Border Checks Summer 2011
Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Straw
As I shall explain, the issue is not whether a Minister mouths the words, but whether, in practice, that Minister acts in a way that demonstrates his or her responsibility for what happens in his or her Department.
The truth about the Home Office—which is the subject of all kinds of dark jokes, particularly when new Home Secretaries enter it—is that things are more likely to go wrong there than in any other Department. That is not because its staff are of less high quality than other staff; far from it. Overwhelmingly, the staff in all parts of the Home Office who served me during the four years for which I was Home Secretary showed the highest possible skill, dedication and commitment. They possessed the added attribute that they were dealing with people—such as prisoners, criminals and illegal immigrants—with whom most of us would not wish to deal day by day or week by week.
The fact that the Home Office is so often in the limelight for the wrong reasons, because there is a “fiasco” or “crisis”, is due to the nature of its business. Other Departments generally work with the grain of the people with whom they deal. There are two obvious examples. In schools, parents and pupils want, roughly speaking, what teachers and the Secretary of State want, which is better education. When it comes to health, patients and their relatives want the same as nurses, doctors and the Secretary of State, which is improved health care. The same does not apply in the Home Office, which is at the sharp end of the operation of the state. However much we may dress it up, the business of the Home Office is actually about enforcing the state’s monopoly over the use of force, and its monopoly over the deprivation of other people’s liberties. It is a hard, tough job, both for the person at the top and for those all the way down.
The other aspect that lies behind one of the core arguments in the debate is that, because the Home Office’s business is about the use of force, the deprivation of liberty and the refusal of rights, junior, young and quite inexperienced staff must often be accorded a very high level of discretion—discretion to arrest people, to allow them in, to lock them up, and so on—which is not accorded to equivalent people elsewhere. The whole system will seize up unless those lower down believe that those at the top are worthy of their confidence, and are ready to take responsibility when things go wrong.
I am not dewy-eyed about what can go wrong in a very large Department—of course not—and no Secretary of State is responsible for locking every cell door or checking every border. I recall occasions when, after a full and careful inquiry, one or two people had to be invited to pursue their careers elsewhere. That is inevitable. However, I believe that it must be done in a way that is judicious and judicial. Secretaries of State must ensure that they take the overwhelming majority of their staff with them. What they should not do—I am sorry that the Home Secretary has embarked on this—is adopt what appears to me, whatever the right hon. Lady’s personal motives, to be both a vindictive and a punitive approach of hanging someone out to dry because it seemed to her that that would be a way of saving her career.
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
I think that the House would take the right hon. Gentleman slightly more seriously were it not for the case of, say, Mr Steve Moxon, who in 2004 revealed the evident failings of the previous Administration on immigration, particularly in relation to one-legged Romanian and Bulgarian roofers. For his pains he was hounded out of office, as indeed was the then Member of Parliament for Stretford and Urmston, the right hon. Beverley Hughes.
Mr Jackson
I am happy to clarify what I said. There is evidently a double standard in what the right hon. Gentleman says. He talks of keeping the respect and trust of people who work in the Home Office or the Ministry of Justice, but those who have revealed the failings of the last Administration on immigration have been hounded out of their jobs.
Home Department
Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts(12 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
T4. The Equality and Human Rights Commission posted qualified accounts in 2009-10 and the auditors found poor financial management, poor record keeping and poor leadership. What specific actions will the Minister take to rectify this problem and to ensure that taxpayers’ money is not wasted by that organisation?
Mrs May
I thank my hon. Friend for drawing attention to the issue. The qualifications, of course, represent spend for periods under the previous Government and we have been absolutely clear with the EHRC from the start that any problems with its accounts under this Government are likely to result in financial consequences for it. In March, we set out our plans to change the EHRC. Our consultation closed in June and we will be responding shortly, but we have already announced that we will reduce its budget by more than half from £55 million in 2010-11 to £28.8 million in 2014-15.
[Official Report, 12 September 2011, Vol. 532, c. 751-52.]
Letter of correction from Mrs Theresa May:
An error has been identified in the oral answer given on 12 September 2011. The correct answer should have been:
Oral Answers to Questions
Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts(12 years, 8 months ago)
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The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Nick Herbert)
It is entirely a matter for the chief constable and police authority how they deploy their resources. There has been some rationalisation of custody and we are also very supportive of those forces that seek to contract out custody facilities and in so doing improve their service and save money.
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
T4. The Equality and Human Rights Commission posted qualified accounts in 2009-10 and the auditors found poor financial management, poor record keeping and poor leadership. What specific actions will the Minister take to rectify this problem and to ensure that taxpayers’ money is not wasted by that organisation?[Official Report, 14 September 2011, Vol. 532, c. 9-10MC.]
Mrs May
I thank my hon. Friend for drawing attention to the issue. The qualifications, of course, represent spend for periods under the previous Government and we have been absolutely clear with the EHRC from the start that any problems with its accounts under this Government are likely to result in financial consequences for it. In March, we set out our plans to change the EHRC. Our consultation closed in June and we will be responding shortly, but we have already announced that we will reduce its budget by more than half from £55 million in 2010-11 to £28.8 million in 2014-15.
Student Visas
Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts(12 years, 11 months ago)
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Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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Paul Blomfield
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. That view has certainly been expressed to me on many occasions by many vice-chancellors. It also reflects my experience of working with international students. As I said earlier, this is a market in which we have been spectacularly successful, growing our world share of it from 1% to 11% at the same time as the USA’s world share of it dropped. One of the contributory factors in that decline in the USA’s world share was the way in which the USA messed around with its own visa requirements during that time.
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this important debate. However, in fairness, he is not using a holistic approach. The Home Office concedes that one in five students in higher education and on pre-degree-level courses will become a de facto economic migrant, and therefore the complete fiscal impact, given the net rise in immigration, will clearly include an effect on the public purse and on the delivery of important public services.
Paul Blomfield
I assume that the Home Office, as a diligent Department, took account of all the relevant issues when it published its impact assessment earlier this week and indicated that the proposals’ effect on the economy would be minus £2.4 billion.
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for what I think is the first time, Mr Benton. I congratulate the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) on his cogent, intelligent and measured speech. If I might make one slightly negative observation, it was perhaps very narrow, and I understand that, given that he pursued his constituency interest, rather than looking at the overall picture on immigration. It is a mark of how important this issue is that the hon. Gentleman has the support of so many of his hon. Friends, who will no doubt make eloquent pleas on behalf of the higher education and other institutions in their areas.
The Government’s policy must be seen not simply in a vacuum or within the narrow parameters of student visas, but in the context of the Government’s commitment to reducing net immigration. That policy position is supported by a substantial majority of the British electorate; it was clearly enunciated in the Conservative election manifesto in May 2010 and it was recapitulated in the coalition agreement of that month, which is the basis on which this Administration put forward their policies.
I have to say that the position we have taken was also a constituent part of the policy pursued by the former Government. The right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne), and even the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls), have expressed concerns and linked the inability to deal with immigration to the fact that the Labour party achieved its second-worst electoral result last year.
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)
Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that these measures will only make the UK a less competitive and less attractive destination in the international student market, which is a significant growth area?
Mr Jackson
Time permitting, I hope to articulate the slightly wider view that universities have not only a narrow remit to deliver education to their paying customers as part of a contractual relationship, but a social responsibility to educate the people of this country appropriately.
Richard Fuller
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. One problem with the lens through which the previous Government looked at immigration policies was that it often focused predominantly on economic perspectives. Having had years of immigration, which have kept working wages down, and hearing that we need different immigration policies based on economic benefits, the British people want to see immigration brought under control first before they move forward. Does my hon. Friend agree?
Mr Jackson
My hon. Friend makes an astute point. Incidentally, there is no empirical, anecdotal or demonstrable academic evidence to show that there will be a significant impact on good-quality institutions and the courses they offer. That is simply because we are going forward incrementally, and we cannot yet assess the impact.
Yasmin Qureshi
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. He says that there is no empirical evidence, but all of us have received letters from university chancellors in our constituencies and adjoining constituencies. They are specifically and clearly saying that the Government’s measures will radically affect their institutions financially and in terms of the facilities that they provide for other students. How can the hon. Gentleman say what he has said?
Mr Jackson
I am touched that the hon. Lady calls me her hon. Friend, and I am happy to accept that sobriquet. I would direct her to the recent comments by Nicola Dandridge of Universities UK, who said that the Government’s proposals
“take into account many of the concerns expressed by Universities UK and will allow British universities to remain at the forefront of international student recruitment.”
That was said after an exhaustive, detailed and comprehensive consultation with key stakeholders, including language schools, universities, colleges of further education and others intimately involved in the system.
Mark Lazarowicz
If I am called to speak, I hope to refer to a letter that I have had from the principal of Edinburgh university, Professor Sir Timothy O’Shea. The university was founded in the middle of the 16th century, and its chancellery recently passed a humble address on the occasion of the Duke of Edinburgh’s 90th birthday. Is the hon. Gentleman saying that it is not a reputable institution and that the concerns raised by the principal are not real?
Mr Jackson
The former Prime Minister was an alumnus of Edinburgh university. However, none of us is in any doubt that we live in an age of globalisation and that we must be competitive. The Government’s template and watchword is that we will be open for business and geared to growth across a number of areas, including manufacturing, services, finance and higher education. We all understand that that approach is based, in the higher education sector, on the reputation, kudos and prestige of the institutions involved, and none of us has any argument with that. I truly and sincerely believe that the Government and my hon. Friend the Minister would not hastily introduce proposals that damaged that reputation.
The onus is on those taking the Government to task to demonstrate that the proposals will damage the reputation of the higher education sector and that they are not—as I believe, and as the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee would surely concede, given the views expressed to his Committee—about dealing with bogus institutions, bogus students and overstayers. I will talk later about the financial impact, which I mentioned in my intervention on the hon. Member for Sheffield Central.
The wider issue is that if we do nothing about net migration, we will have a population of 70 million in 20 years and one of perhaps 80 million in 50 years. Under the Labour Government, net migration quadrupled to 237,000 per annum between 1997 and 2007. With the exception of Malta, England is now the most overcrowded country in Europe, along with the Netherlands. Under the former Government, 5.2 million people came into this country as foreign migrants, while 2 million left.
As I said, senior parliamentarians have noted that significant mistakes have been made. I draw hon. Members’ attention to the projections made about European Union migration before the free movement directive came into force in 2004. Officials at the then Home Office told us that about 13,000 to 15,000 EU migrants would seek temporary work under the worker registration scheme, but they were out by a factor of 25, if not more.
Keith Vaz
I have no objection to the hon. Gentleman’s widening the debate, because he touches on the context of the Government’s actions. However, on his last point, we cannot do anything about EU migration. Does he not agree that we should be careful about restricting genuine people from taking genuine, legal routes to come here to study, because we cannot stop people coming from the EU? Does he not also agree that it is essential that we know the figures—how many people come in and how many go out—when we debate immigration? To this day, we do not have accurate figures.
Mr Jackson
The Chairman of the Select Committee makes his point in his normal charming and intelligent way. My wider point, which he anticipates, is that the former Government made no effort to anticipate EU and non-EU immigration. Indeed, it has recently come to light that they suppressed research commissioned by the Department for Communities and Local Government, which looked at some, although not all, of the negative consequences of large-scale migration.
All I am asking in considering the specific and narrow point about tier 4 student visas is that we genuinely look at the cost-benefit analysis for the wider community. Yes, we can argue about nuances and value judgments made by individual higher education institutions, but at the same time we must concede that within the wider policy framework, these decisions, which are essentially about large-scale migration, have wider ramifications. That is consistent with the Government’s view that we must move away from the inexorable conveyor belt towards a population that will be significantly greater within 25 years than the population of Germany or France, for example.
The policy has been flexible and there has been appropriate consultation. It is aimed principally at bogus students and overstayers. I would like to see the evidence that HE institutions will be adversely affected, because the level of graduate unemployment across all disciplines in the UK stands at something like 20%, which is pertinent when considering public policy on the recruitment of international students who might stay to work after the conclusion of their studies. That is fair. If we look at the fees regime and at how financial arrangements for universities will progress over the next few years and measure that against demand, we see that because of our reputation and because we have the kudos of being a principal centre of superb higher education in the world, the demand for people across the world will remain high, whether for chemical engineering, languages, dentistry or humanities.
Lilian Greenwood
Although many universities, including my universities in Nottingham, say that this will have a detrimental impact on their ability to recruit students and therefore on economic activity in the UK, the hon. Gentleman suggests that we must wait until that damage is done before the Government will act. That seems immensely short-sighted. Everyone is warning that this will cause damage and he wants to wait until the damage is done.
Mr Jackson
The evidence given by Migrationwatch UK for example—[Interruption.] Migrationwatch UK has put forward an evidence-based, robust and demonstrable case. It may not be to the taste of many Opposition Members, who are reminded on too many occasions of their abysmal failings in the management of immigration on behalf of the citizens of this country. Nevertheless the case is not usually challenged in terms of its robustness, and I am sure that the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee would concur.
Keith Vaz
It may come as a surprise to the hon. Gentleman that when Sir Andrew Green gave evidence to the Select Committee, he did not regard students as migrants. His main concern was those who came illegally and bogus colleges, not genuine students coming to the country to support University Centre Peterborough.
Mr Jackson
The right hon. Gentleman has reiterated the points I am making. I will not repeat verbatim what Sir Andrew said in his evidence to the Committee in February—I think—but he said that he was mostly concerned about pre-degree education, language schools and “bogus” colleges and that he did not see the increase in student numbers per se as a “problem” for immigration. I do not dissent from that view; he and are at one. I resist the premise on which the hon. Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) proceeds, but I must be very careful because my brother is a professor at Nottingham university, so I am aware that it is a superb institution—he would expect me to say that, but nevertheless it is true.
The issue is not about reducing the number of students per se, but about closing loopholes and ensuring that we retain our integrity and reputation. If we look at pre-degree level courses, we must in fairness also look at the evidence over past years and draw a link between the number of students who have come into the country, over the past 15 years for example, and long-term economic migration and settlement. It would be foolish and short-sighted not to accept that many students have been economic migrants. We are looking perhaps at a reduction in student numbers of only about 10% from the 2009 figure of 270,000. No one has yet given detailed projections of how many of them would be in each sector.
On the face of it, yes, institutions will lose £105 million due to students not coming, but we must make the link and look at the opportunity cost—the displacement of indigenous people, who are British citizens, who are not in work and are on benefits as a result of jobs being taken by people who began as students but entered the work force. It is foolish to disregard that.
Even the Scottish Trades Union Congress and others have conceded that if we do not get a grip on that displacement and the corollary—the cost imposed on taxpayers—it will drive down wages and conditions, particularly for those in low-wage and low-skilled jobs in my constituency and others. That cannot be good for community cohesion and the economic well-being of the country.
Mr Bailey
In my constituency, regrettably, I do not have a university, but, equally regrettably, I do have a substantial British National party presence. Many of issues that the hon. Gentleman has brought up—the widening of the debate—are relevant to constituencies such as mine. I want to make it quite clear that representatives of local manufacturers have taken me round foundries and said to me, “The one thing that we do not want is a block on immigration, because we cannot get people from our own indigenous population to work in the foundries”. It is only by recruiting from outside that we have managed to sustain the jobs of the indigenous people who work in the foundries. Does the hon. Gentleman accept it from me that the issue is far more complex than he has articulated?
Mr Jackson
I am glad that the hon. Gentleman in the great socialist spirit articulates the point of view of the forces of capital, because they will almost always seek to drive down wages.
Mr Jackson
My hon. Friend the Member for Reading East (Mr Wilson), who is a very wise man, has reminded me of the hon. Gentleman’s party’s trouble over the concept of, “British jobs for British workers.” There was a pretty sharp U-turn over that. I am not mentioning creed, religion or colour, but economic and social trends in demography. I respect the hon. Gentleman in this instance because he is speaking for his constituents, as he is elected to do, and is a long-standing Member of the House, but I am also speaking for my constituents and from the position of having had between 16,000 and 20,000 migrants—admittedly from the EU—move to my constituency since 2004, because it is a centre for agriculture, horticulture and food processing and manufacturing. There has been displacement and pressure on maternity and other health services, housing, and in terms of crime, policing. Thirty-one per cent of children in my primary schools speak English as an additional language.
I concur with the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz): I accept that EU migration is sui generis, but it is because we can debate immigration in a reasonable and considered way that we do not give in to the BNP and allow it to spread its spite and division and destroy social cohesion. Unless we have a grown-up, truthful and honest debate, we will be in a difficult position.
Others wish to speak, so I will conclude as soon as possible. The number of overstayers has been assessed at about 32,000, as a rough guess, in recent figures by the Home Office. The focus is on overstayers. The UN definition of “migrant” has been mentioned. The hon. Member for Sheffield Central handled that issue sensibly. There is a debate to be had about the United Nations definition and whether students are economic migrants or merely temporary numbers in the system. That is fair enough. We hope to resolve that issue through e-Borders and discussions with European Union Governments, although I bring him back to the United Nations rather than the United States adopting that particular definition.
I respect the views of hon. Members and of the higher education sector, which is undoubtedly a vested interest and will seek to defend its business model as much as anyone else. We have seen other public services do so this week. Those in the higher education sector are articulate and can influence parliamentarians and others, for instance in the media, but they should remember that they have a responsibility to people who are not so articulate. They have a responsibility to develop scholarships and outreach programmes for people in this country, they have a wider remit to upskill people who might never have had an opportunity to go to university and they have a responsibility to drive social mobility. That is the challenge for universities.
I believe that the proposals are absolutely correct. They have taken on board the concerns of higher education institutions and others, and I think that they will deal with the issue of bogus students and colleges. I commend them to the House with the proviso that feedback will continue. In all sincerity, I do not believe that they will do anything but enhance the reputation and long-term viability of higher education institutions in this country.
The Minister for Immigration (Damian Green)
I echo the remarks of the hon. Member for Bradford South (Mr Sutcliffe) about the thoughtful and passionate nature of the debate. The hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) introduced this important debate in a thoughtful way.
I will follow the good examples of my hon. Friends the Members for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) and for Bedford (Richard Fuller) and the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett), the former Home Secretary, in saying that there are clearly macro and micro aspects to this and it is important that we conduct the debate about student visas and tier 4 within the overall context of the Government’s immigration policy.
I should say at the outset that Britain is quite rightly internationally renowned for its top-quality education institutions. Many hon. Members have rightly made that point. The students who choose to study here from across the globe bring numerous cultural, social and economic benefits to the UK and to their own countries when they return. We all acknowledge that and it is certainly acknowledged across Government.
We must recognise that the student visa system had become a broken instrument. It has failed to control immigration and, in many cases, to protect legitimate students—a point that the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) made. He said that severe damage has been caused. He said that people come here honestly hoping to study and then find that they have been scammed. Bogus colleges are scamming not just the British immigration system but the students who come here.
Student immigration has more than trebled in the past 10 years and is now far larger than the other two main routes of immigration—the work route and the family route. Too many of the people who come here calling themselves students have a primary motivation of working here, and not of receiving a high-quality education. Too many institutions are providing a service that is not about education but immigration. Addressing that issue is at the heart of what we are seeking to do. Many Members from all parties have agreed that it is worth driving out that abuse.
There are endless examples of institutions and “students” working the system to get round language requirements and rights to work, and to bring in dependants. That is not just a small problem; too many colleges provide minimal or no tuition or classroom study. We have students barely able to hold a conversation in English turning up to “study” degree-level courses.
Last year, both Governments—the Labour Government and the coalition Government—were in power. So I hope that I will respond to the point made by the hon. Member for Bradford South about being non-partisan by saying that in 2010 tier 4 visas represented 14% of visas that were issued, but tier 4 visa-holders were responsible for 41% of refusals at ports, in other words actually being turned down by immigration officers. The equivalent figures for tiers 1, 2 and 5 visa-holders were all less than 1%.
We want genuine students coming to Britain to attend courses of high educational value at legitimate and responsible institutions. We need to maintain our international reputation for providing top-quality education, and we want the very best students to stay on in the UK to complete their studies. That is exactly what our proposals are designed to deliver and that is why the Home Secretary announced a comprehensive programme of reform on 22 March. I want to set out what those changes mean in practice and how they will contribute to meeting our wider objective of reducing net migration to the tens of thousands. I also want to address the many specific points made by individual Members during the debate. I will try to deal with them all in the next few minutes.
Many contributors to the debate have talked about flexibility, including the hon. Member for Sheffield Central. Indeed, to minimise disruption to education providers and students, we are implementing the changes in three stages. The rules for the first stage came into effect on 21 April. Last Monday—13 June—we laid the second set of changes to the rules before Parliament. They will come into effect on 4 July. We will complete our changes by the end of 2012.
We continue to have extensive dialogue with the sector about the changes that we are making. I can assure right hon. and hon. Members who are concerned about that that there are numerous and constant contacts at official level and, where necessary, between myself and Universities UK and selected vice-chancellors about these changes, because we want to introduce them in the most practical way possible.
I want to respond to a specific point that was made about the timing of the changes. The hon. Member for Edinburgh North and Leith (Mark Lazarowicz) read out the letter from the vice-chancellor of a university in his constituency asking if all the changes could be delayed for a year. I should say that when we began to have discussions on them last autumn, we were urged by the universities themselves to get on with them, because we all know that the longer there is any uncertainty in a system, the more people are wary of that system. Various Members have said that the uncertainty that exists is deterring people from making applications and so on. If we allow the uncertainty to continue for another year, I suspect that the results would be worse. So that was the wise advice that I received from the universities last autumn.
I must repeat the basic point that there are so many abuses of the system that we need radical reform. Many colleges seem happy to accept students who do not even meet their own admissions criteria and who speak very little English. In one college, we found that there were two lecturers for 940 students. In another, we found that students were attending classes for just one day a month and working excessive hours for the rest of the time. UK Border Agency enforcement teams recently picked up students who were supposed to be studying at a college in London, but were actually living and working in west Wales; indeed, every student whom we found from that college was doing that.
We are targeting the least compliant students and institutions, and of course that is what we should do. For too long, institutions in parts of the privately funded education sector have been essentially unregulated, yet all the evidence suggests that those institutions pose the biggest risk to immigration control. In a sample of tier 4 students studying at private institutions about which the UKBA had concerns, up to 26% could not be accounted for.
The UKBA has revoked the sponsorship licences of 64 colleges. I hope that that meets the reasonable request of the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who is Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, that the inspection regime should be robust. He said that the UKBA used to phone up institutions in advance to say that its inspectors were coming. As is evident from the number of licences that have been revoked, the enforcement regime is getting better.
I want to turn to the current points-based system. Again in the spirit of non-partisanship, I must say that this Government did not arrive and tear up that system. We said that we could build on it and we accepted the point of having objective ways of measuring who comes to the UK, and that is what we are seeking to do. Under that objective system, a sponsor assesses the intentions and ability of the student; UKBA staff no longer have the power to refuse a migrant entry to the UK on those grounds. We therefore need to make absolutely sure that sponsors are exercising their powers responsibly, and that is one of the things that these reforms are designed to achieve.
Damian Green
I will give way once; I suspect that I will not get through my speech if I give way to all the Members who wish to intervene.
Mr Jackson
I am very grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. On the points-based system, given that the overall purpose of immigration policy is to reduce net migration, can he confirm that after the introduction of the points-based system in 2007, arrivals of students, dependants and student visitors increased from 370,000 in 2007 to 489,000 by 2009?
Damian Green
Absolutely. Indeed, the numbers were still rising right up until last year. We now have the figures up to the summer of last year and the numbers were still rising at that point. As I was saying, we are building on the points-based system, but we are precisely introducing limits and precisely driving out abuse in the student system. That is why we will move on to other systems, so that we can get the numbers down. The points-based system is not enough on its own, but it is a platform on which we can build.
The Home Secretary announced new reforms that mean that all sponsors must now be vetted by one of the approved inspectorates and all of them must attain the status of highly trusted sponsors. In line with that commitment, we announced earlier this week that the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education and the Independent Schools Inspectorate would extend their activities to cover privately funded providers. Sponsors must meet our immigration requirements and high standards of educational provision. Institutions that do not meet those requirements are now subject to a limit on the number of students that they can bring in. To stay on the sponsor register in the longer term, they must achieve highly trusted sponsor status no later than April 2012 and gain accreditation by the relevant agency by the end of 2012. The imposition of a limit responds to the urgent need to tackle abuse, allows sponsors time to adjust to the new system and prevents surges in applications from high-risk sectors. We are well on track to delivering a sponsorship system that the public can trust.
We are also raising the bar on entry requirements. All students coming to study degree-level courses must now be able to speak English at an upper intermediate level and others will have to speak English at an intermediate level. If students cannot answer basic questions in English about their course, UKBA officers will refuse them entry at the border. That was another point legitimately made by the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee. We are now bringing back the power for immigration officers at the border to recognise that someone is obviously, indeed blatantly, incapable of fulfilling the requirements of their visa.
In recognition of our trust in universities, we are flexible about the methods that they use to assess a student’s level of English. That brings me on to a specific point that was made by the hon. Member for Sheffield Central. Let me start by discussing what is, if you like, the biggest transitional issue. That is the English language requirement, which he raised in his introductory speech.
The appropriate level of English for those coming to study at level 6 and above is an upper intermediate level across each of the four disciplines: reading; writing; speaking; and listening. That is level B2 on the common European framework of language. A lower level—B1—is the appropriate level for lower courses, including the pathways courses that many Members have mentioned. Those are courses taken by people coming in who do not have the appropriate level of English but who want to take an English language course in the UK on their way to taking a full university course here. So we have set a lower level of English as a requirement for those students.
In order to get a visa, those outside universities will have to present a test certificate from an independent test provider proving that they have attained the required level. As another flexibility that we have introduced, universities will be able to vouch for a student’s ability if they are coming to study at degree level or above. Indeed, there might be the odd student who cannot meet the requirements for all four disciplines but is so exceptional that we will allow individual requests by university academic registrars.
A number of Members have talked about English language schools. People who want to come to the UK to study lower-level English can do so for up to 11 months through the student visitor route. We introduced that concession after discussions with the English language colleges last autumn, and the colleges have welcomed it.
On the confirmations of acceptance for studies and the visas, the requirements for an offer of a place at a university are separate from the requirements under the immigration rules. Universities could, and should, have assigned a confirmation of acceptance for studies to people who held unconditional offers before 21 April. Someone with a conditional offer has, of course, not yet satisfied the university’s own academic entry requirements. The immigration system and its requirements have always been separate from the academic entry requirements, and it is important not to confuse the two. For instance, any Government would refuse a student entry if their background indicated that a potential harm would be posed to the UK, even if a university had given an unconditional offer of a place.
It was mentioned that there are difficulties relating to the English language tests. The UKBA ran a procurement exercise and expanded the list of English test providers to ensure that there was significant capacity, and we are in regular contact with each of the approved test providers, which have demonstrated flexibility in expanding test centre capacity where there is demand. If there are blockages, we are trying hard to remove them.
There has been much inevitable discussion about the impact assessment, and various figures have been cited. I wish to put on the record that the net cost is said to be £2.4 billion. The £3.6 billion is the gross cost, but there will also be £1.1 billion of benefits. The truth about the impact assessment process is that it is in its infancy and is not yet satisfactory. I have spoken to the economists who do the assessments and they agree that the process needs to improve. I do not want to go into the economic theology of what works and what does not work because it is late on a Thursday afternoon, but I shall give one very practical example. The way in which the assessments are carried out requires us to assume that there is a zero displacement effect of students taking jobs on the local labour market. In other words, if a foreign student is doing a job and then leaves, 100% of that economic activity is assumed to be lost. In practical terms, however, it is likely that that person will be replaced by a British student or someone else. Clearly, therefore, the assessments are not satisfactory, and we have asked the Migration Advisory Committee, which is independent of Government, to look at the process over the summer.
The definition of immigration is beginning to vex us, and I am half-tempted to spend a long time discussing whether students should somehow be removed from the definition altogether. There is clearly an academic argument to be had, but I will just make the underlying point that although it would be fantastically convenient for the Minister for Immigration suddenly to discover that hundreds of thousands of people who were regarded as immigrants yesterday would not be regarded as immigrants tomorrow—I would hit my targets with no effort at all—that is not realistic, and I do not think that the public would accept it. In terms of confidence, the point is very well made that immigration statistics are imperfect, particularly regarding counting people in and out, and that is why we have re-let the e-Borders contract. Over the next few years we will develop a much greater ability to count people out as well as in, but it seems sensible to stick to the internationally agreed measurements we have always had, which are used by other countries, rather than apparently try to redefine our way out of what is a serious and difficult political issue.
The other big subject that many Members have mentioned is post-study work, and I am afraid that I will have to agree to differ with the hon. Member for Sheffield Central. The students’ primary motivation should be to study, not to work. The ability to work after finishing a course or, as my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Jonathan Lord) said, while doing a course, should not be a significant part of the motivation of someone coming here on a student visa. If people want to come here to work, there are work routes, and I do not want them to deceive either us or themselves by saying, “I’m here as a student but what really matters to me—the motivating force—is that I can either work during the course or stay for a couple of years afterwards.” It is simply not the case that everyone who does that gets a graduate-level job. In one cohort that we looked at, of those who were hanging around for the allowed two years after finishing their degrees, about 20% were unemployed, and 50% of those who were employed were in unskilled jobs and not making use of their studies.
National Crime Agency
Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts(12 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
Order. I have made this point several times before: statements are about questioning the policy of the Government, not that of the Opposition. I call Mr Stewart Jackson.
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
I welcome the Home Secretary’s statement. I am sure that she, like me, would congratulate Cambridgeshire constabulary on the work it is doing to combat people trafficking through initiatives such as Operation Sodium. On a specific point about people trafficking, how does she see the priority for the NCA in respect of the sharing of criminal records data across the European Union, an area that, regrettably, was ignored by the previous Government?
Mrs May
I thank my hon. Friend for his question and am happy to join him in congratulating Cambridgeshire constabulary on its work and the operations it has undertaken on human trafficking. In relation to all those issues, the National Crime Agency will be looking to operate across international borders as well as across police force borders in the UK. The sharing of information within the European Union, and indeed the sharing of information in other ways, as he knows, has been and is a matter of discussion within the European Union. The NCA will be the key point of contact for both European and wider international co-operation.
Policing and Crime
Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts(12 years, 12 months ago)
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Yvette Cooper
I am delighted to give way to another hon. Member on the Government Benches, but their points would be more credible if they would tell us that they would put the cuts to police officers in their constituencies on their leaflets at the next election.
Mr Jackson
I am grateful for the campaigning advice from the right hon. Lady. Does she think one would have to be cynical to be perplexed by the fact that before the general election, her right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) was not prepared under any circumstances to name the percentage decrease in the budget for the police, but since the general election he just happens to agree with Her Majesty’s inspector of constabulary on a 12% figure? Is that cynical, or does it reflect the fact that the Labour party has no policy on cuts in the police service?
Yvette Cooper
I am afraid the hon. Gentleman’s facts are wrong. In fact, the former Home Secretary set out in November, before the election, areas where he believed reductions in the budget for the police could be made, which would come from efficiency savings. That is why he backed a 12% reduction, which was supported by HMIC, not a 20% reduction, which is hitting thousands and thousands of police officers across the country and putting front-line services at risk right across the country. Senior police chiefs are deeply troubled by chaotic changes to national policing, and police morale is at rock bottom. Members on the Government Benches are deeply out of touch if they think their constituents want to see 12,000 police officers across the country go.
Student Visas
Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Mrs May
The proposals will not prevent genuine students from coming to study, but we do need to look at things such as documents provided by banks to ensure that they are genuine institutions that are genuinely backing up the financial claims being made by individuals who come here to study. It is in nobody’s interests to allow people to use documents that are not legitimate when they apply for a student visa to come to the UK. As regards the three universities in Liverpool, as I have made absolutely clear, they will continue to be able to attract international students.
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
I congratulate the Home Secretary on facing down some of the hysterical hyperbole from the Opposition, parts of the media and parts of the further and higher education sector. On English proficiency and integration, will she please work with our colleagues across government to address the very specific issue of the hundreds of millions of pounds spent by British taxpayers on translation and interpretation services—a non-statutory duty—and to reduce such expenditure in these financially straitened times?
Mrs May
My hon. Friend is taking me down a road that goes beyond the Home Office’s area of responsibility, large though that is. I fully accept the thrust of his comment about the importance of people being able to speak English, which is precisely why we introduced a requirement last year that those who come here to marry or join a partner should be able to speak English to a particular standard.
Protection of Freedoms Bill
Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts(13 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend remember the Hayes dictum, named after my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes)? It was that if a Member was in the same Lobby as Dr Evan Harris, they were in the wrong Lobby.
Mr Leigh
That is enough about our friend, I think.
Section 5 of the 1986 Act outlaws
“threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour”
if they are likely to cause “harassment, alarm or distress”. The proposal that I wish to make, which I and the Liberals supported before, is the deletion of the lowest threshold of that offence, which is the word “insulting”. That would still leave the two higher thresholds of “threatening” and “abusive”.
The 1986 Act was brought in to replace the Public Order Act 1936, which had worked very well in dealing with the blackshirts and all that. The 1986 Act does not define the terms “threats” and “abuse”, but we all know them when we see them. The courts have often said that. Threat is obvious, is it not? It is when someone is in your face and there is a fear of violence, and abuse is when someone uses obscene language. Insult, however, is clearly something less serious and more subjective, and that is the problem. I believe that removing the word “insulting” would be enough to stop section 5 being misused and generating a chilling effect on free speech.
Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill
Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Hazel Blears
Indeed, and I am about to put forward an idea that would meet many of those concerns. One way of achieving the greater visibility for policing that the hon. Lady talks about would be having a directly elected person in each local authority area who would be responsible for local policing but would also have a duty to operate within the rest of the local public service framework to mobilise all those resources to make communities safer. Those directly elected local commissioners could act collectively at force level to hold chief constables to account and to provide direct, local links to their communities. I am genuinely concerned about the ability of a single police and crime commissioner to be visible and accountable to 2.5 million people across Greater Manchester in communities as diverse as those in Rochdale, Wigan, Stockport, Oldham, Manchester city centre and Salford. I wonder whether the Minister has considered having directly elected local commissioners. There is all the rhetoric about localism, but then this policy of having a single police and crime commissioner for millions of people. That is not localism.
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
Is not the right hon. Lady effectively making the case for an elected official for each basic command unit? In such a system there would not be co-ordination between different parts of Greater Manchester, because those people would compete with one another for resources and to work and co-operate with other state agencies. That would be a recipe for duplication, expense and confusion.
Hazel Blears
It is a difficult circle to square and I shall suggest how we might address some of those issues. There is no perfect system, but I do not believe that having a single person who is supposed to be visible and accountable to millions of people will work.
I understand that the police and crime panels, which are to be made up of local authority representatives and which will be remarkably similar to the police authorities that have been criticised for their lack of visibility, will have the power to advise and scrutinise the work of commissioners, but would it not be better if those local representatives were elected and therefore had a direct local mandate and accountability? I am very concerned that there will be a lack of consistency between the plans and strategies of local authorities and the health service, plans on tackling drugs and the possible crime plans of the police and crime panels. The local reps could come together and pool the sovereignty of their elected mandates to consider issues of serious, organised and trans-border crime—issues that are properly the concern of whole force areas. Currently, there is concern that police and crime commissioners will concentrate almost solely on very local issues, because of the electoral impetus, and that they might ignore some trans-force, serious and organised crime issues as well as national priorities.
It is inevitable that commissioners will be pressed to prioritise local, visible neighbourhood policing. I do not argue against that, as there is no greater advocate in the House than me of neighbourhood policing. Indeed, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) and I drove a culture change through the police service to ensure that neighbourhood policing was properly valued and rewarded. Hon. Members will remember that 10 years ago the sexy end of the police business was going out in the squad car with the blues and twos blazing and a helicopter circling overhead. People thought that was real policing. It was not entirely dissimilar from Gene Hunt’s kind of policing and it took a great deal of effort to bring the police back to tackling antisocial behaviour, closing crack houses and tackling prostitution on our estates. That was the really important part of policing for local people. I believe that the police get that now and know that being visible in their communities is hugely important to restoring and improving local people’s confidence, but we still need to keep the pressure on to make sure that that happens.
Some crime is not immediately visible to people on the streets, but is hugely important to address—whether it is counter-terrorism, serious and organised crime, the emerging problems of cybercrime, drug enforcement or tackling knife and gun crime. All that work needs to be done. The Home Secretary can talk about the national policing priorities in the Bill, but there is no provision for those second-tier regional priorities. In my own area, Salford, we have just had a fantastic operation called Operation Gulf, which entailed the long-term surveillance of organised crime gangs, using a range of powers—not police powers, particularly, but bringing in, for example, the Department for Work and Pensions to examine tax and benefits fraud, working with the Security Industry Agency, and investigating illegal protection rackets and pubs that have been used for organised crime. All that is not immediately visible to people on the street, but it is tackling those serious criminals who are role models for many of my young people. It is about confiscating their assets, and it is long-term police work that costs money. I worry enormously that a police commissioner will not give that the priority that it needs.
In the short time left to me, I shall say a word about the people whom we ask to carry out all that work on our behalf. We spent a long time trying to get a proper skill mix within our police service, recognising that we do not need fully warranted officers to do every single job in the service. Peter Fahy, the chief constable of Greater Manchester, has been a tremendous champion of work force modernisation. When I met him last week, he was desperately worried that with the very severe cuts that we have to make in such a short period of time, the people who will be most vulnerable are the PCSOs and the civilian staff who, because of their employee status, can be made redundant, unlike police officers.
I worry that we will go backwards, rather than forwards. We have got police officers away from being escort officers, custody officers or scenes-of-crime officers, and we have got them on the front line. As a result of cutting so quickly and so deeply, we will find uniformed officers again in the back-office doing file preparation or escort duties. That is utterly ludicrous. It is a backward step which will lead to much less effectiveness in our service. Our chief constable must get rid of 3,000 people over the next four years. He has said publicly that that will affect front-line policing. As a result of the speed at which it needs to be done and the arcane employment regulations in the police service, we will find ourselves making the wrong decisions about effectiveness.
The public will judge success not simply by elections. They will judge it by what happens on their streets and in their communities. If they can go to bed at night and not wake up with the fear of being burgled, if they can get up in the morning and find that their car has not been slashed and trashed, that will be the sign of success. Accountability, as commissioners will find, will be a pretty tough thing.
Controlling Migration
Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Mrs May
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question. His turn of phrase encourages me to enjoy my time in front of the Home Affairs Committee when that happy occasion next comes around. He also made a serious point about his Committee’s past recommendations on this issue. We will certainly look at his specific suggestion. We need to consider a number of ways of ensuring that students coming to the UK are genuinely coming as students and to institutions properly offering an education and providing a qualification. This is not just about the immigration system, but about the reputation of the UK, because we do not want people to come here thinking they are coming to a college on an educational course, but then find that they have come to something quite different.
Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
I generally welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement—but on EU migration, are we not in danger of ignoring the lessons of the past six years, when we imported more than 1 million low-wage and low-skilled workers, despite having 5 million of our own citizens on out-of-work benefits? Will she also explain why importing highly skilled workers is practical, when we have record numbers of UK and British graduates who could and should do those jobs?
Mrs May
My hon. Friend is right about the need to ensure that people in the UK are skilled enough to take up the work available. The figures show that EU-UK immigration and emigration numbers have broadly balanced out, and that net migration is coming predominantly from outside the EU. Our immigration policy has to fit in closely with the skills agenda that my right hon. Friend the Business Secretary announced last week. On occasions, however, there will be highly skilled workers with a specialism that a British company needs—in areas such as the energy sector, for example—and it is right for Britain to be open for business, and for us to allow companies to grow by introducing those workers into the UK.