Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Harper Excerpts

Monday 27th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

2. What her policy is on the payment of fees for a fast-track border control service at airports.

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

Border Force is committed to improving the experience of all passengers at our ports in support of the Government’s long-term economic plan, including the delivery of value-added services such as fast-track queuing. When such a service is delivered, it is appropriate that, at the very least, the costs of such a service are met by the passengers or airlines that receive the benefit.

[Mr Sheerman]

What seems to be emerging from this Government policy is a class system for going through airports. My ordinary constituents have to wait in long queues, and sometimes very long queues, whereas people who are wealthy—bankers, Mr Abramovich and people like that—have a special relationship that means that they do not go through security and are fast-tracked. I know that that is going on and it is a class system for who comes in and out of this country. What is the Minister going to do to reassure my constituents that that is not happening?

[Mr Harper]

It is difficult to know where to start; there were so many inaccuracies in that question. First, in the case of 99.6% of passengers, we meet our queuing requirements and we have now largely fixed the problems we inherited with Border Force and queuing. Secondly, everyone who comes through our airports has their details checked and it is clear in the operating mandate that 100% should be checked. We have fast-track approaches where people pay fees that provide extra resources so that we can deliver that service without damaging the service received by everybody else.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

London Gatwick airport in my constituency introduced automatic e-gates for departures for all passengers some time ago. May I seek assurances from my hon. Friend that Gatwick will be included in future fast-track border entry, which will be great for local business and great for that important gateway into the UK?

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. He will be aware that I recently had the opportunity to open the e-gates at the south terminal at Gatwick that mean that British citizens and European economic area passengers can get access to the United Kingdom more quickly with their chipped passports. We are looking into developing a range of services so that those who bring value, business, growth and jobs to the country can get here more efficiently. That is something that all Members should welcome.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

For many years, the Home Office, and before that, the UK Border Agency, have offered people premium or priority immigration services, with set timelines, but they have not always managed to meet those timelines. What progress is the Minister making on being able to deliver all immigration services within the time promised?

[Mr Harper]

As a member of the Select Committee on Home Affairs, my hon. Friend will know that the latest data, provided to that Committee, show that we have made considerable progress in reducing the backlog of applications. He will also know that we have published our new service standard—I will write to Members shortly, setting that out—which gives customers much clearer, more transparent expectations about how long they should wait for their immigration applications to be dealt with. That will be a considerable improvement in customer service standards.

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

3. What recent representations she has received on the effect of the cost of a certificate in knowledge of policing on the recruitment to the police of black and minority ethnic groups and disadvantaged groups; and if she will publish the equalities impact assessment of that policy.

UN Syrian Refugees Programme

Mark Harper Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Home Secretary if she will make a statement on the UN settlement programme for vulnerable Syrian refugees.

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

More than half the Syrian population of 9.3 million is in need of humanitarian assistance, and 2.3 million people have been displaced from Syria to neighbouring countries. This is a crisis of international proportions and needs a commensurate response from the international community. The Government are proud to be playing their part in that response, and share the view of the UN Secretary-General that the priorities must be to

“assist the Syrian parties in ending the violence and achieving a comprehensive agreement for a political settlement”,

and ending the suffering of the Syrian people. No one should underestimate the difficulties ahead, but we are determined to strive for a peaceful settlement through the Geneva II process, which starts later this week and is working towards the establishment of a transitional governing body for Syria.

The Government continue to believe that the best way to address the suffering of the Syrian people should be to provide humanitarian assistance to displaced people, in partnership with neighbouring countries and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Before last week, the Government had provided £500 million for the Syrian relief effort, of which more than £480 million had been allocated to partners in Syria and the region. That has helped more than 1 million people. Almost 320,000 people are being provided with food assistance each month in Syria and neighbouring countries, and more than 244,000 people in Syria have been offered medical help. The Government continually press for better access and protection for humanitarian convoys inside Syria so that aid can get to the millions in need inside the country. That represents the UK’s largest ever response to a humanitarian crisis.

We are leading the way in helping the Syrians suffering from the humanitarian crisis as the second largest donor, behind the US, helping refugees, and through consideration of Syrian asylum claims under our normal rules. In the year to last September, we had already recognised more than 1,100 Syrian nationals as refugees.

We are very aware that some, including the UNHCR, would like to see a more proactive programme of resettlement of refugees who are currently hosted by countries neighbouring Syria. We have considered those options very carefully and respect the views of those countries who favour a resettlement programme, but we think that our priority should continue to be to provide humanitarian assistance to displaced people in the region, in partnership with neighbouring countries, the UNHCR and other UN and non-governmental partners. Most of those who are displaced want to return home as soon as it is safe to do so, and protection in the region affords them that hope.

Beyond immediate humanitarian assistance, our priority must be to help neighbouring countries to provide sustainable protection in the region. That should be our focus, rather than resettlement or providing humanitarian admission to Syrians—initiatives that can provide only very limited relief and have only a token impact on the huge numbers of refugees.

The UK can be proud of its contribution but there is still more to do. Last week, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development pledged a further £100 million in aid at the pledging conference in Kuwait, taking our contribution to £600 million.

I recognise that this is a highly emotive issue and one that continues to require real action through high levels of international co-operation, both in the region and more widely. The UK has a proud tradition of providing protection to those in need, and this Government are committed to continuing to playing our full part in the international response to the humanitarian crisis in Syria. Our response to date is one of which we can be proud.

[Yvette Cooper]

I am sorry the Home Secretary has not come to the House for this question.

When the House opposed military intervention in Syria, both sides were adamant that we had an even greater moral obligation to provide humanitarian support in that dreadful conflict. The position is now desperate. Two million refugees have fled their country, more than half of whom are children.

Most of the support is rightly being provided in the region, particularly by Syria’s neighbours. Britain has led the way, through Government aid and the generosity of the British people, in providing outside help, but we have also been asked by the UN to join its programme for the most vulnerable refugees. I spoke to the UN this morning. The programme is for those whom the UN believes will find it hardest to survive in the camps in the region, such as abandoned children who have no other protection or support; torture victims, who may be suffering immense physical and mental distress; those who need urgent medical help; mothers of young children who have lost their husbands and relatives and are vulnerable; and those who have been abused in the camps. They are not asylum seekers. They cannot travel here or elsewhere to apply for asylum. They are already UN-certified refugees.

Other countries—France, Spain, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, even Luxemburg and Moldova, and Australia, Canada and the USA—have agreed to help. Those countries have offered places, taking the UN well on its way towards its target. Britain is being asked to provide only limited help as part of the wider programme, but the Government have refused. The Minister described such help as “token”, but it is not token for a child who is given a home. He dismissed the UN programme in favour of regional support, but it is not an either/or question. As every other major western country understands, some vulnerable refugees need a different kind of help. This is not about border control or immigration policy, but about our long tradition of sanctuary. How can we ask Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon to keep their borders open or to keep helping millions of people if Britain will not do its bit for a few hundred of the most vulnerable, or if we will not even take in those with British relatives who are desperate to help? Charities like Oxfam and Save the Children are urging us to join this programme. It would be shameful for Britain to refuse.

Will the Minister tell the Home Secretary not to turn her back on vulnerable refugees? Will he tell her to look urgently at how many places Britain can provide? The Prime Minister said:

“We should encourage other countries to step up to the plate”

and that we must

“fulfil our moral obligations to those people who will suffer.”—[Official Report, 18 December 2013; Vol. 572, c. 744.]

He is exactly right. This is a moral obligation. How can we encourage others if we do not act?

[Mr Harper]

Listening to the shadow Secretary of State’s response, I do not think that she could have listened to a word that I said. On the scale of help and support the United Kingdom is giving to the region, our level of aid support dwarfs that of most other European countries. Some countries are willing to take very small numbers—sometimes just two figures, by which I mean 10 or 20—and they are not providing financial support. We are the second largest donor: we are helping not hundreds but hundreds of thousands of people in the region by providing water, food and medical supplies. That has to be the right way. Indeed, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development has been one of the leading players working with UNICEF on a programme to help about 15,000 vulnerable children in Syria and the neighbouring countries. That has to be the right solution, rather than offering to take token numbers of people compared with the millions of people in need and the hundreds of thousands of people we are helping in the region.

We are stepping up and doing our part, not just on aid but in the work we are doing on the diplomatic front to help to bring the Geneva II talks, which my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has been leading, to a successful conclusion. That has to be the long-term solution. It has to be in the region, making sure that those people can return home when the country is safe for them to do so. I am sorry that the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) did not acknowledge the work that we are doing, with our European partners, to lead that approach.

[Sir Menzies Campbell (North East Fife) (LD)]

There is no dispute that the Government have led the way in the provision of financial aid; nor is there any dispute that the Government have helped to lead the way in relation to a political settlement, but the children of Syria have suffered grievously. Are we really saying that we cannot take a few hundred of those who have suffered most, or are we now so intimidated by UKIP that we have abandoned our humanity?

[Mr Harper]

I agree with the right hon. and learned Gentleman that children are among those most at risk. One example of what we are doing for children in particular is our work with UNICEF in Syria and the region to provide help not to a few hundred children, but to 15,000. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development has been leading this initiative with UNICEF. In terms of the numbers we can help, it is better to help tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of people in the region than the frankly relatively small numbers that some European countries are talking about. They are taking very small numbers of people and they are not providing aid. This country is playing a leading role and we can be proud of that.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

May I declare an interest? I visited the Domiz refugee camp in Iraqi Kurdistan in November, where I saw facilities for the protection of children, because of some issues that arise in huge refugee camps. Will the Minister explain why he believes his Government should have a policy that is to the right of UKIP?

[Mr Harper]

I do not understand the hon. Gentleman’s obsession with other political parties. We are taking this view because we think it is the right way to get the maximum help to the largest number of people. The £600 million we are spending—not everyone agrees with our significant international aid commitments, but we have met our 0.7% aid target and are proud of the help we can give to those most vulnerable—is helping hundreds of thousands, not hundreds, of people in the region with food, water and medical attention. That is the right priority.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

The Government can indeed be extremely proud of what they have done in financial terms, and the tens and hundreds of thousands of people the Minister mentions of course have a great deal to thank us for, but does he not accept that what the UNHCR has asked for—that a small number of extremely vulnerable children be helped by coming to this country—we could do at a very limited cost to ourselves, and not as an alternative to the things he is talking about, but as well as?

[Mr Harper]

We have taken the view that the best way to help people is in the region. Most of the Syrian refugees do not want to come to another country; they want to return to Syria when it is safe, and by supporting them in the region, we enable them to do so. That is the right way to help significant numbers of people. Our support is helping not hundreds but hundreds of thousands of people, which is the right thing to do.

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

While in no way setting aside the overall disaster of the refugee situation caused by the Syrian conflict, I ask the Government to pay specific attention to the plight of the Palestinian refugees in the al-Yarmouk camp, who are being slaughtered and dealt terrible blows as a result of this conflict, which is not their conflict. The Minister says that of course one of our objectives is that the refugees should be able to go home, but the Palestinian refugees have no home to go to, and their plight must be given special attention in the overall tragedy. Will he give that specific commitment to the House?

[Mr Harper]

I am pleased to tell the right hon. Gentleman that actually we are helping. UK funding is supporting the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in its work with Palestinian refugees, providing support for more than 350,000 Palestinian refugees in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. I am pleased to give him the reassurance he asks for.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

France has been mentioned. Just how many refugees is it taking? Are we not spending 15 times more than France on humanitarian aid? Our Parliament refused to bomb Syria; France wanted to bomb it. Which approach is more likely to produce peace and light—our approach or the French approach?

[Mr Harper]

In my initial response, I deliberately did not set out details of our European partners, but my hon. Friend has specifically asked me to. Yes, France has offered to take a few hundred refugees, but it is only prepared to put in £25 million—a significantly smaller amount than us and several other smaller European countries. We are stepping up and doing what is necessary. I think that some other European countries need to reflect on their contribution—if they did, they might look to do a little more.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

Everyone agrees that Britain’s international aid effort is significant, but the Minister is missing the point about refugees. If Britain does not step up, other countries already threatening to shut their borders will see no reason to continue. The population of Lebanon, which I recently visited with World Vision, has grown by a third because of the refugee flows. We need to lead by example, and that is essentially the point of today’s question, which I hope he will take seriously, instead of referring to this as tokenistic. It is too important for that. We need to step up.

[Mr Harper]

If I may say so, I think the hon. Lady is missing the point. Neighbouring countries have significant numbers of refugees because they are neighbouring countries, and of course there are family connections. Ultimately, the refugees want to return home. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development was in Lebanon only last week. Part of the point of our huge financial effort is to support Lebanon and Jordan to help them deal with the refugees. That is the whole purpose of our funding. We are not leaving those countries to give the support themselves; we are putting our shoulder to the wheel and assisting them in providing it in the region.

[Mr Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

Given that the cost of resettlement is a significant amount of money per person, surely that money is better spent on the ground, where it can immediately save lives. Given that other countries have not lived up to their donor responsibilities, what more can be done to persuade them to do so?

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend makes exactly the right point. Looking at how best to deploy our financial resources to help the largest number of people, we need to recognise that there is a difference between taking in refugees in the United Kingdom, as some are calling for us to do, and what we are doing through providing funding for the region. I think that helping hundreds of thousands of people in the region is the right priority, one of which we can be proud.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Will the Minister think again? Many of us welcome the amount of money the British Government have provided to assist refugees—we have no problem with that and fully understand the need. Syria as a whole, however, has hosted a very large number of refugees in the past, particularly Palestinians coming from Iraq, and as my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) pointed out, they are being bombed in al-Yarmouk refugee camp. Will the Minister think again and join in a UN programme to give safety to the most vulnerable refugees who, should they remain in place, will be killed for political or social purposes?

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman talks about refugees who previously lived in Syria. Of course, the help we are providing is not just to the neighbouring countries; a lot of it is for people who are internally displaced in Syria. We are working very hard with our diplomatic partners to secure humanitarian access in Syria, as well as supporting neighbouring countries. I hope the hon. Gentleman will welcome that too.

[Sarah Teather (Brent Central) (LD)]

Before Christmas, I visited Jordan and the Zaatari refugee camp, as well as a number of organisations providing help for refugees living in host communities. I was particularly concerned about the plight of disabled children and children who have managed to travel on their own. The Minister is of course correct to say that most refugees just want to go back to Syria and do not want to come to Britain, but we are not asking for most refugees to come to Britain; we are asking only for those in exceptional need whom we could help to come to Britain. We should continue to make the arguments for Jordan and Lebanon to keep their borders open; otherwise, we really will have a catastrophe.

[Mr Harper]

As I think I said in response to the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell), we are working closely with UNICEF in Syria and the region on providing support services and protection for 15,000 of the most vulnerable Syrian children and their carers, as well as for refugee children in neighbouring countries. We are providing that support, and we are able to help a significantly larger number of people than the numbers the hon. Lady talks about.

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

Is this not about trying to create a false set of alternatives? These strategies are not mutually exclusive. We recognise, welcome and acknowledge—this has been made clear by Opposition Members—the Government’s good record on total aid programmes and specifically their excellent record so far on providing aid to Syria. However, the Minister is belittling and undermining that effort by his stubborn and incomprehensible refusal to take part in a United Nations-backed programme targeted on those in most urgent need in Syria—primarily children—for no good reason that we Opposition Members can understand. Will he not reconsider?

[Mr Harper]

I could turn it around and say to the hon. Gentleman that we are providing support for those people in the region. We are helping hundreds of thousands by providing food, water and medical aid—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) says that it is the sixth time I have said that, but that is because it is true. It is the right policy, and I do not mind repeating it as many times as necessary. If I look at what some of our European neighbours are providing, I find that they are taking very small numbers of people and not providing any support. We are helping hundreds of thousands more people than most other European countries, and I think we can be very proud of that response.

[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)]

There is no doubt that all colleagues mean well, but the enormity of this humanitarian crisis means it is imperative for the Government to continue to help as many people as possible—and help the many rather than the few in this case rather than using helping the few as an excuse. Other agencies are helping, like the Lady Fatemah Trust in my constituency—a small charitable organisation that takes no administrative fees whatever—so what can the Government do to help support those charities? This one has already distributed 103 tonnes of food to Syrian refugees in Lebanon.

[Mr Harper]

I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for drawing attention to the work of that excellent organisation in her constituency. We are working with various organisations, including partner organisations, but the Secretary of State for International Development is present and will have heard the details about this charity. I am sure that she will discuss with my right hon. Friend whether we can do more to support its work in helping people in the region.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

Like most people in Scotland, I am appalled that this Government, unlike Governments in other small European nations, will not take refugee children. I know that they are terrified of UKIP, but even Nigel Farage recognises that there is a difference between a refugee and an immigrant. Why can the Minister not recognise that as well?

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman seems to be obsessed in a way that we are not. [Laughter.] I have made very clear what our policy is when it comes to assisting the largest possible number of people in the region, and I think that that is the right approach. It enables us to help hundreds of thousands of people by providing water, medical resources and food. We are supporting the neighbouring countries and helping them to do the right thing, and I think that we can be very proud of that support.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

I am proud of the fact that our Government is the largest donor to Syria. Of course we need a permanent and a political solution, and of course we cannot take every refugee. However, with the greatest respect, I disagree with the Minister. Surely there is room for more children in this country, particularly vulnerable children such as orphans and those who have been most severely disabled as a result of the conflict. We are not talking about taking everyone, but surely we can take some more, as well as helping on the ground.

[Mr Harper]

As I said in my statement, we granted refugee status to 1,100 Syrians in the year to last September, and we will continue to grant such status if we receive asylum applications. We should consider how we can help the largest possible number of people, including those who are vulnerable. As I said in answer to questions from Liberal Democrat Members, one of the programmes that we have been supporting is the UNICEF programme, which has been championed by my right hon. Friend the International Development Secretary and which has helped 15,000 of the most vulnerable Syrian children, and I think that that is the right thing to do.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

This is rapidly becoming one of the largest humanitarian crises of the last 50 years, and it is producing a phenomenal problem politically in that very complex country, Lebanon. Surely the answer in every country must be “both…and”, not “either…or”. Would we not have much more moral authority if we argued to the French that we are doing “both…and”, not “either…or”, and would it not therefore be a good idea for us to start taking more of these children?

[Mr Harper]

There are 2.4 million refugees in neighbouring countries, and about 6.5 million displaced people in Syria. Arguing about helping a few hundred people misses the point. [Interruption.] We have put £600 million into the region—the hon. Gentleman is right: this is the biggest humanitarian crisis, which is why our response is the biggest humanitarian response that this country has ever mounted—in order to help hundreds of thousands of people there. That is the right thing to do, and we are helping an enormously larger number of people than any of our European partners.

[Mr Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con)]

I congratulate the Government on all that they have done for refugees outside the country. I recently visited the Nizip refugee camp, which is on the Syrian border in Turkey. The Turks do a tremendous job in delivering support, and it is far more cost-effective for the Government to provide for those refugees—particularly the most vulnerable—in situ, in a refugee camp or nearby. Does my hon. Friend not agree, however, that it is the tragedy within Syria that is greatest, and would he support an initiative at Geneva II to ensure that there are safe corridors inside the country so that we can maximise the safety of the majority of Syrians?

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s question, and the fact that it is informed by his recent visit to the region where he was able to see practically what our colleagues in Turkey—one of the neighbouring countries—are doing to help on the ground. In answer to his specific question, he is right: we have been pushing for better access within Syria and we need to continue to do so, so that we and the aid agencies can get access to the 6.5 million internally displaced people and provide the help they need, as well as providing help to those in the neighbouring countries.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

The Minister is absolutely right to praise the Department for International Development for the work it has done, but it is his Department that has been called to the Dispatch Box today, not DFID, and he has undermined his own argument. He said that what is being asked of the Government is simply nugatory—that it is insignificant, that it is a token. If it is so small, why do the Government not do it? Is it because it will contribute to the Minister’s net migration figures? Is that what he is afraid of?

[Mr Harper]

First, Ministers speak at this Dispatch Box for the Government and set out the Government’s policy. We do not have different policies in different Departments. The hon. Gentleman ought to go away and have a look at that, because we have a collectively agreed policy and I am setting out the Government’s response to the question asked by the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper). The reason why I do not want to agree to the proposition the hon. Gentleman puts is that the Government do not think it is the right solution. We think that the solution we have set out, which is to provide the UK’s largest ever response to a humanitarian crisis, will be more effective in helping in the region, and I think that is the right thing to do.

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to have some policy coherence here? It is not coherent policy to call for the United Kingdom to admit refugees from Syria if one is not also simultaneously going to be calling for the UK to admit refugees from Darfur, South Sudan, Central African Republic and other jurisdictions. One cannot pray in aid just one country and say that the UK should admit refugees from that country. That simply is not a coherent position.

[Mr Harper]

My right hon. Friend makes a very good point. Our usual asylum rules are in place, and as I have said we have already granted asylum, in the year to last September, to 1,100 Syrian refugees and will continue granting asylum where someone has a claim that meets the rules on providing international protection. My right hon. Friend makes a very good point about the various crises around the world where we apply our normal asylum rules. In this case, I think we have more than stepped up to the plate. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said this was an enormous humanitarian crisis: it is, and that is why we have delivered our biggest ever humanitarian response.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

A few months ago the Prime Minister stood at the Dispatch Box and suggested that Britain was leading the world in the humanitarian response to the Syrian crisis. Why does that leadership not extend to doing the most human thing of all: giving a home to vulnerable children who have suffered horrendous atrocities at the hands of President Assad?

[Mr Harper]

I do not think anybody can say that this Government are not playing our full role on the diplomatic front. The Foreign Secretary has been leading efforts in trying to get a diplomatic solution and I am very pleased that those Geneva II talks will take place and start this week. They are, of course, a process, not a single point in time. I think we are leading. We are the second largest donor in the world and the largest donor in the European Union. Until very recently when the Germans stepped up, we had donated more money than the rest of the EU combined.

[Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

Going back to the question of Lebanon, does my hon. Friend agree that that frail state desperately needs two things: first, the splendid programme of aid we have, and, secondly, much greater assistance for the very brave, but very small and poorly equipped, Lebanese army, which is trying to hold the border and the ring within the country?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend is right. As well as the support we are providing in Lebanon to the Syrian refugees, we are of course making sure that we are providing support to it in order to promote stability. We are also providing help to make sure it can deliver the support it is having to deliver because of its location as a neighbour of Syria. I therefore think we are both helping refugees in Syria and providing the necessary support to Lebanon so that it can step up and do what it is required to do in the region.

[Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman, whose views I respect, acknowledge that operating a blanket ban and excluding the most vulnerable few from admission to the UK is undermining the authority with which he speaks from the Front Bench? Will he listen to the mood of the House, which is clear for all to hear, and go away and change this policy?

[Mr Harper]

I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman; we do not operate a ban. As I have said, 1,100 Syrian refugees have been granted asylum in the United Kingdom under our normal rules in which people make a case for international protection. That is more than most European countries have done, and we are providing the largest ever humanitarian response—more than all our European partners combined. I think that is a record of which we can be proud.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

Seventy-five years ago, through the Kindertransport, this country saved some 10,000 children from what was happening in Europe. That was not the complete answer to the problems of the holocaust and its terrors, but it made a difference and saved many thousands of lives. The Government are right to be proud of the money they are now putting in, but in much the same way, they could now take further action and save the lives of thousands of children. With Holocaust memorial day coming up, will the Minister reflect on this matter and talk to the Home Secretary to see whether some progress can be made?

[Mr Harper]

It is sometimes a mistake just to talk about the money we are providing, which is why I have tried to set out some of the help that that money is providing in region. It is helping hundreds of thousands of people there, including tens of thousands of children and some of the most vulnerable people. That is enormously more valuable than what I am being asked to do by the Opposition.

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

Often when we discuss foreign or defence policy, we rightly talk about the need to uphold Britain’s standing in the world. Surely that applies to this situation too. Aid and sanctuary are not opposing policies, and the Minister can clearly hear the will of the House on this matter. Many countries are doing both; why cannot we do the same?

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman says that many countries are doing more, but I do not know who he could mean. We are providing more support to the neighbouring countries in the region than any other country except the United States of America. Of the 28 member states of the European Union, we were until very recently providing more financial support than the rest of the EU combined. That is a record of which we can be proud, and on which we lead.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I totally support the Government in the amount of humanitarian aid that they are providing, but let us be quite clear that the key to sorting this problem out is to stop the war. That will happen when one side or the other wins, but there is now a stalemate within Syria. Probably the only way ahead will be through a United Nations Security Council resolution. How are we going to get such a resolution, which would be the first step towards stopping what is happening in that very sad country?

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Gentleman’s question was extremely interesting, but it was a tad distant from the question of refugees. Perhaps with a degree of licence, however, and knowing the dexterity of the Minister, we can hear his response.

[Mr Harper]

You can be assured, Mr Speaker, that I shall not go much wider than what I have already said. My hon. Friend will know the challenges involved in getting a United Nations Security Council resolution. We have welcomed the announcement of the Geneva II process, which starts this week, as well as the positive news at the weekend that the national coalition has taken the difficult decision to involve itself in the process. That will be the best—and probably the only—solution to getting a sensible, peaceful settlement in Syria, so that those refugees can do as they want to do and return home to rebuild their country.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

I do not blame you for taking a deep breath before I speak, Mr Speaker. The purpose of these urgent questions is for the Minister, first, to outline what work the Government are doing and, secondly, to listen to the will of the House. May I urge him, once again, to listen to the voices in all parts of this House that are saying that it is not a binary choice between the excellent humanitarian aid the UK Government and UK people are currently gifting to the region, and receiving here in this country a few of the most vulnerable children? We should be doing both, and the Minister should listen to the voices from these Houses of Parliament.

[Mr Harper]

I am sure that your intake of breath was because you were spoilt for choice by the excellent number of colleagues on both sides of the House who are waiting to ask a question. Let me respond directly to the hon. Gentleman. The question for the Government is: with the resources at our disposal, how can we help the largest number and deliver the best support we can? Our judgment is that we can deliver that help and support best in the region, by providing the support we have—we are the second largest donor in the world. We are helping not hundreds but hundreds of thousands of people. We think that is the right solution, but we have also already accepted, under our normal terms, more than 1,000 refugees from Syria in the year to last September.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

I very much welcome the Minister’s statement. On resettlement in the region, have further discussions taken place with countries such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates? Those three countries are the ones pushing for change in Syria by supporting the opposition, so are they taking their fair share of refugees?

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend will of course know that we continue to talk to our partners in the Gulf on this issue, as on many others, and they and we keep this matter under review. I know that they are providing help and support where they can as well.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

We know that al-Qaeda and the Syrian Government have been targeting medical personnel, including British medical personnel who have gone to provide assistance. Given that there are problems with accessing medical aid in Syria and in the neighbouring countries that are providing asylum to refugees, is it not right that the UK offers humanitarian admission—not refugee status—to this country for those needing medical aid, including children, disabled children and those who have been tortured? Is it not our moral responsibility to act in that way?

[Mr Harper]

What the hon. Lady says about medical support for people who require it—critically injured or sick people—is very important, which is why the work we are doing with the World Health Organisation has supported, across Syria and in neighbouring countries, nearly a quarter of a million people. That is a significant number, and it is far more than anyone is talking about providing for in the United Kingdom.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

We can indeed be rightly proud of the humanitarian assistance that this country has provided, which is second only to that provided by the United States. However, I urge the Minister to consider how much more we should be doing, despite the lack of action on the part of some neighbouring European Union countries. We are now being asked by the UN to take on some special cases, and that would not necessarily be a tokenistic response if we could combine that with the sheer number of special cases that other countries might be prepared to take. Will he at least not rule out our participation in such a programme in the future?

[Mr Harper]

We always keep these matters under review, but we judge that helping the largest number of people is best achieved in the region. As I said, we have accepted more than 1,000 asylum seekers in the United Kingdom, but we think that the help we are providing—not only food and water, but medical support, including to the most vulnerable and to children—is best provided in the region, working with our partners.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

The House has made it clear that this is not seen as a question of, “Either aid or refugees.” The Minister has belittled the number of refugees taken by some other countries in Europe. Does he not accept that if we took a number even proportional to the number Moldova has taken, we would be making a significant difference to the lives of hundreds of the most vulnerable children?

[Mr Harper]

When the hon. Gentleman talks about making a difference to the lives of hundreds of children, he should understand—I have set it out many times—that we are helping not hundreds of children but hundreds of thousands of children in Syria and the neighbouring countries, and that is the best way of helping. We are helping enormous numbers of people in incredibly important ways, such as by providing food, water, medical attention and shelter. We are also supporting the neighbouring countries that are doing so much to help. That is the right thing to do and something of which we can be proud.

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

The Minister talked earlier about how poor some countries have been at pledging in this crisis. Does he think that Britain can be proud of its Ministers and the work that they have done to get other countries to pledge, culminating last week in the Kuwait conference where $2.4 billion was pledged, $1 billion more than last year?

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. We have been leading on that approach. We have carried weight because of our own very significant donations. He rightly draws attention to the pledging conference. As I have said, up until last week, we had pledged £500 million, most of which has already been distributed, and is providing help to the region. Last week, the Secretary of State was able to increase that by a further £100 million, demonstrating that we put our money where our mouth is.

[James Duddridge (Rochford and Southend East) (Con)]

This debate has been typified by whether we should be doing either/or. In many ways, I congratulate the Government on doing both. By that I mean accepting the 1,100 refugees and also focusing on the other 2.3 million. On reflection, it is the right thing to spend the money in the camps, but could we have a differentiated response for that 2.3 million? We should look at helping categories of individuals, such as children, and use UK expertise effectively and efficiently in-country to help the maximum number. Rather than taking out just one or two—or 500 in this case—and bringing them back to the United Kingdom, we could help far more of them in their own country.

[Mr Harper]

I think my hon. Friend is right. Some of the work we are doing with UNICEF in Syria and in the region includes providing support services and child protection for 15,000 of the most vulnerable Syrian children and their carers, as well as for refugee children in neighbouring countries. That is a significant amount of help to many, many thousands of children.

[Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)]

I, too, have recently visited Turkey and the Nizip refugee camp, which is receiving support from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. I have seen first hand the scale of the human tragedy that is unfolding there. It is hard not to be moved by the plight of the 2.4 million Syrians who have been displaced. However, on talking to them, it is obvious that their desire is not to come to the UK but to go home. The Government are doing the right thing in providing support on the ground to the most vulnerable people in the camps and in the communities, and we have to work tirelessly to allow all those people to go back to their own home country.

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question, which was informed by his recent personal experience. He answered rather better than I did the earlier question about the support the Gulf countries are providing to Turkey. He is exactly right. We are providing diplomatic support to the Geneva II process, which is the best solution to a settlement in Syria, and we are providing help to the 2.4 million refugees and the 6.5 million internally displaced people in Syria, and that is the right thing to do.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Having visited Syrian refugee families in Lebanon, I find it staggering that this country should be accused of being uncaring towards Syrian children. We are the first country in the world to pledge 0.7% of our economy every year in international aid. As the second biggest donor to the Syrian refugee crisis, will the Minister confirm that we are helping the second largest number of Syrian children?

[Mr Harper]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question as he draws attention not only to the help that we are providing in Syria but to the help that we are able to provide across the world with our international development spending, which, although not universally popular, makes sense from both a humanitarian and a security perspective. He has put his finger on the help we are providing. By being the second largest global donor, it follows that we are almost certainly helping the second largest number of people after the United States of America.

[Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)]

The sizeable Syrian community in Greater Manchester makes a valuable contribution to that city and the wider area, so places such as Manchester are therefore best equipped to support Syrian children who have faced unmentionable suffering. Surely the Minister needs to think again.

[Mr Harper]

As I said, we are providing help and support to tens of thousands of Syrian children, including some of the most vulnerable, working with our international partners. The work we are doing in the region is more effective than some of the solutions proposed by hon. Members. I know that the hon. Gentleman does not agree, but I think that the Government’s policy is the right one and it is one that we will stick to.

Illegal Immigrants (Criminal Sanctions) Bill

Mark Harper Excerpts

Friday 17th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nuttall]

It is certainly the largest developed nation.

I do not want to detain the House for too long, because I am keen that the Bill should proceed through the House today.

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

I will be brief, but I cannot resist intervening, because I do not often have the chance to put right my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) on a constitutional matter. Her Majesty the Queen is of course the sovereign of 16 nations, not only six.

[Mr Nuttall]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

I have listened carefully to the debate. Although the Bill is not enormous, a wide range of issues have been touched on, including the scale of illegal immigration to Britain, why people may come here and the effectiveness of Government policy in removing people. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) spoke about some of the visible enforcement activity that he has seen.

Before I turn to the detailed provisions of the Bill, it might be helpful to the House if I set out a little of the context, which Members can bear in mind when they consider how they will vote on the Bill if my hon. Friend decides to test the will of the House. Immigration is an important subject, as is the question of those who have no right to be in Britain. Some illegal immigrants never had the right to be here, but still entered the United Kingdom. A more significant number of immigrants came here lawfully, but overstayed their welcome.

Why are people concerned about this matter? It is perfectly reasonable to be concerned, given the significant amount of migration, both legal and illegal, that we saw during the period of the last Labour Government. We only have statistics on legal migration because, by definition, it is very difficult to get a good handle on the level of unlawful migration. Net migration during that period was 2.2 million people. Despite what Labour likes to lead people to believe, the majority of those people came from outside the European Union, so it had full powers to do something about it.

We know that people are concerned about immigration and that they want tougher immigration controls. That was my party’s policy before the election and it is this Government’s policy. We have had a fair bit of success, with net migration down by nearly a third since 2010. I am afraid that it is not true, as the hon. Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed) said, that that is to do with a change in the number of British citizens. The most significant change is the fall in immigration. That has been put clearly on the record by the independent Office for National Statistics. Non-EU immigration to the United Kingdom is at its lowest level since 1998.

To be frank, it is true that the most recent figures showed a small increase. That was largely because of an increase in migration from the EU. However, that has come not from the parts of the EU that have recently been giving the press in this country the vapours, but from more traditional EU member states such as Spain and other countries in southern Europe which have economies that are performing less well. It is important to put that in context.

On illegal migration, which is the subject of the Bill, I want to put two points to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch that I hope he will find reassuring. A significant number of people who want to come to the United Kingdom illegally try to get here through our sea ports or the channel tunnel. He will be familiar with the fact that we have juxtaposed controls, which means that our border is effectively in France. We check freight vehicles, passenger transport that comes through the tunnel and transport on the ferries. Our UK Border Force officers, whom he mentioned, do an excellent job of preventing people from entering the UK illegally in the first place. In the year to the end of March 2013, for example, they prevented more than 11,000 people from entering. That is important, because if people cannot enter the United Kingdom illegally in the first place, the provisions in his Bill are unnecessary. We stop them at the border, which, with the juxtaposed controls, is in France, so they never get to our shores.

[Mr Chope]

The Minister says that 11,000 people were prevented from coming, but how many of them have subsequently got in without detection?

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend asks an unanswerable question, but it is also worth considering the checks that our immigration enforcement officers make. When they encounter people who are working illegally, they look at when those people entered the United Kingdom to test whether they got through our juxtaposed controls. When we examine both sets of people—those we stop and those we encounter in-country—the evidence is that our controls are effective. I would not pretend that they are 100% effective, but they are very effective in reducing the number of people coming into the country.

As I said, most people who are in the United Kingdom illegally did not come here illegally. They came here lawfully but for a limited period. They are either a visa national—someone from one of the countries where we have visa controls—who has applied for a visa either to study or to work here and has overstayed, or a non-visa national from whom a visa was not required, but who has been allowed to come into the UK for only a limited period, perhaps as a visitor, and has overstayed. In one sense, my hon. Friend was right to raise his concern, because under the previous Government, if someone applied in-country for the renewal of a visa and was refused—I believe that was the example he gave—nothing happened. That was quite wrong. With our immigration enforcement organisation, we have started to change that.

It is worth mentioning in passing one change that I believe was generally welcomed in the House, including by the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who has already been mentioned in this debate despite his not being here. Many people criticised the UK Border Agency, and when the Home Secretary split it up last year, one benefit was that our immigration enforcement operation—the part of the business that enforces the law and deals with illegal immigrants—was given a clear and separate identity. It still works closely with its colleagues in the rest of the Home Office, but we are creating much more of a visible law enforcement culture, which I think is what my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch is looking for. He said that he had seen some immigration enforcement vans with their livery, which is a deliberate strategy to make people aware that we have legal powers and are taking action. In a moment, I will set out for him some statistics showing that we are stepping up that activity so that people know that we are being effective.

If we are to deal with overstayers, it is no good just having more effective controls at the border, because they were legal when they arrived in the UK. Clause 1 of my hon. Friend’s Bill refers not just to people who enter the UK without authority but to people who are present here, so it covers overstayers. He referred to overstayers being attracted to the UK because of their chances of being removed, but I will set out in a moment why I do not believe that was a correct conclusion. In the Immigration Bill, which is currently before Parliament and waiting for business managers to agree the timing of Report—that is well above my pay grade as a humble Minister of State, as he will know—there are a number of provisions to deal effectively with overstayers. For example, we will make it impossible for someone who is in the country unlawfully to rent property. They will not be able to get a driving licence, and if they have one we will be able to revoke it. They will not have access to a bank account, and we are toughening the law governing whether or not they will be able to work lawfully.

Importantly—several hon. Members have mentioned this—we are putting into primary legislation clear rules about the impact of article 8 of the European convention on human rights on our ability to remove foreign nationals, particularly if they are offenders. Judges have told us that despite having included such measures in secondary legislation, we have not given a clear enough steer to the judiciary. They have asked us to put that into primary legislation, and if my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch and other hon. Members have taken the trouble to look at the Immigration Bill—I am sure they have—they will know that it contains clear statements about what the public interest requires, particularly regarding those guilty of criminal offences. Except in the most exceptional circumstances, we would expect someone guilty of an offence to be removed from the United Kingdom, and the Immigration Bill will contribute well to that.

My hon. Friend might also have spotted last October that we created the National Crime Agency, so as to be more effective in dealing with serious and organised crime. One part of that agency is the border policing command, part of which deals with the issues he raised about organised crime groups—based both inside and outside the United Kingdom—who are involved in people trafficking. Such trafficking could be either completely against someone’s will or when people effectively con others into coming to the United Kingdom by suggesting that all will be well, and perhaps charging them a fee. When people get to the UK, they then discover that things are not quite as they were led to believe, and sometimes they are almost in some kind of slavery or bonded arrangement, and are indebted to those organised crime groups. Hopefully, my hon. Friend will welcome the measures we have introduced.

My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), and my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch when he introduced the Bill, spoke about exit checks. My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley said that we currently have no idea about who leaves the country, but that is not correct. Around 80% of those going into and out of the United Kingdom do so by air, around 10% by rail, and 10% by sea. For the vast majority of those travelling by air we have what is called advance passenger information, not only for those coming into the United Kingdom, but also for those leaving it. We use those data to protect ourselves from people coming in and to detect people who have perhaps had no right to be here and are leaving. We have that ability, but it needs to be improved.

My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley will know—I think he drew attention to this—that implementing exit checks was one of the commitments in the coalition agreement, and we are in the process of improving the coverage and the amount of data we collect. He will also know that the Immigration Bill contains provisions about outbound journeys, so that where we do not collect advance passenger information, the Home Secretary has the power—if we are not able to do it on a voluntary basis—to direct the carriers to work with the Home Office and perhaps collect some of that information. Such information is already collected for other reasons such as security and booking information, and so that we have more effective information about those coming to and from the United Kingdom. I do not pretend to my hon. Friend that the current position is perfect—it is not, and there is more work to do—but it is not as bleak as he set out. We have also had meetings with those in the rail and maritime sectors to consider what more we can do for those modes of travel.

I detected in the debate one or two remarks from my hon. Friends the Members for Christchurch, for Shipley and for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) about European Union nationals, and the extent to which there are legal provisions to deal with those coming from the European Union. I know that all three hon. Friends take a close interest in such matters, and they will have spotted that in December I laid before Parliament amendments to regulations covering the European economic area. We have taken steps to restrict access to benefits for EEA migrants—that was the subject of the previous Bill, and I am not sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch has caught up with the extent to which we have already changed the law, but I will not dwell on that.

We have already defined in those regulations some abuses of free movement, such as when people are not exercising their treaty rights—for example, not working, not looking for work, not studying, not self-sufficient, but rough sleeping, begging or taking part in criminality. In those cases, we have given ourselves the legal power—the Immigration Bill is about putting provisions in statute to deal with offences—to remove those individuals from the UK and, importantly and for the first time, to prevent them from returning for at least a year, unless they can demonstrate that they will immediately be exercising their treaty rights. That is a significant new power that EU Schengen countries cannot put into effect because they do not have internal border controls. We can put it into effect because we do have those controls. I hope that gives my hon. Friend some confidence that we can deal with those abusing the free movement rules.

Finally, before turning to the detailed provisions in the Bill, I want to touch on serious criminality. I think my hon. Friends the Members for Christchurch, for Shipley and for Bury North all talked about people committing not just offences to do with their immigration status, but more serious offences. In case they are not aware, I draw to their attention the joint working that the immigration enforcement directorate is doing with police forces, starting with the Metropolitan police, as part of a project called Nexus. It is not surprising, given that one third of London’s population are foreign nationals, that one third of criminals in London are also foreign nationals—they are not more likely to be criminals, but they are not less likely either.

We have opened up a new set of powers, and we are helping the police to use their powers more effectively. It is sometimes difficult to get the required level of evidence to prosecute a person even for serious criminality—for example, if they are involved in gang-related activity, it can be difficult, because of intimidation, to persuade witnesses to come forward—but if that person is a foreign national, it is sometimes possible to use our immigration powers to remove them from the UK and prevent them from returning. Since we started Nexus a year ago, we have removed more than 1,000 high-harm criminals and are now rolling it out to other parts of the UK with significant foreign national populations. We are working with West Midlands and Great Manchester police and—this will be of interest to you, Madam Deputy Speaker—Avon and Somerset constabulary to help them deal more effectively with criminality perpetrated by foreign nationals, which is welcome. I hope my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch welcomes those provisions, if he was not otherwise familiar with them.

When talking about how attractive the Bill was, my hon. Friend, like my hon. Friends the Members for Shipley and for Bury North, mentioned the noble Lord Ashcroft’s extensive polling on these subjects. I am not sure what terms he used in his polling—whether he referred specifically to the Bill or just to its provisions—but it was probably correct to point out that the provisions were overwhelmingly supported by the general public. I am not at all surprised by that. One of my hon. Friends also said that the general public would be surprised that these things were not already against the law. I do not often agree with the Labour party, but the hon. Member for Croydon North was right that the provisions are already effectively in statute.

The general public are hugely in favour of these provisions—quite rightly; I would expect them to be—but, as I think my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley said, the general public are also right if they think that they already exist in law, because they do exist. It may be helpful, in trying to persuade my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch not to pursue his Bill, briefly to set out the existing powers.

The Immigration Act 1971 provides for the two criminal offences set out in the Bill. Section 24(1)(a) of the 1971 Act makes an offence of

“knowingly entering the United Kingdom in breach of a deportation order or without leave”,

while section 24(1)(b) makes it an offence to “knowingly overstay or breach” the conditions of leave. The maximum penalty for both those offences on summary conviction is a fine of £5,000 and/or six months’ imprisonment, which is the same as proposed in the Bill—a spooky coincidence. Under section 24A of the Immigration Act 1971, it is an offence to obtain or seek to obtain leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom by deception, or to secure or seek to secure the avoidance, postponement or revocation of enforcement action by deception—and the maximum penalty for that offence is £5,000 and/or six months’ imprisonment on summary conviction. On indictment, the penalty is two years’ imprisonment or an unlimited fine or both. I hope that Members can see that the offences proposed in the Bill are already on the statute book.

[Mr Chope]

I asked the Minister a question about the incidence of offences. Can he tell us how many people have been prosecuted and convicted in respect of each of the offences to which he has referred? In replying to the parliamentary question I asked him, he said that the information could not be obtained because it would be too expensive.

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend anticipates what I was about to say. He refers to a question he asked me a few Home Office Question Times ago. He basically asked me whether there was an offence in relation to this issue and why we did not prosecute people who are in this country unlawfully. I replied that that was against the law, but that our strategy was to secure such people’s removal from the United Kingdom. I think I made the point during that session of Home Office questions that it was not sensible, on the grounds of cost of the process, to prosecute everybody who is here unlawfully. My hon. Friend will know—he has expressed opinions about this before—that legal aid being what it is, the taxpayer would, even with our reforms, be likely to have to pay both prosecution and defence costs. Putting such offenders in prison would also be at taxpayers’ expense, and that would be necessary before we could remove them from the UK.

[Philip Davies]

The Minister talks about the cost of throwing these people into prison, but he was also bandying around the fact that £5,000 fines could be imposed, which I would have thought amounted to getting money into the Exchequer. If he does not want to send these people to prison because of the cost, will he tell us how many £5,000 fines have been levied on these people since he has been the Minister and since these marvellous laws that he has talked about have been in place?

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend will know, because he follows criminal justice matters intently, how much it costs to keep someone in prison. He knows that it costs very much more, even for six months, than £5,000. We are talking about costing the taxpayer significant amounts of money. I shall come on in a few moments to the number of people who are removed from the country; I would certainly not want to fund the cost of keeping them all in prison.

The current strategy is that we try to remove people who are in the United Kingdom illegally. Every year of this Government more illegal migrants have departed from the UK than in any year before 2010, and that trend was continuing in 2013. We remove two groups of people from the UK. Our preference is that people who are here unlawfully leave of their own accord. There is a clear reason for that: if someone leaves of their own accord, it does not put a huge financial burden on the taxpayer. If we have to go through the process of arresting and detaining someone, and going through an enforced removal, sometimes including escorts, the cost of removal can be upwards of £15,000 per person. I would rather not burden the taxpayer with that. In 2012-13, 44,000 people were removed from the country. It is worth repeating that figure of 44,000, because the polling seems to show that people think that nobody is removed from the UK, whereas the actual figure is significant. The number of people removed voluntarily because they found that it is not easy to be in the UK illegally increased by 30% between 2009-10 and 2012-13. That is the right approach to take. Part of the reason for the measures in the Immigration Bill is to make it more difficult to be in the UK unlawfully, so that more people will choose not to come here unlawfully in the first place and so that those already here will find leaving the UK a more attractive proposition than staying here unlawfully.

[Philip Davies]

Has the Minister not considered the fact that being much tougher on illegal immigrants might deter others from coming here? He seems to be suggesting that the worst thing that will happen to someone who comes to this country illegally is that the Minister, like Sergeant Wilson in “Dad’s Army”, is going to say, “Would you mind awfully leaving?” How is there any deterrent to stop anybody coming here in the first place illegally if that is the worst that is ever going to happen to them?

[Mr Harper]

Not only do 40,000 people a year leave, but in addition to those who leave voluntarily we enforce the removal of about 15,000 others, and that demonstrates that we are very effective. Part of the reason for the measures in the Immigration Bill is to make coming here illegally less attractive. We are also seeking to make it clear that people who come here unlawfully will find it difficult to be able to work; they will not have access to free treatment on the national health service; and they will not be able to have a bank account or a driving licence. In other words, it will be very difficult for them to be here. So it will be both less attractive to come here unlawfully and more attractive for those already here to leave, and the evidence shows that we are making progress on that.

The Bill contains another set of penalty provisions. The first set of penalties are the imprisonment and the fine, which of course are already in legislation. The Bill also proposes provisions on deportation and makes reference to the “public interest”. That doubtless relates to the points that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch made about the convention and the public interest test. Immigration legislation already provides for removal powers without the need to pursue a prosecution, so we have not only administration removal powers but deportation powers in criminal cases. Under schedule 2 to the Immigration Act 1971, immigration officers have the power to remove an illegal entrant. An illegal entrant is for these purposes defined as a person unlawfully entering or seeking to enter the United Kingdom in breach of a deportation order or of the immigration laws, or entering or seeking to enter by means which include deception. Unlike with the criminal sanction, there is no requirement for the migrant knowingly to be an illegal entrant. That is important, because it removes a defence which there would be in a criminal case in relation to the person having to know that they were breaching the law. Section 10 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 gives immigration officers a power to remove a person who remains beyond the time limited by the leave—in other words, an overstayer. Once again, for the purpose of removal there is no requirement for the overstaying to have been knowingly committed.

Part I of the 1971 Act sets out the Secretary of State’s power to deport an individual where it is deemed to be conducive to the public good or where there is a court recommendation for deportation, and the UK Borders Act 2007 further sets out that, subject to the exemptions listed, where a foreign national is sentenced to at least 12 months’ imprisonment the Secretary of State must make a deportation order.

That is the point, welcome though it is, that has fallen foul of the provisions of the European convention on human rights. I agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley said when he expressed frustration about that, but that is why I hope that he welcomes the provisions in the Immigration Bill, which I set out. If he has not looked at them already, I can tell him that we have set out very clearly in them the public interest test. In other words, judges can weigh up the private interests of the people concerned against the public interest test that Parliament will set out, if it passes that Bill. If someone is a foreign national offender and they have committed a crime, the normal position is that they will be removed from the United Kingdom.

I think that my hon. Friend will also welcome the fact that the test makes it clear that if someone is here unlawfully or in a precarious immigration position—in other words, they are not here for very long—the court should put very little or no weight on any private or family interests built up during that period. Someone cannot come here unlawfully, create a family relationship and then expect that relationship to count, and to be a way of their avoiding being removed from the United Kingdom. That is very welcome, because I think that most Members, and most members of the public, will have the same view that I do: if someone has committed a serious offence, it is not right that they are able to stay in the United Kingdom because they have created some sort of family relationship while they should not have been here. I think that provision will be very welcome, and I hope that it will receive my hon. Friend’s support.

It is also worth saying that the removal powers that I have set out do not carry an in-country right of appeal before removal can take place. In the Immigration Bill, we propose extending the use of non-suspensive appeals so that we can remove more criminals whose article 3 rights are not engaged—in other words, those who would not suffer torture or worse in the country we are removing them to—before they are able to appeal. They will still have an appeal right, but it must be exercised out of country. My hunch is that appeals will not then take place, because most of those appeals are filed by people to try to delay their removal.

My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch and other hon. Friends who support the measure are usually assiduous—this is a position that I welcome—and particularly on Fridays in persuading the House, whether by dint of argument or through their use of time, that where legislation is not necessary, it should not be passed by the House. I frequently marvel at their creativity. Sadly, as a Minister, it is an activity in which I am no longer able to partake. They give the House many reasons why many Bills which other Members may support should not be put on the statute book.

My plea to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch and my other hon. Friends is this. I hope that I have effectively demonstrated, as the hon. Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed) did, that these provisions are already on the statute book and are well supported by members of the public, as one would expect, given that they are sensible measures. Knowing my hon. Friends’ general sense that we should not burden the statute book with unnecessary legislation, I hope that they will acknowledge that the offences are already on the statute book, and will think it not worth troubling Parliament to pass legislation that does not give us any more tools to deal with those who abuse the law.

Finally, I hope that I have demonstrated that this Government, through some of the operational measures we are taking and the provisions in the Immigration Bill, are absolutely determined to address this issue, although we welcome those who come to the country lawfully. The hon. Member for Croydon North was right to put on the record that those who wish to come here lawfully to work, study and contribute to the country, and to pay taxes that make us all wealthier, are very welcome indeed. The Government are absolutely determined that those who have no right to be here or those who abuse our laws should be dealt with.

Having provided that clarity, I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch will feel able to tell the House that he does not wish to proceed with the Bill, and I hope that I have not failed to convince him that that is the right course of action.

[Mr Chope]

I am grateful to the Minister for his thorough response. I shall look at it in great detail, along with the Immigration Bill, which I hope we will be able to discuss on Report sooner rather than later, because it is an important matter for the Government. I am surprised that they have delayed it so long. Taking into account what the Minister has said, I seek the leave of the House to withdraw the motion.

Motion and Bill, by leave, withdrawn.

Citizenship (Armed Forces) Bill

Mark Harper Excerpts

Friday 17th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

My remarks will be relatively brief. First, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Jonathan Lord). In his career in the House he has had remarkable success on private Members’ Bills, and if this one reaches the statute book, he will have been infinitely more successful than I ever was at getting a private Member’s Bill through. I am pleased that he chose this particular subject. He has steered the Bill well. At the end I will say a little about the Member of the House of Lords—as I believe we are now allowed to call it in this House—who will steer the Bill in the other place.

I join my hon. Friend, not in a full tribute, because that would test your patience, Mr Speaker, but in a tribute none the less to the foreign and Commonwealth members of our armed forces. The 1st Battalion The Rifles is based in my constituency at Beachley barracks, and a number of foreign and Commonwealth personnel have served on the battalion’s operational tours in Afghanistan. I have met those foreign and Commonwealth personnel, and they are as dedicated and committed as British citizens are to defending our country and serving Her Majesty the Queen.

It is right that the Bill addresses a matter on which those personnel could be disadvantaged by giving the Home Secretary the necessary discretion. The change is indeed small but sensible, and it is not insignificant. My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) put it very well: it is a small Bill with a big heart. That phrase deserves repeating.

The Bill enables us to remove the disadvantage faced by those forces and ex-forces personnel who happened to be outside the United Kingdom serving their country on day one of the five-year qualifying period for naturalisation. The Bill gives the Home Secretary the necessary discretion to overlook the current requirement in schedule 1 to the British Nationality Act 1981. The hon. Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed) asked whether the Bill is retrospective, and it is to that extent. Once the Bill is enacted, for anyone applying for naturalisation we will look back five years to what they were doing at that time, and the Bill will enable the Home Secretary to use her discretion, where appropriate, to overlook absences for service. The Bill will benefit people as soon as it gets on to the statute book. We will not have to wait five years for it to kick in, which is very helpful.

In the Home Office we take our responsibilities under the armed forces covenant very seriously. My hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) set out the background, so I will not test your patience by repeating it, Mr Speaker. We have been steadily pursuing a range of measures to improve how the Home Office deals with our foreign and Commonwealth personnel. Briefly, we have implemented new immigration rules for armed forces families, which include a number of practical improvements such as a five-year visa, a dedicated application form and the ability to make applications from overseas. The Army Families Federation said in its statement in the armed forces covenant annual report 2013 that the rules will

“address many of the inequalities that Foreign and Commonwealth families have been experiencing”.

The federation has been working closely with us and colleagues in the Ministry of Defence, and I am pleased that the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison), is here today, because it demonstrates the Ministry of Defence’s close working with the Home Office. We have implemented the rules by having a transitional period in which those already on a route to settlement will be able to complete that route under the existing rules, and there will be clear rules for new foreign and Commonwealth service personnel.

Going back to a point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham and the hon. Member for Croydon North, we are not expecting a huge number of applications from forces personnel benefiting from the measure. We expect, anecdotally, some 200 to 300 cases a year of people who have served to naturalise as British citizens. Not all of those cases will require discretion, but where they do—even if there is only one case—it is right that someone who has served in our armed forces should benefit, and I am pleased that the Bill will enable that to happen.

We have had support for the Bill from the Army Families Federation, which has said that it will make

“a big difference to the…soldiers and their spouses who are currently prohibited from applying for Citizenship because they were serving overseas or were on operations at the start of the…period.”

The federation said that the current rule has been

“disproportionately disadvantaging members of HM Forces…and the AFF is fully supportive of the…changes”.

The other organisation, already mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham, is Veterans Aid, which warmly welcomes the change. Veterans Aid works for a range of former service personnel, and it works very hard for those who have had mental illness. I worked closely with the organisation when I was a shadow Defence Minister, and it works closely with foreign and Commonwealth personnel who have fallen foul of the system. Indeed, I met Dr Hugh Milroy, the organisation’s excellent chief executive, just yesterday to talk through some of the issues, and he has a very close working relationship both with my officials and with officials in the Ministry of Defence. Veterans Aid does excellent casework to support former members of our armed forces, both British citizens and foreign and Commonwealth personnel .

The Bill will hopefully get a fair wind today. It will then pass, as my hon. Friend the Member for Woking said, to the steady hand of our noble Friend Lord Trefgarne, who of course had six years’ experience as a Defence Minister in the 1980s, so he is well briefed on defence issues, and I know that this matter is close to his heart. He is also experienced in the equivalent Friday sessions in the House of Lords, and he will be expert in steering both this Bill and, assisting our noble Friend Lord Dobbs, the European Union (Referendum) Bill through the House of Lords. I hope that the Citizenship (Armed Forces) Bill will rapidly pass through the House of Lords and receive Royal Assent.

We have listened to the organisations that represent members of the armed forces, and will continue to work with them. The Bill does justice to those who have served our country from foreign and Commonwealth countries that support our armed forces. I am pleased to give the Government’s support to the Bill, which I hope will receive Third Reading today.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

Immigration (Bulgaria and Romania)

Mark Harper Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2013 Westminster Hall

[Keith Vaz]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman; he is absolutely right. That is why we wanted the Migration Advisory Committee to assist.

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

On that specific point, we asked the Migration Advisory Committee in 2011 the question about the labour market, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) referred. In its response, the committee stated:

“It would not be sensible, or helpful to policy makers, for us to attempt to put a precise numerical range around this likely impact.”

That was the advice it gave us, and that was the advice we followed.

[Keith Vaz]

I say to the Minister, for whom I have enormous respect—he is a hard-working and fair Immigration Minister, and I have seen quite a few in my time—he has obviously not had the time to read the evidence of Sir David Metcalf. I specifically asked him that question after it was also raised by others, and he said:

“we have never been tasked to make estimates of the numbers coming from Romania and Bulgaria.”

He said that last week. The Minister has quoted something from 2011, but frankly the chairman himself has not been asked yet.

[Mr Harper]

David Metcalf was right in what he said, and I have read the transcript. The point is that he and his committee said that asking them to do that work would not be sensible or helpful because of the uncertainty, so it seemed pointless to ask them, because they had replied to the point when we commissioned them in 2011.

[Keith Vaz]

That may be so, but that is not what he said to us last week. Perhaps the Government, because of the importance of the issue, should have kept in regular touch with Sir David Metcalf. If they had done so, perhaps he would have updated what he said in 2011.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hollobone]

I welcome the intervention from the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey), not least because, as always, she knows what she is talking about. She is a proud champion of the concerns of her constituents, who will be rightly concerned about that issue.

[Mr Harper]

Given that two hon. Members have raised the question, and given that my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) takes part in crime fighting directly, I think it would be helpful to give an answer. The order I signed and laid before the House on 6 December, which I will set out in more detail later, enables us to remove from the UK people who are not here to exercise treaty rights—those committing low-level, but damaging crimes, begging and sleeping rough—and importantly stop them from coming straight back again, unless they are coming to exercise those rights. That is an important power and change that goes some way to addressing the concerns of my hon. Friend and the hon. Lady.

[Mr Hollobone]

It does indeed go some way, and I am grateful for it, but sadly the changes do not go far enough. Those people can be sent back under the order he mentions to their country of origin, but in a certain amount of time, they can come back to our shores. I have a private Member’s Bill on the Order Paper that would ban foreign nationals who commit an offence in this country from ever returning to our shores. I think that measure would enjoy popular support.

The scale of this crime wave is really quite startling. Romanians are seven times more likely to be arrested in London than British nationals; Romanians account for more than 11% of all foreign offenders in the UK, despite currently making up just a tiny proportion of foreign residents here; and last year Romanians accounted for almost half of all arrests for begging and a third of arrests for pick-pocketing in the capital. I declare in my interests that I am a special constable with the British Transport police on the London underground, and I can say that eight out of 10 pick-pockets are from Romania. So the whole thing is completely out of control and the Romanian authorities need to provide the British police with information about the Romanian criminals that they know are in this country far more quickly than they are currently providing it.

The background to all this is that we are a crowded island. What the British people object to is not the nationality of someone coming to our shores, the colour of their skin or the language that they speak. What my constituents object to—what the British people object to—is the numbers coming to our shores, with which our crowded isle cannot cope.

We are now told that, according to official Government statistics, some 43% of new housing requirements are because of immigration. Immigration is driving up our population to unsustainable levels, and we have a population boom that is fuelled by EU migration. Indeed, Polish immigration has contributed almost half of the UK’s recent population growth. Half of all foreign-born residents currently in the UK have come here since 2001. From 2001, the number of foreign-born residents rose by almost 3 million, and yet in the 50 years beforehand only 2.7 million people arrived in the UK from abroad. There has been more immigration to our shores since 1950 than there was in all the time between 1066 and 1950. We are one of the most densely crowded countries in the European Union.

The vast majority of people who have come here in recent times have come from Poland. Poles are now the second largest group of foreign-born nationals in the UK, with only Indians having a larger presence. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that in 2011 there were 7.5 million non-UK-born residents in the country—13% of the population—and it is migration that has contributed to just less than half of that population change in the last 60 years. The non-UK-born population has almost quadrupled since 1951, from 4.3% of the population to 13.4%. My contention is that our crowded island cannot cope with this level of population increase, because our population is set to rise, according to official statistics from the ONS, by 9.6 million people by 2037, reaching a total of 73.3 million people, a level of population that our country has never had to cope with before.

Unless we close the door to immigration from EU states, my contention—on behalf of my constituents—is that our country will struggle to cope, and not just in our capital city or our other big metropolitan areas but in semi-rural areas, such as my constituency of Kettering, where the number of houses is set to increase by a third within the next 25 years.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Ruffley]

Indeed. I am reminded of Cecil Rhodes’s comment that to be born a free-born Englishman was to have won first prize in the lottery of life. English as the world language is obviously the reason why so many migrants want to come from within and outside the EU, and attend language schools in this country. My hon. Friend is correct in suspecting that London will be a huge magnet for Romanians and Bulgarians. There are perfectly understandable reasons for them to want to come to this country, and many will no doubt want to work hard. Perhaps some will take jobs illegally under the minimum wage level of £6 an hour. We do not criticise those individuals who want a better life; we merely suggest that what I have outlined is a luxury that the country cannot afford, now or in the future.

[Mr Harper]

On the argument about where people might go, my hon. Friend considered the facts regarding the number of Romanians and Bulgarians who are already here, but let us look at the other countries mentioned. Italy did not have transitional controls, and there are 1 million Romanians and Bulgarians there. Spain and Germany did, and 500,000 Romanians and Bulgarians went to Germany and 1 million to Spain. I do not say that that is conclusive, but it may be one aspect of what was meant when it was suggested that there is a range of options for Romanians and Bulgarians besides coming to the United Kingdom.

[Mr Ruffley]

One could argue that in Germany and the other countries my hon. Friend mentioned, job vacancies for Romanians and Bulgarians are perhaps pretty much full up now, and they may want to try their luck in the United Kingdom, where, if they do their research, they will understand there are many job vacancies that remain unfilled, despite the economic recovery, and that there could be rich job pickings. However, I do not think that the argument can be made conclusively either way.

I am getting rather tired with the argument that all immigration to this country is by definition good, in economic terms. First, I pray in aid a 2008 report of the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee, which made the point that total output can be driven up by increasing the number of people in the country. The greater the population, the greater the economic growth. That is an economic truism that no one disputes. However, the Committee also said that that was beside the point. What matters is not GDP, but GDP per capita. A much larger population, generating a higher total output, means there is a bigger cake; but there are also more people who want a slice of it.

The key point, which the Home Secretary and her Ministers have identified, is that this is not just about getting bodies into the country to generate more economic growth; it is about getting the right people in, with the skills and specialisms that we need. That, almost by definition, means small numbers of immigrants, who will meet a high-skill, high-value-added specification—not tens or even hundreds of thousands, as there were in the case of Poland and other accession countries in 2004. I fear that what happened then will also happen with Romania and Bulgaria.

If anyone is thinking of references for the debate, many arguments have recently been made about work by University college London that argues that immigrants contribute more in tax than they ever take in benefit. I do not have time to say why that work is grossly inadequate. Another grossly inadequate body, in my view, is the Office for Budget Responsibility, which in the past six months has blithely said that, unless this country has 7 million more immigrants between now and 2050, we will not cut our deficit and our national debt. Those figures are “Through the Looking Glass” stuff. I repeat again that the current Home Office Ministers understand that truth, but they are not able to say that they have made it tougher for EU migrants to come here, as they have with non-EU migrants. As a result of the EU treaties, Ministers have not been able to impose such welcome discipline on the number of EU migrants coming into this country.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) talked about the polarity—which he helped to set up, if he will allow me to say so—between little Englanders and free traders. I like to think that I am a free trader, and I want to run the Prime Minister’s global race, as I am sure we all do. I can hardly wait to run that race. As a free-market, right-of-centre—nay, right-wing—Conservative, I believe in free trade and Britain facing outwards to the world, but we should still understand that the best way to earn our way in the world is not to open our doors willy-nilly to an undifferentiated mass of workers from other countries, when we have no way of sifting to see what skills they have and how highly specialised those skills are. We can do that for workers from the rest of the world, but we cannot do it for workers from the EU.

Over the past year, as we all know, the British economy has begun to recover, thanks to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his tenacity in sticking to his economic project. Private sector employment is now at an all-time high. In the past, as the number of job vacancies increased, the response from employers in this country would have been to increase wages to attract the best workers. When the economy grew, wages grew. That is a fairly uncontroversial proposition, but that link seems to have been broken in the current recovery. The number of people in employment has increased, but real wage growth has been flat.

With gross migration to this country running at some 500,000 a year, and with many of those migrants coming from low-income countries, there is not much incentive for employers to increase wages. In 2004, when the Labour Government lifted the restriction on Polish and other eastern European workers coming into this country, the average wage in Poland was just 42% of the average wage in the UK. If a Polish plumber could more than double his salary by coming over to fit bathrooms in Wellingborough rather than Warsaw, who could blame him for jumping on the next easyJet flight? Good luck to him.

Although some think that lifting restrictions on Bulgarians and Romanians will somehow produce a different outcome, we should bear in mind the following facts, which have been alluded to in earlier contributions. Average wages in Bulgaria and Romania are currently 31% and 34% of average wages in the UK respectively. That is even lower, relative to the UK, than Polish wages were in 2004.

Wage levels in the UK have been fairly flat recently, but since 2004, wages paid to workers in so-called elementary occupations, such as manual labourers and cleaners, have declined by 8%. Wages have not been flat. At the very lowest end, we have seen a very large fall in wages. Cleaning jobs and labouring jobs are hard, difficult and often monotonous work, but they are the sorts of jobs that many immigrants drift towards, at least when they first arrive in a country and need a job fast. Many immigrants have a strong work ethic. It is not surprising that several academic studies in many countries have found a close link, over time, between the scale of migration to a developed country such as ours and the wages of less-skilled workers. Those wages go down or stay flat.

If the restrictions are lifted—and it looks as if they will be—and there is an influx into this country of an indeterminate number of Bulgarians and Romanians, jobs in the elementary occupations might be paid at below the legal minimum wage. Why might that be? Paying below the minimum wage is, of course, illegal, but it is certainly anecdotally true that many immigrants do not have a tendency to inform the authorities that they are receiving £3 or £4 an hour, rather than the £6-plus that is the legal minimum in this country.

The problem of British workers being undercut by EU workers—in this case Bulgarians and Romanians—who are willing to accept extremely low wages, sometimes perhaps illegally low wages, may get worse in the coming year. This statistic has been mentioned before, but it bears repeating: the legal minimum wage in both Romania and Bulgaria is under 80p an hour; in the UK it is well over £6 an hour, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough recited. One factor that we all know, and which has also been referred to, is that British workers do not want low-paid jobs. We hear all the time that young people do not want to take jobs in domiciliary care, nursing homes and so on. Suffice it to say that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is doing excellent work in reforming the benefit system, but there is more to do.

We cannot say yet that the welfare reforms have been a success. As Andrew Green, the chairman of Migration Watch UK, reminds us, it is inexcusable for British employers not to give British workers a level playing field on recruitment. The key point is that, with 1 million young people not in employment or training, it is imperative that they are given a chance to get on the work ladder. The route to proper employment has to start somewhere, and 1 million young people in our country are not doing anything at all. It is fairly inevitable that the influx of Bulgarians and Romanians will crowd out the opportunities for young people to move off benefits and into productive work.

I will close my remarks by saying that we may have lost the argument on lifting the controls, but I hope that this debate, and the further debates that I trust we will have in 2014, will move on to new territory. That territory must include the views attributed to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, who I understand has floated a cap on EU migrants to this country of 75,000. EU migrants to this country should be blocked from claiming benefits not just for three months, but for three years or more. Finally, freedom of movement from poorer countries should be restricted, and we should insist that such movement may happen only when the GDP of those countries has reached 75% of the UK’s GDP. I hope that those of us here today, and those who support my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley, will press the Prime Minister to put such radical reform of freedom of movement at the very top of his list of renegotiation items when he comes to renegotiate this country’s future as it relates to the European Union.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) and I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) on securing the debate.

I was elected to this Parliament on the basis of a promise to cut immigration from hundreds of thousands a year to no more than tens of thousands a year. Many of my constituents voted for me on that basis. They had had enough of a Labour Government who oversaw uncontrolled immigration for year after year after year, and they wanted to see immigration cut. As a Member of this place and of the Select Committee on Home Affairs—I am delighted to have its Chair, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), next to me—I have found that whenever we hold an inquiry into immigration all manner of people want to come in to tell us why there should be more immigrants for their particular vested interest, but hardly anyone, except Migration Watch UK, which is a superb, independent and thoroughly respected think tank, will put the counter-argument—

[Mr Harper]

And the Minister.

[Mark Reckless]

And of course the Minister, and his predecessor from Kent, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green), who also put forward that case.

Although the Government have taken a lot of action on immigration, much of which is in the detail of what has been done—I credit both Ministers for their work in that area—I am concerned that in several key areas we have relaxed what we should have done and perhaps originally intended to do. One such area was the number of people whom we allow in on inter-company transfers. When the Prime Minister went to India, he came under pressure, from Liberal Democrats and the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, to put in place this loophole whereby people with incomes of down to the £24,000 or £30,000 level are allowed to come in for a certain period but then leave, and other people come in and also earn below the proper cap for inter-company transfers. That has put people in the IT industry in particular under intense pressure in terms of holding down wages in that sector and, I fear, has also increased the number of people in the country.

Another area is post-study work, which expanded under the Labour Government. As far as I can see, anyone can come here and do any course, and then stay on and work afterwards, or indeed while they are doing the course, with few if any questions asked. I was delighted when the Home Office said that it would get rid of that, but unfortunately it was then watered down under pressure from universities and, as ever, the Liberal Democrats. I would love to hear from the Minister whether they signed up to that policy, and whether it is a Government policy.

We then said that anyone who comes here and gets a degree from a university can stay on and work. We are subsidising our university sector through our immigration policy. The Government go on as though everyone else does it, but they do not. I studied in America, and it is difficult to stay on there afterwards. I think only Australia has a more obviously generous system than we do. Our universities should compete on the basis of their academic excellence, not on the basis of “If you come and study with us rather than with some other competitor, you’ll be able to stay on and work in the British labour market, and potentially stay on for ever thereafter.” The fact that we have allowed that loophole makes net migration higher than it otherwise would be, and we are further from hitting our target.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) said that we have cut net migration by more than a third. I am afraid that his figures are significantly out of date, if indeed they had a solid basis when produced. He referred to a couple of weeks ago, “on Third Reading of the Immigration Bill”, which he may be aware has not actually happened yet.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hanson]

That would be valuable. We have to have some positive dialogue. Statements have been made in the Chamber today that paint a picture of people from Bulgaria and Romania in one particular category—not all individuals are in the categories referred to today by some hon. Members. We need to look at what measures we can put in place before 31 December, including those the Opposition have suggested in response to the issue.

Members have mentioned a number of issues. There is potentially downward pressure on wages, because of people being undercut. There are recruitment agencies recruiting solely from eastern Europe, which was mentioned again by the hon. Members for Rochester and Strood and for Christchurch (Mr Chope). There are pressures on certain economic markets run by gangmasters with minimum wage, as mentioned by the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds (Mr Ruffley); people are coming to this country because they believe that a £4 or £5 an hour wage packet is better than a £2 an hour equivalent wage packet in their home country. Whatever happens on 31 December and whatever numbers of individuals come to the United Kingdom, I therefore want to see a real focus by the Government on enforcement of the minimum wage as a starting point. We need to put some effort in, not only through Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, but by looking at the possibility of giving local authorities the power to enforce the minimum wage, so that we can have greater enforcement, potentially stopping the undercutting of wages that the hon. Gentleman and others have referred to.

We need to look at enforcement of the Equality Act 2010. The hon. Member for Christchurch mentioned recruitment from eastern Europe. It is illegal to recruit individuals based on their race or nationality under that Act, but it is not widely enforced. I have discussed that with the Minister and he has agreed to look at it and refer it to the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

[Mr Harper]

I have done so.

[Mr Hanson]

I am glad the Minister has done that, because I recently gave chapter and verse in the Immigration Bill Committee on a number of recruitment agencies that are recruiting to fill positions in the United Kingdom solely with people from abroad.

We need to take greater action on the enforcement of housing regulations. Only yesterday, I was pleased to see the Prime Minister—again, I give credit when it is due—visiting a raid on a beds-in-sheds encampment in Southall. One aspect of immigration that greatly upsets my constituents in north Wales is when individuals share properties in squalid conditions and so are able to undercut wages locally, because the low standard of their accommodation means they do not have the outgoings that other people have. We also wish to look at extending legislation on gangmasters. It is perfectly reasonable to put controls in and extend gangmaster legislation to sectors to which it does not apply at the moment, such as catering and tourism.

There is action that we can take, but—and this is not intended to provoke a political fight—I genuinely do not think that the approach that some hon. Members are taking, of arguing that the transitional controls should be extended beyond 31 December, is the right one: we know, as do they, that that is a matter for treaty negotiation. Nor do I think, speaking with genuine humility, that the approach of withdrawal from the European Union is one that I can support. The European Union provides significant investments to constituencies such as mine. It also provides significant employment and a proper standard of working conditions across the board.

Furthermore, although this might not be a common thought at the moment, just under 100 years ago my grandfather was fighting Germans, Romanians and Bulgarians in the trenches and Turks in the middle east. But now, we have not had a world war for a generation and there is a stability that would surprise my grandfather if he were alive today. People from Germany, Romania, Bulgaria and Britain now sit in the same chamber to discuss issues of common economic and social interest whereas in his generation Europe was at war. That view of the European Union and the potential of a strong future Europe might not be a common one, but it is one that I hold passionately.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Benton. I agree with the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) that the blend of you and Ms Dorries could not have been bettered. I congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills), for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), for Kettering (Mr Hollobone), and for Bury St Edmunds (Mr Ruffley), who collectively made a bid to the Backbench Business Committee for the debate.

I will not spend a great deal of time being partisan—that is not my natural way—but I want to make a couple of points. Part of the reason for the concern that our constituents have—a number of hon. Members touched on this—is the record of the previous Government, and the fact that they did not put transitional controls in place for the previous accession of new EU member states. Of course, the important thing was not just that we did not have them, but that we were the only significant country that did not have them. That was the reason for the very significant influx then, and that is a different position from the one that we face now.

My hon. Friend the Member for Kettering tried to get the right hon. Member for Delyn to say sorry, but it is, of course, the hardest word, and he could not quite bring himself to say it. Interestingly, the Opposition have never said that they accept that they made any mistake on non-EU immigration. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) said, that was twice as large—twice as many people came from outside the EU—and it was completely controllable, as there were no issues about free movement. The Labour Government also messed that up, but not only have we heard no apology for that, we have not even heard an acknowledgement that it was a mistake. Perhaps in due course that statement will arrive; we wait with bated breath.

The other thing that we have been criticised for is not taking action previously. The shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), has criticised us for not having made changes to the benefits system. It slipped my mind during our debate on this topic last week, but she was the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in the previous Administration. I am sure that the right hon. Member for Delyn will leap up and correct me if I am wrong, but I do not recall either of them acknowledging at any point, while he was at the Home Office or she was the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, that there was a problem with benefits for immigrants; nor, frankly, do I recall them doing anything about it. We are being criticised by the Opposition for not having taken any steps when our Immigration Bill is before the House and we have laid out steps in secondary legislation to deal with people’s concerns; that is a little bit on the rich side, but we will not be spending too much time on that.

I am sure that you will be pleased to hear, Mr Benton, that I will not spend too much time on the bigger issue of our membership of the European Union.

[Mr Bone]

Go on!

[Mr Harper]

Tempting though I find the invitation from my hon. Friend to say more, I will just observe this: we were not, as we have discovered, blessed by the presence of any Liberal Democrats in this debate, but I note that there were only two Labour Back Benchers here—sadly, neither is here now. Interestingly, both support a referendum on our membership of the EU, and both attended the House on a Friday to support the excellent European Union (Referendum) Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (James Wharton). The right hon. Member for Delyn is a little isolated: the only Labour Members who were here today, aside from him, are in favour of a referendum on our EU membership, want us to renegotiate that membership, and were willing to vote for that excellent Bill. Perhaps he should reflect on that and think about whether it might be more sensible for the Labour party to change its official position to support the Prime Minister when he leads that renegotiation after we win the general election with a Conservative majority Government, and then support us when we put that new position to the people.

I will say a few words on our record. We have reduced net migration. I will act as referee between my hon. Friends the Members for Bournemouth East, and for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless): net migration is down by nearly a third since its peak. My hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood was right about the latest figures, but what my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East said was correct before those came out. The reduction is now nearly a third, rather than over a third. Non-European economic area migration is at its lowest level for 14 years, and is back to the level that it was at when we were last in power by ourselves. That is significant progress.

[Mark Reckless]

I was talking about the last year under the previous Government, rather than the peak. Is the Minister concerned by the increase in visa applications? They had gone down to 500,000 a quarter in the first half of the year, but are now up to about 530,00 for the third quarter.

[Mr Harper]

It depends on the sort of visa applications. Some people coming to Britain do not count as immigrants, because they are not here for a long enough period of time. I will have to check the information, but my understanding is that our visa numbers suggest that the downward trend on non-EU migration will continue, based on our reforms. It is right to say—this goes to the heart of the debate—that the reason for the increase in the last set of figures was an increase in migration from the European Union, but not from eastern Europe. Interestingly, it was from the more traditional countries—the western European countries, with which there is not a massive disparity in GDP, although our economy has been rather more successful than theirs in creating jobs.

My hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley made a key point about employment. We might disagree about the solution, but his concern is well placed. My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East made this point strongly, too. Between 2003 and 2008, when the economy was growing under the previous Government, more than 90% of employment growth was accounted for by foreign nationals. Yes, the economy was growing under Labour, but the benefit was largely going to people who were not UK citizens—not the people for whom we all work. We have made a difference. Since the Government came to power, our immigration and welfare reforms have made it more worth while for British citizens to be in work.

Our skills agenda, more rigorous education and more apprenticeships are helping to make a difference. Since the second quarter of 2010, there has been a 1.1 million net increase in employment, and more than three quarters of that rise in employment has been accounted for by UK nationals, so the employment growth that we have seen since we came to power has largely benefited UK citizens, which is a significant turnaround. It is exactly what we wanted to achieve, and it is being achieved not only by the Home Office, but by our policies on immigration, on welfare, and on apprenticeships, training and education, which are all aligned and delivering the same outcome. That is significant, and it means that hundreds of thousands of families in Britain today have somebody in employment; they would not have had somebody in employment if the policies followed by the Labour had continued. That is welcome, and it is something of which we can be proud.

We are still committed to bringing down net migration. My hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood referred to the Prime Minister’s remarks. Just to be clear, he was drawing attention to the difficulty of the task, particularly given the problems in some of our western and southern European neighbours’ economies. In the interview, he reasserted the importance of delivering on our policy; he was simply drawing attention to the fact that it is a little more difficult than we had first thought, because of the difficulty in the European economies, but we are absolutely still committed to the policy.

It is worth putting the numbers in context. It is still the case with our reforms that, even having driven down migration from outside the European Union, 48% of immigration to Britain is from outside the EU, compared to 36% from the EU; the remainder are British citizens who have been overseas for more than a year and are returning to the United Kingdom. We should remember that many British citizens go to other European countries. According to the 2010 figures, there were 2.2 million EU nationals in the UK and 1.4 million Brits in EU countries. Interestingly, only five European Union countries have more than 100,000 citizens in the United Kingdom, and it is not the ones people might think: France, Germany, Ireland, Italy and Poland. In the case of Ireland, there are historical reasons not connected to the EU. Poland is the only non-traditional country that has a significant number, which is 500,000.

If we balance the figures with the countries in which our citizens live, there are only two European Union countries where the net number of EU citizens in the United Kingdom is more than 100,000. There are 145,000 more Germans living in Britain than vice versa, and Poland has a significant number—519,000 more. Of course, Spain is the opposite way round: there are 750,000 more Brits living in Spain. It is worth putting that in context, so that we can have the rational, sensible debate that the right hon. Member for Delyn talked about.

Turning to the specific points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley, and to his new clause to the Immigration Bill, it is worth remembering—I agree with the right hon. Member for Delyn on this point—that for that Bill to take effect, it has to go through our House and the other place. Whether we had debated the new clause this side of Christmas or the other side of Christmas, it would have made no difference, because the measure cannot become law until the Bill progresses through Parliament, and that is not likely to happen until towards the end of this Session. As the Leader of the House has said, the legislative agenda is quite packed. Only yesterday, five or six Acts of Parliament got Royal Assent, and—this is rather above my pay grade, so I have to be very careful, because the usual channels are in the room—the business will be scheduled in due course, but it will not make a difference to when the measure becomes law.

I fear that the right hon. Member for Delyn is right: the previous Government signed the accession treaties and we supported them. Of course I am not pretending that we did not support them. The treaty came into effect in 2007, and the seven-year transitional controls expire at the end of the year. It is worth being careful about language. We are not lifting them; they expire. They cease to have any legal effect, because of the terms of the accession treaties. I am not doing anything to lift them; they simply become legally ineffective at the end of the year, because of the provisions.

[Mr Bone]

Will the Minister give way on that point?

[Mr Harper]

If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I am trying to cover the points made in the debate. I have listened to the debate, and I only have three and a half minutes to try to cover the other points that people have raised.

Unlike the previous Government, who chose not to apply controls, we have extended them to the maximum length possible, so I feel that the strategy of my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley is not going to work. Although it is perfectly reasonable for colleagues to have concerns, I hope that they will have seen—of course, I knew these things were in the pipeline when we debated them in Committee, which, obviously, my hon. Friend did not—the order that I signed a couple of weeks ago, which puts in place tough rules about limiting jobseeker’s allowance to six months. It puts in place the controls that I talked about in response to points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering and the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey).

We will be able to remove, and stop returning to Britain, people who are here not exercising their treaty rights—who are here begging, rough sleeping and engaged in criminality. If Members look at some of those tough changes, they will see that they address things that our constituents are concerned about, so I urge Members who have signed the new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley, and those who have not done so, to look at the changes that we have brought forward. I think that they will see that they address many of their concerns.

My right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary have laid out their thinking about the discussions we need to have on the new accession countries and free movement generally. We can have that negotiation only when there is a new Government. We are constrained by the coalition with our Liberal Democrat colleagues. The renegotiation strategy is not the current Government’s policy, but it is the Conservative party’s policy, which we will put before the people at the election.

The final point is that we should remember that the transitional controls are about employment. A significant number of people—102,000 Romanians and 53,000 Bulgarians—are already here, according to the Office for National Statistics. They are working, or are self-employed, self-sufficient or studying. They are already in Britain. As one or two hon. Members suggested, some people already here might not entirely be doing what they purport to be doing. They might be working. We might find that they regularise their status in the new year. The point is that the controls are about whether people can work, not whether they can come to Britain. People can come to Britain for three months, but they can stay only if they are exercising treaty rights. We have given ourselves the power to remove people if they are here not exercising treaty rights—not working, studying or being self-sufficient—and we can stop them coming back to the UK to cause damage.

We want people who come here to work, contribute and pay taxes. The legislative changes that we will make with the Immigration Bill, and that we have made in secondary legislation, address the concerns. I urge hon. Members to study the changes. If they do so, they will be reassured that the Government are taking the tough action that our constituents want. We have a good story to tell our constituents.

Question put and agreed to.

EU/Swiss Agreement

Mark Harper Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2013 Written Statements

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

The Government have decided to opt in to the Council decisions to sign and conclude an agreement to extend the EU-Switzerland free movement agreement to Croatia.

The proposal seeks to amend the agreement to reflect the accession of the Republic of Croatia to the European Union on 1 July 2013. The amendment is a natural step following accession and will extend the agreement to apply to nationals of Croatia in Switzerland, and to nationals of Switzerland in Croatia. The proposed amendment will not extend a right of free movement in the UK to persons who do not already enjoy such a right. Therefore, the proposed amendment will have no impact on the UK.

Immigration Transparency Data

Mark Harper Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2013 Written Statements

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

The Government are committed to openness and transparency to enable the public to hold the Government and other public bodies to account. This Government have made more data available than ever before. The Home Office contributes to that agenda by regularly releasing information about its work, spend and outcomes in a publicly accessible and open format.

This includes information about the immigration family returns process on our website. Unfortunately between 15 and 28 October 2013 some personal data were available on the Home Office website as part of a spreadsheet alongside the regular data set, in error. This was identified by Home Office officials on 28 October 2013 and the personal information was removed immediately. The personal data related to the names of 1,598 main applicants in the family returns process, their date of birth and limited details about their immigration case type and status. It did not include personal addresses or financial information.

The Department has taken steps to establish whether the data were viewed or accessed outside of the Home Office. That analysis suggests there were fewer than 30 visits to the relevant webpage. It has not been possible to ascertain whether those who visited the webpage went on to open the data sheet in question or accessed the part of the data sheet which contained the personal information.

The Home Office has notified the Information Commissioner’s Office and is undertaking an internal investigation. Measures have been put in place to prevent a recurrence of the error and verify that no similar error has previously taken place.

Our official assessment is that the risk to those whose personal information was accessible for the period is low. However, I have instructed my officials to take steps to notify those individuals concerned, where it is possible and appropriate to do so.

Immigration

Mark Harper Excerpts

Wednesday 11th December 2013 Westminster Hall

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to contribute to this debate under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak. Although I speak from the Opposition Benches, I am not in the business of defending everything that the previous Government did in relation to immigration, but frankly, the suggestion by the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner) that the decisions that we made about the A8 accession countries—which we recognised were a mistake, and perhaps arose from listening too closely to the calls of the business community and its desire for free movement of labour into the UK—were some sort of ideological plot to transform the nature of our society is perhaps something that is better placed in the pages of the Daily Mail.

Let me describe a personal experience. Last Friday, when I was conducting one of my regular advice surgeries, I was talking to a Romanian citizen currently living in the UK. She is a student and is making a significant contribution to our local economy in Sheffield. She was volunteering for AIESEC, which is a student society committed to promoting business, finding business placements, developing skills in an industrial and commercial context and growing global-minded entrepreneurs. She was enthusiastic when she came to Britain, but she was deeply depressed by the public discourse around Romania and Bulgaria and their citizens, which made her feel unwelcome. I think we need to take care how we debate the issue, not only for her sake and others’, but also for the sake of all those UK citizens who have raised concerns, of which all hon. Members have experience, about immigration. They deserve proper leadership from us as politicians, which means being honest about the facts and coming up with the right solutions to the real problems.

I have some sympathy with the Minister. He was right a couple of weeks ago to talk down the fear of a mass influx of Romanians and Bulgarians. He will not be surprised, however, that I have only some sympathy. Much of the problem has been created through the Government talking up the problems of migration for political advantage. We need an honest debate. We have heard a lot of noise, some of which was reflected in the speech by the hon. Member for Isle of Wight, about benefits for newly arriving EU migrants. The impression being given is that EU migrants are freeloaders who come simply to claim our benefits and to exploit our generosity. However, all the evidence, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman knows, suggests that EU migrants make a net fiscal contribution.

A study was published last month by the centre for research and analysis of migration—CReAM—at University college London, which is one of our country’s greatest universities and one of the world’s leading universities. It concluded that recent immigrants—those who arrived after 1999, who constituted 33% of the overall immigrant population in 2011—were 45% less likely to receive state benefits or tax credits than UK natives. Over the same period, recent European economic area immigrants have on average contributed 34% more in taxes than they have received in transfers. By contrast, over the same period, the total of UK natives’ tax payments were 11% lower than the transfers they received.

We welcome the most talented migrants. In 2011, 32% of EEA immigrants and 43% of non-EEA immigrants had university degrees. The estimated net fiscal contribution of immigrants increases even more if we consider that immigration helps to share the total cost of fixed public expenditure among a larger pool.

The main reasons for the large net fiscal contribution of recent EEA immigrants are their higher average labour market participation than UK natives and their lower receipt of welfare benefits. Professor Christian Dustmann, the director of CReAM and the co-author of the study, said:

“Our research shows that in contrast with most other European countries, the UK attracts highly educated and skilled immigrants from within the EEA as well as from outside. What’s more, immigrants who arrived since 2000 have made a very sizeable net fiscal contribution and therefore helped to reduce the fiscal burden on UK-born workers. Our study also suggests that over the last decade or so the UK has benefited fiscally from immigrants from EEA countries, who have put in considerably more in taxes and contributions than they received in benefits and transfers. Given this evidence, claims about ‘benefit tourism’ by EEA immigrants”—

that myth—

seem to be disconnected from reality.”

Another example of the Government talking up the migration issue but introducing measures that damage the economy by targeting the wrong issue is on the issue of international students. The Minister will not be surprised to hear me speaking about that again. I agree that the Government are right, as were the previous Government, to clamp down on bogus students who not only are exploiting our system, but are themselves in many cases exploited by bogus colleges. However, overall, international students bring huge benefits to the economy.

Oxford Economics conducted research on behalf of the university of Sheffield, which looked at the students’ net contribution after all costs to public services—such as traffic congestion and everything else it could think of. The survey was published in January 2013 and showed that during the previous academic year the 8,000-plus international students at our two universities made a net total contribution of more than £120 million to the Sheffield economy. Probably about 6,000, 7,000 or 8,000 local jobs depend on those students. Furthermore, the net benefits generated by the indirect supply chain advantages were assumed to account for approximately an additional £22 million to the local economy. International students obviously bring further external benefits, such as boosts to demand as a consequence of increased familiarity with locally produced goods and the potential for our status as a city and a country to be boosted by the relationship that they build while they are in the UK.

International students are a growing market internationally. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has calculated that by 2020 the market could double. Instead of being worth £8 billion to our economy, it could be worth £16 billion; instead of 6,000 jobs in Sheffield, it could be 12,000 jobs. Currently, international student numbers are flatlining, while our competitor countries are taking advantage of some of the measures that this Government have put in place. We should be concerned about that.

The hon. Member for Isle of Wight expressed concerns about things that are happening in the labour market. My concern is that he did not focus on the things that can be done to address issues in the labour market. The Minister for Immigration made a useful contribution before the Home Affairs Committee this week when he was challenged about a statement from the head of Domino’s Pizza about why it was unable to recruit sufficiently from within the UK domestic work force. The Minister rightly made the point that the company should perhaps look at its employment conditions and wages. It would be helpful to consider positive labour market interventions that can create the sort of level playing field that the hon. Member for Isle of Wight seeks.

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

To be clear, it is worse than the hon. Gentleman suggests. The chief executive of Domino’s Pizza was not arguing that he could not recruit in the UK alone. He was arguing that he could not recruit enough people from the whole EU labour pool, and that we needed to start importing low-skilled workers from outside the EU in order that he could keep low wages in his business. That is why I said he perhaps ought to reflect on the terms and conditions. So he was arguing that we should have an unrestricted free-for-all, but I do not think it is the role of Government policy to let multinationals keep wages low when, frankly, they should pay their staff a little more.

[Paul Blomfield]

I agree entirely with the Minister on that point. We should ensure that multinationals pay wages that will attract people to do the jobs. We should also ensure that companies do not recruit exclusively from eastern Europe, as they seek to do. Jobs should be available to local workers in the market. We should also do more to ensure that companies that flout the minimum wage rules are prosecuted. The number of businesses that are fined for employing illegal workers has halved, plummeting from more than 2,000 in 2009 to a little more than 1,000 in 2012. We can talk positively about those sorts of labour market interventions to address many of our concerns.

I will conclude by commenting on something that the hon. Member for Isle of Wight said about a constituent, who is concerned about the way in which their community has been transformed by the influx of migrants. I am sure that if we look back in 50-year snapshots, we will find that people have always expressed such concerns. I am sure that they expressed concerns about my wife’s family, who came across from Ireland to supplement the work force in the UK. I was brought up in Sheffield in the 1960s and it was a relatively monocultural city. The city in which I have brought up my son in the 1990s is stronger, richer and better for having welcomed people from around the world—some to build better lives, some fleeing persecution. I am proud that we are the country’s first city of sanctuary.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Howarth, and it is a rare treat to have two Howarths in the Chamber at the same time. I suspect that you are at rather different ends of the political spectrum—although you, as Chair, are completely neutral.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner) for securing the debate. As the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) said, it is always good to have one and a half hours of valuable parliamentary time to talk about issues that are of concern to all our constituents. Some are concerned, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) said, about attracting the best and the brightest. Others are worried about the numbers of people coming here and whether they are all making a contribution.

I am also pleased to see that the right hon. Member for Delyn has some friends today. Last time we debated immigration, he was completely by himself with no Labour Back Benchers to support him. Today, however, one Labour Member spoke in the debate and another is in the Chamber, so the right hon. Gentleman’s powers of oratory are clearly attracting a wider audience.

My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight was right to highlight the failure of the previous Labour Government, and one can argue about whether that was the result of a conspiracy or a cock-up. The former Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) leans towards the view that a “spectacular mistake”, in his words, was made. A significant number of people came into the country when the previous Labour Government were in power, which is partly why people have concerns. It was partly to do with the fact that at the time of the eastern European accession, we were the only major country to have no transitional controls, so most of those who left their own countries to work came to Britain.

It is worth remembering, however, that eastern Europe was not where the largest number of people came from. During the Labour party’s time in office, more than twice as many migrants came from outside the European Union. Although the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), was presented with that information in a clear graphical format during a recent edition of “Sunday Politics”, and she was sitting right in front of the screen, she denied that it is true. I am afraid it is, however. Although the Labour party may argue that it made some mistakes on eastern European migration, in an area in which it had complete control over who came to the United Kingdom, it failed. That is behind many people’s concerns, so we have tried to demonstrate that we are able to take tough decisions to reassure people.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) said that even in an area such as his constituency where immigration is low, people see significant numbers of migrants from eastern Europe in neighbouring towns, such as Boston in Lincolnshire. People are concerned about the numbers of people who have immigrated in a relatively short space of time and how successfully they have integrated. That is why we have to address those concerns.

We have made progress. Several Members have referred to the fact that net migration is down by nearly one third since its peak. We are building a system that works in the national interest. Immigration from outside the EU is now at its lowest level for 14 years, and almost back to the level it was when the previous Conservative Government left office.

The good news is that we are being more selective. According to the latest figures, there is a 7% increase in students coming to our excellent UK universities. The hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) has made that point before and I am sure he will make it again, as will my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge. We welcome international students coming to our excellent universities, and both the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend have more than one excellent university in their areas. It is important that we welcome students who come to Britain to study. Most will leave, some will stay, some will start businesses and some will help create economic growth, and we very much welcome them. I think my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) was being slightly unfair earlier—the “hear, hears” when he congratulated my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr Newmark) were coming not from him but from the rest of us. He made an excellent speech focusing on those who are going to contribute. People who come here and contribute are important.

I listened carefully to what my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) said about numbers, which was also a concern of my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight. Two things are worth remembering. First, my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering was concerned that we will see a repeat of what happened in 2004, but the situation now is different, because in 2004 we were the only country to have no transitional controls. This time, we have had such controls and at the end of September, the controls of eight other European countries—including large countries with successful economies, such as Germany—will expire at the same time as ours. We are not the only country that will have a policy change. Secondly, 48% of immigrants come from outside the EU, 36% come from within the EU and 15% of the people coming to Britain are British citizens who have lived overseas for more than a year who are returning home or who have never lived here. It is worth putting the numbers into perspective.

Most hon. Members talked about employment. We have made a difference, which my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight put his finger on when he talked about our immigration policy, our welfare policy and our education and training policy. The difference is in the combination of the three—a tougher immigration policy; a tougher welfare policy that encourages people to work and contribute; and an increase in the number of apprenticeships and more rigour in schools. In the five years to December 2008, under the previous Government, when there was economic growth and jobs were being created, more than 90% of the increase in employment was accounted for by foreign nationals. That is probably what provoked the comment of the previous Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), about

“British jobs for British workers.”

Since the second quarter of 2010, under the current Government, more than three quarters of the 1.1 million new jobs in the economy have gone to British citizens, which is of benefit. Talented people are still coming to Britain to fill gaps in the labour market and contribute, but the growth in employment now benefits British citizens. That is, first, what we are in business to do in Parliament, and, secondly, very welcome.

We are committed to continuing to bring net migration down. My hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot referred to removing people who have no right to be here. The Immigration Bill currently before Parliament contains measures to reduce the rights of appeal and make it easier to remove foreign national offenders, for example, from the UK when they have no right to be here, which is welcome.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

I salute the Minister for what he is doing. My point is not so much that further measures, which I welcome, are being taken, but that many people in this country have already exhausted the extensive appeals procedures and have still not been removed. Despite people like me writing to say, “Why aren’t they being removed?”, officials do not seem to take action.

[Mr Harper]

I agree with my hon. Friend. We will certainly give ourselves the powers to take action. Since we split up the UK Border Agency earlier this year, there has been a change in the culture of the two new parts. The immigration enforcement branch now feels that it is a law enforcement organisation and its job is to deal with those who break our immigration rules.

On the subject of those who break the law and want to come to the UK, I would like to make a bit of a public service announcement. I noticed in media coverage this morning that Mike Tyson, who wants to visit the UK, is not able to come here because we changed the immigration rules for those guilty of serious offences. A column in The Sun says that he received a “knock out blow”—the first time I have ever, in effect, got in the ring with a boxer. Mr Tyson is a convicted rapist. If people have been convicted of an offence for which they have been sentenced to a period of imprisonment of at least four years, we will refuse them entry to the UK. I say that because his publisher, who organised his UK book tour, said:

“There was a change in the UK immigration law in December 2012 of which we were unaware.”

That is a fault on their part. I will say in Parliament, therefore, to make the position clear, that we have toughened the immigration rules and people who are criminals who want to come to the UK will not be able to if they are guilty of serious crimes. The measure is welcome and has been welcomed by many who support victims of violence. The child protection campaigner, Sara Payne, said:

“I think the Home Office got it right.”

I savour those words; I do not often hear people say them. She said:

“The rules don’t change just because the offender is famous.”

That is an important point. People have to obey the law. The Government make no apology for toughening up the rules in 2012, and those rules will apply to people equally, whether they are famous or not.

Before I move on, I shall pick up on the intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot. The Immigration Bill will reduce the number of appeals and tighten up the rules on article 8, putting them in primary legislation. People who have no right to be here, for example a foreign national offender we are trying to remove, will have fewer opportunities to argue that they should be able to stay, and we will be able to remove them more effectively. I hope my hon. Friend welcomes that.

There was much discussion about labour market rules. The right hon. Member for Delyn mentioned advertisements that aim to hire only foreign nationals, which are unlawful already. I said during a debate on the Immigration Bill that I would draw such advertisements to the attention of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which is the regulator and enforcement body in that area, and I have done so. It wrote back to me and, to paraphrase a relatively lengthy letter, it is on the case. I will be able to update hon. Members when the Bill returns to the Floor of the House.

My hon. Friends the Members for Cleethorpes and for Braintree referred to what we are doing as we move towards the end of the year. We are preparing for the transitional controls expiring. Last week, I signed an order, which we laid before the House on Friday, amending the European economic area regulations, to take steps to restrict access to benefits, guard against the abuse of free movement and prevent individuals who are removed from the UK for not fulfilling the requirements of the free movement rules from coming straight back again. Those changes will be helpful. A number of them come into force on 1 January. Those we remove for begging or rough sleeping, for example, will not be allowed to come back unless they can demonstrate that immediately on re-entry they will be exercising a treaty right, coming back to work or study, or that they will be self-sufficient.

I am pressed for time and I want to deal with the other issues my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight raised. We will restrict access to jobseeker’s allowance to six months for foreign nationals who become unemployed. This week, the Department for Work and Pensions is rolling out a toughened habitual residence test to increase the range and depth of evidence collected from benefit claimants to ensure that they are entitled to be here. The Home Secretary has consistently raised that issue at the Justice and Home Affairs Council, and she did so again last week. She received support from a number of member states and, I note, robust support from my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot.

The Government are taking the tough measures necessary. We are bearing down on numbers, but also ensuring that Britain is open to those who want to come to contribute, to put something back and to make our country wealthier. We have the balance right. I want to continue to make changes and I am confident that hon. Members on both sides might even support them.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Harper Excerpts

Monday 2nd December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

6. What assessment she has made of the expected level of immigration from Romania and Bulgaria between 2014 and 2018.

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

My hon. Friend will know that we consulted the Migration Advisory Committee on that question, and it advised us that making an estimate was not practical because of the number of variables, so we have not done so.

[Nigel Mills]

I am grateful for that answer. Having seen the numbers last week for the increase in migrants from the EU, does the Minister still believe that we can get total net migration down to the tens of thousands in this Parliament without having some restrictions on immigration by Romanians and Bulgarians next year?

[Mr Harper]

If my hon. Friend looked closely at the net migration statistics last week, he will have seen that what was interesting about them was not only the reduction in emigration by European Union nationals, but the fact that the increase in migration from the European Union involved people from not eastern Europe, or Romania and Bulgaria, but some of the southern European states, reflecting the weakness in their economy and the strength of ours.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

Yesterday was the national day of Romania, celebrated in Bucharest, and also in White Hart Lane, where a young, talented Romanian, Vlad Chiriches, was man of the match. Is it still the Government’s position, as set out on the website in Bucharest, that we want Romanians to come to this country to live and work, provided that they do not claim benefits? How many members of the Government support the retention of the restrictions?

[Mr Harper]

Of course, since 2007, Romanians and Bulgarians have been able to come to Britain to study, if they are self-sufficient, or to work in a skilled occupation, where they have asked for permission to do so. All that is happening at the end of the year is that the general restrictions are being lifted. Of course, if they want to come here to work and contribute, they are very welcome to do so; the changes set out last week by my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary make it clear that we do not want them coming here just to claim benefits. I think that those reforms are welcome and are supported by Government Members.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

I congratulate the Government and the Minister on getting non-EU immigration figures down. I want to be helpful to him. He will know that the respected think-tank Migration Watch UK has predicted that between 30,000 and 70,000 Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants will come to the UK every year for five years. What figures, within those parameters, does he favour?

[Mr Harper]

As I said, we consulted the Migration Advisory Committee. I have seen a range of forecasts. I have seen the Migration Watch UK one, forecasts from the two countries concerned, which are much lower, and other forecasts that are much higher. The fact that there is such a range of forecasts from independent commentators demonstrates how sensible the Government’s decision was not to join in.

[Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

Three million Bulgarians have left their country to work in other countries over the last few years, because they have had the right to access 15 European countries. Is not a lot of the rhetoric that we have heard recently just scaremongering, following on from the disgraceful situation in the Eastleigh by-election? [Interruption.] I see a Member squinting; in that by-election, it was said that 3.1 million Bulgarians—more than half the population of Bulgaria—would be coming here in January next year. Why does the Minister not publish the actual number of Bulgarians who have come here to work in the past few years, so that we do not have this rhetoric running around the media?

[Mr Harper]

I wish that I could control the rhetoric running around the media, but unfortunately I cannot. Today I did an interview with the BBC in which I was more or less told that there is no problem, which was interesting, because, as I gently pointed out, it is running an entire week of programmes on the subject. That suggests it has a strange sense of priorities. To answer the right hon. Gentleman’s point seriously, the Government have been clear that if people want to come here to work and contribute, as Romanians and Bulgarians have done since 2007, that is absolutely fine. The changes we made last week are about ensuring that people do not come here to claim benefits. It is also worth noting that 79% of the new jobs created since the Government came to power have gone to British citizens.

[Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

Although I welcome the measures that the Government have taken on benefits, which will have an effect, are not the concerns about immigration from Romania and Bulgaria really just the tip of a wider problem? With much of southern and eastern Europe still heading into recession, tolerance of the free movement of people is quite close to reaching its natural end.

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. It is why our right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said last week that we very much want to look at free movement and how we negotiate future accession arrangements for large countries. He set out a range of things we might want to consider, other than just time limits—for example, relative income levels in countries—which I think has great merit.

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

The Minister did not really answer the question from the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills), so let me give him another go. Given that figures published last week show that net migration rose to 182,000, from 167,000, over the previous year, before the impact of any Romanian and Bulgarian immigration in January, does he think that the target, as set out in the Prime Minister’s solemn manifesto pledge, of having a net migration in the “tens of thousands,” to quote the hon. Member for Amber Valley, by May 2015 will be met—yes or no?

[Mr Harper]

When the right hon. Gentleman’s party was in power, net migration reached 2.1 million. I should also point out, to help the shadow Home Secretary, who was challenged on this yesterday by Andrew Neil, that most of that immigration was from countries outside the European Union. There was a large bar chart showing that on the television screen, but she denied what is reality.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

9. What steps she has taken to restrict access to benefits for immigrants.

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

My hon. Friend will have noted the steps set out last week by the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary to tighten up the benefits system and ensure that those coming to Britain do so to work and contribute, rather than to take out of the country.

[Mr Turner]

A thought-provoking article on migration published last week by Civitas shows that the British sense of fairness dictates that there should be some link between what people put into the welfare state and what they get out of it. Does my hon. Friend agree that in the case of new immigrants there is very little link at all, and does that not need to be looked at?

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend is spot on. A number of the changes we set out last week do exactly that. For example, we are limiting the period over which a jobseeker can keep claiming benefits to six months. Colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions have strengthened the habitual residence test to ensure that it is tougher. We have also made sure that if people who come here are not exercising treaty rights and we remove them from the United Kingdom, we can stop them returning unless they demonstrate that they are going to do so.

[Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)]

Much of the detail on access to benefits is determined locally, and it is quite difficult, even after checking with the House of Commons Library or the website, to understand what some of the precise definitions mean. What steps has the Minister taken to ensure that local authorities and the various agencies interpret what he thinks is a toughening consistently across the country?

[Mr Harper]

On the hon. Lady’s point about benefits, those are not decisions for local authorities but for the Department for Work and Pensions, which trains its staff very carefully and gives them clear guidance. They are rolling out the new habitual residence test, which is robust and has a clear script with questions that people are asked. There will be further changes on access to housing benefit. We will make sure that where these decisions are for local authorities they are provided with clear guidance so that they can make the right decisions in the tougher regime.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

On 1 January, when the transitional controls on Romania and Bulgaria are lifted, will entry also be permitted to non-EU citizens who have Bulgarian or Romanian passports? If so, will the very large number of Moldovans who have Romanian passports be entitled to benefits, like Romanians and Bulgarians?

[Mr Harper]

I may be missing something, but if people have Romanian or Bulgarian passports and are citizens of Romania or Bulgaria, they are entitled to come to Britain because those countries are members of the European Union. Indeed, they could come to Britain today; the transitional restrictions are only about whether they can come here to work. People with a Romanian or Bulgarian passports—citizens of those countries—are of course able to come to Britain today.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

My constituents are pretty accepting of migration and have been for very many years, and I have always been liberal about migration to our country, but what does worry them is not just the benefit position but whether we have enough school places and social housing. Do we have enough public services to meet the challenge of a fresh wave of immigration?

[Mr Harper]

It is very good, of course, that the hon. Gentleman takes a very liberal approach; he will have been delighted, then, when his party was in power and had net migration of 2.1 million over its period in office, but I do not think that was the general view. On the availability of public services, it is exactly because of the pressures on school places and on access to GPs that the Government have reduced net migration by nearly a third since the election. We want to make sure that people who are coming here are doing so to contribute and to pay their way, and that immigration is properly controlled.

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

10. What changes she plans to make to the deportation appeals system.

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

We are making changes in the Immigration Bill to reduce the number of appeal rights and to ensure that those convicted of criminal offences will, in most cases, be able to be deported first and their appeal to take place from overseas.

[Christopher Pincher]

I am grateful to the Minister for tightening up the previous Government’s deportation regulations so that the scandalous waste of time it took to deport Hamza and Qatada can never happen again. Can he confirm that the proposals he has tabled are unlikely to be struck down by the European Court of Human Rights? If they might be, is he prepared to take action against the European convention on human rights first?

[Mr Harper]

We have looked very carefully at this, and we are confident that the measures in the Immigration Bill, including the changes that clause 14 makes to put article 8 on a proper statutory basis, are robust. The Home Secretary has made it clear that at the election we will have to deal with the impact of the Human Rights Act 1998 and the convention. Indeed, that has been reinforced by comments from Lord Sumption, who pointed out that the Court is now engaged in judicial law-making, which is in constitutional terms remarkable, taking many contentious issues that should be questions for political debate and turning them into questions of law to be resolved by a tribunal. I could not agree with him more.

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

11. What assessment she has made of trends in the number of referrals from the police to the Crown Prosecution Service for domestic violence offences.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

12. How many random inquiries on immigration status have been made in public places in each of the last six months.

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

None.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

That is a surprising answer, because a number of us have witnessed immigration officers at Metropolitan line and other tube stations around London stopping people and asking them for their immigration status. Will the Minister assure me that no immigration officer would ever stop anyone randomly in a public place, ask them for identity documents and then call in the police to assist them with their inquiries, when there is no requirement to carry identity cards at any time in this country? Indeed, such identity cards do not even exist.

[Mr Harper]

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we do not conduct random operations; we conduct intelligence-led operations, as did the previous Government, and they are very successful. The street operations we have conducted this year have led to the arrest of almost a third of those encountered. They are very successful in enforcing our immigration laws. We do not stop people at random; we are not empowered to do so by law and even if we were, we would not do so as a matter of policy. We stop people when we think there is intelligence to indicate that they are breaking our immigration laws, and I make no apology for that.

[Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister and his staff for the support they gave recently to a constituent of mine to clarify a situation and smooth over the problems.

The number of illegals being identified by the police at the ferry terminals in my area—which is part of the common travel area—has fallen only slightly. Is the Minister able to tell the House the number of people in that category who are stopped but not properly processed and who simply disappear?

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s opening remarks.

I do not have the figures to hand, because I was not aware that he intended to ask that question. I will look at the issue in detail and write to him, but on the common travel area in general, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims signed an agreement with the Irish Justice Minister in, I think, December 2011. We are taking steps with the Irish Republic to strengthen the common travel area to make sure that our borders continue to get more secure.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

13. What recent discussions she has had with the Secretary of State for Education on preventing violence against women and girls.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gordon Henderson (Sittingbourne and Sheppey) (Con)]

15. What steps she is taking to reduce net immigration.

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

We have reduced net migration by nearly a third since its peak in 2010. Immigration continues to fall, with immigration from outside the EU at its lowest level since 1998. We will continue to take steps to keep immigration under control, while allowing the best and the brightest to come to Britain to contribute to our economy.

[Gordon Henderson]

I welcome the Minister’s answer, but will he assure me that the Government will remove people who are not here to work and prevent them from coming back, unless they have a very good, legitimate reason for doing so?

[Mr Harper]

From last week’s announcements, my hon. Friend will have noted that we are changing the relevant regulations so that if EU citizens in Britain are, for example, involved in low-level criminality or rough sleeping, and not exercising their treaty rights, we will be able to remove them and prevent them from coming back, unless they can demonstrate that they will immediately be exercising those treaty rights. I think that those changes will be welcomed in the country.

[Mr Charles Kennedy (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (LD)]

Will the Minister address that part of his responsibilities in this policy area as they affect would-be foreign students coming to study in this country? On 17 October, he painted a pretty positive picture in a written answer to me on this issue, but that stands in stark contrast to what the UK university sector is saying about a massive loss of income and of international good will for our country.

[Mr Harper]

I am surprised by that, because figures published last week showed a 7% increase—an increased increase on the previous statistics—in the number of such students going to our universities. There is no reason why a student who is properly qualified, who can speak English and who can pay their fees cannot come to a university, and if they get a graduate-level job, they can stay afterwards to work and to continue contributing, so I am not sure why the university sector is saying that. The increase in the number of students does not support its argument.

[Sir Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) (Con)]

Although I can understand, given the grotesque underestimate by the previous Government, my hon. Friend’s reluctance to predict the number of Bulgarians and Romanians likely to come to this country, may I encourage him to give the public and local authorities some indication so that they can plan? Furthermore, even at this late stage, may I invite the Government to support new clause 1 to the Immigration Bill to extend the transitional arrangements—and let us see the courts of these islands, or indeed the European Court of Justice, defy the will of Parliament?

[Mr Harper]

On the first point, predictions only have any value if they are accurate. I am sure that my hon. Friend was listening carefully to my earlier answer, but the figures from independent commentators—from the countries concerned to Migration Watch and other forecasters—are wide-ranging. Indeed, from what I think I heard an Opposition Member say, there is a political party in this country that thinks that all 29 million citizens of those two countries are going to arrive at Heathrow airport on 1 January. With that range of forecasts, it would not be wise to make any predictions.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

16. What changes she is considering to terrorism prevention and investigation measures.

--- Later in debate ---

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

T2. My constituents are concerned about immigration from Romania and Bulgaria and would like to see the transitional period extended. Public opinion in neighbouring EU states shows that that view is widely shared. Have the Government had discussions with other EU Governments on united action?

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

It is not possible to extend transitional controls due to the terms of the accession treaties signed by the Labour party when it was in government. Eight other European countries will remove those controls at the end of the year. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has, however, been working with our European colleagues to tighten the rules so that we see a reduction in the abuse of free movement.

[Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

I welcome that fact that now, under Clare’s law, victims of serial perpetrators of domestic violence will be able to get disclosures from right across the country. The Home Secretary knows that victims are probably at their most vulnerable at the point of disclosure, so will she ensure that organisations such as Women’s Aid and domestic violence advisers have sufficient resources to be able to protect those victims at that point?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

T5. After the wave of mass immigration under the previous Labour Government, my constituents believe that this country is full, and do not want to see unrestricted immigration from Romania, Bulgaria and, as it now turns out, up to one third of Moldova. At this late stage with a month to go, I urge the Home Secretary to think again and not to waive the transitional controls.

[Mr Harper]

Obviously I understand why my hon. Friend’s constituents are concerned, given the appalling job that was done by the Labour Government. In fact, under Labour twice as many people arrived from outside the European Union as arrived from within it. However, as I said earlier, the transitional controls under the accession treaties that Labour signed can last only until the end of the year, and eight other European countries are removing those controls. That is why we have announced changes to ensure that anyone who comes to this country comes to work and not to claim benefits.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

A number of my constituents who have been given leave to remain in this country, in some cases after appealing, are now spending several months waiting for the paperwork to come through, with the result that a number of them cannot take up job offers. What steps is the Department taking to deal with that?

[Mr Harper]

If the hon. Lady knows of any specific cases and has not already written to me about them, I suggest that she do so. Since we split up the UK Border Agency, UK Visas and Immigration has been concentrating on improving its customer service standards. We have already reduced the backlog of cases by a significant amount in the current financial year, and we will continue to do so. The new director general is focusing on improving performance for our customers.

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

T6. What action is the Home Secretary taking to ensure that child victims of trafficking are receiving all the support to which they are entitled, and would she consider piloting a system of independent guardianship?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

I know that this matter is of concern to my hon. Friend and his constituents, because he wrote to me about it early this year. As I said earlier during Home Office questions, we continue to work closely with the Irish Republic following the protocol signed by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims. We work closely with the Republic in sharing intelligence to strengthen the controls that ensure that our country is properly protected.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

Given the record number of animal experiments that were recorded in 2012, what action are the Government taking to create a downward rather than an upward trend?

Stalking

Mark Harper Excerpts

Thursday 21st November 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

First, I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing this well-subscribed and informative debate for Members who have had an interest in this subject for a great deal of time. This is not meant as an insult to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I would have liked to have seen Madam Deputy Speaker in the Chair, because this would then have been the first debate in which I had spoken under her chairmanship. If you will forgive me, I will place on record that it was a great pleasure to be sat here quietly while she chaired the first part of the debate. I was enormously pleased by that and I am equally pleased to have been joined by you for the latter part of the debate.

I will not refer to what the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) will do after the next election, because when other Members did so it sounded terribly like an obituary. I am sure he has plenty of life left in him and plenty of exciting challenges waiting for him when he eventually departs this place, so I will simply pay tribute to him for his work not only as chairman of the all-party group on stalking and harassment, but as chair of the parliamentary inquiry into stalking law reform. I also pay tribute to the other members of the all-party group, including its vice-chairs my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) and the hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Sandra Osborne).

Unfortunately, my right hon. Friend is unable to be present for the end of the debate. I listened carefully to her excellent speech and she has done a great deal of work in this area. There was a strange irony when Madam Deputy Speaker read out the Royal Assent for the HS2 Bill, which my right hon. Friend has campaigned against in varying levels of publicness, including when she was a member of the Government and even more forcefully since. That was an interesting and spooky part of the debate, but I think she saw the ironic and funny side of it, as did the rest of the House.

Every Member who has participated in the debate has made the point that stalking is a serious crime and the various examples given—the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) spoke from her personal experience—have illustrated that it can seriously affect people’s lives. People can be physically attacked and they can lose their homes, families, friends and jobs in a bid to escape a persistent, fixated stalker. Stalking can also take place in a relationship or after a brief relationship, or people can be stalked by a complete stranger. It varies and the response needs to take that into consideration.

The crime survey for England and Wales shows that 4% of women and 3% of men are affected by stalking in some way, so it is clearly a very important issue that affects a large number of people. The work of the parliamentary inquiry, chaired by the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd, demonstrated clearly that there was a gap in the law, and the Government were able—partly, I am sure, because of the excellent case that was made, but also, I suspect, because of the fortuitous timing of an appropriate piece of legislation—to introduce the new offences very shortly after the case had been so powerfully made. Legislation is, of course, not the only response and I will address some of the other issues that have been raised.

We want to work through the reforms we have already made to the policing landscape. That brings me on to police and crime commissioners, which several Members mentioned, including my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Henry Smith), and my hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), who particularly mentioned the Essex police and crime commissioner. Those who are elected, such as police and crime commissioners, will listen to the concerns of the public, so they provide a good opportunity to drive the issues home. Angus Macpherson, the police and crime commissioner for Wiltshire and Swindon, is someone I know personally as I used to live in Swindon, my home town. He attended a stalking awareness event and made it clear that he wanted to understand the issue so that he could see whether there were any provisions that he could put in place to further support victims and stop offenders.

The Hull Daily Mail reported last December that the new police and crime commissioner there, Matthew Grove, was backing calls for tougher measures to protect stalking victims. I know more about the Hull Daily Mail now, having seen yesterday its excellent supplement celebrating the award of city of culture status to Hull. Stalking is an issue that that newspaper has taken very seriously. To be cross-party on the issue, I note that the PCC for Greater Manchester, Tony Lloyd, a former Member of this House, has welcomed the fact that the police are taking stalking seriously, and has been working closely with his police force to raise awareness of the importance of dealing with that crime. There is a great opportunity for Members of Parliament to work with police and crime commissioners and to have a democratic voice in challenging police forces that may not take the issue as seriously as they should. The vast majority of police and crime commissioners have made violence against women and girls a priority in their policing plans, which is an important first step.

I do not always agree with the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and he does not always agree with me, but on this subject I can agree with him. He said that one role of the Government was to try to bring organisations together. We have issued information to police and crime commissioners so that they are better equipped. We have also hosted an event for them, which I suspect will not be the last, bringing together police and crime commissioners and enabling them to hear from the voluntary sector, for example Paladin, an organisation that was mentioned by almost every Member who spoke in the debate. I echo the appreciation expressed for the work of Harry Fletcher and Laura Richards, who are paying close attention to this debate. They were able to be present and take part in the day. That is the start of the engagement with police and crime commissioners, and it will continue.

The College of Policing is the other new feature in the policing arena that will help, by driving consistent training across police forces in England and Wales. This month the college’s training package on stalking and harassment won the silver award for “excellence in the production of learning content” at the E-learning awards. It is based on powerful scenarios developed with the help of victims and their families, as the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd said. The training package is available to all police officers and staff. Since last October it has been used about 44,000 times, which represents about a third of police officers, so that is some progress but clearly, picking up the right hon. Gentleman’s point, we want all police officers to be trained. The national policing lead on stalking and harassment, Assistant Chief Constable Garry Shewan of Greater Manchester police, has written once to all chief constables and will continue to do so jointly with the Director of Public Prosecutions to ensure a consistent message to the law enforcement community for both the police and the CPS, so that the issues are taken seriously.

Much of the debate about police and crime commissioners focuses on the “police” part of their role, but the most significant benefit that they can bring is the “and crime” part. It is their role in their police areas to bring together all parts of the criminal justice system—the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and the voluntary sector—and to bang heads together so that there is a properly joined-up approach in local areas. That is one of the most significant things that police and crime commissioners can do, and it is one of the reasons we set them up. The Crown Prosecution Service has made its training mandatory this year. More than 1,000—or about 45%, I think—of its lawyers have completed the training, which is a good start, and we obviously want the rest of them to do so.

[Helen Jones]

Will the Minister tell the House whether he has any explanation for the discrepancy between the number of people arrested and the number of people actually charged?

[Mr Harper]

I will come on to the guidelines issued by the CPS, but that matter to some extent depends on the details of individual cases. Normally, decisions are based on how realistic a prosecution is and what evidence there is, as well as the public interest test. I do not know whether different prosecution rates relate to the ability of the police to put cases together, or whether some forces are more likely to make arrests than others. Without looking at the information, I simply do not know the answer to the question.

An advantage in the devolved criminal justice landscape —the hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock referred to the experience in Scotland—is that police forces in England and Wales could look at the Scottish example to see what lessons can be learned. The systems are of course different and not directly comparable: the criminal justice legislation is different and, for example, harassment legislation has not been put in place in Scotland. We should, however, look at whether different parts of the UK are doing things better, and if they are, we should happily learn from them. That is a benefit of devolution of which we should take advantage.

[Mr Llwyd]

As I would expect, the Minister is trying to engage constructively in the debate, which is how he always deals with these matters. I suggest that another contributor to the variation in prosecution levels is, sadly—I am a great supporter of the police, and I come from a police family—that some police officers are under-charging under the old 1997 Act, because it is far easier to do the paperwork and get rid of it.

[Mr Harper]

I defer to the right hon. Gentleman’s detailed knowledge of this area. One purpose of the College of Policing is to have consistency in training and to share best practice. To be fair, this is about ensuring that police officers, as well as the CPS, have the necessary knowledge and understand what works and is successful. The College of Policing can help share best practice, which is one advantage of having set it up. The Government will keep that under close scrutiny—the Home Secretary takes this area very seriously—and we will take steps if it does not succeed.

It is important to talk about victims and their experience of the criminal justice system. We have consulted on a revised victims code to give victims clearer entitlements. It was published at the end of October, and will be implemented next month. It includes information on the victim personal statement, which lets victims explain the impact of the crime on them. That will be of particular benefit in stalking cases, where much of the issue relates to the emotional and psychological impact of the offence on the victim.

The hon. Member for Walthamstow made that point strongly. She spoke about seeing the powerful effect on victims of advocates’ listening to them explain their cases. Enabling the voices of victims to be heard is clearly very beneficial. My hon. Friend the Member for Witham, who is in her place, made exactly that point. I know that she has worked on and published this year a report called, “Rebalancing the Scales”. She edited it, and the foreword was by the Lord Chancellor. The chapter on stalking, which was prepared by the ubiquitous Harry Fletcher and Laura Richards, highlighted the voices of victims and their experience in the criminal justice system, an area on which I know my hon. Friend has campaigned.

[Stella Creasy]

My concern, and that of other people who have experienced this problem, is that the victim’s voice has traditionally been heard when there is a prosecution, but that should happen during the investigation of the offence. The police, like the criminal justice system, need to develop a different culture in which the offence is not seen as an issue of harassment, but in relation to the impact of particular forms of behaviour on the victim, because that opens up a different investigative process. The training is so important because too often the presumption is still that a victim comes in after the offence has been determined, rather than as part of the process of determining the offence.

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Lady makes a very good point. When the impact on the victim is part of the importance of the offence, the matter is more complex. She is right that that should form part of the investigative process in terms of the work that needs to be done to provide the evidence and to ensure that the right charge is brought. I will draw her point to the attention of the College of Policing for its consideration when rolling out the training.

The hon. Lady also made an important point, sadly illustrated by her own experiences this year, about the dark side that the internet brings out, alongside all its benefits. On the internet, it is easier for people to abuse their victims. Sometimes that happens wholly online and that has a tremendous impact. Sometimes, it happens offline as well. The Government are clear that if something is illegal offline, it is illegal online. There is no difference. She said that in her experience and in the experience of other people, police forces have not always recognised that.

When online abuse constitutes stalking, it must be dealt with. The Director of Public Prosecutions has published new guidelines on social media. They make it very clear that cases of stalking online should be prosecuted robustly. Those guidelines are relatively recent and we will have to see what impact they have on the Crown Prosecution Service. I looked at them carefully in preparing for this debate and I think that they are very robust. [Interruption.] I do not know whether the hon. Lady wants to intervene again, but she is pulling a face that suggests that she is not entirely enamoured of the said guidelines.

[Stella Creasy]

I press the Minister, as I did in my remarks, to consider the course of conduct and the disparities in relation to that. The police are doing some fantastic work. I pay tribute to the police who are dealing with my case at the moment. However, they are hampered by the disconnect between what we are told at a national level about guidance and how that guidance is interpreted, especially with regard to behaviour online. There is an issue with the understanding in our criminal justice system of behaviours online and of what constitutes a course of conduct. I am sorry to tell the Minister that I do not feel, as a victim myself, that that issue has been addressed. That will have an impact on our ability to move forward unless it is addressed.

[Mr Harper]

I listened carefully to the hon. Lady’s point on that issue. The inter-ministerial group on violence against women and girls, which is chaired by the Home Secretary, draws together the Government’s efforts on this matter and on the support for victims. I will draw the hon. Lady’s point to the attention of the Home Secretary.

There are some offences for online communications that do not require a course of conduct, some of which can result in custodial sentences. I think that the DPP’s guidelines are clear and robust. The hon. Lady is right that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Like us, she will want to see that the guidelines are taken seriously by Crown prosecutors.

As I said, police and crime commissioners should remember the “and crime” part of their job title. This matter is absolutely within their remit in their local areas. As well as looking at the police’s response to these offences, they should look at the response of the Crown Prosecution Service and the way in which it works with the police. One advantage of police and crime commissioners over the police authorities that we had previously is that they can pull those organisations together locally and get them to work more effectively together. Commissioners can draw to the attention of those organisations the guidelines that the DPP has issued and ensure that they are followed locally.

I will draw the specific concerns of the hon. Lady to the attention of the Home Secretary and the Justice Secretary. I am sure that she will monitor the matter closely and come back to us if she does not see action on the ground.

My hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) cited some good work that has been done by the university of Worcester and the Worcestershire forum against domestic violence. They have done some very practical work to raise awareness of the new law and to hear from victims. From his description, it was clear that that was part of a preventive strategy, which is something that has been raised by the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) and others.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham asked specifically about data, which we have spoken a little about. Convictions and sentencing data are collected by the Ministry of Justice and published on an annual basis. The data for 2012 were therefore published just a short period after the offences under sections 2A and 4A were inserted into the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. Headline data on court proceedings have been published, but those are at a high level. Detailed data will be published for this calendar year in May next year—that is when properly robust and assured data will be published.

On policing information, we are working on a new method of data collection specifically to call out the offences from this legislation, but again that will not be available at national level until next year. More detailed information is available at police force level, and I know that Labour Members and the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd have attempted to get those data from police forces under freedom of information legislation. The Home Office is working to publish those data on a consistent basis at national level, and will be able to do so next year.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham and others, including the hon. Member for Warrington North, mentioned sentencing guidelines. The Sentencing Council plans to start work on a new public order guideline in 2014, and it will consider guidance on stalking offences as part of that. Several Members, including the hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock, mentioned out-of-court disposals by police forces. The Justice Secretary has announced a review of those, and we will ensure that for both stalking and domestic violence, we look specifically at whether out-of-court disposals—cautioning, for example—are being used properly and appropriately for these serious issues.

I am conscious that I want to leave time for the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd to wind up this debate, which I have found very constructive. Members have raised a lot of serious issues, and I hope I have been able to demonstrate that the Government take the issue seriously and want to drive responses across a number of organisations.

[John McDonnell]

Will the Minister take back to his Department the request from the family courts unions parliamentary group for a meeting about the closure of family contact centres?

[Mr Harper]

I will take that request back to my colleagues at the Ministry of Justice and ensure they hear it and respond to the hon. Gentleman. On that note, Mr Deputy Speaker, we want to hear from the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd.