London Metropolitan University

Tom Brake Excerpts

Monday 3rd September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

I do not think that it would be appropriate to announce relaxations in the rules. Indeed, the hon. Gentleman may not have heard, but I have said that the curtailment letters that start the 60-day period will not go out until 1 October, to ensure that we enable those people to come and find a new course. However, he has also revealed—perhaps inadvertently—one of the problems: people are coming here as students precisely so that they or members of their family can work. People who come here to study should come here to study. That is what the student visa is meant to be for. It should not be, either directly or indirectly, a way to gain a work visa.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

London Metropolitan university suggests that the UKBA’s concerns relate to a previous administration or previous management. What reassurances can the Minister give that the decision is fair and based on current processes and data, and that London Metropolitan university is not being singled out as an example?

[Damian Green]

I have heard that suggestion from London Metropolitan, which is precisely why, when the concerns were first expressed after a visit in March, the UKBA deliberately looked for contemporary samples. The figures I gave earlier to the hon. Member for Islington North relate to students who have come under the new management regime, so we are talking about up-to-date systemic problems, not historic systemic problems.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tom Brake Excerpts

Monday 9th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert]

There has been a 6% fall in crime in Greater Manchester. That shows that the force is able to deal with the necessary spending reductions while continuing to reduce crime. That is a credit to the force, its leadership and its officers. The hon. Gentleman, in common with his Labour colleagues, continues to call for increases in public spending, which is exactly what got us into this mess in the first place.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

Will the Minister look at the role that an institute for policing excellence could play in pulling together evidence of best practice and ensuring that the police use what works and what is cost-effective in tackling crime?

[Nick Herbert]

Yes. I am happy to reassure my right hon. Friend that we will be—indeed, we are—looking at that proposal. We are working constructively with the police to set up a professional body for policing, about which we will have more to say shortly. Tomorrow I shall be speaking in Cambridge about evidence-led policing, and about the importance of police forces developing links with academia, which includes the potential for faculties of policing.

UK Border Agency

Tom Brake Excerpts

Wednesday 4th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

I am pleased to have the opportunity to make a few short points in the debate. My first is about the structural changes taking place within the UK Border Agency. Does the Minister have strong views about these proposals? In his view, will they make a significant contribution to making UKBA an organisation or agency that is fit for purpose? He will be aware of the specific changes to operational areas, with specific directors and cross-cutting directorates being established.

The Select Committee on Home Affairs has played a central role in tracking developments at UKBA over recent years. I refer briefly to the 15th report published in November last year. That report rightly identifies initial decision making as central to much of what we are debating and covers appeals, which are clearly a two-way process. Yes, officials may well make wrong decisions, but it is equally clear from the information I have received that appeals are often successful because the information was not supplied correctly the first time round. The appeal was not based on a decision, but was one in which supplementary information led to a positive outcome. Making the right decision at the outset is key, as is ensuring that the right information is supplied by applicants.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East (Mr Ward), who is no longer in his place but will return shortly, highlighted the importance of intelligence, and I certainly support what he said. When people come to MPs with intelligence about the activities of individuals who they think are here illegitimately, feedback is essential so that constituents can see that some action has been taken as a result. I appreciate the difficulties associated with data protection when providing feedback that is specific to an individual case, but we need to ensure that feedback is provided in some shape or form.

On correspondence between the MPs and the UKBA, contrary to what the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) said, my experience suggests that things have improved. They are not perfect, but there is no doubt about the improvement, and my staff would confirm that. I no longer experience the sort of thing that happened back in 1997, when many people I saw in my surgery had been in the UK for perhaps 10 years, yet their status had still not been determined. That is changing, which does not mean that things are perfect.

What MPs do quite successfully is to use individual cases to identify areas with a pattern of poor performance. I will not reel off a long list of individual cases, but I shall refer to one case of a family—I shall call them Mr and Mrs J—who were granted visas on appeal in February last year in Colombo, but who have still not received them. I do not know whether a specific problem in Colombo has caused that to happen, but if such cases help to identify an issue in a particular mission, I hope that the Government would respond.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

May I assure the right hon. Gentleman that this is not just specific to Colombo? This pattern is common; I have a number of such cases in Islamabad, for example.

[Tom Brake]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, which shows that it is essential for us collectively to identify such problems; we might believe that these are individual cases, but when the feedback comes in from all MPs, we see that the issue is a much wider one.

A number of Members have referred to data. Clearly, without strong data, it is difficult to determine whether policy is effective. I greatly welcome the fact that, following pressure from the Liberal Democrats on an issue that we have been running with for a number of years, exit checks will be reintroduced. Ultimately, that is the only way to secure high-quality data that can effectively inform debate.

On the problem of backlogs, I am sure the Minister will have received the briefing from the Immigration Law Practitioners Association, which many of us, too, have received for today’s debate. The briefing refers to the definition of a review, and it challenges the UKBA statement that reviews have been carried out in respect of all asylum backlog cases. That might involve a definitional issue involving what constitutes a review. A paper review may involve no contact with either the legal representatives or the individual who is the subject of the review. In any event, the ILPA is concerned about whether every case has been reviewed.

I do not know whether the Minister was quoted accurately when he was reported to have said:

“The UK has been forced to launch a global charm offensive to convince foreign students it is not against immigration”.

The quotation comes from a BBC report headed “Please come to UK”. The Minister is shaking his head, so it appears it that is not an accurate representation of what he said. Whether it is or not, however, I should like him to tell me whether the capacity exists to make what I accept is a difficult distinction between students who, having applied to attend a college here quite legitimately, find that between their application and their arrival the college has been shut down—for perfectly legitimate reasons—and has taken their money but will not give them what they wanted, and those who are not students but have colluded to come here for purposes other than study. It would be helpful to be able to distinguish such people from students who fall foul of the rules through no fault of their own.

[Mr Winnick]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman was going to mention this, but may I put to him the question that I put earlier to his hon. Friend the hon. Member for Bradford East (Mr Ward)? If he and his party believe that the appeals system is right for visitors, what input, if any, is the coalition receiving from his party on the issue?

[Tom Brake]

We have made written representations, but the hon. Gentleman may not have heard something that I said earlier. The most significant thing that the Government can do on behalf of everyone—the UKBA, the Government and, indeed, applicants—is ensure that the correct decisions are made the first time round.

The ILPA has drawn Members’ attention to changes made in October 2010 to the policy on suitability for detention. It alleges that conditions have worsened considerably, especially for people with serious medical conditions. Has the Minister had any dialogue with the UKBA on the subject, and is he satisfied that the rules ensure that a person’s health can be taken into account?

I shall not go into my final point in any great detail, because it has already been raised in the context of HC 194 “Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules”. Concern has been expressed not just about typographical errors, but about instances in which the understanding of the rules may have been different from what their intention now appears to be. The issue is too detailed for the Minister to respond now, but I hope that he will be able to clarify the Government’s position. I know that he has the relevant documentation.

I think that the coalition Government have made progress, particularly, I am pleased to say, on the issue of child detention, which was mentioned earlier. However, I accept that they still have a considerable distance to go.

Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

Tom Brake Excerpts

Wednesday 4th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

I thank the Minister for setting out so clearly why the coalition Government intend to proscribe this organisation. He could have listed, I believe, nine separate incidents in which it was involved between 2007 and 2011. It is clearly a prolific and dangerous organisation.

The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) asked a great many questions, to which I can add just one. I understand that the Minister may not be able to answer it—and many of the other questions—for security reasons, but is there any evidence of activity in the UK and specifically of, perhaps, charity work to support that organisation?

Proceeds of Crime

Tom Brake Excerpts

Tuesday 12th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

The right hon. Gentleman, the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, makes an important point about international co-operation—one that we certainly recognised in the organised crime strategy that was published last summer. Criminals may wish to hide or to secrete assets not only in the EU, but throughout the world, so the need to look at the matter in an international context is an important one to which I shall return during my contribution.

In our domestic legislation, we have taken some important steps forward. The Proceeds of Crime Act 2002 is the principal piece of domestic legislation for the restraint and confiscation of the proceeds of crime. It is an advanced and powerful piece of legislation that in most areas goes beyond the minimum standards of the directive that we are debating this evening. It provides a single scheme for the confiscation of the value of the proceeds of crime, following any criminal conviction and regardless of the amount.

If a defendant has been convicted of a listed serious offence or has a number of convictions, the court can assume that all their property is the proceeds of crime and can be factored into the amount of a confiscation order, a power known internationally as “extended confiscation”. It allows for the confiscation of assets that have been transferred to family members or other third parties; it enables the freezing of assets by a court from the beginning of an investigation in order to prevent their dissipation; and it provides civil recovery powers, an intrinsic part of our approach to this area of law, whereby the focus is on the property, not on the person who holds it, and no conviction is required. That is a particularly useful tool for tackling high-level organised criminals for whom it is hard to obtain a conviction.

In 2010-11 UK law enforcement agencies froze or recovered more than £1 billion of criminal assets. The amount of assets recovered has increased year on year since the 2002 Act, and one of this Government’s first steps on entering office was to do away with some of the arbitrary targets that the previous Government imposed on law enforcement professionals. This has galvanised their professionalism and their approach to ensuring that more assets are recovered or frozen. Certainly, the UK is recognised as a leader in this field. However, the Government want to do more, particularly on international asset recovery, as we made clear in our organised crime strategy of July 2011.

In 2008, it was estimated that some £560 million-worth of UK criminal assets were held abroad. That underlines the level of sophistication that a number of organised crime groups are seeking to deploy in order to hide or to shield assets. Improved international co-operation is therefore a necessary step towards recovering that money. That is why we welcome the aims of the directive, if not some of its provisions. It is right that we seek to drive up standards throughout the EU and find better ways of working together with our EU partners. To that end, the directive covers confiscation following a criminal conviction, extended confiscation, third-party confiscation, non-conviction-based confiscation, and powers to freeze assets. The UK already has all those powers under the Proceeds of Crime Act, and so, in almost all areas, we exceed the minimum standards established by the directive.

The purpose of the directive is to require member states to be able to freeze and confiscate the proceeds of cross-border serious and organised crime. The Commission argues that the confiscation of the proceeds of crime in the EU is under-utilised despite the existing EU legal framework. It says that there are three problems with the current EU legal framework: its incomplete or late transition into domestic law, diverging national provisions that make mutual recognition more difficult, and the low utilisation of confiscation in practice. The directive therefore creates minimum standards for the freezing, management and confiscation of the proceeds of crime. The Commission intends that minimum standards will lead to greater co-operation, but a mutual recognition instrument has not yet been published.

It is vital that we get the detail right, and we must pay great attention to the effect of the directive on our existing domestic regime and its likely operational impact. In that regard, the Government have identified a serious problem with the directive. As drafted, it poses a very real threat to our domestic non-conviction-based confiscation regime. Operational partners have expressed concern that opting in at this stage poses a risk to the powers used by our law enforcement agencies to target and disrupt the most serious organised criminals. Our non-conviction-based confiscation powers are civil law measures that allow prosecution agencies to take action against property that they think has been acquired through unlawful activity. The action is not taken against an individual, and no criminal conviction is necessary. As I said, it is a particularly useful tool for tackling the high-level organised criminals against whom it is very difficult to achieve a criminal conviction.

In 2011-12, approximately £20 million-worth of criminal assets were recovered using non-conviction-based confiscation powers. It is important to note that the Proceeds of Crime Act, and the use of the civil standard of proof as structured within the Act, has been upheld by the Supreme Court, and therefore its operation has been subject to judicial scrutiny at the highest level. Because of its criminal law legal base, the directive risks placing non-conviction-based confiscation measures in the UK on to a criminal law footing, opening new avenues of legal challenge to our powers and, in many ways, undermining the court judgments that have been secured in relation to the operation of the Proceeds of Crime Act. If criminal law procedural protections and a criminal law standard of proof were introduced, our domestic regime would be severely weakened and our law enforcement agencies would find it harder to disrupt the workings of some of the most dangerous organised criminals.

This is a technical argument, but it is of great importance to the law enforcement agencies that protect our country from organised crime. Under qualified majority voting, there is no guarantee that we can secure the necessary changes to the text. This Government will not risk hindering the work of law enforcement agencies in tackling high-level criminality. The risk is simply too great.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

Is it not the case that non-conviction-based confiscation powers exist in many other EU countries and that the directive is therefore likely to be changed to increase flexibility and incorporate those powers, rather than to reduce it?

[James Brokenshire]

There is likely to be negotiation and discussion on the directive, as the right hon. Gentleman will know, given the manner in which such instruments are taken forward. However, given the significance of the existing powers and the way in which the regime has been tested before the courts, the key point is that because of the use of qualified majority voting, which I have mentioned, there is no guarantee that there will be the outcome that he suggests. The Government have taken the judgment that that risk is too high. On balance, we believe that not opting in at this stage is the better option. The risk to our civil recovery regime is simply too great, and I am not willing to take it, especially when operational partners have expressed such concern to us.

None the less, it is our intention to play an active part in the negotiation on the directive. Our experience on the recent human trafficking directive shows that the UK can have an influential voice, even when it does not opt in at the outset. In that case, we opted in to the directive at the post-adoption stage. The UK’s recognised experience and expertise in asset recovery will certainly help with the negotiations.

Our wider aim is to establish effective mutual recognition arrangements for both conviction-based and non-conviction-based confiscation orders. Although the draft directive adds nothing to our domestic asset recovery regime, mutual recognition arrangements could greatly improve our ability to recover the proceeds of crime held in other member states. The draft contains no proposal to establish an effective system for the mutual recognition of confiscation orders. Law enforcement partners say that they would welcome such proposals. The Government will consider how best to use our influence on that matter.

It is important to underline the comments of the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee on how mutual recognition can be a powerful tool. It is important to focus on that point. Indeed, the EU Select Committee in the other place has highlighted it as an issue with the directive and it needs careful attention.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to follow the Chairman of the Select Committee on Home Affairs, who has been able to put Members’ minds at rest on the subject of RABITs this evening. It is also a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), who was loquacious, in the earlier Defamation Bill debate, on the joys of coalition. I wanted to point out to him that I feel a particularly heightened sense of joy on coalition partnership working during these European Union debates.

There are a couple of points that I should like to make on this subject. I am sure that all fair-minded Members will acknowledge the value of a robust EU-wide regime for freezing and confiscating criminal proceeds, because cross-border crime is a serious and growing threat to the UK. Inevitably, one of the consequences of the four freedoms of the single market—the free movement of goods, services, people and capital—is the growth in cross-border organised crime and proceeds of crime. I am sure that Members will also agree that it is important that the UK maintains its European and international lead on these issues. That has been the UK’s position since 1998. Indeed, the EU’s 1998 joint action, which the directive would replace, was a UK proposal. Currently, in almost every respect, UK domestic arrangements match or exceed the minimum rules in the directive, so opting out permanently would threaten the UK’s leading role.

I agree that the text of the directive is not perfect and that the UK must use its active observer status to improve it and opt back in. As the Minister indicated, there are legitimate concerns about how the draft directive would interrelate particularly with our non-conviction-based confiscation powers. In response to my intervention on that point, he said that there would be no guarantee that the directive could be changed to accommodate our non-conviction-based confiscation regime. I wonder, however, whether he has any intelligence about whether that would be likely, given the extent to which these non-conviction-based confiscation schemes operate in other EU countries. I hope that he can reassure me that the UK will use its status to seek to galvanise support for ensuring that our non-conviction-based confiscation regime can sit within the scope of the directive and secure other changes deemed preferable so that we can opt back into the directive post-adoption.

Family Migration

Tom Brake Excerpts

Monday 11th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

A regional variation in the income threshold was looked at by the Migration Advisory Committee and rejected by that committee for a number of reasons. The committee looked at income versus public sector costs in regions and the purely practical point that if we had regional variation, the result could very well be someone initially going to live in a region where the threshold was lower, in order to get into the country, and then moving within the country.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

The coalition Government must be firm but fair on immigration, so I welcome the income threshold that was eventually agreed. What flexibility or discretion will be available for those who, for example, might not be able to pass the intermediate language test—perhaps for medical reasons—or who, for exceptional reasons, might have to apply for family reunion while they are in the UK?

[Mrs May]

Obviously we are conscious that some people will find it difficult to deal with the income threshold—perhaps a sponsor here who is disabled and may not have the same expectations of income as others—so there will be some ability to be flexible on that. The English language test is an important part of the scheme we are putting in place. I acknowledge what my right hon. Friend says about people who, for a medical reason, may have difficulty with that, but overall I think it is right that we have the test in the scheme.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tom Brake Excerpts

Monday 21st May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

No, the whole point of the approach the Government are taking is that we are cutting the bureaucracy for police to enable them to spend more time on the beat. The challenge is this: I was willing to go to the Police Federation conference and be absolutely honest with the police about what we are doing. I trust that the message that the shadow Home Secretary and the shadow policing Minister gave to the police was that Labour Front Benchers support the same level of cuts in funding as the Government are putting through, and the impact that that would have. I wonder if the shadow policing Minister told the police about his view that £600 million should be taken out of police overtime.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

Exempting the National Crime Agency from the Freedom of Information Act will reduce the administrative burden on the police, but will the Home Secretary set out how the principles of transparency and accountability will be upheld in the way that the NCA operates?

[Mrs May]

I am happy to give my right hon. Friend what I hope will be reassurance on this issue. We are clear that the NCA, when it is set up, should be transparent about how it operates and we will set out clearly those aspects that we expect it to be transparent about and publish information on. However, given the nature of many of the cases that it will deal with and some of the information behind those cases, it is right that we exempt it from the FOI. It is our intention that, on those matters that it can tell the public about, it is as transparent as possible.

Home Affairs and Justice

Tom Brake Excerpts

Thursday 10th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

Yesterday was a great day for our Parliament. I am a big fan of such enormously traditional and historic ceremonies. They are a little like getting married, in that they give us the opportunity to make all sorts of new resolutions to do things better than ever before. Yesterday I was attending my second state opening, and this time I actually half-understood what was going on. It renewed my enthusiasm for the job I do. I hope it also enthused the coalition to keep going—to make the economy better and to improve our country for the sake of all of us—and I am sure that it did so. However, on some issues I want to urge the Government to go even further than was proposed in the Gracious Speech.

On the issue of sorting out our banking system, I have spoken to a number of members of the Monetary Policy Committee and to people at the top of small banks in Britain who share my grave concern about the lack of competition in banking. There is a groundswell of support among smaller banks for full account portability, so people can transfer their bank account number with them, rather than having to change all their accounts and all their online banking transactions—including, perhaps, their iTunes and Tesco online shopping accounts —every time they want to move banks. That is a huge disincentive both to people to switch and to businesses, which have enough on their plates at present. Especially now, when we are implementing the Vickers proposals, I urge the Government to look again at introducing full account portability. Instead of having a seven-day redirection service, it would be very easy to introduce a shared payments infrastructure. That would, at last, give us real competitiveness in our banking sector.

I also urge the Government to go further with regard to the European Union. I am sure everyone in this country agrees with them that we need to defend Britain against the British taxpayer having to bail out eurozone members, but I think the Government should be going further. We should now be proposing a new and better relationship for Britain within the EU. It is simply not possible for the EU to remain as it has been ever since it was started, with the same relationships for all 27 member states, while it continues to expand, with different member states having different needs, different economic situations and different interests. It is going to have to change, and I urge the Government to ensure that we are completely ready to determine what would work better for Britain.

The third issue on which I urge the Government to go further is regulation and red tape for businesses. The absolute, top priority, as Her Majesty said, is to get our economy going again, and nowhere more so than in the very small business sector. We must give young people and others who cannot find a job a direct and clear incentive to create one for themselves by starting a business. I urge the Government to look carefully at scrapping the entire burden of regulation on micro-businesses with, say, three employees or fewer. I envisage there being absolutely no regulation whatsoever—no minimum wage, no maternity or paternity rights, no unfair dismissal rights, no pension rights—for the smallest companies that are trying to get off the ground, in order to give them a chance. That would all change, however, as soon as the number of employees increased.

We could also get Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs to provide a simple one-page online form for micro-businesses such as market stall traders, domestic cleaners, gardeners and carpenters. Such businesses, although they may employ people, are often outside the real economy, and when the owners retire or move to another area, they lose that entire asset and have nothing to on-sell. If we could wipe out such regulation for the very smallest businesses, set a flat-rate personal allowance and 20% flat-rate tax, including capital gains—with a turnover restriction, of course—that would get our economy going again and provide a direct incentive for those who are looking for work, particularly young people, to do something for themselves.

I urge the Government to go further in those three areas, but I am conscious that today’s debate is about justice and home affairs, and I want to focus on a massive revolution that would make the job of both Government and Opposition Front Benchers far less onerous. We need to do something for the very youngest in our society. I know that we plan during this Parliament to make it far easier for people to adopt, but we need to turn the situation on its head and to look at life from the perspective—with your indulgence, Mr Deputy Speaker—of the baby. This issue is entirely relevant to the justice and home affairs agenda. What we saw during last August’s riots was surely the result of a generation of children not being taught the difference between right and wrong, and not being brought up to empathise with other people and to respect their property. In many cases, they simply have not had the benefit of the loving upbringing that would enable them to develop the mental and emotional capacity to obey the law, fulfil their role in society and be decent human beings.

Of course, it all starts with the moment of conception. When a baby is born, it is effectively two years premature. Humans are unique in the animal kingdom. A new-born foal or calf can instantly feed and walk and do many things that babies simply cannot do, whereas humans have to be two years old before they can really do much at all for themselves. Interestingly, physical underdevelopment is only a tiny part of the story: the key is the mental underdevelopment. When a newborn baby is hot, cold, tired, bored or hungry, he does not know that that is the problem. He just knows that something is wrong, so he will cry, and he will look to the adult carer who loves him to sort him out and figure out what is wrong. So we, as loving parents or grandparents, or even as nannies or foster parents, will change him, feed him, burp him, jog him up and down or walk him down the garden. We will do anything to try to soothe his feelings, get him back to sleep and put him back into a state of rest and calm—that is what babies try to draw their parents into doing for them. Most of us are able to do that, and it is extremely successful for the baby.

Interestingly, when a baby is born he only really has the amygdala—the brain stem—that gives him the flight or fight self-preservation instinct. It is only between six and 18 months that a baby puts on a growth spurt of the frontal cortex, which is the empathy part of the brain; it is the part of the brain that turns someone into a human being. It makes the difference between an animal with a flight-or-fight instinct and a human being with the capacity to empathise, to feel someone else’s pain, to make relationships, and to form friendships and long-term commitments.

That growth spurt occurs as a result of loving attention—the peek-a-boo games, people saying, “Aren’t you gorgeous, I love you” and so on. I am not talking about you, Mr Deputy Speaker; I am merely giving you an example. I am quite sure that you were very securely bonded to your parents. Those peek-a-boo games and the love that a parent has for an infant stimulate that brain development and build the capacity in that infant to deal with the things that life will later throw at them.

This is not a niche issue that affects only the most troubled in our society, as research shows that 40% of British children are not securely attached by the age of five; they have not formed a secure and loving bond with their parents. When a baby does not form that loving and secure attachment, the frontal cortex does not develop properly. The brain scan of a three-year-old child who did form that bond shows a lovely “cauliflower-looking” brain, whereas the scan of a three-year-old who was neglected or abused as a baby shows something that looks more like a shrivelled prune. The earliest relationship between a loving parent and their baby, or an uncaring parent and their baby, determines the capacity of that human being throughout the rest of their life. As I say, 40% of children in Britain are not securely attached by the age of five.

There are no longitudinal studies tracking precisely the impact for those people, but, as with anything, the impact is on a spectrum. If someone’s capacity to hold down a job, to make friends at school or to not be bullied or become a victim is all set out by the age of two, the consequences can be very difficult for people who are not securely bonded. Such consequences can range from simply struggling, having bouts of depression throughout life, not being able to keep a relationship going or not having very good friends to those at the very desperate end, where people have literally been neglected or abused by the person upon whom they came to rely.

Let us consider what happened to baby Peter, who was so badly abused. What mother could allow some idiot to stub a cigarette out on her baby unless she really did not love him, did not care about him and was putting her relationship needs above those of her own relationship with her baby? Where babies are severely neglected and abused, it harms their whole lifelong capacity. Those who are neglected and abused now will, as adults, be the neglecters and the abusers. It is entirely natural to us, as human beings, to be the kind of parent to our children that our parents were to us. So sociopaths are not born; they are made by the earliest experiences in their life. Most of those occur when a baby is less than two years old.

So when we talk about adoption and fostering, and when we all express disgust at the fact that 6,000 babies under a year old are in the care system, it is not just that it is terribly tough on those parents who are the would-be adopters or terribly tough on those babies not having loving parents; the situation is fundamental to the entire life prospects for those babies. If they do not form a loving bond, their capacity throughout their life will be damaged irreversibly.

There is another impact on a baby who does not receive loving attention. When babies are left to scream and scream for hours and days on end—I am not talking about parents who, in desperation when they have had enough and tried everything, leave the baby to cry for an hour or two, but about parents who go out and leave the baby to fend for his or herself, which does happen—they continue to cry and eventually take refuge in sleep. When the baby is screaming his or her level of cortisol—the stress hormone in their bloodstream—rises and if it stays high, that has consequences for the baby’s immune system. When an infant is very neglected, bad health and poor health consequences go with that. People with mental health problems and other problems stemming from early neglect and child abuse also have very poor health outcomes, which are fundamental to their quality of their life later on.

If someone constantly has high stress levels, they develop a tolerance to them. Although some of us might find an exciting episode of “Z-Cars” incredibly thrilling, somebody with a high tolerance to their own stress levels would need to indulge in much higher risks to get the same level of stress. So, for example, going out fighting, getting into drugs, going out and stabbing someone or committing other violent crimes could be the only way for that person to get the same level of stress and excitement. People who have been badly neglected at an early age often have a predisposition to high-risk behaviour.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

Is my hon. Friend aware of the campaign run by Action for Children on reforming the law on child neglect? As I understand it, at the moment the law on child neglect is simply about whether a child has a roof over their head and does not cover emotional support, which is exactly what she is talking about.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I am aware of that campaign and many others, too. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children has an excellent programme called “All babies count”, which is concerned about the mental health of babies. After all, that is a slightly obscure topic until one gets into it. Adult mental health has always been something of a Cinderella service for our NHS and when infant mental health is mentioned, it usually merely prompts the question, “What’s all that about?”

Our society has taken great care to develop an NHS that every man, woman and child in this country values and wishes to preserve, yet it is all about health and focuses on mental health far too little and too late. At the moment, when someone conceives, they are allocated a midwifery team and introduced to the health visiting team. If they get so far with problems, they might be introduced to the social work team. Unfortunately, there is great fear among parents of being introduced to the social work team because they fear that their baby might be taken away. They are therefore concerned about seeking help. Parents have a midwife and health visitor, who often do a fabulous job for the physical health of mum and baby while the mum is pregnant and when the baby is very young. When mum is not bonding well with her baby—she might be terribly post-natally depressed, as one in 10 women suffer from post-natal depression, but she might not know that she is suffering from it—the midwife and/or the health visitor might spot it but, at the moment, there is not much they can do. The bar is set so high for referrals to child and adolescent mental health services that someone almost needs to be at a crisis level before they can be referred for psychotherapeutic support for that earliest relationship. That is quite simply wrong.

When we talk about children being school-ready, we mean in the sense of their responding to their own name, understanding danger and understanding the word no, but those should not even be the questions that are asked. When parents are firmly bonded to their baby, they will take the trouble to teach their child about danger and to give their child breakfast. We are always firefighting. We should accept that everything we do for a baby from the moment of conception until they reach the age of two is developmental and that pretty much everything we do for them after they are two is about trying to put right damage that has already been done.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma), although I have to say that I must have listened to a different Queen’s Speech. My hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Mary Macleod) did an excellent job of setting out exactly what is in the Queen’s Speech for business. Let me remind the hon. Gentleman that it contains provisions on reform of the banks, which we need to ensure stability, on cutting red tape, on the Green investment bank, and on allowing renewable development to continue. I should also point out that the Government have already introduced measures on youth unemployment through the youth contract and apprenticeships, so they are not sitting on their hands doing nothing as he was suggesting.

I want to focus on the proposals relating to home affairs and justice issues. First, however, let me say a couple of things about House of Lords reform, to which all parties made a commitment in their manifestos. I assume that all of them are unhappy with a scenario in which we have 92 hereditary peers and peers who are appointed by party leaders making decisions about our legislation. I hope, therefore, that all Members will want to facilitate a process that enables us to come to a rapid conclusion on this and that these proceedings will not be delayed as a result of actions by Liberal Democrat Members.

[Mark Hendrick]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Brake]

I shall not because there is little time for other Members to speak.

Let me focus on the National Crime Agency, which I welcome. I have had discussions with Keith Bristow, who will be heading up the NCA. The Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee said that Keith Bristow was currently the only employee of the NCA so I am very pleased to have met 100% of its employees. Mr Bristow confirmed that for the first time we will have national tasking for the police, which I welcome. I am sure that most Members will be surprised to learn that there has previously been no capacity for national tasking. The real challenge for the NCA will be how the relationship between the chief constable, the NCA and the elected police and crime commissioners will work. How will they work together? Clearly, they will to some extent be pulling in different directions and might have different priorities. How that is managed will be key to the NCA’s effectiveness.

I understand that there will be some issues with funding in that transfers of money will sometimes have to take place if NCA resources are called on, so that issue requires some investigation. Also, at some point the issue of where responsibility for counter-terrorism should lie will have to be addressed, but I accept that it would have been inappropriate for that to happen before the Olympics. I regret that it has not been possible to identify ways in which some parts of the NCA could be subject to freedom of information considerations. It will have to work very hard to demonstrate through the annual reports it will produce and the information it is going to make available that it is completely transparent.

I strongly welcome the measures on freedom of speech and defamation, and I hope that the use of the word “insulting” will be addressed in relation to section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986. An interesting alliance of groups will support such changes if they come forward. The changes on defamation are very welcome. I do not think that any Member of the House is comfortable with a situation in which the United Nations Committee on Human Rights describes our laws as discouraging

“critical media reporting on matters of serious public interest, adversely affecting the ability of scholars and journalists to publish their work”.

There is a need to take action and I welcome the fact that the Government are doing that.

On justice and security, I understand that the proposals on closed material proceedings will no longer apply to inquests. I hope that is true because the original Green Paper was far too wide in what it proposed. That approach will be restricted to national security issues only and there will be a requirement for a judicial approval process to be gone through before CMP can be invoked. I also welcome the plans to strengthen oversight of our security and intelligence agencies because there are concerns that our services have been involved in some activities that might make us all uncomfortable.

There has been a degree of confusion about the communications data proposals; even on Radio 4 this morning, we were told that e-mails would now be covered, whereas most Members will be aware that e-mails are already covered by existing communications data measures. However, we need to look at safeguards. We have a strange scenario in the UK, where there are about 500,000 comms data requests every year. I hope the Government will look at a sample to work out how many of them actually lead to something concrete in terms of helpful evidence or prosecution. If we can cut down significantly the number of requests, it will be much easier to involve a third party or a judicial process when issuing permissions. Currently, the volume of requests would seem to make that impossible. I hope that the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 will be looked at as part of that process. I welcome the extra safeguards the Government are considering to extend the roles or powers of the interception of communications commissioner and the Investigatory Powers Tribunal.

I welcome the reform of laws affecting children. I have already referred to the campaign that Action for Children is running on the reform of laws on child neglect, to make sure that it is not just about children having a roof over their head, but about getting emotional support, which, as we heard earlier, is key to a child’s development.

When discussing the shared parenting proposals, my right hon. Friend the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith), the Chair of the Justice Committee, highlighted the fact that we shall have to be careful not to encroach on the rights of the child. Children should be at the centre of the process, even though we want to support both parents in having access to their children.

I regret that there is nothing in the Queen’s Speech about equal marriage. I understand that it was not possible to include proposals while consultation is still under way, but there is a firm commitment.

The Queen’s Speech demonstrates for a second time that the coalition Government are committed to effective reforms of policing, the security services and the courts. We will be relying more heavily on policy that is based on evidence of what works and that achieves the right balance between civil liberties and safety and security.

Immigration Queues (UK Airports)

Tom Brake Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

The Secretary of State for Transport—who is here, as is the Minister of State, Department for Transport, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Mrs Villiers)—the Home Secretary and I meet regularly and we all agree on this matter. Although the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) does not seem to agree with his boss, I agree with mine, and we all agree on the need for proper checks and efficiently flowing airports. That is obviously a priority for the Department for Transport as well. It is a dual priority for every Government, and certainly for this one. I can only re-emphasise that we will not compromise border security in any circumstances.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

Will the Minister tell the House whether equipment failures have been the source of any delays, and whether the contingency arrangements relating to equipment failure have been reviewed? If the problem is the result of the sheer volume of passengers, would he consider introducing genuine risk-based passenger assessment, which would have the potential to speed up the passage of people through airports and to improve security?

[Damian Green]

There have been one or two specific incidents in which either equipment failure or wider technical failure has contributed to problems. For example, there was a problem at Birmingham airport that was caused by a power surge that knocked out all the electrical equipment across the airport for a time. Accidents such as that will happen. On my right hon. Friend’s point about ever-rising numbers, which might well happen, this is a question of being able to deploy staff flexibly enough so that, when we know that more people are coming in, we can have more staff at the right gates and encourage as many people as possible to use the technology at the e-gates, which enables more people to go through more smoothly. That is the focus of what we are trying to do.

Stephen Lawrence

Tom Brake Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I accept the hon. Lady’s general points about the need for public assurance. Our judgment is that it is appropriate for the Metropolitan police to investigate the current allegations of corruption, and that once that has been provided, it is absolutely right and proper for the Home Secretary to look at that and consider whether a public inquiry is or is not required to provide the necessary reassurance to the public.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

We must listen to the Lawrence family. They have lived with the tragic death of their son and with police incompetence for nearly 20 years. Will the Minister comment on whether a public inquiry might also need to consider earlier cases of police corruption, such as that involving Daniel Morgan?

[James Brokenshire]

I certainly pay tribute to the work of the Lawrence family. As I think I said in my opening response, I am sure that if it were not for their tireless fight for justice, we would not have seen the convictions that we have. I do not want to speculate on what the response may be once we see the outcome of the response from the Metropolitan Police Service. However, let me say to my right hon. Friend that the Government take the issue of corruption in the police service extremely seriously. That is why we have established the Leveson inquiry, why the Home Secretary commissioned the Independent Police Complaints Commission to provide a report on corruption in the police service, and why she commissioned Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary to consider instances of undue influence, inappropriate arrangements and other abuses of power in police relationships.