London Metropolitan University

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 3rd September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

I am grateful for the support of my hon. Friend and, more widely, of the Home Affairs Committee. For some time, it has urged me and my predecessors in the previous Government to ensure that proper action is taken against those who abuse the student visa system. We have already taken extremely effective action against the bogus colleges referred to by the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) in his initial question, and over 500 fewer institutions are able to bring in foreign students as a result of the tough and proper requirements that we have placed on those colleges. If the rules apply to the private sector, they must apply to the public sector as well. Universities must obey the rules just as much as private colleges.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

The Opposition fully support the Government’s attempts to tackle bogus colleges and stop immigration fraud. If colleges are incapable of ensuring that every applicant is a bona fide student and speaks English sufficiently well to study, they should lose their highly trusted status. However, our universities are vital to Britain’s economic future. We need to foster an international reputation for high-value education, not undermine it. The Government have engaged in classic diversionary tactics. First, they briefed the press on Saturday that London Met was going to lose its highly trusted status. On Sunday, the Minister denied it on the radio, but then announced it—surprise, surprise—on the day that statistics showing that the Government have no prospect of reaching their declared immigration target were published. Talk about dither!

Will the Minister confirm precisely how many of the 2,700 students with certificates to attend studies at London Met are, in his terms, illegitimate—precisely how many? How many are already in the country and how will the Minister establish their whereabouts? How many does he expect to seek to deport, and when? What will happen to those arriving at British ports in forthcoming days? The Minister accepts that the vast majority of London Met students are legitimate, genuine. Is he really saying to a foreign student who has saved up for years, paid their way, done nothing wrong and studied hard for two years at London Met, that they should simply pack their bags and go back home? I hope not.

The Government have acted at the most disruptive time of year, in the most disruptive way—yet more ministerial incompetence. Legitimate international students bring in £3.3 billion to this country’s economy. I just say to the Minister, “Baby”, “Bathwater.”

[Damian Green]

Let me try to find some substance to respond to in the hon. Gentleman’s rant. On his first point, I pray in aid something that I know he is familiar with, as I know he is assiduous in following his brief: the conclusion of the most recent report from the Home Affairs Committee on the work of the UK Border Agency. It was published on 23 July and states:

“If a sponsor is failing to comply with their duties or is deceiving the Agency then their licence should be revoked. The Agency should take tough enforcement action against those who abuse the immigration system.”

I am very glad that within weeks of making that recommendation the Committee has been able to see the Government carrying it out.

The hon. Gentleman made the ludicrous point that this announcement was made on the same day as the immigration figures were published. I rather regret that, because I would have liked more coverage of net migration coming down by 36,000 and visas being issued at their lowest level since 2005, precisely because the figures show that—after the years of neglect under the Labour Government—we now have a Government who are effective in bringing immigration down.

The hon. Gentleman asked a specific question about arrivals. The Border Force is instructed to allow into the country those who arrive with a visa for London Metropolitan university. We will give them temporary leave to remain and they can take part in the taskforce process. The taskforce is setting up a clearing house to find other sources. He also asked about numbers, but he may not have been following the story closely enough. The whole point about the problem with London Metropolitan’s system is that it does not know whether the students are turning up for lectures. It does not know whether they can speak English or not. As I have already detailed, of the sample of 600, more than 60% have one or more problems. It is precisely because London Metropolitan does not know the status of its students that we say that it has a systemic problem, and that is why we have had to revoke its licence.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 9th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Lynne Featherstone]

I am sure that all Members have people coming to their surgeries with noise complaints that have gone on for years uninvestigated. As part of the reforms set out in the recent White Paper on antisocial behaviour, we propose to introduce the community protection notice, which will give front-line professionals a single flexible power to deal quickly with any inconsiderate behaviour that is affecting a community’s quality of life. The notice will also give the police new powers to deal with antisocial noise. We are putting power into the hands of local communities with the new community trigger—

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Too long.

[Lynne Featherstone]

It may be too long for the hon. Gentleman, but it is a darn sight more important to the people who live in these communities and want to use the community triggers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Green]

The times were unacceptable in April, and anything beyond the service level clearly remains unacceptable. For non-EEA passengers we met our targets 90% of the time in June, an increase from 75% in April. In response to those large passenger volumes, we increased the number of staff at Heathrow by more than 50% this weekend. We now have a new central control room to enable us to deploy people more quickly and efficiently, and we have mobile teams to fill the gaps more speedily than ever before.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I do not trust those statistics, to be honest. [Interruption.] I trust the Minister, but I do not trust the statistics. I went to Stansted last week, and I know that UK Border Agency staff start counting the people in the queue only when they arrive in the hall itself, which physically cannot take more than 20 minutes. They do not count the people who are waiting on the escalators, or the people in the corridor, or the people round two bends or over the bridge or all the way back to the aeroplanes. When will the Government publish proper statistics, involving proper, independent counting, which would show that they are failing in their primary duty?

[Damian Green]

I am happy to reassure—and, hopefully, calm down—the hon. Gentleman. The figures I was citing were not border force or Home Office figures; they were BAA figures. BAA publishes the monthly figures every month on its website. Those June figures were figures from BAA, not the Government. I hope the hon. Gentleman trusts BAA to produce reliable figures.

UK Border Agency

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Wednesday 4th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that that is a problem, but that does not mean that we do not have to try to make sure that such deportations happen, because that would be a huge saving to the taxpayer and help us to meet the targets that the Government clearly want us to reach.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend referred to the TARDIS, as he calls it, but there are other cases in which people who have not yet been deported are simply categorised as “unknown issues”, so we have the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns. That is a bizarre way of dealing with people, is it not?

[Keith Vaz]

It is indeed. There seems to be a paralysis on the part of senior officials of the UKBA, who just create more of these archives and move the backlog into different areas without trying to solve the problem.

The archive has now been reduced from 98,000 to 93,000, and from January to March 2012 it fell to 80,000. When Mr Whiteman, the chief executive of the UKBA, who has been brought in as a new broom to try to make sure that these matters are sorted out, last appeared before the Committee, he promised us that the archive will, in effect, be closed by 31 December 2012, and we will hold him to that promise. His predecessor, Lin Homer, who because of the fabulous work that she did at the UKBA has been promoted and is now one of the permanent secretaries at the Treasury, gave us a promise when she said, in answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick), who had requested that the legacy cases be concluded by the end of last summer, that every single legacy case would be concluded by the end of last year. [Interruption.]As can be seen from the reaction of right hon. and hon. Members here today, that has not happened. The UKBA has probably just created another of the filing systems where it puts various files when it does not know what has happened to the people involved.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

To follow on directly from the nationalist argument that we have just heard, I presume that when Scotland is an independent country, if it is an independent country, it will join the European Union. Membership of the European Union requires that all new members are fully signed up to Schengen. Consequently, there will be a border between Scotland and England, so the Scottish border agency will spend most of its time dealing with whether people from England can go into Scotland. It is a nonsense.

A large number of right hon. and hon. Members have spoken in the debate this afternoon. It is an oddity that the debate is on a set of reports in relation to the UK Border Agency, yet it is also about spending £11 billion on the Home Office—a curiosity of how we do our financial expenditure in the House. We heard from my hon. Friends the Members for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) and for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), and from the hon. Members for Bedford (Richard Fuller) and for Bradford East (Mr Ward). Most notably, the greatest panjandrum of the lot, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) kicked us off, and my hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson) spoke as well.

In his speech my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) said one thing to which I took exception. He referred to a 72-year-old as being old. I am sure he thinks a 72-year-old is not old but is just coming to the prime of their life.

[Sir Gerald Kaufman]

I would say that a 72-year-old is gradually approaching the prime of her life.

[Chris Bryant]

And wisdom is slowly descending upon her.

The right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), who is not in his seat but who, I am sure, will be back in a moment, referred to the fact that a large part of the casework of many hon. Members relates to the UKBA, and we heard the voice of those Members in the Chamber this afternoon. It was noticeable that only one Back-Bench Conservative Member made a speech in the debate, which is different from previous occasions. The right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) spoke on behalf of the Liberal Democrats.

The role of the UKBA is to provide an immigration system that is efficient, effective, humane and as watertight as possible, and it must surely be an own goal if people can come in and out of our country or overstay, willy-nilly or, if the system is so complex that it is easy to circumvent or utterly impossible for an ordinary sane person to understand, or if the queues are so lengthy at our airports or ports that the UK’s reputation as a place to do business or as a place to come as a tourist is harmed, or if it costs too much money to run.

In the motion that we are discussing, we are spending £11,034,371,000. That is a significant amount of money and our constituents would want to make sure that it was being spent well.

As the various reports referred to in the debate—two of which are by the Home Affairs Committee—have made clear, the UKBA has not had an easy time. Last summer’s experiments by the Home Secretary meant that warnings index checks were suspended 354 times. They were suspended on European economic area school groups of under-16s travelling by coach at juxtaposed controls, originally with the permission of Ministers. The policy was then extended to sea ports and the Eurostar, which Ministers were notified of, but from February 2011 the age restriction was completely lifted without any degree of permission. The agency’s records on the suspension of warnings index checks were extremely poor, as Mr John Vine has testified. The secure ID was suspended 482 times between June 2010 and November 2011, 463 of which were at Heathrow, the country’s busiest airport.

We understand that this was all supposedly because the UKBA interpreted the Immigration Minister’s letter of 27 January 2011 as approval to lift the secure ID. He believes that that was not his intention whatsoever. The Home Secretary made clear her opposition to the moves being mooted on 13 April, yet it continued. This is obviously a sign of an organisation in chaos. Indeed, the independent chief inspector’s report states that

‘the language used in both the “Summer pressures” submission to Ministers and the response provided’—

in other words, by Ministers—

“was not clear and as a result was open to misinterpretation… there was confusion amongst staff”

not least because the Home Secretary’s office note did not clearly define any of the terms being used.

I would like to refer to another report by the independent chief inspector, on border control operations at Heathrow terminal 3 from August to November 2011, the same period covered by the Home Affairs Committee’s report. The inspector identified even more worrying signs, first of an

“inconsistent application of border security checks”,

and secondly of “completely inadequate” record keeping in two thirds of the cases examined. That matters, because all the references we have heard in the debate to paperwork further down the system being inadequate, poorly looked after, incomplete or disappearing into the black hole, or the Tardis, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East referred to it, stem from inadequate record keeping at the beginning. However, the report found such inadequate record keeping not only at terminal 3, but at Gatwick’s north terminal.

In addition, the inspector found:

“The introduction of team based working in July 2011, coupled with a new shift working system and the amalgamation of immigration and detection roles at Heathrow was far too much organisational change during the busiest time of the year at Heathrow.”

That goes to the heart of the point my hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington made on how staff morale can be kept up so that they do an effective and efficient job if they are trying to cope with so much change at the same time. Perhaps we are demanding too much of them. The inspector also found that all this was

“complicated by staff reductions of 15% at Terminal 3”.

We want secure borders, but it is difficult to provide them if we do not provide enough resources to allow the job to be done properly. When I visited Stansted on Monday to see the operation there, staff working for the UKBA made it clear to me that all the new staff who have been drafted in to help in the run-up to the Olympics and through the games receive only three days of training. They are unable to do the full job that is necessary and, consequently, there is a real security problem. In addition, the fact that they are suddenly recruiting back from retirement people who were made redundant only last year makes it look as if they do not really know what they are doing.

The report also found that:

“The Agency was failing proactively to deal with absconders,”

and I really want to raise that issue with the Minister, because there is a serious problem with absconders, and it is not just at terminal 3—although the report found that it had increased there

“by 62% between 2009 and 2011.”

Indeed, not only did the figure for those absconding go up, but the figure for people who were captured having absconded went down, falling from 40% to 16%, meaning that during that period alone some 150 people absconded—and have not been found.

I raise the matter because I worry that the general level of absconders is rising throughout the country, so, first, I should be grateful if the Minister said how many people who have been told that they are no longer able to stay in this country are still in this country. Can he pitch a figure? Is it 100,000, 150,000, 250,000? I suspect that it is about 150,000.

Secondly, the Government and the UKBA have absolutely no idea where many of those people may be, or whether they have left the country, and that must surely be a concern, so can the Minister confirm whether all absconders are added to the national police computer, either as wanted or with a local trace mark, so that when somebody pops up in another area it is possible to track them down? If they are not, the UKBA is failing in its task.

I raise one other problem in relation to the independent inspector’s report, namely that of measuring queues. I noticed at Stansted that the UKBA starts measuring the length of a queue only from the moment at which someone enters the terminal building, but the queues often start long before the terminal building, and the time from the moment someone enters the terminal to their passport being dealt with is normally only 20 minutes, because the vast majority of the queue is backed up way down a series of tunnels, on trains and, sometimes, on aeroplanes, so I am distrustful of the figures for queuing times at Stansted.

[Keith Vaz]

I, too, went to Stansted, albeit at a different time from my hon. Friend, and the problem is that, when British citizens return to their own country, they are held by airline officials just before they join the escalators, all the way back to the plane, and that, when they reach the immigration hall, half the kiosks are un-personned.

[Chris Bryant]

Yes, “un-personned”: very correct of my right hon. Friend.

In addition, one of the biggest problems, which applies not only to Stansted but elsewhere, is that many staff who have been brought in to help in the run-up to the Olympics, a known problem that is coming along the track, are not able to work with non-EU passengers, and consequently the moment any arrive there is an enormous back-up. Further, when I was there on Monday morning not a single e-gate was working, and I understand that they were not working at any point at all on Monday.

The fact that e-gates are not working effectively is a significant problem across the estate and at several different ports. When IRIS finally goes in September, the real problem will be whether we have any automated system on which we can rely, so I should be grateful if the Minister commented on the future of automation.

I have one final complaint in relation to the inspector’s report, because at Heathrow terminal 3 there was a 58% drop in the issuing of IS81 forms, on which a passenger is told that they will be subject to further interrogation. That is important, as all too often in a simple desire to cut queues, we are cutting back on security, because staff are not able to do their job properly.

There is a further problem in relation to foreign national prisoners. Of the 5,012 who completed their sentences in 2010-11, 3,248 were removed, 471 were allowed to remain but the cases of 1,300—a staggering figure—are still outstanding. Only 500 of those are detained. There are other unspecified issues with 20 of them and, as I said earlier, 27% of them—some 350—are just categorised as unknown issues. In other words, the UKBA has next to no idea about what is happening with those people or about the likelihood of moving forward in a way that makes their lives easier or our country more secure.

In addition, immigration tribunals overturn UKBA decisions a dramatic number of times—41% of appeals are lost by the UKBA. That is a significant problem. Obviously, it delays people’s ability to get on with their lives and it is a significant additional expense for the UKBA. How will the Minister tackle the problem of so many appeals being lost at tribunal?

I have a minor comment to make about the common travel area, also at Stansted. It was pretty clear that it would be easy for someone to negotiate their way around without going through proper border controls, having printed off a boarding pass pretending that they had flown in from Ireland when in fact they had flown in from somewhere else. I hope that the Minister will be able to close that loophole.

My final point is that the Government are planning to cut staff at the UKBA by 5,300. I believe that that will make it phenomenally difficult for the agency to do its job effectively. In particular, in the run-up to the Olympics, which everybody knew were coming along, we have already seen how difficult it has been to maintain strong security and a decently short length of queue.

Lots of people have been flown in from different parts of the country as emergency measures in the run-up to the Olympics, and the relevant people have been prevented from taking holidays during the Olympics and Paralympics. My concern is that the moment that is over, it will be phenomenally difficult for the UKBA, without those resources, to get anywhere near doing its job properly. We can complain about the UKBA, but if we do not give it the resources to do its job properly, our complaints are worth nothing.

European Convention on Human Rights

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 19th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Geoffrey Cox (Torridge and West Devon) (Con)]

I had not intended to speak, but a number of matters have been raised on which, it seems to me, some light might be thrown. The hon. Members for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) and for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) both questioned the effect of what we are doing, and it is on that point that I hope to shed some light.

This is a limited, practical measure, and one that I support, but I do not hold out an enormous degree of hope that it will have a substantive effect on the exercise of the courts’ discretion. Section 3 of the Immigration Act 1971 provides that the Home Secretary can amend the immigration rules, and it provides for the procedure, by way of negative resolution, by which those rules can be challenged. If they are challenged, the Act requires the Home Secretary simply to consider the points that have been made on the resolution that has disapproved them and alter, as she sees fit, the executive administrative guidance that those rules contain. Today, an attempt is being made to give some democratic force to the alteration of the immigration rules, which the Home Secretary could otherwise have done simply by an Executive act, in the hope that it will communicate to the courts the fact that there has been some consideration by Parliament.

I take the view that that might well have some effect on the courts beyond the fact that they will attach a degree of weight to the Home Secretary’s opinion in any event. It is well established in the human rights jurisprudence that a decision maturely taken by the Executive—in this case a Secretary of State who has a wide range of advice available to her and who can consult experts in the field—to change the existing immigration rules would already be accorded a degree of weight by the courts when they are considering what is a proportionate decision in the application of a specific human right. What the Home Secretary is doing today, which, I submit, the House should applaud, is giving the House an opportunity to voice its opinion on the changes she has decided to make.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

The key point, as I think the Clerks have already made clear, is that we are not deciding on the totality of the changes; we are deciding only on the basis of what is in the motion being debated today. I would not want the hon. and learned Gentleman to conflate the two by mistake.

[Mr Cox]

The courts are more than capable of appreciating that what we are dealing with here is not primary legislation. Primary legislation will be accorded a much greater degree of weight—some people use the word “deference”, but the courts have disapproved it—because there is usually a period of consultation, a Bill might have been scrutinised before it was even brought to the House and a wide range of interests will have been taken into account in the process of scrutiny. A court is more than able to distinguish between a piece of primary legislation and a motion such as the one before us and to see the scope that the motion considers. That is why I say that this process is likely to produce a degree—probably a very modest degree—of additional weight to be accorded to the Home Secretary’s discretion. Her discretion would normally be accorded a degree of weight by the courts, and the motion might add a little more to the changes to the immigration rules than they would already have been accorded.

It is not difficult to interpret what is being done here. It is perfectly valid. The courts will not be deceived or hoodwinked. They will see what we are doing. They will no doubt read, if they take the trouble to go that far down the pages of Hansard, the profoundly principled position that the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington took when he held up his hands and, with a cry of horror, said, “Not with my assent.” But the reality is that the motion will lend some modest substance to the already substantial decision that the Executive and the Home Secretary have taken. She should be applauded for, and congratulated on, giving the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire the opportunity to mount that—one hon. Member described it as a “rant”; I should never be so impolite—extraordinary, eloquent and passionate diatribe, to which he treated the entire House from his position on the Opposition Benches, representing the Scottish National party.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate, which I think we would all agree has been interesting. I note that several of the Members who have spoken are not in their seats, but I will none the less refer to their contributions.

The hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier) spoke about a great number of the wider immigration issues that he believed needed addressing. However, it is important to remember that that is not the subject at hand this evening.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) referred to a constituency case, involving Mr Mohammed, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Hyndburn (Graham Jones) also referred. I think everybody would agree—the Home Secretary tacitly referred to this, albeit without naming the case—that that case is one of the most heinous examples of where it has felt as though the judges were out of step with public opinion, and certainly the opinion in this House. I do not think that one has to be a supporter of The Daily Telegraph or the Daily Mail to hold that view; it seems to me a fairly commonsensical one. Indeed, my right hon. Friend and my hon. Friend detailed what were some pretty horrific incidents and the way in which fairly flimsy excuses were used to remain in this country.

The hon. Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins)—he, too, is not in his place, so I hope that I do not misrepresent him—said, “I want to see all criminals deported as soon as possible.” That would return us to a rather 19th-century understanding of what should happen to criminals in this country. I think he meant that all foreign criminals should be deported as soon as possible, but—[Interruption.] I think that returning to what happened to the Tolpuddle martyrs would—

[Mr Tom Harris]

We are reviewing the policy.

[Chris Bryant]

No; we, at least, are certainly not reviewing it.

However, the hon. Member for Keighley did say something with which I wholeheartedly agreed. He said that it was not racist to want to debate immigration. I have said this at the Dispatch Box before, and I will say it again: just because someone wants to talk about immigration does not make them a racist. There are certainly some people who want to talk about immigration because they are racists, but I believe that everybody has a perfect right to debate this issue, and we should be able to do so calmly and reasonably.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) expressed a view about the motion before us which I think a lot of us had come to when he said, “I no longer know what this debate is about,” and when he referred to the unusual process that has been used. I will refer later to why I think this is not the process for us to go through. I think we have come to a much greater understanding of what the legal implications will be of the decision we take this evening, but he was right to highlight the fact that some of the water had been somewhat muddied by earlier contributions.

[Pete Wishart]

What about the Liberal contribution?

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

We did not have a Liberal contribution—I was going to point that out earlier—but I am sure that the Liberals will be reserving their position for when they form a Government on their own, without the Conservative party.

The hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) made a thoughtful contribution, as usual. He was right to say that the European convention on human rights was never originally intended to have any kind of extra-territorial effect. However, I would merely point out to him that it was not intended to have any effect on whether homosexuals could serve in the military in any country in the United Kingdom or how marriage law should be interpreted. There are undoubtedly aspects of how the ECHR has been interpreted by the Court in Strasbourg that have been significantly beneficial, not only to people in the United Kingdom, but to people in Russia and other signatory countries.

The hon. Gentleman also referred to the shifting goalposts of article 8. That is another area where there is some agreement across the House, and certainly between the two Front Benches. He also pointed out that it would be difficult to be precise about what constituted success in the terms to which the Home Secretary referred at the beginning of the debate. How will we know whether what we are doing today has been successful? It is difficult to be precise.

I would not call the speech by the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) a rant, but it had—

[Pete Wishart]

It was barnstorming.

[Chris Bryant]

I would not call it that, either. I thought the hon. Gentleman’s speech was just wrong, and in some areas inappropriate, although he did unite the House in condemnation of himself—I think that is mostly what he seeks to achieve in politics—so it was quite a success.

The hon. Member for Witham (Priti Patel)—again, she is not in her place—spoke about a whole range of wider immigration issues. All I would say is that today’s debate is not about those wider issues; rather, it is about the specific set of issues that are incorporated in the motion—a motion that is tightly drawn and does not have any papers tagged to it.

My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South (Mr Harris) did a very good job of demolishing the argument of the hon. Member for Perth and—is it “Perth and Perthshire”?

[Pete Wishart]

Perth and North Perthshire.

[Chris Bryant]

I see; otherwise, I would have thought that it was a rather tautological name for a constituency.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: many of our constituents, in many different parts of this country—in Wales, just as in Scotland and England—have significant concerns about matters relating to the deportation of foreign criminals, and they want them addressed better in the criminal justice system.

I always enjoy listening to the hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox), not least because I see him as a very successful barrister, and I am aware that there is a convention in this House that if an hon. Member were to ask another Member who practises at the Bar to represent them in court, that Member would be required to provide their services, free, gratis and for nothing. I therefore look forward to him representing me one day in some action, free, gratis and for nothing. [Interruption.] I think he is mouthing something at me, but I am not quite sure what it is. I know that he was seeking to be helpful to the Government and to support the direction of travel in which they are moving, but I noted that he said, “I do not hold out an enormous amount of hope.” I think he was referring to whether this proposal is going to be a successful manoeuvre, which is partly our concern as well. It is not a concern about the direction of travel, but a concern about whether this measure is precisely the right way in which to steer ourselves in that direction of travel.

The hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) is one of my favourite Members, because I have debated with him so many times—and he also told me once that he loved me, so I cannot dislike him. He referred to the application of the rules of the European Court’s decisions in relation to the courts in the United Kingdom. He, too, said that whether the decisions we make today will have any effect remains to be seen. I say that—and I think he said it, too—not out of a desire to undermine where we want to go, but to ensure that we securely get change in the direction to which many hon. Members have referred.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) made a moving speech about some of the experiences that she has had personally and in dealing with her constituents. In particular, she mentioned the situation facing many women and children. We would do ourselves a disservice if we were to pretend that the European convention on human rights had done nothing to protect the sorely abused rights of women around the world. In many cases, it has acted as a beacon for what a decent society should look like and how a decent society should go about its business.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said that he thought that there would be no Division on the motion. I thought that he might have been having a dig at the hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon when he said that everything goes wrong when lawyers get involved. He was also critical of some of the judges in the European Court of Human Rights because they sometimes did not have the level of qualifications or the amount of experience that we would expect of a British judge. I am certain of the need for reform of the way in which the judges are appointed and the way in which the Court does its business and comes to its decisions, but that is not a reason for us to leave the European Court or to abandon the convention, not least—I might not be able to carry the hon. Gentleman with me on this—because it is a requirement of membership of the European Union that we should be a signatory and adhere to the Court.

The hon. Member for Ipswich (Ben Gummer), who has just fled the Chamber, made a tiny intervention on the hon. Member for Strangford, in which he pointed out the difference between the European Union, the European Court and the European convention on human rights. He was absolutely right to say that that difference was often not recognised.

The Home Secretary made several issues crystal clear in her speech. First, she made it clear that Pepper v. Hart was right, and that it is absolutely right for the courts to bear in mind what is said by a Minister or in a debate in the House of Commons—or, for that matter, the House of Lords—when legislation is ambiguous and the court is uncertain of how to proceed, without breaching article IX of the Bill of Rights, which states that a court is not able to question or impeach a proceeding in Parliament.

[Mr Cash]

In regard to interpretation, certainly in the field of European law—whether in the European Court of Justice or the European Court of Human Rights—the travaux préparatoires, as they are called, include all sorts of explanatory memorandums and so on. So when we talk about a clear basis, the question is whether it will stand up in due course. I hope that it will, but I am not sure.

[Chris Bryant]

I am not entirely sure whether I agree with that, so I am afraid that I am going to gloss over it. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will give me a better lecture on the matter later.

We agreed with the Home Secretary’s point on Pepper v. Hart. We also agreed when she effectively said that she accepted the judgment in the Pankina case of 2010 that the mere tabling of new immigration rules is often not enough to provide legal or political clarity to the courts. We agree with that, which is why we would wholeheartedly welcome a debate in Parliament on these matters. There are those who would say that the process that the hon. and learned Member for Torridge and West Devon referred to earlier has been inadequate in the past.

The Home Secretary also referred to changes in the operation of article 8 in relation to the deportation of prisoners. Again, we completely agree with the direction of travel that she is taking and with what she is trying to do. In a sense, that is what we tried to do in 2007 with the changes in the law, but we accept that further work needs to be done. She said specifically that foreign criminals had used flimsy human rights arguments to remain in this country, and we agree. She said that the broader issue of the other changes, tabled last Wednesday, was a separate issue. We wholeheartedly agree with that, too.

We have some concerns about the process, but I do not want to overstate them. The motion expressly refers to “the Immigration Rules”. It therefore stands to reason that we are debating the rules that are in force today, rather than any that have been tabled but will not come into force until 9 July and could, in theory, be annulled in the future. So I am not sure that this motion provides quite the level of legal clarity that the Home Secretary would like.

Furthermore, there is the question of exactly how much influence a motion of the House has. We have already heard from the shadow Home Secretary about the ruling from the Clerks on that point. A few weeks ago, a motion of the House, which was agreed unanimously, stated that nobody wanting to come to this country from Russia should be allowed a visa if they had had anything to do with the death of Sergei Magnitsky. That motion has no force in law, however; it is just an interesting statement from the House of Commons. It has not been agreed by the House of Lords, and it has not gone through any kind of primary or secondary legislative process.

It might have been better if the measures had been taken in a different order, with the full set of rule changes being followed by the motion that we are considering today. Indeed, many hon. Members have said that there might well be a need for primary legislation to provide the courts with the absolute clarity that they need.

I want to make it absolutely clear that we are supporting the motion today on the understanding that it applies solely to the operation of article 8 in relation to the deportation of foreign criminals. In the words of the Home Secretary, the rest is a “separate issue”.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 21st May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

No, it’s not.

[Karen Bradley]

I apologise; I meant migration. Will the Minister tell the House what the Government are doing to break the link between coming here temporarily and settling here permanently?

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Green]

My right hon. Friend will know that we have introduced more staff, as well as the range of other measures that I mentioned in answer to an earlier question. BAA—and the airlines themselves, including the head of safety and security at Virgin Atlantic—has said that we have seen some improvement in the last few weeks. I am also able to assure my right hon. Friend and the House that more people are working there this week than last week, and that there will be more next week. As the summer gets busier and busier, there will be an increasing number of staff on the desks.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I thought that the whole point of hosting the Olympics was to try to increase the number of visitors to this country. Our anxiety is not just about the queues now, but about the queues when the Olympics are over. There is one thing that the Minister just does not seem to grasp, so let me ask him a very simple question, which a schoolchild could answer: if it takes 400 passengers 60 minutes to pass through 10 manned controls, how long would it take those passengers to pass through if the number of controls is cut by 20% to eight?

[Damian Green]

I can tell the hon. Gentleman about the Olympics, as he is, for once, right about that. I, too, am concerned about what happens after the games. That is why I announced last week that we are bringing forward the recruitment of the first wave of people who will be needed for terminal 2 when it reopens, so that they will be available after the Olympics. We will have extra people at the border not only up to and during the Olympics, but after the Olympics. I am happy to tell the hon. Gentleman that his concerns have been fully met.

Immigration Queues (UK Airports)

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call Yvette Cooper.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Or me.

[Mr Speaker]

I beg the hon. Gentleman’s pardon. More particularly, I beg the right hon. Lady’s pardon. I am sorry. I had it down that she would be performing, but of course it would not be a normal day if we did not hear from the hon. Gentleman.

[Chris Bryant]

Thank you, Mr Speaker.

I have to say to the Minister that his was a ludicrously complacent answer. Surely it cannot be beyond the wit of man, especially with increased technology, to do two things at the same time: secure the borders and have reasonably swift queues. The problems at Heathrow and Gatwick have given a shocking impression of a Government who are out of control, just when Britain is facing a special security challenge in advance of the Olympics and when the British tourism industry is keen to make as good an impression as possible. I gather that No. 10 is now blaming it on the weather.

The figures that the Minister gave are not the full story. Even before last week, between 1 April and 15 April, Border Force missed its waiting targets for non-European economic area nationals on 13 out of 15 days, and even for people returning home to their own country, it missed them on four days. There was not a single day in that two-week period when it met all its targets.

It might be understandable if long queues meant better security, but no airport in the world is designed to kettle thousands of passengers for hours prior to passing through immigration, which is why it is vital that the Government provide enough resources to Border Force.

Sir John Vine expressly recommended that a clear understanding of what constitutes health and safety grounds for suspension should be agreed. Has that happened? Have there been any such suspensions in the last month? I ask the Minister that because I have been contacted by one passenger who says that on arrival on a Kenya Airways flight from Nairobi to terminal 4, his passport was not swiped at all. How many UK or other European nationals have had to wait more than the target of 25 minutes?

Will most people not be perplexed by the Government’s priorities? They have already cut 500 border staff—they are going to cut another 1,000—while at the same time they are spending £2.5 million on new uniforms. How can that possibly be the right set of priorities? Numbers at Heathrow are set to rise, not only for the Olympics and Paralympics, but year on year into the future, yet Border Force is running at 100% capacity, with no room for the unexpected—and clearly the Government are running way past their capacity. Is it not time that the Government shouldered their responsibility and gave Border Force the resources it truly needs to do the job properly?

[Damian Green]

Up to that point, we had heard the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, make a thoughtful contribution to what is a serious debate. Sadly, the shadow Minister for Immigration has let the side down, with a rant that had no purpose whatever. He also clearly wrote it before he had heard my statement, which addressed the measures we are taking in some detail. The only solution he has—this is instructive, as a glimpse into Labour’s approach to everything—is to spend more taxpayers’ money; and this from a member of the Government who left this country bankrupt, because of their profligate spending over 13 years.

In the midst of that rant, the hon. Gentleman raised one or two issues, so let me deal with them. First, he talked about the uniforms and implied that it was a terrible waste of money to buy new uniforms. I have to tell him that the current Border Force uniform was bought by the previous Government and was designed to last only three years, so it is now out of date and has to be replaced anyway. That money would therefore have to be spent under any circumstances.

The hon. Gentleman also asked about what was happening at the border. However, I am afraid that he is relying on unreliable reports. The monitoring for this period shows that in the first two weeks of April, we met all our targets for EU passengers, meeting targets for non-EU passengers on 11 days out of 15. Of course I would prefer to meet our targets for non-EU passengers on 15 days out of 15, but he is relying on information that does not accord with the official figures given by Border Force.

I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman has no particular answers to give. Indeed, what is quite surprising about everything he said was—[Interruption.] He should agree with this statement, which was made last November:

“We seemed to have a consensus from Labour ministers and I thought from…Tory ministers as well that with every year that went by, you should be strengthening the checks at the borders, adding better technology and that kind of thing”.

That was said by the shadow Home Secretary. The hon. Gentleman is now saying that we should make fewer checks. I suggest that he and she get their act together.

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Green]

First, I must confess to my hon. Friend that I did not know that Hilton Hotels was based in Watford. I am ashamed of my lack of knowledge of a fact with which I have now managed to catch up.

[Chris Bryant]

Even I knew that.

[Damian Green]

The shadow Immigration Minister says that even he knew that, which makes me feel doubly ashamed.

My hon. Friend has made a very good point. It is not just for this summer and the Olympics that we need an improvement, although the summer will clearly be a hugely important time for our airports and the British tourism industry generally. What we need is a permanent improvement, which is why I hope that my hon. Friend has been reassured by the many changes that I announced in response to the original question. It is important not just to do something for the summer, but to change the way in which our Border Force operates and the way in which our airport operators and airlines go about their business, to ensure that there is a permanent improvement for all who travel into and out of the country.

Point of Order

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Tuesday 17th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Home Secretary said that it was not a good idea to warn Abu Qatada that he was about to be arrested, which obviously prompts one to ask whether he would then have been able to abscond. She maintains that that is why she could not tell the House first and suggested that there had been no briefing to the media, but the precise words in the Evening Standard, which was published before the House sat today, are:

“A deportation order to send Abu Qatada to Jordan and allow him to be put back behind bars will be issued within days, Home Secretary Theresa May said today”—

not “will say today” or “in the next few days,” but “said today”. That was published before she came into the House and before the House sat. It goes on in precise terms to detail every single element of what the Home Secretary has said to the House this afternoon.

Mr Speaker, will you investigate precisely why and how this came to pass? Surely, at least on matters of national security, about which the public need to have confidence in the Government and parliamentary process, Parliament should hear first. Will you also confirm that if Mr Qatada is not under detention at the end of today it is perfectly possible for the Home Secretary to return to the House to explain why not?

[Mr Speaker]

I will rule on that, but as the hon. Gentleman has raised a point of order that relates directly to the Home Secretary and she is in her place, she has the opportunity to respond if she wishes to do so.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 19th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for reminding us that the Vine report indicated that there had been problems with border controls since 2007—a fact that, sadly, Members on the Opposition Front Bench seemed unable to recognise when the Vine report came out. We have, indeed, reinstated full border security checks—that is absolutely right and proper—and we have taken action to make sure that by separating the UK border force from UKBA it can concentrate on the issue of establishing and maintaining proper security at our borders.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I, too, convey apologies to the House, from my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary, who is with the Policing Minister in Northumbria at the memorial service for PC Rathband. As the Home Secretary rightly said, he was a very brave police officer, and our thoughts and prayers are with his family, and his colleagues in the Northumbria police. It just goes to show that, for a police officer, harm’s way can come in many different guises.

On 9 November last year, the Minister for Immigration said:

“this pilot was a success”—[Official Report, 9 November 2011; Vol. 535, c. 358.]

As it was such a great success, will the Home Secretary repeat the pilot this year, and if not, why not?

[Mrs May]

The hon. Gentleman knows full well, because this was reported to Parliament when I made a statement on the chief inspector’s report on security checks, that the initial figures that we were given last year about the summer pilot did indeed show some success, in terms of the seizure of items such as drugs. However, when the chief inspector came to look at the whole issue, he discovered that there had been some other unauthorised relaxation of security checks, and that the recording had not been complete; it was therefore not possible to give a full evaluation of that pilot.

Oral Answers to Questions

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

Let me explain to my hon. Friend how I arrived at those figures. They are not my figures; they are figures from the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, a body that is specifically involved in the protection of children. It said that, in 2007, 55% of such children went missing from care. That was an appalling figure, but it has most recently come down to 18%. I agree with my hon. Friend that that is still far too high, but he can see that local authorities are making considerable progress. In that respect, I particularly commend Hillingdon council, which is one of the most experienced councils in this regard, as it covers Heathrow. In 2009, 12% of unaccompanied children were going missing from its care; it has now reduced that number to 4%.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Tackling human trafficking undoubtedly requires strong international organisations and, in some cases, an international power of arrest to apprehend these criminals. Will the Minister answer a very simple question? Will he guarantee that he, unlike many of his party’s Back-Bench Members who have called for it, will not withdraw from the European arrest warrant—yes or no?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs May]

Well, really, I have to say to the right hon. Gentleman that he knows full well there is no direct link—there is no simple link—between crime and—

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

Ooh, you slipped up there didn’t you?

[Mrs May]

The Immigration Minister is getting very excited.

Parliamentary Representation

Chris Bryant Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Dame Anne Begg]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. There are enormous economic barriers that prevent not only women but people from lower socio-economic groups from getting into Parliament. The political parties should certainly look at her suggestion in relation to their selection process, and consider capping the amount that can be spent. At the moment, it can get into the thousands, and that can rule out many candidates.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I want to add some statistics to those that my hon. Friend has given. In Wales, in 2001, when all-women shortlists legally had to be suspended, the Labour party had to select 10 candidates for seats in which the sitting Member of Parliament was retiring. In every single case, it selected a man. Does not that highlight the problem of what happens if there is not an all-women shortlist?

[Dame Anne Begg]

Indeed. That ties in with my fear for the 2015 election—that the advances we have made could start to be reversed. While huge advances were made on the representation of women in the 1997 Parliament because of the use of all-women shortlists, the number of women in Parliament dropped after the 2001 election. That happened not just in Wales but across the whole country, because this mechanism was not available to the Labour party to use in its election process.

--- Later in debate ---

[Adam Afriyie]

I am sure I would flush up if I was able to; I thank my hon. Friend very much for his intervention.

As I said, I want to share some insights and experience, but if the House will bear with me I will make a couple of points very crudely because I do not have time to put them more subtly; I hope the House will understand that they are well intentioned, and that if I had more time I would elaborate slightly further.

A key reason why I joined the Conservative party, about which I will say a few words in a moment, is that I felt that during the ’80s the Labour party was quite patronising towards ethnic minorities. There was a sense on the part of the incumbents in politics—those with power—that ethnic minority groups were somehow hapless and weak and needed all the support and help they could get, and all sorts of extra support in order simply to compete. I rejected that prognosis—[Interruption.] Please bear with me: I am putting this very briskly; with more time I would put it more subtly. I rejected that notion because, irrespective of which group in society one comes from—whatever one’s physical or socio-economic characteristics, whatever one’s background or heritage—everybody is equal. It is a question of whether the opportunity exists to get involved in the political process and to be recognised for ones innate, equal abilities. That is part of the reason why I joined the Conservative party, and something to reflect on.

[Chris Bryant]

By way of counterpart, I joined the Labour party because I found that the Conservative party was not just patronising about homosexuals, but downright dismissive and aggressively so, and used the full force of the law and of Parliament to legislate that homosexual relationships were nothing other than “a pretended family relationship”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

I apologise to you, Mr Speaker, to the Minister and to the House if I am not able to be here at the conclusion of the debate.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Dame Anne Begg), not only on securing the debate but on the work she did under your patronage, Mr Speaker, leading the Speaker’s Conference. Some of us in the House today spent well over a year of our lives—not full-time, but it seemed a lot—on the Speaker’s Conference and I hope that the recommendations can be followed through and that it will be possible to make progress.

In order to avoid repetition, I say at the beginning that the issues surrounding the next general election, not only the lower number of Members of Parliament, but the dramatic boundary changes, present a challenge for all political parties. We need to appeal to them to take the matter very seriously if we are not to take a step backwards on gender, on sexuality, on ethnicity and on disability. I am genuinely deeply worried. I hope that the access to public life fund and the initiative of my right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) on internships will assist.

On a lighter note, I think that we have made progress in the 25 years since I came to the House. I was asked when I first came in with my dog whether there would be a problem with animal noises, and I gave an assurance that the dog would not be disturbed at all by the kind of thing that he was likely to hear in Prime Minister’s questions at that time. I did, however, face the enormous problem of persuading people that additional resources would make it possible to work on equal terms. It was a fiasco. We had a working party between the two Houses under the chairmanship of Lord Jenkins, as he became. The recommendations had to be voted on on the Floor of the House. We have come a long way since that terrible embarrassment. One Member, who is still in the House, said to me, “You’re very lucky to get these extra resources.” I said, “I’ll swap you any time.”

[Chris Bryant]

My right hon. Friend may be interested to hear that when I was helping to organise the memorial service for John Smith at Westminster abbey and I said that we would need a bowl of water put out for my right hon. Friend’s dog, the usher said, “I’m not putting a bowl out for any bloody socialist’s dog.”

[Mr Blunkett]

All I can say is that I wish he had not discriminated on political grounds.

There are major challenges facing us. The nature of the Palace of Westminster has changed to some degree, but not enough. It is not quite the old boys’ club that it was when my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Dame Joan Ruddock) and I joined in 1987, but people still have in their minds a major psychological barrier about what they will experience here. There are also practical barriers, which have been referred to, in the procedures of the House. I hope that we can be more radical in the next three and a half years than we have been in the 25 that I have been here. Unless we change the way we vote, the knowledge about votes, the way in which the day is organised and the support for families, we will not have the diversity and the reflection of society that all of us in this House want.

I congratulate those who have broken through even bigger barriers than I have been able to challenge in my life. To win a by-election as a member of an ethnic minority is a real step forward. Reflecting on the years gone by, I think that it has been shown that the way in which society gradually changes is reflected here, but we have a role in accelerating that change by the way we behave.

The thing that I have probably done best in my public life and am most proud of is not something from my eight years as a Cabinet Minister or from my time as leader of a council. It is having changed attitudes outside— the way that people perceive not only others but, sometimes, themselves. That is a comfort when things go badly wrong.

I agree that we need to revisit the way in which we encourage diversity in supporting Members. I have to pay tribute—I know that it is not fashionable—to the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority in relation to disability issues. It has been extremely understanding and helpful in a way that I hope will be reflected in further revisions to support family life, particularly in terms of gender challenges. I look forward to IPSA responding to that challenge.

It is important that the Government are able to respond too. I think that Departments have improved. I hope that the Office for Disability Issues will continue and will be able to make progress, along with the access to public life fund. However, there are still ingrained challenges in terms of covert discrimination. There is no question but that people are sometimes grumpy about being expected to go the extra mile to help those facing a challenge that is perfectly manageable and can be overcome with a bit of thought. People do not like to talk about it; they do not even like to think about it; but, believe me, they do behave in quite extraordinary ways.

What I want to emphasise this afternoon is that we must go right back to the way we develop an understanding of citizenship in schools and persuade the Secretary of State for Education, even at this late stage, not to downgrade the programme we put in place 10 years ago and instead to build upon it. It would be an irony indeed if newcomers to this country who were becoming naturalised were more savvy about politics and better able to get to this House than the population as a whole because they had experienced the necessity of passing the dreaded test. Once we have done that and we have continued to change the nature of our politics and the way we speak to each another, we might get even more progress within political parties.

My hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) has kindly indicated—I have no buzzer—that I have only a few seconds left, so I will bring my comments to an end. Political parties have made progress, as has been mentioned this afternoon, but, my goodness, there are still major blockages. Unless the political parties take a lead, how can we expect the nation as a whole to do so?

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

I slightly disagree with the last remark made by the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard). If we are honest, we are all a bit weird, are we not? After all, by definition, we wanted to come here. The hon. Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) is pointing at me. That is not very kind. I could point back, because I do not think that she is any less weird than I am.

There are two fundamental principles. The first is that we should never judge people according to the colour of their skin, their gender, their sexuality, the school that they went to or the accent with which they speak. We should only ever judge people according to the strength of the convictions that they hold, the strength of their personal character, and whether they are able to see their convictions through in their lives. Surely the political system should embody that principle.

The second principle is that, broadly speaking, Parliament should look like the country that it is meant to represent. There are several reasons for that, some of which have already been given today. First, it makes Parliament more effective and efficient, and we end up with better legislation. People can spot some of the holes in an idea that is being advanced because they know from their own lives whether it works or not, and how it affects them. The advent of women in Parliament undoubtedly meant that a whole raft of legislation was improved, because, frankly, men simply did not know what they were talking about. I can see hon. Ladies thinking that perhaps that happens all the time generally.

Secondly, Parliament is more likely to embrace the people’s priorities. Rather that its being obsessed with a few things that might have interested a self-chosen elite, the views of the whole of society are expressed on its Order Paper and on the agenda for political action, and that must surely make it better.

Thirdly—this has not been mentioned yet—it is all very well in politics to legislate, to pull a lever, but if the legislation has no effect out in the country because it has no public support, it will have no real chance of effecting change. A Parliament that looks more like the society that it is meant to represent is able to carry that society with it more effectively, and that means that can effect change more convincingly.

We are, I think, nowhere near being able to meet either of those two principles. A number of Members have reminded us today that for many centuries no women were allowed to vote or to sit in here. Of the first two women who were allowed to sit in here, one was a countess and the other was a Lady—not that I have anything against Ladies, or against Dames, who seem to be multiplying on the Opposition Benches, or even against pantomime dames. Similarly, I believe that two of the first women to arrive in the House of Lords were the daughters of viceroys, and that one was married to a viceroy. The change needs to be far more substantial.

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart) for what he said about lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender Members. It is significant that we now have more out gay Members of Parliament than ever before. Indeed, sometimes when you go into the Strangers Bar you feel as though you are in Rupert street. It is virtually a gay bar now, and my husband sometimes worries about whether I should be allowed in there any more.

Even the numbers that we have, however, do not come near matching the numbers in the country in terms of the percentage of the population. It is a great sadness to me that there are still only two out lesbians in Parliament, because two prejudices have been, as it were, tied together to form one. I pay tribute to those who have come out. That is difficult however, as not every gay person wants to be out, and I do not think they should have to be. I disagree with what the hon. Member for Milton Keynes South said about role models. I hope to God nobody will ever think of me as a role model in relation to anything whatsoever at any time. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman says that I should not worry about that, because nobody does. That is very generous of him. I was once described in the Daily Mail as an ex-gay vicar; I just want to point out that I am an ex-vicar, but my gayness is extant.

Turning to disabilities, it is important to remember that not every disability is visible. There have been disabled MPs for many centuries, including Philip Snowden, Labour Chancellor in 1924, and the first Earl of Salisbury, who was profoundly disabled and a Secretary of State. The barriers for many people with disabilities are still great, however, such as in terms of this building itself and the way in which we do our business—the way we vote and so forth.

As the Member of Parliament for the Rhondda, I would also like to point out that the biggest difficulties of all face working-class people who may want to enter the House. That is partly because of finances, as standing for Parliament is prohibitively expensive. Ironically, there is now also a problem at the other end of the scale, in that the pay and conditions in Parliament seem prohibitive to people in professional jobs who expect to earn £100,000, £120,000 or £150,000.

This issue is not just about being representative; it is also about representing, and we should do that with courage and determination.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Five Members still wish to speak, and we have just over 15 minutes left, so according to the maths if each of them speaks for about three minutes everybody will get in—a bit of moral blackmail there.