Nissan in Sunderland

Debate between Lord Hannay of Chiswick and Lord Henley

Tuesday 5th February 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

I am grateful to the right reverend Prelate for asking that question and for underlining the obvious concerns of all people living in Sunderland, Durham and the wider north-east, including the 7,000 workers at Nissan and the 35,000 people supported in the supply chain. We will continue to talk to all concerned; we want to allay those fears. We are very grateful that Nissan continues to be committed to that site. It has made enormous investments there over the last 30-plus years. As the right reverend Prelate stressed, we will also continue to make investments in R&D and new technologies in other fields. The automotive industry is changing, and what we have all been saying about diesel holds true. There will be a decline in diesel sales, but we hope to see a greater take-up in others.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister not recognise that the real story here is that the Government—perhaps understandably—in 2016 gave an undertaking to Nissan that there would be no deterioration in its access to the European market, which they have proved unable to deliver? That is the real story, is it not?

The Minister referred to Baroness Thatcher and the role she played in getting Nissan established. I fundamentally and absolutely agree with that. I was the British Permanent Representative at the time. We had a lot of trouble because the French Government wanted origin rules to be applied to the production in Sunderland, which would have destroyed the case for investment there. Thanks largely to the late Lord Cockfield, that attempt was defeated. How sure is the Minister that, if we leave the European Union, the issue of origin rules will not arise again and affect the capacity of foreign investors in this country to export cars to the European Union?

[Lord Henley]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, for paying tribute to the late Lady Thatcher and for reminding us of the work of the late Lord Cockfield, whom many of us remember. As regards what will happen to the rules for the future, that will depend very much on negotiations. Those negotiations will continue. I very much hope that we get a deal that is suitable to make sure that this company can continue to flourish. I am sure that it will continue to flourish, and will continue to flourish in Sunderland, irrespective of what happens.

Ffos-y-Fran Opencast Coal Mine

Debate between Lord Hannay of Chiswick and Lord Henley

Tuesday 5th June 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I do not think that I can take the noble Baroness any further. This is a devolved matter. It is a matter for the Welsh Government, who have responded to the special rapporteur’s report.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, will the Minister explain to the House how the UK Government fulfil their obligations to the United Nations if they cease to have any obligation for matters that have been devolved? Surely the responsibility of the British Government in the UN is to fulfil obligations they enter into. How are they going to do so?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, the UK Government have responded to this report. The Question relates to one part of the report relating to the Ffos-y-Fran opencast coal mine. As I have made clear, that is a devolved matter and a matter for the Welsh Government, and the Welsh Government have responded to the UN rapporteur’s report.

Brexit: Galileo Space Project

Debate between Lord Hannay of Chiswick and Lord Henley

Thursday 26th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, given our history, I find the lack of trust very confusing, but certainly we can look at other options. We have made it clear in a letter that my right honourable friend has sent to all appropriate Ministers in the other 27 countries that we wish to continue to participate in this programme. So far, we have had only a letter from the Commission itself setting out its view that we should not take part. In our view, that would be folly of the worst sort: it would increase costs for the whole programme by €1 billion and possibly delay it for three years.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick (CB)]

My Lords, have negotiations begun on the Prime Minister’s proposals for a security treaty with the European Union? If they have begun or are about to begin, will they cover the security aspects of the Galileo programme and perhaps provide a way of avoiding what can be described only as mutually assured damage?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I am not aware of whether they have begun but certainly they would provide a way to deal with this matter. The noble Lord is right to stress that there would be mutually assured damage if the Commission was to continue with its suggestion that we should not participate in this programme.

Immigration: Foreign University Students

Debate between Lord Hannay of Chiswick and Lord Henley

Tuesday 3rd July 2012 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Henley)]

My Lords, the United Kingdom uses the internationally agreed definition of the migrant, which is someone who comes here for over 12 months. It is right that students staying for that period are counted because during their stay they are part of the resident population. It would damage public confidence in statistics to discount them.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that somewhat familiar reply. The main reason he has given in replies to earlier questions—he has just given it again—for not changing our present practice of classifying students for policy purposes in the net migration figures is the existence of a UN guideline to the effect that anyone who stays for a year is a migrant. Can he confirm that the guideline does not have the force of international law, is therefore not binding on the British Government and, further, is not applied in the calculation of net migration figures for policy purposes by our main competitors in the higher education sector—the US, Canada and Australia? Is it not about time that the Government ceased to handicap the most rapidly growing and most promising invisible export sector we have?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I fail to understand what the noble Lord and Universities UK are getting at in their objections to us applying proper statistics as agreed by international convention, which is what we follow. If the noble Lord is suggesting that by changing the way we count the statistics, we will make life easier for universities, again I fail to understand him. I do not see why they are discouraging undergraduates from coming to this country. All we require of the students is that they show an ability to speak English and that they have an offer of a place at a university in the United Kingdom. The statistics simply do not come into it, so fiddling with them would discourage students because it would imply that probably the only subject they ought to come here to study would be statistics.

European Court of Justice: Jurisdiction

Debate between Lord Hannay of Chiswick and Lord Henley

Wednesday 20th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, as I said in my original Answer, we are committed to making a decision by May 2014. It is a very important decision and we understand its severity. That is why we have committed ourselves to a debate in both Houses of Parliament, followed by a vote. In the end, the decision will be based on what is in the interests of the United Kingdom. My right honourable friend has given that assurance.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, the Minister will recognise that in January 2011, when committing the Government to a vote in both Houses on Protocol 36, the Minister for Europe said in another place:

“The Government will conduct further consultations on the arrangements for this vote, in particular with the European Scrutiny Committees, and the Commons and Lords Home Affairs and Justice Select Committees and a further announcement will be made in due course”.—[Official Report, Commons, 20/1/11; col. 51WS.]

Will the Minister say what sort of consultations they have in mind and what their timing will be? Does he agree that all these consultations need to take place in a deliberate and fully transparent way if the subsequent vote in both Houses is to be conducted on a sound evidential basis?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, the precise words that the noble Lord used about the Government conducting further consultations—I could go on—are in front of me in my brief. I agree with them and that is what we committed ourselves to in January 2011. How we conduct those arrangements will be a matter for discussions in the appropriate place at the appropriate time between the European Scrutiny Committees and the Commons and Lords Home Affairs and Justice Select Committees. We need to discuss these things with a number of different committees. I make it clear to the House and the noble Lord today how seriously we take this and why we think it vital that we eventually have that debate and vote in both Houses.

Piracy

Debate between Lord Hannay of Chiswick and Lord Henley

Monday 26th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether the assistance given by the Serious Organised Crime Agency to the Regional Anti-Piracy Prosecutions and Intelligence Co-ordination Centre in the Seychelles will include information gleaned from suspicious activity reports.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Henley)]

My Lords, no decision has been made on whether SOCA will share information from suspicious activity reports with the Regional Anti-Piracy Prosecutions and Intelligence Co-ordination Centre. We are still determining the centre’s requirements, which will include safeguards for the protection of personal data.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that response—although, alas, there is not a huge amount to thank him for but just a little bit—but I should be grateful if he would ensure that we are told when a decision has been reached on this matter. Would he not agree, moreover, that now that the Government are getting a better grip on all aspects of the problems of Somalia, including that of piracy, it is high time that the Government insisted that anyone assembling a ransom should file a suspicious activity report about that? Would he also confirm that the Prime Minister has now asked for a proper study to be made of all aspects of the issue of assembling ransoms?

Immigration

Debate between Lord Hannay of Chiswick and Lord Henley

Monday 19th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I do not accept what the noble Baroness says, but if she can provide proper evidence for that, we will certainly look at it in due course. We are not aware that universities are complaining; we are aware that a certain number of private colleges— the bogus colleges to which I referred earlier—are complaining. That is why we will want to deal with that. In the main, I think it is quite right that we should tighten up on people coming to university and that is why, for example, there are rules about family members coming in which, again, the party opposite failed to introduce. Those have been tightened up for undergraduates but not for postgraduates.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

My Lords, has any consideration been given, or is consideration being given, to taking students out of the immigration system? Now that the business of bogus academies has been dealt with rather effectively—I welcome that—would it not be sensible to recognise that the university sector is the most rapidly growing invisible export that this country has? It is simply not good enough to say that universities are not complaining. There may be some vestige of a lack of complaint from some body or other, but I would suggest that, if the noble Lord goes round the universities carefully, he will not find that that is the case.

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I accept what the noble Lord has to say about universities being a very valuable export—we acknowledge that—but there should also be controls on students coming in. One area where we provided stricter controls is on undergraduate students bringing in families, which was seen as a form of abuse. We were quite right to tighten up on that and to keep more general matters under review, and that is what we will continue to do.

EUC Report: Money Laundering

Debate between Lord Hannay of Chiswick and Lord Henley

Monday 19th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Henley)]

My Lords, as always, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, and to other noble Lords who have spoken, particularly the noble Lord, Lord Judd, and my noble friend Lord Dykes who are members of the committee. I am grateful that we have had an opportunity to debate this report of the EU committee as well as, to some extent, the 2009 report and the Information Commissioner’s report which dealt with a number of these matters. I am also grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, for outlining the very important work that the House does in relation to its post-legislative scrutiny of these matters. I hope that I can give a reasonably detailed response to the various points that have been made.

The first important point is the Information Commissioner’s report. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, for emphasising that. That made a number of findings, notably referring to the Elmer database. As someone rather new to this, I was fascinated to discover that the Elmer referred to in that name is not an acronym but the first name of the original head of the United States Department of the Treasury intelligence unit, back in the 1920s or 1930s, who was responsible for nailing or achieving the conviction of Al Capone on the famous occasion when they got him for tax evasion rather than for other matters. We must be grateful to that Elmer—I imagine in the United States they are even more grateful—for so doing.

The first point of call with the Information Commissioner’s report is access to the Elmer database. Secondly, the Information Commissioner referred to the retention of records, which are of no concern and which may not comply with data protection principles. Thirdly, the report also refers to how SOCA develops retention policies which are data protection and human rights compliant. I hope that I can deal with all those matters as I know that the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, as chairman of the committee, will have been particularly concerned about how SOCA had been actively working on these recommendations.

I start with access to Elmer. As recommended in the report, SOCA has continued to maintain its robust policies and procedures in respect of access. It must be remembered that Elmer is a very important intelligence tool, not just in respect of financial crime but in respect of all levels of all crime. The use of financial intelligence is not an addition but an essential part of the wider armoury of techniques to investigate criminality. That said, obviously access to Elmer has to be limited and those wanting direct access have to go through a user agreement which sets very strict criteria and which is kept under review. It is also of importance that these are individual financial investigators rather than bodies themselves. SOCA provides guidance to users and all users are required to undertake training which is generally delivered by the National Policing Improvement Agency or some other similarly approved agency before accessing the database.

Having said that, I cannot give any assurance about who may have access to Elmer in the future but, of course, concerns of this House will be considered very carefully as we develop these items.

I move on to the question of record retention and deletion policy. SOCA has introduced a new retention regime that will delete suspicious activity reports that are more than six years old. It expects to complete this task very soon. I will add one further remark. I need not even say “very soon” because the task was completed today. I can assure the noble Lord that as of today there are 1,384,477 entries on the Elmer database, and that 584,351 entries were deleted in a recent exercise. All entries that were more than six months old were deleted today, so we achieved the aim of deleting them by the end of the year.

My third point on the Data Protection Act is that SOCA will implement a Data Protection Act and Human Rights Act-compliant retention policy in three months. It is important to note that the Elmer database does not focus specifically on collecting information relating to individuals. It is essentially an assembly of reports submitted in the light of the Proceeds of Crime Act, the Terrorism Act and associated regulations. SOCA has introduced processes that will provide for the immediate deletion of SARs that are confirmed as being not linked to criminality, and for the deletion of others after six years. That is why I was pleased to make the remark about what we achieved today.

The report also asked if there was a justification for the current arrangements for reporting SARs. We feel that setting a suspicion threshold would send the wrong signal to reporters, who may reduce their scrutiny. Experience shows that criminals will attempt to find ways to circumvent controls in order to avoid arousing suspicion—for example, by breaking down large deposits. Reports that may look minor may take on a much larger significance to law enforcement when matched with intelligence both within Elmer and beyond. A threshold might have the unintended and unwanted effect of causing us to miss vital intelligence opportunities.

I will deal with a couple of further questions. The first, which was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, referred to Somali piracy. We recognise the committee's concerns regarding possible links between the payment of ransoms and terrorist finance in Somalia. There is currently no evidence of any formal organisational relationship between pirates and terrorist organisations operating in Somalia. However, we are keeping this assessment under review. My honourable friend Mr James Brokenshire, who was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, is in receipt of the letter on this matter from the noble Lord, Lord Roper, and will provide an appropriate reply in due course. I cannot take that further and say precisely when it might appear.

The second point I will deal with, which concerns money-laundering and the Financial Action Task Force, was raised by my noble friend Lord Dykes.

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

The noble Lord is moving on from the question of Somali piracy, so I must draw his attention to the fact that he has not answered the main point that I made. One can have two views about whether it is meaningful to say that there is no direct evidence of ransom moneys reaching terrorists. However, I am not pressing the point and did not press it in my introductory question. The question that I pressed, to which he did not reply, was why the Government do not consider that the assembling of such ransoms should give rise to the filing of suspicious activity reports, because the ransoms concerned will undoubtedly be the proceeds of crime and will undoubtedly end up in the hands of criminals? In all our correspondence it has been impossible to get an answer on this point. That is why I used the somewhat unparliamentary term, “obfuscation”. Why are the Government not simply telling people who put together these ransoms that if they have reason to believe that these will end up in the hands of criminals—and I cannot believe that they do not have that—then they should file an SAR? That does not mean that the person who files the SAR is committing or admitting any wrongdoing at all. However, I find it hard to believe that since the British Government are, I assume, trying to prevent the laundering of the proceeds of ransoms around the world, are working with many other countries to do that, and have, I believe, an intelligence operation based in the Seychelles to compare evidence and to try to find out where this money goes to—

[Lord Hannay of Chiswick]

I am sorry; I am just coming to the end. I just was saying that I still find it very odd—it would be helpful if the Minister would reply on this point—that the Government do not consider that an SAR should be filed in such circumstances.

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, the noble Lord would never expect any obfuscation from me. He is a very distinguished former civil servant from the Foreign Office, a department which also has never obfuscated in any way whatever. I would prefer it if he would wait for a response from my honourable friend Mr James Brokenshire, which I am sure will be provided in due course. I think that that is as far as I can go on these matters, and I hope that the noble Lord will accept that. I am also mindful of the intervention of my noble friend the Chief Whip that I must move on.

I was briefly touching on the question of the Financial Action Task Force, and briefly making it clear to my noble friend Lord Dykes that it is reviewing global standards on countering money-laundering and terrorist financing. In February 2012 the FATF member countries will approve changes to the standards following this review. I hope that my noble friend will be prepared to wait for that review.

I hope that I have given a number of assurances that will satisfy noble Lords, even the noble Lord, Lord Hannay. I hope that he will be prepared to await the response from my honourable friend Mr Brokenshire. Again, I am grateful to all noble Lords for their interventions in this debate. I feel that we have had a useful discussion on these matters.