2 will have asbestos issues dealt with appropriately, whether they were raised as a specific concern in the application process or not, because we might discover some of these issues when we go on-site.
We also directly fund the maintenance and improvement of academies and sixth-form colleges through the academies capital maintenance fund and the building condition improvement fund for sixth-form colleges, which are now being combined into the new condition improvement fund. A number of these schemes involve the removal of asbestos—for example, where an academy is replacing its boilers and pipework—and we also allow academies and sixth-form colleges to bid to this fund where they have significant asbestos that is proving difficult to manage.
Asbestos can be managed effectively—and is being managed effectively in the vast majority of schools. The review we published last week is just the latest step in these ongoing efforts. Working together, we can ensure that asbestos is managed effectively in all schools and over time in a safe and an evidence-based way. As the school estate is modernised and replaced, asbestos will be removed from school buildings.
I welcome today’s debate and the contributions from all hon. Members who have participated. Through our school building programme and the measures announced in the review, I hope that we will ensure that the schools estate is a safe environment for all pupils and teachers.
Question put and agreed to.