Criminal Law

Debate between Baroness May of Maidenhead and Graham Stringer

Monday 10th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I am not saying that. I suggest to my hon. Friend that I have been very clear about this matter. The Government have negotiated with the European Commission, and with other member states, a package of measures for us to opt back in to. We believe that those law and order measures are necessary for ensuring that our law enforcement agencies have the tools that they need to catch criminals and to deal with matters of justice, which is why we have put before the House legislative measures that will enable United Kingdom law to accord with that package of 35 measures.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

The Home Secretary has dug herself into a hole. She will not allow the House to decide on the very important issue of the European arrest warrant. Why does she not simply support the procedural motion so that she can go away, have a think, and then come back and allow the House to vote on whether it wants to enter into the European arrest warrant or not?

[Mrs May]

The House said absolutely clearly that it wanted to debate the European arrest warrant, and we have been debating the European arrest warrant. I am very happy to speak about the issue, and I am sure that other Members wish to speak about it as well. I understand that, if the Question put by the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford is agreed to, the debate will be ended in relation to the European arrest warrant, and the debate will be ended in relation to the regulations.

UK Border Force

Debate between Baroness May of Maidenhead and Graham Stringer

Monday 7th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

The matter related to the operation of border security controls, which is a matter for the Home Office.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

I am appalled that the Home Secretary set up a pilot at Manchester airport and did not know she had done so. That is extraordinary. Will she now answer without any ambiguity the question that has been asked four or five times: did information come from those pilot schemes into her or any other Minister’s office in the Home Office—yes or no?

[Mrs May]

As I have made clear, an evaluation of the pilot was going to take place at the end of the study, so that we could look at how it was operating and whether it was doing what it was expected to do. As I said in my statement, a decision was taken in the middle of September to extend the pilot until November in order to ensure that there was a fuller period of time to make the evaluation.

Identity Documents Bill

Debate between Baroness May of Maidenhead and Graham Stringer

Wednesday 9th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

The right hon. Lady is right that ID cards did not stop the bombing in Madrid, but does she accept that ID cards in Spain allowed the bombers to be traced from the fingerprints on the Atocha bombs?

[Mrs May]

The point that I am making is a simple one. The last Labour Government claimed that this would be—[Interruption.] A shadow Minister on the Front Bench says, “No. we didn’t.” As I had not said what I was going to say the Government had claimed, I suggest that she is being a little premature, or perhaps she is learning the ways of opposition rather earlier than some of her colleagues.

Many claims were made at various times about what the Government said. One of them was that the purpose of ID cards was to keep this country safe. The examples that I gave show that ID cards do not keep this country safe and are an intrusion into civil liberties. The imposition of an enormously expensive system, which will be a target for computer hackers, might result in greater identity fraud and would not make us safer, cannot be justified.

There is one other objection to such an extension of the state’s surveillance powers, and it is one that Labour never understood: it is unBritish. We are a freedom-loving people, and we recognise that intrusive government does not enhance our well-being or safety. In 2004 the Mayor of London promised to eat his ID card in front of

“whatever emanation of the state has demanded that I produce it.”

I will not endorse civil disobedience, but Boris Johnson was expressing in his own inimitable way a discomfort even stronger than the discomfort to be had from eating an ID card. It is a discomfort born of a very healthy and British revulsion towards bossy, interfering, prying, wasteful and bullying Government. The coalition Government are determined to do things differently.

I pay tribute to all those who have campaigned so vigorously for the abolition of ID cards. They include N02ID, Liberty, and the parties that make up the coalition Government. I am also grateful that Members in other parts of the House, including Labour Members, as indicated earlier, have had the integrity to speak out and vote against the issue and, in the case of Labour Members, against those on their Front Bench. Indeed, Labour Members may even find that voting for the abolition of ID cards curries favour with the next leader of their party although, with the notable exception of the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), none of the leadership candidates appears to have taken an interest in civil liberties.

Let me read to the House what the hon. Lady said during her impassioned speech against the Identity Cards Bill in 2005:

“As the evening has worn on, the Government Whips have subjected several of my colleagues to their usual rough-hew methods of persuasion. However, I say to colleagues in the closing minutes of the debate that voting against the Bill would be far from betraying our Government or going against Labour principles, because we would be doing the Government a great service. The more the public hear of the Bill, the less they like it, so the sooner it is stopped in its tracks, the better.”—[Official Report, 28 June 2005; Vol. 435, c. 1248-9.]

I could not agree more.

I urge Members in all parts of the House to vote with their conscience, and to show their constituents that they stand for freedom, sound expenditure and common sense. The case for ID cards has not been made and will not be. It is an extension of state power that we cannot, in any sense, afford. I commend the Bill to the House.