Immigration (Stranraer/Cairnryan)

Lord Dodds of Duncairn Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Brown]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. As I said earlier, the previous Immigration Minister came to see the site and was quite shocked by what she witnessed. My plea all along has been that before the Government withdraw the funding, somebody should come to have a look. According to Stena’s figures, we are expecting a potential 50% increase in traffic. Thankfully, the Scottish Government Justice Minister has decided that he will look favourably on another four officers, but that will simply take us back to a situation that the chief constable sees as having been sustainable; it does not take account of the additional traffic that there will be.

[Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this important debate. As well as the issue of terrorism, does he accept that there is great concern in Northern Ireland about the fact that people can so easily enter the Northern Ireland part of the United Kingdom across the border with no real check, as a result not only of cuts but of a deliberate policy?

[Mr Brown]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention and his concern. This is a serious issue, and I hope that even if the Minister cannot give us answers this evening, he will give the matter serious consideration and take the time to come to have a look at what we are experiencing.

One of the most damning aspects to emerge from the situation is the revelation that no one has any idea how many illegal immigrants simply disappear after being stopped at the ports. The police have no authority to seize and arrest any of them. Two weeks ago the Home Secretary was under fire for immigration failings over the summer. The scandal is that she has known for more than a year that there is no way to keep track of illegal immigrants entering through the Galloway ports, and she has not done a thing about it.

Upon detecting illegal immigrants at the ports, Dumfries and Galloway police issue them with an instruction and an appointment to appear at a UKBA office in Glasgow or Manchester. They then release the offenders, in the hope they will keep their promise. That is shockingly lax. If someone has entered the country illegally, are they really going to hand themselves in the next morning?

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[Damian Green]

Of course, more always needs to be done, on every route. However, what I hope I am explaining to the House and the hon. Gentleman is what is being done and why I believe that the changes being made—which focus the operation more in Northern Ireland, which is the source of the problem in his constituency—are a more effective long-term way of tackling illegal immigration and, as a beneficial side effect, reducing the stress on the Dumfries and Galloway police.

[Mr Dodds]

I am grateful for what the Minister has said about what is being done in Northern Ireland, and he is absolutely right. However, he also said that the source of the problem was Northern Ireland, but is not the real problem people coming in from the Irish Republic? There are checks at the border at the ports and the airports, but what about the illegal immigration into Northern Ireland? What is being done to tackle that problem?

[Damian Green]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a perfectly reasonable point. I am in close negotiations with my Irish counterpart to ensure that the common travel area becomes more effective, as I have explained. We need to help the Irish Government to strengthen their border, because, as we are in a common travel area, to some extent their border is obviously our border. The closer we can co-operate and the stronger we can make that border, the better it will be.

Let me demonstrate what has happened. If we look at UKBA work, as seen in the review into working arrangements, we find that impressive results have been produced both in Scotland and Northern Ireland. In just four months—January to April—175 immigration offenders were detected at Northern Irish sea and airports and at west of Scotland sea ports. That is a 200% increase on the same period in 2010, which suggests we are doing much better at getting to the root of the problem.

We have produced and agreed a 10-point plan between the Border Agency and the Dumfries and Galloway constabulary to improve co-ordination and liaison. The plan will cover a wide range of aspects, including the systematic sharing of intelligence, joint tasking and co-ordination of deployments, which optimises coverage at the highest-risk times at Northern Ireland sea ports and reduces the number of immigration offenders who need to be processed by the police in Scotland. Again, that is a double benefit. There are now also monthly operational and quarterly strategic meetings to share results, learn from experiences, identify and introduce best practice, and review the progress of current arrangements. The joint objective over the next six months is to introduce all these measures fully and to refine them, to deliver the majority of detections and detentions in Northern Ireland and to reduce Dumfries and Galloway constabulary time and the work needed to deal with immigration suspects and offenders encountered at the Scottish sea ports.

This debate is particularly timely, as I know that Kenny MacAskill, the Scottish Government Cabinet Secretary for Justice chaired a meeting yesterday at the new port of Loch Ryan where he met David Ford, the Northern Ireland Assembly Minister of Justice, as well as representatives of both Scottish and Northern Irish police forces and the regional operation leads from the UKBA. I understand that it was a very constructive meeting, and I think it is important to recognise that the working relationship at the operational level among the Border Agency, the Police Service of Northern Ireland and the Dumfries and Galloway constabulary goes a long way to make our ports an unwelcoming place for criminals.

Of course, all police forces come across illegal immigrants—

Metropolitan Police Service

Lord Dodds of Duncairn Excerpts

Monday 18th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point. I can assure him that this issue is being taken into account in the various inquiries and investigations.

[Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

At this time of unprecedented chaos within the Metropolitan police, and given the Met’s national responsibilities for national security, are not the public right to feel concerned that it has taken its eye off the ball when it comes to protecting citizens against terrorism? What is the Home Secretary going to do to reassure people that the Met is on top of its game in terms of protecting the public against the threat of terrorism both here in the United Kingdom and from abroad?

[Mrs May]

The work that has been done by the Met, indeed led by Assistant Commissioner John Yates, on counter-terrorism policing has been important. Counter-terrorism policing has improved over the years and extra resources have been put in, which has been beneficial in keeping this country safe. The Metropolitan police have moved quickly to ensure that there is an immediate appointment to replace Assistant Commissioner John Yates in Assistant Commissioner Cressida Dick. I am sure that she will take this work forward every bit as effectively as has been done previously. I assure people that the eye has not been taken off the ball; we are very conscious of the duty to protect the public, be it from criminals or terrorists.

Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

Lord Dodds of Duncairn Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Patrick Mercer]

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend. He is absolutely right: of course we interned people in the last war, and we also carried out the disastrous policy of internment in Northern Ireland in the ’70s. I was not there at the time, but I was there in the follow-up to that policy, which was literally disastrous, not only in countering terrorism, but in aiding and abetting the recruitment of our foes in the battle with the Irish Republican Army that lay ahead. However, I hope that my hon. Friend does not mind if I do not go into that in too much detail.

If we retain the powers indefinitely and continue to treat that small number of people in that way, we will pass the most important tool that we can to our foes. We will be saying to our enemies: “Please understand that without letting off any bombs or killing any policemen, soldiers or civilians, you have achieved exactly what you want to achieve. In other words, you have destabilised our democracy. Without raising a finger, you have done exactly what you wanted to do: you have changed the way we live our lives.” That is not right. I celebrate the changes that the Home Secretary announced earlier. Without doubt, there have been some improvements. For instance, of the three measures for which I have long argued, and for which I shall continue to argue—the ability to question after charge, the use of intercept evidence and plea bargaining—one has been accepted. One is better than nothing—it is an improvement—but we must understand that our abiding aim is to get those individuals into court on a legitimate charge and with a legitimate trial, and to uphold the principle that they are innocent until proven guilty.

We have other methods of dealing with criminals. I am sure that, like me, the House remembers how a previous Prime Minister made it a point of principle that Irish republican terrorists, and indeed Protestant paramilitaries, should not be treated as they wished to be—that is, as soldiers—but as mere common criminals.

[Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

I am following the hon. Gentleman carefully, but will he correct his reference to “Protestant paramilitaries”, by perhaps describing them as loyalists or so-called loyalists? His use of the word “Protestant” in this context is not correct.

[Patrick Mercer]

The right hon. Gentleman is quite right. I am afraid that I am a victim of my own experience. He is absolutely right that the term is outdated. It was one that we used in the many tours that I served in Northern Ireland, but it is both wrong and probably insensitive, and I apologise.

Whatever stamp of terrorist we were facing in Northern Ireland, that terrorist was deemed to be a criminal. There are methods that we can use to handle those criminals. They are not soldiers; they are criminals. Therefore, surely it is up to us to deal with them in the same way, using the rules of bail along with other methods that we use to surveille those of whom we are suspicious. We do not need to take these individuals’ liberties away from them.

There are two points behind that idea. The first is that it is improper and undemocratic; the second is that it is plain damn silly. If we say to someone, “We are interested in you; we are surveilling you; we are keeping you under observation”, we immediately fail to harvest the intelligence that those individuals can give us. Not all of them are terribly clever, although some are, and many of them are very foolish, which is why they have fallen under suspicion in the first place. Foolishness, of course, should be aided and abetted by the security services because foolishness provides us with further clues and further evidence.

I will not detain the House further. Despite my instincts, I will certainly support the Government tonight on the basis that I understand that future legislation needs time to mature and to be properly formulated. The fact remains that I hope that the Home Secretary and her Ministers will look most carefully at what is proposed so that in the future we will deal with our enemies not only in a democratic and proper way, but in a thoroughly practical one.

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[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

It is a privilege to speak in the debate and to follow the hon. Member for South Antrim (Dr McCrea). I welcome the outcome of the counter-terrorism review. Ministers have been decisive in scaling back some of the more draconian aspects of the previous Government’s authoritarian legislation, such as pre-charge detention and stop-and-search powers, and by tightening regulations in relation to surveillance.

The contentious debate that we are having on control orders should not obscure this welcome sea change in the overall approach. The tide is turning, and I commend the Minister for helping to bring about that change. Likewise, I recognise that Ministers are committed to substantial reform of the control order regime. The new powers will be significantly less offensive to basic principles of British justice than what we have now, but each half-step in the right direction raises the question of why we are not scrapping them altogether.

Under the regime that we are reviewing, the Home Secretary must have “reasonable grounds to suspect” an individual’s involvement in terrorist-related activity before imposing a control order. Now the threshold will be raised to “reasonable belief”. No one can deny that that is progress, but it still allows the equivalent of a criminal penalty to be imposed without a criminal conviction. There is no getting around that. It undermines the most basic principle of our justice system: innocent until proven guilty.

The two-year limit is a welcome recognition that a person not convicted of a crime should not be subject to intrusive restrictions indefinitely, but the orders are renewable, or they will be, which in the same breath undermines this element of the reforms. The fact that under the new system an order can be renewed if someone is engaged in further, different, terrorist activity while subject to its restrictions speaks volumes about the frailty of control orders as a means of public protection. I recognise that curfews are an improvement of sorts on virtual house arrest, a feature of the current regime, but as Lord Macdonald said in his report, curfews are still “disproportionate, unnecessary and objectionable”.

Control orders are an affront to British liberty and justice, but—I make this point to the hon. Member for South Antrim—their relevance as a security measure for dealing with a threat on which we all agree is at best minimal. My hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer) put it more eloquently. There are eight control orders in force. On the best numeric assessment, there are 4,000 terrorist suspects in this country. Use of the orders against that rising threat has halved. Overall, 15% have absconded. Between 2006 and 2009, £16 million was spent on the regime. That is without factoring in court costs or policing.

The new regime is intended to strengthen the duty to consider prosecuting controlees, but Lord Macdonald pointed out clearly and categorically that control orders are not just a poor substitute, but make prosecution more difficult. He said that the regime is

“an impediment to prosecution… controls may be imposed that precisely prevent those very activities that are apt to result in the discovery of evidence fit for prosecution, conviction and imprisonment”.

With that in mind, the House should note that the number of terrorists convicted in the past three years has not just fallen, but plummeted. The number of convictions has fallen off a cliff edge—90% in three years, according to the October statistics. Control orders cannot reverse that trend. As Lord Macdonald said, they just get in the way.

What is being done to address this pretty fundamental failing in the counter-terrorism strategy that the coalition Government, to be fair, have inherited? What is being done on plea bargaining, prosecutorial policy and intercept evidence? The Home Secretary has indicated that the review on lifting the ban on intercept will continue. Both Lord Macdonald and the current Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, support lifting the ban. They say that it can be made to work effectively, as in virtually every other country in the world. However, Liberty has described the Government’s efforts—I think it is a reference to official efforts—to grasp this important reform as “lethargic”. Prosecution is vital. It is not some quaint commitment to legal tradition. In relation to the home-grown threat, suspects cannot be deported, so prosecution and incarceration is the only way to protect the public.

[Mr Dodds]

I am very interested in what the hon. Gentleman is saying and his emphasis on prosecution and incarceration. He will remember that his party and the Labour party, and indeed the House, voted to release terrorist prisoners who had been duly prosecuted and imprisoned for lengthy periods of time. It was decided that they should be let out, free from the severe punishment that had been meted out to them. That was a decision of this House. Does he now regret the decision to take that course of action, given what he has said about prosecution?

[Mr Raab]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. In fairness, that was in the context of an overall conflict resolution settlement. I was not a Member of the House at the time, but I pay deference to an important and valid point.

Protection of Freedoms Bill

Lord Dodds of Duncairn Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

Although there are many excellent things in the Bill that I welcome, the right hon. Lady is absolutely right on this point. When it comes to the protection of children and to giving confidence to parents, is it not right always to err on the side of caution?

[Yvette Cooper]

The right hon. Gentleman is right. This is a difficult area. People will raise concerns if they feel that there are inappropriate burdens in reporting arrangements, and of course it is right to try to reduce those and to prevent inappropriate checks or bureaucracy, but it is also right to put safeguards for our children at the heart of the measures that we set out, and not to do things that feel inappropriate given the potential risks, given the evidence, and given the security that parents want for their children.

Aviation Security Incident

Lord Dodds of Duncairn Excerpts

Monday 1st November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend raises an issue that has been mentioned on a number of occasions. That approach has been adopted by others. We are looking at all the techniques that we should be using to ensure that we provide the maximum protection for people in the UK. In relation to passengers, we are enhancing our ability at the borders to ensure that those who are a threat to the UK do not travel here.

[Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

I thank the Home Secretary for her statement and commend the security and intelligence services for their great work. Sadly, however, she will be aware that the bomb at East Midlands airport was not the only bomb to be planted or found at a British airport this weekend. A bomb planted by IRA dissidents was found and defused at Belfast City airport. It would have caused casualties, injuries and even death, and I commend the security forces on locating and defusing it. This illustrates the fact that British citizens are subject to attack from a range of sources. Will the Home Secretary give a guarantee to all our citizens, wherever they live, that resources and efforts will be put into combating all kinds of terrorism? The focus is rightly on the incident in the east midlands at the moment, but the people of Northern Ireland are still facing the threat of dissident republican terrorism.

[Mrs May]

The right hon. Gentleman is right to remind us of the fact that terrorism comes from a number of sources, and not just from al-Qaeda. I commend the security forces and the Police Service of Northern Ireland, not only this weekend but over recent months, for the increasing amount of work that they have done to prevent any incidents of terrorism in Northern Ireland from taking place. Indeed, the right hon. Gentleman will have seen in the national security strategy that we published two weeks ago that we have clearly identified the threat from dissident republicanism as one that we need to address. We are conscious of the fact that the number of attempted attacks in Northern Ireland has been increasing in recent months.

Cumbrian Shooting Incident

Lord Dodds of Duncairn Excerpts

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I do indeed accept that, as my hon. Friend says, there are many responsible shooters in the UK who will have been as appalled by these events in Cumbria yesterday as everybody else was. As I indicated in my previous answer, it is right that we should have an opportunity to consider these issues, but we should do so only when we have the full facts—when the police have been able to investigate and we know as much as we can about the events that took place in Cumbria. We must not leap to conclusions before we have those facts.

[Mr Nigel Dodds (Belfast North) (DUP)]

The Home Secretary is absolutely right to say that today is a day for remembering the innocent victims. May I, on behalf of my party colleagues, extend our deepest sympathies to the families and friends of those who have been murdered, and to the wider community in Cumbria as well? May I support the remarks of the hon. Member for Workington (Tony Cunningham), and other local Members, about the need for continuing help for the area to assist the police, statutory agencies and charities as they continue with their important work in helping the communities through this awful time?

[Mrs May]

Indeed. I think we all recognise in this House that there are two jobs to be done: one is the police investigation, but the other is the need to provide support to the local communities in Cumbria so that they can recover from the terrible tragedy that has occurred. It is right that we recognise that there is a role for central Government and for local government in that, but there is also a role for others, including charities, many of which will be best positioned and best able to offer the sort of support, counselling, advice and practical help that people will need.