Daniel Morgan Independent Panel Report
Emily Thornberry Excerpts(2 years, 8 months ago)
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Kit Malthouse
The process and appointment of the Met commissioner are established in law, and we cannot obviate that, but we are all, I hope, committed to making sure that the person we appoint will bring about the changes that we are all seeking as well as continue the fight against crime in the capital. In the meantime, as the current commissioner exits, I believe that in the proposed acting commissioner and current deputy commissioner we have an individual of integrity and commitment who has already made very welcome public statements about driving forward change.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for allowing convention to be waived so that I can speak from the Back Benches on this matter. Alastair Morgan, Daniel’s brother, has been campaigning for some justice for his brother for 35 years and I have stood alongside him for the past 17. The Minister referred to the “original report”. It was not the original report. There have been many, many inquiries. There have been inquiries into inquiries. This has been going on for years and years, with corruption layered upon corruption and nobody ever telling the truth. It is no wonder, in those circumstances, that Alastair has said that the Metropolitan police
“cared more about its own tatty reputation than solving my brother’s murder.”
Now what do we see? We see an official report that states that it has
“found no evidence that someone, somewhere, had adopted the view that this must never happen again.”
Nobody even cares if it happens again. What is the Minister going to do about that? What are we going to do about the Met?
European Union (Withdrawal) Act
Emily Thornberry Excerpts(5 years, 10 months ago)
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Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
This has been an excellent debate to listen to, even though I have the most astonishing feeling of déjà vu about it. Perhaps it is the flu I have been suffering all week, or the massive doses of Lemsip or Berocca I took this morning, but I do feel as though we have been through all this before about five weeks ago and absolutely nothing seems to have changed.
Nevertheless, I am glad to be here and I am delighted to see the Foreign Secretary in his place for the first time this year, safely returned from his recess travels and basking in the success of his new vision for post-Brexit Britain, which he unveiled in Singapore, namely that we are to become the “invisible chain” linking countries across the globe. It is a truly inspiring phrase, but colleagues may not realise that the inspiration has an unlikely source, because the phrase, “The Invisible Chain”, first originated as the Spanish language title of the 1943 film, “Lassie Come Home”. It is a beloved children’s classic: the story of a desperate family who are down to their lowest ebb, with no answers to their problems, but whose fortunes are rescued at the last moment by the return of their beloved dog. Here is the truth: the Cabinet is not waiting for unicorns to come riding over the hill; it is just waiting for Lassie.
It is no wonder that the Foreign Secretary’s vision of the invisible chain has been so enthusiastically embraced by his dog-loving Cabinet colleagues, including the Health Secretary, with his invisible Green Paper on social care; the Transport Secretary, with his invisible ferries and invisible traffic jams; and, of course, the Prime Minister running around Europe obtaining invisible concessions on Brexit.
That brings us to the crux of today’s debate. Here we are, five weeks after we had the same debate, and so many Members on both sides of the House have pointed out that there is nothing in the withdrawal agreement in relation to home affairs and foreign policy, let alone any other subject, that is in any way different from what we discussed on 5 December.
Let me summarise those contributions that have made that point best. My right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), the shadow Home Secretary, demonstrated with absolute clarity that this deal jeopardises all the co-operation with the European Union that we have come to rely on in the fields of justice, security and policing, and therefore we cannot accept it. My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) made it clear in his typically enjoyable speech that the issues of the Northern Ireland border remain totally unresolved. My hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South (Ian Murray) made the vital point—I have no doubt that many Conservative Members agree with him—that it remains the case that the deal on the table delivers no control of our laws, no control of our borders, and no control of our money. In fact, it cedes control to Europe by giving us no say on those issues.
My hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) made it clear that the lack of changes to the Prime Minister’s deal means that the economic damage it would do to investment and jobs remains unaltered. That point was echoed by my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle), who pointed out the major problems over recruitment and retention across multiple business sectors in his constituency that are reliant on migrant labour. We also heard a powerful and important contribution from my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) on the hopeless inadequacy of the Government’s proposal to deliver a fair system for immigration.
My hon. Friends the Members for Cardiff Central (Jo Stevens), for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) and for East Lothian (Martin Whitfield) made it clear that wherever people are in this country, and whichever of our nations they live in, our constituents overwhelmingly reject this hopeless deal. Yet, as my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) reminded us, it would be an even greater disaster for our country—from our factories to our universities—if we crash out without a deal.
All of those contributions, and the many others we have heard from colleagues, have laid bare the fact that nothing has been achieved during the five weeks of delay. Nothing has changed in terms of the withdrawal agreement, and nothing of substance or principle has been done to change the mind of any Member, with the possible exception of my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick)—[Interruption.] Just one Member changing their mind in five weeks is not necessarily a huge contribution; Conservative Members should not get too excited. It is still likely that the agreement will be voted down next week.
We have been told that there will be assurances from the European Union—no changes to the withdrawal agreement, no changes written into law, just a set of assurances. I hope we all remember the words of the Prime Minister’s deputy, the Minister for the Cabinet Office, when he spoke from the Dispatch Box in 2015, as the then Minister for Europe, in relation to a similar situation, when David Cameron was supposed to be renegotiating Britain’s membership of the European Union. He said that
“we will not ask the House to rely only on the words of Ministers from the Dispatch Box. We have made a commitment to introduce into the Bill changes that give expression to the assurances that we have given.”—[Official Report, 16 June 2015; Vol. 597, c. 234.]
This morning we heard the Foreign Secretary say the same thing:
“Theresa May has said she doesn’t just want words. She wants something with legal force.”
Based on what he said this morning, and on the position the Government took four years ago, when David Cameron was renegotiating, does the Foreign Secretary accept that the assurances that the Prime Minister is obtaining from other European leaders will not be worth the paper on which they have hastily been written if they are not also written into law? If that is the case, will he confirm that, before next Tuesday, formal amendments will be made to the withdrawal agreement? If he does not accept that and accepts that this will not happen, the Conservative Back Benchers and the DUP will be quite within their rights to reject the withdrawal agreement, just as they planned to do in December, on the grounds that it will remain fatally flawed. However, I am afraid that the Foreign Secretary knows that there will not be legally binding changes to the withdrawal agreement over the next four days, so the only real question at issue is what will happen after next Tuesday once the Prime Minister’s deal is rejected. As ever, the Foreign Secretary has given us a multitude of answers on this subject. The problem is that he gives us a different answer depending on what audience he is speaking to. Speaking to the Sunday Telegraph before Christmas, he said that if we had to leave without a deal, Britain would “flourish and prosper” in that scenario, but he then told reporters in Singapore that the disruption caused by a no-deal outcome is
“not something that any Government should willingly wish on its people.”
This week, at Cabinet, when the Work and Pensions Secretary said that history would take a “dim view” of a Cabinet that allowed Britain to leave without a deal and the Justice Secretary said that they would need an alternative plan instead, the Foreign Secretary went back to insisting that no deal was the preferred option. And yet here we are three days later with the Foreign Secretary on the “Today” programme saying that no deal will not happen and that the most likely scenario after Tuesday is that Brexit will not happen at all. I ask the Foreign Secretary to give us some clarity today not on what he expects to happen after Tuesday when the Prime Minister’s deal is voted down, but on what he believes should happen after that point. In particular, on the most vital issue of all, can he make it clear whether he is prepared to countenance this country leaving the European Union on 31 March without a deal?
The Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs (Mr Jeremy Hunt)
Let me give the right hon. Lady that clarity, because what I have said has always been completely consistent. I do not want us to leave without a deal—there would be a lot of disruption if we did—but if we were in that situation, I believe that, in the end, this country is strong enough to find a way to flourish and prosper.
Emily Thornberry
The trouble is that that does not seem to be what the Foreign Secretary said on the radio this morning. I am just holding him to account. He cannot go round telling all sorts of different people different things and not expect us to be listening. We are listening. We are the Opposition and we will hold you to account and you need to be consistent because you are in government and you are supposed to be in a leadership position. That is the point, and that is the point of this debate. As I say, to give all these accounts and to try to be consistent is what we wish him to do. Should he also not accept this? He said, as I understand it, back in 2016, that we need to negotiate a deal and put it to the British people either in a referendum or through a fresh general election, and he said that
“we will trust the British people to decide on whether or not it is a good deal”.
If he thought that that was the right course of action to pursue in the event of securing a deal, surely the Foreign Secretary accepts that that is the only course of action to pursue if there is no deal at all.
Emily Thornberry
When we leave the European Union, free movement will end. It is our policy that there should be fair rules and managed migration. We believe that immigration should look after our economy and should look after our communities. That is the answer; it is a full answer, and it has been consistent. If the right hon. Gentleman would like to listen to what the Labour party has said with the consistency with which we will be listening to what he says, he will find that we are consistent and that our policy is clear. Unless he has any other questions on Labour’s policy, I propose to sit down.
European Union (Withdrawal) Act
Emily Thornberry Excerpts(5 years, 11 months ago)
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Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
This has been an excellent debate covering a range of vital and urgent issues. I am not going to repeat the many compelling points made by the shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) in her speech. I cannot do adequate justice to all the other 48 contributions that have been made, some of which I missed. I am told, however, that there was a typically brilliant speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David).
In the time I have available, let me highlight those contributions which I believe best sum up why the Prime Minister’s proposed Brexit deal would leave us less secure as a country and would not deliver the fair rules for migration that we need—two out of Labour’s six tests failed in one debate. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, said, we are being asked to make this decision without even seeing the immigration White Paper we were promised. We therefore have no detailed idea of what the new migration rules will say or how they will work in practice. She also said that we are being asked to support a political agreement that is entirely silent on our future access to the SIS II database and will leave our police and security services less well able to protect the public than they are at present. As the former universities Minister, the hon. Member for East Surrey (Mr Gyimah), pointed out, if we are being cut out of the Galileo database even while the agreement is being discussed, what hope do we have of negotiating access to other vital databases once the agreement has been signed?
We also heard an important contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Paul Farrelly), who talked about his German lessons at school and the lessons from history that show that our place in the world is not strengthened but diminished when we cut ourselves off from Europe—a point also made by my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma). From the Chair of the Health Committee, the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), we heard about the grave consequences of the dangers of this deal, and even worse of no deal, for the national health service, both for medical supplies and for medical staff. That is something that the Foreign Secretary should understand better than anyone, because that is what he used to say when campaigning for remain.
We were reminded by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin) not just that EU co-operation and networks help to keep our country safe from crime and terrorism, but that the Prime Minister personally fought to keep our part in them when she was Home Secretary. Now, however, she cannot guarantee that they will continue. My hon. Friends the Members for Cardiff North and for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) both rightly said—I agree with them—that far from helping to maintain Europe’s leadership on climate change, which is the single biggest threat to the world’s long-term security, this political agreement cannot even guarantee that we will continue to agree a common position in future international negotiations. Indeed, let us note that it used to be one of the warnings against a no-deal Brexit that Britain could lose access to the EU emissions trading scheme. However, even this supposed deal does not guarantee that continued access, and says only that the parties should “consider” co-operation—just one of many foreign policy sections of the document where clear, existing agreements on co-operation have been replaced by vague, loose aspirations.
What this debate and all the many contributions have laid bare is that on the first duty of every Government—the duty to protect the safety and security of their citizens—the Prime Minister’s deal fails. I hope that when the Foreign Secretary speaks in a moment, he will address the points that I have mentioned: access to vital security databases—
Emily Thornberry
No, I have been asked not to take interventions at this stage of the evening.
Emily Thornberry
We have had an opportunity over the last eight hours for everyone to have—[Interruption.] Mr Duncan, please calm down. I have been asked not to take interventions at this stage and I am not going to—
Emily Thornberry
When the right hon. Gentleman has had a chance to calm down, perhaps I can continue. What this debate and all the many contributions have laid bare is that on the first duty of every Government—the duty to protect the safety and security of their citizens—the Prime Minister’s deal fails. I hope that when the Foreign Secretary speaks in a moment, he will address those points that I have mentioned: access to vital security databases; our future international co-operation with the EU; our ability to tackle terrorism and organised crime; our place in the world; our shared fight against climate change; and even the future of our NHS.
I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will answer one other very specific question that goes to the heart of his responsibilities as Foreign Secretary. He was proud to announce yesterday the new embassy that his Department is opening in the Maldives, one of 12 new posts due to be opened by the Government over the next two years. However, even after those new openings, there will still be 16 other countries around the world where Britain has no direct consular representation but where other EU countries do. These countries have a combined population of 72 million people, spread across Asia, Latin America and Africa, including 10 past and present members of the UN Security Council. These are countries where up until this point, thanks to the common foreign and security policy, any British citizen visiting, working or living there who found themselves in difficulty and could not look to a British embassy for help had the right to go to other EU embassies based there and ask for consular support.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) asked the Government last week what provision was being made in the Prime Minister’s proposed deal to continue those arrangements after we leave the EU. The answer was none. In fact, it is worse than that—the answer was that British citizens who are arrested in those countries or who are affected by a hurricane or an earthquake could no longer ask the French or Spanish embassies to help, but they could “phone the Foreign Office switchboard.” If we needed any more evidence of how half-baked, hurried through and totally botched the Prime Minister’s deal is and how reliant it is on vague future aspirations of co-operation, it is the fact that the Government have not even bothered to think about what it means for British citizens being left without consular support in dangerous situations. It is the very definition of making the British people, whom it is our first duty to protect, less safe and less secure.
That is not the only loss of security that I hope the Foreign Secretary will address in his closing speech. If the first duty of the Government is to protect the physical security of their citizens, their second duty is surely to protect the economic security of the nation, which was a point well made by my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham). What we have learned with this Foreign Secretary is that he is very willing, quite often, to say one thing about the economic impact of Brexit behind the closed doors of Downing Street and another when he is in the television studios or standing at the Dispatch Box. When he is trying to sell this deal to Parliament tonight, I hope that he will clear up some of the disparities between what he says publicly and what he says privately.
I have three questions for him to that end. In the television studios, he says that this is the best deal for Britain and we can look forward to a glorious era, where
“we become an independent sovereign power, negotiating our own trade deals”
around the world. Around the Cabinet table, presumably informed by the Attorney General’s advice, he says the opposite—that this deal will leave us in what he calls a “Turkey trap”, stuck in an exclusive trading agreement with the EU, but unable to influence any of its decisions and unable to negotiate our own deals. Will he tell us tonight what he really thinks? ?
Secondly, in the television studios, when asked to talk about the backstop, the Foreign Secretary says it simply will not happen. He says:
“Britain will be an independent nation…it is in black and white. That is the intention of the EU”.
But round the Cabinet table, he says the opposite. The backstop will become a “frontstop”, he says. “As soon as the deal is signed,” he says, “the EU will have what they want”. “They will block any progress,” he says, “on the final new trading agreement, and will turn the backstop into the only available outcome.” Will he tell us tonight what he really thinks?
Thirdly and finally, in the television studios, the Foreign Secretary says:
“We will not be significantly worse off”
as a result of the Prime Minister’s deal, but did he not used to say the exact opposite around the Cabinet table, especially about the impact on the NHS, when he warned of the need to avoid a hard Brexit?
I hate to say it, but I have to agree with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury’s remarks over lunch on Monday. She said that the Foreign Secretary was “so charming” but that there was “no consistency”, and she was absolutely right. Even more damning, however, was her explanation for the inconsistency. Excuse me, Mr Speaker, for using the Foreign Secretary’s name, but I am quoting his Cabinet colleague. “Hunt”, she says, “is all about the game-playing”. Doesn’t that sum it all up?
We have a Tory Cabinet obsessed with their own internal power games and fighting like ferrets in a sack to succeed their lame duck leader, with a Foreign Secretary who, according to his own Cabinet colleague and the evidence of this debate, has been more interested in playing leadership games than in making sure that this political agreement can maintain our future foreign policy co-operation with the EU and protect the security of British citizens, whether at home or abroad. That is the kind of Front Bench we see before us today. In the light of their complete failure of leadership and their total—[Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. No, it’s not boring to me. Sir Alan, you are normally a figure of dignity in one way or another. You are a little over-excitable. Calm yourself. You really need to get a grip. You are not only a knight, but a KCMG and a figure of enormous celebrity in the life of the nation. I know that you do not underestimate all that, so a tad of dignity would be greatly appreciated.
Emily Thornberry
That is the kind of Front Bench we see before us, and in the light of their complete failure of leadership and their total failure to deliver a new set of fair rules on immigration and to protect our country’s security, it is absolutely no wonder that this House is only a week away from rejecting their dismal Brexit deal and already holds this dismal Government in total and utter contempt.
EU Nationals in the UK
Emily Thornberry Excerpts(8 years, 4 months ago)
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Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
We have had a full debate, albeit in a short period of time. We have heard a huge amount of passion, and the opinion of the House is quite clear.
We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Chris Elmore) about a Polish care home worker being asked regularly by residents when they are going home. We heard from the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Roger Mullin) about EU citizens being afraid to invest in his constituency. We learned during the speech of the hon. Member for Ross, Skye and Lochaber (Ian Blackford) that the Home Secretary is not in her place for this debate because, as was tweeted, she was busy enjoying a taste of Colchester.
I think the technical term is a “stonking speech”, and we heard it from my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), who talked about a swastika with the word “Out” being daubed on tower blocks in her constituency. We heard from my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) that if the Home Secretary will not provide a guarantee, my right hon. Friend cannot reassure kids in the playground who are being told to “go home”.
We heard an important speech from my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart), who said that the Vote Leave campaign was clear on this issue—that no one would be sent back—and asked why the Government had not honoured that.
My hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) said that 36,000 EU migrants live in Westminster and that it was hard to overstate those people’s concern. The hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) explained the contribution of EU migrants to the NHS, while the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss) mentioned Glasgow’s slogan, “People make Glasgow”, and told us that a high proportion of her constituents are from the EU.
My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) said that 46% of his constituents were born outside the UK. If the Home Secretary could say what she did about EU migrants, my hon. Friend wondered what might be said next about anyone else. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) made it absolutely clear what we are calling for. He said that those here before 23 June must have certainty and he insisted that we cannot have different members of the Government saying different things.
We heard something from Conservative Members. I know that the hon. Members for South Cambridgeshire (Heidi Allen) and for Portsmouth South (Mrs Drummond) are both strong characters who are quite capable of making themselves clearly understood. It would be only fair to say, however, that while they made a contribution to the debate, they rather pulled their punches. They do not normally do so.
Great disappointment has been expressed about the Home Secretary’s rhetoric and the fact that she has not bothered to turn up yet again. She has effectively reduced 3 million of our friends and neighbours to little more than pawns in the negotiations. The Minister for Immigration has been called upon once again to deliver his services and to act as a shield for the Home Secretary. He has come here and done his best. He has provided a lot of rhetoric, claiming that the Government will work to guarantee the rights of EU citizens and that they are confident that the negotiations will be successful. However, he cannot say when these negotiations will happen or when people will be able to have their rights guaranteed. He says that he will guarantee those rights, but he wants to link them to the rights of British citizens living across the rest of Europe. That means that they are being used as bargaining chips. That is what it means.
Frankly, it is all very well for the Immigration Minister to say that these people can fully expect their legal status to be properly protected and that he is confident that it will be, but the problem is that he says this will happen only through reciprocal arrangements and that the Government could not support any attempt to pre-empt it. That is not enough for people to build their lives on. That is not enough for people to know that they can remain in the UK and be able to invest in our country, fall in love, work and continue to contribute to our country. That is not enough. We are ashamed, and the Minister should be ashamed. Three million people should not be treated in this way. They have come to this country in good faith.
It is quite simple. The Minister is able to get up today and clarify the position for those who have been here since before the referendum. It is wrong for the Government to say different things to all these people. We can see and we all know that there has been a rise in racism and attacks, so that people are feeling profoundly insecure. It is in the Minister’s hands to do something about it. He has a responsibility not only to fight back against the thuggish behaviour that we can see happening right now in our communities, but to provide more than just rhetoric. He can do something about this.
Conor McGinn (St Helens North) (Lab)
Like me, my hon. Friend is both a British and an Irish citizen, and I think she understands the difficulty very acutely. Will she urge the Government to respect the reciprocal rights enjoyed by Irish citizens in the UK and British citizens in Ireland, and to make it clear that they, as well as the rights of all the other EU citizens who currently reside in the UK, will be absolutely guaranteed and protected?
Emily Thornberry
I thank my hon. Friend for making that point—and yes, I should declare an interest. I come from generations of EU nationals. Indeed, the Thornberry brothers built much of Camden. We have made a great contribution to this country, and of course we want the security of knowing that we can come into this country and remain here. We need that reassurance. The Irish need it, but the other EU citizens need it too. It is in the Minister’s hands to give us that reassurance, and he should do so.
This is not just an outrage in moral terms; it is also, in my view, a completely cack-handed negotiating strategy. Ministers suggest that they should not guarantee the rights of EU nationals in Britain until similar guarantees have been provided by the rest of the EU. It shows poor judgment, to say the least, for a would-be Prime Minister to embark on negotiating an exit deal with such an apparent lack of trust in the good faith of our partners, or former partners. If, as has been promised, the UK can expect the best possible deal in the Brexit negotiations, we really must do better than that.
As has been said throughout the debate, it is fundamentally wrong to treat valued members of our society and our communities as mere bargaining chips. We must never forget the human faces behind the numbers. [Interruption.] The Minister says that they are not being treated as bargaining chips, but they are. By linking EU migrants in the UK with British citizens in the EU, he is putting them on the table and behaving just as he does when he negotiates agriculture subsidies and export regulations. That sends completely the wrong message.
These are people. They are people with real faces, whose children are in our playgrounds. They work all over our country, they invest in our country, and we need them. We have some of the best. They have come to our country, and they deserve to have some form of security, because they cannot build their lives without it. They should not be holding their breath until such time—the Minister is unable to tell us exactly when—as their future may or may not be secured.
After all, 3 million of our doctors, nurses, teachers and small business owners come from elsewhere in the EU. They are our neighbours and our friends, and many of them who are, like me—as was pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn)—second-generation EU migrants, are our kith and kin. They have the same inherent value as any one of us in the Chamber today, and it is incumbent on us to make that principle clear.
The Government have cast a shadow over the futures of millions, and that is a matter of huge regret. Why was it not considered in advance of Brexit? If the Government had decided to have a referendum, why was there no plan B? Why are they scrambling into a position at this stage? Why have the futures of so many people been made so insecure? How is it possible that a Government can go into a referendum without even thinking that the public might reach a different conclusion, and having a plan B as a result? This is the Government’s fault, but they can do something about it, and they should do something about it today.
If the Conservatives do not vote against the motion, Parliament’s position will be clear: we wish the 3 million people from the EU who are living here to stay, and we want their position to be clarified. Will that be of assistance to them? It is all that we can do to give them some security. However, with a click of his fingers, the Minister could make their futures properly secure by standing up now and saying that the futures of those who were here before the referendum are secure, that they are welcome, and that they will be able to live here.
Karen Bradley
I will just say that if my hon. Friend had heard the opening statement from my right hon. Friend the Minister for Immigration, he would have heard that point at that stage.
We fully expect that the legal status of EU nationals living in the UK and of UK nationals in EU member states will be properly protected, but we must not forget our duty to UK citizens who have chosen to build a life in an EU member state. Addressing that issue is a priority that we intend to deal with as soon as possible. As my right hon. Friend and I have said, it is a complicated matter with a range of considerations and detailed work is needed to examine the full range of circumstances of EU nationals and to ensure that any decisions taken have no unforeseen or unintended consequences.
I want to give some examples from today’s debate. What I heard from the Opposition Front Bench was that anybody who was here on 23 June has automatic rights and that that will be the cut-off date. If someone arrived on 24 June, however, would the points-based system of the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Ms Stuart) apply to them? Would they be repatriated? Is it the case that somebody who arrived on 24 June is no longer attracted to staying in the UK? This is a really complicated matter, and we must ensure that we get it right.
Karen Bradley
I am sorry, but I want to make some progress. I did not intervene on the hon. Lady.
In conclusion, EU nationals can have our full and unreserved reassurance that, whether they arrived on 22 June, 23 June or 24 June, there has been no immediate change to their right to enter, work, study and live in the UK as a result of the EU referendum. I would like to reassure EU citizens up and down the country that we recognise the huge contribution that they make to our economy, our health service, our schools, our care sector, our communities and in so many other ways. We will act fairly towards them just as we expect other EU countries to act fairly towards our citizens living there.
However, as has been set out today, any decision to pre-empt our future negotiations would risk undermining our ability to protect the interests of EU and British nationals alike and to get the best outcomes for both. We will look to secure the best deal for EU citizens just as we will seek to secure the best deal for British citizens in the EU. That is the responsible approach and that is what we will do.
Question put.
Paris Terrorist Attacks
Emily Thornberry Excerpts(9 years ago)
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Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
I spent this morning with one of my constituents who spent Friday night just yards from the Bataclan. Despite the trauma he had been through, he wanted to speak to me about his concerns about the Syrian community, especially in the light of the passport that was found. His view was that those who run away from Islamic State in Syria do so because—like us—they do not share its values. It is important that we continue to make it clear that Europe—and Britain—welcome refugees.
Mrs May
Indeed and, as the hon. Lady knows, we are committed to welcoming 1,000 Syrian refugees before Christmas and 20,000 over the course of this Parliament. She is right: those fleeing Syria are fleeing from the barbarism of ISIL and, in many cases, from attacks on the Syrian people by their own Government. That is why it is so important that we ensure that we find a political resolution to what is happening in Syria, so that those many hundreds of thousands—millions—who have had to flee can go back to their homes where they want to be.
Reports into Investigatory Powers
Emily Thornberry Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
I thank the Home Secretary for her thoughtful speech and for scheduling the debate so swiftly after the publication of David Anderson’s report. I called for the debate in response to the statement two weeks ago and it has been swiftly delivered.
I should also apologise to the House, as I already have to the Home Secretary and to you, Mr Speaker, for the fact that I cannot be here for the closing speeches. It is my daughter’s school graduation, so I hope the House will forgive me for being there instead.
This will be a good debate and it is an opportunity to debate the right legal framework to protect our liberty and security in the digital age. I join the Home Secretary in paying tribute to the quiet heroism of our intelligence services, agents and counter-terror police. Their work is necessarily secret and their successes are rarely reported, but their success is measured, bluntly, by a lack of column inches and TV headlines. We are rightly all proud of them.
There is also no doubt that as the world becomes increasingly connected and as we increasingly rely on smartphones, tablets and other technology to communicate and organise our lives, that has repercussions for the fight against terrorism and serious and organised crime. David Anderson’s report contains the startling fact that in 1975 there were 1 billion connected places, that by 2010 there were 5 billion connected people and that by 2020 there will be 50 billion connected devices.
Our lives are increasingly online, and with that opportunity come great challenges. For example, we know that Twitter is a lot of fun for many people, including many Members of this House—although, perhaps, not yet the Home Secretary—but it has also been used to connect extremists and recruiters with young people in the United Kingdom, including the young girls who left for Syria from Bethnal Green earlier this year. New devices, mail services and apps are used to help us all keep in touch, build amazing new businesses and organise our lives, but also by some to commit crimes and abuse. Online crime has risen exponentially and we have also seen awful cases of online child abuse that we are still failing to address as a country.
We have also seen growing problems with organised cyber-attacks for major companies, infrastructure and the Government. The operations of the police and intelligence agencies need to be able to keep up with these new forms of crime and national security threats, but at the same time the checks and balances, safeguards and oversight that are needed must keep up with new technology. We have a long and proud tradition in Britain of having those checks, balances and safeguards for our liberty and our privacy. We must ensure that action by the state is proportionate, so those checks and balances must keep up with the fast-moving changing technology.
We have argued for some time that the legal framework is out of date. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act is, in David Anderson’s words,
“incomprehensible to all but a tiny band of initiates”
and in the long run that means that it is “intolerable”. Its interaction with previous legislation, including the Telecommunications Act 1984, is baffling, too, and even after being briefed on some of the work that the agencies do and having studied the legislation over seven years—often with a wet towel wrapped around my head, which was the only thing that enabled me to get my head around it even temporarily—I still find it hard to be clear about what is possible and what is not under the law as it stands and about the extent of existing safeguards. That is unsustainable as a framework for legitimacy for the vital work the agencies do, which is why we have called for some time for a review of RIPA, why we argued for it in the debates last summer and why we have welcomed the Government’s agreement to ask David Anderson to produce this report.
The report is extremely thorough and ranges from ideas of privacy in ancient Babylonia to what Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of a rather different kind of empire, thinks of the topic. It provides us with an opportunity for Parliament, civil society, the intelligence community, law enforcement, communication providers and, crucially, the public properly to consider the powers and safeguards we need.
As David Anderson recently said:
“The threat that I see of not accepting my recommendations, or recommendations along these lines is that people become disenchanted with the whole business of intelligence gathering. They believe some of the wilder allegations…that the state is reading into people’s emails the whole time when patently it isn’t. If this sense of disillusionment and disenchantment is perpetuated and spreads further then I think both law enforcement and intelligence lose the public confidence that they actually need if they are going to do an effective job.”
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend is making a good and comprehensive speech. Is it not appropriate that David Anderson’s report is entitled “A Question of Trust”? Surely that is one of the most important things in bringing the public with us on this issue.
Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is exactly right. There is strong support for the work of the intelligence agencies and the work they do in Britain, which has historically always been the case, but we should never take that for granted. It would not be fair on the intelligence agencies to take it for granted, so maintaining that sense of trust and confidence across the whole of society and not simply across the majority of people is extremely important for the work that they do. If we are to protect both our liberty and security in a democracy, we need to achieve consent for and understanding of the law and it is not just those who are concerned about surveillance who value greater clarity. It is also an essential mission of our intelligence agencies as part of defending democracy and protecting liberty and security.
The Home Secretary has been clear that there is no doubt that investigatory powers are vital in confronting terrorism, child abuse and other serious and organised crime. During the Home Secretary’s statement two weeks ago, I mentioned the awful case cited in David Anderson’s report in which communications data were used, rightly, to stop the abuse of three children who were all less than four years old. There are other cases. For example, Operation Overt dealt with the largest and most serious terrorist plot we have ever faced. Between 2008 and 2010, 10 individuals were convicted of plotting to blow up multiple transatlantic airliners. A key part of the evidence that brought the plotters to justice was coded conversations by email between the conspirators and extremists abroad in which they discussed the preparation for their attacks and the selection of targets.
It is clear from the review and other evidence that the powers passed through the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act 2014 last summer are essential and must be renewed, and will need to be renewed in good time before the sunset clause at the end of next year. It is also right, however, that we ensure that the legal framework that governs them is updated so that it properly reflects the needs of security and the need for safeguards.
In 2012, the Home Secretary made proposals in the draft Communications Data Bill that would have gone much further than the current legislation. I argued at the time that there were serious problems with the Bill, because it put too much power in the hands of the Home Secretary. The Joint Committee set up to scrutinise the draft Bill also, rightly, raised substantial concerns. David Anderson’s report makes it clear that he does not think that the draft Bill was the right approach. He noted that the first clause was “excessively broad”. The important question of IP addresses, which was encompassed in the draft Bill, has now been dealt with in other legislation. On weblogs, which the Home Office said at the time it wanted to pursue, David Anderson concluded that he
“was not presented with a detailed or unified case”
on the viability, practicalities or legal considerations.
On perhaps the most significant and the most controversial measure in the draft Bill—requiring internet service providers to hold huge amounts of third-party data—he commented:
“I did not get the sense that this was judged to be the priority that it once was, even within law enforcement”,
and he concluded:
“Accordingly…there should be no question of progressing this element of the old draft Bill until such time as a compelling operational case has been made, there has been full consultation with CSPs and the various legal and technical issues have been fully bottomed out. None of those conditions appears to me to be currently satisfied.”
Experts have also expressed substantial concerns about encryption and the cost and proportionality of the proposals.
Where David Anderson and the agencies confirm that there is a problem is in ensuring that companies whose headquarters are overseas comply with UK law, particularly for data and communications that involve those who are living and operating in the UK and those who pose threats to the UK. The Home Secretary referred to the report by Nigel Sheinwald, whose work is vital because, as the agencies and the Home Secretary recognise, UK law is only part of the answer; legal and diplomatic arrangements with other countries are immensely important. In fact, there is a growing range of views that the proposals in the draft Communications Data Bill were not the right way to deal with that genuine and significant problem in relation to companies based overseas.
On that basis, I ask the Home Secretary to confirm that she has dropped the original draft Communications Data Bill and is starting with a fresh approach. I think it would help our debate in this place and the development of future proposals that should balance the appropriate powers and the appropriate safeguards. Will she confirm that that draft Bill has been dropped and a new approach will be taken?
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
I may speak very quickly to get through everything I want to say, Madam Deputy Speaker.
I will refer to the reports by the ISC and the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, not the two later reports, which we have not really had an opportunity to read or consider properly. The report by David Anderson, QC, aptly entitled “A Question of Trust”, has rightly been complimented in the House for its thoroughness and rigour. Perhaps we should give a warning to those who might want to read it, though—do not drop it on your foot. Anderson’s recommendation that the law on investigatory powers should be made both comprehensive and comprehensible has also been widely endorsed, and it is surely right. If it is unintelligible to a lay reader, it will seem esoteric and inaccessible to all and will therefore not inspire public confidence.
I would like to focus on the main bone of contention, which is who should have authority to grant permission for access to the content of people’s private communications. The ISC’s report, for all its strengths, offers an insider’s view. The Home Secretary no doubt found much more to agree with in that report than in others, not least because she found herself extensively quoted in it. After hearing evidence that, in my view, was heavily weighted towards Ministers and officials from the security services, the ISC came down squarely on the side of the status quo. It concluded that the current system of ministerial authorisation of interception warrants should be maintained. I listened with some interest to the comments of the right hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) on that issue.
The Committee appears to have reached its conclusion based almost wholly on the recommendations of Ministers themselves, with the concerns of civil liberties groups being given comparatively short shrift. In concluding that Ministers were better equipped than judges to make decisions on warrants, the Committee relied on arguments some of which, in my view, were based on flawed logic. I will give one example. It argued that,
“Ministers are able to take into account the wider context of each warrant application and the risks involved, whereas judges can only decide whether a warrant application is legally compliant.”
The example that the Committee provided by way of support for that rather extraordinary claim was the diplomatic fracas following the allegations in 2013 that the US National Security Agency had tapped the German Chancellor’s phone. The ISC’s less than subtle implication was that whereas a Minister would have the wisdom to reject such an application, judges would be too clueless to understand the requirements of international diplomacy and could not possibly be trusted to understand the diplomatic implications of such a decision.
Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)
Does the hon. Lady not accept that Ministers and judges have a different role? The report recognises that the role of a Minister is to represent Her Majesty’s Government across a broad swathe of areas, including international policy, and the role of a judge is to adjudicate on a question of law.
Emily Thornberry
Yes, of course, but it underestimates the subtle role that judges have come to play in recent years. For example, the development of administrative law has meant that judges have to be able to balance a number of factors. Are we essentially saying that the only way for Ministers to have some form of oversight of the security services is by giving permission for intercepts? There must be greater oversight than that. For example, if there was a suggestion that—I am plucking an idea from the air—we should tap the phone of the President of France, are we saying that the Home Secretary would not be aware of it if there were a system of applying to the court? If that is our current system, we need to examine it carefully. We need to ensure that our Ministers have some form of oversight of the security services, but that does not preclude the need for judges as a back-up. Surely Ministers would welcome the idea that they can not only make their own judgment but have it backed up with the authority of a judge.
The caricature of judges as being completely out of the world does not bear up, in my experience. I have to declare an interest at this point—I am married to a judge, and there have been times when my husband has been duty judge. Although the phone has not necessarily been passed to him while he has been in the bath, it is quite right that judges are flexible and can move quickly to make decisions as and when necessary.
Emily Thornberry
I have already given way to the hon. Gentleman, and I want to try to keep to your strictures, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am not doing very well—I have only three minutes left if I am to do so. I suspect that I might not, but I will go as fast as I can.
Judges do not live in a vacuum. Their job requires them to have some form of judgment. There have been great challenges to the establishment, and the public have great scepticism about not only politics but all sorts of pillars of the establishment. I find it interesting that the judiciary is one of the few areas that are not challenged in the same way. Whenever a difficult issue needs to be decided on or there has been a crisis, it does not take people long to call for a full judicial inquiry. When we are talking about trust in the highly contentious field of investigatory powers, it seems to me that it would be a mistake for Ministers not to call for the back-up of the judiciary. When we are considering a radical overhaul of the legislative and regulatory framework, we need to be bold.
There is great sense in David Anderson’s report. He talks about the establishment of a new body, which is the backbone of his recommendations, not just one of many proposals that he has put forward. It is absolutely essential, and last time we discussed the matter in this place I was a little alarmed to hear the Home Secretary refer to it as being only one of many recommendations. Actually, the body features in about 50 of the recommendations, so I hope that it is not pushed aside as being a peripheral issue. Clearly, it is not.
Transparency is another important part of David Anderson’s report. The new commission would not only take on responsibility for approving warrants but would incorporate the retrospective audit functions currently exercised by the interception of communications commissioner and the intelligence services commissioner. Those officers currently fit into what I see as a deeply foggy regulatory arrangement, which in many ways is reminiscent of Wall Street before the crash, when not a single one of the half a dozen or so agencies that were given the job of regulating and supervising the banks seemed to be able to exert its authority sufficiently or even know what was going on under its nose, let alone have the power to stop it.
The Home Secretary said to the ISC at that stage that it was important for the decision to be taken by somebody who is democratically accountable to the public. I understand that, but the reality is that thousands of warrants for interception are issued under RIPA. We do not know what proportion of applications the Home Secretary does not approve when they appear on her desk, because both she and successive Governments have refused to say. The current Home Secretary admitted in evidence to the ISC that the proportion of applications she approves is very high. That is not surprising, given that reviewing such applications takes up such a significant proportion of her day and it is not as though she does not have lots of other things to do. She relies heavily on the judgment of her officials—we would, of course, expect her to do so—but we have to be careful that it is not a rubber-stamping exercise. I am sure it is not, but we have to be mindful about what it looks like when we are considering a question of trust. Let us look at the reality before deciding whether a change would be a bad thing.
Taken together, David Anderson’s proposals represent a radical overhaul of the existing framework. I do not believe they are the worse for that. When looking at the report, we must go back and say to ourselves that, in the end, we need a radical overhaul. We need to bring the public with us. We need to be unafraid to bring in additional expertise. A clearer framework in which we can have traditional oversight of such sensitive things as intercepts must be a good thing.
Anderson Report
Emily Thornberry Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mrs May
I thank my hon. Friend for bringing her experience to this House. It is important that people recognise that this is not just a debate about what this House puts into legislation; it is a debate about the powers that our agencies have and the ability prosecutors then have to bring people to justice. Some 95% of serious and organised crime investigations make use of communications data, and such information is essential for prosecution in many of those cases. I am sorry that the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) is not in the Chamber today, because in his former incarnation as Director of Public Prosecutions, he was clear about the importance of communications data not only in investigating but in prosecuting criminals.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
As one of those who have struggled with the legislation for some time, I join in the welcome for David Anderson’s recommendation that the new legislation be written in non-technical language that can be understood by intelligent readers across the world. I also welcome his recommendations that RIPA parts 1 and 4 be replaced and for increased judicial oversight—something that I think RIPA lacked, so I am glad that it will be looked at again. Also, I will read with great care what is said about the bulk collection of data.
This is an important measure, which needs to be debated much more widely than is currently the case. I support the calls for a day’s debate in this Chamber, so that we all have an opportunity to debate the many issues relating to it. This is too important to be captured by a few voices. We need to have a more profound debate.
Modern Slavery Bill
Emily Thornberry Excerpts(9 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Karen Bradley
I look forward to hearing from the right hon. Gentleman, and it sounds to me as though you will be obliging, Mr Speaker.
Holding anyone in slavery or servitude or trafficking them is an abhorrent crime, which this Government are determined to stamp out. Such abuse of anyone on an overseas domestic worker visa is totally unacceptable. This landmark Modern Slavery Bill’s core purpose is to make sure both that law enforcement has the tools to ensure those who commit these appalling crimes are caught and punished and that victims receive the protection and support they need to recover. This is crucial to our approach to overseas domestic workers. This Bill means those who traffic overseas domestic workers or hold them in servitude can receive a life sentence and that the slavery, servitude and forced or compulsory labour offence reflects the particular circumstances of vulnerable victims.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
I applaud and understand what the Minister says about ensuring that those who enslave domestic servants should be given a life sentence. If that was to happen and the law enforcement agencies were to get involved with the employer, what would happen to the employee?
Karen Bradley
I shall address later in my remarks exactly what is envisaged through the amendment in lieu to give support specifically to people on an overseas domestic workers visa who are victims of slavery.
The Bill means that all victims of modern slavery will have major new protections such as the statutory defence to prevent them from being treated inappropriately as criminals. I understand and share the sentiment behind Lords amendment 72. When my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and I looked at it and considered how to respond to the Lords vote, our priority was to improve the protection for victims of modern slavery. I know that that is in line with the spirit in which peers passed the amendment and I am grateful for their careful scrutiny of the Bill. That common focus on supporting and protecting victims of modern slavery is why I am not simply proposing that this House should disagree with the Lords amendment. Instead, even at this late stage of the passage of the Bill, we are proposing to add additional protections for overseas domestic workers who fall victim to modern slavery.
Karen Bradley
My hon. Friend and the right hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) were strong and assiduous members of the Committee that scrutinised the Bill as it went through the House of Commons, which is when we started debating this issue. My hon. Friend is right to mention the guidance, and I shall explain more about that in a moment. It is absolutely clear that all front-line professionals need to understand that the visa situation of an individual is irrelevant in these circumstances: if they are a victim of slavery, they are a victim of slavery, and they will need the support that is available. As I have said, the amendment will give additional support for victims who are on an overseas domestic workers visa, and I shall explain why that is appropriate.
Before I explain the additional protections, which seek to address the important concerns raised in the other place, I should explain to the House why I am deeply concerned that Lords amendment 72 will not protect victims, however well intentioned it might be. There is a real risk that it will achieve the opposite. I want to ensure that a provision to support overseas domestic workers who fall victim to modern slavery will help those vulnerable people get the help they need and allow law enforcement to take action to prevent their abusers from doing the same to another domestic worker. I do not believe that the Lords amendment would achieve either of those things. Members will have seen from my letter that those worries are shared by senior law enforcement officers working in this field.
I should remind the House that the overseas domestic workers visa allows visitors to the UK to bring their existing domestic staff with them when they visit the UK, for a maximum of six months. Separate arrangements apply for the small number of overseas domestic workers who work in diplomatic households. Around 15,000 of these visas are issued every year, and the data suggest that visits typically last for only about 15 days, so the vast majority of overseas domestic workers will be here for a very short time. To qualify for this short-term visa, there must be evidence of a long-term employment relationship between employer and employee.
Even before the Lords debate on Report, the Government announced that the safeguards would be strengthened. There will be a new standard contract, along with changes to the immigration rules to strengthen the guarantees that overseas domestic workers will be paid at least the national minimum wage, pilot programmes of interviews for applicants overseas and the provision of information cards at the border. Given the specific circumstances in which the visa is applicable, it is not possible to change employer during the short period that the workers are in the UK or to extend the visa as a route to settling permanently in the UK.
Lords amendment 72 would change that, allowing overseas domestic workers to change employer and stay in the UK indefinitely, potentially gaining settlement. The Government have listened carefully to the debates on this issue, and we are keen to take an evidence-based approach. As the House will know, the Government have announced an independent review of the overseas domestic workers visa, which is to report in July. The review will look specifically at the ability to change employer. It is being undertaken by James Ewins, a respected expert on modern slavery who served as a specialist legal adviser to the pre-legislative scrutiny Committee on the Bill.
Emily Thornberry
Would not the Lords amendment effectively bring us back to the position that we were in in 2012, which is when the Government changed the immigration rules? My question to the Minister is why did they change the rules in the first place? Why could we not have kept them as they were?
Karen Bradley
The hon. Lady will know that there was abuse under the old regime. We wanted to ensure that we were giving maximum protection to victims. I shall shortly give the House some information from the anti-slavery commissioner designate, who is quite clear about the abuse of workers that he saw when he was working in the Metropolitan police. Those workers were here on the visa and were able to change employer, and they were trafficked and moved between employers by organised criminal gangs.
There was abuse under the old system, so going back to the old system is not the right answer. The answer is to find out what the problem is with the visa and to ensure that we are not importing abuse. That is what I am determined to do, and that is what I have asked James Ewins to look at. The measures in the Bill today are designed to give as much protection, support and information as possible to workers on this visa. By July, we shall have a full evidence base for the best way of supporting those employees, and that is the point at which changes should be made. They should be made when we have the evidence.
Emily Thornberry
I am grateful to the Minister for her answer, but I do not really understand why the rules were changed in 2012 if there was no proper evidence to enable them to be changed properly to give people protection. Why are we debating the issue now, three years later? The Government changed the rules, and they made things worse. I do not understand why we are having this debate three years on.
Karen Bradley
The evidence is not that it has made things worse. Kalayaan, the leading charity in this area, was getting 300 victims of slavery coming through its doors each year under the old system. The figure is now 60 a year.
Karen Bradley
I said that I was going to make progress, but I will give way to the hon. Lady and the hon. Gentleman, and then do so.
Emily Thornberry
I am trying to think about this in terms of the real world. It seems to me that the best way of escape for someone who is in servitude and being abused would be to find another employer, who could then be supportive. In those circumstances, someone could explain what had happened to them. Such a person is more likely to come forward in those circumstances than they are to come forward to the police when they are still in servitude and still being abused.
Karen Bradley
Let me be clear: this is not about coming forward to the police; it is about victims coming forward to a professional first responder who will refer them into the NRM. If someone chooses to give evidence that allows the police to instigate inquiries, they may be eligible for the 12 months and a day of discretionary leave. But what we are saying is, “You don’t need to come to the police. If you are a victim of slavery, you can come forward to a first responder—a professional—and a charity such as Kalayaan can help you by putting you into the NRM. And if at the end of the specialist support you are given a conclusive grounds decision, you will be allowed to stay and work for six months while you get your life back on track.” If the matter was as simple as someone changing employer, we would not have UK or EEA nationals being victims of slavery. It is not that simple to solve; it is a far more complicated problem. We are talking about 15,000 people who are, on average, here for 15 days. How do we make sure we find those victims? That is the challenge we face and that is what I want the review to deal with.
Mr Hanson
I am eternally grateful that I allowed my hon. Friend to intervene and I am grateful for his support in Committee when we debated this matter. He has helpfully cemented the central argument that the tied visa is a wrong-headed approach. There were challenges before April 2012; undoubtedly there will always be challenges in this type of situation. However, the tied visa exacerbates it. We have to make this change. I hope that the Government will listen, but if they do not—
Emily Thornberry
Governments have been talking for years about bringing in a modern slavery Bill. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is unfortunate that in the last gasp of this Government, they have brought a Bill before the House that will still not address one of the most important aspects of modern slavery?
Mr Hanson
I remind the House that in taking the position that they have today, the Government are rejecting the cross-party recommendation from my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead and his Committee; rejecting the discussions we had in the Modern Slavery Bill Committee that resulted in a nine-to-nine vote with the Chair casting his vote in favour of the Government; rejecting the will of another place, where a cross-party group of MPs led by Lord Hylton tabled this amendment; and rejecting the advice of every organisation involved in dealing with this issue outside this House.
That is for the Government to determine. I am simply saying that if, by the end of this debate, they do not change their mind, I will ask my right hon. and hon. Friends to support the House of Lords amendment and, if that is defeated, reluctantly accept the Government’s late, compromise, dragged-out proposal.
Caroline Nokes
I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that point. Let me make the point that his Government had 13 years in which to introduce such legislation. In fact, we have had to wait 200 years for a piece of modern day slavery legislation.
Emily Thornberry
Does not the hon. Lady agree, though, that a modern slavery Bill ought to be more than just its title and the campaign behind it? It ought to be good law that will be able to affect the lives of the most vulnerable. Does she not agree that this Bill falls down on that in some important respects?
Caroline Nokes
Of course we all want this to be good law, which is precisely what the Minister intends. We do not want loopholes that enable slave masters to find new victims; we do not want these slaves to be without the protection we are seeking to give them.
Michael Connarty
As I am the person who forced the Prime Minister eventually to sign up to the directive on human trafficking, which he had refused to do for several months, during which he wiggled and wriggled, I do not have to apologise to anybody and I do not need it explained to me what the Bill is about. It is a good Bill, but it could be improved immensely. I do not know whether the hon. Lady has read Lords amendment 72, but it says that people should be able to
“change their employer (but not work sector) while in the United Kingdom”.
It is quite clear that it is about people going from domestic work into domestic work. I hope that the House will agree to the amendment.
Finally, I want to question the whole idea of creating this rather tortuous process. It has always been a problem that the Government have seen the Bill as, first and foremost, a criminal Bill to chase people who abuse others through human trafficking and slavery. Many of us hold the view that we should first protect those who are enslaved or abused and then convince them to become witnesses and to help in that secondary programme. If we get the two things back to front, what happens? The victims do not become witnesses and the people who abuse others escape, as they have been escaping. I believe that if we agree to amendment (a), we will have another tortuous process that will become another barrier that makes people stay away from the institutions, because it is not about protecting the victims; it is about the Government’s obsession with catching the bad people.
Emily Thornberry
I remember welcoming the Government’s move to opt into the EU directive on human trafficking in March 2011. I learned this afternoon that that was the result of the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty). I congratulate him on that.
It seemed to me that the Government were putting themselves in a contradictory position by signing up to the EU directive on human trafficking. The European Court of Justice has said that any country signing up to the directive
“must refrain from taking any measures liable seriously to compromise the result prescribed.”
It seems to me that signing up to a directive is about more than putting our country’s name to a piece of paper; we must sign up to the spirit of it, too. As I have said, the European Court of Justice has said that we must not go backwards.
I read with interest the speech of the former Attorney-General, the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), to City university about the role of UK law as a model for combating human trafficking and slavery, in which he summarised the progress that had been made. I was very concerned that it was entirely contradictory for the Government on the one hand to sign up to the directive and trumpet the work that had been done to combat human trafficking and slavery, yet on the other hand to change the immigration rules to make life much more difficult for domestic workers. That seemed a complete contradiction, so on 30 April 2012 I wrote to the former Attorney-General to point that out. He referred me to the Home Office, which wrote back. I am glad that it has moved on from the position that it adopted on 16 June 2012, when it stated:
“The position is that, if an ODW has been granted a visa to come to the UK to work for their overseas employer while that employer is visiting the UK, the ODW will have leave to remain in the UK in line with that granted to the employer—ie, up to 6 months’ leave (the maximum grant of leave for visitors). If an ODW leaves their employer during the time of the visit to the UK, the ODW will retain whatever time remains of the original leave granted and so will not be in the UK illegally during that time.”
That did not seem terribly generous. Let us suppose an overseas domestic worker came with a visa to stay in the UK for a certain amount of time. If they left their employer because of abuse, they could remain until their visa ran out but then they had to go. The letter continued:
“The ODW will not be entitled to work for another employer, but they will not be in the UK illegally unless or until the leave expires.”
As I said, we have moved on from that, but it seems that alarm bells have been ringing about abused and exploited overseas domestic workers for many years. Many of those who have raised the alarm have spoken today in the House, and many organisations outside have done so. The Government have spent a number of years preparing such a Bill, and I am disappointed and surprised that, to try to get the Bill through the House today, they are putting this matter back for yet another review. Many people with much greater experience in this issue have been assisting the Government as best they can for some time. They have coalesced around this amendment in the House of Lords, and although I listened carefully to the Minister when she explained why the amendment is not satisfactory, I still do not understand. Not to accept the Lords amendment seems to fly in the face of the collective common sense in this place.
Perhaps I can add my ha’pence worth. We have heard a great deal about how important it is for victims to give evidence against their employers in court, and that to encourage them to come forward it is important they understand that their continued presence within the United Kingdom will be dependent on their giving evidence against their employers, or assisting the police to ensure that those employers are prosecuted. I hear and understand that point, but it makes no sense.
Fiona Mactaggart
My hon. Friend is a lawyer and has court experience of these matters. Will she comment on advice I have received from Parosha Chandran, which suggests that where leave is granted as a result of someone coming forward, a prosecution might be more difficult to secure? Although 29 victims of slavery have had conclusive decisions referred by Kalayaan, there has been only one successful prosecution for domestic worker abuse.
Emily Thornberry
My right hon. Friend—it is a pleasure to say that—is absolutely right, and in a way she predicts the point I was going to make. In my former manifestation as a criminal lawyer, we always looked for what might be the primary motivation for why a witness would be giving evidence. If we could cross-examine a victim and say, “You’re only saying that to stay in the United Kingdom. Your continued presence within the United Kingdom is dependent on you co-operating with the police. You’re gilding the lily; you are making up lies and doing what you can to remain here,” that would undermine the credibility of the witness. In the end, any prosecution for slavery will be entirely dependent on the evidence of that woman. That is why witnesses need to be empowered, and why it must be clear that a witness has come forward entirely freely and honestly, so that we can have a powerful prosecution. That is the way to combat modern slavery in the context of overseas domestic workers.
Terrorist Attacks (Paris)
Emily Thornberry Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
I am sure the whole House was pleased to hear the Home Secretary say that real Islam had absolutely nothing to do with the attacks in Paris. Will she take the opportunity to decry the statement that Rupert Murdoch made at the weekend that all Muslims were to blame, and to ask him to get a grip of Fox News and its so-called terrorism experts, who set about insulting Birmingham, London and everywhere else with their silly comments?
Mrs May
I agree with the hon. Lady that it is important that we reiterate the message that this is not about Islam; it is about a perversion of Islam. There are Muslims in this country and other countries around the world who condemn these acts of violence and terrorism, and their voices are being heard in increasing numbers. As I said, they are sending a clear message that this is not in their name. I also say to the hon. Lady that freedom of the press means freedom of the press.
Student Visas
Emily Thornberry Excerpts(10 years, 5 months ago)
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James Brokenshire
I assure my hon. Friend that discussions are ongoing with each institution that has been affected by my announcement. I recognise the desire to gain certainty and, indeed, for the measures and steps that those institutions are taking to put right abuses and to put their systems in place. This is something for those institutions, for the community and for genuine students who may be affected. That is why I made the points about the support that is being provided to them. I am conscious of the impact on them, too.
Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)
I share the concern expressed across the House about the abuse and about the fact that the Home Office seems to be relying on the BBC to undercover it. May I raise a case with the hon. Gentleman that I have raised with his boss? I have yet to receive the courtesy of a reply. St Mary Magdalene academy is a very ambitious school, with a big sixth-form centre. It teaches Mandarin. It wants to run an exchange programme with Chinese students from Peking. It has applied to have 10 students come over. It will not charge them. It hopes to have a reciprocal arrangement. It expects these kids to bring language skills and an attitude that will really help inner-city children. The opportunity that those inner-city children will have to go to Peking will be extraordinary. The fly in the ointment is the Home Office, which has not allowed them to have the visa. Will the hon. Gentleman please deal with this matter now?
James Brokenshire
There is the student visitor route, which is separate from the normal student visa route that applies for universities and further education colleges. I am, of course, happy to look into the specific case that the hon. Lady highlights. I am not familiar with the detail, as I hope she appreciates, but I am happy to look into the matter, if she can give me some more information, and to consider what might be appropriate.