Refugee Situation in the Mediterranean

Debate between David Winnick and Keith Vaz

Tuesday 16th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz]

I commend my hon. Friend for calling for a debate on this subject at last week’s business questions. I am glad we are able to have the debate today. Yes, we must take special care of the children who are put at risk because of what is happening in the Mediterranean. She is absolutely right.

Operation Triton is the Frontex rescue mission that replaced Mare Nostrum. It has failed to live up to expectations. Operating at a third of the budget of Mare Nostrum, which saved 150,000 people in 2014, Triton was clearly overstretched, as the number of migrants making the journey to Italy increased by 30%. Sadly, and predictably, the number of deaths rose ninefold under Triton in the period leading up to May. That was tragically demonstrated between 16 and 20 April, when five ships containing around 2,000 migrants sank—1,200 people, including children, died. Triton’s resources were simply unable to cope with such a tragedy.

The subsequent emergency summit on 23 April tripled Triton’s budget to €120 million and expanded its patrol area. Better late than never. Federico Fossi of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees believes that that increase in resources has demonstrated results, and 6,000 people were rescued between 6 and 7 June. Before the emergency summit, aid organisations feared that the death toll would otherwise reach the tens of thousands.

I want to join the hon. Member for North East Fife (Stephen Gethins) and others in commending the British Government for dispatching HMS Bulwark to the area, and our servicemen and women for performing heroic tasks. Can the Minister today confirm that when Bulwark’s tour of duty ends on 5 July it will be adequately replaced by an equivalent mission? We must ensure that the rescue mission maintains these improved resources and learn our lesson that we simply cannot manage this problem with a small and poorly financed operation.

One proposed solution to the problem is quotas, which the Home Secretary discussed today with her EU counterparts in Luxembourg. However, as envisaged, quotas would be beset with complications, as any formal announcement may give the green light to the traffickers to send more ships. Particularly while those gangs are operating, mandatory resettlement will not completely solve the problem—a position held by France and Spain. But it is clear to me that burden sharing between Schengen countries is on the agenda.

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

I endorse everything that my right hon. Friend has said. Does he recall the urgent question in the closing days of the previous Parliament, when the Government were warned that any change in the sea rescue mission would endanger lives? Is it not absolutely vital that every effort is always made to rescue people, whatever the result of their application for refugee status might be? The rescue of human beings must be the first priority of any civilised society.

[Keith Vaz]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We should try to make arrangements to stop the boats leaving in the first place, but once they are out in the Mediterranean we have a duty to try to save lives.

Counter-Terrorism (Statutory Instruments)

Debate between David Winnick and Keith Vaz

Monday 16th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I shall be brief. It seems clear that the House will approve the orders moved by the Minister today. He began by putting the situation and the reasons behind the orders in context. He knows, as Security Minister, that the country faces a severe threat.

Last week, the Select Committee on Home Affairs, in one of our last sessions of this Parliament, heard the evidence of the relatives of Shamima, Amira and Khadiza, three young ladies aged 16, 15 and 15 who left Tower Hamlets and went to Syria. Only this morning, I met the families of two of the young men who have just returned from Istanbul. The families are wonderful people, hard working and dedicated to this country, and were as shocked as any of us would have been that their children had left the country and, in the case of the girls from Tower Hamlets, reached Syria and, in the case of the three young men, been brought back yesterday. I commend the police for their work, and the Turkish authorities in the latter case.

The Turkish ambassador gave us very good evidence last week, with a timeline. The situation was much better second time around, with phone calls being made instead of e-mails being sent. We need to commend people when things go right and this is a good news story in the fight against terrorism. We do not have many of them, but everyone worked together and we commend them for what they are doing.

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

I am sure that we would all endorse what my right hon. Friend says and what the Minister said about the Turkish police and ensuring that the young people involved were returned to this country immediately. I cannot go further than that, as the Minister has stated. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we need to probe further, even though the numbers are very small, and ask why it is that young people like those he mentioned, whose relatives we saw in the Home Affairs Committee last week, should wish to join a group motivated by mass murder, savage beatings, beheadings and sex slavery? More needs to be done to find the reasons why such youngsters, born and educated in this country, should wish to travel in the way they intended.

[Keith Vaz]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Committee has taken evidence from all the stakeholders involved, but it is the people who have gone abroad who really matter as we need to find out why they went in the first place. We need to get into their minds in some way, as he has said and as his questions in the Committee’s evidence sessions have tried to do, to find out why they make that decision, what turns them and what the tipping point is. They are brought up in this country, and by parents who obviously love and support them, but then suddenly they decide to go abroad. If I have one regret from all my years of chairing the Committee, it is that we have never been able to take evidence directly from those who have gone abroad. Some have come back, of course, but they are reluctant to talk to us, either formally or informally. My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I think that why people decide to go is something that successor Committees and the next Parliament will have to consider.

On the orders before the House, I fully support the instrument that brings into force the code of practice to enhance safeguards and ensure clear guidance on best practice with regard to the acquisition and retention of communications data. When the Committee took evidence from journalists on the matter—this is in the public domain, of course—we said that we believed there ought to be exceptions. The Government accept that the authorities need to be very careful when they stray into areas relating to freedom of the press. I think that the code does provide for that, so the Government are right to bring it before the House now rather than at some later date.

However, the Committee, in looking at the regulations before the House, strongly suggested that RIPA’s days had come and gone. Although it was acceptable at the time to pass that legislation, we felt that, frankly, it was being misused. Anecdotally, we have head about some local authorities using the powers in RIPA to spy on families deciding where to send their children to school. We felt that such misuse was probably going on in other areas, but we did not know because there was no proper and effective monitoring.

Female Genital Mutilation

Debate between David Winnick and Keith Vaz

Thursday 29th January 2015 Westminster Hall

[Keith Vaz]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on his appointment as shadow Solicitor-General. If the British people vote in a Labour Government and he is fortunate enough to become Solicitor-General, his Department—the Attorney-General’s Office—will have responsibility for that, so it will be for him and the new Government to say, “We will change the law.”

The Committee made specific recommendations on mandatory reporting and the criminalisation of failing to do so. The professions, however, are not so keen on that and would prefer to deal with this on a professional basis. We need to keep the law under constant review, but there is already legislation in place that has not been used. If my hon. Friend becomes Solicitor-General, we will expect whoever is his DPP to be a little more active than their predecessors of the past 29 years in ensuring that things happen.

The World Health Organisation defines FGM as

“all procedures that involve partial or total removal of the external female genitalia, or other injury to the female genital organs for non-medical reasons.”

That will include, in our view, designer work on genitals that is done with the woman’s consent.

FGM is usually carried out on girls between infancy and the age of 15, with the majority of cases occurring between the ages of five and eight. It is commonly performed by a traditional practitioner who has no formal medical training, without any kind of drugs to assist with the pain that the young girls are suffering, and using knives, scissors, scalpels, pieces of glass or even razor blades. We heard harrowing testimony during our inquiry of how girls are often forcibly restrained, in some cases by close members of their families, including their mother and aunts. While the performance of FGM might be done by a stranger with the instruments that I described, the act usually involves the connivance and support of members of the family including, in some cases, mothers.

During our inquiry, we heard some excellent evidence from those involved in dealing with FGM and campaigning on the issue. On Tuesday, we took evidence from two campaigners called Leyla Hussein and Alimatu Dimonekene. We also took evidence from Keith Niven, who is head of the rape and child abuse command in the Metropolitan police, Professor Nigel Mathers from the Royal College of General Practitioners and Janet Fyle from the Royal College of Midwives, all three of whom also gave evidence during the original inquiry. In addition, during the original inquiry, Leyla Hussein appeared before us, and we also took evidence from Professor Janice Rymer, Obi Amadi, a community practitioner, Dr Kerry Robinson, Dr Comfort Momoh, Linda Weil-Curiel, a lawyer from Paris, and Dr Emmanuelle Piet, a female gynaecologist who is county medical officer in a district in France.

The Committee’s conclusions were quite clear. We lamented the lack of prosecutions, so we were glad when Alison Saunders came before us to announce that prosecutions were taking place. Rather bizarrely, I found out about the first prosecutions on the Friday before that evidence session in a supermarket in Battersea, along with the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison), who is another great campaigner on FGM. We were there to talk about diabetes when the call came through to her that the first individuals had been arrested and would be charged. I pay tribute to all her work in the House on the issue both before and after she became a Minister, and she still has an interest as a Health Minister.

There is no doubt that prosecutions can send out the powerful message that the Government are serious about an issue, so the lack of prosecutions relating to FGM—only two in 29 years—is lamentable. The Committee said that we need many more prosecutions. It is not possible to match up the hundreds of thousands of girls affected worldwide, and the thousands affected or at risk in our country, with the fact that there have been only two prosecutions. We are not saying that we should prosecute for the sake of it; we are asking why there have not been sufficient prosecutions, and that is when we must look to the various agencies and their reactions.

Hon. Members will know that whenever the Select Committee conducts an inquiry, we come away with one standard recommendation: agencies concerned with a policy area have to work together. That is absolutely clear as far as FGM is concerned. There are some individual practitioners—Dr Comfort Momoh, for example, whom we visited at St Thomas’s hospital to look at her clinic and to talk to some of the women who were waiting to see her—who have tried to bring agencies together, but the process has taken far too long, and the agencies involved have become institutionalised.

We were especially critical about the lack of action by the police. We were not very impressed with the evidence given by the Association of Chief Police Officers lead. We did not feel that the answer to FGM was more seminars, discussions and conferences. We believe that the action required as a result of our report should be on the front line, engaging with community organisations to ensure that action is taken. We were not pleased with what the police had done.

On Tuesday, Detective Chief Superintendent Niven reminded us of evidence that had been given to us previously: the police cannot take any action if there are not sufficient referrals. At that time, the police were saying that it was not their responsibility, as they would act and investigate as soon as somebody came to them, and bemoaned the fact that not enough people were reporting the issue. We therefore must go to the next stage in the chain: social workers and doctors. The Committee believes that when doctors examine a young girl and find that FGM has been committed against her, they are under a duty to report it. We were of a view that there should be mandatory reporting, with a sanction for those who fail to report. Colleagues from the Committee—I am delighted to see my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) here, as he took part in the inquiry sessions—put this question to all our witnesses: what should the sanction be? A number of them talked about the need for criminal sanctions, depending on the seriousness of the failure to report, which suggested that some individuals deliberately wished not to report, while others did not know what they were looking at.

Frankly, I was surprised to hear from some of our witnesses that doctors might not know what FGM is. Given that it takes seven years to train a doctor and medicine is one of the most difficult subjects to get into at university, I would have thought that most people who came out of that training would know whether FGM has been committed against a patient, rather than requiring further training. Of course we need particular FGM training, but doctors ought to know when something is wrong. I was really surprised that people, including social workers, were saying, “Well, the doctors might not know.” When we asked why, they said, “They may not be trained about it.” That is a big area that we need to look at, and the Committee believes it is important that we do so.

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

The information given to us by a number of witnesses was that although prosecutions in Britain have been very few—there have been hardly any, although the first are now taking place—in France there have been 40, and sentences have been imposed. Why should there be that difference, bearing in mind that this barbaric custom must be eliminated as far as we are able to do so?

[Keith Vaz]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The French need to be congratulated on the way they have dealt with the issue. He will recall the evidence given to the Committee by the witnesses from France whom I have already mentioned. I went over to Paris to meet doctors and prosecutors, and I was extremely impressed by not just the passion of those on the front line but the willingness of the authorities themselves to get things done. We went to meet the officials of the relevant Minister. They were determined to ensure that that willingness continued. We could not understand why there was a difference between what the French were doing and what we were doing, with so many prosecutions in France and only two in our country.

We asked every one of our witnesses from Britain whether they had gone over to France to look at good practice. Frankly, none had done so, from the ACPO lead to those who run our royal colleges. It is really important that we compare what is being done abroad to ensure that we are doing the right thing.

We also believe it is important that all schools provide training for teachers on the issue on in-service training days. Although we did not take direct evidence from schools to the extent that we would have wished, simply because we did not have time to see everyone, we felt that that training was important. Teachers and those in the education profession should be aware of and able to deal with the issue. If we look at a place such as London, there is no reason why every teacher in every school ought not to be made aware of the problem. They should be told about it and told exactly what to do about it, so that we can get to the truth of what is happening.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Winnick]

In order that there is no misunderstanding by those who may be sensitive, in the medical profession or elsewhere, that this could be a form of racism, should we not make it absolutely clear that what we are discussing has absolutely nothing to do with the Islam religion as such and that the leading campaigners—very courageous people whom we should praise, as I am sure my right hon. Friend has done—are themselves Muslims?

[Keith Vaz]

Yes. I support that absolutely. I am sure that my hon. Friend was moved, as I was, by the fact that Leyla Hussein broke down in tears before the Select Committee on Tuesday when she was asked whether she had been subjected to death threats and other threats to her and her family. The courage of people such as Leyla Hussein goes against those who believe that some kind of political correctness means that people cannot talk about these subjects—that the community is somehow on its own and no one can comment. As my hon. Friend said, this is barbarism—brutality—and it needs to be dealt with. There is no community, religious or political justification for what is going on, which is why it needs to be stopped.

To finish my point on the medical profession, it needs to do much more. This country does not do mandatory examinations of young children as France does. That is not what we do here, but we believe that if a doctor comes across this, there should be a mandatory duty to report.

Let me deal finally with where we go from here and what the Select Committee hopes will happen to its report. The Home Affairs Committee does not believe in publishing reports with a lot of recommendations and then just walking away from them. That is why this week we revisited the conclusions of this report and took fresh evidence. I can say now, even though we have not written another report, that I was not overly impressed that huge progress has been made since we published this report, but we made a promise to the campaigners that we would look at the issue again, so we will produce a report as a result of our revisiting it. However, it will be for our successor Committee in the new Parliament to look at it again.

The worst possible thing that we could do for those who suffer every day is to produce a report, let it lie on the shelf, wait for the Government response and not pursue it. We wish to pursue this matter until we see real change, and I do not mean just the kind of FGM that we have been discussing today. We raised with all witnesses that which is happening as we speak in places such as Harley street—private clinics that women go into to create what are described as designer vaginas. They consent to that happening; they are not forced to do it by individuals holding them down. They go voluntarily, for whatever reason—peer pressure or another reason—and have these operations themselves. I believe that this should be a criminal offence, and I am very pleased that all the witnesses who gave evidence to us this week—barring Detective Chief Superintendent Niven, who thought there should be a debate about this—also felt very strongly that it should be a criminal offence.

The argument is that we can allow this to happen if there is consent and it is done in the private sector, but not if it is done in people’s homes and redone sometimes in the public sector when women go to hospitals and doctors perform the operation again, for whatever reason. We should not have double standards. That is why I believe that what we have proposed should happen.

I wish that I could say in conclusion that, as a result of something we have done, someone has been prevented from being the subject of FGM. We do not claim that. All we say is that we hope that we have raised the issue in a positive and constructive way. I believe that we are pushing at an open door. Government and Opposition are united on doing something about this. I saw the Prime Minister’s personal commitment during the Girl summit. Leaders came from all over the world to support the initiative that he and the Department for International Development had taken.

The Minister should take credit for the Girl summit and her involvement in that. Everyone is for it and everyone is united, but this practice is still going on in London, Leicester, Bristol and Manchester and is not being stopped. We have to stop it, because that is the right thing to do, it is the humane thing to do and it protects the human rights of girls and women.

Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Debate between David Winnick and Keith Vaz

Tuesday 2nd December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz]

I thank my hon. Friend, although that also happened with a Government of whom we were both Members; it is a feature of the way in which Governments tend to introduce counter-terrorism legislation. Indeed, as the shadow Home Secretary said, mistakes are made, and there were mistakes under the last Government. I remember the incredibly important speeches of the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield on 42 days and 92 days, and the role played by my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) on these issues. That is why it is so important to pause, consider, scrutinise and then report to the House. The Select Committee will not be in a position to produce a report for this House as we had hoped we might, simply because there is no time to do so as we have already reached Second Reading. By the time the Home Secretary makes her much-heralded appearance before us, the legislation will probably already have passed through the House.

Having made my complaint about that matter, I agree that these are dangerous times. The Home Secretary and the shadow Home Secretary are absolutely right that we need to act quickly but carefully, while recognising not only that ISIL and extremist groups are operating in Iraq and Syria but that those who support those groups are acting in countries all over the world.

Yesterday I met Nathalie Goulet, the chair of the French Senate Committee that is inquiring into the struggle of jihadi networks in France and Europe. I was astonished to hear that the situation in respect of French citizens travelling to Iraq and Syria is much worse in France than it is in our country. I looked up the last report our Select Committee published, and it must be a surprise for the House to learn that countries such as Belgium, Australia and even Norway are in exactly the same position as we are in respect of citizens who wish to travel abroad to fight.

That is why we cannot see the fight against terrorism as something that affects just this House. The shadow Home Secretary was right to raise the international dimension. The Select Committee was very clear in its last report published earlier this year in saying that there needed to be an international platform, with countries able to pool information and act together. We suggested that we should work through Interpol, which we saw as the most appropriate organisation, as it already exists to share information about organised crime. We felt that that was a platform that could be developed to build an international network with allies such as the French, the Dutch and others to ensure that we do things together and learn good practice.

I learned that in France, for example, they have a dedicated “Green Line”, which people can ring with information about those they suspect of being involved in terrorism, and parents can ring for advice and be guided in the right direction. As a result of the activities of the “Green Line”, the French authorities have been able to stop 200 people from travelling abroad to fight. There are other examples, and I hope that we use the good practice developed in other countries in order not to repeat mistakes and to move forward and try to find effective methods of stopping people travelling.

[Mr Winnick]

My right hon. Friend talked about mistakes. Going further back, would it not be wise to remember some of the measures taken against IRA terrorism? Like everyone else, I opposed such terrorism from the very beginning; it had no justification. However, some of those measures, such as internment, were counter-productive and played right into the hands of the IRA. Should we not take that sort of thing into account?

[Keith Vaz]

Those are exactly the unintended consequences to which the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield and others have referred. Of course we need powers in order to deal with those who wish to undermine the values of our society, but we need to be very careful about the way in which we use them, and we need to think about the consequences.

A number of the recommendations made by the Select Committee over a number of years have been adopted in the Bill. We support what is being done in respect of radicalism, but we are cautious about some of the programmes that are being used. I do not support the placing of the counter-terrorism narrative in the Department for Communities and Local Government. The Select Committee has not inquired into that, but I believe that the Home Office is the lead organisation and these should be Home Office programmes. The problem with dealing with more than one Department is the need to persuade different Ministers and civil servants of the necessity of changing things. I do not think that it works very well when two Cabinet Ministers are responsible for roughly the same area of policy. This should be done with and through the Home Secretary, so that she can deliver locally what she tells the House that she wishes to deliver in a more strategic way.

Succession to the Crown Bill (Allocation of Time)

Debate between David Winnick and Keith Vaz

Tuesday 22nd January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz]

As I am already married—

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

He would if he could.

[Keith Vaz]

But I am a Catholic—

UK Border Agency

Debate between David Winnick and Keith Vaz

Wednesday 4th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz]

I agree with the hon. Lady, but that is true not only of the elite, which includes Oxford and Oxford Brookes universities, but of all the other language schools and higher education colleges that provide such a wonderful service.

I will turn to family migration, which I know the Minister for Immigration will be asked about when he comes before the Select Committee on Tuesday. The new migration changes will come into effect on Monday. That, in my view, will be a disaster for the settled British Asian community. We are dealing not with people who come here illegally, but with the settled community, which the Prime Minister rightly praised recently at a big meeting of the Conservative Friends of India. Some 1,000 members of the diaspora turned up and listened to the Prime Minister’s speech. They liked what he said, but they will not like what the Minister and the Home Office are going to do on family visitor visas.

Last week, I was presented with a case involving a wedding that will take place in Leicester in three weeks’ time. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester South (Jonathan Ashworth) and I will go along, as we do with every wedding in Leicester. Two sisters of the bride had applied to come over from Toronto. One sister had been allowed to come, but the other had been refused. I wrote a letter, because there was no time for an appeal. The appeals system is so awful and takes so long, as the Minister keeps telling us and the UKBA, that there was no point in appealing, because the appeal would have come up next year, well after the wedding. I therefore wrote to ask for a review. I wrote to my account manager, Saleah Ahmed, who is very efficient. He is a post box—he does not make the decisions, but sent my letter to New York, which is the hub for north America. The letter that I got back said, “Sorry, the second sister’s case cannot be looked at because we only look at cases where there is a death or serious injury.” The first sister will be able to get into the country for the wedding, but the second sister will not be allowed in, despite the additional evidence that I have sent in, which will not even be considered. If the bridegroom or the bride died, the decision might be reconsidered, but otherwise, the second sister will not be allowed into the country and will miss her sister’s wedding.

That situation will be repeated thousands and thousands of times when the right of appeal is removed and there is no effective system to deal with such problems. We have asked the Minister for meeting. I hope that he will meet Members from all parts of the House who have an interest in this matter. The right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), members of whose community I have met, the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), who must have a huge immigration case load, the hon. Member for Bradford East (Mr Ward) and the hon. Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller)—I could go round the whole Chamber—will not like a system which means that they can no longer tell their constituents that there is a right of appeal. They will not like a system in which there is no review or in which the review will take longer than the period that is left before such a wedding. We will be inundated with cases and the system will collapse.

When I and other members of the Home Affairs Committee went to meet Jonathan Sedgwick, who heads the international section of the UKBA, he did not have a plan, because there was no ministerial plan in place. It is very important that we get such a plan in place before the changes take place. I do not like those changes, of course, but I will look at the plan that is on offer.

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

I am sure my right hon. Friend is aware that the last Conservative Government abolished the right of appeal. As he said, when constituents who are sponsors write to us, we then write to the UKBA or the Minister and receive the predictable reply that the case was examined by the appropriate official, who took into consideration all the details and came to a decision. Writing to the Minister or the UKBA will get us no response other than one reaffirming the refusal. That is a denial of justice and means that the entry clearance officer is judge and jury, which is totally wrong and inappropriate. I hope the Minister will reconsider it.

[Keith Vaz]

I agree with my hon. Friend’s comments, although I have not made those points with quite the same passion and eloquence. This issue will simply not go away.

I hope that we will also consider the quality of refusal notices. I pay tribute to John Vine, who is doing a superb job as the independent inspector. He came before the Home Affairs Committee a few years ago, just after he was appointed, and I was worried that he would not be able to do a good job, but he has done a superb job. He makes the point that the process starts with the refusal notice. If that is not clear, we cannot make progress.

I do not know whether the Minister or other Members had the chance to see the Prime Minister’s appearance before the Liaison Committee yesterday. In his answer to my question about the UKBA, he was very clear that he did not believe bonuses should be paid if the job was not being done. The £3.5 million given to senior officials of the UKBA last year, in defiance of the Home Affairs Committee’s recommendation and the views of the Prime Minister and senior Ministers, who have no control over those bonuses, was wrong. Some 25% of the senior officials at the UKBA got a bonus of up to £7,000 each last year.

The Minister knows the problems of the UKBA. He knows about the queues at Heathrow airport and is well aware of what happened with the Brodie Clark saga. It is not an organisation whose senior officials are worthy of being given bonuses. When they do a good job, as Mr Whiteman has promised to do in the end, we can consider bonuses, but certainly not at the moment.

I hope that the Minister will assure us that the 7,000 people in the Border Force will be enough to deal with the inflow of the 5 million to 11 million people who it is estimated will come to the UK in the three-week period of the Olympics. I hope that the number of people that he promised would be at the airports to check people getting in will be forthcoming.

The Home Affairs Committee does not divide on its reports if it can help it, although on points of great principle my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) does his best to encourage us to be much more challenging—I was going to say divisive—in how we present our reports. We will continue to monitor the UKBA every three months, and we will continue to give it key indicators, of which there are 47 at the moment.

The one thing that really irritates the Committee is the fact that the UKBA delays in sending us information. I put that point to the Prime Minister in the Liaison Committee yesterday. That was a problem under the Labour Government and, I am sorry to say, there is still a problem under the current Government. We are dealing by and large with the same officials—Ministers have changed, but the officials and the culture remain the same. When we write to the UKBA and ask for information, we want a reply by a deadline, because when it writes to our constituents it expects a reply by a deadline. We want to ensure that the data that we ask for are put forward and that our requests are not left on a Minister’s desk waiting to be replied to. We shall continue to hold the organisation to account in a rigorous and robust way, and we hope that that will be of benefit to Members.

Policing

Debate between David Winnick and Keith Vaz

Thursday 12th January 2012 Westminster Hall

[Keith Vaz]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for, and agree with, his intervention. It is important that we put on record the achievements of the NPIA in certain areas. The fact that organisations are being abolished does not mean that we do not recognise the work done. I will come on to some of those organisations later.

The fact that the location of all the NPIA functions has not been announced remains a concern. I hope that, during his winding-up speech, the Minister will finally give us the list of all the outstanding functions and tell us where they will go. Many of the NPIA functions bound for the NCA will have to move to the Serious Organised Crime Agency, which itself is due to be abolished and co-opted into the NCA by December 2013. This shifting of resources between agencies due for closure, before finally shifting them to the NCA, makes heavy weather of the Government’s important principle of uncluttering the landscape.

SOCA was set up by the previous Government, of which the shadow Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), was an active member—one of his roles was that of Policing Minister—and our Committee has been concerned about it for a number of years. In our most recent report on the agency in 2009, we found that its budget of £476 million was used to hire 3,800 members of staff; that it was spending £15 of public money for every pound it seized from criminal gangs; and that it lacked transparency in the way that it operated. Despite improvement in its performance, it is essential that the Government’s new crime-fighting agency be set the correct targets and can use its resources cost-effectively, so that it does not become another SOCA. It is also not clear whether SOCA will be given extra resources to help it manage the NPIA functions during the short-lived transition. I hope that the Minister will offer clarification on that point.

The lack of detail regarding the creation of the NCA was one of the central concerns of the Committee, and that remains the case. We were concerned about the delay in appointing a head of the agency, and the lack of detail on the objectives and—most importantly—the budget of this new policing agency. We welcome the appointment of Keith Bristow as the head of the NCA since the publication of our report. We felt, however, that someone occupying a position of that importance ought to have appeared before the Committee before taking up his formal appointment. We also remain concerned about the lack of detail on his role and objectives. Will he be a civil servant, or the head of the No. 1 crime-busting agency in the country? Will he be Sir Humphrey or Eliot Ness? Perhaps we will find out when he appears before the Committee on Tuesday to answer some important questions.

The Committee still awaits the figures on the agency’s budget. When the Minister first appeared before the Committee on 28 June, I asked his director of finance whether he knew the budget. He replied that it would be a little higher than SOCA’s, which is £476 million. Luckily, he had the Minister next to him, who told the Committee that although the budget for the NCA had not yet been set, the lion’s share of it would come from SOCA. The Minister came before us again on 20 December 2011, following the announcement that the destination of some of the NPIA functions would be the NCA, and he could still not inform us of the budget. This is not a game of “Play Your Cards Right”—a little higher here, a little lower there. We want the figures. Parliament needs to know exactly what the budget of this new agency will be, particularly as it is the flagship of the Government’s new policy.

There remain many areas where the agenda for the future of policing is unclear. One such area is police IT. Despite costing the public £1.2 billion annually, we concluded that

“IT across the police service as a whole is not fit for purpose,”

and that that affected the

“police’s ability to fulfil their basic mission of preventing crime and disorder.”

The Home Office has made rectifying that, through changes to police IT, a top priority.

It was an error of judgment on the part of the Home Office to prevent Lord Wasserman from giving oral evidence to our inquiry. As the author of the police IT review that preceded the Home Secretary’s announcement of the creation of a police-led information and communications technology company, and as chairman of the board setting up that new IT company, he is central to any future plans. He hosts seminars on behalf of Ministers, he speaks on behalf of Ministers, and he advises Ministers. I have received many invitations to seminars that the Minister for Policing was unable to attend, and Lord Wasserman is sent in his place. It appears that Lord Wasserman is, in fact, acting as a Minister, so it is very odd that he has refused to appear before the Committee. I hope that the Minister will have some good news for the Committee, in terms of agreeing to allow him to attend. The Committee unanimously wrote to the Home Secretary again on 20 October 2011 asking Lord Wasserman to come before us and give us answers on the development of the new company. That request was turned down.

One of the areas that the Committee has been focusing on with regard to policing has been the policing protocol.

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

I know that my right hon. Friend is going through a lengthy period of not being controversial—somewhat like me—but is he coming to the point when we deal with morale in the police force?

[Keith Vaz]

I have a feeling that my hon. Friend has seen a copy of my speech—although I am not suggesting that he popped into my office, which is next door to his—because I will indeed come on to police morale.

[Mr Winnick]

I can assure my right hon. Friend that I have not seen a copy of his speech.

[Keith Vaz]

One thing is certain: my hon. Friend did not write it for me. We will be coming on to police morale in a moment.

I pay tribute to the excellent work done by the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood in pursuing the issue of the protocol. In the past, the Minister has been willing to engage with the Committee on a number of issues. I find him a very accessible Minister. He may well be top of the league table, as far as my dealings with Home Office Ministers are concerned.

--- Later in debate ---

[Keith Vaz]

The debate is taking place in no small measure because of all the work that the hon. Gentleman has done.

I turn to the issue of police morale, which was raised in an intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick). For police officers up and down the country, the role and future of the police service have been at the forefront of the national agenda since July 2010. The service will suffer more than 16,000 job losses before the next election, and uncertainty remains over how pay and conditions will be affected by the Winsor review and the ruling this week by the Police Arbitration Tribunal. In addition, there is the two-year public sector pay freeze and the capped 1% increase beyond those two years. We have heard from the Police Federation that the proposals for changes to police pay and conditions will have a detrimental effect on the morale of the police service.

In a Police Federation survey of 43,000 police officers last year, 98% said that they were demoralised by how these matters were progressing. When the issue of police pay has been settled, and when that is coupled with all the other challenges that they face, there could be a fundamental shift in the standards and motivation of police officers all over the country. We would be grateful to hear from the Minister about the progress on that subject, and about any other discussions that he has had with the Police Federation.

I have to say to the Minister—again, this is uncharacteristic of him—that I was very disappointed with the reply that he gave to my parliamentary question when I asked how many times he had met the Police Federation. He gave me no reply. He said that he could not tell me how many times because that is what the previous Government did. That is very odd. I thought that this Government were committed to transparency. When the Chairman of a Select Committee tables a parliamentary question to the Minister of Policing asking when he met officially—not socially or informally—the chairman of the Police Federation, he deserves a reply. I shall take that up with Mr Speaker.

[Mr Winnick]

I am sure that my right hon. Friend recalls that when I—and indeed he—pressed the chief constable of the west midlands on the effect of cuts in that region, he said that it was bound to have an effect. Over the period concerned, cuts in the west midlands will be somewhere in the region of 26%. That is not disputed. It will mean 1,100 fewer police officers and around 1,100 fewer police support officers. That is bound to have an adverse effect on dealing with criminality.

[Keith Vaz]

My hon. Friend is a distinguished Member from the west midlands, and I accept what he says. That is exactly what the chief constable of the west midlands said to us when we met him about these matters, so they have to be taken very seriously. On the question of the reply, I will take that up with Mr Speaker, because it is a reasonable question for hon. Members to ask. If we accept that we will never get an answer to questions about who Ministers meet officially, then, frankly, there is no point in coming here and no point in tabling questions.

Despite those difficulties, we need to accept that officers in police forces all over the country work extremely hard and are very dedicated. The riots across the UK highlighted the length to which officers will go to protect their communities and to have a positive impact on local areas. Yesterday, along with the Minister, other Ministers and hon. Members, I attended a reception at Downing street organised by the Prime Minister to thank police officers who had taken part in trying to quell the riots. The Prime Minister spoke eloquently about the bravery of those officers. It is right that we realise and recognise that, during these difficult times when budgets have to be cut to some extent, police officers face enormous problems.

In the week after the Stephen Lawrence verdicts, when there has been some criticism of how the police operated during the original investigation, may I give the Minister an example of really good practice? On Boxing day, a young student was shot in the head in Manchester when he was out attending the sales. He was an overseas student. I was involved in this matter, because an e-mail came from India from his family in Gujarat, and they asked me to ensure that things were in order. I am full of praise for the work that was done by Greater Manchester police. I would like the Minister to look at the letter that I have sent to the Home Secretary today. Within seven days, Assistant Chief Constable Dawn Copley and her team in Greater Manchester arrested someone and charged them with the murder. They sent two police officers to India to inform the family of what was happening. When the family came over here, they looked after them and communicated with them on an hourly basis to tell them what was happening. We now have a date for the hearing of the person who is alleged to have murdered Anuj Bidve. That is an example of good practice, which we should acknowledge when we look at what happened in the Lawrence affair; we can see how far forward we have moved in the past few years.

The Government’s changes are the most far-reaching proposals for the police service since the 1960s, and are among the most significant since Sir Robert Peel laid the foundations for modern policing nearly 200 years ago. Ministers must be commended for thinking outside the box in their desire to improve policing in Britain in a radical way. However, the structures must follow their vision for policing in the 21st century. All the Committee is seeking to do in its report is caution the Government to think carefully before putting their structures in place, so that they are fit for purpose and achieve their laudable aim of reducing crime as much as possible, and provide intervention from the centre to guide long-term policing. It is for that reason that we suggest, in the very last words of our report, that change on this massive scale requires clear and strong leadership from the Home Office, and effective communication with the stakeholders involved in this very important process.

Sovereign Grant Bill (Allocation of Time)

Debate between David Winnick and Keith Vaz

Thursday 14th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I will detain the House for only a very short time. First, I strongly agree with the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall South—

[Mr Winnick]

Walsall North. Walsall South is your sister.

[Keith Vaz]

Walsall North (Mr Winnick); my hon. Friend is definitely not my sister, my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz)—I would have recognised that. I agree with what he said and I thank him.

I think the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the shadow Chancellor are trying to be helpful but there were issues that I wanted to raise on Second Reading concerning the Act of Settlement and my Bill on the removal of primogeniture, which is currently before the House and ought to be considered alongside the very sensible changes being made by the Chancellor in clause 9 of this Bill, which gives a female heir of the Duke of Cornwall the chance to get a settlement equal to a male heir. I agree with what the Chancellor and shadow Chancellor have said, but there is no opportunity to raise these issues if we simply have a debate on clause stand part instead of on Second Reading. Like the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh), I should like to know whether it is your intention, Mr Deputy Speaker, to allow a clause stand part debate to proceed as if it were Second Reading, thus enabling us to raise concerns about the modernisation of the Act of Settlement, which as the hon. Gentleman has said, we have been waiting to do for two centuries.

Police (Detention and Bail) Bill

Debate between David Winnick and Keith Vaz

Thursday 7th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake). I congratulate him on the recent announcement of his elevation to the Privy Council.

The Home Secretary is in the enviable position of coming to the Dispatch Box with the support of Opposition Front Benchers—who seem to have disappeared temporarily; they are hiding behind the Chair—and that of the Liberal Democrat spokesman, ACPO, Liberty and every police officer in the country. The only person missing is His Holiness the Pope. Everybody seems to accept that it is vital that the Government get the legislation through as speedily as possible, within the time frame that was set out by the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice. I thought he was very generous in saying that we would have until 3 o’clock to complete our debate, because everyone who has spoken so far has said that they agree absolutely with everything that the Government are doing, as do I. I shall learn from my own lesson by speaking as briefly as I can.

I thank the Home Secretary for showing great courtesy to the Home Affairs Committee. She promised us a copy of the draft Bill by 6 o’clock on Monday and we received it. She then appeared before the Select Committee on Tuesday. This may seem like déjà vu because there are so many members of the Select Committee here. In fact, we could adjourn the House and straight away be quorate. This is a model not just for emergency legislation, but for the way in which the Government should deal with Select Committees. If she carries on like this, our next report might have to recommend her for canonisation. [Interruption.] Steady on. I said only that we might have to recommend her for canonisation.

[Mr Winnick]

There would be a vote against, I can assure my right hon. Friend.

[Keith Vaz]

I am sure that there would be a vote against it, probably led by my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick).

It is important that Parliament is kept informed. The fact that this legislation had to be scrutinised in this way meant that the Home Secretary’s presence this week was very helpful.

Government Members need to be mindful of the fact that Opposition Front Benchers are supporting the Government on this matter. Government Members were a little unfair to the shadow Home Secretary. It is right that she is able to raise issues concerning the time line. Select Committee members from both sides of the House necessarily raised that issue with the Home Secretary on Tuesday, and indeed with the chief constable of Essex and the commander in the Met who deals with these matters. I commend the hon. Member for South Ribble (Lorraine Fullbrook) and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) for their speeches. Although they disagreed on issues concerning the time line, there was absolute agreement with what the Government propose, just as there is unanimous support for it in the Select Committee.

I want to raise two issues with the Home Secretary. The first relates to the position of the Attorney-General and the importance of Law Officers being involved in this process. As the Home Secretary said and as I know from being a Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General and a junior Minister in the Lord Chancellor’s Department in the last Government, advice given by the Attorney-General or Solicitor-General is by its nature confidential to the Government. However, when this case was first decided on in Salford, I think it was incumbent on Greater Manchester police, who had conduct of this matter, to inform Home Office officials about it, and I am sure that they did. I have not checked the time line, but I am sure that is what they said they did. The Home Office officials should then have consulted the Law Officers. After all, the Attorney-General and Solicitor-General have superintendence over the Director of Public Prosecutions, whose role is extremely important in these matters.

I am sure that if the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless) catches your eye, Mr Deputy Speaker, he will talk about the role of ACPO in this matter. Of course we are interested in the role of ACPO, because under the new landscape of policing, ACPO will be reformed. In making this legislation, we are putting a lot of faith in the advice given to ACPO by two Queen’s counsel, and in the advice that it gave Ministers. The chief constable of Essex clarified after the evidence session that he finally told the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice last Thursday that it was time to go back to the House to pass legislation, which is what the Minister told the House last Thursday. The chief constable had originally told the Committee in open session that it was the day after when he finally made up his mind.

I do not think that these issues ought to be left to ACPO. They are serious issues that ought to occupy the time of Home Office officials. I hope that Home Office officials in this case did alert the Law Officers. I am not asking for a time line from the Minister when he replies, but it would be nice to know whether that happened. I believe that the Law Officers and the Treasury Solicitor’s Department have a role in this, because at the end of the day, it is they who have to go to the courts to represent the Government. I accept what the Home Secretary says and that she has no locus standi in these matters, but this needs to be kept under review. If we look to the future rather than the past, and accept that what the Government have to do, as outlined by the Home Secretary, is the right approach, we should be aware that these things may well happen in the future. I know about the points made by Professor Michael Zander. I have not put down a parliamentary question to ask whether Criminal Law and Justice Weekly, where he wrote his article, is standard reading in the Home Office or the Law Officers’ Department.

Identity Documents Bill

Debate between David Winnick and Keith Vaz

Wednesday 15th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz]

I agree with my hon. Friend: it is a lot of money for some people, but it is not clear whether there is a huge point of principle, based as it is on the fact that people were clear that identity cards were an absolutely partisan policy on the part of the previous Government. Only my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall South—

[Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)]

Walsall North—the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) is your sister.

[Keith Vaz]

I thank my hon. Friend for reminding me—I think I just about know the difference between my sister and my hon. Friend, who was so often the conscience of the Select Committee on Home Affairs when it considered the issue in the previous Parliament. We accepted that the previous Government had an absolute right to put through their legislation on ID cards. It was only my hon. Friend who reminded the Committee on so many occasions that he thought that the policy was wrong.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Winnick]

As for the previous Government, obviously there was controversy among Labour Members on the subject—it would have been odd if that were not so—but does my right hon. Friend not agree that the original idea for identity cards came from Michael Howard, when he was the Home Secretary in, of course, a Conservative Administration?

[Keith Vaz]

I cannot say for certain, but my hon. Friend is wiser and has been in this House for longer than me, so if he quotes Michael Howard from a few years ago, I accept what he says.