Oral Answers to Questions
Pete Wishart Excerpts(11 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Harper
We welcome international students as long as they study at a genuine university or other genuine institution. We have dealt with abuse, which we inherited from the Opposition, but we welcome students and the best of them are welcome to stay here to create businesses, wealth and jobs.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
The Minister knows that almost the entire Scottish higher education establishment despise the immigration reforms, which do nothing but make Scotland a less attractive place to come. This is not working for us and we do not have the issues of the rest of the United Kingdom. Can we now make our own course, so that we can make Scotland an attractive and welcoming place for international students?
Mr Harper
If the hon. Gentleman looks at the facts, he will see that there is an increase in the number of international students going to the excellent universities in Scotland. Scotland is attractive to international students, as is the rest of the United Kingdom. I see no evidence that our immigration reforms are turning students away.
Immigration Bill
Pete Wishart Excerpts(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend makes an important point, and the Home Secretary should confirm that she will never pursue such divisive gimmicks again. That is beneath her and ought to be beneath the Government.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
The policy was disgusting and embarrassing. What a dreadful episode it was, and let us hope it never happens again. On apologies, however, will the right hon. Lady apologise for the intervention by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) in the summer? He had a go at Tesco and Next, but he got the place of Tesco’s base wrong. Will the right hon. Lady apologise to Tesco and Next for that “British jobs for British workers” nonsense revived by the hon. Member for Rhondda?
Yvette Cooper
The labour market is an important issue, and it is particularly important to ensure that employers are not exploiting low-skilled migration. I will come to that issue in a moment, but let me finish the point about illegal immigration.
Instead of gimmicks, we need practical measures to help tackle illegal immigration. Why not improve enforcement? Why not reinstate fingerprinting for stowaways at Calais, as we have been urging the Home Secretary to do for two and a half years? Why not tighten up checks in the first place? Student visitor visas have now become too easy a route through which people come to Britain to work illegally. They do not even have to provide proper paperwork to show they have a place on a course. Numbers are up 70% since the election. Surely that should ring alarm bells for Ministers. The Labour party will table amendments to have proper checks on student visitor visas, stronger inspections and enforcement, and stronger action against employers who take on and exploit illegal migrants. If the Home Secretary is serious about tackling illegal immigration, I hope she will back our amendments and plans.
Mr Jackson
No, I am not saying that, but if the hon. Gentleman is attacking the Government side for being racist, as he did in his Westminster Hall debate, I say that chauvinism and nationalism are bad and that he should be mindful—
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
I wish I could say it is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson), but I cannot. The only thing I will say is that when it comes to a world view and political values, he and I are probably on the opposite sides of the spectrum. His intemperate remarks about Scottish independence do him no credit whatsoever. He wants to pull up the drawbridge and leave the European Union and other institutions, whereas we want to join the world and we welcome the fact that the world will welcome Scotland as an independent nation.
The Government’s stated aim with this Bill is to make the UK a more “hostile environment” for illegal immigrants. I give the Minister 10 out of 10 and say to him, “Well done and pat yourself on the back,” because the Government have most certainly achieved that with this Bill. They have just made the UK an even more intolerant place for the rest of us to live in.
This Government have also achieved something I never thought I would see in the 12 years I have been a Member of Parliament: an Immigration Bill that is even nastier and more pernicious than all those that have gone before. All these right-wing immigration Bills have to achieve is two simple things: kick as many people as possible out of the country and prevent as many people as possible from getting in in the first place. That is what every single immigration Bill we have had from right-wing Governments, whether they be Blairite or Conservative, has done: kick out as many people as possible and prevent as many people as possible from coming in.
Sometimes Governments have to be inventive. This Bill relies on some of the traditional routes, such as making appeals harder, enforcement more difficult and life more miserable for people living in this country who should not be here. However, it is also inventive, because it covers social services and health and tells landlords to become immigration officers. This Bill will turn race relations into a nightmare, bringing suspicion based on ethnicity into our social services and the housing market.
Like most right-wing parties, the Tories’ pre-conceived idea about immigration is that it is a bad thing that has to be dealt with and managed. To them it is a burden. Right-wing Conservatives such as those in this Government want to get the numbers down. That has been the case throughout history. Conservatives would probably have tried to stop the Normans and the Vikings coming here on their boats in the 9th and 10th centuries. Theirs is a world view of barriers and of preventing people from coming here.
We live in a globalised, interconnected world in which the transfer and movement of people have never been greater. We are standing in London, for goodness’ sake! This is one of the greatest cities, if not the greatest city, in the world. One third of the people who live and work in London come from outwith the United Kingdom. It is they who built this magnificent city.
We should listen to what the Mayor of London has to say about these issues. He wrote a fantastic article in The Daily Telegraph the other day—I wish the Conservatives would read it—under the headline, “It’s mad to blame our housing crisis on ‘blooming foreigners’”. I would not put it that way, but the Mayor of London is spot on. He recognises the value of and contribution made by high-end and low-end migrants to London. I recommend that my many Conservative friends in the House take a look at what the London Mayor has to say about this issue, because they will get some sense from him, unlike the hon. Member for Peterborough.
Yes, this country has changed. My country, Scotland, is changing, too. We do not vote Conservative. We approach these issues differently. Debates such as this show that we are pulling apart politically. We would not have such a debate in Scotland; we would not discuss such themes. We are drifting apart as a political culture.
This place is living in the early days of UKIP UK. That is where we are in this country. It started a little while ago, but it really came through with UKIP’s success in the local elections. That changed everything. We now live in UKIP UK. The party does not have one member in this House, but it is pulling all the Conservative party’s strings and dominating political debate. Everything is predicated on UKIP and Nigel Farage.
UKIP’s victory was closely followed by the hate vans and the ridiculous texts trying to get people to go home. I secured a debate on the hate vans last week. Perhaps I should get a bit of credit for getting rid of the appalling things. It took ages for the Minister to respond to me about them, but a week after the debate, we have got rid of the hate vans. That is a result.
Even this Conservative Government realise how ridiculous it was to drag a billboard around the streets of London, ranting at people to go home, with a telephone number and a text number. That is what they were reduced to. It could not get more ridiculous. What would have been next? The Minister was one of the few people in the Home Office who was prepared to defend the hate vans. He was in the studios all last week saying that, with a bit of refinement around the edges, they might be okay. He was prepared to put son-of-hate-vans on the streets. Thank goodness that has been ruled out by the Home Secretary. Let us be sure that it does not happen.
Are the Opposition opposing the Bill? I do not know. They do not like aspects of it, but they are compromised. If they are to win the next election, they have to win votes in the south. That brings us back to UKIP UK. They are aware that immigration is a hot issue in seats that they have to win, so they are having to be very careful about what they say. The Conservatives are right to point the finger at them because they are not doing a thing, but they should not let the Conservatives bully them. The Conservatives are saying that the seven to nine years of high immigration when Labour was in government were a waste. One of the best things that Labour did was to get people into this country. It built cities such as London and rejuvenated cities such as Manchester and Leeds. Labour Members should not let the Conservatives bully them into thinking that they did the wrong thing on immigration.
Pamela Nash (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)
I would appreciate some clarity on the SNP’s position. I presume that the UK Government will need help from the Scottish Government on the landlord checks and on the NHS proposals, as those areas are largely devolved. What is the SNP line on that?
Pete Wishart
I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for reminding me to talk about Scotland. There are proposals that relate to devolved services that we are in control of. We do not like them—we do not like them at all. We are in charge of the health service in Scotland. We would need to be convinced that these measures were in the best interests of Scotland before we would go through with them. Scotland is a different country. The hon. Lady knows that, and I think she would agree that we would not do these things.
Dr Huppert
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his debate last week. I agree with him on that issue. I also share his concerns about landlords. Is he as pleased as I am that there will be only one pilot in one location and that the policy will not be rolled out without a vote? Does he take some comfort from that, even though he might not be totally reassured?
Pete Wishart
I take a little comfort from that, but not a great deal. I do not know what the hon. Gentleman is thinking, but I am sure that he will not vote for this nonsense tonight. I know what he has said. I can see all the Liberals sitting there thinking, “Uh-uh! This is not a liberal Bill.” It is one of the most illiberal Bills that we have seen from this Government. It will be an absolute disgrace if even one Liberal goes through the Aye Lobby tonight. When I sat on the Opposition Benches with them, I heard them rant against new Labour immigration Bills. This Bill is 10 times worse than anything new Labour concocted.
Scotland has had the “go home” project. The UK Border Agency office in Glasgow was telling people to go home before they had even sat down. Now that we have got rid of the appalling hate vans, I want the Minister to guarantee that we will not have “go home” messages at UKBA offices. We do not want that in Scotland. We do not have UKIP in Scotland. Nigel Farage had to get a police escort out of Edinburgh. We hate UKIP to the bottom of our ballot boxes. It has not secured one deposit in Scotland. We do not want to take part in the appalling race to the bottom that the Conservatives are engaged in with UKIP—a race to the bottom that they can never win. They will never out-UKIP UKIP. It is the master of right-wing gimmickry. If the Conservatives enter a race with UKIP, they will only get beaten. I think that the Minister knows that.
This matter is important for Scotland. The hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Pamela Nash) is right about that. We have our own demographic issues and population requirements. I will tell Members the difference between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom. When the Scottish Government received the latest population figures, they put out a press release welcoming the rise in the Scottish population. Could you ever, Madam Deputy Speaker, imagine a UK Government welcoming a rise in population? That is what distinguishes us as a Government from them—we welcome the contribution of immigration. We have our own population requirements, but we are stuck and burdened with a set of immigration policies that are almost the exact opposite of what we require. That is why we must wrest control of our own immigration requirements.
Our population has gone up and that is good, but there are concerns that it might still fall. Even 10 years ago, we were worried that our population might fall below the 5 million mark. Thankfully, that did not happen. The health provisions will cut across our responsibility for devolved services, and we will have to look at them carefully before we do anything.
There is one thing I want to say about immigration, because we do not like any of this stuff—it is just rubbish. The UK Government’s immigration policy is having an impact on Scotland’s great universities. We have three universities in the top 200 universities in the world. We have fantastic world-class universities and this Government are hurting them. Just stop it. We want to ensure that we get the best possible students to our universities. All this rubbish that the Government are proposing puts more and more people off. We have to compete with other English-speaking nations around the world to ensure that our universities stay world class. We just wish the UK Government would get out.
This issue is simple. Let us admit that Government Members seem to be going in one direction—the emerging UKIP UK has its own set of values, culture and political direction—and in Scotland we are going another way. We do not like this stuff. We do not vote Conservative and we hate UKIP, so we are not going to go in that direction. Here is a novel solution: why do they not do their own thing and we do our own thing? It is called independence and it works for most countries. Next year, thank goodness, we will achieve it.
Pamela Nash
I appreciate the Minister’s intervention, but the fact is that there is no clarity in the Bill—it leaves that fear for communities seeking primary care. If they believe they will be kicked out of the country for going to the doctor, they might not go and therefore might not be tested.
Public health experts agree that increasing the offer of HIV testing to a wide range of facilities is key to tackling the UK epidemic in all communities. In addition, the purpose of primary care is to assess the broadest range of health needs and identify how best to meet them. Anything that delays or prevents anyone with an infectious disease from seeking medical advice denies them the opportunity to be diagnosed and increases the chance of them passing on the infection to someone else. Someone on HIV treatment is 96% less likely to transmit it to others. Therefore, the Bill clearly risks unlimited and unintended consequences to UK public health.
The Bill may increase the risk that we will fail to tackle HIV in our communities, and it may also be costly. According to the Department of Health’s review of overseas visitors charging policy, referred to in the explanatory notes, a comparison of the administration costs of the current system with the amount actually recovered showed that it barely broke even. The Home Secretary failed to address that point, and I hope that the Minister will do so in his closing remarks. The new system may not be cheaper and we may fail to reclaim any money.
According to the review, in order to recoup the money and achieve the Government’s aims, the NHS structure would need to be radically changed. It said:
“Only a fundamentally different system and supporting processes would enable significant new revenue to be realised.”
I would be grateful if the Minister provided more clarity about the administration of the proposals and the collection of the money from those who have entered the country.
I am also concerned about the effect that the proposals will have on reciprocal arrangements with other countries, which has not really been mentioned today. The Bill refers to our EEA partners, but we have arrangements with 27 countries that are not in the EEA, including Australia and New Zealand. Many of our students go backpacking in those countries or to work on short-term visas, and they access health care free of charge, like the people who come here from those countries. Can the Minister clarify how the Bill will affect reciprocal arrangements? Has he had discussions with representatives of those countries? Will we have new reciprocal agreements, or will they not be affected?
The final area of concern is the devolved aspects of the Bill, which I mentioned in an intervention earlier. I am surprised by how vague this issue is in the Bill. There is no detail on how charges for devolved public services will be made, or on how landlord checks will work in the devolved nations.
Pete Wishart
The hon. Lady is probably aware—and if not, she is now—that there was no consultation whatever with the Scottish Government in the lead-up to the publication of this Bill.
The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)
In the limited time available—the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) could not help taking slightly more than half the time left—I will do my best to deal with as many of the points raised as I can. I welcome the contributions from Members on both sides of the House in what has been a good debate. I listened carefully and shall try to deal with the main issues.
Listening to the right hon. Gentleman, one would never know that Labour left behind a legacy of 450,000 asylum cases, border checks that were frequently relaxed to deal with queues and out-of-control net migration—and the latter was not just from eastern European countries; under Labour, twice as many people arrived from outside the EU as from within it—and of course it was that record which made our constituents rightly concerned about the issue, as many of my hon. Friends said.
The Government are firmly on the side of the vast majority of law-abiding migrants who play by the rules and contribute much to our society. We have a proud history of lawful migration, and this Government will continue to welcome the best and brightest to the country—
Mr Harper
No, I want to deal with some of the points. I listened to the debate, and if the hon. Gentleman will give me the opportunity, I will deal with the points raised.
The Government will continue to welcome the best and the brightest, be they skilled workers, the number of which is increasing, or students going to our universities, whose number is also increasing. For those who have overstayed their visa or were never here lawfully in the first place, however, there must be consequences for unlawful behaviour.
Mr Harper
No, let me make some progress.
We always prefer migrants who have had an application refused or who have overstayed to do the right thing and leave the UK under their own steam, and we will promote that compliant behaviour, but the Government want to put the law squarely on the side of people who respect the law, not those who break it. The Bill will deliver several important reforms to do that, cutting the number of immigration appeal rights, enabling us to require foreign criminals—not migrants in general—to leave the UK before appealing, ending the abuse of article 8 and introducing important measures to prevent illegal migrants from accessing services or the labour market.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) has made his point—he wants to get in—but it is up to the Minister to give way, and quite obviously he wants to make some progress.
Mr Harper
I am trying to do justice to the many Members who spoke in the debate, including the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart).
I particularly enjoyed the remarks from my hon. Friends the Members for Peterborough (Mr Jackson), for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) and for Crawley (Henry Smith), all of whose constituencies I have had the opportunity to visit in my current role, and the contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills), from whom I am sure I will receive an invitation in due course.
The right hon. Member for Delyn is right about the issues that we will not have a chance to debate in the remaining seven minutes; I want us to have a good debate in Committee and to go through the issues in detail, and I am confident that when we lay out our aims, we will take Members with us, having first tested their concerns. We want the Bill to leave Committee and this House in good shape. As Members will know from my previous roles and challenges, I do not think we should leave it to the other place to put Bills in good shape. I want to ensure it leaves this House in good shape, and I look forward to the debate in Committee to do so.
In the time remaining, I shall try to deal with some of the issues raised. A number of Members raised important points about the proposals on health. To be clear, we are not talking about denying access to health care. We are talking about making sure that those who have no right to free health care have to make a contribution towards it. One of the points raised by the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Pamela Nash) was about public health and access to health for HIV treatment. I intervened on her to say that public health access will still be available for free. What I did not remember at the time was that this Government abolished treatment charges for HIV for overseas visitors exactly to protect the sorts of public health concerns she raised.
We are talking about making sure people pay a fair share. For those temporary migrants coming to Britain either to work or to study, we will collect the money before they come into the UK. It will go into the Consolidated Fund, and it is well above my pay grade, Mr Deputy Speaker, to tell colleagues in the Treasury how to do public spending. But if money is then distributed, any funds that go to the NHS in England will of course be distributed to the devolved Administrations in the usual way according to the Barnett consequentials. I hope that that is clear. We are not proposing to change the way in which the devolved Administrations can charge under the overseas visitors arrangements. Those aspects of charging are of course devolved. We will talk to the devolved administrations to make sure that there are no unforeseen consequences from different parts of the UK having different regimes for visitor charging.
As I said earlier in response to the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), these are significant sums of money. She asked my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary how much we thought was not collected from health tourists. In the report that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health published today, we say that we think that between £20 million and £100 million is the cost of deliberate health tourism for urgent treatment and between £50 million and £200 million for regular visitors taking advantage. Clearly there is a range, but this is an independent report that has been peer-reviewed and it is the best information we have. The hon. Lady is right; it is not a massive proportion of the overall NHS budget but £500 million that we are not collecting is a significant sum and it would make a real difference if we were able to collect it.
The Chair of the Select Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), made some points about landlords, and we will test those issues in Committee. He also referred to e-Borders. He deserves a reasonable reply since he shared the blame around with the previous Government. We do already collect a significant amount of information on those coming into Britain and those leaving and we are working on improving that. I know that he will continue to question my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and myself when we appear in front of his Committee.
The hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) and I do not always agree, but she made an important point about refugees. The reason I think it is important to deal with people who have no right to be in Britain is that I want Britain to continue to be a welcoming place for those genuinely fleeing persecution. I fundamentally believe that we will only carry the public with us and have the public support a system where we protect genuine refugees—those fleeing persecution—if where we decide someone does not need our protection, and an independent judge does not think they need protection, those people leave the UK. By the way, we are not removing appeal rights for those where there is a fundamental right involved. If they abuse our hospitality by trying every trick in the book to stay here, they are damaging the interests of genuine migrants. It is our duty to make sure we do that.
Mr Harper
I do not have time to deal with the hon. Gentleman’s points.
There were many issues around appeal. Administrative review is a better way to deal with caseworking errors than forcing someone through the appeals system. I also listened very carefully to the genuine concerns raised about landlords. There will be a chance in Committee to deal with the practical implications of that. We have thought through the issues that colleagues have raised and we will be able to deal adequately with them in Committee and take colleagues with us. If there are things that we have not thought about, we can deal with those. I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) dealt with that issue very well.
I am looking forward to debating the issues in Committee. The Bill continues our reforms of the immigration system, and it will ensure that the public’s expectations of a fair system are delivered. I commend the Bill to the House.
Question put, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
“Go Home or Face Arrest” Campaign
Pete Wishart Excerpts(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon for this short debate, Mr Pritchard.
I want people to imagine a situation and just think about it for a minute—a van pulls a billboard through the streets, telling illegal immigrants to “Go home or face arrest”. Just imagine it, and picture it. This is not 1940s occupied Europe; it is not even one of those National Front campaigns from the 1970s. This is the United Kingdom in 2013, where a van pulls a billboard through the streets of London telling people to “Go home or face arrest”. Just in case people did not quite get it, what else was on that poster? It was a huge set of handcuffs. And just to make it even more provocative, this van was trailed through some of the most racially diverse and multicultural parts of London. That was almost as stupid as it was grotesque.
What sort of response did that action get? Well, I do not think that I have seen a Government campaign that has been so roundly condemned. I could not even start to read out the lists of organisations, individuals and groups that were overwhelmingly opposed to it. Suffice to say that it managed to create a coalition of everybody from the Deputy Prime Minister to Nigel Farage, with the Business Secretary flung in for good measure, with his acerbic comment that it was “stupid and offensive”. As I say, this particular campaign united everybody from the Deputy Prime Minister to Nigel Farage, such was the opposition to it.
Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this very important debate. Does he agree that this campaign has caused division, and also fear in the minds of the citizens who freely walk on the streets that they will be stopped and perhaps harassed by the police and other agencies?
Pete Wishart
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention because he reminds me of something else that went on that week, and he is right to mention it. Not only did we have the grotesque sight of a van pulling a billboard in London telling people to “Go home”, but it was part of a joint operation whereby, for the first time in years if not decades, we had racial profiling at London underground stations as part of UK Border Agency operations. What on earth was going to happen next? Where was this going to go after that?
Of course, today we had the landmark ruling from the Advertising Standards Authority, which has effectively banned this stupid and grotesque campaign. I have seen the Minister who is here today go round—
Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)
Did it ban the whole thing or did it just point out one element that was wrong?
Pete Wishart
I am glad that the hon. Gentleman mentioned that, because I saw the Minister this morning, going from studio to studio, defending this decision. I think that he took some comfort from the fact that the ASA only banned it because it was misleading, not because it was offensive or racist. However, that is cold comfort to the Minister, because the ASA said that this campaign was reminiscent of the anti-immigrant campaigns of the ’70s and that people would find it offensive.
Pete Wishart
The Minister is scowling. The saddest thing about these TV appearances this morning is that he is still prepared to defend this absurd campaign and to revise it and bring it back to us, once again, aping his boss, the Home Secretary, who made the same remarks in an interview with Andrew Marr on Sunday. We might see the son of hate vans in the streets soon.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
I apologise for missing the start of the debate. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman not just on securing this debate, but securing the decision from the ASA to coincide with it. Has he seen the reply to my parliamentary question about the cost of the pilot project, which was put at £10,000? Given the pressure on the public purse, does he not think that that £10,000 could have been used better in some other area of the immigration field, which we know the Minister is keen to repair?
Pete Wishart
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. I must have missed his parliamentary question, which is remiss of me, because I usually look out for every one of his parliamentary utterances and questions. Of course, he is right. The £10,000 could have been better spent than on that absurd campaign with a hate van, trailing through the streets of London with a message saying, “Go home”.
Mr Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Does he agree that the Minister can hardly take any comfort from the ASA’s statement that the Government were using misleading statements? They were basically saying things that were not true on a van being trailed through areas of mixed ethnicity, which was bound to cause trouble.
Pete Wishart
My hon. Friend is right. I cannot remember any campaign that has effectively been banned by the ASA. It is the first time in my 12 years in the House that I have seen anything like this misleading information. The Minister should be thoroughly embarrassed about what happened this morning, but instead we have seen the parody of him going through the news studios, defending these awful, appalling vans.
Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)
Does the hon. Gentleman feel that all vans advertising the breaking of the law may put fear into the hearts of those who may be breaking it? For example, people could go to prison if they did not pay their television licence.
Pete Wishart
That is a good point. I want to come on to such points, which are important, about how the message was communicated and observed by the target groups. If I miss that point, I will give way to the hon. Gentleman once again.
These vans have been correctly labelled, in common parlance, as hate vans or racist vans, and that is how we have started to refer to them. We could not find a terminology to express our horror and disgust at the sight of these things and we were right to label them as such.
I agree with the Minister that illegal immigration must be tackled. I think that all hon. Members here agree with that. It is wrong and the Government must do something to deal with it. However, they have to deal with such issues reasonably, in a measured and mannered way. Probably every hon. Member in this Chamber agrees that there should be voluntary return. If people want to go home, let us assist them.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
Can we also send out the message of the importance of immigration and how people benefit, both in host countries and countries of origin? The Philippines, for example, with about 9 million of its citizens migrating abroad for work, has a national migrants day. I encourage hon. Members to read Philippe Legrain’s book, “Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them”, and to see the benefits that immigration generally brings to all societies, where it happens.
Pete Wishart
My hon. Friend gets to the heart of so many of our debates on immigration, including the philosophical debate about the value and worth of immigration. We never hear about that from this Government. They do not accept for a minute that immigration is valuable. It is a problem that has to be managed, and this Government in particular say that it has to be managed in a more hostile, aggressive, robust way. As we head towards the new immigration Bill, which contains some thoroughly nasty horrors, we will see much more of this from this Government and it will get ever worse.
Pete Wishart
I have given way already and shall try to make some progress. I may come back to the hon. Gentleman later.
The hate vans, or racist vans, were ranting at people through a billboard with a telephone number on it, instead of communicating with them reasonably, trying to get a measured response and trying to ensure that people can return voluntarily. We should be helping them—assisting them—not shouting at them and giving a telephone number on a billboard. That is not the way to deal with some of the keen and sensitive issues to do with immigration. However, there is no way that we will get through to this Government on such points.
The Minister knows how hard life is for illegal immigrants. Life is desperate for illegal immigrants in this country. They cannot work—certainly, not legally—and they do not have access to benefits. They live a life of destitution, in fear of being detected. That is the reality of life for illegal immigrants in the United Kingdom, not the Daily Mail version, in which they are living the life of Riley, at our expense, laughing behind our backs, which sometimes I think that the Minister believes. It is a life of desperate destitution and fear.
It is about fear and that is what is being communicated. We have to look underneath the stupid message—the silly “Go home or face arrest”—and find out what it is intended to do and to achieve. Stupid poster though it is, there is something fundamental underneath this. The campaign is trying to engender a sense of fear and exaggerate the problem, to politicise it and appeal to the basest political instincts. That is a dangerous game to play. That is where it leads to real issues, tensions and anxieties in our communities. This Government should stop that and ensure that it is never done again. These hate vans and racist vans are touring our country.
Let us gloss over the obvious point that those who are notionally targeted by the campaign probably cannot read English and probably have no idea what the vans are trying to say. If they do read English, the first thing they will do is go right underground and try to hide away, having been made aware, thanks to the Government, of a more aggressive campaign that is out to get them.
Let us be generous and say that this campaign gets through to its target audience. Mr Pritchard, imagine that you are an illegal immigrant, walking down your street in your multiracial, multi-diverse community. There is something in the back of your mind and you are thinking, “There’s something I’ve got to do. What is it? I can’t figure out what it is.” Then, all of a sudden, one of these vans comes along, telling you to go home and you say, “That’s it! That’s what I forgot to do! All this time I’ve been in this country, I’ve forgotten to go home whence I came.” What nonsense. [Interruption.] No wonder you are laughing, Mr Pritchard, as is every other hon. Member. That is how nonsensical a concept this is. Imagine that.
Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)
Order. For the record, unless I misheard the hon. Gentleman, I do not think that I show any emotion when chairing debates. I am completely impartial.
Pete Wishart
I am sorry to have misinterpreted your wry smile as any sign of jocularity, Mr Pritchard.
Pete Wishart
I am glad that that is resolved. Thank you, Mr Pritchard.
Come on, let us figure out what it is really all about. I think that all hon. Members in this Chamber can be candid. This has little, if anything, to do with illegal immigration, but everything to do with the rise of the UK Independence party in the opinion polls. It is about this Conservative Government’s fear of the electoral challenge from UKIP and the fact that it has made immigration a key plank of its appeal. The Government are now engaged in a desperate race to the bottom with Nigel Farage, to see who can be the hardest on immigration. I gently say to the Minister that he will never out-UKIP UKIP. UKIP is the master of nasty, pernicious, right-wing populism, and it is to the Conservative party’s credit that it will never beat UKIP in a race to the bottom on such issues, regardless of how hard the Conservative party might try.
What did Nigel Farage do when he saw the campaign? He laughed in the Home Secretary’s face and mumbled something about the Big Brother state—imagine the campaign’s target laughing in the Home Secretary’s face. I bet Nigel Farage went home that evening and, like a badge of honour, knew that he had managed to move the Government significantly on to his territory, where he will decisively beat them on such issues. This is UKIP UK. UKIP does not have even one Member of Parliament, but the whole political world down here is now spinning around the world of the fruitcakes and loonies, as the Prime Minister so cleverly, clearly and accurately described them. That is where we are now: the reality of UKIP UK. UKIP is pulling the strings and the Conservative party is dancing to it.
People might wonder why I, as a Scots Nat, am concerned about these vans in London. First, they appal me as a citizen of this country, and they should appal every decent, reasonable person. They are appalling and should not be here. But the Government brought the campaign to Scotland. When I first saw the vans, I immediately wrote to the Home Secretary asking whether there were any plans to bring them to Scotland. I said, “We do not want the vans in Scotland. We have fantastic relations throughout every single community, and we value those relations. The vans would be most unwelcome.” I did not get the courtesy of a reply. I therefore wrote again to the Home Secretary asking why I did not get a reply to my letter. Coincidentally, I got a reply from the Minister yesterday—it might be that there just happens to be a debate. I say this not to the Minister but to his officials: get your act together, for goodness’ sake.
Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)
Order. Remarks should be made to the Chair, not directly to officials. I am sure the hon. Gentleman recalls that, as he has been here for many years.
Pete Wishart
I am grateful, Mr Pritchard. It must have just slipped my mind.
I ask the Minister to ask his officials to ensure that they reply, for goodness’ sake, to Members of Parliament on sensitive issues such as this. Will the Minister pass on to his officials that it is not good enough that Members of Parliament are not responded to until they decide to hold a debate on an issue to ensure that they get that reply? That certainly seems to be consistent with what is happening in the Home Office.
In the meantime, between my writing to the Home Secretary and where we are today, the full suite of “Go home” materials arrived in Glasgow. The UK Border Agency office in Brand street, Glasgow now plays host to those appalling materials. We do not have UKIP in Scotland. In Scotland, we loathe UKIP to the bottom of our ballot boxes. UKIP does not even retain its deposits. Nigel Farage had to get a police escort the last time he visited Edinburgh. UKIP is alien to our cultural and political values. The campaign jars with our sense of community, and it is something that we just do not want in Scotland.
The Minister should take his battle with UKIP elsewhere and leave Scotland out of it, because I do not want people in Scotland who go to the Glasgow Brand street office to be met with those materials. What do those materials say? Before people are even sitting down, they are asked to think about going home, with the inquiry “Is life hard here?” They are then told “Going home is simple,” before being told by another poster with a photograph of a plane:
“This plane can take you home. We can book the tickets.”
On the way out there is a dangling plane, which suggests “This is the plane that can take you home.” That is absolutely disgusting and contrary to how we would like to address such issues sensitively, and it makes me more determined than ever that, with independence, Scotland will always get the Government whom we vote for. We will not have a Conservative Government with their one lone panda of a Member of Parliament ruling the roost over our country and imposing such nonsense on my nation, and thank goodness we will secure that next year and end such Tory rubbish in our Glasgow offices. Minister, please keep Scotland well out of this.
What happens now? We have had the ASA ruling today, and we are all very pleased. It looks like the end of these appalling hate vans—these racist vans. The son of hate vans might be coming, I do not know, but perhaps the Minister will tell us whether he is encouraged by what he has seen over the past few months. When the Government were first challenged, they seemed to be able to pull out some sort of statistic showing that the vans were actually working. I do not know what on earth that statistic was based on, but perhaps the Minister could tell us about how the vans were supposed to be working.
Pete Wishart
My time is up, sorry.
Hopefully we will see the end of the vans, which I think were a testing exercise in advance of the next immigration Bill. The Government floated the policy just to see how much they would get away with, how nasty and pernicious they could be, in trying to get their immigration Bill through. That is exactly what they were doing. Everyone in this room has a concern on immigration, and we will be questioning the Minister when the immigration Bill is introduced, because it will contain some horrible stuff that we must confront. We are still part of the UK, and we will be subject to the Bill. We do not want it, but unfortunately we will be subject to it. The Bill is contrary to everything that we are trying to achieve for positive, good relations in Scotland, but we will be subject to a Conservative Government’s immigration Bill.
How did the Conservatives get this past the Liberals? I want to hear the Minister’s take on this. How on earth did they get the Liberals to sign up to something like this? I heard that the former Home Office Minister, the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Mr Browne), was not available, so the Conservatives decided to proceed any way. After what we have heard from the Deputy Prime Minister, with whom I know he worked closely, the Conservatives managed somehow to get the policy through the Liberals and into the campaign. Hopefully the Liberals will veto anything like this in future so we have no repeats.
The one thing I want from the Minister, and I know I will not get it, is an apology for exposing this nation to a nasty, pernicious and grotesque campaign. I know I will not get that apology, but perhaps I will get a small acknowledgement that there was something wrong with the campaign, that it was not right and that it was inconsistent with the good community relations that we are trying to achieve. I just want an acknowledgement, but somehow I do not think I will get that, either. Let us hope that we never see the likes of this again, but I have a feeling that it is just the beginning.
Border Force
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Mr Harper
My right hon. Friend is right; that is certainly the view that I get, too. There is one thing that Labour never acknowledge when criticised on this. They happily acknowledge that they made mistakes on immigration from eastern Europe, but they forget to tell the public that, under their watch, immigration from outside the EU went up by far more. They have never apologised for that.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
Will the Minister assure me he will not bring these xenophobic “go home” hate vans to Scotland, and will he remove the unwanted, disgraceful “go home” materials from the UKBA office in Glasgow?
Mr Harper
I do not think the hon. Gentleman reflects the views of the public in the way that he characterises those vans. The majority of people in this country want a very robust stance. Asking people who have no right to be in the UK—who are here unlawfully, taking the mickey out of everyone else—to go home, as they should do, rather than forcing the taxpayer to spend up to £15,000 on arresting, detaining and enforcing their removal, is a very sensible thing to do, and I am not going to apologise for it.
Alcohol Strategy Consultation
Pete Wishart Excerpts(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Browne
I do not have NICE’s specific representation to hand but, as I have said, the majority of respondents did not believe that we should go ahead with the 45p minimum unit price. As for the ban on multi-buy promotions, which we have rejected, the opinion was split about 50:50, but again the common concern—it was raised not just by institutions, but by ordinary people who want to live their lives without being micro-managed by the Government—was that moderate and sensible drinkers should not be unreasonably penalised, and I think they have a point.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
If Carlsberg did statements, we just heard it from the Minister. It is unfortunate that this Government are not following the fine example of the Scottish Government in pursuing minimum unit pricing for alcohol and plain packaging for cigarettes. We will go ahead with that, because we have no Lynton Crosby and no right-wing Tories in Scotland. Will the Minister assure me that he will do all he can to ensure that the Scottish Government can get down to the business of tackling our health problems?
2014 JHA Opt-out Decision
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Mrs May
I have been extremely generous to Members. I may be prepared to take some interventions later in my speech, but I want to make some progress.
Before I took a number of interventions, I mentioned the European Court of Justice. I also want to refer to the European Court of Human Rights, which contradicts laws passed by our Parliament, overrules judgments made by our courts, and interprets the articles of the original convention on human rights in an expansionist way. That is totally unacceptable. I therefore believe that we also have to consider very carefully this country’s relationship with Strasbourg as well as our relationship with Brussels. Indeed, my right hon. Friend the Justice Secretary is working on that particular issue.
Before I turn to the policy detail of the 2014 decision, I want to address the role of Parliament in making it. I know hon. Members have had some concerns about this, and I hope I can provide some reassurance, including to my hon. Friend the Member for Stone, the Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, about the process we will undertake.
Under the terms of the Lisbon treaty, which the previous Government signed in 2007, the United Kingdom has until 31 May 2014 to decide whether to opt out of about 130 justice and home affairs measures covered by the treaty. If we do, the opt-out will come into effect on 1 December 2014. As I have indicated in response to earlier interventions, it is not possible to opt out of individual measures. The opt-out must be exercised en masse, after which we may seek to rejoin any measures in which we would like to participate. This would be subject to negotiation with the European Commission and other member states. As I confirmed in my statement last week, the Government intend to exercise the opt-out. We then plan to seek to rejoin a limited set of measures that underpin practical co-operation in the fight against crime.
The Government have always said that we will give Parliament time to scrutinise that decision properly. In his statement in January 2011—
Mrs May
I have not explained the point yet, so I suggest that the hon. Gentleman waits to hear what I am going to say.
In his statement in January 2011, the Minister for Europe, my right hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr Lidington) said:
“Parliament should have the right to give its view on a decision of such importance. The Government therefore commit to a vote in both Houses of Parliament before they make a formal decision on whether they wish to opt out.”—[Official Report, 20 January 2011; Vol. 521, c. 51WS.]
Today’s vote is the fulfilment of that commitment. It is, as the wording of the motion makes clear, the vote on whether the Government should exercise the right to opt out. The decision about which measures the UK should seek to rejoin is separate, so there will be a second, separate vote on that matter. We have published that set of measures, along with explanatory memorandums, in Command Paper 8671, last week.
Pete Wishart
I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for finally giving way to a Member from a minority party—the hon. Member for Belfast East (Naomi Long) is waiting too. The Home Secretary has said on several occasions that she is speaking on behalf of the whole United Kingdom when it comes to these measures, but she will know that there is great unhappiness in the Scottish Government, Police Scotland, and the whole legal profession about this opt-out. Why was there so little consultation with the Scottish Government, why did they know nothing about this until last week, and why is she indulging in such UKIP-ery?
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is right that that is what it looks like. Why else would there have been such late notice that we were going to have this debate at all today? We have had plenty of discussions over many months about the European arrest warrant and the opt-in, opt-out process. Everybody has known that this was coming, so why was this the subject for an emergency business statement? We have had very few emergency business statements in this Parliament, yet this somehow qualified for one. That raises questions as to whether this was about political party management rather than having proper respect for the House.
Pete Wishart
Can we clarify the Labour position? Would Labour opt out of the EU policing and human affairs chapters if these conditions were met? Would the Labour party opt out of these measures?
Yvette Cooper
I am going to come on to the substance because our view is that we should not be opting out without proper guarantees and assurances in place about the key measures we think it is vital to be opted into.
Let me turn to the substance of the plan. Clearly, without time for scrutiny it is hard for the House to take a view on the mix of measures and the overall plan. I welcome the Home Secretary’s proposal to opt back into some of the measures, and I am glad she has ignored the Eurosceptic voices and has chosen to support the European arrest warrant. She is right about the seriousness of the cases in which it has been applied, and to support the arrest of Arunas Cervinskas, returned from Britain to Ireland after his attempted rape and serious assault of an 18-year-old girl, and the arrest only a few days ago of Mark Lilley, who was found hidden in a luxury Spanish villa after 13 years on the run for drug smuggling and dealing. He will soon be back in the UK to face his long prison sentence. Then there is the example that the Home Secretary used last week and again today of Hussain Osman, who was extradited back to the UK, after attempting to blow up a tube train, in less than two months. She is right to say that we cannot go back to the days when it took 10 years to extradite a terror suspect to France or when it took 11 years to get Ronnie Knight back from the costa del crime.
I am glad, too, that the Home Secretary has ignored the Eurosceptic voices and decided to support joint investigation teams; she has decided to support Operation Golf, in which 126 suspects from a Romanian crime gang were arrested for benefit fraud, money laundering and child neglect, and more than 270 trafficking victims were saved. We cannot go back to the days when foreign crime gangs were untouchable, allowed to damage our society or cause serious harm to victims. So I am glad that she has decided to ignore the Eurosceptic Back Benchers—to ignore the Fresh Start group—and instead to agree with the arguments made by Labour Members, by the police and by the Liberal Democrats.
I am glad, too, that the Home Secretary has accepted the exchange of criminal records, Eurojust, the co-operation to protect personal data, the co-operation to combat child pornography and measures on football hooliganism. She has come a long way since the Prime Minister described the European arrest warrant as “highly objectionable”. I am very pleased that the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister have done a U-turn on this; it is a shame that it has taken them so long.
Let me turn to some of the measures that the Home Secretary wants to opt out of—again, it is very hard to take a view without full scrutiny of the measures that the Government have set out.
Oral Answers to Questions
Pete Wishart Excerpts(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Harper
My hon. Friend will know that Migration Watch has written to the Office for National Statistics about that historical period, and I understand that it is engaged in a dialogue about it. I also understand from the ONS that it has revised its methodology so that its current recording of statistics is accurate, but his general point is very sensible: we had a period of uncontrolled immigration under the last Government—a mistake that this Government are not going to make.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
Does the Minister finally recognise that Scotland has its own immigration issues, and can he name just one thing that the Government have done to help us to address our distinct problems and issues?
Mr Harper
One thing is that the number of foreign students going to excellent universities in Scotland is up, as it is across the whole of the United Kingdom. The hon. Gentleman’s desire to have a border between England and Scotland and to turn England into a foreign country is not one welcomed by people either in England or in the rest of the United Kingdom, including in Scotland.
Treaty on the Functioning of the EU
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Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
The Secretary of State will know that there is great unhappiness in Scotland among the Scottish Government and Police Scotland about the opt-out. The Scottish Government have expressed their disappointment about the lack of consultation and raised concerns about the uncertainty and instability it will cause. Why should Scotland’s safety be compromised because of this Government’s Euro-obsession? Can the Scottish Government opt out of this Government’s moves to opt out of this European measure should they wish to do so?
Mrs May
As with Northern Ireland, my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary has been in touch with the Minister responsible for Justice in Scotland and is discussing with him the implications for Scotland. It would appear that the Scottish National party’s only answer to everything is to opt out, to be separate and different and not to be part of anything. In fact, as we know, the measures that we have decided to seek to rejoin are of benefit to the whole United Kingdom.
Oral Answers to Questions
Pete Wishart Excerpts(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Vaizey
The hon. Gentleman makes a very important point, so I hope that he will support the Government, who want to allow people to teach in schools if they have the ability to inspire our young people, rather than shut them out artificially by forcing them to take a teaching degree.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
Surely it cannot be right that musicians and entertainers are about the only group of industrial workers still expected to work for nothing in the 21st century. Will the Minister guarantee that no Government or Government-sponsored event will now ever allow musicians to go unpaid?
EU Police, Justice and Home Affairs
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Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
I hope that part of the consultation will be with the devolved Parliaments, because the Home Secretary will know of the very real concern from the Scottish Government and from Police Scotland about the loss of the European arrest warrant. The Justice Secretary said that could have appalling consequences for Scottish justice. Will the Home Secretary make sure that she consults properly and listens carefully to what Scotland has to say on the matter?
Mrs May
The hon. Gentleman has slightly pre-empted something that I was going to say a little later in my speech, so I will bring it forward in answer to his question. Following my announcement in October, Ministers have engaged with the devolved Administrations and their operational partners. The Minister responsible for security has visited both Scotland and Northern Ireland. There is, of course, a particular issue in relation to Northern Ireland and we are aware of the importance of taking into account any implications that the 2014 decision might have for policing, given the land border with the Republic of Ireland, and we will continue to work with both the Northern Ireland Executive and the Irish Government to ensure that those matters are fully considered.