Oral Answers to Questions
Pete Wishart Excerpts(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Mrs May
I am happy to help the hon. Gentleman and debunk that myth. To be absolutely clear: a vote for independence is a vote for a Scotland that will be outside the United Kingdom. The referendum offers a fundamental choice between staying in the UK or leaving it and forming a new independent Scottish state. That is the legal reality of independence. As the Prime Minister said in Stirling on Friday:
“There is simply no challenge we face today where breaking up Britain is the right answer.”
The United Kingdom is stronger together and better together.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
We just wish that the Prime Minister would come to Scotland much more often, because it increases support for independence. The right hon. Lady will know that after independence it will be possible to keep a UK passport. The real question is why, with a new dynamic Scotland in charge of its own resources and making its own peaceful contribution to the world, anybody would want anything other than a Scottish passport in Scotland.
Mrs May
I suggest to the hon. Gentleman that he thinks very carefully about what he has said, and perhaps looks at the Hansard record of it. As I made clear in answer to the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Mr McCann), decisions about UK citizenship rest with the United Kingdom Government. However, if there is a vote in the referendum for separation, Scotland will become a separate state and not be part of the United Kingdom. That is a very simple fact and I suggest the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) recognises it.
Home Affairs
Pete Wishart Excerpts(11 years, 7 months ago)
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Mrs May
The hon. Lady’s point does not technically come under the remit of the communications data issue and deals with access to the internet more widely. If I have understood the point she is making, there is an issue to address. Some hon. Members have been taking this point up; my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Claire Perry), for example, has been doing a lot of work in this area and examining any possible changes.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
I am a little confused about what is being proposed for data now. Will it deal solely and exclusively with IP addresses or is the plan to bring in, either in this Session or the next one, what we all described as a snooper’s charter?
Mrs May
The hon. Gentleman refers to the proposed measure as a snooper’s charter, as others have done, but it was not about snooping and it was not a charter. It is about ensuring—this will continue in the proposal we bring forward—that we are able to deal with the situation that is emerging, where it is becoming harder to identify these communications because people are using new methods of communication that are not covered by existing legislation.
Hon. Members will note that I have not referred to the justice Bill, which will increase public protection by ending early release schemes for dangerous offenders, or to the offender rehabilitation Bill, which, as we have just heard in my right hon. Friend the Justice Secretary’s statement, will require that all offenders released from prison, including those given short sentences, serve at least 12 months under statutory supervision in the community. Neither of those important Bills is the subject of debate today. The Opposition are in charge of the debate following the Gracious Speech, so will the shadow Home Secretary explain why the Labour party does not consider the rehabilitation of offenders and cutting reoffending to be worthy of inclusion in the debate? Perhaps she does not feel that the shadow Justice Secretary is up to the debate, which might well be true, given that he was not even here to respond to that statement, but we would like to know.
The Bills I have outlined send an unambiguous message: we are on the side of hard-working families; we will help people who play by the rules and who want to get on in life; and people should be able to receive benefits only if they contribute something first. On crime, antisocial behaviour and immigration, the Government and this legislative programme are on the side of the people, and I commend it to the House.
Oral Answers to Questions
Pete Wishart Excerpts(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Harper
I have two things to say to my hon. Friend. First, the sponsorship system provides a good mechanism for employers to track and record who is working for them when they come to fill skills shortages. Secondly, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions will, with the roll-out of universal credit, collect as a routine matter the nationality of those who claim benefits.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
On the issue of foreign nationals and all others, is the Government’s response simply determined by the rise and threat of the United Kingdom Independence party?
Mr Harper
No, not at all—the speech that my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister made earlier today was informed by work that has been going on for a number of months in the cross-ministerial committee that I chair. It is a well thought-through policy area as we further tighten the immigration system. The hon. Gentleman will know that, since the Government came to power, we have reduced net migration to the UK by a third and will continue to reduce it.
Alcohol: Minimum Unit Price
Pete Wishart Excerpts(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Mr Browne
Again, I recognise the keen interest that my hon. Friend takes in these issues. I am aware that many people in the health sector share her view. The logic of their argument, as I have just said, is why stop at 45p? If we had a £1 minimum unit price, the health case would be made all the more strongly. The Government have to balance all kinds of competing concerns and other, also compelling, concerns about the affordability of alcohol for people on low incomes. They have to balance the role of the state and of the private individual and what choices the individual is free to make. Great tensions have become evident this morning in the Labour party, and the Government also have issues that they need to resolve.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
The Minister will know that in Scotland we have our own plans for minimum unit pricing for alcohol to tackle our excessive consumption. It might surprise him to know that in Scotland the Labour party is opposed to the plans and will do all it can to thwart them. Will the Minister assure me that he will work closely with our Government to ensure that at least we can start to deal with our alcohol problems in Scotland?
Mr Browne
The Department of Health in London meets Health Ministers and officials in Edinburgh and we are keen to try to ensure that the harm caused by alcohol across the United Kingdom is addressed seriously. I am distressed to learn that the Labour party is so inconsistent on this matter. I thought being a credible Opposition involved having credible policy positions, but we have not reached that stage yet.
Oral Answers to Questions
Pete Wishart Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Hugh Robertson
Yes; as my hon. Friend is well aware, if money is raised in one area and there is a cut, it generally has to be found from somewhere else, and of course raising these duties has the perverse effect of encouraging people to take their holidays in this country. There is a balance to be struck, however, and that is what we are trying to do.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
Next week, it is the Brit awards, when we will once again celebrate the massive success of our music industry. I am sure the Minister will be in his usual place. He will know of the usual challenges facing the music industry, particularly from illegal downloading and piracy. When can we expect to see the provisions agreed in the Digital Economy Act 2010?
Mr Vaizey
The Digital Economy Act was a good example of a piece of rushed legislation that was not properly scrutinised, but we are doing our best to get it back on track. There have been bumps in the road, but we continue to work with the music industry and the internet provider industries to crack down on advertising, payments and illegal piracy sites.
Crime and Courts Bill [Lords]
Pete Wishart Excerpts(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)
As with most Bills, there are aspects of this one that are to be commended, and others that we can argue about. The Bill contains several measures for which the justification is utterly unclear. In introducing the changes to community orders and to the law of self-defence, the Government seem to be ignoring the importance of judicial discretion, and the changes to immigration law seem very harsh. In my contribution today, I will set out the reasons for my opposition to some provisions in the Bill. I would also like to say, however, that the proposals on single family courts, on drug-driving and on judicial appointments are all excellent. The devil will be in the detail, of course, but so far so good in those areas.
Clause 28 provides for the relaxation of the ban on televising court proceedings by granting the Secretary of State the power to revoke the current rules by order, with the agreement of the Lord Chief Justice. Under the current law, section 41 of the Criminal Justice Act 1925 bans the taking of photographs, portraits and recordings of judges, jurors and witnesses in all civil and criminal proceedings. By removing that ban, I hope that clause 28 will broaden public engagement with the administration of justice, as well as increasing understanding of the judicial process.
Caution must be exercised, however, to ensure that proper parliamentary scrutiny is given to the detail of these plans. It is unclear to me why clause 39 should provide for any secondary legislation setting out the specific circumstances in which the Government intended to allow filming to be subject to the negative resolution procedure, hence greatly limiting the scope for debate on the topic in this place. Many groups, including Liberty, have expressed concern about the possible repercussions that could emanate from allowing for the filming of civil and criminal proceedings in their entirety. That could well lead to additional anxiety for witnesses—and in certain circumstances to some witnesses being less inclined to appear in court—as well as to the alteration of testimony.
The impetus behind the provision is, of course, welcome, but for the reasons that I have set out, the details of the Government’s plans in this area should be set out in primary legislation. If, however, the televising were limited to the judgment, as is the case in Scottish courts, that would add useful transparency and provide assistance to law commentators, to students and to practitioners.
By contrast, the proposed changes to the law on self-defence in clause 30 seem to have no justification. I do not like falling out with the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith)—the esteemed Chair of the Justice Committee, of which I am a member—but I take a different view from him on this. He will know that, under the common law, defendants are able to use reasonable force against an intruder. That defence was put on to the statute book by section 76 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008.
The law states that a defendant may use against an intruder an amount of force that he or she believes to be reasonable and proportionate at the time, even if a court subsequently considers that that belief was misplaced. The law as it stands evidently provides sufficient defence for homeowners. Indeed, data from the Crown Prosecution Service show that, between 1990 and 2005, the service prosecuted only 11 cases in which a defendant had been charged under the current law. However, if clause 30 is allowed to go through unamended, it will allow for a defendant to use an amount of force that he or she acknowledges to be disproportionate at the time, provided that the force used is not “grossly disproportionate”.
I have prosecuted and defended many cases involving self-defence, as have other Members, and the existing law has been regarded as perfectly adequate hitherto. If ever I saw a change to the law that would open the door to vigilantism, this is it. In my surgery on Friday last, a farmer came to see me. He was a responsible, middle-aged man, and he told me that three individuals had tried to break into one of his barns to steal a quad bike. There is too much of that kind of thing going on in rural Wales at the moment—but I digress.
The farmer said, “I have a shotgun. What would have happened if I’d aimed and shot above their heads?” I had to put him right on that and he said, “But isn’t there a change in the law?” That is where we are: people think that we are upping the ante. If the purport of the clause is to raise the bar for the police and the CPS in the first place—Justice Ministers have told me that that is the case—I suppose that there is some logic to it, but it could well be dangerous, as my example shows. Ministers do not think that it will change anything in the court and hope that it will lead to the bar being raised in the first place, but as I have said, there is a grave danger that people will take the law into their own hands and believe that it is open season on individuals who roam on their property. The Law Society says that it will end up with greater litigation and that the present law is workable and acceptable.
Clause 31 would put into effect the provisions of schedule 15, which provide for a number of changes to courts’ means of dealing non-custodially with offenders. Part 2 of the schedule would allow courts to defer sentencing so that the offender and victim can partake in restorative justice. This is most welcome. All we need to do, as the right hon. Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins) has said, is look at the Northern Ireland model and make sure that the resources are there. It is an excellent step forward and I am pleased with it.
Recent polling conducted by Make Justice Work suggests that 70% of victims believe that they should have the opportunity to communicate with the offender so as to show them the impact of their actions. I think that that is probably right. However, the findings of a poll conducted by the British Crime Survey showed that 69% of victims who were offered a meeting with their perpetrator said no to the opportunity. The onus is now on us as individual politicians and the Ministry of Justice to increase public confidence in any proposed scheme.
The changes introduced in part 7 of schedule 15 are likewise welcomed. If passed, part 7 would ensure that all contracts made between the Secretary of State and probation trusts would require the trusts to make specific provision for female offenders, thus taking into account the particular needs of this demographic group. I pay due regard and tribute to Baroness Corston for the work she has done. The provisions in part 7 were included as a result of a successful non-Government amendment on Third Reading in the other place. I hope that the Government will accept these vital measures in this place.
Other changes proposed by schedule 15 are less welcome. Part 1 would amend section 177 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 to guarantee that courts imposing community orders must include a mandatory punitive element. This could mean electronic tagging, exclusion orders and so on. I am at a loss to see why the Government are going further down the road of electronic tagging. Actually, I find it baffling, because the Government’s own impact assessment, published in March 2012, acknowledged that the measures could lead to an increase in reoffending as a result of rehabilitative requirements being sacrificed to make way for punitive requirements.
Part 4 of schedule 15 relates to electronic monitoring, on which the Government’s own impact assessment, dated 4 January 2012, suggests that
“the UK evidence points towards a more neutral impact on re-offending”.
It does not work. The current spending on electronic monitoring is £120 million and, as a result of this Bill, it will rise to £360 million for something that does not work—and this from a Government who seek “more for less”. Conversely, the impact assessment observes:
“Research on supervision suggests that the supervisory relationship between the offender and the case manager plays an important role in securing compliance and promoting desistance.”
Why, therefore, are the Government now seeking to privatise that so that trained professionals will not deal face to face with offenders, which is the proper way of doing it? The Government have also proposed major changes to the probation service and I am concerned about the effects they will have.
Clause 20 would revoke a restriction listed in the Senior Courts Act 1981, thus providing for the transfer of immigration judicial review applications from the High Court to the upper tribunal.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
The right hon. Gentleman will know that the Scottish Parliament passed a legislative consent motion allowing this House to legislate on its behalf, but clauses 20 and 21 were introduced at a later stage without any consultation with Scottish Ministers. This has caused great upset in the legal fraternity in Scotland, particularly those who are acting and operating in our judicial system and with particular regard to referrals to the Court of Session. Does he agree that the Government should have consulted Scottish Ministers before including clauses 20 and 21 in the Bill?
Mr Llwyd
Absolutely. We always thought that the devolved Administrations were part of the respect agenda and that the Government would consult them. I find it astonishing that that has not happened with regard to such an important matter.
On clause 20, the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association and Liberty argue that no case has been made for the change, which will impact on almost all immigration and asylum applications. Crucially, the upper tribunal stands charged with not having demonstrated its ability to deal with the UK Border Agency’s conduct in the same way as the High Court has done. ILPA cites examples of UKBA failing to respond quickly to the upper tribunal’s orders and its failure to adequately plead its case as problems that plague many cases.
As a result, the Joint Committee on Human Rights has recommended that the Government insert further provisions into the Bill to make sure that immigration and nationality cases in which human rights such as life, liberty and freedom from torture are at stake continue to be decided by the High Court. I hope that the Government will reconsider that point.
Clause 34 would remove the right of appeal against the refusal of a visa to visit a family member, except on grounds of human rights or race discrimination. I will not retread the ground very well and adequately covered by the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) and others. I fully agree with them and hope that the Government will reconsider the provision, because it could be harsh in the extreme. I also agree with the Law Society and the JCHR, which argue that the measure cannot be passed in the light of the poor quality of so many decisions made by UKBA, as evidenced by the high number of successful appeals against refusals.
There it is—as always, there are some very good things, but there are some pretty poor things as well, and one hopes that many of them will be improved and some deleted in Committee.
Oral Answers to Questions
Pete Wishart Excerpts(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Mrs May
As the hon. Lady knows, the whole question of the legacy case load was looked at recently by the chief inspector. He found some problems with the way the UK Border Agency has dealt with that. I am happy to write to the hon. Lady with the precise number of people in the category she describes. There are problems with how that was dealt with and we are working through them.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
The Home Secretary will know that Scotland recently recorded its highest ever population figure, something we very much welcome, and much of it is down to immigration. However, we still have massive demographic issues, with an ageing population and a diminishing active work force, so will she detail how UK immigration policy is helping Scotland to address those?
UK Border Agency
Pete Wishart Excerpts(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
UKBA—the United Kingdom Borders Agency—might have a UK-wide remit, but it does not particularly serve Scotland. In Scotland, we have a different range of issues, challenges and priorities and the UKBA cannot even start to deal with our priorities.
We have issues to do with immigration and population, particularly concerning demography, and when I get to my feet I always try to set out why things are different in Scotland. I shall try to do it once again so that the House can more clearly understand. We occupy just over a third of the landmass of the UK but we have 8.4% of the population. We are one of the least densely populated parts of western Europe. Of course we need a different approach to immigration and our border agency, but will this Government consider any sort of policy that is regional or international within the UK? Not a bit of it. We have to experience the same decisions and policy as the rest of the UK and that is utter and total madness.
Our population reached 5.2 million in the course of last month, which is the highest population that Scotland has ever had. The Scottish Government issued a press release to welcome that fact. Could hon. Members imagine the UK Minister for Immigration ever putting out a press release welcoming the fact that the UK population was at an all-time high? That, more than anything, demonstrates the difference between Scotland and the UK.
What do we want from the UKBA? We want it to go away, basically. We need a specific Scottish agency which could serve our immigration priorities, our population necessities and our demographic needs. We have big problems. Our population is going up, but we do not know the medium to long-term prospects. There was a fear only a few months ago that Scotland’s population might dip below the iconic 5 million mark for the first time since the mid-20th century. That would have been a disaster for us. We have an ageing population and a shrinking working population and we need people to come to Scotland with specific skills and to meet specific requirements.
What the Government are doing to our universities is chaotic and disastrous and I want them to stop. We have more people coming to our universities from overseas than the rest of the UK; 19% of the students at Scottish universities come from overseas, as do 10% of the teaching staff. The competition for international students—the brightest and the best—is sensitive and fragile. The Government’s policies are deterring students from coming here and that is causing chaos for our universities. The Minister for Immigration has heard that from Universities Scotland, the CBI, the National Union of Students in Scotland and practically everybody who takes an interest. I ask him just to stop it. Leave our universities alone. Allow us to continue to attract the brightest and the best.
Pete Wishart
Quite right—why are students considered immigrants? They are here for only a few years.
We face particular issues with students at university, and I hope that the House will bear with me, as I should like to try to explain what they are. We need to continue to be a centre of excellence in Scotland. We have three universities in the top 100 in ratings around the world. Today, we have heard about the Higgs boson, whose existence was proposed by Peter Higgs, an Edinburgh university professor, which shows the excellence of Scottish universities. Those places are centres of excellence because we can attract the best and brightest, and we need to continue to be able to do so. However, we cannot do so if the new immigration rules and UKBA policies are implemented—and for what end? Students do not have recourse to public funds. They pay fees and maintenance, and have minimal impact on public services.
The benefits that we see in Scotland are not just financial, significant as they are—international students contribute £500 million to our economy. We gain so much by working with and learning from students from hundreds of countries who enhance our education system, our distinctive culture and Scottish society. We want to be at the forefront of the international marketplace for ideas and imagination. We want to continue to attract the brightest and best overseas academic talent to help build a smarter, wealthier and fairer Scotland. We want to welcome talented people to live, learn, work and remain here, but the proposals by the UK Government send out entirely the wrong message. They are already being perceived negatively overseas, deterring prospective students from applying to study across the UK, and that is particularly so in Scotland.
UKBA is simply doing its job: making tougher rules and enforcing them ever more rigidly. Perhaps the Minister for Immigration will confirm this, but I think that it is looking for a reduction of around 80,000 students across the UK—that is the target—and by heck it is going to achieve it regardless of the collateral damage to our universities. If it is bad for universities, tough luck. If we lose out on attracting the students we need for our economy and our institutions, too bad—UKBA has a job to do, and it is going to do it.
If it bad for students who now have to be relatively prosperous to come to the UK, for goodness’ sake they should not be poor and destitute if they are fleeing oppression, because in that condition they will undoubtedly remain. Our treatment of failed asylum seekers who cannot return to their country of origin because of fear of persecution or oppression should shame all in this House. There is almost positively a policy of destitution.
How is the UKBA dealing with people who are here legally?
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the vast number of people in this country feel strongly about the question of failed asylum seekers and destitution, and provide food, support and somewhere to live in churches, mosques and other places? I agree that it is an absolute disgrace that we expect people to live in complete destitution until they have got through the relevant number of years, which the Government propose to extend, before they can get residence in this country. We need to be humane about it.
Pete Wishart
The hon. Gentleman is spot on. I see those efforts in Scotland, particularly Glasgow, where we have a number of failed asylum seekers. We cannot return them to countries such as Iran, Afghanistan and Zimbabwe—it would be absurd to do so—and the policy of destitution that the Government have imposed on them is a disgrace. We in the House are rightly appalled about the way in which we deal with them.
The people with whom we come into contact are those we have heard about from Members across the Chamber, and a feature of the debate has been the ultimate frustration experienced by ordinary Members of Parliament who have to deal with the UKBA. A couple of weeks ago, we had a debate on article 8 of the European convention on human rights, and several Members who attended that debate are here today. The House indulged in the usual kickabout stuff about marauding foreign rapists and murderers on every street corner who go home to their state-funded apartment and get all their swanky lawyers to invent reasons for them to stay in the UK. However, we deal with the real, mundane issues that are brought to our offices by people who suffer as a result of trying to ensure that they can stay here.
The UKBA’s job is quite simple: to stop people coming to the UK who want to come to our shores—people who should not be here should be kicked out—and to frustrate as much as possible those who are trying to go up the citizenship or immigration ladder. I have only a few minutes, but I want to mention two cases that I have dealt with. One is quite a celebrated case that the Immigration Minister may remember and shows the type of case we have to deal with. It concerns a lovely guy called Swarthwick Salins, who lived in my constituency. The UKBA, which was doing its job, looked into his bank account, and found that instead of £800, there was £740 there. There was no phone call to Swarthwick to say, “Listen, Mr Salins, there is an issue with your bank account. You’re £80 below the necessary level—this is a warning that you are £80 short.” The one and only course of action by the UKBA was to boot him out. That is the way it officiously applies the rules.
Let me explain who Swarthwick Salins is. He is a PhD student from St Andrews university, he has three Scottish children, he is a strong member of his church and a loyal member of the community. A community campaign was launched to ensure that Swarthwick Salins could remain in Perth and it was backed by practically everybody there. I would have paid the £80, and I would have put money on with the Minister, because I know that I would win the bet that he will never reduce immigration to the numbers that he wants.
The Government want to reduce immigration from hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands. It ain’t going to happen. We live in an interconnected globalised world. We are here in London. One third of the people who live and work in London come from outwith the UK. That is the type of world we live in. It is like King Canute trying to hold back the tide to imagine for a minute that we are going to be able to deal with these issues. What has immigration done for London, as Monty Python would say? London is the most successful, dynamic city in the world. Let us hear a little more about the positive sides of immigration. Let us talk it up. Let us see what we can do to try to encourage a good feeling about it, because the Minister is not going to reach his targets. Regardless of an immigration-obsessed Conservative Government giving massive resources to the UKBA, the issue will never be effectively addressed.
Thankfully, in a few years, we will have control over and responsibility for our immigration policy in Scotland. We will do it differently. We will work in partnership with the rest of the UK, but we will not kick people out for £80, we will not harass overseas students who want to come and study in our universities, and we will deal with immigration damn well better than the UKBA is doing just now.
European Convention on Human Rights
Pete Wishart Excerpts(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
I am looking at a motion that says nothing about Parliament’s view on article 8; all it seems to be is a restatement of the bleeding obvious. We all know that article 8 is a qualified right, so why are we here debating a nothing motion?
Mrs May
I suggest that the hon. Gentleman read right to the end of the motion, as he will then see that we do indeed record that we support the
“right to respect for family…life in Article 8”.
We say that it is “a qualified right” and we agree that
“the conditions for migrants to enter or remain in the UK on the basis of their family or private life should be those contained in the Immigration Rules.”
That is the second crucial part of the motion. Opposition Members are arguing that somehow Parliament should not debate an issue that is of considerable concern to members of the public. The public do not want to see foreign criminals whom they think should be deported, and whom the Government think should be deported, being able to stay in the UK because they are able to claim a right under article 8. Parliament has the opportunity today to set out its view on this clearly.
Mrs May
The immigration rules have been laid and it is open to any Member of the House to pray against them and see whether they can initiate a debate on them in the House. [Interruption.] It is open to anybody to pray against the immigration rules if they wish to debate the detail of them. I will refer to the changes that are being made. What we are saying today is that article 8 should be qualified in line with the immigration rules. I think I have repeated the motion several times.
Pete Wishart
The right hon. Lady is going to have to explain very carefully and clearly exactly what we are debating today. Are we debating and agreeing to the rules that she announced in her statement last week or are we agreeing to restate once again the fact that article 8 is qualified in the terms of the European convention on human rights?
Mrs May
I am tempted to give exactly the same answer to the hon. Gentleman as I gave to him earlier. What we are debating is Parliament’s saying, first, that the House supports the Government in recognising the qualified nature of article 8 and, secondly, that the basis on which article 8 can be qualified is set out in the immigration rules. It is open to hon. Members to pray against the immigration rules if they wish to debate them. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) asks whether we are agreeing to the immigration rules. What we are agreeing is that article 8 is qualified as set out in the immigration rules. There is then the separate issue—perhaps it would be helpful if I put it this way—of whether the immigration rules are prayed against and whether there is then a debate and a vote on those rules. I hope that I have helped him. There is a very important point at issue here: the courts have said that Parliament needs to give its views about the qualification of article 8 and that is what I am inviting hon. Members to do today.
Yvette Cooper
The hon. Gentleman is right that we need a proper debate in Parliament and proper scrutiny. However, there are concerns about how the Home Secretary has set the matter out today. For example, the motion represents neither primary nor secondary legislation, so it is not clear whether the Home Secretary wants it to trump case law. She spent some time reading individual cases on to the record, so we can only assume that she wants the motion and today’s debate to trump case law and individual decisions. However, it is only a motion of the House. We have told her that we are happy to work with her on primary legislation to ensure that there is a proper legal framework.
Pete Wishart
Is it the right hon. Lady’s understanding that what the motion asks us to do—she is absolutely right that it is neither primary nor secondary legislation—is sign up to the Home Secretary’s immigration rules applying in their totality unless the shadow Home Secretary and her colleagues introduce another motion to challenge them?
Yvette Cooper
That is not what the motion says. It deals simply with an issue of principle about whether Parliament should be able to set out how article 8 is interpreted. Various lawyers have said that the motion is little more than a statement of fact and is effectively the equivalent of the Home Secretary regarding the immigration rules as compliant with article 8.
That is what the motion does, but it is not clear whether the Home Secretary expects us to endorse the detailed content of individual immigration rules, only some of which she discussed in her speech—many were not discussed. She referred, for example, to foreign criminals. The Opposition believe that the Government’s broad approach to foreign criminals is the right one—we think it is right to take stronger action, including through the immigration rules and the Border Agency—but this process is not appropriate as a general rule for the scrutiny of the content of immigration rules. For Parliament to attempt such scrutiny just two sitting days after the rules were published would be inappropriate, and it would be unlikely to reassure the courts that the detail had been properly scrutinised and debated.
In particular, today’s debate cannot be about the detail of the wider family immigration rules, which were published only last week. Further scrutiny will be needed, because there are concerns about whether the rules are the most effective way of protecting the taxpayer, and whether they are fair and just. Those concerns should be debated properly, but that cannot happen in a debate on a general motion.
The motion refers simply to the broad immigration rules and cannot suffice as proper scrutiny or endorsement of the changes to individual rules. The Opposition are happy to support the Government’s approach to tackling foreign criminals, because we believe that more action needs to be taken, including through the immigration rules. We also believe the Government are right to consider how to ensure that article 8 is interpreted. In that way, they can provide a framework of guidance when it comes to dealing with foreign criminals through the immigration rules.
There is a wider challenge. The Home Secretary’s reason for introducing the motion was that she is concerned that more foreign criminals should be deported. She will know that the number of foreign criminals deported in 2011-12 fell by nearly 18%. If all those in the cases to which she referred—the 185 cases that the Home Office said were granted appeal on article 8 grounds—were instead deported, the number deported in the most recent financial year would still have fallen by around 15% on the previous year. Whatever the Home Secretary’s intention, the motion still deals with only a small minority of cases involving foreign criminals.
The border inspector has made it clear that one of the main reasons why people are not being deported is difficulty in obtaining travel documentation. Everyone recognises that that can be difficult and untimely in some cases, but those practical operations have clearly become significantly worse since the election, which is a deep concern. The Home Secretary has said nothing today to answer those concerns or to address the growing concern that the Border Agency’s performance is deteriorating substantially on the Government’s watch.
The Opposition want to be able to support the Government’s approach to tackling foreign criminals, but we need more answers from the Home Secretary about what she hopes the motion will do.
John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)
Unfortunately the Home Secretary is not present, but let me place on record that I have a good deal of time for her. I think that her speech a few years ago about “the nasty party” was incredibly courageous. [Interruption.] I was trying to make a wider point. I think that it helped to change a bit of the culture of politics in this country. However, I am extremely disappointed in the process that is taking place today. I no longer know what we are debating, or what the purpose of the debate is. If its purpose is to establish some form of credentials for the House—to cause the courts to acknowledge statements in the House and thus, to an extent, shape their judgments in the light of the debate—this is not the way to go about it.
Normally we would debate legislation, and the legislative proposals would be published in good time. Often, as one of my hon. Friends pointed out, those proposals would be presented to the relevant Committee of the House, which in this instance would probably be the Joint Committee on Human Rights. We would receive a report, a legislative proposal would be debated in the House in some form, and then, as a result of a vote, legislation would be enacted. That is the way in which we not only legislate, but shape the interpretation of legislation by the courts.
Pete Wishart
Like the hon. Gentleman, I am totally confused about what we are voting for this evening. There have been three explanations of what the vote at 8.30 pm will entail, but the danger is that we may be voting for the immigration rules in their entirety, as laid out last week. That is unacceptable to me, and I am sure that it is unacceptable to the hon. Gentleman.
John McDonnell
Let me finish the point I was making, which is that this is an object lesson in how not to go about influencing others, and certainly not the courts. The immigration rules’ legislative proposals were published only a week ago, and there are 45 pages of amendments to what is an even more detailed document. I ask Members who have read all that material to put up their hand. For the benefit of Hansard, I note that one Member has raised their arm—or perhaps two.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
Sometimes, I do not know why we bother. We all turn up for these debates. All those who take an interest in home affairs and issues such as human rights are here, and you are here in your finery, Mr Deputy Speaker. We have heard a very confused speech from the Conservative Secretary of State and we have heard from Labour Members, ever compliant on human rights and home affairs. We have not heard from the Liberals; I do not know whether we will, but I would be interested to hear what they have to say. We are all here, but we are all more or less wasting our time. Why not just get on with it and get The Daily Telegraph, along with the Daily Mail, to conduct our immigration policy? That is what we are getting, with immigration rules that are practically out of The Daily Telegraph’s leader column.
What an absolute farce this afternoon has been. What on earth are we debating? I do not have a clue. We have had three different explanations from the Government about what we are being asked to consider. We are asked to consider that article 8 is a qualified right. Yes, that is a restatement of the bleeding obvious, as I said earlier, and we all know that. We are then asked to support the Government’s immigration rules. Does that mean the immigration rules in their totality, as the Home Secretary said when I intervened, or part of them? Or are we just giving a direction to the judges? I have absolutely no clue whatsoever what we are being asked to consider this evening. It is a total waste of time and a farce. As the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) says, we need a proper process to consider this very important subject—and it is important.
Pete Wishart
I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman is being helpful, but that seems to be another interpretation. When he sums up, the Minister for Immigration must tell us exactly what we are voting on this evening, because I do not know. I cannot support the immigration rules in their totality, so if the Government are saying that we have to accept them tonight, I unfortunately cannot support them and will press the matter to a Division. We cannot accept the rules as they stand. This is a very important debate condensed to four hours and a lot of nonsense.
Jeremy Corbyn
Like the hon. Gentleman, I am confused by much of the debate. Would his interpretation be that whatever the outcome of the rather odd motion the Home Secretary has tabled, it cannot by any stretch of the imagination be construed as an approval of the rules, a direction to courts or as anything other than a vague statement from the Home Secretary of whatever she happens to believe in today?
Pete Wishart
The hon. Gentleman might be right—I do not know. We need to hear from the Government exactly what we are voting on. The Home Secretary made three different attempts to tell the House what we will be voting on tonight, but we are no clearer. At some point, we will need to hear from the Government exactly what they are asking us to support. If they want us to support the full rules, I cannot do that. It is a Conservative assault on article 8 and I will not be able to support it this evening.
We need a considered debate on immigration. Hon. Members who have spoken are absolutely right that the matter concerns our constituents, but in Scotland we do not share the Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail, right-wing Tory view of immigration. Scotland consistently sees these issues differently. Scotland’s population is at an all-time high, but only a few years ago we had great concerns that it was going to fall below the iconic 5 million mark for the first time since the 20th century. That was a real and absolute concern that has been addressed by immigration. We see immigration as something that is valuable to our communities and that is there to be cherished, grown and developed. The minute people set foot in our nation, they are new Scots. They are integrated from day one and that is why we do not have such problems.
Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)
Will the hon. Gentleman therefore confirm whether, were Scotland to become independent, it would have its own independent border service?
Pete Wishart
You betcha. We have been observing what has been happening in the UK Border Agency and it is a textbook guide of how not to do to it. It is a nonsensical agency; it is dysfunctional and gets things absolutely wrong. I look forward to the day when we exercise control over our own immigration policies, so that we can have policies that are designed for and suited to our demography, our economy and our population. Right now, our population is at an all-time high because of immigration and we see that as good and positive.
Mark Reckless
Just to clarify, is the hon. Gentleman presuming that an independent Scotland would be part of a common travel area in the way that the Republic of Ireland is? If so, can he be certain of that—
Pete Wishart
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.
We are here today to consider changes to article 8 of the European convention on human rights, which will effectively define the basis on which people can enter or remain in the UK based on their right to a family life. The motion is a revelation, almost declaring that article 8 is not an absolute right and that it is therefore okay to interpret it in any way that the Government want and for them to give guidance to that effect.
The Government are determined to have their way with the judiciary and to tell it how to interpret these provisions. Why bother even having a judge? Why cannot the Home Secretary and the Minister for Immigration do it themselves? We will have an end to judges performing the delicate balancing exercise they carry out every day in these tribunals and courts will now be dictated by the Secretary of State.
The Home Secretary has set herself quite an ambitious deadline. She has pledged by the end of the summer to end the abuse of the right to a family life by people who should not be here. She has been egged on by the “end the human rights” brigade, whom we see every day in the right-wing press, on the Conservative Back Benches and on the Labour Front Benches. They paint an extraordinary picture of our inner cities, inhabited by marauding foreign national murderers who in the evenings go home to their luxury penthouse flats, probably paid for by benefits and taxpayers’ money, and spend time on the phone to any one of the lavish lawyers who invent any kind of bizarre excuse to show that they have the right to a family life in the UK. That is the picture painted and the pretext behind the assault on article 8 that we are seeing today, and it is all utter nonsense.
Do you know the reality of the question of the right to a family life, Mr Deputy Speaker? Let me tell you. It is not about the marauding foreign nationals about whom we hear every day from the Conservative party. It is about the people whom we see in our constituency surgeries every day when we deal with their cases, who are separated from their families because of the inflexible rules and their rigid application of those rules by the UKBA.
Mr Tom Harris (Glasgow South) (Lab)
I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman’s rant, but can he explain whether he shares the general feeling of repulsion held by most Members of the House about the example of the failed asylum seeker who was responsible for the death of a 12-year-old girl, left the scene of that crime and used his right to a family life to remain in the country? It is of course a small example, but does he understand why we feel such revulsion? Does he understand why ordinary people feel revulsion? Does he accept that one does not have to be a Daily Telegraph or Daily Mail reader to be revolted by that example?
Pete Wishart
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving me the opportunity to say absolutely that such people have no place in our country and should be dealt with efficiently and effectively, but article 8 allows the judiciary to do that. What the Government want to do is dictate to judges exactly how they should interpret these cases. I am all for getting rid of all the murderous, mayhem-causing foreign nationals we hear about every day—it is absolutely right that we do that—but let us talk about what actually happens on the ground in our constituency offices and the day-to-day routine cases.
There is a fantastic case in Scotland just now concerning a man called Gary Boyd, who is the deputy head teacher at Kirkwall grammar school in Orkney. He has just returned to his native Scotland after an absence of five years with his Australian wife of nine years. She is having to return to Australia with her eldest son to reapply to come back into the UK because of the way in which the rules have been interpreted by the UKBA, with no flexibility but total rigidity. She had indefinite leave to remain and was out of the country for a long time and did not know that she had to reapply to stay here. She is now off to Australia. What that means—we are talking about the right to family life—is that she will be separated from her husband for six months. Their eldest son is supposed to be sitting his O-levels next year, but he does not know whether he will now be sitting them because of having to go to Australia, and we do not know whether their youngest daughter will be able to start nursery education at the end of the year. This is the reality of the right to a family life and these are the things we should be considering—the rigid rules being applied by the UKBA.
Mr Tom Harris
I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman again but the example he has just cited has absolutely no relevance to the motion before the House. We are talking about deportation cases, but he is not talking about deportation. He is talking about a couple who did not obey the rules that are applied to every single other person in the country. Will he admit that he is not talking about a deportation case?
Pete Wishart
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman once again because he gives me another opportunity to restate that this is the reality—the things that we have to deal with in our constituency offices day in, day out. Yes, we see the headlines in The Daily Telegraph and yes we are appalled by the actions of some foreign nationals. Yes, such people should be deported, but if we are discussing, as we are this afternoon, the right to a family life, this is the reality—the stuff we deal with day in, day out. That is the stuff that needs the real attention.
Who can forget where all this started? It was the hilarious speech by the Home Secretary at the Conservative party conference when she—I am not making this up—cited the example of a Bolivian man who was allowed to remain in the country because he owned a cat. Of course, the Home Secretary is never one to unleash the cat among the pigeons. That ridiculous story had the Justice Secretary twitching in his Hush Puppies. He said at the time that he was willing to bet it was not true, and he was absolutely right because the Home Secretary’s story unravelled faster than a condemned pasty shortly after her speech.
Mr Raab
Has the hon. Gentleman read the case to which he is referring? I do not think he can have because the cat was a relevant factor—not the decisive factor but a material one—in the relationship between the boyfriend and the girlfriend, which was relied on in this case. Has the hon. Gentleman read the case?
Pete Wishart
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I have been following his campaign with great interest, but I think he has ruined it totally with that intervention.
Pete Wishart
Of course I have read the case. The hon. Gentleman has ruined his campaign totally. He has conducted a great campaign in some ways, because it has attracted a lot of attention, and good luck to him because he has managed to secure all these fantastic column inches in all the right-wing newspapers, but he has done himself no justice with that intervention.
When the Home Secretary made her statement the other day, I asked her about these other rules that we now have to consider, which I believe we are now being asked to support. They include the measure that a family has to come up with a minimum income guarantee of £18,600. In the statement, I asked the Home Secretary why there is a flat rate across the whole United Kingdom and why there are not different rates to reflect the different incomes in other parts of the UK. In Dundee, there is a different standard of living than in London docklands—that just makes sense. She said that it would not be possible to impose different rates across the UK. What absolute rubbish. That happens in Australia. The Australians have different immigration rules for different states and they seem to get along perfectly well. All we would need to do is license people. If there was an agreement for someone to come to one part of the UK, they would have to stay in that part or lose their right to stay here and be arrested and deported. That is simple, straightforward and could easily have been done, but the Home Secretary decided that was not for us, and now everyone across the UK has to have at least £18,600.
Even if that sum is secured, the partner is now likely to be stuck in the purgatory of a probation period of five years rather than the current two. If one is foolish enough to have children, the required income level rises substantially. We are told that this is to prevent migrants from sponging off the state, but Government statistics show that foreign-born people are less than half as likely to claim benefits as those who were born here. The measures will force families to choose between staying apart or moving abroad.
The Home Secretary ridiculously says that these immigration policies are not about numbers, but if they are not, why have the Government imposed the arbitrary cap that is already doing such damage to our universities, colleges and one of the few sectors of our economy that is actually booming?
The Minister for Immigration (Damian Green)
I think the hon. Gentleman is very confused. He is talking about a cap on universities but there is no cap on student numbers in this country. There is a cap on work visas, which is nothing to do with universities.
Pete Wishart
I am grateful to the Minister. He has received representations from countless educational institutions right across Scotland that have told him again and again about the damage that his immigration policies are doing to our university and college sector. I wish that he and the Home Secretary would respond positively and do the right thing for our universities and colleges, which are suffering in Scotland because of these Tory immigration policies.
This is such a Tory solution. There is one rule for the rich immigrant and another for the poor, forcing an estimated 15,000 families a year to emigrate or live apart. That is heartless and it gives the lie to the Tories’ manifesto claims to support what in their words is society’s building block—the family.
We will not do things this way and we look forward to getting the levers of immigration. We have observed what has happened down here and it does not work. We have seen the chaos of the UKBA and we will not do the same. We will make sure that Scotland is a welcoming, accommodating place when we have the levers of immigration at our disposal. I was at one of our national conferences at the weekend and I listened, consecutively, to an Italian Scot, an Asian Scot and a Frenchman who declared himself a new Scot and a European. Such people all contribute to the Scottish economy and to our community and culture. They have enriched Scotland. When we secure the full levers of immigration we will design a system that will attract the best and the brightest and we will address our demographic and population concerns. I cannot wait for that day when we will get rid of the Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail right-wing Tory nonsense determining our immigration policy here.
Mr Tom Harris (Glasgow South) (Lab)
I begin by offering support to my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), who is resuming his place in the Chamber. He is right to express concern about the purpose of the debate and the purpose of the motion on the Order Paper. I have a lot of time for the Immigration Minister, and I know that he will have taken those comments seriously. I expect that in his summing up, he will want to explain to the House why we are here today and what precedent he expects the motion to set—or what precedent has already been set at some time in the past that leads him to believe that the discussion of the motion will have a substantial effect on the decisions of judges in the future.
Before I continue my remarks, I should like to comment on the contribution from the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart). It was a misjudged contribution. He repeatedly referred disparagingly to right-wing papers such as The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail. Actually, there is a troika of right-wing newspapers. Everyone knows that they are The Telegraph, The Mail and The Sun, but the hon. Gentleman did not mention The Sun or any News International newspapers. I cannot think why. Apparently the right-wing press is now limited to The Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail.
The hon. Gentleman also showed utter contempt for the citizens of England by suggesting that Scots, unlike the English, are welcoming of immigrants, and that every immigrant to Scotland is integrated into Scottish life as of day one—I think that was the expression that he used. Naturally, he is entirely wrong. Scots, like citizens in the rest of our country, are tolerant and welcoming, but like those in the rest of the country, we value fairness. Support for immigration in Scotland does not extend to support for open-door immigration of the kind proposed by the Scottish National party.
Pete Wishart
I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has had a chance to look at the Scottish Social Attitudes survey that was carried out in the past year. If he has had a look at it, what does he make of it?
Mr Harris
I can tell the hon. Gentleman that, unlike him, I speak to constituents all the time, and I know that my constituents have exactly the same view as citizens throughout the United Kingdom. They want to welcome asylum seekers, they want to welcome immigrant communities, but they want a sense of fair play that applies equally across the border. Scots are no more or less tolerant of foreign-born criminals remaining in the UK than are our fellow citizens unfortunate enough to live south of the border.
Now that the hon. Gentleman has had a chance to calm down and get his breath back, I would like to ask him whether, if Scots throughout the country are some sort of homogenous entity, all thinking the same thing, he can explain why the only local authority in Scotland that applied to welcome asylum seekers was Labour-controlled Glasgow—not Perth, not Edinburgh, not another local authority anywhere in Scotland, just Glasgow?
As has already been highlighted, the deportation of foreign criminals is more often frustrated by bureaucratic process than by appeals under article 8 of the Human Rights Act. My concern today is that some Members of the House and many members of the media—yes, the right-wing media—are using the relatively small number of appeals under this part of the Act to make the case for the Act’s repeal. That would be unacceptable. It is important that the debate focuses on the reasons behind the failure of the Government—and, yes, the failure of previous Governments—rather than on the straw man of the Human Rights Act.
Nevertheless, it is a concern to all our constituents when someone who has enjoyed British hospitality, and who has chosen to repay that hospitality with contempt for our law is allowed to remain in the UK. My understanding—perhaps the Immigration Minister will be able to clarify this in his summing up—is that the interpretation of article 8 as representing an absolute right to a family life is a peculiarly British interpretation. My understanding is that other judiciaries operating elsewhere in the EU under the European convention on human rights attach a significantly different interpretation to article 8—one that more frequently allows the deportation of foreign criminals.
The Government’s own policy on the circumstances in which deportation would not be appropriate—for example, if the person had lived here under valid terms for at least 15 years—deserves some attention.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) has already referred to the shocking case of Aso Mohammed Ibrahim, who in 2003 was responsible for the death of 12-year-old Amy Houston in a hit-and-run incident in Lancashire. Mr Ibrahim is variously described as an asylum seeker, a failed asylum seeker and an illegal immigrant. In fact, only the last term is correct. He arrived in the UK in 2001 and was refused refugee status, so he was never—not for one second—a refugee, and his appeal rights were exhausted by the end of 2002.
It is not the Human Rights Act that is to blame for the fact that too many criminals are allowed to remain here; it is the failure of the UK Border Agency to remove illegal immigrants in far greater numbers, and that should concern the House. Of course I accept the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn, who is a former Home Secretary, which is that on many occasions we simply cannot return people to their country of origin because it would not be safe to do so.
However, I have come across many constituents who have been in the country for eight or 10 years, applied for asylum and had the application refused, but who regard the refusal simply as an indication that no decision on their case has yet been made. They are wrong. They have been given the decision on their case: they have been told that they are in the country illegally and so should remove themselves. Far too often we allow time to march on and they do not make arrangements to remove themselves, but the UK Border Agency should remove them forcibly—I know that that process costs a lot—if they are not prepared to remove themselves voluntarily. I should point out that, although this debate has been billed as being about the scandal of permitting criminals to remain in the UK, the motion rightly refers only to migrants, not criminals.
I welcome the Government’s statement that one of the exceptions to the presumption that an individual will be deported is where an individual has been resident in the UK legally for 15 years. I hope that the Minister, in summing up, can confirm that the many thousands of individuals who have remained here illegally, ignoring decisions to refuse them refugee status, will not qualify under that exception as they have not been in the country legally. That issue is as pertinent to the cases of law-abiding immigrants as it is to criminals, and article 8 has been used to confirm the residency in the UK of many who have no criminal past and who are of less interest to the right-wing tabloids.
Countries across the whole UK are relocating, but our hospitality is sorely tested when people who come here either to seek refuge or to build a better life for themselves repay it by exhibiting contempt for our rules and, by implication, contempt for our citizens. Whether they have broken the law through an appallingly violent and callous act, as in the case of young Amy Houston, or by ignoring an appeal ruling that they have no right to remain here, the right to a family life cannot be absolute. The Government are right to say so. However, they are merely reflecting what the whole country already believes.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
I am grateful to the hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox) for making a wonderful speech, trying to convince the House that we are actually doing something useful when the Clerk has just explained to us that we are not doing anything very useful whatever. We are deeply indebted to the hon. and learned Gentleman, and the courts are the stronger for the ability to make that kind of argument—to make something utterly irrelevant seem important. It is a skill and a talent that, sadly, only some of us are able to possess.
The Home Secretary probably tabled this rather strange motion because she assumed that it would be a useful bone to feed to her Back Benchers, who are obsessed with the Human Rights Act, with the European convention on human rights and, in some cases, with anything to do with Europe. They follow their obsession every day in The Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail and Daily Express. Some of them even read The Sun, I believe, and they continue with that obsession.
We should be slightly more careful than that, however, because the European convention on human rights was established in 1948 to look to a future in Europe based on human rights and a respect for people, rather than on the power of the state to oppress people. We had come out of the Nazi period, the most horrible period in European history, so the popular press, which consistently reports anything to do with human rights as a laughable matter, should remember that many people owe their very lives to the existence of that convention and the European Court of Human Rights, which have had a good effect on many other countries.
The Home Secretary may be saying that immigration law trumps the Human Rights Act and the European convention on human rights, but article 8 has always been qualified and no one has ever disputed that. What would she and others say if the Hungarian Government made a similar statement, announcing that it absolved them of any need to be taken to the European Court of Human Rights for their treatment of Roma people and Traveller people in Hungary? We should think a bit more deeply about the causes of human rights abuse throughout Europe, and be a bit more sympathetic to the European Court of Human Rights and the European convention on human rights.
I shall not speak for long, because others want to get in and the debate is time-limited, but the Home Secretary placed in the Vote Office last week an explanatory statement on her immigration proposals, and it ranges far wider than the question of just deporting foreign criminals. It skates over the important issue of how children and families are treated in the right to family life. She has chosen to interpret that right in the narrow sphere of the individual—usually male—criminal who has served a sentence, left prison, is hopefully a reformed character and then asserts that he has a right to family life in the UK, giving stern warnings that she will not accept any of that stuff any more and they are going to be on their way. She might care to look at what the London School of Economics did in considering the effects of article 8, and what others have done in this respect.
Baroness Hale has said that a child cannot be held responsible for the moral failings of their parents. That is a profound statement that emphasises that children do have rights in these situations. They have rights not to be deported, and their parents have rights to enjoy the company of their spouse or partner. Surely that is what we should be looking at. What is the effect on those children of one parent being removed? Some of us have been through the sad experience of arguing that case on behalf of constituents. One partner and their children do not want to be removed to another jurisdiction, so they remain here knowing full well that the missing partner—the ex-prisoner—will not be allowed into this country for at least 10 years. That is a huge proportion of a child’s life and experience. We should be slightly more liberal and understanding about these issues.
Obviously in some of the extreme cases, such as that cited by my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), one would have no sympathy with what those individuals have achieved, but looking at extreme cases does not make for good law. A serious examination of the totality makes for a better example of good law. That is why I suggested that we should refer the whole issue to the Joint Committee on Human Rights.
Pete Wishart
As usual, the hon. Gentleman is making a powerful case. He, like me, will remember the debates of years ago when we argued the same type of case. In those days, we would be joined by the Liberals, but today we have heard not one speech by a Liberal Member on a very important issue that they used almost to scream about. We have not had even one intervention by a Liberal Member. Two of them came wandering into the Chamber, had a little look around, and disappeared again. Is the hon. Gentleman as surprised as I am that we have heard nothing from the Liberals today?
Jeremy Corbyn
I am sorry to disappoint the hon. Gentleman, but I cannot help him by describing what the Liberal Democrats are doing today, because I am not responsible for them. However, having been involved in a lot of human rights, anti-terrorism and immigration debates over the many years I have been in Parliament, I know that there are different allies in different Parliaments. Sometimes there are Conservatives one agrees with, sometimes there are Liberals one agrees with, and sometimes there is nobody one agrees with, but that’s life, and we plough on.
Chris Bryant
No; we, at least, are certainly not reviewing it.
However, the hon. Member for Keighley did say something with which I wholeheartedly agreed. He said that it was not racist to want to debate immigration. I have said this at the Dispatch Box before, and I will say it again: just because someone wants to talk about immigration does not make them a racist. There are certainly some people who want to talk about immigration because they are racists, but I believe that everybody has a perfect right to debate this issue, and we should be able to do so calmly and reasonably.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) expressed a view about the motion before us which I think a lot of us had come to when he said, “I no longer know what this debate is about,” and when he referred to the unusual process that has been used. I will refer later to why I think this is not the process for us to go through. I think we have come to a much greater understanding of what the legal implications will be of the decision we take this evening, but he was right to highlight the fact that some of the water had been somewhat muddied by earlier contributions.
Chris Bryant
We did not have a Liberal contribution—I was going to point that out earlier—but I am sure that the Liberals will be reserving their position for when they form a Government on their own, without the Conservative party.
The hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) made a thoughtful contribution, as usual. He was right to say that the European convention on human rights was never originally intended to have any kind of extra-territorial effect. However, I would merely point out to him that it was not intended to have any effect on whether homosexuals could serve in the military in any country in the United Kingdom or how marriage law should be interpreted. There are undoubtedly aspects of how the ECHR has been interpreted by the Court in Strasbourg that have been significantly beneficial, not only to people in the United Kingdom, but to people in Russia and other signatory countries.
The hon. Gentleman also referred to the shifting goalposts of article 8. That is another area where there is some agreement across the House, and certainly between the two Front Benches. He also pointed out that it would be difficult to be precise about what constituted success in the terms to which the Home Secretary referred at the beginning of the debate. How will we know whether what we are doing today has been successful? It is difficult to be precise.
I would not call the speech by the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) a rant, but it had—
Chris Bryant
I would not call it that, either. I thought the hon. Gentleman’s speech was just wrong, and in some areas inappropriate, although he did unite the House in condemnation of himself—I think that is mostly what he seeks to achieve in politics—so it was quite a success.
The hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel)—again, she is not in her place—spoke about a whole range of wider immigration issues. All I would say is that today’s debate is not about those wider issues; rather, it is about the specific set of issues that are incorporated in the motion—a motion that is tightly drawn and does not have any papers tagged to it.
My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South (Mr Harris) did a very good job of demolishing the argument of the hon. Member for Perth and—is it “Perth and Perthshire”?
Chris Bryant
I see; otherwise, I would have thought that it was a rather tautological name for a constituency.
My hon. Friend is absolutely right: many of our constituents, in many different parts of this country—in Wales, just as in Scotland and England—have significant concerns about matters relating to the deportation of foreign criminals, and they want them addressed better in the criminal justice system.
I always enjoy listening to the hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox), not least because I see him as a very successful barrister, and I am aware that there is a convention in this House that if an hon. Member were to ask another Member who practises at the Bar to represent them in court, that Member would be required to provide their services, free, gratis and for nothing. I therefore look forward to him representing me one day in some action, free, gratis and for nothing. [Interruption.] I think he is mouthing something at me, but I am not quite sure what it is. I know that he was seeking to be helpful to the Government and to support the direction of travel in which they are moving, but I noted that he said, “I do not hold out an enormous amount of hope.” I think he was referring to whether this proposal is going to be a successful manoeuvre, which is partly our concern as well. It is not a concern about the direction of travel, but a concern about whether this measure is precisely the right way in which to steer ourselves in that direction of travel.
The hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) is one of my favourite Members, because I have debated with him so many times—and he also told me once that he loved me, so I cannot dislike him. He referred to the application of the rules of the European Court’s decisions in relation to the courts in the United Kingdom. He, too, said that whether the decisions we make today will have any effect remains to be seen. I say that—and I think he said it, too—not out of a desire to undermine where we want to go, but to ensure that we securely get change in the direction to which many hon. Members have referred.
My hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) made a moving speech about some of the experiences that she has had personally and in dealing with her constituents. In particular, she mentioned the situation facing many women and children. We would do ourselves a disservice if we were to pretend that the European convention on human rights had done nothing to protect the sorely abused rights of women around the world. In many cases, it has acted as a beacon for what a decent society should look like and how a decent society should go about its business.
The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said that he thought that there would be no Division on the motion. I thought that he might have been having a dig at the hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon when he said that everything goes wrong when lawyers get involved. He was also critical of some of the judges in the European Court of Human Rights because they sometimes did not have the level of qualifications or the amount of experience that we would expect of a British judge. I am certain of the need for reform of the way in which the judges are appointed and the way in which the Court does its business and comes to its decisions, but that is not a reason for us to leave the European Court or to abandon the convention, not least—I might not be able to carry the hon. Gentleman with me on this—because it is a requirement of membership of the European Union that we should be a signatory and adhere to the Court.
The hon. Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer), who has just fled the Chamber, made a tiny intervention on the hon. Member for Strangford, in which he pointed out the difference between the European Union, the European Court and the European convention on human rights. He was absolutely right to say that that difference was often not recognised.
The Home Secretary made several issues crystal clear in her speech. First, she made it clear that Pepper v. Hart was right, and that it is absolutely right for the courts to bear in mind what is said by a Minister or in a debate in the House of Commons—or, for that matter, the House of Lords—when legislation is ambiguous and the court is uncertain of how to proceed, without breaching article IX of the Bill of Rights, which states that a court is not able to question or impeach a proceeding in Parliament.
The Minister for Immigration (Damian Green)
I am grateful to Members on both sides of the House who have treated this important subject seriously today. I am also grateful for the support for the Government’s approach that eventually appeared from the Opposition Front Bench, although I was rather doubtful about it earlier, when the shadow Home Secretary was speaking. I am also grateful to the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) and the hon. Members for Glasgow South (Mr Harris) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon), as well as to those on the Government Benches who have spoken.
Let me deal with the central question. The motion clearly sets out for the agreement of the House where we believe the balance should lie between the right to respect for family and private life under article 8 of the European convention on human rights and the legitimate aims of our immigration controls. That view is reflected in the new immigration rules that we laid before the House last week. We are in complete agreement that article 8 is a qualified right. Article 8 sets out the basis on which the public interest can justify proportionate interference in individual rights to family and private life. It is the responsibility of the Government, and of Parliament, on behalf of the public, to set out when and how the public interest should qualify those individual rights. The immigration rules are the appropriate vehicle for the expression of the views of the Government and Parliament.
Pete Wishart
I am beginning to get confused all over again. I thought that we had received clarification on this earlier, but the Minister is now inviting us to support all the Government’s immigration rules, which will be unacceptable to many people in the House.
Damian Green
No sensible person would put that interpretation on what I have just said. No sensible person would put that interpretation on the motion that is before the House, which the hon. Gentleman has shown, over the past three and a half hours, he is incapable of reading. Read the motion, and you will see what we are debating.
The immigration rules are the appropriate vehicle for the expression of the views of the Government and Parliament. They are a statement of the normal practice to be followed by the Secretary of State’s caseworkers in making immigration decisions under the statutory framework that Parliament has provided.
Since the Human Rights Act 1998 was implemented in 2000, it has become increasingly apparent that the existing immigration rules do not provide a sufficiently clear and comprehensive framework for considering family and private life cases in line with article 8. The rules have not reflected adequately the factors that can weigh in favour of, and against, an applicant’s article 8 claim. The courts—understandably, as the Government have never set out for Parliament’s agreement a clear position on article 8 in the immigration rules—have had to decide for themselves on the facts of the cases before them whether article 8 did or did not provide a basis for the applicant to come to or stay in the UK.
The courts have therefore not been able to give due weight to Government’s and Parliament’s view of where the balance should be struck between individual rights and the public interest, as they have not known fully what that view is. As the Government and Parliament have not established the correct balance in the rules, the courts have arguably been as well placed as the Secretary of State’s caseworkers to assess the case and make a decision. In the absence in the rules of a comprehensive statement of public policy in these matters, the courts have developed the policy themselves through case law on issues such as the required level of maintenance for family migrants.
The changes to the immigration rules that we laid before Parliament on 13 June fill the public policy vacuum we inherited by setting out the position of the Secretary of State on proportionality under article 8. The new rules state how the balance should be struck between the public interest and individual rights, taking into account relevant case law and evidence. They provide clear instructions for caseworkers on the approach they must normally take, and they therefore provide the basis for a consistent, fair and transparent decision-making process.
As the immigration rules will now explicitly take into account proportionality under article 8, the role of the courts should focus on considering proportionality in the light of the clear statement of public policy reflected in the rules. They should not have to consider the proportionality of every decision taken in accordance with the rules on every immigration application. The starting point from now will be that Parliament has decided how the balance under article 8 should be struck, and although Parliament’s view is subject to consideration by the courts, it should be accorded the deference rightly due to the legislature on the determination of public policy. That is the approach that the new immigration rules seek to put in place in the immigration system.
By subjecting the public interest that the rules reflect to debate and approval in Parliament today, we are making good the democratic deficit we inherited on the operation of article 8 rights in the immigration sphere. We are also responding to the need that the courts have themselves identified for the Government and Parliament to take proper responsibility for these matters of public policy.
The hon. Member for Hyndburn (Graham Jones), who is not in his place, raised the important Mohammed case, which precisely illustrates why we are proceeding in this way. He asked a specific question about what would happen in a case like that where the sentence was not for 12 months or more. I am happy to repeat what my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said in her opening remarks, that “even if a criminal has received a shorter sentence, deportation will still normally be proportionate if their offending has caused serious harm.” There is that additional power.
My hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash) raised an interesting point, which was repeated by the shadow Immigration Minister, about which rules we should look at—the rules as they stand today or the new rules. Again, I am more than happy to repeat what my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said, this time in her statement last week:
“I will shortly ask the House to approve a motion recognising the qualified nature of article 8 and agreeing that the new immigration rules should form the basis of whether someone can come to or stay in this country”.—[Official Report, 11 June 2012; Vol. 546, c. 50.]
That is what she told the House last Monday; that is what we are debating today.
The shadow Home Secretary and, indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier) made points about the importance of removing more foreign national offenders, on which we agree. She asked why the numbers had come down. The simple fact is that fewer cases are arising that fit the deportation threshold. The numbers in this category are down approximately 12% in 2011 in comparison with 2010, while the overall prison population has not fallen. The number of people forcibly removed or departing voluntarily during the first quarter of 2012 has remained steady. It is slightly higher than in the fourth quarter of 2011, so I hope the right hon. Lady will be reassured that action is being taken on the very important point she raised about removals.
In what might be described as the less serious part of the debate, the hon. Members for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) and for Glasgow South (Mr Harris) and my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox) raised the issue of whether the courts would take any notice Parliament. What the new rules do are respond to what the courts have said about the lack of a clear framework in immigration cases for balancing individual article 8 rights and the wider public interest. The House of Lords—this was before we had the Supreme Court—observed in the Huang case back in 2007 that immigration lacks a clear framework representing the competing interests of individual rights and the wider public interest because the immigration laws
“are not the product of active debate in Parliament”.
That is precisely the purpose of today’s debate. We are having an “active debate in Parliament” on immigration rules as they affect the balance between individual rights and collective rights on article 8.
Frankly, this House ought to welcome the fact that Parliament becomes the central part of a debate on an issue that is important to our constituents. I am genuinely surprised that so many Opposition Members appear to think it inappropriate for Parliament to act in this way. I shall take up what must be a luxury for any Home Office Minister under any Government and pray in aid Liberty, which said today:
“Any fair immigration policy will be a combination of rules and discretion, allowing both for clarity and compassion in the handling of individual cases and the system as a whole. On that basis, Immigration Rules are the obvious way for any Home Secretary to seek to guide both her officials and the judiciary in their handling of cases.”
I think Liberty is exactly right in its interpretation. As I say, that is what we are doing today.
My hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins) can be reassured that we are indeed, as he urged, trying to deport as many criminals as possible. I hope he will be reassured by the figures that I read out a few moments ago.
My hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) has huge legal expertise in this matter and spoke with much wisdom. I was glad to hear from him that my answers to all his parliamentary questions have done some good in providing him with facts and figures. He asked what will happen if the courts do not respond. As my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary said previously, if we need to take further steps, we will, but we do not anticipate that happening.
My hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) eloquently pointed out how the distortions of human rights law have indeed created real problems in this country. She said she would like to see people taken straight from jail to the airport to be deported. I cannot quite promise her that, but I hope she is reassured to some extent that the average number of days between a foreign national prisoner finishing their sentence and being removed has decreased markedly. In 2008, it was 131 days; by 2011, we had got it down to 74 days, so we are indeed speeding up that process.
The hon. Members for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) and for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) talked about the best interests of children. The hon. Lady is quite right that she and I worked closely together for some time on these matters during the dark days of the previous Government when they were trying to do bad things through immigration legislation. Of course we recognise the importance of the statutory duty under section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009
“to safeguard and promote the welfare of children…in the UK”.
It is precisely for that reason that we have reinforced our approach by bringing a consideration of the welfare or the best interest of children into the new immigration rules. In assessing that best interest, the primary question in immigration cases involving removal is whether it is reasonable to expect the child to leave the UK. The best interests of the child will normally be met by their remaining with their parents. As the hon. Lady predicted, I make the point that in these rules, exceptional factors are allowed for.
There will be exceptional factors. I do not entirely share the hon. Lady’s view of the box-ticking nature of the way in which the UKBA and individual caseworkers approach these cases, not least because of the training that they have been undertaking—training to which, as she rightly said, she has contributed in the past. We are continuing to train so that our caseworkers act in a sensitive way, but exceptions can certainly be made in extreme cases.
In these rules we are introducing clear, proportionate requirements relating to who can enter or remain in the UK on the basis of their family life. They are requirements that reflect case law, evidence, independent advice and public consultation. We invite the House to agree that they are requirements which reflect the fact that family migration should be controlled in the public interest, and the fact that the best interests of a child in the UK should be taken into account.
Article 8 will cease to be an afterthought in the decision-making process, considered only after a decision has been made under the immigration rules. Instead, the determination under article 8 will be made according to the immigration rules which the Government have put in place, and which Parliament has agreed correctly reflect the public interest. We have set clear and transparent requirements as the basis for the ability of a partner, child or adult dependant of non-European economic area nationality to enter or remain in the UK because of his or her relationship with a British citizen or a person with settled status in the UK.
Applicants will have to meet clear requirements in the rules which reflect an assessment of the public interest. Those requirements are a proportionate interference with article 8 because they draw on the relevant case law, because there is a strong rationale and evidence for the fact that they will serve the public interest, and because, if Parliament agrees to the motion—as I hope and expect that it will—they will reflect the correct balance between individual rights and the public interest.
No set of rules can deal with 100% of cases, and there will be genuinely exceptional circumstances in which discretion is exercised outside the rules. However, it is in the interests of both the public and applicants for there to be a clear system to ensure fairness, consistency and transparency. The public, applicants and caseworkers need to know who is entitled to come or stay, and on what basis, and who is not. If there is to be a system of that kind, there must be rules: rules that deliver sustainable family migration to the UK that is right for the migrants, for communities and for the country as a whole, rules that properly reflect individual rights and the wider public interest, and, above all, rules that are set in Parliament, and not by individual legal cases. With that in mind, I commend the motion to the House.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House supports the Government in recognising that the right to respect for family or private life in Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights is a qualified right and agrees that the conditions for migrants to enter or remain in the UK on the basis of their family or private life should be those contained in the Immigration Rules.
Family Migration
Pete Wishart Excerpts(12 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mrs May
As I indicated in a previous response, on a number of occasions the judiciary has, in effect, said to Parliament, “You need to set out what is the public interest and where the balance of public interest lies.” That is why I expect that what we are doing in the immigration rules and the debate in Parliament will help judges in saying, “This is where Parliament believes the balance should be between the public interest and the individual’s rights.”
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
What discussions did the Secretary of State have with the Scottish Government about the proposals? Why was she not open to the suggestion of variance in the minimum income threshold, to match the variance of income across the United Kingdom? We in Scotland do not share her little conservative view of immigration; we prefer to do things a bit differently. Does she not think it is now time that we had our own powers over immigration, so that we can match our community needs in Scotland?
Mrs May
A regional variation in the income threshold was looked at by the Migration Advisory Committee and rejected by that committee for a number of reasons. The committee looked at income versus public sector costs in regions and the purely practical point that if we had regional variation, the result could very well be someone initially going to live in a region where the threshold was lower, in order to get into the country, and then moving within the country.