Serious and Organised Crime: Prüm Convention

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Tuesday 8th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

The case the Home Secretary has just set out from the Dispatch Box was compelling and powerful, revealing, as it did, the zeal of the convert to the cause. She was right to make her case with such force, and I am sure my right hon. Friend would agree that the problem with the amendment in the name of the hon. Member for Stone and others this evening is that it invites the House to prioritise the civil liberties of British citizens and risks to UK sovereignty over and above risks to national security. That is what the amendment to the motion invites us to do.

Of course our liberties and our sovereignty are important considerations, but the safety of the public must come first. That is the primary duty of any Government, and it is why the Government are right not to listen to the hon. Member for Stone. The truth is they got themselves into difficulty two years ago by listening to those siren voices, and I hope Members on the Treasury Bench will not make the same mistake today. Indeed, I hope they would have learned an important lesson from this whole episode. It was the European Council that required the Government, after notification of the opt-out, to conduct and publish a business and implementation case assessing the costs and benefits of Prüm. In other words, the EU forced the UK Government to face up to the benefits of European co-operation and in bringing this motion to the House tonight they are effectively conceding the EU was right all along.

That assessment was informed by a pilot undertaken by the Government which the Home Secretary referred to. It found an overwhelming case to opt back in. It involved DNA samples from 2,513 unsolved British murders, rapes and burglaries which were automatically checked against European police databases in France, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands. Searching the profiles against the databases of those four member states revealed 71 scene-to-person matches and 47 scene-to-scene matches, five relating to rape, two to sexual assault and 23 to burglary.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

On an earlier point, is not the greatest defence of the nation’s security the civil liberties of the people?

[Andy Burnham]

I would put it to the hon. Gentleman that security comes first and that is the primary duty of any Government—to keep the public safe. Once we have secured people’s safety, then liberty comes from that security. That is why I believe the amendment before the House tonight has got things the wrong way round. I conceded they are incredibly important considerations, but they are not more important than national security and any measures that enhance the security of the public here in the end contribute to enhancing their liberty. That is why security must come first.

As well as finding those matches, the pilot also found that information was provided in a much more timely manner than it had been under the old arrangements, as the Home Secretary said. It found that information was being provided in a matter of seconds, minutes or hours, drastically improving the speed and quality of investigations. At present, requests by the British police for DNA checks from other European forces involve a request to the National Crime Agency, which is then passed to Interpol before being passed on to the relevant national police force. On average, it takes 143 days for the results to come back. The benefits to UK law enforcement of opting into the Prüm decisions on data access are therefore abundantly clear, in terms of speed of investigation and of resources. DNA checks will be available within 15 seconds, automated number plate checks within 10 seconds and fingerprint matches within 24 hours.

Paris Terrorist Attacks

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Monday 16th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I am not able to comment on the case the hon. Gentleman outlines because I do not know all the facts. There have been reports in the media, but it would not be appropriate for me to comment. I confirm that these will be extra posts and that it will be additional money.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

As chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on France and on behalf of all those in this place who love France, may I express our solidarity with our French colleagues in their national Parliament? Just as in the two world wars, we stand shoulder to shoulder with them. May I speak directly to them and say, “A nos collègues à l’Assemblée nationale, maintenant et pour toujours, vous avez nos prières et notre solidarité. Vive la République. Vive la France.”?

[Mrs May]

I can only respond to my hon. Friend by saying, “Nous sommes solidaires avec vous. Nous sommes tous ensembles.”

Oral Answers to Questions

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Monday 12th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I am always pleased to meet hon. Members to discuss the work of the Scotland Malawi Partnership, and I fully recognise the close bonds and ties that have existed for many years. Our focus is on delivering a high-quality service, and I am pleased to note that about 86% of applications from Malawi are successful. We are considering closely how we can improve the service further, however, and I am certainly happy to meet the hon. Gentleman to discuss the issues on his and the partnership’s mind.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

The Mayor of Calais has a point, does he not, about there being a unique pull factor—[Hon. Members: “She!”] I do apologise. I am sure she is a most impressive lady and a friend of our nation. Anyway, she has a point about there being a unique pull factor in the benefits we pay, how we deal with discretionary leave to remain and the fact that people can vanish into the black economy. Rather than just concentrating on visa applications, therefore, will the Minister undertake to remove all these pull factors into this country?

[James Brokenshire]

I think my hon. Friend, in his own distinct way, has highlighted the important distinction between legal and illegal migration and the challenges we have faced in terms of migratory flows and those putting their lives at risk on the Mediterranean sea and in the hands of people traffickers. We are examining all options, as part of the Government’s comprehensive stance, and focusing in particular on those people traffickers and smugglers selling people false hope and putting their lives at risk.

Refugee Crisis in Europe

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Tuesday 8th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. I agree that no country can do this alone. When we have a crisis that involves people fleeing across borders, of course no country can deal with it alone. I am like my hon. Friend in that the pressures in Greece are what I am most troubled about in Europe now. They provide the strongest argument for Britain to respond within Europe and not simply to help those from the camps near Syria.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

No one doubts the right hon. Lady’s humane instincts, and of course we should not be hard-hearted, but we have to be hard-headed. Given that millions are displaced in Syria and there is, quite understandably, no limit to how many want to come here, will she say exactly how many migrants Labour wants to admit to this country?

Oral Answers to Questions

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Monday 6th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

We will work to a tight timescale for consulting and getting the funding formula in place. I hope that we can announce the consultation process in the next few weeks.

I take this opportunity to praise front-line police and the chief constable in Lincolnshire—something that the shadow police Minister always forgets to do. They do a fantastic job, and we should praise them every day.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Lincolnshire police are in crisis for want of a mere £3 million to £4 million. In my area of 600 square miles, there is barely one police car on duty through the night. This is a crisis: £3 million would be a drop in the ocean compared with what we spend on international development, so will my right hon. Friend persuade the Chancellor to transfer just a little money to us? Charity begins at home.

[Mike Penning]

As my hon. Friend knows, I arranged for a Home Office team to do a deep dive in Lincolnshire to see exactly how the funding formula was working. Lincolnshire police have done a fantastic job—crime has dropped by 24% since 2010—and we will continue to support them.

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[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

T6. The policy of European Governments on migrants is weak, and because it is weak, it is cruel, encouraging traffickers to bring more and more of them in. What action is the Home Secretary taking to enforce the Dublin convention, whereby migrants are returned to the place where they first entered the European Union? That is happening in only 3% of cases. What is she doing to enforce the traditional law of the sea whereby people are picked up in a humane way, looked after, and returned to where they came from?

[James Brokenshire]

My hon. Friend has made an important point about the established principle enshrined in the Dublin regulation that those in need of protection should seek asylum in the first safe country that they enter. Since 2003, when the regulation came into force, it has allowed us to transfer more than 12,000 asylum seekers from the UK to other European states. As for the point that he rightly made about organised criminality, we have established a new taskforce to ensure that we have the best intelligence so that we can pursue traffickers, who seem to see people as some sort of commodity that they can trade, with all the risks and loss of life that that can bring.

Home Affairs and Justice

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Thursday 28th May 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for asking me to complete this debate. I shall endeavour to do so—that is, up until the very important closing speeches.

I apologise for being unable to be here for the opening speeches or for all the maiden speeches, though all those I heard were of an extraordinarily high quality, not least the one we just heard from the hon. Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) and the one that preceded it from the hon. Member for Edinburgh East (Tommy Sheppard), who made a speech that was absolutely in the traditions of this House. He is very welcome as a Member of this House if the contributions that he is to make, and his colleagues are to make, are of that calibre and quality. He should know that many people in this House claim Scots ancestry. My second name is Bruce, and I have always been proud to believe that somewhere in my bloodstream there is Scottish blood. There is great sympathy and fellow feeling with the people of Scotland. That is one reason why those of us who are Unionists want to retain Scotland as part of the greater unity of the United Kingdom. However, that is an issue that we can discuss, and if it is done in the manner that it has been today, it will raise the level of debate very considerably.

I want to address the repeal and replacement of the Human Rights Act. I am a passionate defender of our civil liberties. In Cabinet, I defended, sometimes almost single-handedly, the right to trial by jury against attempts to limit and restrict it. Likewise, I fought against compulsory ID cards, often in alliance with my now dear departed friends in the Liberal Democrat party. I supported a free press against the Leveson attempt to introduce state control of our free media. I have advocated legalising cannabis.

However, belief in human rights and civil liberties is not the same as belief in the Human Rights Act or the European declaration of human rights. They are not identical, although of course there was a deliberate political attempt to claim ownership of human rights by enshrining the European declaration of human rights in law in our Human Rights Act.

We all in this House support human rights. We did so before the Human Rights Act, we do so now that we have a Human Rights Act and we will continue to support human rights if the Human Rights Act is repealed. There is no controversy in practice about the core of each right. There is no controversy about the fact that Governments should not be entitled, willy-nilly and at whim, to deprive us of our liberty. There is no conflict or debate about whether Governments have the right to deprive us of our life if we are innocent and are not committing any acts or doing anything that requires self-defence.

The issue at dispute is: where rights conflict, who or what institution should decide the balance between those rights, and who should set the outer boundaries or the lower limits of triviality where rights apply? No right is absolute and unlimited. There is a right to freedom of speech, but there is no right to libel or slander, to spread hatred or stir up breaches of the peace, or to invade another person’s privacy. We have the right to life, but we do not prosecute soldiers who, legitimately and under orders, take lives in war. We do not allow the courts to decide whether the woman should make the decision over the right to life of an unborn child, or to decide that such a right to life should be deemed absolute, as is likewise the case with suicide and euthanasia. There are boundaries to every right, and the balances between rights have to be resolved.

Balancing conflicting rights, as well as setting boundaries and limits to their triviality, is intrinsically a policy or political matter. In the last resort, that is why such issues have been decided by the political process in Parliament, not by the legal process in the courts. Where the boundaries of conflicting rights have not been drawn by statute, the courts do their best to interpret the law to create law, in the way they have learned to do in the common law process in this country, to fill in the gaps left by Parliament. Ultimately, however, Parliament has always been able to redraw the boundaries if it so wished to establish a statutory right or a limit to a right.

That is the process, with Parliament supreme over the courts, under which human rights have developed in this country from Magna Carta onwards. That charter was laid down not by judges but by barons. It is paradoxical that so many advocates of human rights—or self-declared owners of belief in human rights—now assert that the parliamentary supremacy under which those human rights evolved is a threat to human rights, and therefore argue that Parliament must be subordinated to the courts. But if judges are given the intrinsically political role of deciding on the balance between conflicting rights and the outer boundaries of rights, we will inevitably and ineluctably politicise the judiciary.

Such a politicisation has happened in the United States, where the Supreme Court is the supreme court—the supreme arbiter of the rights laid down in the constitution. As a consequence, the appointment of judges is highly political—it is one of the most highly political decisions any President takes—and the political, cultural and social views of candidates, not their legal abilities, are paramount in the choice of candidates for the Supreme Court in America and their ratification through the political process. Indeed, Presidents try to embed their views for long after they and their elected term of office come to an end by appointing to the Supreme Court the youngest, fittest and most intransigent fellow believers, in the hope that they will continue to enforce their views when the President is long gone. Of course, even local judges can be elected in the States. Do we seriously want to go down that route in this country—the route of politicising the appointment of our judiciary?

The second consequence of giving judge-made law supremacy over Parliament-made law is that we take away the most important right of all of the British people: the right to hold their lawmakers accountable. The voters can turf out MPs if they do not like the way we interpret their rights, or if they believe we have infringed them in any way. We are accountable to the electorate, but judges are not accountable. In my view, they should not be politically accountable—they should not be removed or appointed as a result of the political process—but if they are given a political role and remain unaccountable, that lack of accountability will undermine respect for the law, as it is already doing.

I very much hope that we will repeal the Human Rights Act and restore a proper balance between Parliament and the courts, but we should not just replace the Human Rights Act with a British Bill of Rights that gives judges supremacy over Parliament—that would merely recreate in the domestic forum the problems we have created internationally. However, there is the issue of the European declaration and the European Court of Human Rights. When I was in the Cabinet, the renewal of our membership of that declaration, or our adherence to it, came up. I proposed that we resile from it at that point. It so happened that the Foreign Office had just made Croatia’s adherence to the convention a condition of our recognition of it. It was felt that it would look odd if, having made that a condition, we resiled from the convention. I was quite happy to overcome that little problem, but that was why my advice was not taken.

Many appeal to the origins of the European convention on human rights and to chauvinistic sentiment. They say that the convention is ultimately British and that it was written by a British Attorney General and other British lawyers; that it simply codified British human rights that had evolved over centuries, including the right to jury trial and so on; and that there was therefore absolutely nothing to worry about. Of course, those who codified and enshrined the convention did not realise that they were changing the process by which law was made. Instead of being made ultimately by Parliament, it was ultimately made by courts, often of a political composition but unaccountable to any electorate. Although it was inevitable and foreseeable, they did not anticipate that the courts, once they had been given the right to interpret a rather abstract document, would do so in an extensive and continually elaborated way.

The result is that judges have reached the sorts of decisions that would never have been reached had we not signed up to the European Court of Human Rights and the European declaration of rights, and had we not enshrined it in our law. There have been judgments on relatively trivial issues, such as on whether prisoners should have the vote. I can see quite a good case for giving prisoners the vote—it would force hon. Members to go and campaign in prisons to win those votes, and we would learn more about prisons than most of us have done. I have only ever learned about prison when my friends have been put in it and I have had to go and visit—no names, no pack drill.

Whether or not prisoners are given the vote is essentially a political decision. It is not something that judges automatically know best. Underlying the belief in making judges supreme over Parliament is a belief that judges have an innate ability that others do not have to discern what is right and true, or the belief that the document that judges interpret is a revealed document, a bit like the Koran being interpreted by an ayatollah. It is not, of course. It is a rough summary of what had evolved in this part of the world, and leaving people to interpret it as they will gives them great and unaccountable power that they should not have.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend is making a most thoughtful speech. It is worth articulating the exact legal and constitutional position. We signed the convention in the early 1950s, and the Human Rights Act was not passed until the late 1990s. If this Parliament were to repeal the Human Rights Act, it would be entirely our choice as to whether we stayed in the Council of Europe and remained wedded to the convention. We would not be expelled.

[Mr Lilley]

I am sure that my hon. Friend is right, although I am not sure that it would matter terribly if we were expelled from the Council of Europe. We might just as well belong to it, and I am sure that we could continue to belong to it even if we did repeal the Human Rights Act and no longer accepted the supremacy of the European Court of Human Rights.

The essential issue is whether political decisions should be taken by politicians and judicial decisions by judges. Those who believe that the Human Rights Act should remain on our statute book ultimately want judges to take political decisions, leaving us deprived of that right and the electorate deprived of any ability to hold those who make those laws accountable—or to throw them out if they make decisions the electorate do not like. It is very important that we recognise that that is the issue, not whether we believe in human rights. We all believe in human rights, but we need to decide how the balance between rights is to be determined and how the full extent of any right is to be limited. If that is the question, I am sure that the whole House will agree with the measures that the Secretary of State will develop after consultation and, in due course, bring before the House. I welcome every measure in the Queen’s Speech, but above all the prospect of the repeal of the Human Rights Act.

Oral Answers to Questions

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Monday 23rd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Karen Bradley)]

The hon. Lady and I have had several discussions about Action Fraud. Let me bring her up to date with the latest figures from the organisation. As we have established in earlier discussions, fraud is historically an under-reported crime. The number of recorded offences has almost trebled, from 72,000 before the introduction of Action Fraud’s centralised reporting system to 211,000 now. As the hon. Lady knows, Action Fraud is also embarking on an improvement plan. It has resulted in a reduction in the number of complaints, which should be welcomed, but we are still keen to ensure that local police forces in particular treat and correspond with victims in a way that enables them to understand the action that is being taken to deal with these crimes.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

T6. Yesterday huge crowds turned out in our most multicultural city, Leicester, to celebrate English history. Did not that celebration of monarchy and continuity provide a fine example of British values, and should we not learn from that example of history that it is not a good idea to get on politically by bumping off one’s close relations?

[Mrs May]

We could have an interesting debate about my hon. Friend’s last comment, and I am grateful to him for not suggesting that the princes in the tower is an historic case that the police should take up today. The point he made about those in Leicester coming together yesterday from all parts of the community and celebrating British values is an important one. It is exactly what I was speaking about this morning, when I said that we need a partnership of individuals, communities, families and Government, going across Government and including other agencies, to promote our British values and what it is to live here in the United Kingdom and to be part of our British society.

Oral Answers to Questions

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Monday 9th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I rebut that entirely. The proposal is about bringing into line arrangements that were already in place in relation to pre-2007 asylum applications. We have a specialist centre—a specialist unit—in Liverpool and it is ensuring that those further submissions are considered appropriately and effectively.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

15. What research her Department has undertaken on how architecture and urban design may assist crime prevention.

[The Minister for Crime Prevention (Lynne Featherstone)]

We have not conducted any recent research in this area, but a strong body of evidence shows how the design and build of our homes, schools and public places can prevent crime and antisocial behaviour.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

We do not need research to tell us that—it is common sense. Without sounding too much like that most estimable man the Prince of Wales, may I urge the Home Office to do more to encourage new urbanist principles in urban design that are developing on the continent: walkability; high density, as in European cities and as opposed to urban sprawl; and modernist projects? All these ideas of involving the community in their community can only help to defeat crime.

[Lynne Featherstone]

I thank my hon. Friend, who is almost indistinguishable from the Prince of Wales. We have no current plans to conduct research on the impact of modern architecture and design on crime and antisocial behaviour, but we keep an open mind on all ideas. A Home Office-funded project published in 2010 looked at the crime experience of six contemporary housing schemes and its findings led to the development of valuable design principles on creating safe places to live for use by the police, architects and others. Anyone using their common sense when commissioning and designing a building would, obviously, wish to design out crime.

Terrorist Attacks (Paris)

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Wednesday 14th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that everybody in this House needs to send a very clear message that we stand for freedom, including the freedom of the press, and democracy, and that we oppose the vile views that lead to the behaviour and incidents we saw in Paris. We must recognise that we have seen a number of terrorist attacks in this country over the years, the most recent of which was in 2013, when we saw not only Fusilier Lee Rigby’s murder, but the murder of Mohammed Saleem and the attempt to plant a number of bombs at mosques in the west midlands, which were undertaken by a far-right extremist. We must stand against terrorism and extremism in all their forms.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

If one good thing has come out of the horrible events of recent days, it is the evidence of the British people’s affection for France in her hour of trial. Speaking as the chairman of the amitié group between the two Parliaments and on behalf of our Back Benchers, I would like to extend the warmest fraternal greetings to our French colleagues in the Assemblée Nationale, express our support for them and say that, as has been the case for the last 100 years, our two nations stand shoulder to shoulder against tyranny and terror.

[Mrs May]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend’s comments. We stand alongside France against terror and for freedom and democracy. It was a very moving experience to be part of the march in Paris on Sunday not only because it involved so many people—nearly 4 million across France and an estimated 2 million in Paris—but because of the reaction of the people alongside the march, who constantly expressed their support for all those who were standing for freedom of the press and the freedoms of our democracy.

UK Borders Control Bill

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Friday 9th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) has given a comprehensive description of his Bill. I do not need to follow him down that route and will speak very briefly indeed.

My hon. Friend was right to have this short debate to draw the attention of the House to what has become one of the most important issues facing our country. Managed migration works. We welcome people, in a managed way, who want to come here to live, work and make a contribution. That is good for the economy. There is no dispute about that, and neither was there any dispute in the early years of our membership of the European Union over whether the free movement of workers between economies that performed in fundamentally the same way worked.

Unfortunately, the whole system is breaking down. It is breaking down not just in our country, but across Europe. The reason it is breaking down is that we now have economies that perform on a very different level and that have very different levels of benefits—in countries such as Romania and Bulgaria. I make no criticism of Romanians or Bulgarians—they are wonderful people, they work hard and they are welcome to come here in a managed way. I have always warmly welcomed people of Polish and Lithuanian extraction. Nobody disputes that they should be welcome. However, because there are economies with very low wage and benefit rates, the cardinal principle of the European Union, which perhaps worked in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, simply does not work now.

This debate is exercising the whole nation, not just a small group of Conservative Back Benchers who are obsessed with European and want to criticise the European Union. Many people around Europe who take an intelligent interest in whether the European Union is functioning properly are concerned about this issue. There is concern about it throughout the Conservative party, from the bottom to the top, because we are simply reflecting public opinion. The public are concerned and, therefore, there is concern even at the level of the Prime Minister.

[Mr Chope]

Does my hon. Friend accept that another issue that concerns the public is the distortion of policy? If 120,000 people a year are coming in from the European Union and we cannot do anything about it, all the pressure is on trying to reduce the number of people who come in from outside the European Union, many of whom might be able to make a bigger contribution to our economy and society.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Yes, and we have had that debate. Apparently there is also a debate inside the Government. Those such as the Home Secretary argue that we must effectively expel all people who have completed their course—as I think happens in the United States—so that the moment they complete their university or college education they must go back to India or wherever. We read in the press that, apparently, other members of the Government—such as the Chancellor of the Exchequer who is responsible for the good management of the economy—say that we must allow those people in. All the pressure now on the Home Secretary is to try and reduce immigration from elsewhere in the world, but those people may be essential to our economy. The whole system is not working well at the moment.

As I was saying, it is not only a small group of Conservative Back Benchers who are concerned with this matter, but the wider public and indeed the Prime Minister. We understand that when he was drafting his recent speech on immigration, right up to the last minute he was determined—indeed, he went to a parliamentary meeting and talked to colleagues—to take action in terms of having some control over our borders, such as an emergency brake or whatever. This Bill is a contribution to that debate, and we must have a serious debate, away from emotion, charges of racism and all that sort of nonsense, which obviously do not apply in this case. People simply want managed migration. The system is not working at the moment, and there must be a sensible debate.

It is simply not acceptable for the Chancellor of Germany to say that such a debate is a no-go area. If we are fortunate enough to see the return of a Conservative Government, there will be a referendum. At the moment we understand that the German Chancellor has said that the issue is a no-go area, and that if it is brought up in negotiations she will veto it and it will not happen. I do not think that is a good way to proceed. If we believe in the European Union but proceed in that way, all we are doing is fuelling the fire of Euroscepticism, and forcing more and more broad-minded people, who otherwise would support our membership of the EU, to say that we have to leave. If someone supports membership of the EU, they must believe that it needs to evolve. If we believe that because a principle worked well when the European Union had very few members it is some sort of religion that is set in stone and cannot be changed, all we do is fuel the fires of Euroscepticism, and indeed something much more sinister.

We see throughout Europe what I believe is the wrong view that states that everything is bad about our countries—I do not believe that for a moment; I think they are some of the most wonderful countries in the world—and that that is the fault of a particular minority. Today it might be Romanians, Bulgarians or Poles, but in the last century it was other minority groups such as Jewish people, and in the preceding centuries it might have been those of a different religious domination. If we do not have managed migration, and if the centrist parties—the Conservatives, Labour and the Liberals—do not have a sensible debate, all we do is fuel support for extremist parties that will run with this issue. There is no doubt about that. This serious matter needs to be addressed. It will not be resolved by my hon. Friend’s Bill, but we must have a managed, rational debate on managed migration. The Bill is the first step in the right direction, which is why I commend it.

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[Mr Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) on securing the debate. However, his Bill is a reminder of the gap between what the Prime Minister’s Eurosceptic Back Benchers demand and what he says.

Only this week, at his joint press conference with Chancellor Merkel of Germany, the Prime Minister confirmed his support for the principle of free movement within the EU. To be fair to Conservative Back Benchers, it must be hard to keep up with the Government’s position. First, it was that the Prime Minister was going to “sort this out”, as he said in his conference speech. Then, there was the great retreat from that position in his pre-Christmas immigration speech. Now, when standing alongside Chancellor Merkel, he talks of his new-found love for freedom of movement.

The gap between the Prime Minister and his Eurosceptic Back Benchers illustrates his plight. No renegotiation in Europe could ever satisfy some of them, other than one leading to Britain’s exit from the EU. Europe does need to change, but the tragedy for Britain is that, since being elected, the Prime Minister has spent more time negotiating with his rebellious Back Benchers than with other EU leaders. His attempts at megaphone diplomacy, such as his ill-fated opposition to the appointment of the new Commission President have left him isolated and, dare I say, humiliated.

Dragging Britain closer to the EU exit door would be damaging enough if that was the Prime Minister’s thought-out strategy. Worse than that, however, he is marginalising Britain in Europe without even thinking it through. A British exit from Europe by default is an even bigger failure of leadership than exit by design.

I have some sympathy with the hon. Gentleman and other speakers on the Government Benches over their disappointment with the Government’s record on immigration. I do not think it is fair to blame that entirely on the Liberal Democrats either, who are a minority in the coalition. The Government have abandoned the Prime Minister’s “no ifs, no buts” immigration target. The chief inspector of borders finds that the Government make no attempt to check potential immigrants’ criminal records. In October last year, the Public Administration Committee found that 50,000 failed asylum seekers have been lost. We do not know where they are. What is needed is not exit from the European Union, but renegotiation, delays before new arrivals can claim benefits, more and properly trained border staff, proper entry and exit checks, and a requirement for applicants to provide criminal records.

What is remarkable about the debate over Europe in the Conservative party is that it thinks speculation about the UK leaving is Europe is costless. It is not. It places a huge question mark over British jobs, rights at work, investment and our place in the world. It is a growing national tragedy that the Prime Minister is too weak to stand up to the Eurosceptics in his party, or to engage our European Union colleagues properly.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

The hon. Gentleman is making a very serious point. We are all agreed that we want to stop criminals entering the country. Is he saying that the Labour believes there should be some sort of device by which we can require EU nationals entering this country to prove that they are not guilty of a criminal offence, or some way in which we can prevent criminals from other EU countries coming to this country? Is he saying that?

[Mr Reed]

The Labour party is very keen to negotiate from a position of solidarity with our European Union colleagues. That is what the Labour party would do if elected in a few weeks’ time.

In the meantime, I remain very disappointed that the Prime Minister has failed to engage our European colleagues and the leaders of our fellow EU states in proper negotiations. By failing to do so, he will never secure the improvements that I think Members on all sides of the House would like to see on this issue and in our relationship with the EU.

--- Later in debate ---

[Karen Bradley]

As the hon. Gentleman will know, it is this Government who dealt with the failing UK Border Agency and introduced Border Force and UK Visas and Immigration. My meetings with Border Force officials and guards on the front line are always positive. It is clear to me that those dedicated professionals are doing all that they can to protect our borders, because they understand just how important it is for them to do so. I shall deal shortly with the issue of criminal movement within the European Union and across our borders.

The Immigration (European Economic Area) Regulations 2006 provide for the admission of EEA nationals and their family members and the removal of those who are not entitled to reside, in accordance with European Union law.

While I agree with the thrust of my hon. Friend’s thinking, I believe that parts of the Bill would be unlawful. Its aim is to ensure that the United Kingdom has absolute control over the right to prevent non-UK citizens from entering the UK, and to determine the circumstances in which they may be required to leave. It asserts the absolute sovereignty of the UK in controlling its own borders, notwithstanding our existing international treaty obligations and the domestic legislation that gives effect to them.

The Bill would repeal section 7 of the Immigration Act 1988, which provides the basis on which those exercising European Union rights are not required to obtain leave to enter or remain in the UK under the Immigration Act 1971 and subsequent legislation. Essentially, it seeks to curtail the free movement of EU citizens to the UK under existing treaty rights. The provisions curtailing rights of entry are not compatible with EU free movement rights, and we cannot pass national legislation that does not comply with EU law.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Does the Minister accept, therefore, that the Government’s settled position is to acknowledge that there can be no change in the treaties, and that EU nationals must have unrestricted access to this country?

[Karen Bradley]

I shall come to the restrictions that the Government place on EU nationals, particularly those with criminal histories.

The Bill would not achieve its intended objectives owing to the principle of direct effect, which means that EU nationals can derive rights directly from the free movement directive and the treaty on the functioning of the European Union, whether or not those provisions have been given effect in UK law.

Let me now deal with the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh). Free movement is not without conditions, and I am keen to ensure that any free movement includes the free movement of criminal information. I want to ensure that a police officer in Leek, in my constituency, has as much information about an individual residing in Leek as a police officer in any other town in any other country in the European Union has about someone with a criminal past. The 35 measures that the UK chose to opt back into in December last year are vital to ensuring that criminal information moves freely between EU countries. If we are to keep UK citizens safe, we shall need to know about the criminal past of people who are trying to enter the UK.

EU nationals arriving at the UK border can be stopped and questioned by Border Force officers to establish their right of admission to the UK when that is appropriate. Border Force officers can refuse admission to EU nationals when such action is necessary and proportionate—for example, owing to their criminal convictions or conditions arising from a previous removal or deportation, or when officers have reasonable grounds to suspect that admitting them would give rise to an abuse of free movement rights. In the first three quarters of 2014, 1,205 EU nationals were initially refused admission at the UK border. Opting into the 35 measures means that we shall have more and more information about criminals, and we will—and do—exercise the right to refuse their admission to the UK.

Effective renegotiation is the way to bring about a real change in the basis for EU migration. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister set out his agenda for that in November. It includes the introduction of a four-year residency requirement before an EU national can have access to in-work benefits or social housing in the UK, the removal of child benefit for non-resident children of EU nationals, and further powers to deport EU criminals and tackle abuse.

I do not believe that the measures proposed by my hon. Friend are necessary for the proper control of our borders. For all the reasons that I have given, the Government cannot support his Bill.