European Parliament Elections Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Bob Stewart

Friday 4th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

That system also seems to work here, which I think is wrong.

[Mr Chope]

It can work here, although my hon. Friend should remember the courageous move made by my hon. Friend the Member for Clacton (Mr Carswell). He said he did not wish to carry on as a Conservative Member and wanted to change his party allegiance. Before doing that, however, he sought the endorsement of the electorate in a by-election. That was a worthy approach. I hope that the mood is changing and that people will not feel that they can ignore the mandate given to them by their constituents and switch parties without reverting to their electors.

The Bill seems quite complicated in the sense that, although it has only three clauses, one clause has nine subsections, but I have been advised that that is the only way in which we can alter the existing system to introduce the open list system for elections to the European Parliament.

I look forward to hearing what my hon. Friend the Minister says. I expect him to preface his remarks by saying that he hopes we do not have any more European elections, but that, if we do, he can assure us that they are going to be more democratic than those we have had in the past.

Illegal Immigrants (Criminal Sanctions) Bill

Debate between Christopher Chope and Bob Stewart

Friday 4th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

I am grateful to everyone who has participated in the debate, particularly my hon. Friends the Members for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) and for Bury North (Mr Nuttall), who are sponsors of the Bill. I much enjoyed the speech by the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) from the Labour Front Bench. I listened with interest to the Minister’s response, but at the heart of what he was saying, particularly at the end of his speech, was the view that a person who enters this country illegally should be enabled to profit from their illegality by being allowed to stay in this country and not being deported once they have been detected.

[Bob Stewart]

Unless they do something illegal.

[Mr Chope]

Unless they do something illegal, as my hon. Friend says. The Bill would make it clear that the very act of entering this country without authority, often by subterfuge and often after having paid people smugglers large sums of money, would in itself be a criminal act that would merit a deportation, except in the most exceptional circumstances when the Home Secretary determined that it would not be in the public interest.

There is at the heart of this debate a fundamental difference between the approach that I and my hon. Friends would like the Government to take and the one that the Government are taking. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and the Conservative party, in its manifestos both in 2010 and 2015, promised that we would reduce net migration to the tens of thousands. In the light of today’s debate, I think that promise needs to be rephrased—we should promise that we will, in the future, reduce illegal migration to the tens of thousands. We already have illegal migration in excess of the tens of thousands—more than 100,000 illegally here. The Minister does not dispute that, so why do we not concentrate on trying to get rid of those people, because we are a million miles away from ever being able to implement the pledge to reduce all migration, both legal and illegal, to the tens of thousands? It has come through very strongly in this debate that the Government are not controlling the things that they could control.

The EU aspect has been brought out in the debate, but the charge of indifference brought against the Government—I know the hon. Member for West Ham also brought it—to some of the key issues has been well made.

The hon. Lady said that my proposals were very bureaucratic, but the people who are here illegally are being exploited and they are vulnerable. Although they are not being prosecuted, under the existing legislation they could be. The fact that they could be prosecuted if they are shopped by the people who control them makes them not want to put their heads above the parapet.

The current levels of illegal immigration are enabling the people traffickers, the exploiters and the pimps to carry on their business, and that is creating a whole underworld of crime. I would have thought that the Home Office was more interested in trying to address that. The Bill would enable all the people currently in that underworld to come forward before 1 July and admit that they are here, and under this legislation they would then not be guilty of a criminal offence. That would send out a clear message to people trying to get into this country that they need to do so before the Bill becomes law, but after that there would be a strong deterrent effect. The Bill would indeed be a fresh start.

The hon. Member for West Ham said that there are 207,000 overstayers—the people who came here legally but are no longer entitled to be here and should have gone back to where they came from. What is being done about them? The Minister puts his arms up, metaphorically, and says, “Well, where are we going to deport them to?” What is absolutely clear is that they do not have the right to be in this country. The hon. Lady referred to some interesting constituency cases, and if someone has overstayed by mistake, we should in most cases be able to rectify that pretty quickly. At the moment, the authorities tend to pick on those people for an oversight in order to demonstrate to the wider world that the Government are taking the issue seriously. The Government are picking on the hapless people who have made a small error. I had a constituency case the other day of a person who accidentally submitted five months of wage slips as evidence, rather than six months. They have now been told that they have to go back to wherever it is and make a fresh application, with all the associated expense. The Government are incredibly petty in dealing with the good people who have made a slip, and they are incredibly poor at dealing with the real villains.

That would all be put right if the Bill received its Second Reading today. However, I fear that it is too late in the Session for the Bill to have a realistic prospect of getting on to the statute book. I therefore seek the leave of the House to withdraw the motion. In so doing, I want to say that I will bring the issue back again, because this is an issue about which the people feel very strongly, and so do we.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [Lords]

Debate between Christopher Chope and Bob Stewart

Monday 7th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

My right hon. Friend knows all about levers, having been a deputy Chief Whip. That is exactly how I envisage this power being used. I am sure that that is why there was an attempt to smuggle it through at the last minute. Now we are, I hope, exposing it for what it is, which is a power grabbed by the Government to try to ensure that they can have the final word and beat their stick against a council that is not doing as they wish it to do.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I am making the assumption that my hon. Friend would support the amendment proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) to have a referendum.

[Mr Chope]

Absolutely. I am very supportive of that amendment, but I have not yet had a chance to talk about it because I am so concerned about amendment 56 and amendment (a). I am not going to restate the case about the referendum, but I think it is a necessary safeguard.

If we look at the history books we see the unintended consequences that can flow from local government reorganisation. It was only because Wandsworth council started a campaign to abolish the Inner London Education Authority that education was given back to the inner-London boroughs, which were then able to gain economic growth as a result of having good-quality education within their boundaries. The same thing happened with the Greater London Council. The Greater London Council was interfering in the lives of the boroughs in inner London and outer London, so those in charge of the boroughs at the time persuaded the Conservative Government to abolish it. As a result, parks such as Battersea park are run by the local authority—Wandsworth council—rather than by a remote authority for Greater London.

If we are not going to put proposals like this to the electorate, we must have the necessary safeguards. None of this stuff was in our manifesto. There was no suggestion that a Conservative Government were going to restructure local authorities so as to try to squeeze out small councils that are closest to the people. If we are not going to test this in a general election and amendment 56 is going to be on the statute book until the end of March 2019, it is all the more important that we should be able to have the safeguard of a referendum—the very safeguard that the Poole People party and the Liberal Democrats have sought, in vain, from the leaders of Poole, Bournemouth, East Dorset and Christchurch Borough Councils.

We are on the threshold of a big spat at local government level between different councils at different tiers and different councillors with different personalities and political parties. This threatens completely to preoccupy local government for the next three or four years. We will look back and say that this all started with the Government wanting to interfere in areas where they should not be interfering at all. They should be trusting local councillors and local people to decide what is best for them. They should not be taking away from Dorset County Council or East Dorset District Council, for example, the power to veto any proposals to change the boundaries in which they operate.

I very much hope that the House will not accept amendment 56 as proposed to be amended by the Government but will push them back to their previous position, which was that this is genuinely for local councils and local people to decide, and the Government are not going to interfere.