Immigration Rules: Paragraph 322(5)

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Alison Thewliss]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. If there were a case to answer, HMRC would have something to say about it.

This issue affects not just those individuals. Last week, I spoke to Saleem Dadabhoy, who employs 20 people in his business. If his situation is not resolved, all those people will be made unemployed and a British company worth £1.5 million will be wound up. That is economic madness, and the Home Office should carefully consider the impact of its target-driven culture on the economy, especially in these uncertain times.

I have spoken to many highly skilled migrants, all of whom have been distressed about the way they have been treated, having given the best years of their lives to the UK and made their home here. We should thank that group, not put them out.



My constituent, Omer Khitab, travelled to the UK on a study visa in 2006 and completed a master’s course in international marketing at the University of the West of Scotland in 2009. He then worked in journalism and marketing before starting his own business. His accountants completed his tax return on his behalf, and the errors they made inadvertently were rectified by my constituent a few months later. Omer has written documents from his accountants to prove that, and accepting full responsibility for the errors.

Omer also suffers from depression and anxiety, a factor that his GP and his psychiatrist have acknowledged would, without doubt, contribute to his inability to spot an administrative error in his tax return. His stress is only worsened by the ongoing nature of his case. He said:

“I feel this is my home, I thought my children will grow up here, I will get married and die here. That letter saying I don’t belong to this place, I am a threat to national security, it’s very hard to swallow”.

It is hard for all of us to swallow.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that, given the association of that rule with terrorism provisions, the implications are wide ranging and can leave a black mark on people’s lives forever? It is difficult for them ever to get a visa or to work anywhere worldwide after all that.

[Alison Thewliss]

Absolutely. That is why there needs to be a proper and thorough inquiry into the use of the provision. If Home Office staff are being advised to use it as a means of refusing people, they are clearly not looking at the full implications or the possible long-term impact.

My constituent Omer was refused leave to remain on the basis that he had deceived the Department, which goes entirely against all the evidence that he provided. Furthermore, HMRC has written to Omer to say that its staff are satisfied that he has acted honestly and not tried to deceive anyone.

Mustafa Ali Baig also travelled to the UK to study in 2006. He obtained master’s degree in international marketing from the University of the West of Scotland in 2009. Mustafa and Omer have a lovely picture of the two of them graduated—two young boys with all their lives ahead of them, and Omer certainly is almost unrecognisable from that picture, given the stress he has been under lately.

Before coming to the UK, Mustafa obtained a bachelor of law degree at the University of the Punjab, and he has master’s degree in political science. He has worked in business development, marketing and public relations, and has undertaken voluntary positions for civil rights and social action groups. He also volunteers to run a current affairs radio show. He is very much part of the Glasgow community, and he has gone above and beyond to advocate for his friends.

As far as I am aware, there is no question as to Mustafa’s integrity, but, due to that immigration rule, as the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) has just pointed out, he has been told that he is a questionable character and a threat to national security—as a result of correcting a small error on his tax return in 2010. That is no basis on which to remove someone in such a way. His case goes to the immigration tribunal on 20 June—that proves that decisions on such cases are still being made, despite what the Home Secretary has said.

Mr Sanjeev Pande travelled to the UK in 2005 on a student visa and graduated from Glasgow University in 2008. He started his own IT business and was also employed as an IT consultant and project manager—a lucrative career. Most recently, he had been leading an IT project for a bank in Scotland, before his right to work was removed by the Home Office.

Mr Pande applied for ILR—indefinite leave to remain—under long-term residency rules in 2017. He had been in the UK for 12 years at that point. He hired an accountant, but his tax return submissions were subsequently questioned by the Home Office. As a result, Mr Pande made attempts to change his accountant and to rectify the errors, but the Home Office has continued to pursue him on the basis that officials believe him to be dishonest.

Most distressingly, Mr Pande was detained at Heathrow airport on his return from a family holiday in 2017. His passport and BRP—biometric residence permit—were confiscated by immigration officers, removing his right to work. That has a huge impact on the family finances, because he has a mortgage and other commitments. Judges found in his favour at both first-tier and upper tribunals. Indeed, paperwork from the first-tier tribunal states that in some detail—it is a long quote but it is worth putting it on the record—with the judge saying:

“The refusal letter is I think confusing in itself in relation to the Appellant’s income, but I have to say that I found both the Appellant and his wife to be credible witnesses. I do not think that they have acted dishonestly. The Appellant relied on the advice of an accountant. He was entitled to rely on that advice and whilst he is under a duty to check information, it is entirely unfair to expect him to have a level of accountancy and tax knowledge accorded to professionals in this field... He was clear that he sought clarification from the accountant but eventually, when he was unable to get satisfactory answers, he changed accountants… It also appears to me that the Appellant was unfairly treated by the Home Office. His passport was retained during the first appeal proceedings. As a result he was unable to find employment since employers refused to employ him without the benefits of his passport. He was, I think, therefore prejudiced and I consider that this matter should be taken into account in the question of proportionality.

Taking all of the above into account, therefore, I do not consider that the Appellant has acted dishonestly. He may have been misguided, but that is a different matter and I consider that it would be disproportionate in the circumstances to expect the Appellant and his wife to leave the UK, particularly as they own property in the UK, they pay tax in the UK and they have spent a considerable number of years here.”

The last case I want to highlight is that of a female constituent—I do not want to name her, because her children are at school in my constituency. She travelled to the UK from Nigeria and has been refused leave to remain in similar circumstances to the others, under paragraph 322(5) of the immigration rules. She legitimately made changes to her tax return, but the Home Office is again putting forward the argument that she has tried to deceive the Department and it has refused her an administrative review.

My constituent is a qualified accountant, and has been unable to continue seeking work in her field as a result of the status imposed on her by the Home Office. She has been made destitute as she has no recourse to public funds—many on tier 1 have no such recourse.

My constituent has been to my office to seek help in getting school uniforms for her children. Unable to work, she is struggling to keep her family afloat, and there is a real risk that she and her children will be made homeless as a result of the Home Office decision. Her landlord, the Wheatley Group, confirmed only yesterday that, due to the support of her church paying her rent, it was not to proceed with legal action to evict her at this point, but that option remains open. I am extremely grateful to the Wheatley Group for the discretion it has shown, but the situation is not sustainable—my constituent needs to get back to work.

The issue has been considered by the Select Committee on Home Affairs, and the Home Secretary corresponded with its Chair, committing to put all 322(5) applications on hold and to carry out a review by the end of May. As far as I can ascertain, that review has not yet been published and no further detail on it is available, although as I said in connection with my constituent Mustafa, 322(5) decisions are still being made.

Oral Answers to Questions

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Monday 4th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

Ealing’s police have been dealing with one protest for 23 years outside our local Marie Stopes clinic. The aim of the protest is to prevent women from accessing healthcare. Although our council has now introduced a public spaces protection order, this is a national problem that requires a national solution. Will the Minister respond to the letter that 160 of us—including the Father of the House, the right hon. and learned Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke), and three Select Committee Chairs—wrote to him asking for his predecessor’s review to be published, and will he opt for our proposed solution of buffer zones? That would be an easy win for him at an early stage in his already successful career.

[Mr Hurd]

The hon. Lady and I have debated this matter in Westminster Hall, and we both know that there is a balance to be struck between the right to protest and ensuring that protests do not cross the line into harassment and intimidation. As she says, her local council has introduced a public spaces protection order, and we need to see how that goes. As for the review that she mentioned, it was entered into in good faith and it is ongoing.

BAME Communities: Stop and Search

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Owen. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford West (Naz Shah) on bringing this important subject before us. It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), who made his case with his usual Yorkshire bluntness. I will be a bit less monochromatic; I am a sociologist, so I will introduce some light and shade and context to the debate. I will quote very few opinion surveys, because as a sociologist, I am always suspicious of the sampling techniques used to seemingly pluck figures out of the air, such as the use of self-selecting samples. I used to teach sampling methods.

It is important to remember the context. Disquiet at the excessive use of stop-and-search long predates expressions such as “institutional racism”, “hostile environment” and other terms with which we are now familiar. It has its origins in the sus laws, and in the Vagrancy Act 1824, which allowed any person to be arrested on suspicion of loitering and was scrapped in the 1980s. These are not new debates.

We have a sense of déjà vu. In 1981, there were headlines about rising violence on the streets. The Specials’ “Ghost Town” was No. 1, and the streets of Brixton and Toxteth burned. At the same time, a royal wedding was being celebrated. I queued up to see the fireworks for Prince Charles and Lady Diana, I remember. A royal commission in 1981 found that there was an excessive use of stop-and-search, and in the end it was scrapped. That year’s riots were the result of the heavy-handedness of the sus laws and of the use of stop-and-search against ethnic minority communities. It is often a knee-jerk reaction to step up stop-and-search. Nobody doubts that it is an important tool in the toolbox of police and law enforcement when there is rising crime, but it can be a blunt instrument, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford West pointed out. We need to think about the implications that it has for community relations, for trust and confidence, and for transparency.

Of course, the events I mentioned were in 1981, before the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 and before interviews had to be recorded, and there are a lot of scary examples of how it was used indiscriminately on our streets. My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford West pointed out the alarming figures, and the fact that some people are eight times more likely to be searched, which is quite disturbing. My intervention was going to be figure-free and has grown into a speech as I have been sitting here. We still have Section 60 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, which authorises officers to stop and search people without reasonable grounds but where there is a risk of violence, or where it is believed weapons are being carried. A Section 60 stop-and-search order is something that should not be slapped on lightly.

What we are talking about is racial profiling, as a sociologist would say. There has been some to-ing and fro-ing on drugs policy in the debate. I have figures from the most recent British crime survey—a robust exercise, not simply an opinion survey—that say that BAME people are much less likely to use drugs, including cannabis, than white people, yet black people are stopped and searched for drugs at a rate nine times higher than their white counterparts, compared with eight times higher for all other reasons for a search. Asian and mixed-race people were also stopped and searched for drugs at a rate three times higher than their white counterparts, compared with two times higher where there were other reasons for a search. There are disparities there; we cannot get away from that.

[Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

A key part of addressing racial bias in the police force is making sure the force reflects the community it serves. When I joined Greater Manchester police, there were only a handful of such officers. Things have improved since then, and there has been good work, through unconscious bias training, positive action co-ordinators and independent advisory groups, but there is still an issue with minority ethnic officers rising to the top ranks. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government and politicians should do what we can to encourage forces to reflect their communities at all ranks?

[Dr Huq]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend, who has served as a police officer and a lawyer, and is now a shadow Minister—so he speaks with great authority. There is a need for greater training, and for things to be seen in a less monochromatic, dogmatic way, rather than as political correctness gone mad, and to address the issues. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford West has pointed out, the Prime Minister said when she was Home Secretary that communities are alienated when stop-and-search is used willy-nilly.

There are some reasons to be cheerful. According to figures from the Mayor of London’s office, from 2011 to 2012, fewer than one in 12 instances of stop-and-search culminated in arrest; but now one in six leads to arrest, and of those, one in three produces a positive outcome. No one disagrees with stop-and-search if it is done properly—if it is targeted and intelligence-led. There are many instances of that, and I can give some anecdotal ones. As I have said, I am always suspicious of opinion polls of any sort; at the general election, they predicted my demise, and my majority went up 50 times. However, the polls cited by the Mayor of London show that 74% of Londoners and 58% of young people support stop-and-search. I do not know where the figures came from.

The hon. Member for Shipley pointed out the use of body-worn cameras, which could be a game changer; we shall have to see how that plays out. In the past, police interviews were not even tape-recorded. We live in an age when everyone carries a smartphone and many more things are recorded.

As I have said, my speech is really an overgrown intervention. I wanted to share a personal experience that all Opposition Members present may be able to identify with—the fact that because of our pigmentation we are treated differently. The in-built suspicion of people and the idea that they can be stopped while going about their lawful business pervades all levels of society. I have been stopped more times in this place since my election in 2015 than in 43 years outside. It still occurs daily, presumably because my face does not fit. I have the correct pass, and the last time I gave the rejoinder that I had every right to be here, a complaint was made against me through the office of the Serjeant at Arms. We all face that kind of thing. I am sure that it is not a completely alien scenario even for my right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), who has been here many years.

Last year I was on a cross-party delegation to the state of Israel, and I was told that often the person of colour on a delegation is the one who gets problems. I thought, as an MP, it would not happen. I shall not go into the details of being strip-searched at Ben Gurion International airport, but it happened to me as a Member of Parliament. Those things do happen, and perhaps a cultural shift is needed in society, in the light of such things as the hostile environment policy. The assumption that anyone of the wrong pigmentation may be up to no good, and the idea that all public servants, NHS staff and landlords must suddenly turn into Border Force and ask for passports at every turn, is what we get under a hostile environment policy. Noises are being made about restricting stop-and-search and carrying it out in a more targeted way. I should be interested to hear from the Minister about that.

Having said that I do not want to quote opinion polls, I have some actual data from 2014-15—the most recent figures I could find. They show that of a total of 82,183 citizens in London who were arrested and subsequently released without charge, 45% were white Londoners. It is not necessary to be a statistician to work out that that is hitting black and ethnic minority people disproportionately. If 45% were white, 55% were not, for the benefit of anyone who is not quick at maths.

As a sociologist, I also want to draw attention to poverty and a critical error that is made in this context. The new Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Cressida Dick, has said—I have a counter-quote to the one given by the hon. Member for Shipley—that we need higher rates of stop-and-search. However, the idea that higher rates of stop-and-search will lead automatically to a reduction in violence is a false promise; they cannot, on their own. It is poverty that we need to address, because the violence is taking place in the most acutely deprived communities.

There have been police cuts, and police numbers are down 20,000. Cuts, including cuts in the Home Office, have consequences; that is the reason for the massive errors about the Windrush generation. If there are fewer Home Office staff and everyone else is expected to act as border police, anomalies occur. I am glad that the new Home Secretary is addressing those matters. I hope that the change will be to not just wording, but the mentality and climate. This may be politically unpalatable, but rising crime also has to do with rising poverty in society. Anyway, this is an overgrown intervention; it was not intended to be a speech, so I will end there.

[Albert Owen (in the Chair)]

We will now hear from the Front Benchers. We have a bit of extra time, so I ask that they use it wisely to give the Minister a full opportunity to respond, and to enable Ms Shah to wind up the debate at the end. If hon. Members have come in late and wish to make interventions, that is fine, but they are not to make long interventions or speeches.

G4S: Immigration Removal Centres

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Tuesday 8th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

My hon. Friend will know of the issues in her own constituency. Morton Hall is in a slightly different category because it is run by the Prison Service and not by G4S. That reflects the fact that these are people who are being detained in a prison environment awaiting their removal. The Government take very seriously the treatment of people whose immigration status is not to their liking and who have appeals and so on in the process. The fact that the vast majority of people who are liable to removal from the UK are in the community being dealt with through alternatives to detention should, I hope, give comfort to the House.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

If “Panorama” shocked the nation with its depiction of racial abuse and choking of detainees at Brook House, the collapse of Carillion like a pack of cards has exposed that the outsourcing model is failing our public services. Why are the Government persisting with this course of action, or on a sunny pre-bank holiday filled with local election results, did they think no one would notice?

[Victoria Atkins]

I can only assume that the hon. Lady was not in the Chamber when the shadow Home Secretary asked me that question. The answer is that the decision was taken during the purdah period, so the announcement was made on the first available day after purdah. Again, I reflect on the fact that I am standing here at the Dispatch Box being scrutinised.

The fact is that there is a role for private sector involvement in the delivery of services, as long as we ensure that it is about delivering the best public services at the best value for money. I remind the House that this is not a new thing; it did not come about in 2015 or 2017. Private companies have been helping the Government to deliver various services since the 1990s, including under a Labour Government.

Windrush

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Monday 23rd April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. I was in Croydon this morning to make sure that I could have full confidence in the timetable set out and that we have sufficient people on the casework team to turn it around as swiftly as our expectations. That remains the case. The number of calls coming in and the number of face-to-face interviews taking place are manageable. I hope that that will remain the case, but I will not stop putting resources in to ensure that this group are properly addressed and get the first-class service I want them to have.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

It is estimated that 50,000 people—a relatively small number—are caught in this indignity, incompetence and “It’ll be all right on the night” policy. None of them have presented themselves at my surgery because they have instructed solicitors, so will the Home Secretary commit to reimburse in full the legal fees incurred by those people? Will she also ensure that none of the much larger group of 3 million EU citizens—13,000 of them in Ealing Central and Action alone—suffer the same demeaning treatment of being denied services or, worse still, receiving a knock at the door from deportation, as has happened to the Windrush generation?

[Amber Rudd]

I can reassure the hon. Lady on the issue of EU citizens. We have put in place a thorough, simple, effective system, which will go live later this year. We have extensively tested it with EU citizen groups and I have a team over at the European Parliament this week, engaging with European parliamentarians to make sure that it is right. It has been prepared in a way that will be very straightforward to use and it anticipates the need that was not anticipated in the case of the Windrush cohort.

On the compensation for which the hon. Lady asks, as I have said, we are launching the compensation scheme, but I need to consult on it first, appoint someone independently and make sure that it addresses the issues she raises. On the actual applications being made now to the taskforce, while I was there this morning I listened in to some calls and the way in which the callers are engaging with the border people helping them has been very constructive. They do not need to have lawyers: in this process we have put in place, there will be no need for lawyers to engage.

Gender Pay Gap

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Wednesday 18th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

Very much so. That is what I mean when I talk about a national conversation. We are now talking about the treatment of women and of workforces generally in a way that we were not a year ago. That is why auditing where we are with the gender pay gap, reviewing the evidence and working out an action plan is the way forward.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

It is all very well to go after big businesses, top FTSE companies and boardrooms, but there is a much greater number of women in social care, catering and hospitality who feel isolated because they rely on agencies. Will the Government focus their attention more on that end of the scale and end the scandal of zero-hours contracts, which hit women so hard in those sectors?

[Victoria Atkins]

We focus on all sectors, all parts of the economy and all levels of pay. The press and colleagues throughout the House tend to talk about things such as the Hampton-Alexander review, which I appreciate is not in any way reflective of everyone, but it is important because it is about leadership at the top, from which will flow the expectation of a diverse workforce. We are very clear: we are absolutely not ignoring the women whom the hon. Lady describes. That is why we took the extraordinary step of introducing the national living wage, which was increased in April, enabling more women to find work. That is along with all the childcare help we are providing; we are spending more on childcare than any Government before us—£6 billion. This is all part of a plan to help women into the workforce, so that they have the financial independence they need.

Hate Crime

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Monday 12th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I am happy to do that, and it follows on well from the previous question. The Government have committed £2.4 million over three years to help protect places of worship that have been subject to or are vulnerable to a hate crime attack. We hope that that money will help local communities to feel safe in their places of worship.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

You do not have to have taught media studies or be a Muslim to have noticed that anti-Muslim sentiment is becoming quite common in much of our tabloid printed press. As well as dealing with the online platforms that spread this kind of hatred, will the Minister also have a word with her friends in the Tory press? These things feed people like those in Britain First and the English Defence League, one of whom has even made a video calling for my head.

[Victoria Atkins]

I hope that everyone in the House knows that, as the Minister for Crime, Safeguarding and Vulnerability, I am of course against language that leads to the incitement of violence or hate crime. I hope that this debate has sent a clear message to the people with whom the hon. Lady is concerned.

Refugee Children: Family Reunion in the UK

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Thursday 22nd February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Hugh Gaffney]

Yes. That is the reason we see these images on TV. These kids do not want to do it; they are running scared and they are walking millions of miles.

The European Union’s Dublin III regulation determines which EU state decides a person’s asylum application. Under the Dublin III regulation, an unaccompanied child who has made an asylum application has the right to have their application transferred to another EU state where they have a relative. It is a way of reuniting children with their families in the United Kingdom, and that is the right thing to do. I note the agreements signed between the French and British Governments to speed up the Dublin III transfers. That seeks to help children reach the safety of their families in the UK, which is welcome and should be a given. They should not have been forced to take those journeys in the first place.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend will remember that the Conservative party used to be known as the party of the family. In autumn 2017, some 52 of its peers and MPs produced “A Manifesto to Strengthen Families” and called for leadership from Government. Does he agree that should apply to child refugees who risk the perilous journey across Europe?

[Hugh Gaffney]

Yes, I agree. That is the whole point of what we are trying to achieve.

Many Members will remember the horrific and devastating image of that lifeless little boy, Alan Kurdi. He was a child, three years old, who was found lying down on a beach in Turkey. Why? Because he was attempting to reach Greece. Why? Because he was trying to be part of the European Union. He was trying to reach a safe and secure home. This was in the 21st century; it should shame and disgrace us all.

The decision of the British people in 2016 to leave the European Union is one that I regret, but I respect it none the less. I mention it because our membership encouraged us to play a role, on a pan-European level, in doing the right thing. I do not want us to stop doing the right thing when we leave the EU. It is important to note that the Government’s announcement of a new strategy comes after an amendment in Committee to the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill that sought to ensure that refugee children could continue to be reunited with their families after we leave the European Union. For me, that is a given.

Medical Cannabis

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Tuesday 20th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

I am certainly happy to meet that group, or a more appropriate Minister could, so the answer is yes.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

I wonder whether the Minister knows the book “The Boy in 7 Billion”, by Callie Blackwell, the mum of Deryn Blackwell who, at the age of 10, was diagnosed with a very rare cancer and then, through the use of cannabis oil, made a miraculous recovery. If he likes, I can lend him my copy. I got one over recess at THTC, a company in my constituency that makes hemp t-shirts—sorry, it does not make them; it supplies them. It is not allowed to make them in this country. It also pointed out that in Mexico, where the medicinal use of cannabis has been legalised, violent crime has dramatically dropped. Does the Minister not think that those things are more than a coincidence, and will he not investigate?

[Mr Hurd]

The hon. Lady is taking us beyond a UK scope. I do not know the book and I am grateful to her for her offer, but I come back to what I said at the start. The Government have a position based on the listing as a schedule 1 drug and the view of experts, but we review, and keep under review, what is happening in other countries and, most importantly, the WHO’s position.

Women’s Suffrage Centenary

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

Under the Equal Pay Act 1970, it is illegal to pay men more than women for the same work. We are focused now on making sure that we make more progress on the gender pay gap, which is why we have introduced legislation requiring all companies with more 250 employees to publish their gender gap by 4 April. After that, we will work with them to make sure that they take action to close it.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

I am proud to be one of those making what the Home Secretary described as the most diverse Parliament ever. I am not only one of the one third who are women, but one of the 7.8% who are from black and minority ethnic backgrounds. My maternal grandmother was illiterate; her passport had a thumbprint in it because she could not write her own name. Does the Home Secretary agree that on a day like today, it is not enough simply to pat ourselves on the back? We could do better not only on women, but on BME, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender, disability, and all those things—some people may even inhabit more than one of those categories at once.

[Amber Rudd]

Yes, I agree with the hon. Lady. We can talk today, as we should, about making sure that we encourage more women into Parliament and ensuring that there is more opportunity for women, but there is a wider issue of equality. I hope that thinking about women in this way today will encourage us all to think about it more diversely as well.