National Minimum Wage (Workplace Internships) Bill

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Philip Davies

Friday 4th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I do not want to get into that, Madam Deputy Speaker—[Interruption.] Well, I do want to get into that, but not today.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. On the contrary, the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) has raised a point that is relevant to the Bill we are discussing, and the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) would not be out of order if he continued the dialogue with him on that point.

[Philip Davies]

I am grateful for that guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I fear that if I got sidetracked into talking about the latest decision by the High Court, we could be here for quite some time. I want to return to the issue but not today; I will save myself for another day, when I will tell the House what I really think of those judges and their ruling.

What I take from the intervention by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) is that, like me, he suspects that the Bill would in effect supersede previous legislation about work experience from Government schemes. We would therefore get ourselves in a bit of muddle. We all agree—both sides of the House agree—that people on benefits doing work experience is a good thing that should be expected of them, unpaid. It helps them to get a job and we do not want to interfere with a system that works very well for lots of people who are looking for jobs. The Bill would need amending on that basis.

My hon. Friend the Member for Elmet and Rothwell mentioned volunteers. If he gets the chance to wind up the debate, I hope he will deal with that issue because we have not had clarity on it. It is referred to in the explanatory notes, but they do not say a fat lot more than the Bill says, if I am honest.

The Bill is about enforcing the national minimum wage, and when the National Minimum Wage Bill was going through Parliament in 1998, the issue of volunteers was dealt with at length. The Minister at the time, Ian McCartney, said:

“I am pleased to say that the entire approach to the clause has been marked by a consensus both on our aims and on the means of achieving them. We want to ensure, first, that genuine volunteers—who give their time to good causes—are not caught up in the Bill’s provisions.”—[Official Report, 9 March 1998; Vol. 308, c. 23.]

The Labour Government at the time were clearly concerned about that issue, which was raised in the Bill Committee. I was not here at the time, but it appears that the Labour Government made changes as a result of concerns raised in Committee, which are the same as those raised by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset, and they had discussions with people who were concerned.

During the debate, the then Minister said:

“We are conscious, however, that there is a grey area. The definition of ‘worker’ in clause 52”

of that Bill

“is quite wide, although no wider than the definition used for the purposes of provisions on unauthorised deductions in the Employment Rights Act 1996”.—[Official Report, 9 March 1998; Vol. 308, c. 24.]

It is an area of concern, and I am not entirely sure that the Bill does a great deal to clear up any confusion about that issue. It seems that the original National Minimum Wage Bill was determined to try to exclude real, genuine volunteers who were volunteering because they believed in a cause, so it would be strange if volunteer interns were now caught up in legislation that they were never really intended to be caught up in in the first place.

I might just say, Madam Deputy Speaker, that Mr Speaker spoke in the debate in 1998. I mention that not because I wish to draw him into the debate now—I do not—but because I agree with the point that he made. He said:

“Are there not instances in which a person works in a charity shop, not for an honorarium but for a modest but regular payment that is below the national minimum wage, and in which, if the shop were obliged to pay that person the national minimum wage, it would have to cease to employ that person? Would not that be a most undesirable state of affairs?”—[Official Report, 9 March 1998; Vol. 308, c. 29.]

Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Philip Davies

Friday 11th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a helpful suggestion. I hope that the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department takes note and will deal with that.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Would the hon. Gentleman mind repeating the name of the case? I did not hear what he said.

[Philip Davies]

I apologise for not being clear. The case was from the Court of Appeal in 2011 and was that of R v. Mintchev. I appreciate your seeking clarification, Madam Deputy Speaker.

I fear that my Twitter feed would not be enough. I have 12,000 followers, all of whom hate me, so I am not entirely that the message would get across to my target audience.

As for how effective we currently are in removing foreign national offenders, the Public Accounts Committee released a report in January 2015 called “Managing and removing foreign nationals” that considered the effectiveness and efficiency of managing foreign offenders in UK prisons. I must say that the Committee’s summary was damning. It said:

“It is eight years since this Committee last looked at this issue. We are dismayed to find so little progress has been made in removing foreign national offenders from the UK. This is despite firm commitments to improve and a ten-fold increase in resources devoted to this work. The public bodies involved are missing too many opportunities to remove foreign national offenders early and are wasting resources, through a combination of a lack of focus on early action at the border and police stations, poor joint working in prisons, and inefficient caseworking in the Home Office.”

I will not go through all of the conclusions, but it was a damning report. We can clearly see that the system is not working.

When we consider the success rate of the Home Office in removing foreign criminals, we can see that it falls short of its own figures. The number of removals is very low compared with the number of referrals to immigration enforcement. Of the 5,262 referrals to the immigration enforcement team up to September 2015, only 2,855 people —50%—were removed. The Department was handed these people on a plate, but only half of them were removed.

I will not go into the figures for foreign national offenders in prison, because my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering went through them very clearly. His figures match mine and also match those of the National Audit Office. It is interesting to see why these removals fail. In its 2014 report, the National Audit Office concluded that 523 removals failed because of issues deemed to be within the control of the Home Office, and 930 failed removals were due to factors outside the control of the Home Office.

In 2013-14, of those reasons deemed to be within the Department’s control, 159 removals failed because emergency travel documents, EU letters or other documentation needed to transport the offender were unavailable. In seven cases, they failed because the tickets for travel had not been booked. It is a farce that someone had forgotten to book the tickets—you couldn’t make it up. How on earth that can happen, Lord only knows.

According to the NAO, the largest reason for failed removals that were deemed to be outside the Department’s control was offenders making an appeal outside the 28-day deadline. They might have submitted an asylum claim, a leave to remain claim or human rights claim. There might have been an injunction, a judicial review or representations received from a medical professional, a Member of Parliament or another Government Department. In 2013-14, 323 removals failed due to those reasons.

We have a situation where the Home Office is trying to kick someone out of the country, and another Government Department is working hard to keep them in the country, which does not say a great deal for joined-up Government. Perhaps the Minister can explain that. The National Audit Office produces a list of all the various failures, the reasons and how many there were for each, and I encourage people to look at it.

One problem is litigation. Indeed, in 2014, in response to an urgent question on this very subject, the Home Secretary said:

“The main problem we face is the rise of litigation; we have seen a 28% increase in the number of appeals.”—[Official Report, 22 October 2014; Vol. 586, c. 905.]

With an estimated £81 million spent in legal aid costs for foreign national offenders, it is clear that the whole process is not only time-consuming, but very expensive. In effect, the Government are paying to thwart the Government in deporting people from the country.

I am not sure whether my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough mentioned the case of William Danga in his remarks, but let me explain that Danga was convicted of raping a 16-year-old girl. After completing his prison sentence, he challenged deportation on the grounds that he had a right to a family life. It was deemed that he could remain here because he had a girlfriend and a young child. This is someone who had raped what I would consider to be a child. Commenting on the case in 2011, a judge said that it was remarkable that he had not been deported for committing the rape. Clearly, there are some sensible judges around.

I raised this very issue with the Home Secretary in 2014, and suggested that, because we are not deporting people, we must ensure that we are tougher at the borders; and that we should take the DNA of foreign nationals who want to enter our country, which I thought was a small price to pay for keeping us safe.

Another concern is over foreign national offenders who are subject to deportation orders and who are then moved to open prisons—you couldn’t make it up. A foreign national has committed an offence and the Government clearly want to deport them, but the Ministry of Justice moves them into an open prison, where people can literally just walk out of the gates. Again, the Government have to do something about the scandal of foreign nationals subject to deportation orders doing that. In 2013 alone, 190 foreign national offenders absconded from our prisons. These are schoolboy mistakes in keeping tabs on people we want to deport.

Bat Habitats Regulation (No. 2) Bill

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Philip Davies

Friday 5th February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am sorry to cut off my hon. Friend in full flow. This is further to my point of order earlier this morning about the security risk this country faces from a European Court of Justice decision to stop the UK kicking out of this country a Moroccan national whom the Home Office believes to be a severe threat to national security. It now appears that the person concerned is Abu Hamza’s daughter-in-law. Whoever it is, this is a very serious matter, and this country and this House should be aware of it. What can be done to get a Home Office Minister to come to the Chamber as a matter of urgency to tell the House about this matter and about what threat this country faces?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his point of order and for bringing this matter, which is indeed important, to the attention of the House again. As he knows, I have no power to require a Minister to come to the House, but I am quite certain, now that the hon. Gentleman has raised this matter on the Floor of the House, that those who ought to take note of what he has said will do so. I trust that the matter will be brought before the House in due course, and the hon. Gentleman is of course well aware of the many methods that he can use next week to ensure that it is brought before the House.

Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Bill

Debate between Baroness Laing of Elderslie and Philip Davies

Friday 16th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

The hon. Lady wants me to cover rather a lot of ground, if she does not mind me saying so. If we get into the funding of local authorities and funding formulas, I am sure that you might start to raise an eyebrow or two at my going off piste, Madam Deputy Speaker.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. For the avoidance of doubt, let me say that the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that I would raise several eyebrows. As I am sure the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) who has intervened to ask all those questions will appreciate, I will make sure that we deal only with what is in the Bill. There is more than enough in the Bill to keep us going.

[Philip Davies]

I am very grateful to you for that guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker. My new year’s resolution was to try to stick to the subject on Fridays. As I have not always achieved that, I thought I would make a special effort this term to stick to the point, and I am rather pleased that you have supported my first attempt to do so.

On the part of the intervention by the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) that is most relevant to the Bill, I accept her premise that it is important for everybody to be in a home that comes up to a certain standard. I am not aware of anybody who would disagree with that proposition. The issue is whether the Bill is necessary to achieve that. If I am allowed to make a bit more progress—time is pressing—I would like to set out my contention that the Bill is not necessary to achieve what she would like, which is exactly the same as what I would like. I cannot speak for the Minister, but I would like to think that he agrees—I am pretty certain he does—with the proposition that all housing should be fit for human habitation. We do not object to that principle.

The starting point for the Bill, as the hon. Member for Westminster North said, was the 1996 Law Commission report, “Landlord and tenant: responsibility for state and condition of property”. The explanatory notes to the Bill confirm that it is adapted from the Law Commission’s draft Bill, which was included in the report. The report was 230 pages long and covered many issues.

I cannot resist pointing out that we are nearly 20 years on from when the report was produced. I hope it has not escaped everybody’s attention that since 1996, we have had 13 years of Labour Government. They had plenty of opportunity to put the draft Bill into legislation if it was a matter of great importance, as the hon. Member for Westminster North claims.