Illegal Migration Bill: Economic Impact Assessment

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I usually have the utmost respect for the right hon. Gentleman, but he is wrong in each respect of that question. First, the figure that he quoted is a gross figure, not a net figure. Secondly, that figure does not relate to the Rwandan partnership, but is an indicative figure based on the Syrian resettlement scheme. We chose not to publish the commercially sensitive nature of our relationship with Rwanda for good reason, because countries and partners working together in good faith should not publish details that we said we would not. His last point, that individuals will be treated with great cruelty in Rwanda, is categorically untrue. I wonder whether he has been to Rwanda—I certainly have. It is a country that is safe and where we have a good working relationship. The High Court exhaustively analysed Rwanda’s safety and the treatment that it would propose to give to those coming from the United Kingdom, and the High Court concluded that the scheme was appropriate and in accordance with our legal obligations. We will shortly hear from the Court of Appeal, but I very much hope it will uphold the High Court’s judgment.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

What is nonsense is to deny that it makes economic sense to offshore. Nobody is going to spend thousands of pounds to a people smuggler just to be detained and sent back to Rwanda. In terms of deterrence, will the Minister accept that if someone is fleeing chaos in Syria or Iraq, they will not be deterred to come if they are going to be put up in a cosy, warm, former airman’s bedroom in RAF Scampton, rather than a hotel in bracing, cold Skegness? Is not the solution to get the Bill through and pass it into law and for the House of Lords to stop its silly games?

[Robert Jenrick]

I completely agree with my right hon. Friend, although not necessarily his comments about Skegness. The point is that we have to look at each and every one of the pull factors to the United Kingdom. The approach that we are now taking to accommodating asylum seekers is not an outlier within Europe. I have spoken to my counterparts in almost every European country in recent weeks, and they are all considering options such as barges and sites such as former military bases. Many are considering tents. Many are bailing people to no fixed abode with vouchers and essentially leaving them to sleep on the streets. We have to ensure that the UK is not perceived to be a soft touch, and I will never allow that to happen.

Migration

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Thursday 15th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I wanted to talk about the challenge posed by legal migration, but there is not much time. Therefore, as my constituency is about to be the victim of illegal migration, I must follow my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) in talking about that topic and once again raising the issue of RAF Scampton. I apologise if I am wearying the House on this issue, but unless people groan when you stand up, you are probably not making progress in this place, so I will keep referring to it.

The decision to house 2,000 migrants at RAF Scampton is a perverse decision that makes no sense in terms of public policy. To remind the House, RAF Scampton is an iconic RAF base, the home of the Dambusters and the Red Arrows. It is to the RAF what Portsmouth is to the Royal Navy. We had the most exciting scheme ever developed for a former RAF base, with £300 million of investment and really exciting proposals, but the Home Office is now intending to put 2,000 migrants in that base. It wants to take the whole base. There are 800 acres, miles of perimeter fence, a two-mile-long runway and 100 buildings—many of them listed, such as Guy Gibson’s office. We were going to have a heritage centre. I have talked about the past and the rich heritage that could, and does, make RAF Scampton an iconic base, but most excitingly of all—as I said to the Innovation Minister yesterday—we were going to have a spaceport on the runway. We were going to launch rockets into space carrying satellites, so a whole new technology was about to be developed.

Why is the Home Office taking this huge, historic base to house 2,000 migrants? Apparently, it wants three or four decaying airmen’s blocks that could maybe take 300 or 400 people, and a bit of hardstanding. The Home Office must own hardstanding all over the country; why can it not put portacabins up on hardstanding, and not try to stymie £300 million of investment? It would be a reasonable proposal as a starting point if the Home Office said to us, “All right, there are these airmen’s blocks. We will take them and put a fence around them”—of course, we cannot lock people up under the refugee convention, but they could go to their own entrance and take a bus to Lincoln, where they could access health, education, sport and all the rest of it—“and we will release the rest of the site to West Lindsey District Council.” It has not even offered us that.

It gets worse. This is something that I have not yet said in the House, which I think is really bad: this is not an isolated site in the middle of the countryside. It is just five miles from Lincoln. There are 1,000 people who live cheek by jowl next to the RAF base in the former married quarters. Some of those people—maybe 100 of them—are still serving RAF personnel. What is really bad is that there has been a total lack of communication between the Government and those private citizens who live in the married quarters, who have bought their own home and put their life savings into those houses, but there has been regular communication with the Ministry of Defence personnel.

Only two or three weeks ago, there was a so-called secret meeting at the village hall on the site, with two military policemen outside, at which the MOD personnel employed by the RAF were told that because migrants were now going to be placed next to them, they would be moved at public expense. That offer has not been made to the ordinary people who have bought their house. The Minister will say, “I am not responsible for the MOD”, but we have collective responsibility. How can the Government say that it is so shocking that their own people, who they employ, should live next to a migrant camp that they are prepared to move them at public expense?

The buildings that we are talking about are old—some of them were put up in the war. They are not built to a modern standard, they may be riddled with asbestos, and there has been contamination by fuel. The Government say, “The fact that we are going to put them in an RAF base is a deterrent”, but I can tell them that if a person is desperate—if they come from the likes of Syria, Somalia or Iraq—they are not going to be deterred from coming to the United Kingdom because they will be put up in a warm room in RAF Scampton, rather than a hotel in Skegness. Skegness is very bracing; it might actually be warmer in RAF Scampton. The thought that we are going to deter people just by taking over an RAF base simply does not make sense.

There is such a lack of communication with the local authority, too. We have asked for risk assessments, but they have been denied us. We have asked for an assessment of the risk of asbestos and that has been denied us.

If the Illegal Migration Bill goes through—I warmly support it; it is the only hope that we can deter people because they know they will be detained and offshored—people will come to Manston. Apparently, they will then be immediately sent to RAF Scampton. By definition at that stage, if the Bill becomes law, they will be illegal migrants, but they will be in RAF Scampton. The Government tell us that there are no plans to make RAF Scampton a detention centre, so those people will be able to walk out the front door, take the shuttle bus to Lincoln, take the train to London and vanish. We have no ID cards. We will never find them. What is the logic of all this? It simply does not make sense.

We should have joined-up government. We are supposed to believe in innovation. Why are we stopping a fantastic piece of innovation to launch satellites into space? We are supposed to believe in levelling up, so why are we destroying £300 million-worth of levelling up? We are supposed to have a coherent policy on migration. Putting as many as 2,000 migrants in one place is not a good idea. By the way, it is not supported by local people, the local authority or the Refugee Council. It is bad for their stability and welfare to have 2,000 migrants in one place. For all those reasons, I very much hope the Minister will think again.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call the SNP spokesman.

Public Order

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Monday 12th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

The hon. Gentleman is right to emphasise the impact of repetitive, disruptive protesters. That they are behaving disruptively again and again is evidence that we now need to ensure the police have robust and sufficient powers to prevent this from happening.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I fully support what my right hon. and learned Friend is doing. She can relax, as I have not come with a pot of glue in my pocket to glue myself to the Bench next to her in protest at what is happening with RAF Scampton. Does she accept that if people with good arguments put them politely and relentlessly, this Government will listen and they will eventually win?

[Suella Braverman]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. I pay tribute to the noble and honourable way in which he advocates for his constituents in relation to RAF Scampton. We live in a democracy in which freedom of speech must prevail. That means advocating and campaigning through lawful methods and lawful means, not breaking the law and causing misery and disruption to the law-abiding majority.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Mullan]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely correct. We have all seen the footage online of people saying that they are just trying to get to work. Opposition Members say that that is not serious disruption, but they should tell that to the individual who is trying to go about their daily life. It is disruption, it is not acceptable and people have other ways to make their point. I would also say to Opposition Members and members of the other place that they cannot have it both ways. They cannot say that this is unnecessary and a waste of time and then block it in the Lords. If it does not make any difference and will not impact on anything, why are they blocking it? They should just let it pass.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Are there not double standards on the left? They believe that in their cause they can disrupt people’s daily lives, but when some old lady is praying outside an abortion clinic, that is absolutely outrageous and must be banned by law.

[Dr Mullan]

Indeed. As I said earlier I supported the proposals for protection zones for abortion clinics, but that makes the exact point. When it suits them, they are perfectly happy to sign up to these arguments, but they take a different view when it does not suit them. As the Home Secretary mentioned, they are very happy to get into bed financially with the people supporting these protests, so I think we all know where their loyalties lie.

Net Migration Figures

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Thursday 25th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I was not expecting a question today arguing that net migration was too low—that seems to be the position of the SNP—but the hon. Gentleman makes a fair point; we need a pragmatic approach to particular sectors that are facing skills shortages, and we need to think about regional disparities across the whole United Kingdom. We do not believe that there should be separate immigration systems for the nations of the UK, and the evidence bears that out: there is no material difference in either unemployment or economic inactivity between Scotland and the United Kingdom average. We do take account, through the shortage occupation list, of particular sectors that are facing challenges, and some are of course more focused in some parts of the UK than in others. Earlier in the week, for example, we decided to add further fishing occupations to the shortage occupation list in order to support the offshore fishing industry, which I hope will be supported by the hon. Gentleman and fellow Scottish MPs who have connections with the industry.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Some people in the Treasury seem to think that a good way to grow the economy is to fill the country with ever more people, but that is bad for productivity and bad for British workers, who are being undercut by mass migration from all over the world. Why is it that under the points-based system we allow into the country people earning only £26,000 a year, while the median UK salary is £33,000? Is not an obvious solution to insist that everybody who comes in is skilled and earns the median UK salary, as then we can boost productivity and get British people back to work?

[Robert Jenrick]

My right hon. Friend makes an important point, which he has made in the past and with which I have a lot of sympathy. We both believe that we need a controlled migration system and that net migration has a number of impacts on communities, including further pressure on public services and housing supply and making it more difficult to integrate people into our country and maintain community cohesion. In some instances, high levels of net migration also put downward pressure on wages for the domestic economy and enable some employers to reach for the easy lever of importing foreign labour rather than training up their own British workforce. It is for those reasons what we created the points-based system that has a salary threshold—a freedom we only have as a result of leaving the European Union—and if further changes to that system are necessary in the future, we will make them.

Student Visas

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Wednesday 24th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

As I said, we have already met our target of 600,000 students coming to the UK from overseas. That is 10 years early; in fact, last year there were 605,000. We expect the numbers to increase this year beyond 600,000. There is no suggestion that universities will be short-changed as a result, but in the medium term it will obviously involve fewer dependants coming with those international students. For the reasons that I have set out, we think that is a good thing. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman does not.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

This measure is wholly to be welcomed, but the fact is that legal migration is out of control and the British people did not vote for Brexit to replace mass migration from Europe with mass migration from the rest of the world. May I therefore press the Minister on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) that we will never deal with legal migration until we solve the labour problem? Home-grown employers in Britain are paying too low wages and trying to attract people from all over the world. Why do we not raise the threshold so that those who want to come here and get a job need to earn average earnings?

[Robert Jenrick]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his support. He is right that, having left the European Union and taken back control of our borders and migration policy, it is critical that we make good on our promise to bring net migration down, because it does put intolerable pressure on public services and housing, and it does strain community cohesion, particularly when it happens at a scale and speed that is too great for many people in British society.

My right hon. Friend makes an important point about the workings of the points-based system and the salary thresholds for the shortage occupation list and for general work visas. The Government keep that under review, because we do not want to see employers reaching for international labour rather than seeking to recruit and train domestic labour, reducing unemployment and reducing the number of people who are on benefits.

Oral Answers to Questions

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Monday 22nd May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

Both the Afghan relocations and assistance policy and the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme make clear the criteria by which people will be assessed when they are applying to come to the United Kingdom. I am proud that this country and this Government have welcomed over 20,000 people under those schemes. Of course there will be individual cases and we are happy to consider them, but overall the scheme has worked well and thousands of people have benefited from it.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

One of the justifications for using former military bases rather than hotels was that they would be a deterrent. We now learn from the Home Office that RAF Scampton will not take people from hotels, but that it might be a detention centre or it might take migrants from Manston. The whole policy is in chaos. Is that why the Home Secretary’s own civil servant, on 6 February, recommended to her that the Home Office should agree to stop work on proposals for RAF Scampton and agree that it should immediately notify the local authority that it was no longer developing proposals for the site? Why has the Home Secretary ignored her own civil servants?

Illegal Migration Update

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Wednesday 29th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

Is it not abundantly clear that Labour does not have the faintest clue how to tackle this issue? It has absolutely no plan. What we have laid out today is three months of intense work, which is seeing the backlog coming down; productivity rising; more sustainable forms of accommodation; a harder approach to make it difficult to live and work in the UK illegally; illegal working raids and visits rising by 50%; and greater control over the channel—all improvements as a result of the 10-point plan that the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary set out.

The right hon. Lady looks back to a mythical time when Labour was last in office— when the Home Office, according to their own Home Secretary, was deemed to be not fit for purpose. Labour calls for more safe and legal routes, even though we are second only to Sweden in Europe for resettlement schemes. It calls for more money for law enforcement, even though we have doubled the funding of the National Crime Agency, and our people are out there upstream tackling organised immigration criminals every day of the week.

Is it not extraordinary that the Home Secretary—[Interruption]—the shadow Home Secretary cannot bring herself to condemn those illegal immigrants who are breaking into our country in flagrant breach of our laws? That is weak. The truth is that the Labour party is too weak to take the kind of tough decisions that we are taking today. In its weakness, it would make the United Kingdom a magnet: there would be open doors, an open cheque book and open season for abuse. The British public know that the Conservative party understands their legitimate concerns. We do not sneer at people for wanting basic border controls. We are taking the tough decisions. We will stop the boats. We will secure the borders.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Although the Minister did not mention RAF Scampton by name, we assume that that is the base in Lincolnshire to which he is referring. I can inform him that the moment that this is confirmed, the local authority of West Lindsey will issue an immediate judicial review and injunction against this thoroughly bad decision, which is based not on good governance, but on the politics of trying to do something. How can he guarantee that we will not lose £300 million-worth of regeneration, already agreed and signed, between West Lindsey and Scampton Holdings? How will he preserve the listed buildings and the heritage centre? How will he preserve the heritage of the Dambusters and of the Red Arrows? How can he guarantee that there is no contamination from the fuel bay of the Red Arrows? How will he protect the safety of 1,000 people living right next door to 1,500 migrants and a primary school? He cannot guarantee anything. Will he work with West Lindsey and Lincolnshire now to try to find an alternative site? We are prepared to do it, but we do not want to lose £300 million of regeneration. Lincolnshire will fight and Lincolnshire will be proved right.

[Robert Jenrick]

I can only pay tribute to my right hon. Friend—my friend and constituency neighbour. He is representing his constituents forcefully, in the way that he has always done in this place, and he is absolutely right to do so. I can say to him that, while this policy is, without question, in the national interest, we understand the impact and concern that there will be within local communities. All parts of Government want to work closely with him and his local authorities to mitigate the issues that will arise as a result of this site. There will be a significant package of support for his constituents. There will be specific protections for the unique heritage on the site. We do not intend to make any use of the historic buildings. In our temporary use of the site, we intend to ensure that those heritage assets are enhanced and preserved. We see this as a short-term arrangement. We would like to enter into an agreement, as he knows, with West Lindsey District Council, so that it can take possession of the site at a later date, and its regeneration plans, which are extremely important for Lincolnshire and the east midlands more generally, can be realised in due course.

Oral Answers to Questions

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Monday 20th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

T7. Tomorrow is the 80th anniversary of the formation of the Dambusters 617 squadron at RAF Scampton. Will the Home Secretary have a conversation with her Minister for Immigration about the meeting I had this morning with him, West Lindsey District Council and Scampton Holdings, in which the Minister was told in terms that if the Home Secretary goes ahead with her plan for 1,500 migrants to be placed there, it will scupper the long-term retention of the runway and the £300 million-worth of investment by Scampton Holdings?

[Robert Jenrick]

I had a helpful and constructive meeting with my right hon. Friend and his constituents. No decision has been made with respect to RAF Scampton, and we will consider all of the things that were said in that meeting extremely carefully as we come to a final decision.

Illegal Migration Bill

Edward Leigh Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 13th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

Perhaps the hon. Gentleman should have put that question to the Home Secretary, because he appears to disagree with his own Conservative Government’s policy and to be off on another bit of freelancing for himself, further undermining any possibility of getting international agreements, whether on returns or on anything else. He is planning to make it even harder to get the kinds of returns agreements we need and to get the kind of international co-operation we need as well.

Ministers say that they plan to lock everyone up before they are returned, and the Bill says that everyone is included. Children, unaccompanied teenagers, pregnant women, torture victims, trafficking victims, and people such as the Afghan interpreters and young Hongkongers we promised to help—all locked up because they arrive without the right papers. The Home Secretary has not said where, or how long for. It might possibly be at RAF Scampton, but the Tory right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) does not want that. It might possibly be at MDP Wethersfield, but the Tory right hon. Member for Braintree (James Cleverly)—the Home Secretary’s Cabinet colleague, the Foreign Secretary —does not want that either. In other circumstances, there might be pressure on the Home Secretary to put the site in her own constituency, except for the fact that she does not actually have one right now.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

A responsible Opposition must have a plan. We all agree that we have to stop these boats, but the Opposition’s plan appears to be to process asylum applications even more quickly, so that more people will come; to process them in France, where an unlimited number will want to come; or to have this ridiculous idea of a cross-border police force. Everybody knows that on average, people get caught once on the beaches by the French police, they are not detained and they come back the very next night—they all get there. The right hon. Lady knows perfectly well that the only way that we are going to stop these boats is the Government plan: to detain them and deport them to Rwanda.

[Yvette Cooper]

The right hon. Member is just kidding himself if he thinks that any of the Government’s plan is actually going to happen, or if he thinks it is actually going to work.

Clause 9 deals with what happens to all of the people who cannot be returned—the tens of thousands of people who, according to the Government, are expected to arrive after 7 March. It says that the Home Office will provide those people with accommodation and support: in other words, they will go back into asylum accommodation and hotels, but they will never get an asylum decision. Tens of thousands of people will be added to the Home Office backlog every year, only it is going to be a permanent backlog that the Home Office is never even going to try to clear. Those who would have been returned after their asylum claim was refused now will not be, and those who would have been granted sanctuary will be stuck in limbo instead. That is tens of thousands of people just added to the asylum backlog, costing billions of pounds more—up to £25 billion over the next five years.

As for the backlog the Prime Minister promised to clear, it is going to get worse, not better. Effectively, the Government have concluded that the Tory Home Office is so rubbish at taking any asylum decisions on time that they have decided to just stop doing them altogether, and they are hoping that no one will notice. Last week, I said that the Government might have decided not to call this an asylum system any more, but everyone is still going to be in the system nevertheless. Well, I got that wrong, because I have read the Bill’s explanatory notes again, and they say that:

“Subsection (2) amends section 94 of the 1999 Act…so that the term ‘asylum-seeker’ covers those whose asylum claims are inadmissible by virtue of Clause 4 of the Bill.”

In other words, the Government are amending the law so that all the people who they are going to exclude from the asylum system are still going to be called asylum seekers after all, and are still going to be in the asylum system.

You could not make it up: more chaos, more people in the asylum system, even fewer decisions taken, more people detained with nowhere to detain them and more people stuck in limbo, with no one credibly believing that anything in the Bill is going to act as any kind of deterrent to any of the criminal gangs. The Government are chasing headlines, but it is all a huge con.

What is the price of that con? What is the price of those empty headlines—of cancelling asylum decisions, rather than getting a grip? The Government are damaging our international standing, our chance of getting new co-operation agreements to tackle the problems, and our commitments to the rule of law. They are saying that Britain, uniquely, will not take asylum decisions, yet are expecting other countries to keep doing so. They are saying that Britain, uniquely, will not follow the refugee convention, the trafficking convention or the European convention on human rights, yet are urging other countries to follow those conventions. Think, too, of the price for the people we promised to help—for the Afghan interpreters who worked for our armed forces but who missed the last flight out of Kabul, and who the Government told to find an alternative route. If those people arrive in the UK now, the Conservatives plan to lock them up, keep them in limbo, and treat them as forever illegal in the country they made huge sacrifices to help.

Think of the Ukrainian family who travelled here via Ireland, as I know some people did in the early days of the conflict, without the right papers. They could have been the family staying with me, or the family staying with the Immigration Minister. I have listened to teenagers talking about how they had 20 minutes to pack before they fled their homes, not knowing whether they would ever return or see friends and family again. Under this law, those teenagers who arrived with the wrong papers would be locked up, denied any chance to ever live or work here lawfully in the future. That is the Tories’ position: in the interests of a plan that is actually a con and will not even work. It will not work to deter the criminal gangs; it will not work to remove people, because the Government do not have the returns agreements in place, and it will make it harder to get those returns agreements. In exchange for that con that makes nothing any better, they believe that no one who arrives in Britain without the right papers in their hands should ever be able to seek protection here or live here, no matter their personal circumstances.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I have been trying for two years to get a young girl, Maira Shahbaz, into this country. Aged 14, she was raped and abducted and she is now hiding in a room after being forced into marriage. I am told that I cannot get her in because the whole system is under such pressure, so I am all in favour of safe and legal routes.

However, the fact is that such is the misery in the world that there is no limit to the number of fit, able young men who want to come over here from Iraq, Eritrea and Syria. I do not blame them; I would do the same. We speak English, President Macron has a point that we have no identity cards—maybe we should have identity cards—and they can get jobs here. We could open a safe and legal processing centre in Lille and it would be overwhelmed: 1,000 would apply today and 10,000 tomorrow. There is no limit to how many people want to come. We could process asylum applications even more quickly, and that would produce even more applications. We could have more gendarmes based on the beach in France and, as I said earlier, people will try the first night, and the second night they will make it.

We have to do something, otherwise they are coming to every hotel. Every single hotel in the country is rapidly being filled up. For two years, I and my local council of West Lindsey have been producing a fantastic plan to try to get redevelopment of former RAF Scampton. We will get £300 million-worth of investment. It is the home of the Dambusters and the Red Arrows; we will have a heritage centre. But the Home Office is so desperate, because every single hotel is filled up, that it has now marched into my constituency and said that it wants to put 1,500 asylum seekers there.

Of course we oppose that. Nobody else in this Chamber cares a damn about what happens in Gainsborough, but I am the local champion; I care about my people and I care about £300 million-worth of investment. I am asking for an assurance from the Home Office that, if the asylum seekers do come in, they will not put at risk that wonderful development. However, in an interview with BBC Radio Lincolnshire, Peter Hewitt of Scampton Holdings said that his development would be “totally scuppered”, that the move would be

“rather inconsistent with running an airfield and airside operations”,

and that, if the housing plans went ahead, 40 acres out of the 130 acres earmarked for redevelopment would be taken up.

That is just one example of what is happening in our country. The system is broken. We have to do something about it, and international experience proves, whether in Greece or Australia, that the only two policies that work are offshoring or pushback. Nothing else works. Unless we pass this Bill, unless we have the courage to try to create an asylum system that brings into this country the real asylum seekers such as Maira Shahbaz, the people who have been raped or forced into marriages, we will have a never-ending stream of young men paying criminal gangs to get into our country.

Public Order Bill

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Consideration of Lords amendments
Tuesday 7th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Stella Creasy]

It is an irony to me that Members of the party that once claimed to be the party of law and order are trying to argue against the law and order that a PSPO establishes.

For the avoidance of doubt, let me be clear that I am not arguing for the criminalisation of silence. My argument is about the location. The right hon. Gentleman is being disingenuous if he does not recognise the effect of somebody who disagrees so passionately with a woman’s right to privacy in making that choice standing there while she does it. He talked about some of the literary greats, so let us talk about Margaret Atwood and “Under His Eye.” That is what these people praying represent by being there at that most tender moment for a woman making that choice. It is their physical presence, not their praying, that is the issue.

If we respect people having different opinions on abortion when it comes to free speech, we also have respect that when someone has made that choice, they should not be repeatedly challenged for it. The Members who want to challenge those women by praying outside and supporting others who do so have no idea why those women are attending the clinics; they have no idea of the histories and stories. They can only listen to the countless testimonies that the women attending the clinics do find this harassing. That is why so many have called for the PSPOs. They do find it intimidating. That is not the right time and place.

In tabling the amendment, the hon. Member for Northampton South is attempting to complicate something that is very simple. I pay tribute to Baroness Sugg for tidying up our original amendment and clarifying where the 150-metre zone will be. In a very small zone around an abortion clinic, that is not the right time and place. People can pray—of course they can. Although I might disagree with the hon. Gentleman on whether that is still intimidating, I will defend to the hilt people’s right to pray. What I will not do is place that ahead of a woman’s right to privacy and say that a woman who has made the decision to have an abortion must continue to face these people, because somehow it is about their freedom of speech unencumbered.

We need to be honest and recognise that there will never be a point at which the people praying agree with the choice that a woman has made, so there is never going to be a point at which their prayers are welcome. There is never going to be a point at which those prayers are not designed to intimidate or to destabilise a very difficult decision. Look at the widespread evidence that shows that the people conducting these prayer marathons outside our abortion clinics are not acting simply to help women, and that they are not well intentioned. I think we can all make our own decision on what is well intentioned. The hon. Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) says it is not offensive, but I disagree. I think that when a woman has made a choice, to have someone try continually to undermine that choice is offensive. We both have a right in this place to make our argument. Where we do not have a right to make that argument is right outside an abortion clinic with a woman who just needs her right to privacy to be upheld.

The hon. Member for Northampton South talked about consensual contact, but that is very unclear. What if a protester walks up to a woman and asks her the time, and she tells them? Does that mean she has engaged in conversation with them, which will allow them to start talking to her about their views on abortion? What if they ask for directions? Will that undermine the provision? The people protesting outside clinics, especially the “40 Days for Life” people, boast about how their presence reduces the number of women having abortions. They say it makes the no-show rate for abortion appointments as high as 75%. This is not benign behaviour. They also claim that those of us who support a woman’s right to choose are “demonic”, and increasingly they suggest we are “satanic” in our support for a woman’s right to privacy. Let us be clear: amendment (a) would not make an abortion clinic buffer zone clearer; it would sabotage a buffer zone by introducing uncertainty about behaviour and about the simple concept of there being a right time and place.

I am conscious of the time available, so I just want to put on the record my gratitude not only to Baroness Sugg, but to my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) for all her work, the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex, and organisations like Sister Supporter. They have stood up for the silent majority—the people who think it is not right to hassle a woman when she is making these choices. That is ultimately what we are here to say. When the vast majority of the public support buffer zones, and when those of us who will be in this position cannot speak freely, as a Scottish colleague raised, then we have a challenge in this place. Freedom of speech is not freedom of speech if 50% are living in fear of what might happen next. Margaret Atwood taught us that. She said that men are worried that women will laugh at them, and women are worried that men might kill them. Do not kill a woman’s right to her freedom. Do not kill a woman’s right to privacy. Let us not sabotage at the last minute abortion buffer zones by supporting amendment (a). We should support Lords amendment 5 and let everybody else move on with their life.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

It is worth looking at what amendment (a) states. It states:

“No offence is committed under subsection (1) by a person engaged in consensual communication or in silent prayer”.

For the avoidance of doubt, amendment (a) goes on to say that nothing in it should allow people to be harassed or their decision to be changed, such as kneeling down and praying right in front of somebody’s face, or blocking the pavement, or indulging in any kind of harassing.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I am not going to give way to my hon. Friend, who has intervened many times already. I have been asked to speak very briefly.

It is worth looking at what this amendment is, and it is worth considering the question put by the police officer to the lady. The police officer asked her, “Are you praying?” In other words, there was nothing she was obviously doing that was harassment or in any way objectionable. The police officer had to actually go into her mind—she was just standing there; I do not think it is even clear that she was kneeling—and that is surely what is dangerous about the measure.

In speaking to this Chamber, I am going far beyond what that lady was doing. Of course I am not indulging in any objectionable behaviour by expressing my thoughts. I am not harassing anybody, but everybody in this Chamber in a sense is being forced to listen to me, and I have spent 39 years no doubt irritating people and even boring them. They cannot shut their ears, but this lady was not actually saying anything, and the policeman had to go up to her and ask what she was doing. If we are going to have a law—a criminal law—it has to be capable of being effective.

The reason George Orwell’s novel “1984” resonates so much with all of us is that the state was trying to regulate not just people’s actions but what goes on in their minds. That is why, ever since that novel was written, people have felt that probably the most advanced form of totalitarianism is one where the state is trying to regulate not simply people’s behaviour, but their minds. What the debate is about is that those who oppose my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South (Andrew Lewer) are determined to stop anybody indulging in any kind of protest, if it could be deemed to be some sort of protest, even if it is entirely silent.

The whole point of the Public Order Bill, as I understand it—this is why I support it—is that it does not outlaw peaceful protest. What the Government are addressing is people making that protest who are deliberately trying to obstruct the rights of other citizens by blocking roads or whatever. That is the point of the Bill. It has now been hijacked by people who want to stop completely silent peaceful protest.

The case of Livia Tossici-Bolt has not yet been mentioned. In the past few days she was told by council officers in Bournemouth that she would be fined simply for holding up a sign saying, “Here to talk if you want” inside a buffer zone. She was not holding up a sign with any graphic images, and she was not trying to intimidate anybody; she was simply saying, “Please, if you want to talk, I am here if you want any advice. This is a very difficult day for you.” For that she was stopped by the police. In other words, that lady was told that she could not offer other women who might, in some circumstances, be coerced into attending an abortion clinic, or who felt that they lacked the resources to complete a pregnancy, the opportunity to talk if they wanted to do so.

We must not criminalise such peaceful activity. Where are we going? Where will this stop? I believe—this is how I will conclude; I think that this is the shortest speech—that this is an entirely worthwhile, harmless, moderate amendment, and I hope that Members will support it.

[Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

I remain of the view that the Bill is draconian and anti-democratic, and represents a frightening lurch towards authoritarianism. Whether or not Members agree with me, most of us will accept that the concept of what constitutes serious disruption is central to the sweeping liberty-curtailing powers and offences that it contains.

The matter of protest banning orders rests on that definition, and the peaceful and often innocent conduct that the police would seemingly be able to criminalise as a result is breath-taking in its range. The Bill says that those orders can apply to people without a conviction—the Minister explained the Government amendment earlier—if someone has carried out activities or contributed to the carrying-out of activities by any other person related to a protest

“that resulted in, or were likely to result in, serious disruption”,

among a range of other scenarios, on two or more occasions. Justice has stated:

“Given the extent of the powers contained within the Bill, it is essential that any definition should be placed at such a threshold as to minimise the possibility for abuse.”

I agree. The term “serious disruption” should be defined. Despite requests even from senior police officers for clarity in the Bill’s early stages, the Government had to be dragged to this point today. Looking at the Government’s vast and vague amendment on this issue, the reasons for not defining the term in the first place are clear. It would appear that their intention was always to set the bar at a frighteningly low level—and the bar could not be lower.

Serious disruption is “more than a minor” hindrance. That is a paradox if ever there was one. Apart from being dangerously vague, “more than a minor” hindrance is not serious disruption by any stretch of the imagination. More than a minor hindrance, as suggested by the Government, is having to cross to the other side of the road because someone is protesting on the pavement. It is a Deliveroo takeaway arriving 15 minutes later than someone would like. Those things might be annoying, but they are not serious disruption and they certainly do not warrant arrest.

I want to set this in context, as the Lords have attempted to do. The comparison in English common law is the definition of civil nuisance, which involves “substantial interference”. That is a very high bar, which has been defined by decades of case law on the matter. It is a world away from the low threshold that the Government propose in this measure.

I should make it clear that on the issue of blocking emergency vehicles—the Minister might try to cite that as a reason for the Government’s vague and dangerous amendment—of course that should be an offence, but it already is. The Emergency Workers (Obstruction) Act 2006 contains two offences. First, the Act makes it an offence to obstruct or hinder certain emergency workers who are responding to emergency circumstances. Secondly, it makes it an offence to hinder or obstruct those who are assisting emergency workers responding to emergency circumstances. The Lords amendment provides a much more sensible definition of serious disruption. It states that serious disruption

“means causing significant harm to persons, organisations or the life of the community, in particular, where…it may result in significant delay to the delivery of a time-sensitive product…or…it may result in a prolonged disruption of access to any essential goods or any essential services”.

That complements “significant delay” in the delivery of goods and “prolonged disruption” of access to services, as set out in the Public Order Act 1986, as well as measures in the Emergency Workers (Obstruction) Act.

On stop and search, which colleagues have already mentioned, of course the police must have the ability, sometimes, to stop and search when people are reasonably suspected of various crimes. However, the danger of abuse lies in the threshold of “reasonable suspicion” being low or, worse, as in the case of this Bill, non-existent.