Home Affairs

Diane Abbott Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

It is significant that the Home Office has cut around 5,000 staff from the UK Border Agency, and we have seen the consequences, for example in the growing delays for business people, who need visas rapidly, and longer delays and problems with appeals.

Crucially, we also need action to deal with the exploitation of migrant workers to undercut local staff. Where is the action to enforce the minimum wage? Where are the measures to extend gangmasters licensing? Where are the measures to stop agencies recruiting only from abroad? Where are the measures to stop employers using overcrowded housing to get around the minimum wage? Higher fines for businesses employing illegal labour are right, but they are no use if enforcement has dropped by more than 800 companies since the general election.

Let us also be clear that UK Independence party policies would make the situation worse. It wants to end statutory paid holidays, redundancy pay and maternity leave. Getting rid of those entitlements would be deeply unfair. Also, to do so would make it easier, not harder, for employers to exploit migrant workers and undercut local terms and conditions. The truth is that neither the Tories nor UKIP are willing to address the real problem of exploitation and the practical issues that trouble people because they are simply in a race to the bottom in the labour market and in the economy. If they really are concerned about deporting foreign criminals, why are they all determined to opt out of the European arrest warrant, just because it has the word Europe in the title, and even though it was responsible for the swift deportation of 900 suspected foreign criminals last year for trial back home? The reality is that those policies are not driven by facts, justice or a serious concern to get immigration policy right.

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

On the question of deporting foreign-born criminals to serve the balance of their sentence in their home countries, does my right hon. Friend agree that, given that most of the prisoner swap agreements we have with non-EU countries need the prisoner’s permission, it is difficult to see how the Government will achieve anything with that stated policy?

[Yvette Cooper]

We are still waiting to see the detail of the Government’s policy, because in so many of these areas we get strong rhetoric but the reality does not add up to it, and often it does not even emerge.

The Home Secretary might think that she is fending off the threat from UKIP, but actually she is doing the opposite. The more she ramps up the rhetoric and widens the gap between it and reality, the more she increases public concern and the more sceptical people become. This is no time for an arms race on immigration rhetoric. Instead, we need fair and sensible policies that will make things better, not worse.

Let me raise one final immigration issue with the Home Secretary. We agree with the sentiment in the Queen’s Speech that those who come here should contribute, but what about those who have already contributed to this country by risking their lives and those of their families for our troops and our nation, and many of those are still doing so? What about the Afghan interpreters who have supported our troops and face threats from the Taliban as our troops pull out? When we left Iraq, we recognised the debt we owed those interpreters. The Americans, the Australians and the New Zealanders are all recognising their obligations to the interpreters. Surely she should show a similar sense of honour and add to the Queen’s Speech a settlement scheme for the Afghan interpreters, to whom we and our troops owe so much? We will support her if she does.

This is a Queen’s Speech that fails to provide the answers on law and order. It fails to provide the answers we need on immigration. It fails to provide help for family living standards. It fails to provide the boost our flatlining economy so badly needs. Once all the pomp and ceremony has passed, the reality of the Queen’s Speech is looking pretty thin. The Home Secretary, like the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, talks tough but does not deliver. As the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless) said, she

“talks the talk but does not walk the walk.”

On the Opposition side, we could not agree more.

--- Later in debate ---

[Fiona Mactaggart]

The hon. Gentleman does not have the history of going into the way that the Home Office works that I have. What happened was that initial determinations of asylum cases had been taking years and years. In ’97, there were thousands of cases that nobody had made any kind of decision on, and the initial determinations were made quickly. He is right that there was a backlog of a number of cases that had been lurking in an underground bunker. In fact, when we were first elected, the underground bunker contained thousands of cases that had not been subject to any decisions at all, and the bunker was full of poison gas. The way in which the Home Office administers cases is ludicrous and I will address the issue later.

I believe that the previous Government did get some things wrong on immigration. We allowed the development of bogus colleges which conned students and allowed people to study here who should not have qualified to do so. We failed most in not sufficiently transforming the administration of immigration that we inherited from the Conservative Government. We did not do enough to make the system work well. We started that work—we introduced e-borders and we proposed identity cards—but we inherited a mess and the Home Office did not sufficiently get it sorted.

Today’s editorial headline in The Times says that the Government are right to prioritise delivery. Although The Times appears to be giving the Government an alibi for not proposing enough legislation in the Queen’s Speech, immigration is a field in which they have failed to prioritise delivery, which is key to ensuring that our immigration system that works. From where does immigration need to operate?

[Ms Abbott]

On the past Labour Government’s record, I gently tell my hon. Friend that I had a few asylum cases that took longer than two months to resolve. Does she agree, however, that one of the most pernicious myths propagated is that the previous Labour Government had an open-door policy on immigration? There was no open-door policy and it is misleading for people to continue to repeat that.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

My hon. Friend is right. In order to get effective administration of immigration in the UK, we need to work out where it can best operate, and in my opinion that is at our borders. We are an island, which provides an opportunity for a primary mechanism of border-based immigration control.

It is not possible to operate effective and fair internal immigration control without identity cards, which is why in 2003 I changed my position from hostility towards them to being in favour of biometric ID cards. The Government’s proposed new mechanism seems to be dependent on not just internal immigration control, but wholly privatised immigration controls, with GPs and landlords—any old person—responsible for checking people’s immigration status. Frankly, that will open the door to more discrimination: people who do not look or sound British, or who cannot provide documents that the non-immigration authorities understand in order to prove their status, are likely to face particular difficulties. Anyone who looks or sounds like they are from abroad is likely to be targeted. That is not fair or right, and it is not an appropriate way for us to operate in the UK.

We know that landlords and GPs will not be able to understand the bits of paper, because employers who, rightly, already have a responsibility are unable to find out whether their employees are properly qualified. In a significant number of cases in my constituency, that is because the papers that prove status are stuck in the Home Office, which is not making a decision on them. I am not sure how a landlord is supposed to be able to prove to their own satisfaction whether someone is qualified or not.

In order to operate the proposal sensibly, it will probably require a register of landlords, which I would enthusiastically accept, because I am concerned about a number of issues with regard to private landlords. At present, private landlords in Slough habitually say that they do not want tenants on housing benefit, but in my view that is discriminatory: it discriminates against disabled people, who are substantially more likely than anybody else to depend on housing benefit. Lawyers have told me that it would be impossible to bring a case of disability discrimination, partly because landlords are not big institutions and because of the costs involved. If we increase the number of people whom landlords have a duty to discriminate against, we will create a society in which the excluded will number not just those with a suspect immigration status, but those with a perfectly secure immigration status.

Rather than legislating in that way, I advise the Government to get with the programme of making the system work—but that is not what they are doing. On illegal employment, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) has said, 800 fewer businesses have been fined in the past year for employing illegal workers. That figure is down from 2,097 in 2010 and 1,215 in 2012. The rhetoric is outperforming activity.

The same is true of the rhetoric on human trafficking. The Prime Minister has said that he wants us to be the leading country in dealing with human trafficking, yet we heard compelling testimony from Kalayaan just a couple of days ago about how the abolition of the overseas domestic workers visa is increasing the oppression of overseas domestic workers in private households. The reach of the Gangmasters Licensing Authority should be spread far more effectively, so that instead of being criticised by the International Labour Organisation, as is currently the case, we can show ourselves to be leaders in preventing human trafficking and the exploitation of workers.

The person who put this case most tellingly was Paul Houston, whose daughter was killed in a hit-and-run incident that became a cause célèbre for those who want to scrap the human rights of foreign nationals, when he said:

“I’m tired of the Borders Agency blaming its failings on human rights instead of just doing its job. Getting landlords to check the status of tenants will lead to suspicion that anyone who isn’t white or who has a foreign-sounding name must be here illegally.”

Let us consider the proportionality of the proposed deportation and human rights legislation. At present, a person sentenced to a year’s imprisonment is also expected—there is a presumption—to be deported. It is more usual for the Home Office to win rather than lose an appeal against such a case. Of the 819 deportation appeals to the first tier tribunal in the year April 2011 to March 2012, 67%—two thirds—were dismissed and 33% allowed. Very few appeals go to the upper courts and the judges have to decide them according to law, which includes the European convention on human rights as the European Court of Human Rights and the British courts have decided it, and not the Home Secretary’s personal views on it.

The Prime Minister has said that

“from here on I want a family test applied to all domestic policy. If it hurts families, if it undermines commitment, if it tramples over the values that keep people together, or stops families from being together, then we shouldn’t do it.”

However, that is precisely what the deportation proposals and those for the diminution of human rights risk doing. I want to give examples of two cases in my constituency in order to try to persuade the Minister who will respond to the debate to give a commitment that those people whose sentence is only in relation to immigration offences should not be caught by the Government’s proposals.

My first constituent is an African man who has lived in the UK for nearly 14 years. He came as a student, formed a relationship and had a son who was born here in 2003. That relationship broke down, but he is in frequent and close contact with his son and on good terms with his ex-partner about that contact. He was refused re-entry after a visit to his home country because he was not continuing to study and was removed immediately. He returned with another passport and worked on false documents, incidentally for a well-known children’s charity. He was arrested for using false documents to come back to the UK and to try to get permission to remain, and was sentenced to 15 months’ imprisonment. In the meantime, he had formed a new relationship with a British citizen who was born in Devon and worked at a special school. She was close to her parents and her two very elderly grandmothers. She stuck by him while he was in prison and they got married in August 2010 after his release. They now have an 18-month-old child.

My constituent applied to revoke the deportation order that was made after his sentence and won his appeal in summer 2012 on article 8 grounds. Eventually, he was given the six months’ leave that the UKBA has decided to give in such circumstances. He will have to apply again and pay Home Office fees for a further extension and has no idea when he might be able to get some security. I received an e-mail from his wife yesterday, which said that he

“has returned to work, he now works there full time in the role of security and youth worker. He continues to see his son fortnightly and our son has become familiar with the routine of”

his father

“taking him to a childminder every morning.”

She wrote that he

“is a very important part of my family and we stay with my parents regularly, as well as regular visits with my extended family and he will be an usher at my sisters wedding in two weeks time.”

That is exactly the kind of person whom the Home Secretary’s proposals are designed to target, unless we are given a commitment that people whose only offence relates to their immigration status will not be included.

My second constituent who has an immigration offence is unsure whether he will be able to stay with his wife and children. The eldest child is 10 years old and has applied for British citizenship, as is that child’s right.

The risk is that we are following the agenda of the tabloids, rather than the agenda of humanity. An alternative approach would be to say that we, as the country that helped to write the European convention on human rights, are proud of our human rights record and will uphold it. We should trust judges to make the decisions on individual cases, rather than write big rules to discriminate against people. We should say that we do not believe in privatising our immigration administration, but that it is time to make the Home Office’s administration of immigration operate better and do what it says on the tin. If we did all those things, this would be a more fair, just and equal country, which is what we should all aim for.

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[Dr Huppert]

I thank the Minister for his detailed clarification and for being so well briefed. The past two Governments removed one set of exit checks each. We need to have them back so that we know who is leaving.

We must ensure that in the drive to correct our systems, we do not bring in measures that stifle our success or international standing. It is fantastic that we attract students from around the world. They come here and pay money, making this a fantastic export business. Some of them stay and contribute to our economy. Others leave and set up businesses or get elected in their own country, and have a good relationship with our country. We should be proud of that. That is a huge factor in my constituency and many others. We must not drive those people out when we correctly try to stop those who are abusing the system and who come here falsely. We need steps that get it right in both ways.

The demise of the Border Agency was somewhat rushed. We must ensure that there is not just a change of name, but a change of practice. The era of decade after decade of backlogs and of people not getting answers promptly must finally end. We all want to see that; no one in any part of the House would like those backlogs to continue to grow or even to exist at all, and we must have a system that will end them. I hope the Government will manage that, but it will be a tough task.

[Ms Abbott]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the inordinate delays and backlogs in the immigration system have two malign effects? First, they make it difficult for those with the type of talent, expertise and entrepreneurship that he describes to have their cases dealt with swiftly. Secondly, they encourage abuse, because many third-rate, dodgy immigration advisers end up giving their clients advice just to play for time.

[Dr Huppert]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right and I agree with everything she said. Delays cause huge harm, and she is right to pick on a number of the advisers and immigration lawyers who help out. A huge number of reputable lawyers do a fantastic job, but all of us who deal with a significant amount of immigration casework see shocking cases of people who should not be allowed to practise as they do, and who are extorting the vulnerable in a deeply unfair way. It is a huge problem that is cruel to those involved, and we must take action.

Much of what we need to do can be achieved without legislation. Some areas, however, need legislation and I look forward to proposals in the immigration Bill, which I hope will contain good provisions and send the signal that we can do the right thing. I know the Minister for Policing and Justice agreed with this when he was Immigration Minister, but there are, for example, specific issues about the status of children born outside the UK to unmarried British fathers before 2006, and to married British mothers before 1983. These are slightly odd cases because those people are not entitled to citizenship, although they are if they were born to unmarried British fathers after 2006, or earlier in the case of the mother. I hope that anomaly—I think that was the word the Minister used—will now be corrected. I also hope that a number of other proposals will be included in the legislation. My hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) pointed out that asylum support rates should be looked at each year, and I hope that will find its way into the Bill if legislation is required.

The idea of landlords and employers having a role is interesting. For employers the issue is clear, but we need stronger controls on those who knowingly hire people who are not allowed to work. We also need a system that makes it easier for employers. I have seen cases where the UK Border Agency has given employers unhelpful or inaccurate information about people’s right to work. Employers cannot be expected to understand all the details of the system—I do not think any hon. Member in the Chamber would claim to understand every nuance of it, although I am prepared to be corrected—and we must have a simple, clear system. If landlords are also to have such a responsibility, they too need such a system. I do not mind if a landlord has to enter a passport number and name on a computer and gets an answer—I can live with that—but if they all are expected to become experts in immigration law, we should be aware that that simply will not happen. I look forward to seeing how the system will work.

I am delighted that the draft Anti-social Behaviour Bill is ready for consideration, and I am pleased that large parts of it have received pre-legislative scrutiny. That is an excellent pattern, and I hope more Bills will go through such scrutiny, and that future Governments will follow the advice, which is useful to ensure good, rather than rushed, decisions. We must deal with antisocial behaviour, which is a blight on many communities. I do not think that antisocial behaviour orders worked; they felt slow, bureaucratic, ineffective, and we know that many young people treated them almost as a badge of honour. A huge proportion—more than half, I think—were breached. The system simply did not work and was part of an effort to sound tough on antisocial behaviour. I hope that the proposals in the Anti-social Behaviour Bill will work, and I will be disappointed if it turns out that they are just another example of people trying to sound tough. However, I am hopeful that the orders and injunctions it contains will be more effective and produce more effective community remedies.

I will not go through the Bill in detail, but I have one concern about the naming and shaming of offenders under 18, which I think should be done only as a very last resort, particularly now that so much information is available on line. The record of a 14-year-old who is publicly named online will be available when they are 18, 24, 34 or 44, and we run the risk of stigmatising for ever young people—who made errors and should not have done what they did—in a way that would not have happened 20 or 30 years ago. That was discussed by the Home Affairs Committee during pre-legislative scrutiny, and I am pleased at the Government’s indication that such a measure should be used only as a last resort. I hope the Minister will clarify that although one section of the law on naming is being disapplied, clear guidance will be given that that should be done only rarely.

I was happy about the criminalisation of forced marriage, which strikes me as absolutely right and was recommended by the Home Affairs Committee, as well as the work on dangerous dogs. In 2011, there were 6,500 hospital admissions in England for dog bites and attacks, not counting those who were treated in A and E and sent home, or the many leaflet deliverers and canvassers who received just a small bite. The new measures will encourage responsible dog ownership, and I am particularly pleased to see the category covering attacks on guide dogs. I spent time with Guide Dogs for the Blind, and I was led blindfolded around my constituency by a guide dog, which was an amazing experience that I recommend to all Members—I see some have had the same experience. There have been a huge number of attacks on guide dogs, which are particularly damaging because of the effect on the person involved and because guide dogs are trained to look after their owner, not turn and fight off the other dog. There are awful cases of a guide dog leading its owner away while being savaged and either killed or seriously harmed, and I am therefore pleased to see protection for assistance dogs included under clause 98, meaning that an attack on a guide dog will count similarly to that on a person.

Rehabilitation has been a long-term Liberal Democrat policy and an issue that we keep discussing. The current jail system simply does not work and there are people who have been in jail but who come out and go back in again, which none of us wants to see. At times, we have seen a bidding war between political parties and areas of the press on who can sound tougher about locking people up for longer. The goal should be to ensure we do not have offences, not to punish people as toughly as we can.

Jail is expensive. It costs £40,000 to put a person in prison for less than 12 months, and many of those will reoffend. The situation is even worse for women offenders, huge numbers of whom are jailed for reoffending. Frankly, there are questions about how many women offenders should be in jail—I think it should be a far smaller number than it currently is. Between 2000 and 2010, the female prison population rose by 27%.

There is firm evidence that measures such as restorative justice and community sentencing are far more effective than costly short-term prison sentences, and that is the right way to go. It is not about being tough on crime but about stopping crimes from happening, and that is what we should see. The continued progress of the rehabilitation revolution will encourage probation services to keep reoffending rates down and shift the focus from being tough on crimes that have already happened to ensuring they do not happen in the first place.

Those are the home affairs and justice Bills in the Queen’s Speech, but I wish to touch on one that I am pleased was not included—the draft Communications Data Bill. This proposed legislation has an interesting history. Last year, the Home Office thought it was ready to be part of a full Bill, but I am delighted that my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister said, “No, I am not sure that it’s ready. Pre-legislative scrutiny needs to consider it and pull apart the details to see whether it is fit for purpose.” I served for a long time on the Joint Committee that considered that Bill carefully—it was, I think, the most detailed piece of pre-legislative scrutiny ever done in this House—and concluded that it was not ready at all. Although there was a case, as there always is, for stronger measures, it was nowhere near made. The Committee’s report was quite damning and stated that

“the draft Bill pays insufficient attention to the duty to respect the right to privacy, and goes much further than it need or should”.

That was a unanimous, cross-party, cross-House Committee. The report described some of the information coming from the Home Office as being, in one case, “fanciful and misleading”, and said that evidence for the problem it was trying to solve was misleading and unhelpful. The head of MI5 said that evidence presented on the problem relied on “pretty heroic assumptions”. It also highlighted that some of the proposals could reduce the amount of communications data available in the United Kingdom. It is a strongly written report and well worth reading.

I was therefore delighted that, after the report, and after the Home Office did not address the fundamentals—it did not manage to show how the 500,000 pieces of data that have been collected already were used, or to provide evidence of the benefits and other things—my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister announced that the proposals would not go ahead. I am delighted with that decision.

I am pleased Her Majesty was clear that most of communications data proposals would not happen. The Home Secretary had a different interpretation, but Her Majesty said that the proposal would address only the problem of matching internet protocol addresses—I am delighted Her Majesty the Queen managed to say that, which I suspect is a first. The Government will not pass legislation allowing a Home Secretary to ensure that records are kept of every website that people visit. They will not take an internal lead forcing internet service providers to monitor and collect information on what everyone does on Facebook, Google, Skype, Twitter or any other platform. We should not set a standard for the world by saying that such information can be collected as it passes through our networks. We will not spend more than £1 billion—£1.8 billion was the original figure, but we suspected that it would increase—snooping on our own citizens. That will not happen under this Government.

I am aware that the Home Secretary would like to implement that proposal, but she will not get her way. We have heard that the Labour party would have liked that, too. A former Labour Home Secretary said on “Daily Politics” that Labour would have gone ahead with the proposal, and the shadow Home Secretary has said that Labour would go ahead with a communications data Bill. She said that Labour would go ahead with collecting web log information and intercepting information on what people do on Facebook and Google. She is not in the Chamber, but if any of the shadow team would like to correct my interpretation of what she said, they are welcome to do so. The Liberal Democrats will stand firm; our position is supported by many Back Benchers and Front Benchers of the other parties in the House.

Safeguards are needed. For example, far too many bodies have access to the information. I was told off for saying in an interview that the egg marketing board was allowed access to communications data information. I had a letter saying that that was inaccurate. I apologise. In fact, the Egg Marketing Inspectorate would be allowed such access.

Evidence will be needed on IP resolution, but I believe legislation will not be needed. We need training on using the huge amount of data available, which is what the Metropolitan Police Commissioner said was most useful. When I asked him how he would spend £1.8 billion, he spoke of training, more officers and better equipment.

The Queen’s Speech contains much to be glad of, and I am pleased that many measures are not in it. However, I am sorry that Australian influences seem to have killed off proposals on plain packaging, minimal pricing and the regulation of lobbying. I am sure they are separate issues, but there is very much to be proud of, and I look forward to debating the measures over the coming year.

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[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

It was a great Queen’s Speech. It was succinct and focused, and I hope that my speech follows suit. It is fantastic that we get the opportunity, during the debates on the Queen’s Speech, to have a free-ranging discussion. I want to cover four specific proposals in Her Majesty’s speech, the first of which is High Speed 2.

My views on HS2 are clearly on the record, so I will not go into them now. However, I hope that the thoughts, feelings and concerns of my constituents will be taken into account in the new consultation on compensation. I urge those on the Front Bench to consider seriously the merits of a property bond. The high-speed link will be a very long time in coming. Unfortunately, too many of my constituents are trapped in their homes and unable to move. It is not that their house prices have dropped in value—they cannot sell at any price. The advantage of a property bond, whereby the Government underwrite any loss once the line is built, is that it would enable them to get on with their normal lives in the interim. I therefore urge the Government to consider this option seriously.

The Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill is vital. It is all about the quality of life of our voters in this great country. It is true to say that antisocial behaviour utterly destroys quality of life, whether it is violence, bullying, littering or dangerous dogs. All too often, antisocial behaviour is carried out by kids who have had the worst start in life. I have spoken many times on this subject in this Chamber. If we really want to solve antisocial behaviour we have to focus on the earliest years. In all of our rehabilitation and youth policies, we need to focus on getting the very youngest a good start in life, as this will mean that they do not join the conveyor belt to antisocial behaviour and crime. We need a revolution in support of the perinatal period. We need to work far earlier with those who are pregnant to help them deal with poor maternal mental health and, later, problems relating to poor attachment with their babies.

As I have said before in the Chamber, all of a baby’s brain development takes place in the first two years of life. In the first year, it builds 1 million neural connections per second, while its entire lifelong emotional resilience—its ability to deal with the things that life throws at us—is largely determined by the age of two. Anything we do later to rehabilitate offenders—for instance, to sort out speech and learning difficulties, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or any of the problems that lead young people into a life of antisocial behaviour and crime—would be much better done through prevention policies in the earliest years. I urge again the Front-Bench team to work closely with the Department of Health and the Department for Education to consider a revolution in the perinatal period.

I want to talk briefly about the immigration reform Bill. The Opposition caused these problems. It was undoubtedly their failure to put in place proper transitional controls that caused the heartache, the sense of injustice and the resentment of immigration that we see today. I agree with hon. Members who have said that immigration has been good for this country. I absolutely accept that point. EU immigration has been good for this country, but it has gone too far, too fast, without any controls and, specifically, without a close focus on fairness for the existing population as against fairness for those who would join this country. The right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) ranted that it was not the time to ramp up the rhetoric on immigration. I could not agree with her less. It is essential not just to talk about it, but to act on it, and that is why the Bill is vital.

[Ms Abbott]

Does the hon. Lady accept that there has never been a time when immigration was not discussed, whether in Parliament or the media? Every day for years, there has been a story in the tabloid press. We have had major immigration and nationality Bills in every Parliament. Furthermore, we know where over-heated rhetoric on immigration goes in a time of recession, and it is not a nice place.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that comment, because it highlights precisely my point. She is subliminally implying that this generates racism, and that has been the problem with the debate for the past decade. Particularly under her Government, anybody who wanted to talk about the problems of uncontrolled immigration was somehow racist. I have just said that immigration has been of huge benefit to this country—I hope she was listening to that—but at the same time fairness is vital to the interests of this country.

I will now address that fairness aspect, which is where I think the Bill is incredibly important. It should ensure that those who have paid into the system benefit more than those who have not. This is not just a problem that concerns Britain; it also concerns Germany. The Fresh Start project, of which I am a founding member, recently went to Berlin to talk to German politicians and businesses. They feel that immigration has benefited the German economy, but that the fact that people can migrate there for the sole purpose of claiming benefits is simply unfair and generates resentment.

Constituents have said to me at surgeries that it is totally unfair that they, having potentially paid into the Exchequer coffers for years, get so little back if they lose their job. The Fresh Start project has assessed what happens on the continent. Many countries, including Germany and the Nordic countries, have a far more Bismarckian system of benefits payments, which means that if someone who has paid into the system for years loses their job, they can, for a period, generate half of their previous income while they get themselves back on their feet. The system in the UK is very different.

If we are to address the resentment over access to benefits for migrants, and access to benefits for those who have paid in versus those who have not, we need to look seriously at reducing benefits for those who have never contributed either because they have never worked here or because they have recently migrated here. Those who have paid in, as well as school leavers who have not yet got a job but whose parents have paid in, should get a higher level of benefit. That would be fair. In dealing with the impact of immigration on voters’ quality of life, fairness is key.

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[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

I am very glad to have an opportunity to say a few words on the Queen’s Speech. It was a Queen’s Speech that could best be described as the creation of one Lynton Crosby, the chief Tory strategist. It is extraordinary that an important, symbolic and historic event that takes place every year should this year have the fingerprints all over it of an Australian huckster. The Lynton Crosby effect can be seen in both what is in the Queen’s Speech, and what is not in it. What runs through the speech, the way it was briefed and its theme, show that this speech has anti-immigration measures as its centrepiece.

In the wake of recent local elections, politicians on all sides are clearly focused on the UKIP vote and what we need to do to appeal to that. There are, however, too many myths about immigration. It is a myth that we have not been allowed to talk about immigration during past decades. My Government had a major Bill on immigration or nationality in every Parliament, and I do not think a day has gone by over the past 20 years in which a tabloid paper has not run an anti-immigrant story, whether it is asylum seekers eating swans or Romanian ladies in headscarves who are the latest threat to the body politic. The myth that no one is allowed to talk about immigration is just that.

It is also a myth that Labour had an open-door policy on immigration. I do more immigration casework than most Members of the House because of the nature of my constituency, and we have filing cabinets full of cases, many of which went on for months, moving into years. The assertion that under the previous Government immigrants and asylum seekers could just walk into the UK is a myth that wants quashing.

I do not doubt that the polls are right when they reflect concern about immigration. I note, however, that the more diverse an area, and the longer immigrants have been there, the less frightened people are of immigration. Fear takes hold in parts of the country where there are hardly any immigrants. Some Labour Members like to point to the children or grandchildren of earlier waves of immigrants who have difficulty with immigration and say, “Look, this West Indian and this African are worried about eastern European migrants.” I have been an MP for more than 20 years, and in a part of London that has seen successive waves of immigration I have noted that it is always the last group of immigrants but one to arrive who feel that they can complain about the latest group. It is almost as if being able to complain about the latest group of immigrants cements someone’s status as a real British national. I do not say that that does not reflect real concerns about immigration, and where there are such concerns, whether about job insecurity, low wages, or an absence of housing, this House and my party should address them. However, it is important not to get swept up in myth making.

In an extraordinarily cynical manoeuvre, the Government —on the instructions, I imagine, of Mr Lynton Crosby—have made immigration one of the centrepieces of the Queen’s Speech, yet a number of the measures that they suggest will not, in practice, achieve the effects that the general public might think. For instance, the Prime Minister spoke about being able to throw out foreign national prisoners almost as soon as they are sentenced. Well, we will see whether that can happen. All prisoner exchange agreements with non-EU countries turn on the consent of the prisoner, and until now, prisoners from Jamaica, which has the largest number of foreign nationals in British jails, and prisoners from Nigeria have always refused to go back to their countries of origin to serve their sentence. I do not know what will change.

An issue was raised in the context of the Queen’s Speech about stopping immigrants who are not entitled to NHS treatment from receiving it. Of course we should not facilitate health tourism—no Opposition Member defends that—and of course hospitals should be able to get back money that they are owed. There is, however, a danger of blowing this up into a huge issue when the sums of money, given the total NHS budget, are not necessarily that great. If hospitals and doctors are to query the entitlement of people who walk through their door, given the nature of things the danger is that they will query those from visible minorities who may well be not just British nationals, but third-generation British nationals. What will that do for community cohesion?

[Lyn Brown]

One thing that worries me is that such rhetoric could prevent people who are sick with transmittable diseases from going to the doctors because they are worried about whether they are entitled to do so. That will cost us more, as people who are entitled to health care pick up diseases. Does my hon. Friend agree that such rhetoric will also cost more in terms of lives and serious illnesses in our communities?

[Ms Abbott]

I am glad my hon. Friend raises that public health aspect of the rhetoric and the media narrative of stopping immigrants from approaching doctors and the health service. Many who are perfectly entitled to approach their doctor will feel inhibited, and there is a danger of disease incubation—people might finally go to the health service only when they are far gone, which will cost a lot more. Another danger is communicable disease. The pronouncements on stopping immigrants from unwarrantedly accessing NHS health care are not just wrong, toxic and unworkable, but inimical to good public health.

The Queen’s Speech is a Lynton Crosby public speech partly because of the immigration theme that runs through it, which is all about rhetoric. The measures will either not deliver or deliver in a minimalist way. All it does is heighten fears. The Government believe that it is to their advantage to do so.

The Lynton Crosby effect is both what is in the speech and what is not in it. We know that his company, Crosby Textor, is on a retainer with British American Tobacco in Australia to fight plain packaging. I put it to the House that it is no coincidence that a man who made his considerable sums of money fighting plain packaging in Australia turns up as the Conservative party’s chief political strategist, and it suddenly drops its commitment to plain packaging.

Dropping that commitment cannot be because of the evidence. I do not ask the House to believe me on the significance of plain packaging; the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry), who has responsibility for public health, said just weeks ago that she was persuaded having seen the evidence—the Department of Health has seen the evidence. What happened between the Department of Health forming a view on plain packaging and the Under-Secretary coming out in public in favour of it, and a Queen’s Speech that does not mention it, even though it is the preferred solution of medical experts and smoking cessation campaigners? Lynton Crosby happened. The idea that thousands of people could have their health endangered because of the malign influence of Lynton Crosby on Tory party policy is very regrettable.

The House must remember that tobacco remains the biggest cause of health inequalities in terms of death rates—it is more significant than any other factor. As I have said, there is complete consensus, including among the British Medical Association and medical and smoking cessation campaigners, that plain packaging is a key aspect in reducing levels of smoking and improving the health of the population, but because Lynton Crosby raises an eyebrow, it seems to have been dropped from the Queen’s Speech.

Another measure missing from the Queen’s Speech that has tremendous public health implications is a minimum price for alcohol. I am proud to tell the House that the Labour party’s policy is to support a minimum price for alcohol because there is a consensus—again—among campaigners, doctors’ organisations and anybody concerned about alcohol abuse, and even among some Government Members, that something must be done about the deluge of cheap alcohol. We have gone from the situation in the 19th century when people were worried about pubs and clubs, to worrying about men, women and children buying cheap alcohol in the supermarket and corner shop and doing themselves real damage drinking at home. We are seeing rising levels of liver disease as a result of the consumption of cheap alcohol. At one point the Prime Minister said that he was persuaded by the arguments for a minimum price, and brave statements were made by the Home Secretary. What happened then? Lynton Crosby came in as chief political adviser and the commitment to a minimum price on alcohol disappeared, again to the detriment of the health of thousands of our people.

This is the Lynton Crosby Queen’s Speech. It is disgraceful that he is able to abuse his position as a political adviser to interfere with the legislative programme of this Government. The health of thousands of people will suffer as a result of that interference, and the malign narrative on immigration that is being propagated is no way to build social cohesion. It rests on myths, rather than facts, and is no way to build what we on the Opposition Benches would like to see: one nation politics.