Border Force

Debate between Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown and Mark Harper

Wednesday 4th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s comment. I had the great pleasure of visiting Tilbury with her early in my time as Immigration Minister, and was very impressed with the engagement of staff there. As she says, the report confirms making Border Force a stand-alone organisation in the Home Office was the right thing to do. It has enabled the organisation to focus on delivering on the operating mandate, and I think that under the new permanent leadership of Sir Charles Montgomery, that process will continue.

[Dr William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)]

Is the substance of what is reported in the national newspapers accurate or inaccurate, and what challenges does the Minister think still remain?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown and Mark Harper

Monday 11th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

That issue was raised during a recent debate in Westminster Hall, and the Government continue to keep it under review. My hon. Friend may be interested to know that this afternoon I will meet officers of the all-party group on human trafficking, including my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), the Baroness Butler-Sloss and Anthony Steen, and I hope we will have further discussions in due course.

[Dr William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)]

Does the Minister believe that the sentences available to the courts are stringent enough to stop unscrupulous agents misleading and forcing women into harsh domestic labour and the sex industry in the United Kingdom?

[Mr Harper]

I think the sentences that are available are harsh enough. It is sometimes difficult to get evidence to prosecute people for the right offences. For example, people are often not necessarily prosecuted for trafficking offences when other offences are more easily proven. The range of sentencing powers is available: it is our job to make sure that they are properly used by prosecutors.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown and Mark Harper

Tuesday 7th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question. The initial response to the data-matching pilots has been very positive. The Electoral Commission will publish its own independent assessment in March, and we will be saying a little more about that in our response to the Select Committee. Data matching opens up ways of ensuring that the register is more complete and accurate and requires voters to do less work.

[Dr William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)]

Will the Minister assure me that he and his colleagues will carefully examine the implementation of the individual electoral registration which has already taken place in Northern Ireland, that any lessons will be learned and that any necessary changes will be made to enhance the situation?

[Mr Harper]

I can absolutely give the hon. Gentleman that assurance. We have already set out some of the lessons we have learned, such as on implementing a carry-forward from the beginning. I have visited Northern Ireland, talked to the chief electoral officer there, looked at some of the very exciting outreach work that people there are doing to get younger voters registered and talked to people about how data matching works. We have learned lessons already and we will continue to work with people in Northern Ireland.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown and Mark Harper

Tuesday 18th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

The amendments relate to the date of the election and it is worth touching on the points that a number of hon. Members have made about the coincidence of the proposed date of 7 May 2015 with the date of the devolved elections. It is worth saying, as we said in Committee, that it is entirely possible and, indeed, likely that, regardless of whether or not this Bill was introduced, the UK general election could have been held on the same day as those devolved elections if this Parliament had run for five years. In some sense, the Bill provides an opportunity, because it has highlighted and crystallised that fact at an early stage, when we have the chance to debate the consequences and do something about it.

As the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said, and as we discussed in Committee, I wrote to all the party leaders in the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament proposing to give their Assembly or Parliament the power to extend its term by up to six months. That was to go alongside the existing power to shorten the term by six months to provide a window of a year in which it could vary the date of the election to avoid that once-in-20-year coincidence with the Westminster election.

[Dr McCrea]

The Electoral Commission’s letter said that there was a

“need for a comprehensive research study on the implications of combining elections”

and that the Commission was “not aware” that that work had taken place up to the moment of writing. Has that research commenced?

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill

Debate between Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown and Mark Harper

Tuesday 12th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I am going to make some more progress, or else I will be in danger of not answering the significant number of points made in this debate.

I am conscious of having given the Committee, through today’s programme motion, an extra hour of time, and I want to make sure that we reach our debate on the question that we will put to people in the referendum.

Amendments 6 and 126 suggest that the Electoral Commission should have a role in assessing the suitability of the poll date. Amendment 6 goes further, suggesting that the Electoral Commission should recommend the date and the length of the referendum period. I do not think it is right in principle that the Electoral Commission should have any of those roles. It is surely right that if the Government intend a referendum to be held, they should propose the date, which should then be discussed and agreed by Parliament. Proposing that the Electoral Commission should assume responsibility drags the Electoral Commission, which should be neutral, into the heart of that political debate, and that is not appropriate. That is why the Government are not able to accept those amendments.

Amendment 225, which was tabled by the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer), who spoke last, proposed to change the referendum date to that of the next general election. Clearly, that was designed to undermine the commitment to move quickly on our reform process. Delaying the referendum to 7 May 2015, which is the date of the next scheduled general election under our Fixed-term Parliaments Bill, does not make any sense. Having a referendum on the voting system for the general election on the same day that the general election is to be held does not make sense.

I shall now deal with some issues raised during the debate. The hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar—I hope he will forgive me if I do not pronounce that quite right, because I do try—opened the debate, making clear his view that the respect agenda was not intact and referring to the counting of the results. The Government have made it clear—I know that the Electoral Commission shares this view—that counting the election results first is important, because it does matter who governs Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. That is the plan; the referendum result will be counted when those elections are out of the way. So I think that the respect agenda is intact.

My hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Ms Bagshawe) picked up well on the contradictory nature of the debate coming from those on the Benches opposite: an argument was being put that the AV referendum would drown out the debate on national issues, yet simultaneously another argument was being made that the national issues would mean that the referendum debate would not get a proper hearing. She correctly spotted that, and I do not think that the point was adequately answered. I am happy to give way to the hon. Member for South Antrim (Dr McCrea) if he still wishes to intervene.

[Dr McCrea]

If the counting for the Assembly elections is resolved, we still have to address the counting of the council elections. Is that to wait until after the counting of the referendum? Where do we come in, because we already have two elections set for the same day?

[Mr Harper]

The Government’s position is very clear: there is an imperative to get the results of the elections to Parliament, the Assemblies and local councils decided first, because it is important who runs those organisations. The result of the referendum is important, but given that any change will not come in until the next election, the counting of the referendum will take place after the other counts. The Government have made that position clear and it is shared by the Electoral Commission. This might be a little frustrating for those who want the referendum result to be given as early as possible, but it is important that elections are counted first. That was the very clear sense that emerged from the previous Parliament when we debated when the general election count should take place. Results of elections need to be heard first.

My hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin), who is in his place, referred to the Government’s view of the referendum outcome and gave all sorts of thoughts as to how we had arrived at the date. Of course the Government are neutral about the outcome of the referendum. The two coalition parties are not, but the Government do not have a view. When the Deputy Prime Minister and I were considering the Bill and its details that was the view that we jointly took.

I also do not take my hon. Friend’s view, which we debated a little following his intervention, about treating votes differently. I do not buy the argument that, because some parts of the United Kingdom are voting and some are not, that in some sense treats voters differently. Even voters in the parts of England that do not have other elections next year are perfectly capable of listening to the arguments. They have the same ability to go out to vote as anybody else, and I do not understand this argument about differential turnout that he and other hon. Friends raised.

Electoral Administration Reform

Debate between Lord McCrea of Magherafelt and Cookstown and Mark Harper

Wednesday 16th June 2010 Westminster Hall

[Dr William McCrea (in the Chair)]

Interventions on the Minister must be short, if they are to be allowed.

[Mr Harper]

The Minister will try to ensure that his answer is shorter than the intervention.

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point; it should be heard not only by his returning officer but by returning officers across the country. However, most parts of the country have local elections almost every year. Another factor is that splitting up the two sets of elections would hugely increase the cost of holding them. As I said, the better solution is to ensure that returning officers think about such matters and plan accordingly, ensuring that they staff the elections properly and have properly sized polling districts. Those are all matters within their control. That is a more sensible solution.