Airports Commission

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Monday 7th September 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

The noble Lord is quite right. I agree with him that this has been a detailed report, which the previous Government, under the current Prime Minister, commissioned in 2012. The report has been received, and I am sure the noble Lord would agree with me that it is time now to give the detailed report considered opinion. It is quite right that there should be a sub-committee of the Cabinet to take this decision forward. I reiterate the point that the Prime Minister has made quite clear: a decision will be made by the end of the year.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, does the Minister recall that I spent the first two years of the last Parliament dodging this very issue? The reason was the helpful policy input from the Liberal Democrat party. Does the Minister recognise that the Government really will have to make a decision on this matter this year?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I would never accuse my noble friend of dodging anything. If he did so that was his assessment; I thought he handled questions in this respect very ably from the Dispatch Box. I reiterate that the Government—and indeed the Prime Minister—have made it clear that a decision will be made and it will be made by the end of the year.

Railways: Swansea to Paddington

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

As a general principle in life, it is often good to pause and reflect. I suggest to the noble Lord that it is something he should sometimes deploy. We have asked Sir Peter Hendy to look into the whole issue and the challenges that have arisen around electrification. He will report in the autumn and, after he does, I am sure we will return to this subject. As for the northern powerhouse, the plug is truly in and the switch is turned on.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, is it not something more to do with lack of engineering capacity, because we have not done very much electrification in recent years, until this Government came into office?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My noble friend speaks from great experience on these matters, not least because he has spoken from this Dispatch Box on the issue of skills. I am delighted that that is one of my specific portfolio responsibilities at the Department for Transport. As noble Lords will know, we have already established the Tunnelling and Underground Construction Academy, which I visited only last week, an incredible investment that has come out of the Crossrail project. Later this year, I will be joining the Secretary of State for the opening of the National Training Academy for Rail. Britain has some great challenges as far as the skills agenda is concerned. It is certainly this Government’s view that we not only meet the skills challenge domestically but establish institutions to provide for skills abroad as well.

Mediterranean: Migrant Trafficking

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Tuesday 14th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

I am very happy to give our support to that. We give our support to the European Asylum Support Office which has locations in Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria and Italy. In fact, we are the largest provider of bilateral assistance to that organisation. What the church is doing is to be applauded. It is absolutely in keeping with the priority we see in providing these vulnerable people with the care they need.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that it is very important to concentrate on a long-term, upstream solution rather than purely on short-term solutions?

[Lord Bates]

My noble friend is absolutely right. Part of the issue is to deal with the immediate crisis and stop the deaths that are occurring in the Mediterranean, but there is a bigger part, which is how you build stability within these countries so that people do not have to embark on this perilous journey. That is why we are so proud of our overseas aid budget, which of course is the second largest, in cash terms, in the world.

Police: Reduction in Numbers

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Thursday 26th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

I am happy to meet the noble Lord later to find out where he was living and the particulars of the incident. One of the measures that we have introduced, of course, is to differentiate—it does not apply in this case—between non-emergency calls and real emergency calls. The ability to triage calls is an important way of ensuring that the police respond to incidents where they are desperately needed as fast as possible.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, have police and crime commissioners been effective in driving through efficiencies in police forces, particularly with respect to adjacent forces?

[Lord Bates]

I can think of some very good examples. In fact, some former colleagues of the noble Baroness have been instrumental in driving forward this type of co-operation. I am thinking particularly of West Mercia and Warwickshire where there is a much closer relationship because of the public visibility of a police and crime commissioner providing that connection with the community that we talked about earlier.

Police and Crime Commissioners

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Wednesday 29th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that I was unable to name any member of a police authority who was not a Member of your Lordships’ House?

[Lord Bates]

My noble friend makes a fine point. Police and crime commissioners, through the press, through discussion and through the elections, are much more widely known and recognised. Therefore, people will increasingly come to them with their issues, to which they can respond.

Serious Crime Bill [HL]

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rosser]

My Lords, the purpose of our Amendment 40CA in this group is to provide anonymity for victims of female genital mutilation by providing for any offences under Sections 1 to 4 of the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 to come within the terms of Section 2 of the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992, which for example provides anonymity for rape victims and victims of various other sexual offences to encourage more to come forward.

We recognise that protecting young girls and women from FGM requires action beyond legislation to tackle the social norms in which it operates, and implement a preventative approach. However, if progress is to be made in addressing and preventing what has already been described in this debate as the abhorrent practice of female genital mutilation, then cases will have to be successfully prosecuted through the courts. That means people who are victims of this practice being willing to come forward and give evidence. As we know, this is not some small, minority offence. It has been estimated that more than 20,000 girls under 15 are at high risk of female genital mutilation in England and Wales each year, with the risk being highest for primary school girls.

The Director of Public Prosecutions, who will surely know better than anyone the difficulties in persuading victims to come forward and give evidence in court, has called for victims to be given the right to anonymity to make it easier to bring charges against alleged perpetrators. She was quoted as saying recently:

“It is a very difficult injury to talk about. It is an abuse of their body and it is not a part of the body that people want to talk about in public”.

The Home Affairs Select Committee has also identified that a key difficulty in securing prosecutions is the ability to gather sufficient evidence and has said that,

“if victims had the protection of press and broadcast anonymity, this might encourage more to come forward. … we recommend the Government bring forward proposals to extend the right to anonymity under the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992 to include victims of FGM”.

Our view is similar. Anonymity is granted to victims of rape, among other offences, because of the sensitivity and stigma attached to such an offence, and the sensitivity and stigma that surround female genital mutilation must be at least as intense. Victims should be protected in the way called for in our amendment. If anonymity would encourage more victims to come forward, it must surely be overwhelmingly in the public interest to go down this road, particularly taking into account the lack of prosecutions to date. Where cases of female genital mutilation go to court, victims should also be entitled to the same support and special measures to which other vulnerable victims are entitled. I sincerely hope that the Minister will be able to give a positive response.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the expert way in which the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, introduced his amendment. I have no greater arguments than the ones he adduced. I strongly support him and urge the Minister to consider his suggestion very carefully. I have one final thought: what would the view of noble Lords be if we were talking not about FGM but MGM?

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, it would not be in order for me to say anything about the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, as I was not in my place when it was moved. I support the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, in his attempt to get anonymity for the victims of FGM, and I hope the Government will consider it. Indeed, I think there may be a case for going a little further than that, because it could be that there are women within communities who know what is happening who might be more encouraged to come forward and say so if it were guaranteed that they would have anonymity. It is something that needs looking at.

Serious Crime Bill [HL]

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Tuesday 8th July 2014 Lords Chamber

I was so glad to hear that my right honourable friend the Home Secretary, for whom I have great admiration, has instructed her Permanent Secretary, Mr Mark Sedwill, to have a fresh look at the Passport Office. I hope I am not being presumptuous if I ask my noble friend the Minister to invite Mr Sedwill at least to glance at what I have just said. I beg to move.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Marlesford for introducing this amendment. It is not the first time that he has raised the issue of foreign passports held by UK passport holders. My noble friend knows very well that success is not normally achieved at the first outing of an amendment, and I admire his persistence. He certainly does not need to apologise for raising this issue again, even if his speech was as wide-ranging as it was interesting.

I query the need for subsections (2) and (3) of the proposed new clause. I do not know why they are there at all. If Parliament agreed them, we would be telling enforcement officials, rather unhelpfully, “We give you this source of information and you are to be grateful and make use of it”. I suspect that my noble friend is far too skilled and experienced to carelessly insert a redundant provision into his amendment. Perhaps it has rather more to do with my noble friend ingeniously making his amendment relevant to the Bill.

The problem is that if we tidy up his amendment by deleting subsections (2) and (3), the amendment will no longer be relevant to the Bill. However, I have another anxiety. I can understand why my noble friend has not provided for any penalties, other than the implied possibility of the withdrawal of the UK passport under prerogative powers. My fear is that an innocent holder of multiple passports may find themselves in difficulties, while at the same time the serious criminal or terrorist has merely made an admin error. I hope that when my noble friend comes to reply to the debate, he will allay my concerns.

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

As noble Lords know, we debated this issue fairly recently when my noble friend moved a similar amendment on Report of last Session’s Immigration Bill on 7 April. Since then, following my recent meeting with my noble friend, I met him again today. We have looked afresh at the issue and I have to advise my noble friend that I have reached the same conclusion as I did before.

As I indicated when we debated this issue in the Immigration Bill, Her Majesty’s Passport Office contributes directly to the Home Secretary’s key aims of securing borders, tackling terrorism and reducing crime. It achieves this through its public protection strategy and by sharing data and intelligence with other parts of the Home Office and other agencies. I thank the senior officials from Her Majesty’s Passport Office for providing me with briefings in this area. They have been extremely busy recently, as noble Lords will know.

My noble friend raised a number of points concerning his amendment. I start by responding directly to the issues he raised. There is an existing requirement for holders of any uncancelled passport to provide that document when applying for a British passport. I will expand on that point later. HMPO issues around 5.5 million passports each year. Data are not held centrally on the number of applicants who hold a second passport under another nationality. Of the passports issued each year, around 1 million applications are from first-time applicants and the remaining 4.5 million are for passport renewals and replacements. About 95% of applications are made in the UK, with the remaining 5% from British citizens resident overseas.

There is no requirement for a British passport holder to notify HMPO of a change of address. This is because the address of the passport holder is not relevant to the ability to travel and cross borders. The HMPO database is for those issued with or refused a British passport. It is not intended to be a record of the individual’s changing personal circumstances unless that impacts on their identity, nationality or entitlement to continue to hold a passport. HMPO has an established process in place whereby the police, courts and prisons notify it of court or police conditions attached to an individual, including persons wanted, arrest warrants, bail conditions and travel restrictions.

I do not have an estimate of the costs involved in setting up a database as suggested in the amendment, but imagine it would be in the hundreds of thousands rather than millions. The issue is one of value for money. To what use would we put the information? If there were a benefit in setting up such a database, we would do so and the costs would be outweighed by security and public protection considerations. However, as I indicated, Her Majesty’s Passport Office already requires a person applying for a first-time passport or renewing or replacing any existing passport to indicate whether they have had any sort of passport—British or otherwise—or been included in any passport before.

Where a passport applicant indicates that they have, they are then required to send to the Passport Office all uncancelled passports. This requirement to submit a passport held in a second nationality is primarily for identification purposes. It can also assist in the determination of British nationality. However, the primary function is to ensure that any British passport issued is compatible with the identity and personal details contained in the existing overseas passport.

Border Force and law enforcement agencies can access data held by Her Majesty’s Passport Office provided it is relevant to their examination of a passenger at a port or is necessary in connection with any investigation or inquiries being undertaken. Accordingly, the information gathered by HM Passport Office is available to assist Border Force and others in helping to prevent and detect crime.

Holding dual national status is perfectly lawful in the UK. It is not a barrier to the issuing of a British passport. We believe that it would therefore be disproportionate to require a person to notify the UK Government of any subsequently acquired overseas passport unless that was relevant to an outstanding application for a British passport. Should such a person fail to disclose at the point of application for a British passport that they hold a passport under another nationality, it would be a criminal offence on the basis that they would have made a false statement on the application form. Apart from considerations of criminal proceedings, it would be open to consider the exercise of the royal prerogative to withdraw or refuse the issue of a British passport. That would be considered on the individual circumstances of the case and the seriousness of the consequences of the attempted deception.

Student Visas

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Tuesday 24th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

The noble Lord will understand that a university’s funding is dependent upon it satisfying the funding agency, HEFCE, on the quality of education being provided. I have great faith in the Quality Assurance Agency. As a result of today’s announcements, we will use it to check out further those colleges which are still the subject of our concerns and anxieties following the inquiries. Therefore, I do not share the noble Lord’s views on this issue.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, should it not be obvious to academic institutions when students do not have a proper command of English? If they do not exercise caution in this regard, is it not inevitable that they will lose their highly trusted sponsorship status?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I agree with my noble friend. That is why we are particularly concerned that the institutions themselves failed to take proper regard of the fact that some of their students were not capable of speaking English properly and had insufficient command of the language, and we know that in some cases the students concerned were not really studying at all but were out there working. The HMRC figures have clearly demonstrated this, and that is why we are taking this action.

Serious Crime Bill [HL]

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Monday 16th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend the Minister for his explanation of the Bill. There is not much meat left on the bones and I do not have that much to say but I do not subscribe to the recent analysis of the gracious Speech—far less the view of the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey, on the health of the coalition Government.

The Bill may not be a flagship Bill; nevertheless, it is a very useful one, without any election puffery, and I shall be honoured to take part in its Committee and later stages. The noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon, referred to the number of Home Office Bills in your Lordships’ House. I cannot recall a Session since 1992 when there has not been a Home Office Bill and perhaps an education Bill for good measure.

The good news for this Bill is that it seems to be welcomed by many noble Lords, including the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. However, many noble Lords have received the commendably short and evidently effective briefing from the ICAEW concerning Clause 41, which relates to participation in organised crime. I am not absolutely convinced that the ICAEW fully understands how the clause works. The Minister is very good at holding meetings with your Lordships and with outside organisations, and perhaps if he were to have a meeting on that, it might alleviate some of the concerns.

I welcome the tidying-up of the FGM legislation in Clause 64. I am clearly not an expert on this issue and others are. The whole House will recognise that it is exceptionally difficult to deal with but we seem to be making pitifully slow progress. There have been no prosecutions so far, although I understand that one is in hand. This morning, I looked at the aggravating factors for the offences of causing grievous bodily harm and child cruelty. By comparison, FGM appears to be off the scale of horror, yet it attracts a maximum of only 14 years in prison. At one point, I understand that the maximum sentence was only five years. Given the extreme difficulties of mounting a prosecution, I am not convinced that we are sending the right signals. On the other hand, the Minister was right when he indicated that we cannot solve this problem with legislation alone. He tempted us with the prospect of some further legislation on anonymity. It will be interesting to see how this will work, since the parents are usually involved. I am slightly pacified by the compliments paid to the Government by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, but we should leave no stone unturned to eradicate this problem in the UK and overseas.

The House seems to be giving the Bill a reasonably warm welcome. That does not mean we should not scrutinise it very thoroughly indeed and I look forward to doing so with the rest of your Lordships.

Passport Office

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

Although I have a few papers here, I cannot say off the top of my head how many of those were the result of overseas applications coming in. Noble Lords will be aware of the security reasons why those applications were moved back into this country. Doing so avoids all the difficulties that we had encountered in having passport applications overseas—for example, the lack of security sometimes in sending blank passports overseas. However, I do not believe that that is a factor in this particular case.

I have been updated on the question that my noble friend Lady Hamwee asked about the website. The website is very much up to date; all the information about passports is at the top of the list of the website.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, is it not the case that if extra capacity were put in place “just in case”, that would have to be reflected in the cost of the passports being issued?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

As noble Lords will know, we have in fact been seeking to reduce the cost of passports. The Passport Office works on the basis of trying to offer value for money to customers—for example, the adult overseas passport has been reduced by £45 this April as a result of the measures that we have taken.