Abu Qatada

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Thursday 19th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I will repeat it again. I could not be clearer. [Interruption.] The deadline was on Monday 16 April. The Government took the first opportunity that arose to take action to resume the deportation, and we will do so again when the process through the European Court is finished.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

Does the Home Secretary agree that claiming that 17 April is within three months of 17 January is rather like claiming that new year’s day is on 2 January?

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend has put it extremely well. I suggest that those who are trying to make that claim listen to him carefully.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert]

What hon. Members still do not seem to understand is the importance of deployment and what officers are doing. According to the latest figures from Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary, the proportion of the policing work force who are on the front line is increasing.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

May I read the House a quote from the chairman of the North Yorkshire Police Federation? He said:

“I can never recall a time when officers were so angry. We have been betrayed by a morally redundant Government.”

Given that that quote comes from 2008, does my right hon. Friend agree that the Police Federation has long been worried about police morale and that the best way of improving police morale is to cut the paperwork and bureaucracy and get them out on the streets doing something that they actually joined the police force to do?

[Nick Herbert]

I strongly agree. Those of us who have experienced Police Federation conferences over the years know that they are always lively and robust events. The Labour party knows that too. I note that the chairman of the Police Federation, Paul McKeever, said last year:

“Reading some of their press materials one would be forgiven for thinking that if Labour were in power they would in fact be increasing the police budget”,

whereas we know that Labour is committed to cutting it.

Foreign National Offenders

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

I rather agree with the right hon. Gentleman. The amount of data protection that Ministers are required to observe may well seem absurd, and I can reassure him that I found it absurd as well. Indeed, those sorts of messages go out to Members of Parliament much less frequently than in the past, because I have changed the system.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

Will the Minister share with the House what specific steps he will take to prevent the misuse of human rights law from stopping the deportation of dangerous foreign criminals?

[Damian Green]

As my hon. Friend will know, we produced a consultation document a few months ago. He will have to wait for the final verdict on the deliberations, but he will be as aware as I am that the pleading of human rights—in particular family rights, under article 8 of the European convention on human rights—has been distorted beyond all measure, principally by courts in this country in this instance, rather than by the European Court. We want to send much clearer guidance to our judges, so that they know where the balance should lie between the rights of the individual and the rights of the community, because that balance has got completely out of kilter.

Border Checks Summer 2011

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Wednesday 9th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Margot James]

I will not give way again, as many other Members wish to speak.

I will conclude my remarks by expressing my astonishment, which I am sure many of my constituents share, that Labour Members have sought in such an opportunistic fashion to capitalise on this media storm. Have they no shame? They have proposed this motion in the aftermath of more than 10 years of open and porous borders and what was effectively an amnesty for illegal immigrants. This Government inherited a 450,000 backlog of asylum cases. The Labour party seemed to have a deliberate policy when in power to increase dramatically the number of eastern European workers coming into the country by making Britain one of only two EU member states that did not introduce transitional controls. It was an outrage when seven years ago the then Home Secretary said on television that he expected 70,000 to come from eastern Europe without introducing those transitional controls. There have been allegations that the Labour party deliberately encouraged the policy of mass immigration so as fundamentally to change British society and boost the economy in a completely unsustainable way.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Margot James]

I will not give way, as my time is running out. I apologise to my hon. Friend.

No one voted for the fundamental change brought about in our country over the past 10 years. The Labour party should be doing time for the fraud it served on the British public, rather than seizing the first media storm to challenge the new Government’s commitment to the truly Herculean task of addressing the dire straits into which our immigration system fell when Labour was in power.

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[Charlie Elphicke]

That is a fair point. There are several important ongoing inquiries into what happened, and they are the right thing to do. It is right that the new boss of UKBA should have the licence and ability to supervise his staff—and that includes Brodie Clark. If the new boss takes that view, and the Home Secretary endorses it, that will be the right execution of the chain of command. The House should respect that, and it should respect the need to let the inquires go through and be conducted properly. I appreciate that the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) may not agree, and may want all the papers published on the internet immediately, but the proper processes should be followed and dealt with. We should ensure that we have the most secure borders possible, because our constituents are deeply concerned about what has gone on.

I talk to people on the doorsteps of Dover who tell me, “I am really unhappy about the fact that we have had so many people come into this country,” and it is a matter of public record that about 2.2 million have done so. European Union citizens have in broad terms a free right of entry to come and go, but that does not apply to people outside the area.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Without trying to be too opportunistic, I wonder whether my hon. Friend agrees that when the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) told the House that concerns over immigration, border controls and asylum were just “nonsense” and apparently “huff and puff” in many of the tabloid newspapers, he showed that he has no credibility on the subject—and neither do the Labour party.

[Charlie Elphicke]

I thank my hon. Friend for that point, and he is right. The hon. Gentleman discussed the matter in a question on the EU constitution, and in fairness I should read out his entire remarks. He said to the then Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett):

“The Home Secretary may well have heard over recent days much huff and puff in many of the tabloid newspapers about the draft constitutional treaty and what it will do to border controls and asylum and immigration in Europe. Will he ignore all that nonsense”?—[Official Report, 16 June 2003; Vol. 407, c. 15.]

The then Home Secretary replied: “Yes, I agree entirely.” One gets a perspective from that, but I do not want to labour what is a partisan point. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will be able to read out more of what he said—he did go on; indeed, he does go on—when he gets his own chance to make some remarks.

I shall close with the concerns of my constituents. We need more controls for people from outside the European Union. The figures reported by the labour market survey show a total increase of 966,000 in employment between quarter 1 of 2004 and quarter 3 of 2010—that is, 966,000 people not born in the UK. UK-born employment fell by 334,000, while foreign-born UK employment rose by 1.297 million. Of those, 530,000 were born in the EU8 countries. The essential point is that the majority—800,000—were born outside those countries. We see immigration as somehow an EU problem, but there is a bigger problem with people born outside those areas—people for whom we can take controls. I hope that in time we will not only do that, but do more to make the Home Office fit for purpose, after the mess of the past 13 years.

Policing and Crime

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Monday 23rd May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Gentleman is right, and I know that he has spent considerable time looking at the issue of DNA. When the police analysed the offences in 2008-09—just one year’s worth of offences—they found that there were 79 matches for very serious crimes, including murder, manslaughter and rape, which they would not have got had it not been for the DNA database. The concern is about not holding DNA for people who are not charged, even though they might have been suspected of a very serious offence and where the reason for not charging may not be that they are now thought to be innocent, but simply that there are difficulties, as, perhaps in a rape case—we know it is sometimes difficult to take such a case through the criminal justice system.

The Government are out of touch with their plans to end antisocial behaviour orders. The Home Secretary has said that she wants to end ASBOs because she is worried that they are being breached, but what is her answer? Her answer is to replace them with a much weaker injunction, with greater delays, which offenders can breach as many times as they like. She is removing the criminal enforcement for serious breaches of ASBOs and removing interim ASBOs altogether, making it much harder for communities, police and local authorities to get urgent action when serious cases arise. No matter how many times an offender breaches the new crime prevention injunctions or ignores the warnings of the police, they will still not get a criminal penalty. They are not so much a badge of honour as a novelty wrist band. How does that help communities that want to see antisocial behaviour brought down?

The area that I worry about most is child protection. The Home Secretary has now been advised that there are serious loopholes in her plans—by the Children’s Commissioner, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the Children’s Society, Action for Children, the Scout Association, the Football Association, the Lawn Tennis Association and countless other national sporting bodies. Her plans still mean that someone could be barred from working with children and yet still get part-time or voluntary work in a school or children’s sports club and the organisation would not even be told that they had been barred. She really must stop and think again on this or she will be putting children at risk.

Time and again the Home Secretary is undermining the powers of the police and the authorities to fight crime. Time and again she is telling them to fight with one hand behind their backs. Worrying signs are already emerging. In Yorkshire, the police are saying that their figures show that crime has gone up this year. In the west midlands it is the same. Over the 13 years of the Labour Government, crime fell by 40%. The risk of being a victim of crime is now at its lowest since the British crime survey began and there is rising confidence in the police, but people want crime to keep falling. She is putting that at risk.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

The right hon. Lady has confirmed that she agrees with the independent inspectorate of constabulary that £1 billion-worth of savings can be made to the police without affecting front-line services. Could she share with the House what challenges she made to the Home Office budget when she was Chief Secretary to the Treasury in 2008-09 to remove this inefficiency?

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Gentleman will find that the Home Office made efficiency savings every year, and we can always rely on Chief Secretaries continually to press for them. Before the election, the then Home Secretary set out in the 2009 pre-Budget report, the 2010 Budget and in the policing White Paper a series of areas where, yes, savings could be made. It is right to make savings, but it is also right to ensure that we give the police enough resources to fight crime and to protect the public in their areas.

The Government tell us that they have no choice. That is rubbish. They have made a choice to put the Tory party’s political timetable for deficit reduction ahead of keeping the public safe. They have made a choice to roll back police officers, because they do not believe in public sector action. They are hitting jobs in the economy, but they are hitting law and order, too.

This policy is driven by ideology, not by necessity. The Government are fighting the police rather than fighting crime, and they are making life easier for offenders and harder for victims of crime. They have turned their backs on communities, they are out of touch on crime and justice, and communities throughout the country will pay the price.

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[Mrs May]

If the hon. Gentleman waits, he will find that I am about to come on to the point that he made in his first intervention.

[Andrew Bridgen]

There is a police station earmarked for closure in my constituency that is completely inefficient and unsuitable for modern policing. Local alternatives are cheaper and provide more community access, but is it not a sad indictment that such inefficient buildings are still being used, and is it not better to cut inefficient buildings rather than front-line policing?

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point, and the sadness of the Opposition’s position is that they would not be making such very important decisions that can lead to a better and improved service to the public. I commend my hon. Friend’s local force for being willing to make such decisions.

I said that I would respond to the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) on the difference between the 12% cuts, which HMIC suggested could be made, and the Government’s cuts. He and other Opposition Members who have raised the point in the past, including the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford, have obviously neither read nor understood the HMIC report, so let me tell them what it said.

HMIC found that more than £1.15 billion per year—12% of national police funding—could be saved if only the least efficient police forces brought themselves up to the average level of efficiency. Well, the state of the public finances that Labour left us is such that all forces must raise themselves up to the level not of the average but of the most efficient forces. That could add another £350 million of savings to those calculated in HMIC’s report. But HMIC did not consider all areas of police spending. It did not consider IT or procurement, for example, and it makes absolutely no sense for the police to procure things in 43 different ways, and it makes absolutely no sense to have 2,000 different IT systems throughout the 43 forces, as they currently do.

With a national joined-up approach, better contracts, more joint purchasing, a smaller number of different IT systems and greater private sector involvement, we can save hundreds of millions of pounds—over and above the savings identified by HMIC.

Likewise, HMIC did not consider pay, because that was outside its remit, but in an organisation such as the police, where £11 billion—80% of total revenue spending—goes on pay, there is no question but that pay restraint and pay reform must form part of the package. That is why we believe, subject to any recommendations from the Police Negotiating Board, that there should be a two-year pay freeze in policing, just as there has been across the public sector. That would save at least £350 million—again, on top of HMIC’s savings.

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[Mrs May]

The hon. Gentleman asks what the previous Government did. Well, they did nothing. They said they wanted democratic accountability and then did absolutely nothing about it. I say to him that if democracy is good enough for this House, it is good enough for police accountability.

[Andrew Bridgen]

My right hon. Friend might remember that the last Labour Government did have plans for policing reform. Indeed, they proposed that police forces should merge and spent some £12 million of taxpayers’ money, only ultimately to abort the plans. Does that not show scant regard for the spending of taxpayers’ money?

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend makes a valid and important point about the attitude of the previous Government.

Our reforms are based on the simple premise that the police must be accountable not to civil servants in Whitehall, but to the communities that they serve. That is exactly what directly elected police and crime commissioners will achieve. The legislation for police and crime commissioners has passed through this House and has entered Committee in the other place. We will seek to overturn the recent Lords amendment when the Bill returns to this House. Unlike the existing invisible and ineffective police authorities, the commissioner will be somebody people have heard of, somebody they have voted for, somebody they can hold to account, and somebody they can vote out if they do not help the police to cut crime.

We now come to the Opposition’s fourth error. It is complete and utter nonsense to suggest there will be no checks and balances on the powers of police and crime commissioners. We have specifically legislated for strong checks and balances. A police and crime panel will scrutinise the police and crime commissioner. The panel will have several key powers, including the power of veto over the police and crime commissioner’s proposed local precept and over the candidate they propose for chief constable. The panel will also make recommendations on local police and crime plans, and will scrutinise the commissioner’s annual report. It will have the power to ask the commissioner to provide information and to sit before it to answer questions. It will also be able to call on Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary for professional judgment over the police and crime commissioner’s proposed decision to dismiss a chief constable.

We have published a draft protocol setting out the relationship between police and crime commissioners and chief constables. The protocol was agreed with the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Association of Police Authorities, the Association of Police Authority Chief Executives, the Met and the Metropolitan Police Authority. A copy has been placed in both House Libraries and copies are available on the Home Office website. The protocol makes it clear that commissioners will not manage police forces, and that they will not be permitted to interfere in the day-to-day work of police officers. The duty and responsibility of managing a police force will fall squarely on the shoulders of the chief constable, as it always has.

We will publish a strategic policing requirement to ensure that commissioners deliver their national policing responsibilities, as well as their local responsibilities. A strengthened HMIC will monitor forces and escalate serious concerns about force performance to Ministers. Finally, the Home Secretary will retain powers to direct police and crime commissioners and chief constables to take action in extreme circumstances, if they are failing to carry out their functions.

The Opposition are simply wrong to say that there will be no checks and balances on police and crime commissioners. There will be extensive checks and balances—the Opposition just choose to ignore them. Of course, unlike the current invisible and unaccountable police authorities, police and crime commissioners will face the strongest and most powerful check and balance there is: the ballot box. This should be a concept with which the Labour party is familiar: if they fail, they get booted out of office.

I will turn to police powers. The police national DNA database, which was established in 1995, has clearly led to a great many criminals being convicted who otherwise would not have been caught. However, in a democracy, there must be limits to any such form of police power. Storing the DNA and fingerprints of more than a million innocent people indefinitely only undermines public trust in policing. We will take innocent people off the DNA database and put guilty people on. While the previous Government were busy stockpiling the DNA of the innocent, they did not bother to take the DNA of the guilty. In March, we gave the police new powers to take DNA from convicted criminals who are now in the community.

Rather than engaging in political posturing, we are making the right reforms for the right reasons. Our proposals will ensure that there is fairness for innocent people by removing the majority of them from the database. By increasing the number of convicted individuals on the database, we will ensure that those who have broken the law can be traced if they reoffend. In all cases, the DNA profile and fingerprints of any person arrested for a recordable offence will be subjected to a speculative search against the national databases. That means that those who have committed crimes in the past and have left their DNA or fingerprints at the scene will not escape justice. The rules will give the police the tools that they need, without putting the DNA of millions of innocent people on the database.

Like DNA, it is clear that CCTV can act as a deterrent to criminals, can help to convict the guilty, and is warmly welcomed by many communities. The Government wholeheartedly support the use of CCTV and DNA to fight crime. However, it is clearly not right that surveillance cameras are being used without proper safeguards. When or where to use CCTV are properly decisions for local areas. It is essential that such measures command public support and confidence. Our proposals for a code of practice will help to achieve just that. If the Opposition disagree, as was clear from the speech by the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford, perhaps they should cast their minds back to the controversy over the use of CCTV cameras in Birmingham in the last year. British policing relies on consent. If that is lost, we all suffer. Sadly, the Opposition do not seem to understand that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Monday 24th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nick Herbert]

I should first of all point out to the hon. Lady what the chief constable of Greater Manchester police actually said. He said that

“the end result will be more resources put into frontline policing and a more efficient and effective service for the people of Greater Manchester.”

If she is going to mount her attack on the basis of police numbers falling, perhaps she will reflect on the fact that police numbers in Greater Manchester fell in the last year of the Labour Government.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

Under the previous Government, more than 4,000 new offences were created—an average of 28 new offences for every month of that Government. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we should not have a deluge of new offences under this Government?

[Nick Herbert]

I agree with my hon. Friend that the previous Government’s record was repeatedly to introduce criminal justice Bills and to create more and more offences. This Government want to ensure that the police can focus on crime fighting rather than on form writing and the bureaucracy that they were landed with by the previous Government.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Monday 13th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Ed Balls (Morley and Outwood) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House declines to give a Second Reading to the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill because it introduces an expensive set of reforms which will do nothing to bring the police closer to the communities they serve; because it risks a single elected politician remote from the frontline overruling operational policing decisions, thus ending one hundred and seventy years of tradition of police independence from politicians; because it gives insufficient attention to the risks of police force collaboration being undermined by the creation of individually elected police commissioners; and because the Government has indicated that it will implement this expensive and disruptive reform in the same year as the Government is making the biggest annual cut to police funding as set out in the Spending Review.

Protecting the public and giving people confidence that they can live free from the fear of crime and antisocial behaviour is the first duty of Government. On the front line in the fight against crime are our police and police community support officers, who do a difficult, sometimes dangerous job with great professionalism. We should start by congratulating our police, who, in record numbers, under Conservative and Labour Governments since 1994, have delivered a 50% fall in crime. We congratulate them on that achievement. We will support the Government, where we can, to ensure that our police have the resources and the powers that they need to do the job.

It is right, too, as the Home Secretary said, that the police must be close to the local communities they serve and be responsive to the views of local communities in order to be accountable to the taxpayer. I pay tribute to the reforms made in recent years by Labour Home Secretaries who have introduced neighbourhood policing, which has ensured that the police are embedded in our communities. That is an achievement of which Labour Members can be very proud.

However, we will argue in Committee that there is more that we can do to deepen that accountability at the force level and at the neighbourhood level to ensure that the police are properly and fully responsive to local communities. I have to say to the Home Secretary that the approach to police accountability that the coalition is pursuing in the Bill is absolutely not the answer to that challenge. Indeed, the judgment of the Association of Police Authorities, which said that elected police commissioners are the wrong reform at the wrong time, is looking more prescient by the day.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman cast his mind back to the cuckoo months of the previous Prime Minister’s Administration, when the then Home Secretary, the former Member for Redditch, considered the idea of elected chiefs of police and then discarded it, not because of politicisation or fears about cost, but because of lobbying from Labour councillors who did not want to lose their lucrative positions on police authorities?

[Ed Balls]

I merely draw the hon. Gentleman’s attention to the excellent House of Commons research report on the Bill, which makes it absolutely clear, in terms, that the then Home Secretary rejected that proposal because it would lead to the politicisation of our police, which is exactly why we are opposing these measures.

Look at the storm that is now gathering around the Home Secretary. Over the past few days, we have seen the events in Sweden—[Interruption.] Hon. Gentlemen mock the events that are happening. We are seeing a rising terrorist threat. We saw the events of last Thursday and the statement that we had to have this afternoon about disorder on our streets. We have the Olympics coming up the year after next, with the Home Secretary now proposing to force through a 20% cut in the Olympic policing budget.

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[Michael Ellis]

I very much agree. Of course we all recognise and cherish the right of people to protest in this country; we have an extremely liberal democracy that allows and, indeed, encourages it. It has however, reached a point of utter nonsense in Parliament square gardens.

The Vagrancy Act 1824 can be used to remove these people because they are either

“in the open air, or under a tent”,

and committing an offence under that provision. The maximum penalty for breaching it is a fine at level 1 of the standard scale, which is a maximum of £200. However, Members will be interested to know that if a person is prosecuted a second time for this offence, they can then be classified as “an incorrigible rogue”. The provision then allows the magistrates to remit the matter to the Crown court for sentence. Whereas on first prosecution the maximum sentence is a £200 fine, on second conviction for the same offence the maximum penalty would be up to 12 months’ imprisonment. That might well act as a disincentive to those encamping themselves on Parliament square, encouraging them to move on. The only requirements for prosecution are that the people concerned have been given an opportunity to take shelter elsewhere and have not availed themselves of that opportunity; that they have persistently ignored reasonably accessible alternatives; and that their remaining in situ would have offensive consequences or those consequences would appear likely to occur. I think that the House could well deal with the encampment by means of a prosecution before the Bill is given Royal Assent.

I have dealt with two clauses. I have only two minutes in which to cover several hundred more, but let me say a little about the proposal relating to police commissioners. It is a fundamentally democratic proposal, which I strongly support. Only a tiny number of people currently know that police authorities even exist.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Does my hon. Friend agree that in this country we police with consent—the consent of the people—and that there is no better way of securing the consent of the people than a democratic election?

[Michael Ellis]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It has been quite strange to observe Opposition members baulking at the suggestion that police and crime commissioners should be elected. One would have expected them to support the democratic process.

Oral Answers to Questions

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I simply do not recognise the picture that the hon. Lady has set out in relation to youth services across the country. I would also remind her of the extremely effective point that my right hon. Friend the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice made just now in response to the shadow Home Secretary—namely, that the Government have had to take the recent decisions on funding because of the mess that the last Labour Government left the finances in. We will be looking very closely at the support that we can provide in relation to specific issues about youth crime, to ensure that we are able to help young people not to go down the route of crime and to ensure that they are able to fulfil their full potential and develop the life that they deserve.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

In my constituency, there are many voluntary organisations providing key services such as children’s centres and youth services. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is essential to maintain the funding for those voluntary organisations that are doing such key work?

[Mrs May]

I pay tribute to the voluntary organisations that are doing key work in my hon. Friend’s constituency, and indeed in other constituencies up and down the country. This is a very good example of the big society in action. As he will be aware, the Government are putting support into voluntary organisations; £100 million is being made available to help voluntary organisations in the difficult times ahead.

Immigration

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mark Tami]

I accept the hon. Gentleman’s point that, in some aspects, tier 1 has gone wrong, but we should not put the whole thing in the bin and say, “We are going to introduce a blanket ban at some point when we reach some quota that is made up as we go along.” I accept that there are problems, but I am discussing a company that directly employs and pays such workers; they do not come to this country to look for work.

ICTs are not a substitute for trained local employees. In fact, they are quite the reverse, because the vast majority of ICTs are trainers themselves who train local employees. They have helped Toyota to improve the productivity of its UK plants, which have become some of the company’s leading plants throughout the world. I am sure that we all applaud that. The ICTs are paid by Toyota; they pay taxes locally and pay money into the local economy; and they have helped to create and maintain many thousands of jobs, as well as to help our export efforts.

I asked a question in Business, Innovation and Skills questions today, because, although I welcome the statement about ICTs, I know there is still a feeling that, given the levels being discussed, the policy is being made up as we go along. We have to clear up the situation as quickly as possible, because many companies are worried about exactly how it will work. Toyota employs 3,500 people in the UK, but throughout the entire business it employs on average only 50 ICTs each year.

I am concerned, because those ICTs are key workers, and if we say to Toyota and other companies, “At some point, you will not be able to site the key workers who do that very important work,” we will affect their decisions about whether to invest more money. I accept that it is probably a marginal decision, but if it is a close call, those companies might start to think, “Should we put our money here or somewhere else?” Somewhere else might mean somewhere prepared to make those guarantees.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the requirement for skilled workers from abroad reflects the failure of the previous Government’s education and training policies?

[Mark Tami]

I am about to move on to training, so if the hon. Gentleman waits a few moments he will hear what I have to say.

There is a concern, because we are introducing extra barriers, which, for international companies, might affect their decision about whether to invest in the UK. I have given examples of two companies with major concerns about the effects of the cap, illustrating the point that, if we apply the cap in a way that greatly concerns business, we could increase rather than reduce UK unemployment. It is simplistic to believe that, if we stop more people from coming in, UK workers will suddenly pick up all those jobs.

As the hon. Gentleman said, that prompts the question: why do we in this country not have the skills we need? The simple answer is: we have failed to train the people to meet our needs. Like the previous Government and the Government before them, the current Government are talking about more apprentices and more training; no doubt future Governments will do the same. The issue is a major problem, and we have not addressed it so far. It is all very well talking about a cap or whatever, but unless we really address the skill base and training need in this country, we will never solve the problem.

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[Mark Tami]

The point that I am trying to make—and the hon. Gentleman’s point, I think—is that we have to address our training needs. Just stopping a person coming in does not address that problem. We still do not have the skill base. We lag behind other countries, and we have done so for many years. I am not saying that we got everything right, and I am certainly not saying that the current Government have got everything right. We will be having the same argument for many years to come.

We have to admit that some UK private industry has been reluctant to train people. Many companies see training as an avoidable cost rather than as an investment. For too long, rather than training people themselves, companies have preferred to poach a skilled employee who has been trained by another company. After a time, that becomes a bit of a vicious circle. Many people from companies, particularly smaller companies, have asked me what the point is of training somebody. They invest a lot of time and money in doing it, but then the bigger company down the road comes in, offers the employee more money and off that employee goes. Those companies say that they might as well not train anybody in the first place.

In the past, we had a number of nationalised industries; whatever their merits, most people will accept that they trained an awful lot of people to a very high standard. Many of those people drifted off to the private sector. After privatisation, one of the first things to suffer was the number of people being trained—numbers were cut and shareholders became the fundamental concern. We saw a big drop-off in the number of employees being trained by companies such as British Telecom, British Gas and the old electricity companies. People were not going from the public sector to the private sector in the same numbers to fill the gap that the private sector has always failed to fill.

I know that this will get absolutely no support from Government Members, but I support a training levy: a company of a certain size should have an obligation to train a certain number of people. That would mean a level playing field. It might address the problem of some companies not training people because they are worried—

[Andrew Bridgen]

Do we not already have a levy on companies? It is called corporation tax.

[Mark Tami]

The hon. Gentleman says that corporation tax is a levy, but does it address the training issue for companies? No, it does not.

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[Chris Skidmore]

I certainly recognise that, back in 2004, the previous Government failed to address the problem of transitional controls when negotiating with the EU. If the EU is to expand, the current Government will ensure that those controls are put in place, as is absolutely necessary.

I certainly welcome the current plans to halve the net migration figure—currently 200,000—by 2015 and also the cap on annual non-EU immigration. We can have a debate today on what the figure for the cap should be, but I believe that it must be in the tens of thousands, drastically lower than the hundreds of thousands that we were witnessing until recently.

Above all, as a Government and a Parliament, we must send out a clear message. My constituents in Kingswood want a Government who are finally in control of their immigration policy—a Government who are policing their borders and standing up for the British people.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Does my hon. Friend agree that there is an argument for controlling immigration that would be obvious to anyone with a basic grasp of mathematics? It is that we are an island of limited resources. The more people there are in the country, the less, on average, every single one of us will get.

[Chris Skidmore]

I certainly agree that our circumstances as an island place us in an unusual situation compared with the rest of Europe.

--- Later in debate ---

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

I am very pleased to participate in this debate. I am grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) for proposing it and to the hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames), who cannot be here today. I do not necessarily share all their views on this subject, but they are both entirely right to say that immigration is a matter of overwhelming concern to the public.

It is with a degree of trepidation that I speak on this topic. Unlike my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead, I have done comparatively little work on immigration. I do not pretend to have all the answers, and I certainly do not pretend that my remarks will please everyone, but as someone who represents a part of London that has benefited enormously from the flow of people from all over the world I feel compelled to say something about the conundrum in which we now find ourselves, where the Government’s desire to see the “brightest and best” come to the UK is contradicted by an artificial, policy-driven cap that prevents those very people from coming in the numbers our economy needs. It is a conundrum in which thousands of people, many of whom have families, have been told by the UK Border Agency that they face removal or deportation, yet for years have been left to get on with their lives in towns and cities up and down the country. It is a conundrum surprisingly summed up best by our tabloids. One day it is “Save Gamu Nhengu”, the next it is back to the old refrain of “Fewer immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers”. I meet people such as Gamu every week in my surgery, who have come to our country to make a better life for themselves and their families. Not everyone has been on “The X Factor”, but many have equally strong cases for staying in the UK.

Immigration was one of the top concerns raised by my constituents during the election, as it was for many other Members. In fact, I would say it was probably in the top three subjects of conversation on the doorstep, along with concerns about the economy and a general disillusionment with politics and politicians. Time and again, I spoke to people who believed that immigrants were taking their jobs and homes. The vast majority of those people were not racist and some were first or second-generation immigrants themselves, but they were often people who were struggling to make ends meet, had seen significant changes in their neighbourhood and were looking for someone to blame for their own hardship. Many held the belief that immigrants were jumping the queue for social housing, and others felt that eastern European construction workers were taking jobs from their sons and grandsons.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Does the hon. Lady agree that those in our society who are the most vulnerable to the next wave of uncontrolled immigration are not her or Conservative Members but the previous wave of immigrants? They will have to compete for the scant resources in our inner-city areas.

[Heidi Alexander]

I do appreciate that recent waves of immigrants are sometimes the most deprived people in urban areas, and I understand their concerns, but I believe that a lot of them respect the contribution that former waves of immigrants have made, and they want to feel that society’s resources are shared fairly and that we take an appropriate, fair but firm approach to immigration.

I have talked a little about the stereotypes of the Daily Mail about why people are concerned about immigration. Those stereotypes have now taken root in many communities across the UK. I understand the concerns of my constituents. I understand that when a family from a different country who speak a different language move into a council house down the road, constituents might question why their daughter is still living at home with them and is number 4,323 on the housing waiting list. However, who is to say that their new neighbours are not renting that house privately? Who is to say that the house was not sold many years ago under the right to buy, or that the main breadwinner in the family is not a highly skilled hospital doctor who has come to the UK to fill a position in our NHS that desperately needed to be filled?

Aviation Security Incident

Andrew Bridgen Excerpts

Monday 1st November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his kind remarks, and I agree with him absolutely. By definition, the very nature of the secret services is that part of what they do is secret. It is important that efforts are made where possible to explain to the public the sort of work being done and the sort of issues being addressed. Indeed, there has been a series of speeches in recent weeks—from the director general of MI5, the head of GCHQ and, now, Sir John Sawers—explaining the operation of each of those different agencies, but of course it is axiomatic that secret work has to be conducted in secret.

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

I would like to praise the security services and the staff of East Midlands airport, which lies in my constituency. By intercepting that package, they may well have saved lives. Everyone who contributed to that successful operation can be rightly proud. However, I would like to ask the Home Secretary for an assurance that additional screening will be introduced only if it is clearly shown to be necessary, and that any such measures would be implemented on a Europe-wide or worldwide basis, and not in the UK alone.

[Mrs May]

rose—

[Andrew Bridgen]

In other words, what we need to do is avoid UK-only measures.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I think that we have got the drift of the hon. Gentleman’s inquiry.