UK/US Free Trade Agreement
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts(1 week, 4 days ago)
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Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, are the British Government going to take any extra security precautions when they are dealing with the President of the United States, who is a convicted felon?
Lord Leong (Lab)
I thank the noble Baroness for the question, but I do not agree with her. We have to respect President Trump. He won an enormous victory and he has a massive mandate from the American people. That is democracy. We will work with President Trump and his Administration.
Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill [HL]
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb ExcerptsFriday 17th January 2025
(2 weeks ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill [HL] 2024-26 View all Refugees (Family Reunion) Bill [HL] 2024-26 Debates Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 13-I Marshalled list for Committee - (15 Jan 2025)
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
Appendix FM, as I understand it—although I would have to check—does allow for an application to be considered by the Home Office in respect of a formally adopted child. But I am sure the Minister can confirm, or otherwise, in relation to that.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
Given that the last Government did not set up safe, legal routes and actually encouraged the small boats, does the noble Lord have no shame in actually suggesting that this will do the same?
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
Well, I am afraid that the noble Baroness is wrong: there are a number of safe and legal routes, as she will hear in a moment from the Minister. We are part of the UK resettlement scheme and there are a number of other routes, including the Ukraine family scheme and the Hong Kong scheme: these are all safe and legal routes. So I have absolutely no shame in standing here and asserting that this Bill would be contrary to the interests of this country.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I regret that I was not here for Second Reading, but my Green Party colleague, my noble friend Lady Bennett, was.
I absolutely oppose all these amendments. I have been at debates on a couple of Bills in this Session where the Conservative Peers have been, I would say, playing games. That does not show respect to your Lordships’ House.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
The noble Lord, Lord Murray, gave me a very sneaky answer earlier. If he is a distinguished lawyer, I can see how he might win cases by being sneaky like that. He knows very well—look, he is laughing.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
The noble Lord has had his say.
The noble Lord, Lord Murray, knows very well that when I say “safe and legal routes”, I mean for any and every nationality—not just the few that the previous Government thought were acceptable to come to Britain.
Also, if noble Lords are rude enough to go over the advisory time limit and show disrespect to the Committee, perhaps their microphones should be turned off.
On the other Bills I mentioned, the Conservatives have been filibustering. They have been making some of these Bills quite unpleasant to sit through when one cares about the issue at hand. Personally, I agree completely with the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, even though he did not give way to me. He is absolutely right that this is petty bickering; I really cannot stand it. We need safe and legal routes. The previous Government did not give us those routes for all nationalities, which means—
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
No. The previous Government actually encouraged the small boats. They encouraged people to come by routes that were not safe.
The Green Party supports this Bill. It is time to remove the barriers so that desperate children can be reunited with their families in safety.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
My Lords, I declare that I—along with Fiona Mactaggart, then an MP—wrote a report on children in northern France, Calais and Dunkirk some years ago. I find this whole group of amendments to the Bill extremely sad.
I want to concentrate on a legal issue, which I raise to some extent with the noble Lord, Lord Murray. I was certainly not an immigration lawyer but, as far as I understand the Immigration Rules, civil partners, who come up in Amendment 13, and adopted children, who come up in Amendment 14—both are referred to in Clause 1(5)—are already within the Immigration Rules. Consequently, if the noble Lord and the noble Baroness are right, they are trying to reduce the Immigration Rules, not increase them.
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
My Lords, I shall be very brief. I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in this interesting debate on this group of amendments, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, who, with her customary elegance, has outlined her response to the amendments. I am particularly glad to note that we agree on the importance of integration in relation to additional family members—if not on too much else.
I am also pleased to note that I agree entirely with the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, on his matter of principle that the detail should be in the Immigration Rules. That is one of the reasons why I, like the Government, oppose the Bill in total. But, if we are to have the Bill, I suggest that we need the amendments. As I understand it, the Government remain against the Bill, notwithstanding the very elegant tightrope on which the Minister trod.
I thank the noble Lord, Lord German, for his speech. Possibly one might have thought, from listening to it, that the purpose of the Bill was solely in relation to children, but of course we can see that Clause 1(3) relates to family members of
“a person granted protection status”.
So that is all people, not just those under 18.
To the question from the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, I agree with her too. I certainly do not intend by my amendments any alteration to the present scheme in Appendix FM. It works well and allows the Secretary of State to amend the scheme, which is the correct way that these things should be done.
Lastly, turning to the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, I obviously do not accept that the Government caused the small boats crossings; they sought very hard to address them and succeeded in bringing them down, and they brought in the Rwanda scheme to stop them. I still maintain that, had it been switched on, it would have achieved its deterrence objective, but that is a debate for another day. The noble Baroness suggested that the term “safe and legal routes” should be defined in the way she suggests: as a route open to anyone for application. I am afraid that that is not the meaning of safe and legal routes. It is a term used in statute and means just what it says on the tin: a route that is safe and legal.
This Government, and the previous Government, have welcomed a great many refugees: over half a million in the last 10 years, including refugees from Ukraine, Hong Kong and Afghanistan. These are great things that we can all be proud of. However, through these amendments I say that the Bill would unfortunately overwhelm our resources to deal with this sort of migration. With that, I will withdraw my amendment.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
I would like to apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Murray, for being so rude about him. I like to think that I speak the truth, but sometimes the truth verges on utter rudeness, and I am extremely sorry for saying that.
Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)
I am very grateful. I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Immigration: Human Rights
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts(2 weeks, 4 days ago)
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Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
The Government want to secure a decision on asylum claims. In doing that, we also want to ensure that the security of the United Kingdom is paramount. Therefore, security checks will take place. It might be of interest to the noble Lord to know that 16,400 people have been removed from the United Kingdom since July of last year. That figure is up by 24% over the previous quarter, when he had stewardship of this office in his Government. We will ensure that, as he says, we look at the issues that successful asylum claimants and refugees experience in relation to work and employment. As my noble friend mentioned, it is important that, when those individuals are successful, they can get into work and contribute to some of the jobs required to be filled by people in this country today.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, there are likely to be more refugees because of climate change—people who are fleeing drought and floods. Do this Government see that, as a massive consumer still driving climate change, we have a duty to those refugees, as well as to refugees from war zones?
Police Officers: Recruitment
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts(1 month, 3 weeks ago)
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Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
It is important that we have stability. Very often, when I was a Member of Parliament, the police chief in the local area would be in post for two years and he or she would either retire or would be promoted and go up the ladder. We need to have some stability. Part of the purpose of neighbourhood policing is to try to get stability and local intelligence, including from police support staff on the ground.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I was on the police authority when Boris Johnson took an axe to police numbers. I remember it very clearly and it damaged the Met because it took out a swathe of officers, and then other officers had to go and do backroom jobs. I remember it clearly, so I think it is a bit hypocritical of this side of the Chamber to start complaining to the Government. My question is: will all those new officers have really good training in dealing with domestic assault against, mainly, women, and in understanding that it can lead to much worse crimes?
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
The Government have a strong commitment to halve the level of violence against women and girls over a 10-year period. We had a Statement last week on some aspects of that in this House, and we will be looking at developing further policies to reduce the level of violence against women and girls. Key to that is police understanding of the sensitivities and potential escalation of that violence, and probation and monitoring the effect on individuals who commit—in inverted commas—low-level crime initially, which can then escalate into sometimes tragic events. The point that the noble Baroness makes is extremely valid, but it is on the Government’s agenda, and I hope she continues to press me on that as time goes on.
Respect Orders and Anti-social Behaviour
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts(1 month, 4 weeks ago)
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Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
The noble Baroness is absolutely right that it is important that people know who their police officers are, see them visibly and have the trust and confidence to give them information that might help reduce anti-social behaviour or other criminal activity. It is important that police engage with the community in a way that gives them confidence for that information to come forward and that, as they have done in the past, at a local level police use their antennae to pick up on information that needs to be addressed by the wider policing family in tackling criminal activity.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, magistrates’ courts are a fantastic resource, but at the moment there is a backlog of 370,700 cases. What will the Government do to make magistrates’ courts viable to deal with the sort of cases we are talking about?
Rural Crime: NFU Mutual Report
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts(4 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
Again, I am grateful to the noble Lord for his question. Organised crime gangs are muscling in on this in a serious way. It is absolutely vital that the police—through the National Rural Crime Unit, the Home Office generally, the Serious Fraud Office and the National Crime Agency—look at how organised crime gangs are operating. Last year, the cost of rural crime increased by 4.3% to £52.8 million, and that quad bike and terrain vehicle crime increased by 9%. These crimes are often led by organised crime groups, who use organised crime to disperse material. They need to face long jail sentences. They need to be caught and put before the courts and action needs to be taken. That needs co-ordination and I assure the noble Lord that we will do that.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I was on the Met Police authority for 12 long years of its existence. In that time, I asked many times for a category of rural crime to be on crime reports. I was told this week that that still does not exist and if you cannot count it, it is very difficult to know what resources to throw at it.
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
There are a number of aspects to rural crime. What we do count, and what the National Farmers’ Union counted in its report, are things such as the cost of GPS theft, vehicle theft, equipment theft, the number of farm animals killed each year and the number of respondents who thought rural crime was increasing. We have statistics on that. We also have statistics on a range of matters such as the number of instances of badger baiting, hare coursing and other types of wildlife crime, such as dog fighting, that occurs in rural areas. There are obviously continual problems with shoplifting, burglary and theft in rural area, just as there is in towns and cities, but there are specific areas that we can measure and examine. Through the National Rural Crime Unit, we can begin to co-ordinate activity to reduce the instances of that and ensure that people are arrested, put before the courts, sentenced and ultimately jailed.
King’s Speech
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts(6 months, 1 week ago)
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Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, I welcome our three new Peers this evening. I also welcome our new Labour Government. I think they have made some moves in the right direction, for example the Hillsborough law and appointing the noble Lord, Lord Timpson. I hope he is given the powers to do his job properly.
However, there are a few issues that were not covered in the King’s Speech that ought to have been. I shall raise those and would like to hear the Government’s response and, hopefully, what they plan to do about them. The first on my list is civil liberties. As many noble Lords will know, a lot of repressive laws were passed in this House by the former Government. Just recently, Just Stop Oil activists were treated abominably in court and given very long prison sentences—much longer than many sexual predators get. The judge who jailed them said that
“the end of the world is neither here nor there”.
Personally, I disagree about that. He showed how draconian the sentencing guidelines are, given that 60% of the population think that an average imprisonment time of four and a half years for these people is simply too much.
That judge has ensured that, the next time a case like this goes before a jury, the jurors could ignore the judge and find the defendants not guilty, which they are entitled to do according to their conscience. That right was established in the early days of Quaker dissent and is inscribed on the walls of the Old Bailey. Jurors can use their common sense to defend the actions of ordinary people when the law is being used to suppress their beliefs or actions. That judge has also highlighted the stupidity of throwing climate protesters in prison at the same time as we are releasing thousands of criminals early because of overcrowding.
I am not keen on putting huge numbers of people in prison—just the violent ones—but we have not yet jailed anyone for the Post Office scandal, Grenfell Tower or the infected blood scandal. What about the obscene rip-off of taxpayers over the PPE ministerial fast track, or the parasites in our water industry, with companies making billions from poisoning our rivers? People are seeing their taxes go up and the NHS collapsing, while those who walked away with our money stay free to spend it. I see trauma and long years of suffering for sub-postmasters, while those who let them down get to keep their corporate pensions. I remember the flames at Grenfell Tower, but the building and development industry that allowed the cladding scandal to happen is as profitable as ever. Clearly, I do not blame the new Government for this, but they have to deal with it. We have scandals, inquiries and taxpayers picking up the bill for compensation, but those responsible at the heart of these scandals get to keep their money and rarely face jail time.
So I do not understand why there is a draconian clampdown on climate protesters, at a time when the climate crisis is accelerating. Essentially, it is because the oil and gas industry bought the last Government. The corruption of dirty money being pumped into the political system via party donations, MPs’ second jobs as lobbyists and Tufton Street think tanks means that we have a polluted system. So it is time to ditch those sentencing guidelines and the whole package of laws passed by the last Government. We need our civil liberties restored. People have voted for change, so please do it.
My second issue is the problem of misogyny, which we heard about earlier. The “spy cops” inquiry has been fascinating because it has demonstrated the appalling misogyny shown by many police officers, some very senior. Now the Treasury is pushing for that inquiry to be closed down because it is costing so much and has gone on for so long. That is mostly because there has been so much damaging material on the part of the police, and the police themselves have blocked disclosure. There are a lack of prosecutions for rape and sexual assault and threats to women politicians, and daily violence against women and girls has reached record levels. Misogyny must be made a hate crime as fast as possible.
My third topic is the scandal of IPP prisoners, which I raised with the Minister earlier. The criminal lawyer Peter Stefanovic has made films about this issue that have had 20 million views, and the people who have seen them are appalled at the persistent persecution of IPP prisoners. This was a Labour Government’s terrible mistake, and the new Labour Government have to fix it. No one should get 11 years for stealing a mobile phone; that is outrageous. We need to see a government action plan as fast as possible, and perhaps resentencing to get these people out of prison.
Finally, I want to make a bid for restoring the refugee scheme of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs—we urgently need safe routes for refugees—and I would like to hear more from this Government on restorative justice.
I wish this Government well and I look forward to offering them many more constructive Green Party ideas in future.
Lord Wolfson of Tredegar (Con)
They are just catching on.
I do not know whether the noble Lord occupies my old room at the Ministry of Justice, but we share a firm commitment to justice and the justice system. There is of course an overlap with yesterday’s debate on the constitution, because the rule of law is not actually a law at all but a constitutional principle. In that sense we should all be declaring an interest, because we all have an interest—a financial one—in the maintenance of the rule of law. Without the rule of law there would be no security in transactions, no enforceable right to property. But it goes well beyond matters financial. Without the rule of law, there is nothing to separate or protect us from despotism on the one hand or anarchy on the other.
That brings me to the first of three short points arising out of the King’s Speech. The first is the safety of public venues and keeping the public safe from terrorism. The Minister referred to what he called the appalling and horrific terrorist attack in the Manchester Arena, which he also called senseless. I am afraid, however, that there are too many people who see in their warped and twisted vision some sense in that sort of attack, and that means our response to terrorism must go beyond merely steps to keep people safe. We must be unyielding against those who commit terrorism, but also those who fund terrorist attacks; those who advocate for them; those who explain them away; those who equivocate about them; or those who fail to assist the authorities in their efforts to thwart them. That means we need to engage with those in all communities—and they are the majority in every community—who support the rule of law and stand against those who seek to subvert it.
The second point concerns leasehold and commonhold reform, the draft Bill on which I await with interest. We must ensure that we have a system of land ownership which is fit for the 21st century. I remember from my university days that in land law, the devil really is in the detail, and it changes slowly. I remember talking about my land law essays with my father, who still referred to the Law of Property Act 1925 as the new property legislation. No doubt any change will be viewed with horror in some parts of Lincoln’s Inn, where they still have flying freeholds—a concept which is too arcane for discussion at any time, but certainly at a quarter to 10 at night. I hope the proposed legislation will be clear, concise, modern and will provide us with a useful system of ownership of land.
Finally, a short word about the Arbitration Bill. I welcome this very much. When I was a Minister, I helped the Law Commission set up its work on arbitration. London is the global centre for international commercial arbitration. The 1996 Act is the gold standard, but like many things made of gold, it does need a bit of polishing from time to time. There is one point which I was going to mention about the Arbitration Act, but my noble friend Lord Kirkhope of Harrogate warned me that if I mentioned again what he regards as the esoteric legal topics of monism and dualism, he might not be responsible for his actions. I do not know how he would react if I more than merely mentioned tonight the difficulties presented by an arbitration agreement having what lawyers call a floating governing law, but I am not minded to find out. I will take that up with the Minister offline, and leave the detail for another day, although I suspect it will be a day on which my learned friend finds he is unavailable to attend your Lordships’ House.