Child Refugees: Calais

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Monday 29th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

My hon. Friend knows from his constituency interests the work that the Government have done to secure the port area around Calais and the Eurotunnel terminal at Coquelles. We keep that security under review in a joint group with the French Government. He makes the powerful and important point that asylum claims should be made at the earliest opportunity so that help and assistance can be given at the earliest opportunity.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

The press are reporting this afternoon that riot police are using tear gas and water cannon to support the destruction of the “jungle” camp. I do not know whether that is what the Minister meant by the French authorities engaging with young people and encouraging them to move on. Given that there is plenty of money to provide fencing, and bilateral co-operation with the French, why can he not simply get together with his French counterpart, identify the young people who have a legal right to come to the UK and get them over here immediately?

[James Brokenshire]

It is a clear question of people claiming asylum, and children are being supported by the work of the NGOs that the French Government have put in place precisely for that purpose. We have taken a consistent joint approach, building on the agreement of last August, to support the French Government in their work to ensure that those in need of help get it.

Child Refugees in Europe

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Monday 25th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

Ultimately, those are matters for the French Government, but we have committed resourcing in terms of arrangements in people’s own country. I underline that claiming asylum in France means that assistance will be provided at the earliest opportunity. We have committed to support the French Government in that activity. We have provided funding to assist them in creating those reception centres outside Calais so that people can travel away from the area and get the support they need.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

When will the Government decide to support Lord Dubs’s amendment? I ask because when I was in the Calais camp on 21 December, I met a former Afghan interpreter for UK forces who was trying to look after some of the unaccompanied children, including 15-year-old Masud. By the time I recounted that visit in Westminster Hall on 6 January, Masud was dead. Time is of the essence. Would not this Wednesday—Holocaust Memorial Day—be a suitable date for the Minister to make up his mind and let the children in?

[James Brokenshire]

The appropriate thing to do is to consider the best interests of the child and get further input from the UNHCR and others, because of the risk of making the situation worse, and the risk of seeing more children put their lives on the line by making those perilous journeys across the Mediterranean. That is at the forefront of our minds, and why we will consider the matter in that way.

Mr Shaker Aamer

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Wednesday 25th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[David T. C. Davies]

No, I disagree with my hon. Friend. If she knows the name of the charity, then she should say so; it is not listed anywhere else. And while she is at it, she ought to try to find out, or the lawyer ought to explain, why Mr Aamer was apparently arrested on a fake Belgian passport when he was in Afghanistan, because fake passports are not normally de rigueur when one is doing work for aid agencies.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman should perhaps really abide by the points made by the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr Mathias). Is he not abusing his position here and taking advantage of parliamentary privilege to try to put on trial a man who spent 14 years in custody without ever having allegations proved against him or ever being put on trial? Is this not a matter where due process should take its course? I hope that is what the Minister will tell us. Frankly, to try to besmirch this man’s name after everything he has been through is really quite disgraceful, and it takes advantage of parliamentary privilege.

[David T. C. Davies]

I am amazed by what the hon. Gentleman is saying, because this matter is surely relevant. If Mr Aamer was in possession of a fake Belgian passport, that needs to be discussed. I am not besmirching him; I am not even saying that he was in possession of a fake Belgian passport. I am saying that it was widely reported and has not been denied.

The second point is that I am saying there is a lot of information that has been put out there about Mr Aamer by his lawyers, among others, but nobody has seen fit to tell us the name of the charity that he was working for.

[Andy Slaughter]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[David T. C. Davies]

No, no; I have given way a few times.

[Andy Slaughter]

On that point?

[David T. C. Davies]

Okay, if the hon. Gentleman knows the name of the charity, let us have it.

[Andy Slaughter]

I will make two points quickly.

[David T. C. Davies]

Ah, right, so he does not know.

[Andy Slaughter]

The first point is that Shaker Aamer himself has not had the opportunity to put his side of the story. I am sure he will do so at some point, and therefore this discussion is at the very least premature.

The hon. Gentleman is entitled to ask about due process and to question the Minister about how the Government conduct litigation. In my humble opinion, he is not entitled to come here and attack a man who has suffered grievously and not been shown due process, and to add insult to injury by doing what he is doing today.

[David T. C. Davies]

The hon. Gentleman can relax, because I am not attacking Mr Aamer at all; if I was attacking him, the hon. Gentleman would know about it. I am just raising a few questions. When I am in attack mode, I am in attack mode, and I am not in attack mode. I am actually giving him the benefit of the doubt—

[Andy Slaughter]

You are in smear mode.

[David T. C. Davies]

No, I am not in smear mode at all.

[David T. C. Davies]

I find this absolutely extraordinary. These are perfectly reasonable questions to ask, given that this man is apparently about to receive £1 million of taxpayers’ money in secret, which I think is outrageous. Three young men from Monmouthshire have lost their lives fighting in Afghanistan. They did not choose to go there; they did not go and choose to live under this extremist Islamo-fascist state that Mr Aamer decided was a worthy state to go and live under. They were asked to go there by the British Government.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall), who is sitting next to me, made some proper points in this debate. What I have here is a list of the sums that people will get paid if they receive serious injuries in the defence of their country. The absolute maximum that someone can get if they have lost both arms and both legs is £570,000. That is for people who have been doing their duty for this country. This man, Mr Aamer, not a British citizen at all, was given the right to come over to this country because of our generous ways. His family, as I understand it, have been looked after by the state ever since he disappeared off to Afghanistan with them—

[Andy Slaughter]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[David T. C. Davies]

No, I am not giving way again, because I asked the hon. Gentleman to answer a straightforward question last time, and he said he was going to and then he did not.

Let me finish by saying that it is absolutely outrageous that British servicemen and women who lost arms and legs in Afghanistan fighting those Islamo-fascists who had launched those disgraceful attacks on New York, while Mr Aamer was apparently out there in Afghanistan by choice working—allegedly—for some sort of charity, will now get only half as much money as Mr Aamer. He is not a British citizen; he chose to go and live in a foreign country; he was kidnapped by members of some other militia in said foreign country; and he was put in prison in another foreign country. It is wrong that the British taxpayer should be expected to pick up the bill for that.

Draft Investigatory Powers Bill

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Wednesday 4th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

That is an important point. I think that it was touched on in a previous question, and I apologise for not responding to it then.

Under the current system, if the Secretary of State expresses the view that a warrant should not be issued, it is open to the agency concerned to go away, reconsider, and then come back with more information about necessity and proportionality, or to abandon the warrant, or to consider applying for a different warrant. That process will continue to be possible under the new system.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

As the Home Secretary has acknowledged, David Anderson called for prior judicial authorisation. He also said that the new law should comply with international human rights standards. Given the uncertainty over the future of the Human Rights Act, will the Home Secretary confirm that the Bill will comply with that Act, and with the European convention on human rights?

[Mrs May]

As the hon. Gentleman will know, Ministers have to take account of the human rights issue in relation to any legislation that they present to the House. That has indeed happened, and I have every confidence that this legislation will comply with human rights requirements.

Policing

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Wednesday 4th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

I will make a little more progress and give way later on.

Last week, the shadow Policing Minister and I joined the Home Secretary and the Minister for Policing, Crime and Criminal Justice at the police bravery awards. As I am sure we would all agree, it was a humbling evening. It was particularly poignant this year, with PC David Phillips in the minds of many. We think of David’s family today, and we hope that they take some comfort from the huge public response and outpouring of feeling that we have seen.

As I said when I started this job, when the Home Secretary gets it right, she will have my support—I have just offered that to her on the investigatory powers Bill—but where she and the Government get it wrong, I am not going to hold back from saying so, particularly where public and community safety is at risk. That brings me to my central point: this Government are about to cause serious damage to our police service and if they do not change course, they are about to put public safety at risk.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that all one needs to know about the Government’s policy is that four Conservative police and crime commissioners and the Mayor of London are preparing a judicial review, in the Met’s case because, in addition to a 43% cut in its budget—achieved and proposed—the Government are proposing another £184 million-worth of cuts as a result of the resourcing budget changes?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs May]

I would like to make a little more progress, because I am conscious that a lot of Members wish to speak, and I want to turn to each of the points in the motion in turn.

First, the motion

“notes with concern the loss of 17,000 police officers in the last five years”

and the possibility of “further reductions” in numbers during this Parliament. Of course, that is not Government policy. Decisions on the size and make-up of each police force are not a matter for the Home Office but a matter for chief constables to decide on locally in conjunction with their police and crime commissioners. Indeed, and Labour Members might be interested in some of these facts, a large number of the police officer reductions since 2010—8,153 officers, or 48% of the total fall—were lost in the 13 areas controlled by Labour police and crime commissioners. Nowhere is this more the case than in neighbourhood policing. Between 2012 and 2014, Conservative PCCs increased the number of neighbourhood officers by 5,813, yet over the same period, Labour PCCs cut them by 701. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) asks where these statistics come from. They should be familiar to Opposition Members, because they were released in response to a parliamentary question from the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) earlier this year. As Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary has said repeatedly over the past five years, what matters in policing and in the safety of communities is not how many officers there are in total, but how they are deployed. Since 2010, the proportion of officers deployed to the frontline has increased from 89% of officers to 92%—the highest level on record.

[Andy Slaughter]

I am sure that the Home Secretary will therefore join me in congratulating Hammersmith and Fulham Council, which is now funding 44 police constables on the beat in Hammersmith. At the same time, though, the Mayor of London has destroyed neighbourhood teams, is about to get rid of all PCSOs, and is closing two out of the three operational police stations in the borough. How can neighbourhood policing survive in that climate?

[Mrs May]

It is interesting to look at the Met, because it has been recruiting more officers, as is the Lancashire force, which I mentioned earlier. It is wrong to assume that the service that is offered by police officers is best judged by the number of police stations. Many forces up and down the country have sold off their police stations but have given the public better access to the police—as I saw when I visited my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Caroline Ansell) prior to the election—by siting them in council offices.

Home Affairs and Justice

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Thursday 28th May 2015 Commons Chamber

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

We are a little ahead of time, but I will break the habit of a lifetime and not abuse my position by taking too much of the remaining time. I welcome the Lord Chancellor to his new job. He has already been warmly welcomed by the legal establishment, and that has no doubt put him on his guard. He follows another non-lawyer in the job, and I can only pray for a better meeting of legal and non-legal minds than was the case with his predecessor. Given the almost instant rapport he had with the education profession, I am sure that will be the case. He has certainly made an excellent start by not putting any justice Bills before the House. Given the sorry history of the last Parliament, from the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 to the Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Act 2015, no news is good news.

This debate has set a high bar for the quality of contributions from Members on both sides of the House, old and new, for the Queen’s Speech and this Parliament. I shall briefly mention those who have spoken, and I hope that some of the old hands will excuse me if I skate over their contributions, given that we had 34 contributions from Back Benchers. We started—it seems some time ago now—with the right hon. Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) who, as we would expect, gave a tour d’horizon on matters of security and international affairs.

The right hon. Gentleman was followed swiftly by the first of the maiden speeches, from the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry), who generously said that her predecessor, Alistair Darling, was a difficult and hard act to follow. But with her robust defence of the Human Rights Act and the principles of the rule of law, she has already proved she might be a worthy successor. I was with her in almost everything she said, except perhaps when she said we were in danger of withdrawing from the ECHR after only 60 years but saw no problem with withdrawing from the Union after 300 years.

We then heard a thoughtful contribution from the right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green), particularly on extremism and investigatory powers, as we would expect given his background. He reiterated his welcome support for the European convention.

I always learn something from the speeches of my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who has been an excellent Chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee for many years. He is almost an institution and I hope to see him continue for many years to come—without giving away my voting intentions in any way.

The next maiden speech was from my hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds). When I made my maiden speech, not only had I written it out in full—I have given that up now—but my hands were shaking as I gave it. For him to give a speech without notes, fluently and eloquently, set a great example. He also paid a generous tribute to someone I think we all greatly respect—his predecessor, Paul Murphy.

I disagree with the hon. Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller) on many issues, but he made the point, as he has done many times, about the dangers of extended detention for immigration and has earned our respect for championing that cause.

I think we are all disappointed—perhaps some on the Government Benches not so much—that my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge) is not continuing as the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee. She showed, however, that not continuing in that post will allow her to talk about many other subjects. From her own constituency and wider experience, she gave an extremely mature view of what was wrong with the Government’s immigration policy.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello) gave a very good deconstruction of what was wrong with the Gracious Speech as drafted by the Government. Obviously his time as a shadow Justice Minister stood him in good stead.

Even though I did not agree with much of the contribution from the hon. Member for Poole (Mr Syms), it was delivered in such a enthusiastic and reassuring manner that I found myself almost agreeing with it by default—but there it is.

I agreed with what my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) said in her excellent and thoughtful speech on the dangers of nationalism, which is a subject to which I suspect we will return on many occasions.

The maiden speech from the hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) included a comment one often hears: “My constituency is the most beautiful in the country”. We are all guilty of that—I often wax lyrical about the beauty of Shepherd’s Bush Green—but those of us who have visited his part of the country will think he might actually have a point. It is an extraordinarily beautiful place. He might wonder why, therefore, that, as he told us, he is the first Member to live there since 1833. Others have not taken advantage of the opportunity.

There swiftly followed the contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer), whom I think we are going to hear a great deal more from on the subject about which he spoke with forensic skill, as one would expect. In a short period, he gave a rebuttal of the Government’s plans to repeal the Human Rights Act, exploring some of the myths and dangers of their approach.

We heard another excellent, and good-humoured, maiden speech from the hon. Member for South Thanet (Craig Mackinlay). He explained why he felt less in the public eye in the Chamber than he did on the doorsteps of South Thanet, given the media frenzy that accompanied his election process. Let us hope he has a quieter time now.

I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Blaenau Gwent (Nick Smith) will excuse me if I say that his speech, despite his being an old hand, sounded a bit like a maiden speech—so great is his love affair with his constituency and given the way he described it and its heritage.

My new hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) gave, as I think all Members would agree, not just a good maiden speech, but a good speech that showed a real depth of knowledge and empathy on a subject that we all take very seriously—the issue of sexual exploitation and domestic violence.

I have mentioned speaking without notes, and this applies equally to the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard). Given what he told us about his constituency, there is a danger that he might become known as “the MP for the fringe”. Because I know him from previous incarnations, I realise that when he spoke so passionately about the deprivation in his constituency, it was very sincere. We shall hear a lot more from him along similar lines.

I cannot avoid mentioning the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), who now sees himself as the lodestar of the Conservative party. We will know when the Conservative party is going wrong when it is not voting with him in the Lobbies.

The last maiden speech we heard today—by no means the least—was from my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd), who paid a generous tribute to his distinguished predecessors, including, of course, Joe Benton. My hon. Friend talked about the distinguished Labour history of the constituency and of his extremely large majority.

We will have more time to assess these affairs on other occasions, but let me do so briefly. Home affairs and justice often get the lion’s share of legislation in the Queen’s Speech under any Government—and there is no change here, at least for home affairs, with five Bills to the Home Secretary’s name. I shall not comment on them in detail or go beyond the excellent analysis of the shadow Home Secretary, save to say that some of the proposed measures seem unhelpfully vague at this point. Both investigatory powers and extremism are important subjects that require sensitivity and balance between the rights of the citizen and the duties of the state. Until we see the detail in the presentation of those Bills, I will remain anxious about whether this Government will get that balance right.

By contrast, the policing and criminal justice Bill already contains a number of welcome specific provisions, not least the treatment of 17-year-olds as children for all the purposes of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, and the better regulation of detention under the Mental Health Act 1983. I note the catch-all phrase that the Bill will

“allow us to deliver a range of criminal justice reforms that will aim to better protect the public, build confidence and improve efficiency.”

I fear that we are about to see yet another Christmas tree Bill on which a mishmash of unconnected new offences and pet projects are hung. One thing we would like to see in the Bill, however, are the provisions for the victims code. I do not know whether the Lord Chancellor will be able to confirm that it will be included in the Bill. Both my hon. Friends the Members for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis) and for Holborn and St Pancras have made the case for that. I would welcome a change of heart from the Government on building the victims code into legislation.

Given the coalition Government’s lamentable record on justice policy, I said that no news may be good news, but some things would have provided welcome additions to the Gracious Speech. There is nothing to deal with the crisis in our prisons; nothing to deal with the crisis in our courts; nothing to improve access to justice; nothing to improve advice services or to mitigate the attacks on civil and criminal legal aid overseen by the previous Lord Chancellor.

Let me spend my final few minutes addressing the proposed repeal of the Human Rights Act—a proposal that was perhaps the most touted of all the Queen’s Speech measures in the run-up to its delivery yesterday, yet the Government have had the least to say about it in comparison with any other measures. Others have had plenty to say on the subject. I include, of course, jurists and practitioners such as my hon. Friend the Member for Holborn and St Pancras, but I am thinking rather more of the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), the right hon. Members for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis) and for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell) and the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke).

When the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield describes the previous proposals as “puerile” and says

“This UK bill of rights is a recipe for disaster”,

when the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield says

“I have to say that I never thought a British government, let alone a Conservative one, would ever have thought of withdrawing from the convention for which, of course, we were responsible”,

or when an admittedly unnamed senior Tory says

“These plans will only pass if the PM wins the support of David Davis and Clarke”—

which I think he is some distance from doing—the Lord Chancellor may be in a little trouble. Not only is the weight of argument on his own Benches, as well as on ours, against him, but he does not appear to have the numbers, not only in the other place but in this House, to get such a proposal through, and he would be right to be nervous about his chances of doing so.

The Government have already got themselves into a bind from which even someone as clever as the Lord Chancellor may struggle to free them. There are constitutional difficulties in relation to the devolved Governments, and the negotiations about the EU referendum are in danger of contamination. If the Lord Chancellor has not already done so, I advise him to read the excellent article by the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield in today’s Times.

Beyond that, there is confusion about the Government’s real intention The hon. Member for Shipley and others have said today that this is not just about scrapping the Human Rights Act, but about withdrawal from the convention. Some Members would welcome that, but if, as the Government say, that is not their intention and they simply wish to withdraw from the Act, they will not achieve their purpose. They seem to “elide over” the fact that we still have parliamentary sovereignty in this country, and the fact that decisions of the European Court are not binding on domestic courts. According to the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield, they are

“in danger…of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.”—[Official Report, 27 May 2015; Vol. 596, c. 97.]

Given that the anomalies and difficulties involving the European Court, whose existence we admitted at the time—the backlog, the insecurity of some of its judgments and, indeed, the fact that the UK courts were perhaps following them too closely—are all in the process of being resolved, one might ask what problem the Government are now seeking to solve.

No doubt the Lord Chancellor will say that this is an important constitutional measure, and that we should pause and consult. We cannot disagree with that theory, save for the fact that the Government—or the Conservative party—have had five years in which to consider the matter. There has been a commission, there have been six or seven drafts of the Bill, and we heard a clear statement last October from the previous Lord Chancellor about what he believed was required, and we heard another clear statement from the Prime Minister that he wanted to see action in the first 100 days. I do not know what has changed, other than the fact that the Lord Chancellor is having trouble delivering the legislation. We shall, however, have an opportunity to examine the matter in more detail. We welcome the fact that there is to be a pause, and that legislation will not be presented during the current Session—not least because there must be less chance of its getting through during later Sessions.

Finally, let me make clear that if there is any attempt to undermine our human rights, and to undermine what my party and I regard as one of the finest pieces of legislation introduced by the Labour Government, we will resist it. We will join supporters from any other parties, on the Opposition or the Government Benches, to ensure that it is resisted. Our human rights are too precious and too important, and have been fought for too long, to be thrown away at the whim of a Lord Chancellor or a political party.