Immigration Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I wish to address four aspects of this complex Bill. The first is the importance of the pull factor in immigration and how best the Government should tackle it. Clause 55 gives the Secretary of State powers through subordinate regulations in the form of statutory instruments, of course, to,

“require certain employers to pay an immigration skills charge for each skilled worker from outside the EEA that they sponsor”.

It is good to see some explicit recognition by the Government that the shortage of skills in our domestic jobs market acts as a powerful incentive for employers to recruit from abroad, thus pulling immigrants into Britain. There has been too much emphasis on in-work benefits acting as a pull factor without the Government providing the evidence that this is a key incentive driving large numbers of immigrants. But our media are full of stories about shortages of skills within the UK, resulting in searches for qualified workers from overseas. Frank Field MP has just called for a crash programme to train young British unemployed people in building skills to supply the labour we desperately need to build more houses rather than, he argues, importing workers from abroad who in turn will require more houses to live in.

We read every week about the desperate shortage of nurses, with reports that hospital trusts want to recruit an additional 6,000 nurses from outside the EEA. The Commons Home Affairs Committee recently commented that the Government’s tier 2 migrant cap, “could have been responsible for a crisis in nurse recruitment”. I saw another recent story that the UK faces so wide a gap between supply and demand for long-distance lorry drivers that there are doubts that assembly plants, shops and supermarkets will be able to maintain the flow of supplies in peak periods. And we all know about the continuing shortage of youngsters with computer skills within the UK.

The Government’s answer to this in Clause 55 is to impose a charge on employers recruiting from outside the EEA in the hope of pushing companies to invest more in training. It is not clear whether hospital trusts recruiting nurses or doctors from outside the EEA will be expected to pay this charge, and perhaps the Minister could clarify whether public sector employers, including universities, will be included in the imposition of such charges. The implications for universities appointing academic staff from outside the EEA could be significant. But the underlying problem with this approach is that it ignores the problems of the English education system; it is particularly a problem in northern England, as we heard at Question Time today, in failing to motivate students or provide them with the skills the market needs. Cuts in further education and proposals that in future student nurses in England will be expected to pay for their training act as disincentives to acquiring the skills the country needs. There seems to be a complete absence of co-ordination across Government on this as the Home Office tightens controls on immigrants with skills while the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, the Department for Education and others cut back on training for those already here.

I have worked in Bradford with a social housing association which runs, as part of its social responsibility agenda, a superb apprenticeship scheme for the various building trades which is enormously oversubscribed. But then, another arm of government is making it harder for social housing associations to contribute to their communities in ways like this. Unless the Government take responsibility for the failings in our education and training systems, and their funding that contributes to the long-term skills shortages which drive inward immigration, they have no hope of reducing the determination of companies and public sector employers to recruit directly from abroad. I have told the noble Lord, Lord Green of Deddington, that Migration Watch should be campaigning for a massive government training programme for the domestic unskilled and unemployed.

My second point is about fees. Clause 59, and Schedule 12, provide powers to charge fees for services that were previously provided without charge, and for any services provided in connection with marriages. Again, this seems to be an example of the Government pursuing entirely contradictory policies. They are strongly in favour of marriage, as we have read in successive manifestos, but determined to charge for them in the future. Fees, as anyone familiar with taxation knows, are regressive: the poor pay more, in effect, than the rich. Imposition of fees will make the business of marriage more expensive for the poor. Is that the Government’s deliberate intention? Do the Conservatives regard marriage as important for the well-to-do, worthy even of offering tax concessions to encourage, but not worth investing public money into for those already marginal in our society?

My third point is about border security—Clauses 44 and 45. These focus on civil airlines and airport operators, although Clause 45 also deals with private vessels, of which there are a great many crossing to and fro across the English Channel, and up and down the Bay of Biscay. When I briefly answered on policing and anti-terrorism issues for the coalition Government in this House, I was struck by the unavoidably transnational nature of serious crime, including drug-smuggling, and the frequent use of private aircraft and private airstrips and heliports in pursuit of illegal activities. I am struck by the apparent absence of reference to private airstrips and helicopter landing pads in this clause, and in Schedule 10. Is it assumed that these are used only by the rich, and can therefore be left outside our tighter border controls?

The Minister may know that I have asked specific Questions about Brecqhou helicopters, which fly the Barclay brothers to and fro from within the UK border control area—devolved in the case of Brecqhou to the Guernsey authorities, which I understand are strongly discouraged from ever setting foot on the island—and various parts of continental Europe. Do the owners of a newspaper that campaigns for the defence of British sovereignty from continental encroachment themselves live outside the reach of British sovereignty, while benefiting from free movement within the UK? Are there others, including Russian oligarchs and Gulf royalty with homes across southern England, who fly from private helipads beyond border controls? Are we moving towards one set of border controls for ordinary people, and a far lighter regime for the super-rich? I hope the Minister will be able to assure us that controls on private flights and landing strips will also be tightened. We cannot be sure that,

“Persons excluded from the United Kingdom”—

in Clause 46 might not be smuggled in by such means, as well as other illegal immigrants and undesirables.

My fourth point is about the impact of the tiered visa system on patterns of movement into and out of the country. The Minister will know that I have recently been concerned with a personal issue in this area, related to spouse visas for talented young Britons seeking to return to the UK after some years of study and work abroad. In the context of this issue, which I do not, of course, wish to discuss further here, I did some comparative investigation of the situation that faces British citizens who have gone abroad for graduate study, as many of us have done in recent years—I used to encourage my brighter students to do so—most often to the United States of America, and then wish to return to the UK to take up employment.

Fifteen years ago there was very little difficulty or delay in bringing those whom such people had married, while abroad, back with them. Now it is a lengthy and costly process. I was particularly shocked by the case of a British citizen who had married a Japanese fellow student while in the USA; his wife was refused entry and forced to hire lawyers to support an appeal. I was more deeply shocked by the comment from a young man I have known since he was an undergraduate, now equipped with a mathematics PhD from a top US university, and married to an American with a similar PhD from the same university. He told me that he is now unlikely to return to the UK because the sense of hostility that faces non-British applicants makes him feel, “that my wife and my children would be unwelcome in my own country”. How much talent are we going to lose in the next generation if that impression spreads across talented expatriates outside the EEA? Exchanges with postgraduates currently within the USA have suggested to me that that feeling is already widespread.

The Tier 1 (Investor) Visa, on the other hand, welcomes those who are willing to bring over £2 million with them into the UK to buy a house in central London, for example. So we open our arms to the super-rich of Russia, China, Malaysia and the Gulf states, looking for somewhere to invest funds they may or may not have accumulated through means that are legal in this country, while raising obstacles to British citizens who have improved their skills and developed their reputations by studying and working abroad. The Tier 1 (Investor) Visa is worthy of a tax haven, not a self-respecting sovereign country; it fits in with a housing regime which promotes sales of newly-built homes in London to overseas buyers before they have been offered to British citizens, and allows them to be bought through anonymous offshore companies.

I note that the Bill has no proposals to tighten controls on Tier 1 visas. If raising fees for marriage is appropriate to this Bill, then transparency of ownership for non-commercial property within the UK must also be entirely appropriate to add. Are the Conservative Government really determined, with Mayor Boris Johnson’s support, to build a country fit for foreign money-launderers to live in? One law for the poor, again, and another for the rich. It seems easier for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Great Britain than for the young and talented to go through the eye of UK border controls.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, when we debate Bills in Committee and on Report, we are liable to be accused of making Second Reading speeches. Now that this is Second Reading, perhaps I will be forgiven for making one. I will look at the wider issues of immigration that are of course referred to in this Bill, which addresses some of the problems.

I support my noble friend the Minister’s view that we have benefited enormously from immigration into this country in the past and that we welcome immigrants to this country. However, it is a question of numbers. We cannot get away from numbers. The noble Baroness, Lady Afshar, just said that we have already made a modest 1% contribution to the refugee crisis taking place. To put that in context, that small number of Syrian refugees we are taking in is in addition to the 330,000 immigrants who came legally into this country in the last year. That contrasts rather forcibly with the undertakings that my right honourable friend the Prime Minister made that immigration should be limited to 100,000 a year—or to tens of thousands. Despite the number of times that that commitment has been made, we seem never to have met the 100,000 target. That is a problem.

We now face an immigration crisis across Europe of proportions never seen before. These are very large numbers of people indeed. The noble Lord, Lord Dubs, referred to Germany as being the conscience of Europe. Angela Merkel may well have been moved with compassion when she said that Germany would take 900,000 Syrian refugees, but I suspect she has regretted that remark ever since. She created enormous problems within her own party. Indeed, I would have thought that that remark was extremely ill-advised if she did not want to see the renaissance of extreme right-wing parties in Germany in future.

My noble friend Lord Horam referred to my right honourable friend the Home Secretary’s remarks at the Tory Party conference. The problem is that, if immigration is in too large numbers, it creates very serious stresses in the home nation. This is something we cannot overlook. At the moment we suffer from a major crisis in housing—in particular, in affordable housing. We are not building enough. This is a problem we have with our existing population. If we take in very large numbers of immigrants, they are almost invariably in greater need of affordable housing than the resident population in this country. That creates enormous resentment. This may well be one reason why UKIP has had a certain amount of electoral success in areas traditionally regarded as bastions of the Labour Party. We cannot overlook this, as my noble friend Lord Horam said. Immigration is a very high priority in the views of the people of this country. We cannot take unlimited numbers of people. I come back to what I said originally: it is a question of numbers.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I apologise for interrupting the noble Lord in a Second Reading speech. I entirely agree with him that we have a housing shortage. Might he possibly address the question of how we will overcome that shortage when we have such a remarkable lack of skilled labour to build houses within this country? Is there not a real problem that a major housebuilding programme now would draw in a very large number of people from abroad to build those houses?

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

The noble Lord, Lord Wallace, knows very well that it is a question not only of the shortage of skilled bricklayers and people who can build houses, but also of the enormous shortage of land on which you can build. This is all to do with our planning laws and is a much more complicated issue than just a question of the shortage of people.

If we control immigration and have a system of allowing in the people with the skills we need, I do not have any problem with that. The problem is if we allow very large numbers of people in who do not have those skills. That is a totally different issue. It is what puts enormous pressure on all our services at the moment. It is not only housing, which is the most obvious issue. The National Health Service seems to be creaking under the demands pressed on it at the moment. Our infrastructure and education are also under great pressure. With all these things, if you have enormous numbers of immigrants coming in, the pressure on public services inevitably grows and that creates resentment and difficulty.

With the EU referendum coming up, I refer to the question of European immigration. As we know, EU citizens are allowed into this country. We apparently do some survey to find out how many there are of them. The figures for last year were 330,000. That is net immigration, netted off against those going out. It is reckoned that about half that number are EU citizens—some 150,000. At the same time, some reports came out recently about 2 million EU citizens applying for national insurance numbers over a period of four years. That is an average of half a million per year. I know we are not comparing like with like here, but it seems that you must do something to reconcile these two numbers. You have half a million EU citizens applying for national insurance while, in theory because of the surveys we do, we had only 150,000 come into this country last year. I believe the number may be even bigger this year. When my noble friend comes to sum up, I would be grateful if he could confirm that 2 million EU citizens applied for national insurance numbers over the past four years. How does he reconcile that with the number of EU migrants that are supposed to have come to live here? We need statistics.

I also support the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, in saying that we need to know what the Government estimate to be the number of illegal immigrants in this country. If we do not have that number, it is extremely difficult to assess whether this Bill has been a success or failure in reducing that number.

Airport Security

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 17th December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

My noble friend raises another important point about the relationship with airlines. I assure him that we work very closely with all international partners and, where we can, we share important information with the airlines. They play an important role in areas such as advance passenger information, which in the UK is also shared with, for example, the Border Force.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, does this scrutiny extend to private airports and heliports? I was looking at the Channel Islands, for example, as a place which, formally speaking, is within our borders. Some months ago I looked at the helicopters flown between Brecqhou and Monaco. I am not aware that the Guernsey police ever visit Brecqhou, for example, but when passengers arrive there—it may just be the Barclay brothers and nobody else—there are no border controls. Do we make sure that private flights are covered? A considerable number of these come in and out of the United Kingdom, both to the mainland and to the Crown dependencies.

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

The noble Lord raises an important point about private flights. I assure him that security arrangements are in place at those airports. I will write to him on the specific airports that he mentioned.

Kurdistan Workers’ Party

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 3rd December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

Political aspirations are of course noble and those are the types of issues which should be addressed in the peace talks that we want the PKK to return to. But the fact is that the PKK has been responsible for 140 deaths of military police and civilians in Turkey just in recent months, and that is the reason it is proscribed as a terrorist organisation and why it will remain so.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, we understand the urgency of the Kurdish issue in Turkish politics, and of course now in both Syrian and Iraqi politics, but can the Government at the very least be active in saying to the AKP Government in Turkey that we welcome the peace negotiations between the PKK and the Government, but we think that the provision of better civil rights for the substantial Kurdish minority in Turkey is an important issue for the future, and that the treatment of the HDP over the past few months within Turkish domestic politics has been deeply unfortunate?

[Lord Bates]

A number of those points were raised at the EU/Turkey summit on Sunday which the Prime Minister attended. Of course there is an absolute need for those discussions to continue, but they must go through a diplomatic and political process; this is not to be decided by military violence.

Foreign and Commonwealth Office: Funding

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 19th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Courtown]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, has mentioned the ODA budget. We have an excellent record of leveraging the ODA for the broader priorities of Her Majesty’s Government, not just the important role of poverty alleviation but the other areas to which the noble Lord has drawn attention.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, when the Ukraine crisis broke out, the FCO really felt its lack of expertise on Russia. If the FCO’s staff is cut further, expertise to analyse what is happening at the moment in countries in other very sensitive areas such as Central Asia, the North Caucasus and the Middle East will be in short supply. Do the Government take that into account when considering whether they can further cut the FCO both at home and abroad?

[The Earl of Courtown]

My Lords, I always take careful note of what the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, has to say, due to his previous role in the department. Just to go into the number of posts, yes we have fewer posts than we had 10 years ago. However, since 2010 we have not closed any sovereign posts and we have opened or upgraded 18 posts under the network shift programme and strategic reprioritisation exercises, as well as deploying around 300 extra front-line staff in more than 30 countries.

Railways: Regional Passenger Trains

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Tuesday 7th July 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I will certainly take back the particular lines that the noble Lord mentioned. On authorities that are collaborating, TransNorth, for example, is a great collaboration of local authorities. We hope that such collaborations, by bringing local authorities together, demonstrate what the acute need is for given regions across the country.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that one evening last year I watched on the London evening news the announcement that the “clapped-out trains” from Thameslink were going to be replaced by brand new stock? The next evening, watching the Yorkshire evening news, I learned that the northern electricals, which may or may not be introduced on the TransPennine line, will be supplied by “refurbished Thameslink stock”. Is the northern powerhouse to be built on hand-me-downs from London, or on something rather better than that?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I think the noble Lord is being a bit disingenuous: he was part of the Government when elements of the northern powerhouse were addressed. He knows full well that the northern powerhouse is alive and well. Indeed, apart from the £38 billion the Government will invest in rail, we are getting HS2.

National Well-being

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, I very much welcome this debate. I share with the few who have spoken my enthusiasm for the topic and my view of its importance. I therefore much regret the very small number of people speaking from all Benches. I can remember five years ago or more, in my own party’s federal policy committee, being told that to have a working party on well-being and happiness was a woolly liberal topic that would arouse the scorn of the media. I read a book on happiness by one of my LSE colleagues at the time, which many thought was a woolly liberal book, written by an economist who only dared to do so because he was about to retire. The quality-of-life paper which my party debated at its last September conference was excellent. It drew on much more research than I had until then known was available. It was probably the first serious political party document that took this debate on board. I am very sorry that the Labour Party is so absent here, because it is absolutely the sort of topic that it ought to be taking on board. It is part of what our colleague, the noble Lord, Lord Glasman, is talking about when he talks about Blue Labour; the importance of community; the importance of social networks; and the importance of the non-economic factors, which old Labour ignored so dreadfully when it was knocking down the old housing communities and putting up those great and soulless estates.

The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, says that this issue is starting to creep into the mainstream of public policy, and we must all accept that the word “creep” is important here. It has some way to go. It is also of course at the heart of the yet loosely defined concept of “big society” in the Conservative Party. I wish there were more Conservatives also taking part in this debate. There is a large cross-party, all-party debate to be had on this subject. It is still, sadly, only beginning.

I am answering this debate because, as the Cabinet Office spokesman in the Lords, I am responsible for the Office of Civil Society and answer for the Office for National Statistics—although I stress, it is an independent body to which I am answerable, but have no influence over. I think that is a very important part of this debate, because if we are talking about getting more reliable measures—measures that everyone in the debate will trust and be able to argue over—we need something like an independent Office for National Statistics to be able to hold the ground on that. I very much welcome the work that it is doing and the encouragement that the Prime Minister is giving to that.

The Stiglitz report, one of the key documents on this—after the book on happiness by the noble Lord, Lord Layard, some years before—says in its executive summary:

“What we measure affects what we do … Choices between promoting GDP and protecting the environment may be false choices, once environmental degradation is appropriately included in our measurement of economic performance … if our metrics of performance are flawed, so too may be the inferences that we draw”.

The problem, as we all know, once one gets involved in this debate, is finding objective measures of well-being and of having to depend partly on subjective measures of well-being. The ONS is experimenting with different forms of subjective work. The international dimension of this—the OECD has already been mentioned—in the work of the Canadians, Australians and others, helps to feed in to a more informed debate. Sadly so far, on the whole, it is limited to the experts, think tanks and social science faculties, but I hope it will spill out into a national debate. As I say that, I can immediately see myself, or perhaps the noble Lord, Lord Layard, in front of Jeremy Paxman as he sneers, “Surely you don’t believe that well-being has any relevance”, let alone imagine what the Daily Mail will say about this. It is going to take a lot of time to build respect for a very important shift in the national debate. It starts from recognition that GDP as a measure of social progress is limited. It does not distinguish between economic activity associated with positive and negative social progress, such as the cost of long commutes, crime, divorce, dealing with natural disasters and so forth. It does not include those important functions performed in the household and voluntary sectors. What we are looking for is a means of measuring social capital and social added value as well as economic capital and economic added value.

I note also in the literature, which I have read with great interest over the last few days, that there is the question of how one measures the quality of life as well as the quantity that one consumes. The Stiglitz report was extremely valuable as a way station in this. I very much welcome the way in which our Prime Minister has taken up the debate, started under the last Government and a number of international organisations, and has done his best to take it forward. I thoroughly enjoyed his excellent speech last November, in which he said,

“it’s high time we admitted that, taken on its own, GDP is an incomplete way of measuring a country’s progress … all of life can’t be measured on a balance sheet”.

And he recognises that,

“a new measure won’t give the full story of our nation’s wellbeing, or our happiness or contentment or the rest of it … but it could give us a general picture of whether life is improving, and that does have a really practical purpose … it will open up a national debate about what really matters”.

He continues that,

“information will help government work out, with evidence, the best ways of trying to help to improve people’s wellbeing”.

That is what the Government are engaged in. That is what the coalition parties are entirely signed up to. We very much hope that the noble Lord, Lord Layard, will in time persuade the Labour Party to sign up to it as well—perhaps, even, to understand the purpose of what is now under way.

As has already been mentioned, the ONS is designing the best measures that it can and is undertaking a large-scale survey, the results of which will be published next July. I hope that will take us on to the next stage in a widening public debate. This will look at a range of areas, including social interaction, relationships, family, community, volunteering, the whole concept of fairness—relative incomes have been mentioned—and a sense of having control over one’s own life. That is a very important set of questions. These are factors that can clearly be influenced and shaped by public policy. To make a slightly partisan point, my dislike for socialism was nurtured by being a candidate in Manchester and working on those huge rebuilt council estates. I fought a constituency in 1974 where 98 per cent of the population lived in council accommodation, mostly flats. I had some real argument with the city planners, who thought that they knew best what was needed for the people who lived in those houses. It was a concept of passive citizenship, in which people had things done for them but had no control over their own lives. That is part of what we have to reverse, and part of what Labour in particular has to reverse, in some of the old Labour thinking that is still there.

We are making progress. Some of these data do not entirely relate to what government can do, but there are very wide implications for public policy across the board. The much greater importance that we need to give to the whole question of mental health is part of this. I thought that the public health White Paper took us one small step in the right direction in that. We all know that depression is the opposite of well-being, and looking at well-being takes us into that whole area.

I myself am very much struck by the importance of the built environment. It is the opposite of the central Manchester council estates in Saltaire, which is a wonderful community. We are forced to live next to each other, because it is all terraced housing. We have green space—there is a park. There is an institute at the centre of the village, and we all as a result know each other and interact with each other. It has a real sense of social capital. Even from just spending the weekends there, I know many more people in Saltaire than I do in my neighbourhood in London. I hope that I do not sound too much like Prince Charles in wanting to build that sort of community, but there are some real questions about the lack of wisdom of building those new estates on the edge of towns with two car spaces outside every house where you absolutely do not interact with your neighbours. You do not have a local high street or a community pub, and as a result you grow up without interacting with your neighbours. So neighbourhood, community and a sense of self-control are all part of this.

That takes us on to the localism agenda, which the coalition agenda is developing. We still have quite a long way to go. Being in control of your own lives also means having more self-government; it means encouraging active citizenship. Many of us also think that it means more urban parish councils and more local, local government. That is something that we have to work on to reverse the alienation of so much of our population from our current style of politics, with the passive observance of Prime Minister’s Question Time as a form of distant entertainment that in no sense involves you.

So this has very large implications for consumer culture and the extent to which marketing and advertising encourage people to substitute buying things for actually thinking what they really want. There is the question of how far government policy should attempt to alter the way in which marketing and advertising go. There is the whole question of social trust and social capital. So we have a very long way to go.

I welcome the little remnant of us who have taken on this debate, all calling for a wider national debate, which shifts the national debate on to a new ground. It is a huge challenge to the conventional wisdom and a challenge to all political parties. It is also a challenge to the economics profession, which I hope the noble Lord, Lord Layard, continues to push. I hope for further debate in this Chamber as part of the wider debate, and I suggest to the noble Lord, Lord Layard, that he persuades Labour Peers to give the subject a full Thursday afternoon debate, or as full as possible, because this is a challenge to us all.

Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 19th October 2011 Lords Chamber

Amendment 38 withdrawn.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, it may be for the convenience of the Committee if I report that there has been agreement among the usual channels that we should continue until 8 o’clock, at which point we should have hit our target for tonight. That will enable what is intended as a 60-minute dinner-hour debate to become a 90- minute end-of-business debate, which I have calculated will allow all speakers an additional three minutes to the advisory time. I hope that that is acceptable. Those who have come in early for the debate may wish to go and stretch their legs for 15 or 20 minutes.

Amendment 40 not moved.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Harris of Richmond]

My Lords, I think that my noble friend the Minister would be disappointed if I did not rise to support the amendment moved by the noble Baroness, Lady Henig. Like her, I acknowledge and welcome many of the government amendments, minor though I believe them to be, including this one on the protocol. However, I am still concerned that the checks and balances on PCCs remain inadequate. While they remain inadequate, chief officers are very vulnerable. I am concerned about the impact this could have on the confidence of senior officers, so I commend this amendment because it would afford at least a minimum level of protection. While this is a start, as the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, pointed out, we need to consider seriously whether in the light of recent developments, this is the right time to be implementing major reforms.

I have consistently expressed my concern that the powers of the panel are not strong enough to act as a proper check on PCCs, but I am also concerned that the wider checks and balances are not strong enough either. This includes checks and balances between PCCs and chief officers, and regulating their relationship effectively. So the amendments dealing with this aspect are welcome because they are helpful up to a point.

All this brings us back to the fundamental problem of the Bill: it puts too much power in the hands of one person and places too little emphasis on good governance. My noble friend the Minister has said on several occasions that she will ensure that the principles of good governance are strengthened in the Bill, so the amendment concerning the protocol is helpful in that it defines roles and functions clearly. However, I would ask her to explain exactly which other principles have been addressed and strengthened. I am particularly concerned that a fundamental weakness of the Bill remains the reliance on individuals rather than embracing a more corporate approach.

Corporate bodies have well-established rules of governance and self-regulation which are well understood and thoroughly tested. We have discussed at length both in Committee and on Report why this is not true of corporations sole. Indeed, other amendments at Third Reading are related to this point. It also means that if there is no internal system for regulating a corporation sole properly, because it is comprised of an individual rather than a collective, that regulation must come independently from outside if it is to be credible. The Bill is seriously flawed in this respect, and particularly in relation to senior officer appointments and dismissals, audit and who will check how public money is spent, complaints and the conduct of both PCCs and senior officers. The Bill sets out only very limited external regulation for all these functions.

The Bill’s proposals are particularly worrying in respect of complaints about conduct. So far as PCCs are concerned, it is lamentable to suggest that they should be regulated only by reference to a criminal standard of behaviour; everything else will be down to informal resolution between the PCC and the panel. It is not clear what that will mean in practice because it will be subject to regulations which have not been developed. This is not an adequate way of handling matters which so clearly impact on public confidence. The Bill is also inadequate in relation to conduct issues among senior officers. I have argued consistently that giving chief officers powers to deal with disciplinary matters in relation to their immediate senior team is a recipe for corruption. Recent events have demonstrated that public confidence is critical, so this must be changed.

Even under the current, much more robust regime, public confidence is badly dented—and that is without these new provisions which say in effect that the police should investigate themselves. We should ask what the public perception of the recent scandals would have been if the decision to suspend and discipline senior officers other than the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police had been left entirely up to the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. I am in no way impugning the integrity of Sir Paul Stephenson. Like other noble Lords—I follow the noble Baroness, Lady Henig—I believe that he has been an outstanding officer. He will be a very sad loss to policing in this country. However, it is a matter of public perception and what they will make of this arrangement if there are accusations about police corruption.

At present, the Bill manages to combine too much lassitude for individuals with too little regulation. This is a direct consequence of the inadequate corporate and governance structures. I am also inclined to agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, that the events that we have seen in recent days are also a direct consequence of politicising policing and a stark warning about the dangers of the press influencing policing in a political environment. This will make all senior officers—particularly chief officers—vulnerable to the winds of political fortune in the new world of directly elected police governors. For this reason it is essential to improve protection for chief officers to enable them to exercise their operational responsibility without fear or favour as the noble Lord, Lord Dear, told us earlier.

If we must take this Bill forward, it is surely now evident that these flaws must be resolved. I join with the noble Baroness, Lady Henig, in urging the Government to think again. We need to strengthen internal as well as external checks and balances, which means implementing a more corporate approach to guard against the dangers of putting too much power in the hands of one individual. We need a model that is more transparent and effective at self-regulation; this includes a stronger role for the panel. We need to ensure that the principles of good governance are applied to embed this more rigorous approach. We need a proper misconduct regime as a key plank of monitoring effective behaviour and governance.

Arguments to pause and reflect on this Bill are now overwhelming. We need to ensure that chief officers are properly protected from political inference but we also need to learn and apply lessons that will be learnt from the review that HMIC and the IPCC have been asked to undertake before the Bill is finalised. I am also conscious that there will shortly be another police Bill this time dealing with the national landscape.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, we are at Third Reading. We are dealing with a specific amendment. I ask the noble Baroness to be as brief as possible, since we have a Statement to follow on some of the other issues with which she is dealing.

[Baroness Harris of Richmond]

And finally, I cannot resist asking the Government why they have resisted making the protocol statutory until now. It certainly does not deal with what would have happened in similar circumstances under the proposed new regime where the chief police officer would have been in charge of dealing with allegations against his senior team.

This has been my last main speech in this debate. I have found it profoundly the most debilitating, distressing and appalling police Bill that has ever been my misfortune to have dealt with in the 12 years that I have been in your Lordships’ House. I regret deeply that there has been no real concern placed on looking at what my noble friend earlier called, “the very important checks and balances”. They are not here.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill]

My Lords, I rise rather hesitantly, because I feel intimidated in talking in this debate, which seems to be populated by QCs. I am neither a QC nor a lawyer. I rise to give a more layman's viewpoint on behalf of those, like me, who are not adept in the intricacies of the law.

No one on any side of this debate is trying to stop universal jurisdiction for the prosecution of suspected war criminals. That must be stated clearly. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, said, the amendment is unnecessary and, I would say, even unhelpful. As many noble Lords will know, the usual course at the moment is that the police investigate and pass a file to the Crown Prosecution Service if they believe that such an offence has occurred, if there is a realistic chance of conviction and, as noble Lords have said, if it is in the public interest.

I read Hansard carefully after the previous debate—that is why I was inhibited by the cabal of QCs who were speaking—and I particularly noted the comments of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Goldsmith, whom I know cannot be here today but who has intimated that he is against the amendment left on the Marshalled List. He said in Committee that,

“there are two elements in the code for Crown prosecutors. One is the test as to the adequacy of the evidence and the second is the public interest. Both have to be satisfied before a prosecution takes place”.—[Official Report, 16/6/11; cols. 1008-9.]

For non-lawyers, it is perhaps useful to say so.

Comment has been made about the current Director of Public Prosecutions, who is universally admired. Those who have inquired of Mr Starmer have been given reassurance that, if extra resources are needed to pursue prosecutions, they will be there. If people who are at the moment going to the magistrates’ court to seek a private prosecution, in advance of the alleged criminal coming to this country, were to give that evidence to the Crown Prosecution Service, the CPS would investigate the case before that person then comes to this country. That seems to me pretty good.

I particularly disagree with the amendment—and the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, touched on this—because the DPP does not need to be told, as it says in the amendment, that he “shall give consent”. I hope noble Lords have confidence, as I have, in the Directors of Public Prosecutions, both past and present, so to do. I am slightly dismayed that the noble Lord, Lord Macdonald, was unable to be with us in Committee and, for obvious reasons, cannot be here today. He was also a Director of Public Prosecutions and it is very important to know what he would say.

It is worth mentioning the difference with a private prosecution, via an arrest warrant in a magistrates’ court, where a much lower prima facie case needs to be made. The magistrate is shown the alleged evidence but that court does not have the facilities to investigate that case in more than a superficial manner. The arrest warrant could then be issued if the paperwork looks good—it is only paperwork. The alleged criminal is not informed. No basic defence can be submitted and, if that person comes to this country, under that arrest warrant he could be put in jail for a couple of nights while the DPP decides whether to prosecute. Many people believe that in the many cases that come forward, for one reason or another, they would not have involved a prosecution. The tests used by the magistrate amount to,

“little more than asking whether the papers disclose an arguable case”—

I take that comment from legal advice given in an article that has just recently been written.

This has not been mentioned by other speakers but I would go on to the practicalities. Can it be right that people who have served in their countries—whichever country—as, say, a Defence Minister, Foreign Minister or a member of the armed forces and who are no longer such, and who come to this country, should be liable for arrest at the magistrates’ court rather than be under the consideration of the DPP?

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I hesitate to interrupt the noble Lord but I remind him that we are on Report and this is becoming rather more of a Second Reading speech than a speech on Report, which should be narrowly connected to the amendment under discussion.

[Lord Palmer of Childs Hill]

Thank you. I am happy to bring it back to the amendment. The amendment supposes that it is right to instruct the Director of Public Prosecutions what he or she should do. I believe that DPPs past and present are able so to do without the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Carlile of Berriew]

I am grateful to my noble friend for allowing me to interrupt, and I am extremely surprised that we have not heard my noble friend on the Front Bench intervening in the way in which he intervened on my noble friend Lord Palmer of Childs Hill a few minutes ago. What my noble friend is saying is out of order, inappropriate and not related to the amendment. She is having a rant at Mrs Livni.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I was considering rising on precisely that point. This is Report, and we are intended to stick very closely to the amendment. This speech is ranging very widely, much more widely than is normal on Report.

[Baroness Tonge]

Nevertheless, my Lords, this is an extremely important issue that shows the general public how our Government conduct themselves. It is important that these things should be said and put on record. I am not going to be silenced on the grounds that this is Report. Many other people have talked at length on other subjects.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

I am very sorry, but we are on Report, and there are rules of the House. I understand the passion with which the noble Baroness is speaking, but the rules on Report are rather tight, and there are other occasions on which one can make these points. I think the sympathy of the House is limited in this respect. We need to address the amendment, and that briefly.

[Baroness Tonge]

My Lords, this puts me in some difficulty because I wanted to contrast the way we had altered our law at the request of a foreign Government, which is how it is perceived, and how we plan—

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bach]

My Lords, I can be very brief and start by saying how grateful the House should be to the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, for explaining this amendment so clearly. We support the amendment. It seems sensible; and it seems equally sensible for the Government, when a sensible amendment is put before them, to react favourably. It would cost them nothing to accept the amendment and would put right something that has been slightly wrong in this section of the 2003 Act. As the noble Lord said, this is a classic example of unintended consequences. His analysis of the law seems to us to be correct and it would be sensible for the Government to accept the amendment.

I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Browning, for having sent a letter to all interested parties on 24 June, included in which is a part that addresses this particular issue. She argued that no formal consultation had taken place between the police and the Government although there had been some informal consultation. She suggested that the Government would not give way on this amendment but we will wait for the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, to answer for the Government. If the noble Lord, Lord Thomas of Gresford, were minded to push this extremely sensible amendment to a vote, we would support it.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, this amendment is near identical to one tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Lester, during Committee stage of this Bill, and to which we gave a fairly full response at the time, so I will be brief. We promised the noble Lord in my response at the time that we would give the matter further consideration. Having done so, I am afraid that the advice we have received is that we remain unconvinced that we want to make an amendment that would make it easier for a convicted offender to sue the police for damages until we hear good answers to the questions and issues that I mentioned in Committee and which I will not repeat here.

We have looked at this again and take the view that the previous Government also took when the issue was raised in 2009. The House should be very clear that Section 329 does not give the police carte blanche to use disproportionate force. They are still subject to the criminal law which permits only reasonable force. All that Section 329 does is raise the bar by making it more difficult for criminals to get financial benefit from situations where they were the ones committing an imprisonable offence. It is reasonable and fair to treat a person who holds the office of constable in the same way for these purposes as any other member of the public. We should not rush to the assumption that it is an unintended consequence for the police to enjoy the protection of Section 329. As I have suggested, the police will inevitably be the people most likely to be able to invoke Section 329, given that their job involves confronting people who are in the course of committing imprisonable offences. The text of Section 329 supports this since subsection (5) specifically extends the protection to people who believe their act was necessary to

“apprehend, or secure the conviction, of the claimant after he had committed an offence”.

I therefore remain unconvinced that an amendment to Section 329 of the 2003 Act in the way proposed by the noble Lord is the right way forward. I hope that after the reassurance that we have again considered this issue the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

I note that my noble friend Lord Lester raised this matter in the Policing and Crime Bill 2009, and that at that stage undertakings were given by the noble Lord, Lord Brett, on behalf of the then Government to consult the police on the unintended consequences. That was reiterated on Report, and in February of last year, the noble Lord, Lord Bach, said that consultation had not yet taken place, and it still has not taken place. I do not think that it is appropriate that this matter should be put on the shelf until we have another Bill into which it can be inserted. It is very important that the police should not be able to shelter behind a provision that clearly was not designed for them, as the noble Lord, Lord Bach, has just acknowledged. Consequently, I propose to test the opinion of the House.