Border Force

Lord Barwell Excerpts

Wednesday 4th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

Checks are made, but to some extent we are dependent on what other countries tell us. The hon. Gentleman may be aware that the second generation of the Schengen information system will hugely improve our ability to share criminal record information with our European partners, and when that comes online in the next year or so, it will give us a much greater ability to stop known criminals entering the UK and therefore enable us to protect the border better.

[Gavin Barwell (Croydon Central) (Con)]

May I draw my hon. Friend’s attention to what the NAO had to say about the improvements that Border Force has made at Gatwick? Does he agree that that is illustrative of the wider picture, which is that there is absolutely no room for complacency and further improvements are needed, but today our border is more secure than it was under the last Government, when hundreds of thousands of people were allowed to come into this country illegally?

[Mr Harper]

I am pleased to agree with my hon. Friend’s sentiments. He might be interested to know that, as announced just today, our Border Force officers seized 8 kg of cocaine, with a street value of up to £800,000, at Gatwick airport. That demonstrates the sort of work that they carry out every day to keep the country secure, both from those who come here who should not be here and from harmful goods that people try to bring into the country.

Stop and Search

Lord Barwell Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

Yes, I am absolutely clear that stop and search, when used properly, is a vital tool for the police and it is right that it should continue. As I said in my statement, as long as I am Home Secretary it will continue. But when we see half a million stops and searches in the Metropolitan police area and an arrest-to-search ratio of 9%, with 45,000 criminals being arrested as a result—the numbers for the Metropolitan police in terms of arrests have been increasing and the number of stops and searches reducing—it is right that we ask whether it is always used as appropriately as it should be. However, it should stay as a tool.

[Gavin Barwell (Croydon Central) (Con)]

In the past my party has not taken seriously enough the concerns of London’s black and minority ethnic communities about the way in which they are policed. It reflects huge credit on the Home Secretary that she is addressing this ongoing concern. Given that policing in this country is based on the principle of consent, does she agree that stop and search is a technique that can protect young people, but that it must be done with respect, it has to be based on intelligence and it has to enjoy the support of those who are being policed?

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend has neatly put his finger on the issue. Stop and search is a valuable tool, but it must have the confidence and support of the community. It can be a vital tool in the protection of young people, as he says, but it has to be dealt with on a basis of respect and intelligence, and with the support of the community.

Undercover Policing

Lord Barwell Excerpts

Monday 24th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I might have misunderstood the right hon. Gentleman, but I must say that operational independence is important, and we should always retain that.

[Gavin Barwell (Croydon Central) (Con)]

Does the Home Secretary agree that it now appears that the Macpherson report, which was so controversial at the time, actually understated the scale of the problem, and that the response that Neville and Doreen Lawrence received when their son was brutally murdered fell so far short of what they had a right to expect that it is almost beyond belief? Given that the Metropolitan police cannot do their job unless they have the support of all London’s communities, is it not essential that we get to the bottom of what has happened as soon as possible and that anyone found guilty of wrongdoing feels the full weight of justice?

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Neville and Doreen Lawrence had every right to expect that the police would do nothing less than hunt down those who murdered their son Stephen. Sadly, as we have seen, it was many years before anyone was brought to justice and there were issues with how the investigation was conducted and with the Metropolitan police, as was shown in the Macpherson report. He is right that if the police are to do their job, they need the confidence and support of the community, which is why it is imperative that where there is wrongdoing, it is identified, and that those who have committed wrongdoing, be it misconduct or criminal activity, are brought to the appropriate justice.

Family Migration Rules

Lord Barwell Excerpts

Wednesday 19th June 2013 Westminster Hall

[Gavin Barwell (Croydon Central) (Con)]

I will be brief. I am grateful to you, Mr Owen, for allowing me to speak, and I apologise to Members for not having been here at the start of the debate; I was on a Committee considering a statutory instrument. Members will know that I have a great deal of interest in this subject. I will limit myself to two minutes, because I see that an hon. Member who has been here from the start wishes to speak.

I have two points to make. The first is broadly in support of what the Government are trying to do. There is growing consensus across the House that net migration levels in recent years have been too high and need to be reduced. My view is that that should be done in a way that prioritises the forms of migration that are most economically beneficial to the country. The family migration route needs to be looked at. I say to Opposition Members, with apologies for not having heard all their speeches, that it is not enough just to will the aims; we must also consider the means of achieving any reduction.

I have sympathy with the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) on one specific point: the income threshold at which the rules kick in. There is a perfectly defensible intellectual logic to what the Government have selected: essentially, the income level at which people no longer need recourse to public funds. However, I have raised the issue privately with the Minister; an individual working full time on the minimum wage would be below the threshold set. The test set by the Prime Minister was that people should be doing their best. Preventing someone who has taken a full-time job that only commands the minimum wage from bringing a partner with whom they have fallen in love into the country seems to me to fail the test of fairness.

I support the principle behind the Government’s tightening of rules, but there is an issue at the margins about the point at which the threshold is set. I hope that Ministers will go away and look at it. I will be true to my word and stop at that, so that the right hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Dame Joan Ruddock) can speak.

Student Visas

Lord Barwell Excerpts

Thursday 6th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Barwell (Croydon Central) (Con)]

I pay tribute to all three previous speakers, who have set out clearly the arguments relevant to this debate, and I particularly congratulate the hon. Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) on securing it.

Back in the autumn, in his speech to the Conservative party conference, the Prime Minister set out an overall mission for the Government, to ensure that this country can win in the global race in which we are engaged. I strongly support that message and have a lot of time for it. We as politicians are sometimes guilty of telling people what they want to hear, but this is actually quite an uncomfortable message because in reality, the world in which we live is not easy and Britain has to earn its living within it.

As well as congratulating the three Members who have spoken so far, I express sympathy for the Minister, for whom I have a high regard. It is his job to balance the Government’s overall mission with what the hon. Member for West Bromwich West acknowledged is our clear task of addressing the public’s concern about levels of migration into this country in recent years—not an easy thing to do. When my constituents communicate with me they sometimes seem to think that the challenges we face are easy to resolve, but the reality of politics is that a lot of these issues are difficult and sometimes point us in conflicting directions. There is also a fundamental conflict between the need in electoral politics for simplicity of message when trying to communicate what our party would do in government, and the complexity of the issues we need to deal with—that point was alluded to in some of the earlier speeches.

Let me say a little about what my constituents think about immigration, which I think is relevant to the debate. I represent a part of south London that is changing rapidly demographically, and it will not be long before no ethnic community is in a majority in the London borough of Croydon, nor will it ever be again. Migration is an issue of real concern to my constituents, particularly because the UK Border Agency has a significant presence in Croydon in Lunar house. Many of my constituents have recently been through the asylum or immigration processes, and I have several thousand constituents who worked for the two units into which the agency has been broken. A lot of my constituents are concerned about the pace of change, and I spend a lot of time talking to them on the doorstep about those concerns. However, I have never heard a constituent express to me a concern about bright people from around the world coming to study at our universities, or about international companies that want to invest in the UK and create businesses, bringing some of their managers and employees to the UK as part of that investment into our economy.

However, I hear a lot of concern about low-skill migration into the EU, which many of my constituents believe—rightly or wrongly—has made it more difficult for them or their children to get work and has depressed wages in sectors of our economy. There is a great deal of concern about unlimited migration from within the EU, and the effect of allowing into the EU countries from eastern Europe, which I strongly support—the concern is about the principle of free movement when the EU incorporates a series of states that are at different levels economically.

There is also huge concern about our failure to control our borders effectively. When I report to my constituents on the Government’s progress in reducing net migration, they are almost universally inclined not to believe the figures, because their perception is that the figures do not include people who are here illegally. On migration policy, therefore, I am most keen for the Government to take more action than they are taking to deal with people who are in this country who should not be here.

[Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Gavin Barwell]

I certainly will.

[Nicola Blackwood]

Does my hon. Friend agree—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. The hon. Lady has just walked into the Chamber. Normally Members would give it a little bit longer before they intervene. On this occasion she can do so, if Mr Barwell wants to give way.

[Gavin Barwell]

indicated assent.

[Nicola Blackwood]

I apologise, Mr Deputy Speaker. You are very kind, as is my hon. Friend.

Does my hon. Friend agree that the introduction of exit checks could be important? In that way, we would know not only how many people are coming into the country, but how many people are going out. One of our biggest problems in developing immigration policy is poor data.

[Gavin Barwell]

That is something we could consider. The key is building public confidence in the system.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Gavin Barwell]

If I can make progress, I will come back to the hon. Gentleman.

I will not go into too much detail on students because the previous hon. Members who made speeches set the situation out clearly, but the UK gains four clear benefits from international students, the first of which is economic. We have heard the figures for the UK as a whole, but the Mayor of London’s office tells me that the economic benefit to London, my city, is about £2.5 billion a year.

The second benefit is to the experience of our students when they are at university. I was lucky enough to attend the university of Cambridge, and can attest to the benefit I gained from studying with pupils from around the world.

The third benefit, which my hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) strongly communicated, is to what is frequently referred to as the UK’s soft power. A 2011 Select Committee on Home Affairs report identified that 27 foreign Heads of State had been educated in the UK. That is a difficult benefit to quantify, but an important one to this country.

[Chris Bryant]

Unfortunately, that includes the Head of State of Syria.

[Gavin Barwell]

It does include Syria—clearly, educating Heads of State will not be a benefit universally, but the hon. Gentleman would agree that, in general, having people in leading positions in foreign countries, whether in Governments, the diplomatic service, the military or the business community, is a benefit to the UK.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Gavin Barwell]

I will take one more intervention because I am conscious that other hon. Members wish to speak.

[Mr Cunningham]

No one would disagree with a number of the hon. Gentleman’s points. For the record, I have always had straight dealings with the Minister in relation to cases I have pursued. Would it not be better if students from abroad were excluded from the immigration numbers? On restoring the manufacturing base, companies in the west midlands such as Jaguar Land Rover will need more and more highly skilled people, whether from abroad or from within. German companies such as Bosch and a large number of universities are in Coventry and the west midlands. Does the hon. Gentleman believe that a better approach would be to exclude students from abroad from our figures to help our exports?

[Gavin Barwell]

The hon. Gentleman finished his intervention just before the bell, I believe, Mr Deputy Speaker.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

It was just after the bell.

[Gavin Barwell]

I will come to the hon. Gentleman’s substantive point at the end of my speech, but on his point on skills, when there are skill needs in our economy, our starting point should be to ask, “Can we train people in this country who have not got work to do those jobs?” However, if there are high-skill gaps, we should of course bring people in if we need them.

The fourth benefit of such migration, which has not been mentioned much, is the contribution to UK science and technology. I studied natural science at Cambridge and was on the Select Committee on Science and Technology for a period, so I feel passionately about this. Some 49% of people on taught postgraduate course in maths, engineering or computer science are international students—that figure has been mentioned. Cutting down on those numbers would have a massive effect on UK leadership in science. Sir Andre Geim, the Russian-born Nobel prize winner from the university of Manchester, has said that the identification of graphene would

“probably not have happened if”

he

“had been unable to employ great non-EU PhD postdoctoral students”.

Those are the four clear benefits, but there are problems. The Higher Education Statistics Agency provides figures for enrolments, not for visa applications—enrolments are the best measure. In 2011, there was a slight decline in applications for first-year places at university from non-EU applicants. Admittedly, the position is complex, with significant country variations—there was a big increase in applications from China, but a big decrease in applications from India. I should be grateful if the Minister would offer an explanation for those significant variations if he has time. Students from different parts of the world tend to apply for different courses. Indian students are more likely to apply for STEM courses, so those variations have an impact on universities. In 2012, for the first time in 10 years, the total number of non-EU postgraduate students fell.

The hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) correctly identified the three issues we need to address, the first of which is bureaucracy and the process people must go through when they want to come here. I pay tribute to the Minister and the Home Secretary, because the decision to split the UKBA up into two organisations—one focuses on customer satisfaction and processing applications for people who want to come here, and the other focuses on the entirely different job of enforcement and removing people who should not be here—was the right decision, and a welcome one. However, there is more to do to improve the process and the experience people have when they apply.

The second issue is the tone and the message we send out in debates on migration—that is not totally within the Government’s control, because we must also consider the tone of the migration debate in our media. The Government have recognised the importance of sending the message that the UK is open for business, as we saw during the Prime Minister’s recent visit to India.

The third issue is policy. We have a target for reducing net migration and should ask who is included in it. One hon. Member has mentioned the Migration Advisory Committee, which has said that an equivalent reduction in all different forms of migration could reduce student migration by 87,000. I put it to the Minister that, in 2009-10, the National Audit Office identified that about 50,000 students looked as if their principal reason for coming here was work rather than study. All hon. Members would accept that there was significant abuse of the process. That happened through institutions— bogus colleges—but we all see what we might regard as serial students, meaning people who have come here and done a number of courses but still not reached undergraduate level. Clearly, their primary motivation for coming to this country is to work in the UK, whatever their visa application says. All hon. Members accept that there was potential to reduce the numbers without having an impact on the positive aspects we have discussed.

On the long-term situation, the House has made its view clear on the policy, but I am interested in what the Conservative party will say in its next manifesto. As hon. Members have said, the sector has the potential nearly to double by 2020. At the moment, about 4.1 million around the world study in tertiary education abroad. The projection is that that will go up to 7 million by 2020. We should at least set ourselves the objective of maintaining our market share, which is currently about 13%. We have done the job of squeezing down on student migration abuse, but if our objective is to maintain or grow our market share and continue to recruit the people we want in this country, it will creep up over time.

I support what my party had to say at the previous election. It was absolutely right to focus on this, and I think many Opposition Members recognise that. In the longer term, we need to think more clearly about how we differentiate to the public the kinds of immigration that we are looking to control—the bits that we do not think are good for the country and want to squeeze down on, both illegal immigration and immigration through the existing system. We should not get ourselves into a position where we are trying to control things that we all recognise are positive and good for the country. I wish the Minister, for whom I have a very high regard, the best of luck as he grapples with the difficult balance that has to be struck between ensuring that we win the global race, but address the legitimate concerns many of my constituents have about the level of immigration.

Abu Qatada

Lord Barwell Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

One thing that we never seem to get from the Opposition, in any aspect of their policies, is an apology for what we had to inherit. The deportation of Abu Qatada has been considered by successive Governments since 2001. We have taken several steps that I believe have put us a position in which we will be able to achieve that end. I have been absolutely clear that rights of appeal will be available to Abu Qatada if a new deportation decision is issued, so the process could take many months—it will not be over quickly—but the Government have been absolutely right to take such action. We have reduced the issues that must be dealt with to this single point that we believe the agreement will address.

[Gavin Barwell (Croydon Central) (Con)]

It is a farce that it has taken so long—it will clearly take a while longer yet—to remove this individual, who we all agree is a danger. That farce damages faith in politics, plays into the hands of extremists and, tragically, undermines my constituents’ support for human rights legislation. In that context, may I warmly welcome what the Home Secretary says about changing the law so that we no longer find ourselves in the ridiculous position whereby the rights of one terror suspect seem to trump our constituents’ rights to live freely and safely?

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend is right. We should be able to balance the rights of the individual against the wider rights of society. I understand his point about his constituents’ attitude to human rights. Those who propounded the changes that took place need to understand the risk that the concept of human rights becomes discredited if people see it as being used consistently to stop us from deporting those who are a danger to this country.

Crime and Courts Bill [Lords]

Lord Barwell Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

Yes, we will do everything we can to improve efficiency in the system and we will look at the whole issue of individual county courts versus a national county court system, as it were. This is part of the Bill. My hon. Friend makes a valuable point about the personalities of county courts.

Part 3 provides for a new drug-driving offence. Over the past 40 years, the drink-driving laws have played an important role in making our roads safer. There is already an offence of driving while impaired through drugs, but it is difficult to secure a conviction, given the need to prove impairment. Drugs were a contributory factor in about 3% of fatal road incidents in Great Britain in 2011, resulting in 54 deaths. This compares to 9% or 166 deaths from drink-driving. We need to adopt the same robust approach to drug-driving as we do to drink-driving.

[Gavin Barwell (Croydon Central) (Con)]

rose—

[Dr Huppert]

rose—

[Mrs May]

I will give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell), whom I was about to commend.

[Gavin Barwell]

In that case, I should have waited before intervening. I first raised the issue of drug-driving at Prime Minister’s Questions on behalf of my constituent Lillian Groves, who was killed outside her home property by a driver under the influence of drugs. The Prime Minister met Lillian’s family, and on their behalf, I would like to thank him, as well as Home Office, Justice and Transport Ministers, for the speed with which they have enacted the change in law that the family was looking for.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gavin Barwell (Croydon Central) (Con)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, and doubly so since he was so kind about me in his speech. He speaks with great authority on all these issues, and although he tempts me towards the issue of appeals in relation to family immigration, I hope he will understand if on this occasion I rise to speak specifically to clause 37, which deals with drug-driving.

On 26 June 2010 my constituent, Lillian Groves, was killed outside her house. She was just 14 years old. The driver of the vehicle that knocked her down was driving a car that was not licensed in his name. He had no insurance to drive that vehicle, was driving at 43 miles an hour in a 30-mile-an-hour zone, and a half-smoked joint of cannabis was found on the car’s dashboard. When the police found him he was not at the scene of the accident as he had gone some distance down the road.

I hope the House will not mind if I pause for a second to reflect on what Lillian might have done in the rest of her life, the people whose lives she would have touched, the children she might have had, and the contribution she might have made to our local town. It is not just the loss of her life, but the impact her death has had on her friends and, most particularly, her family. Lillian was taken to hospital and pronounced dead some hours later. Sadly, the blood of the vehicle’s driver was not tested immediately, and only after Lillian died did the police conduct a test. Cannabis was found in his blood. The family have never been told the level that was found although the Crown Prosecution Service told them that it was not sufficient to warrant a charge of causing death by careless driving while under the influence of drugs.

The driver was sentenced to just eight months in jail. He served just four months and was released. He lives locally to the family, so for the rest of their lives they will be faced with the knowledge that every time they go to the local shops there is a danger that they will bump into this individual who has never spoken to them, apologised or shown any remorse at all for what he has done.

To my mind, those of my constituents, and I hope all Members of the House, that family did not receive justice in any sense of the word, and I want to pay tribute to Gary and Natasha—Lillian’s parents—and Michaela, her aunt. A number of Members, including the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee and the Home Secretary, have been kind to give me credit for the campaign I have run, but I do not feel that I deserve that at all as I am just doing my job. Those who deserve credit in this instance are Lillian’s family. They took a terrible situation that no parent would ever want to endure, and rather than be consumed by anger—as I fear many of us would be—they wanted to turn it into something positive and see a change in the way that we as a society deal with this issue so that other families do not have to experience their anguish.

Lillian’s family found a powerful and useful friend in our local paper, The Croydon Advertiser, and in particular an excellent young reporter called Gareth Davies who worked with them to put together a campaign for what they have called “Lillian’s law”. They came to see me at my surgery to ask for my support, and the package they were looking for contained four items. First, they wanted a change in the law itself. As the Home Secretary mentioned in her speech, although it is currently an offence under section 4 of the Road Traffic Act 1988 to drive while impaired by drugs, it is extremely difficult to secure convictions under that legislation because it is difficult for the prosecution to prove impairment. There is no equivalent to the law on drink-driving whereby if someone has more than a certain level of a drug in their blood, that is held to be evidence of impairment. The law is not weighted in the same way. The first thing, therefore, was to change the law, which is what clause 37 does.

I hope the House will not mind if I mention a couple of other things that the family are also looking to see happen. The second point is to have a device, equivalent to a breathalyser, initially for use in police stations but in the longer term for use at the roadside. At the moment, the police conduct a field impairment test, the suspect can be taken to the police station and a doctor must be called to conduct a blood test. That is expensive and time consuming and there is therefore a disincentive to conduct such tests. It is important to get devices in place that allow tests to be carried out that are equivalent to those for drink-driving. I am pleased that the Government have recently given type approval for devices for use at police stations, and I understand—perhaps the Minister will confirm this—that the intention is to approve a device for use at the roadside by 2014.

The third issue was to look at sentencing and to ensure appropriate punishment for those convicted of such offences. The Bill would provide a level of sentence equivalent to that for drink-driving. The fourth thing, which can only happen once the three other pieces of the jigsaw are in place, is to look at an enforcement campaign similar to that of the 1980s on drink-driving. There was a time when lots of people drove under the influence of drink—to a degree, it was the cultural norm. It took that enforcement campaign in the 1980s to change attitudes, and I think we now need a similar campaign about driving under the influence of some drugs that, sadly, are all too prevalent in society today.

When the family came to see me at my surgery, I was faced with the challenge of what to do and how to help them. As usual, the House of Commons Library was a great place to start, and I began researching the law and previous efforts to change it—and to be fair to the last Government, they looked at this issue. It was a difficult and complicated matter, however, as several different Departments were involved: the Home Office, in relation to the police’s responsibilities; the Ministry of Justice, in relation to the criminal offence; and the Department for Transport.

I decided to raise the profile of the issue and ask about it in Prime Minister’s questions. I want to put on the record my thanks to the Prime Minister, because he agreed to meet the family and invited them to 10 Downing street to see him. I guess they found in him one of the few Members of the House who sadly could understand exactly what they had been through in losing a child. The staff at No. 10 have worked closely with all three Departments to get the change in the law before us today through as rapidly as possible.

I want to ask a couple of questions about the detail. The hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) alluded to this matter in a question that he asked the Home Secretary earlier about what the limits for specified drugs might be. Proposed new section 5A(9) in clause 37(1) provides that specified limits could be zero. Paragraph 562 of the explanatory notes, which are always a great source of guidance, contains the wonderful sentence:

“New section 5A(9) provides that specified limits could be zero, though this does not mean that limits would in fact be set at zero.”

One can make of that what one will.

Lillian’s family feel strongly that the level for illegal drugs should be set at zero. As a matter of principle, they feel that people should not be taking these substances and therefore should not be driving under their influence. There is the strong counter-argument, however, that we should be led by science, as the hon. Member for Cambridge tried to point out, that we should try to discover what level of an active substance in the blood stream leads to the same level of impairment as the blood alcohol limit and that we should set the limits that way. Clearly, as the Bill tries to do, we also have to consider prescribed medications that have the same active substances as some illegal drugs.

[Mr Burrowes]

I commend my hon. Friend for his leadership in driving through this important change. I want to ask about the sentencing impact. Assuming its safe passage, this proposal will have as its outcome a sentencing maximum of 12 months. If someone is impaired by being over the limit, whether in relation to drugs or alcohol, plainly that is inherently careless, but only if they were charged with causing death by careless driving while under the influence would their case get to the High Court for a much heavier sentence, which is what many of these people deserve.

[Gavin Barwell]

As usual, my hon. Friend makes a good point, and I will explore those issues once I have dealt with the limits.

A decision needs to be made about whether the levels should be based as far as possible on the scientific evidence of similar levels of impairment to that caused by alcohol or whether there is a case, as the family believe, for zero limits for some of the most serious substances. As I understand it, the Government have set up the Wolff panel to consider the detail. They themselves are finding this a highly complex and difficult area and are taking a bit more time than originally envisaged to do this work, but I would be grateful for any guidance that the Minister could give in his winding-up speech about the timing of the panel’s report.

[Dr Huppert]

It is a fascinating balance. I have seen comments from the Wolff panel suggesting that alcohol is far and away the most dangerous substance that people can take, so although I support the aim in the Bill of reducing impairment, perhaps more work still needs to be done on drink-driving as well.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gavin Barwell]

The hon. Gentleman makes a powerful point.

I am conscious of the time and of the fact that other Members wish to speak, so I will end by addressing the point about sentencing raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes). The explanatory notes make an interesting point. They state that the sentencing has been set at the same level as for driving under the influence of alcohol. Paragraph 560 of the notes states that these are

“the penalties set out in Schedule 2 to the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988 as increased, for England and Wales, by certain provisions of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 which are not yet in force”.

Will Ministers give some guidance on what the provisions of this Act passed nine years ago are and why neither the previous Government nor the current one have yet brought them into force?

Paragraph 567 also makes an important point that I think answers the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate. It reads:

“Paragraph 2 amends section 3A of the 1988 Act so that if the person had a controlled drug in the blood or urine in excess of the specified limit for that drug, the person could be charged with the more heavily penalised offence in that section of causing death by careless driving”.

I believe that that means—I would be grateful if Ministers could confirm this—that the limits will apply to both offences and that in a case such as Lillian’s, if the driver’s cannabis level is above the limit subsequently set, the more significant charge could be brought against the individual.

In conclusion, I pay tribute to Lillian’s family for their work in advancing this cause. The House will know that Lillian is far from the only individual whose life has sadly been cut short by a drug-driver. No doubt, sadly, other Members will have examples from their own constituencies, but for me it has been a great privilege to speak up on behalf of this wonderful family, who want to ensure that other people do not go through the agony that they have experienced. I thank my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and all the Ministers responsible for bringing the Bill before the House.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Barwell Excerpts

Monday 7th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

7. What assessment her Department has made of the most recent statistics on net migration.

[Gavin Barwell (Croydon Central) (Con)]

12. What assessment her Department has made of the most recent statistics on net migration.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)]

Net migration fell by a quarter in the year to March 2012. This shows that our tough policies are taking effect and marks a significant step towards bringing net migration down from the hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands by the end of this Parliament.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs May]

The very clear lesson we learned was that we should ensure that transitional controls are placed on any future accession countries, and that is indeed what we will do in relation to Croatia’s accession. As my hon. Friend the Immigration Minister has indicated, we are also taking a number of steps to look at the abuse of free movement and how free movement operates across the European Union.

[Gavin Barwell]

I welcome the Government’s progress in reducing net migration to a level that is in our national interest. Many of my constituents, however, are as concerned about EU migration as they are about non-EU migration. Will my right hon. Friend update the House on the progress the Government are making as part of the review of competences, in sharp contrast to the previous Government’s failure to apply accession controls?

[Mrs May]

Absolutely—it is this Government who are willing to look at the issues, make the tough decisions and take action to put tough policies in place. In relation to the balance of competences, we will be looking in detail at free movement. That work has not yet started but will start in the not-too-distant future. There are other things we are doing outside that work. I am working across the European Union with other member states to look at how we can ensure that we reduce the abuse of free movement—through sham marriage, for example—and we are also looking at the pull factors that encourage people to come to the UK, rather than other member states, such as access to benefits.

Scrap Metal Dealers Bill

Lord Barwell Excerpts

Friday 13th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I understand my hon. Friend’s point and she might well be right. Time will tell. I have no doubt that my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South will be successful with his Bill and we will see, but I am not necessarily as confident as my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) that that will happen. The criminals who are engaged in such illegal activity are clearly making a lot of money from it, and I do not believe that on the back of this Bill—my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South made it clear that he did not see it as a silver bullet—those people will pack up their equipment and say, “It was nice while it lasted, but now we’ll all move on to knitting,” or to some other activity of which we would all approve. I suspect that they will continue with their criminal activity and will merely pursue it in a different way. It will probably go underground and through illegitimate businesses rather than legitimate scrap metal dealerships.

We should be wary of the idea that regulating businesses will solve the problem. I have always taken what might be deemed an old-fashioned view of such matters and if someone is going out and committing the crime of stealing metal, we should be clamping down on the people who are going out and stealing the metal. The Bill seems to be chiefly aimed at clamping down on the metal dealers further down the line. The people going out and stealing the metal are not being targeted as much as the dealers.

[Gavin Barwell (Croydon Central) (Con)]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend that we should be clamping down on the people who are stealing the plaques, the memorials and the cabling, but in the case of my own dad’s plaque, the dealer who bought it had bought tens of thousands of plaques and war memorials from across south London. Does my hon. Friend not agree that as well as going after the people who are stealing the items, we should come down like a ton of bricks on the people who know what they are buying and should not let them continue to operate in the industry? That is what the Bill would achieve.

[Philip Davies]

I have a great deal of sympathy for what my hon. Friend says and I think the whole House will have sympathy for what happened and for the distress it must have caused him. Of course, we all want to clamp down on not only the people who steal but on the people who knowingly trade in such metal. I do not think that anybody would deny that, but the proposals in the Bill do not just clamp down on the people involved in the theft or in the trading of stolen metal. The Bill is clamping down on everybody. In effect, it states that everybody involved in the trade is a criminal, that we will treat them all as criminals and that we will clamp down on them all. My point is that it is rather unfair to categorise a whole industry as involved in illegality. In every industry, there are good people and bad people and the Bill imposes extra costs and burdens on the good as well as the bad.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gavin Barwell (Croydon Central) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to speak in support of the private Member’s Bill that my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway) has introduced. He referred to a number of ways in which this problem affects our home towns and constituencies across the country, including through attacks on community facilities and buildings. He referred to Croydon minster, which sits in my constituency. He also referred to the theft of telephone cables. Residents in Forestdale in my constituency have suffered from that problem on numerous occasions.

My hon. Friend also referred to my personal experience. I want to take a couple of minutes of the House’s time to talk about that, not because what my family have been through is any worse than what thousands of other families across the countries have experienced, but because it is important to put on the record the effect that this crime has on people. In the case of my family, my father suffered with Alzheimer’s for a number of years. During that time my mother cared for him at home in increasingly difficult circumstances, until he had to go into a hospice for the last few months of his life. It was an incredibly difficult time for the whole family, but particularly for my mother, who struggled with seeing someone she loved being stripped away from her day by day over a number of years. She gave a great deal of thought to the message that she wrote on the plaque to be placed where my father’s ashes were interred. Beyond my personal anger at the theft of that plaque was my anger as a son that my mother should have to go through further pain after what she had already experienced.

As I said, I mention that not because what we have been through is any worse than what thousands of other families have been through, but to show the type of crime this is. It is one thing for someone to have their car broken into and a stereo or iPod stolen, but when they lose something that is close to them on an emotional level, that is a much more devastating blow. It is a serious offence.

The one thing that perhaps goes beyond even the theft of plaques from people’s graves is the theft of war memorials. Let us think of the incredible sacrifices that generations before mine had to make for this country, to defend the freedoms that we now all enjoy. I have language to describe people who conduct such crimes, but I suspect that you would regard it as unparliamentary, Mr Deputy Speaker.

My hon. Friend rightly said that the Bill on its own would not be the silver bullet that solved the problem, but it contains a number of key ingredients that will help to do that. My hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), who is no longer in her place, talked about cashless payments and the need to ensure a level playing field across the industry.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), who has also had to leave the Chamber, said, the licensing system is a key ingredient. Before I came into the House I was a councillor for 12 years in the London borough of Croydon, and in the last year and a half crime and community safety were my responsibilities. On one of the most interesting evenings that I spent in that job, I went out with the police licensing team. Croydon had a large night-time economy, and they showed me a range of institutions, from those that were highly professionally run to those where I feared for the physical safety of the people in them.

That licensing system, which is a pretty good parallel to what the Bill proposes for the scrap mental industry, was hugely welcomed by the good operators, because they objected to rogue operators who did not invest sufficiently in maintaining the safety of those using their institutions and were undercutting them. To respond to a point that my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) made, let me say that the reputable establishments did not object to the bureaucracy of having a licensing system but thought it was essential to try to drive out the rogue operators, which would be to their benefit.

My hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South mentioned the importance of being able to establish where material has been sourced. He mentioned what Operation Tornado was achieving in the north of the country, and I hope that it will be spread nationwide quickly. The Bill also provides for unlimited fines for those who breach their licences.

I want to end my speech by responding to some of the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley. We come from different traditions within the Conservative party, but I have a very high regard for him. It is hugely to the benefit of the House that when there are proposals to introduce new legislation, there is a voice that questions the need for doing so and makes arguments about whether that is the right solution to the problem. He is right that in politics, when there is a public concern there is an instinct to do something to respond. Sometimes, that can lead to disproportionate legislation that places a cost on businesses or overly restricts individuals’ freedom. It is important that a different voice is heard when we have debates such as this. I suspect that my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) may still hope to speak and will make similar points.

I felt that my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley presented the House with a binary choice—either taking a tougher approach to punishing those responsible for offences under the existing law, or changing the law and introducing new regulations. My strong conviction is that we should do both those things. It is not a choice of one or the other. In the two years I have been in the House, I have often found that the polarisation in the Chamber has presented such a choice. On the wider issue of crime, we are presented with the choice of either introducing tougher sentencing or reforming our prison system to try to reduce reoffending. I never quite understand why we cannot do both at the same time.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we should go after people who steal metal, make greater efforts to catch them and punish them more severely. He is also right that there are laws to deal with those who trade in stolen goods. However, there is good evidence that the industry sees a need for a licensing system to protect the good operators. He is right that we should not send the message that the whole industry is full of criminals, because there are legitimate, proper operators who are law-abiding people, but they themselves are asking us to examine the issue.

In my own case, the scrap metal dealer who bought the plaques—there were thousands of them, not just my father’s—knew exactly what he was doing. I absolutely agree that we should try to bring him to justice and punish him, and that there should be stronger punishment for trading in stolen goods. However, I also profoundly believe that he should not be able to go back into the industry after he has served that punishment and start operating again. That is why we need legislation on a licensing system.

I say with huge regard and affection for the role that my hon. Friend plays in the Chamber that I believe he has made a strong case for not only stronger punishment and more enforcement effort but changes in the law that will strengthen the hand of police and local authorities to deal with a crime that has been a scourge of many communities up and down the country. With that thought in mind, I am proud to support my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South in his efforts to deal with the problem.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Barwell Excerpts

Monday 9th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

Yes, I am very happy to join my hon. Friend in doing so. There has been a fall in crime of 14.5% in Hastings borough, and that is a big tribute to the work of police officers in that part of East Sussex—and long may it continue.

[Gavin Barwell (Croydon Central) (Con)]

2. What plans she has to reduce the time taken to remove dangerous foreign nationals.

[The Minister for Immigration (Damian Green)]

We are working with the prisons, the courts and the police to overcome prisoner non-compliance in the removals process by establishing nationality and identity earlier; we are working with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to increase the efficiency of the documentation process; and we are removing a significant number of prisoners much earlier in the process.

[Gavin Barwell]

I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. What prospects are there for removing foreign national offenders before they have completed their sentence so that the British taxpayer does not have to bear such a cost?