Building Regulations and Fire Safety

Debate between Adam Afriyie and James Brokenshire

Thursday 17th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I understand the point that the hon. Gentleman makes about the uncertainty and the cost of interim measures that may be put in place. One developer in Croydon has done the right thing: Barratt Developments has told residents of the Cityscape flats that it will cover fire safety and cladding costs. The message is that others should be doing the same.

[Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)]

I am conscious that it is very difficult to define combustibility in technical terms, so can my right hon. Friend reassure me that during the consultation he will be cognisant of the standards that underpin the words we use? One may say that something is non-combustible, but it can be combustible in certain circumstances. So we want to push towards a ban on our general understanding of combustibility, but that must be underpinned by a definition of the standards behind that.

[James Brokenshire]

My hon. Friend makes a point about the complexity and technical nature of this issue. I am sure we will reflect carefully as part of the consultation.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Adam Afriyie and James Brokenshire

Monday 9th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Adam Afriyie (Windsor) (Con)]

4. What progress her Department has made on deporting foreign criminals from the UK.

[The Minister for Security and Immigration (James Brokenshire)]

We removed nearly 5,100 foreign criminals from the UK last year, and more than 22,000 since April 2010. More than 400 foreign national offenders have been removed under “deport now, appeal later” powers introduced in the Immigration Act 2014.

[Adam Afriyie]

If we are to have a country that is at ease with itself, deporting foreign criminals, while not easy, is absolutely necessary. The Home Secretary and her Department have done a great job and have shown great leadership in this area. That bodes well for the future of the country under any Conservative Government. Does the Minister agree that if we are to have a country that feels at ease with itself even with minimal levels of immigration, we must continue to redouble our efforts to get rid of foreign criminals?

[James Brokenshire]

Foreign nationals who abuse our hospitality by committing crime in this country should be in no doubt about our determination to deport them. That is why we introduced the changes in the Immigration Act. Despite the 28% increase in the number of legal challenges, we are deporting foreign national offenders, and the measures we have taken are speeding up that process.

Migration Statistics

Debate between Adam Afriyie and James Brokenshire

Thursday 26th June 2014 Westminster Hall

[James Brokenshire]

My hon. Friend did mention that specific aspect. The current discussions with the ONS indicate that its current approach is, rather, to look at other forms of data—other administrative data, such as those from the Department for Work and Pensions—to better inform the statistics. That is its preferred option for this type of work. I give a commitment to discuss the issues again as part of our discussions with the ONS, but that is its preferred approach instead of setting up a separate survey. I have noted the point that my hon. Friend has made, following on from the Select Committee’s recommendations, and we will check and confer with the ONS that that remains its preferred response in providing more localised data in order to inform this subject more carefully. That is certainly the feedback that we have had thus far in respect of what might be beneficial or might help to supplement the information provided by the international passenger survey.

The proposal to increase the IPS may not provide the best value for money, but that does not mean that we or the ONS are at all complacent, or that we do not recognise where improvements can be made. In that context—I think my hon. Friend the Member for Windsor advanced this point—it has been acknowledged that there were problems with the IPS’s estimates following the large surge in eastern European migrants following EU enlargement in 2004. We know that the absence of transitional controls, unlike elsewhere, in the majority view resulted in an unprecedented and surprising number of new arrivals in the years that followed. As my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex highlighted, that significant change also surprised the statisticians. That is why the ONS has taken steps since then to address the coverage of the IPS survey. The ONS is rightly independent and I cannot speak for it, but the revised statistics it has published indicate that some of the issues have been resolved by the size of the survey and some of the specific questions that are being raised as part of its migration statistics improvement programme. The problems that the ONS found were in the survey design, and they have been addressed by recalibrating the survey’s coverage and increasing the sample size as part of that programme.

Questions have been asked about whether the figures are reliable enough for the Government to use them as a basis for our aim on net migration. I accept that any reliance on a survey to monitor a policy objective inevitably means confidence intervals in the central estimates. However, this is not a new issue. Survey estimates have been used in this way for many years to monitor Government policy and societal changes more generally. They are well-established scientific techniques used to ensure that social surveys are well designed and their estimates robust. That is why I would take the advice of the UK Statistics Authority that the central statistical estimate derived from the IPS is currently the best available estimate of net migration.

It must also be remembered that we have a lot of information on migration to monitor migration policy from a wide range of other sources that provide a clear and coherent picture of trends. That picture is reported every quarter in the ONS’s migration statistics quarterly report, and I welcome the steps that the ONS is taking to improve the way in which the data are reported and presented. Those data sources continue to be developed and improved—for example, with the release of additional information by the Home Office on certificates of acceptance of study. The new data allow the public and us to see the impact of the Government’s policies to close down bogus colleges. My hon. Friends will no doubt be aware of my most recent announcements on this issue.

As well as reporting on trends, it is important to look at the impact of migration, and we are grateful for the excellent work of the ONS, through its reports from the 2011 census and other sources, in informing the British public clearly and authoritatively about the significant changes in population that we have seen over the past decade and the impact of migration on the make-up of the population in the UK.

[Adam Afriyie]

I appreciate some of the assurances the Minister is giving. General key concerns are whether the changes to which he is referring—I appreciate that they are not all in place—will mitigate the criticisms or observations by the Royal Statistical Society and the Oxford migration observatory that, with the present statistics and information, we cannot at the moment work out reliably people’s source country or changes in the migratory patterns from individual source countries in the EU or elsewhere, or the impact on specific regions in the United Kingdom. Is he satisfied that with the changes being made those concerns will be mitigated?

[James Brokenshire]

I will come to exit checks. The way in which advance passenger information data can be used to supplement and for support is important and I will address that directly. I highlight the fact that there are other sources of data. My hon. Friend may be aware of the workforce data survey and the use of the statistics for national insurance registrations. The IPS itself highlights and provides data in its reports and analysis in respect of different countries and provides separate analyses of where those flows come from, such as net migration from outside and from within the EU, and it produces the graphs that my hon. Friend has no doubt seen, tracking those back over 30 years. It gives a sense of long-term trends; it is important to understand where there may be growth in particular areas and what that might mean in terms of informing policy.

It is important to recognise some of the excellent and innovative research and analysis that has increased our knowledge of migration—for example, the migrant journey reports, the report on the social and public service impact of migration, and the recent report on labour market changes. All that work is critical in helping us to understand and appreciate the impact of migration on our country.

I highlighted the 2011 census, which provides extremely valuable data that has captured a much broader range of information on migrants than any census previously. The new census questions on the passports that people hold and the length of time they have lived in the UK recognise the strong public concerns about immigration. We welcome that new statistical resource, which will go some way to meeting the Committee’s recommendation, but I will come to further refinements.

The Home Office has commissioned additional data to inform our understanding, such as a new question on emigration in the international passenger survey, the first results from which are now in the public domain, and a new question for the labour force survey on why foreign respondents had originally come to the UK. The breadth and depth of that work reinforces the fact that no single data source can provide a comprehensive picture of migration. That is why I also welcome the work in the UK statistical system to develop and enhance the range of sources, which together mean that we have a picture of migration that I believe is as good as that available to any other country across the globe.

I noted what the shadow Minister said about filling out the ESTA form and how that might be used. It is interesting to note that the US uses population surveys, not the ESTA system, to measure migration. It is important to recognise the interrelationship between the two, and that in some respects the information from e-Borders may help to supplement, but not replace, other information.