Home Affairs

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I would like to concentrate on immigration issues and to start with what immigrants bring to the United Kingdom. If we went by what is said by UKIP and in tabloid headlines, we would assume that it is all chaos and problems, but we should stop and think. There is a reason why Slough, one of the most diverse towns in the country, is the third most productive town in the country. Migrants are entrepreneurial, brave and risk-taking. They are prepared to move their families thousands of miles to learn a new language and to build a better future for themselves and their children. That has real benefits for Britain, and we should not forget that. I start from an unashamed view that Britain’s openness to migration is one of our great strengths. The many cultures in our country have played a key role in making us a world leader in cultural and creative industries. The panicked reaction of trying to out-UKIP UKIP was wrong.

I sometimes do not understand why my party constantly keeps saying that we got it wrong on immigration, because I think that we got it mostly right. We stopped a test on arranged marriages that was introduced by the primary purpose rule. We stopped the huge delays for husbands and wives overseas. When we were elected in 1997, asylum cases were taking years to determine. We ended that situation, and we moved it to months.

[Dr Huppert]

I agreed with the hon. Lady on almost everything until she said that the previous Government stopped asylum cases taking years to process. She will be well aware that there has been a backlog of hundreds of thousands of asylum cases that have taken very many years, including throughout the time of the previous Government, and the situation has still not been fully rectified. Does she accept that her party’s Government did not in fact stop asylum cases taking years?

[Fiona Mactaggart]

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

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

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

[Ms Abbott]

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

[Fiona Mactaggart]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Prime Minister has said that

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

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

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

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

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

his father

“taking him to a childminder every morning.”

She wrote that he

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

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

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

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

--- Later in debate ---

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. The previous Government’s abandonment of exit checks has led to the appalling situation whereby we cannot tell who is in the country. I would certainly welcome it if they were put back in.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

It was in 1994.

[Dr Huppert]

I thank the hon. Gentleman. I think that it was the Government before last who got rid of exit checks, but they certainly were not restored by the last Government. I believe that they are in the process of being restored by this Government. I look forward to clarification from the former Immigration Minister.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Llwyd]

That is absolutely right. The Government’s proposal will quite obviously mean that the client will have no choice. It will lead to a paralegal system, with people coming out of the conurbations to try to deal with tens of cases in one day, taking notes roughly and then reporting back, and then eventually somebody will turn up for the trial or whatever. That concerns me greatly. The whole idea of a fixed fee for a trial or plea worries me as well, because there will inevitably be problems. It is a race to the bottom.

There is a further important point to be made about the Welsh language provision we routinely have in Wales. Members might not know this—I have practised in Welsh courts myself—but any trial can be conducted through the medium of the Welsh language, whether a jury trial, a civil matter or a case in the magistrates court. That is as it should be. Welsh has equal status with English in Wales—again, as it should be. That provision and the work that the Courts Service has done over the last couple of decades will disappear overnight. There will be a great deal of anxiety and turmoil in Wales over that. I regret to say that if the Government go ahead with this proposal, they will be directly responsible for damaging the Welsh language and culture and the services available to people in rural and semi-rural areas. That will happen not just in Wales but in England—although I am thinking in particular about the problems of north and mid-Wales.

There are some Bills in the Queen’s Speech that will not enhance the UK’s international standing. Although previously trailed, the fact that the 0.7% of GDP meant for international development will not now be enshrined in legislation is an unfortunate step backwards.

Today we have largely been discussing the impact of the immigration Bill. In parts, the proposed Bill is very unfortunate. Let me explain why. We need to move away from scaremongering and put in place measures to protect domestic workers and prevent employers from undercutting the work force by paying less than the minimum wage. We all know that the agencies are doing that. However, all too often the Government use immigration as a scapegoat, in an attempt to distract us from their failure to create enough meaningful jobs and secure economic recovery.

I would argue that I live in a nirvana in north Wales. [Interruption.] I see the shadow Minister, the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), laughing. He does not live too far away. Where he lives is also quite a nice place, although not quite to the same degree as Dwyfor Meirionnydd. However, let us not go down that route just now. I obviously know my area intimately. I will be perfectly honest: over the past few years I have had one or two complaints from individuals who have said, “Why are these people from eastern Europe working in hotels?” They asked why such people are doing this or that. I told them why: because very often local people are not prepared to do that work. They are not prepared to work the long or unfriendly hours.

I can speak with some authority on this matter. A local college in Dolgellau has an excellent reputation for catering courses, among other things, yet none of its students is going into the local hotel industry. They are just not interested. Instead, several well-meaning, hard-working young people have come in from various eastern European countries to do that work. They are putting in the hours and some of them, to their credit, are even learning Welsh. They are working hard and doing the stuff that local people do not want to do. I have yet to see any evidence of a so-called benefits scrounger and have not come across the problem. In my view, benefits tourism is a ridiculous concept. I see the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire grinning at that. We have heard about the 40,000 people claiming when their children are not even resident in the UK, and I understand that point—

[Fiona Mactaggart]

That will not be dealt with by this legislation.

[Mr Llwyd]

Perhaps not.

Much of the debate on immigration is dictated by the drumbeat of the United Kingdom Independence party. Why should we spend hours discussing this issue, just because Farage and his bunch think that they are on a roll? There was one council election in Wales last week. It was on Ynys Môn—Anglesey—and UKIP stood in every ward. It did not take a single seat, however. Plaid Cymru took four times as many seats as Labour, and the Conservatives failed to win even one. The Lib Dems, God bless them, took one.

Immigration Rules: Sponsors

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Thursday 14th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point, as she always does. If I understand the Government’s ideological position on this issue, they want to support families and very much approve of carers taking on responsibility for elderly parents or others within their family network. The rule that we are talking about operates to prevent that from happening.

The second case features Mr Z and Ms Z who came to see me in my constituency surgery a few weeks ago. They were married in the UK in March 2011. She is a British citizen and her husband, who had been living and working in the UK for six years under a valid work permit, is South African. He was in highly paid professional work in the UK, but soon after they married, he was made redundant. Although he could probably have secured another job at a similarly high salary in the UK, they decided to take a chance and move to Cape Town for a couple of years.

After two years in South Africa, however, they have decided that they want to return to the UK, but the rules changed while they were away. He will not be allowed to join his wife in the UK unless she earns more than £18,600—despite the fact that he is a highly skilled computer programmer who could expect to earn perhaps £60,000 a year in the UK. Before they left for Cape Town, my woman constituent was earning £26,000 a year as a pub manager. As she has been out of work for two years in Cape Town, however, there is a gap in her CV, so she is unlikely to be able to walk straight back into a manager’s position, although she aspires to do so in a couple of years’ time. Wages in the pub trade are not particularly high, so it is likely she will start on a salary below £18,600. As I said, they would have a joint income as a family of about £75,000 because her husband could get a well-paid job, but under the new rules it is based on her income, so he would not be able to join her.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend cites a number of cases. I think this whole process is unfair because it is quite clear that families who can afford to maintain themselves without making any demands on public funds are being kept apart. My hon. Friend has cases of people returning to the UK, and just this week I have had two constituents contact me about similar issues. One case was a man returning here from India who has £82,000 in a UK bank. Clearly, he and his wife could properly maintain themselves. However, savings do not count. The man is self-employed, but will not have the long record of employment needed to meet the £26,000-plus requirement, so he is unable to have his wife here with him. The other person—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Lady, but this is supposed to be an intervention, not a speech.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kerry McCarthy]

I think that the Government are trying to avoid circumstances in which spouses or fiancées, for instance, are used as a form of chain migration. I have seen that happen, and I accept that the system is open to abuse and should not be abused in that way. I have come across instances in which people first apply for permission for a spouse to join them in this country, and then extend the application to elderly parents, or perhaps younger brothers and sisters. I accept that we have to manage migration to this country, and that we ought to control such situations. However, none of the cases I have cited involves anything like that.

People are increasingly working and studying abroad. People are going off to university in other countries, meeting their partners there, and then not being able to return to the United Kingdom with their partners until they have established themselves on the career ladder. It is not uncommon now for graduates to start work—if they can start work; they may be on unpaid or paid internships or low-paid jobs for the first couple of years after graduating—but to be unable to bring their partners into this country. I recognise the need to ensure that new migrants to the UK do not increase the burden on the British taxpayer, but many couples survive on less than the average income without being a burden on the taxpayer.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

The earning capacity of the spouse from overseas cannot be taken into account. I received a tragic e-mail today from a man who wrote “I cannot get the money. I fell in love with my wife. What can I do? I am really scared.” His wife speaks fluent English, and is a qualified science teacher in Algeria. She would have been able to contribute to science education in my constituency, but she is not going to be able to come here.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) for giving me an opportunity to set out the Government’s thinking. As she was speaking, I was thinking through a number of responses, and I hope I can also respond to the multiple instalment story from the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), who finally got it all out, I think.

Let me first set out a bit of background to put this matter in context. As part of our general reform of the immigration system across all the routes coming to the United Kingdom, we undertook a major overhaul of the family routes. There were three aims: to prevent burdens on the taxpayer, to promote integration, and to tackle abuse. The hon. Member for Bristol East’s focus has been on the financial requirement, which is the minimum income threshold of £18,600 a year to be met by those wishing to sponsor a partner of non-European economic area nationality to settle in the UK, with higher levels for those who also sponsor dependent non-EEA national children.

The point of the requirement is to prevent burdens from falling on the taxpayer and to promote successful integration. To put the story round the other way and to throw it back at the hon. Lady and the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma), people can come here to establish their family lives, but we ask that they should not expect the taxpayer to fund that.

The hon. Lady raised the point about no recourse to public funds, which has always been in place, and suggested that was a sufficient protection for the taxpayer. The problem with that is twofold. First, under the immigration rules only some things the taxpayer funds are classed as public funds. The things that are not considered as public funds are NHS costs, social care, contribution-based jobseeker’s allowance, incapacity benefit, maternity allowance, retirement pension and statutory maternity pay. A range of funds, therefore, are not excluded under the no recourse to public funds measure. If someone comes to the UK under no recourse to public funds, we would still have to provide health care to them, therefore, which may well be a burden on the taxpayer.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Most of the benefits to which the Minister has referred are contribution-based, and therefore are not relevant. On health care, however, I think most of our constituents would be quite happy if there were a requirement looking at some way of paying for health care, because part of the point of this is that there are lots of cases where people will have enough money on any system, but not on this rule.

[Mr Harper]

Let me come back to that. The specific cases that the hon. Lady and the hon. Member for Bristol East raised can I think be dealt with elsewhere in the immigration rules; that comes back to the point about representations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

I do, and that goes back to the central point of the debate.

I was about to give a little background to how we arrived at the particular sums of money involved, because that is helpful—

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Will the Minister take this opportunity to commit to making sure that in every country, applicants who are trying to come here to join a spouse can actually get the qualifications he is going to require of them?

[Mr Harper]

My understanding is that people are able to do that. I can tell from the way the hon. Lady is looking at me that there is a point behind her question, so if she will do me the courtesy of dropping me a line, I will examine the argument she is making and get back to her, rather than diverting the debate away from its central point.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

Under the tier 2 rule, it has to be a skilled job and they have to undergo a resident labour market test. So if he has a particular employer in mind, the rules may be a little more inflexible in the sense that he may not be able to say a specific employer, but if he has skills to offer, there are many occupations in which there is a shortage of people. If it is an occupation on the shortage occupation list, the employer is not required to undergo a resident labour market test. There are therefore opportunities in certain cases for someone to come here.

The hon. Member for Slough highlighted the issue of savings. Despite the fact that I managed to throw together some maths A-levels, that was a long time ago so I will not try to do the maths in my head. Savings can be used to make up the difference. We look at the amount of savings above £16,000, which is the threshold that is generally disregarded for income-related benefits. If someone holds savings for the period that they are hoping to come to the United Kingdom, which would be 30 months, the savings count as long as the applicants have them under their control for at least six months.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Even if they are self-employed?

[Mr Harper]

I believe that the answer is yes. If inspiration does not strike me before the end of the debate to confirm that, I will write to her.

In the immigration rules laid today, we have made some changes to the evidential requirements. For example, we had cases in which people were in receipt of tax-free stipends from universities. The net amount was below £18,600 and the rules were previously unclear about whether people could gross it up. I had a couple of cases raised with me and I thought it self-evident that people should be able to gross it up. So we have made it clear that that is indeed the case.

Violence against Women and Girls

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House notes the One Billion Rising Campaign, and the call to end violence against women and girls; and calls on the Government to support this by introducing statutory provisions to make personal, social and health education, including a zero tolerance approach to violence and abuse in relationships, a requirement in schools.

I rise to speak to the motion on the Order Paper in my name and in the names of many Members across parties. Before I do so, I should like to say some thank yous. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing us this debate. I thank the Leader of the House for tipping us the wink a few weeks earlier that we would probably secure a debate on this day, which is significant because of my other thank you—to the One Billion Rising campaign, a coalition of women around the world rising against violence against women. Many of us who are in the Chamber have been in Parliament square with them today, dancing, shouting and protesting. The movement was prompted by the 15th anniversary of “The Vagina Monologues” by Eve Ensler. Any of us who have heard her speak about how rape is used as a weapon of war will recognise that we are having absolutely the correct pair of debates today—the debate that I am initiating and the debate on sexual violence in conflict that the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) will introduce later.

I chose this subject for debate because activists in the One Billion Rising campaign around the country have been running workshops about what would make the most difference in addressing domestic violence. Over the course of history, quite a lot of things have been done in that regard. We have better prosecution rates, IDVAs—independent domestic violence advisers—and refuges to help victims of domestic violence. However, the workshops concluded that the most important thing to do is make the next generation safe, and that the shortfall in our response to such violence is caused by a lack of education to prevent it. That has led to a situation where one in three women will experience violence in her lifetime, and that is unacceptable.

Others have reached the same view. Although the recent cross-party inquiry into unwanted pregnancies focused on preventing teenage pregnancy, it also argued the importance of teaching young people in school to make informed choices and to resist being coerced through peer pressure into sex or risky sexual behaviour. The Schools Safe 4 Girls campaign, which was launched by the End Violence Against Women Coalition last autumn, echoes that message. Almost every Select Committee report that has looked into domestic violence concluded that the Government’s weakest response is in education.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend regret as much I do the fact that putting personal, social and health education, including sex and relationships education, on to a statutory basis was blocked just before the last general election? That could already have been in place.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

It is a real pity that that did not proceed. It is also a pity that the Government-initiated inquiry into sex and relationships education, which was launched in 2011, has yet to report. The Government have a lack of urgency and a lack of adequate commitment on this matter.

[Dame Joan Ruddock (Lewisham, Deptford) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that many people will say that this education is the responsibility of parents and families and that it should not be done in schools? Many of its opponents—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] We can hear some such opponents on the Government Benches. I would say to them—I hope that my hon. Friend agrees—that many families do not have the capacity to educate their children, and many families, unfortunately, have violent relationships within them, and that is not appropriate to the education of children.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

The responsibility of families does not get rid of the responsibility of the education service.

[Mary Macleod (Brentford and Isleworth) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that some schools are already taking a lead on this issue and teaching it, and that that, along with partnership working with the police, is incredibly important? That is what I find in my London borough of Hounslow.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Yes, of course there are schools that are doing this well. The problem is that we do not have a comprehensive system—I will go into the details later—that guarantees excellent sex and relationships education. It is unsafe not to have such a system in schools, and that is my argument.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Fiona Mactaggart]

I am trying to make progress, but I will give way.

[Mrs Moon]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and for being so patient, because I know she wants to make progress. The Office for National Statistics estimates that more than 500,000 people will be victims of sexual crimes in an average year, with only up to 10,000 prosecutions. Does that not show that there needs to be wider education so that people can protect themselves, as the state, through the police force, is clearly failing to protect them?

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Let us be honest: the police response to this issue has improved over the past decade. It is better than it used to be, but it is not good enough. My hon. Friend is right that the police usually detect only about 2% or 3% of crimes and that there are even fewer prosecutions. The situation, therefore, is not completely unusual. The best response to crime is to prevent it in the first place. My argument is that taking on the challenge of teaching against violence is one way of preventing it.

I am an MP now, but I used to be an educator. I used to teach children in the last years of primary school and then I taught adults to be teachers. I know that good-quality education can transform lives, but I also know that, too often, this subject is an afterthought in too many schools. Let us look at the issue from first principles: is it necessary to act; will the motion’s proposed action make a difference; and what will happen if it does not?

The British crime survey shows that one in 14 women and one in 20 men interviewed in 2011-12 had experienced domestic abuse by a partner or family member in the past year. According to the same interviews, nearly one in three women and almost one in five men said that they had experienced such abuse since the age of 16. A freedom of information request made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) suggested that a third of 999 calls about domestic violence are from people who have been previous victims. Every week, two women are murdered in domestic violence murders. Around the world, women aged 15 to 44 are more likely to die or be disabled because of violence than as a result of cancer, malaria, traffic accidents and war combined.

This is an issue in schools. A YouGov poll found that nearly one in three 16 to 18-year-old girls has experienced groping or unwanted sexual touching. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children found that a third of girls aged 13 to 17 in relationships had experienced physical or sexual violence, with 12% of them reporting rape. We know how often girls who are victims of rape do not report it, because they are not taught in schools about relationships and the importance of consent. The interim findings of the exploitation inquiry undertaken by the Office of the Children’s Commissioner and the university of Bedfordshire uncovered worrying trends of increased sexual exploitation of young people by their peers. Violence and sexual aggression in relationships has become too common for British young people. To overcome that, they need to be able to make positive choices for their own future.

The work on young people’s understanding is really important. This crime is almost unlike any other, because the victim tends to feel responsible or, indeed, is sometimes deemed responsible by society as a result of their actions. We do not tell burglary victims, “It’s your fault, because you haven’t got a burglar alarm,” yet society too often tells victims of rape and sexual violence, “It’s your fault. You were drunk and wearing sexually provocative clothing.” Those attitudes are absorbed by young women so that they think it is their fault.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a compelling case for statutory education. On teaching girls about consent, is it not just as important that boys also learn that no always means no?

[Fiona Mactaggart]

My hon. Friend is right. In preparing for this debate, I have been looking at research about whether sex and relationships education actually works. One of the things that that has shown is that there is further to go with boys than girls. We should take that very seriously, because we need to address the level of tolerance that young boys seem to have towards violence, seeing it as relatively normal. We do not know why that is.

[Sandra Osborne (Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Fiona Mactaggart]

If I keep giving way I will take up too much of the debate, so I will try to resist, but if any Members are really assertive I will give way. How about that for a deal?

Research shows that young men have a higher tolerance of sexual violence than young women. Although both are changed by good-quality sex and relationships education, the sad thing is that a lot of research studies show that the young men move from a very bad set of attitudes to about where the young women’s attitudes start. The young women get more confidence and change their attitudes a lot by understanding that it is not tolerable to put up with physical violence, sexting, sexual bullying or being barged about.

As I have said, I used to be a teacher and a teacher educator in the days when things were much worse. I remember a teacher education resource about computers in education. In those days, computers were rather new in the classroom and the resource stated how the boys would be really excited about them and how the girls’ ribs would be bruised as the boys pushed past them to get to the computers because they enjoyed the lesson so much. That was a resource for people learning to teach. It indicated a tolerance of violence in the classroom that is utterly unacceptable, and that is the reason why I think the motion will do more to prevent the violence that too many women and men in our society face.

I have discussed successful sex and relationships education and how it can change things. Some of it is successful and some of it is very bad. Ofsted’s report says that about three quarters of the lessons observed were good and about a quarter were poor. Of the good lessons, Ofsted noticed that the bit that was not so good was relationships education. I think that we have created an education system that focuses far too much on the mechanics of sex and not sufficiently on autonomy, the right to say no, positive relationships and empowering young women in that way.

I commend the evidence sent by the PSHE Association, which provides teachers with assistance on personal, social, health and economic education. It notes that about 40% of 16 to 18-year-old students have not received or cannot remember lessons or information on sexual consent. Only 6% of respondents said that they got the information on relationships that they needed in PSHE. It points out that good quality PSHE teaching not only helps to raise young people’s awareness of abuse, but supports those who experience abuse to develop practical strategies and skills to stop it, and that it challenges prevailing negative attitudes towards women and girls. We know that this can work and prevent the appalling problem of young girls thinking that violent, abusive relationships are normal and that the controlling way in which their so-called boyfriends manage their behaviour is acceptable.

In view of the cases in Oxford, I asked my local police commander whether there was the same problem in my area of the exploitation of young girls by organised gangs which seduce them with violence, bullying, presents and threats. He said that he did not think that there was an organised gang in Slough, but that he had identified about 12 young women who are very vulnerable, but who think that they just have boyfriends and are not at risk.

That is why we need this education. We need it to enable girls to be safe. We need it to enable boys to know that such behaviour is absolutely unacceptable throughout society, even if it happens behind closed doors. We need it to ensure that people who have been victims of violence know that it is not their fault. We must make a society in which all those things are real. I believe that excellent sex and relationships education based on zero tolerance to violence will deliver that. We are still miles behind according to the evidence that has been sent to us by groups such as the National Union of Students, which reports that many students still face sexual bullying and violence as the norm in colleges and universities.

This motion, if implemented, could really make the difference. I urge the Minister in his summing up to tell us that he will talk to his colleagues in the Department for Education, which in my view has done less than his Department to deal with this issue, and remind them that this is not something for the future; this is urgent.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

There is a six-minute limit on speeches. We may have to reduce that towards the end of the debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ann Coffey]

I do agree, and I was interested to hear the hon. Lady talk about that yesterday.

Sex and relationships education in schools is very important, because it can help children to understand when they are being groomed by older men for sexual exploitation or involved in sexually coercive relationships by their peers. Both the Director of Public Prosecutions and the deputy Children’s Commissioner have spoken recently about the impact of pornography on young men who commit sexual and relationship violence. I was also concerned to read in a report by the chief inspector of probation, out last week, that some professionals fail to combat sexual offending by children because they miss warning signs. That report, conducted by probation inspectors, studied 24 teenage boys with convictions ranging from indecent assault to rape and found that opportunities to intervene when the offender was young had been missed in nearly every case.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Action is needed not just when the offender is young but when the victim is young. It seems clear from the reports that we read of the case in Oxford that the police did not act fast enough when young women first disclosed that they were unhappy about how their controllers were treating them.

[Ann Coffey]

I agree, of course, and as I have just said, it is important to identify child sex offenders as well as children who are sexually offended against.

Sex and relationship education has an important role in challenging at an early age attitudes in boys that result in sexually offending behaviour. With better inter-agency working, data collecting, early intervention and compulsory sex and relationship education in schools, we can make a start on preventing harm from coming to our children, but I fear that centres such as St Mary’s will be needed for some time. I believe that without St Mary’s, there would be more tragic deaths among victims of sexual abuse. We want a better world in which victims are not afraid to speak out and perpetrators cannot rely on the silence of their victims. It is really good to see support from all parties for the excellent motion that my hon. Friend has tabled, because each of us is trying to make a difference in our own different ways. After all, 1 billion voices cannot be wrong.

--- Later in debate ---

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) on securing the debate and the Backbench Business Committee on allocating time for it. I also pay tribute to the work of my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary and my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) in promoting and getting behind the One Billion Rising campaign.

Many Members on both sides of the House have spoken with passion about the importance of ending violence against women. In my constituency, we have a wonderful football team, Hull City, with a wonderful football ground, the KC stadium, which holds some 25,000 people, and as a new MP I was told that the stadium would be filled to capacity by all the victims of domestic violence in the city. That statistic is a stark reminder of the prevalence of domestic violence in all our constituencies.

When I spoke to the police in Hull last week they told me that domestic violence was still one of their key priorities. My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) spoke about the very positive Strength to Change campaign, which was funded by the PCT. It worked with more than 250 perpetrators to try and change behaviour, but those men had already engaged in domestic violence. I think we all agree that it is much better to prevent it from ever happening by getting in early and ensuring that our young men and women understand what is acceptable in relationships and that violence is never acceptable.

The education we give to our young people in schools is limited, as we have heard. It falls within the science curriculum and talks about the biology of reproduction and sexual diseases, but does not in any way address the issues that young people say they want to know about. Young people want to know what a healthy relationship should look like. We need to consider the self-esteem that our young girls, in particular, should be developing and the confidence they need to make good choices. We know from examples around the world that good sex and relationship education in schools delays the time at which youngsters start having sex and most Members of this House would think that that is a jolly good thing.

We must also remember that parents can still withdraw their children from sex education up to the age of 19. Nobody can accept that that is a realistic way of proceeding. We need to ensure that the law reflects what is going on in our country. We know that PSHE is taught with success in some schools and not in others and youngsters tell us that we must get that sorted out for their sake.

I respect the Minister for Immigration, who is on the Front Bench, but I am disappointed that the Home Secretary is not sitting there today. I understand that she chairs the inter-ministerial group on violence against women and girls, on which the Home Office takes a lead. She has spoken out against violence against women and girls on many occasions and I have great respect for her, too, but it would have sent a clear message that the Government were getting behind the motion had she been in the Chamber today.

Let me focus on the motion, which is about making PSHE a statutory requirement in our schools. The review undertaken by the new Government when they came into power ended in November 2011. We must remember that the previous Labour Government attempted to make sex and relationship education statutory in 2010, but that opportunity was unfortunately blocked in the “wash-up” by the Conservative party. The review finished in November 2011, as my hon. Friend the Member for Slough said, and since then I have been chasing the Department for Education. I have tabled many parliamentary questions and asked whether Ministers are meeting groups and organisations to ensure that they get their approach absolutely right, but it seems that very little has happened.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

My hon. Friend spoke about who she thought should be on the Front Bench. Is she as disappointed as I am that there are no Education Ministers sitting there?

[Diana Johnson]

Yes. One Education Minister was in the Chamber earlier, but unfortunately did not stay to hear the rest of the debate. The Department for Education is the villain in the piece today, because there is general acceptance across the House that although making PSHE statutory is not the whole answer, it is part of the jigsaw. It fits in with what the Government are saying and the steps they have taken since they came to power, as well as those taken by the Labour Government, to try to address violence against women and to equip our youngsters with the skills and knowledge they need to make good choices about the lives they lead. I am disappointed that no representative of the Department is in the Chamber to listen to the debate.

I was a little flabbergasted when I heard that the Department for Education had accepted that financial education should be statutory. If the Department knows that that is important and wants to give young people the skills and experience to deal with their finances, it seems rather ironic that it does not accept that young people also need the skills, experience and knowledge to deal with relationships and sexual matters. The Department argues that it does not want to prescribe what schools have to do, but it seems to me that if the Department can be prescriptive about financial education it could be a bit more prescriptive about sex and relationships education.

The Minister of State, Home Department, the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Mr Browne), answered Equality questions earlier today but said nothing about the very effective campaign to reduce teen relationship abuse, which is working directly with young people. It is not being used by the Department for Education—I checked its Twitter account and it is not promoting that campaign. I think the Department for Education should stop turning its face away from what the vast majority of young people, parents and Members of this House want, which is for high-quality statutory sex and relationships education to be brought in as soon as possible with properly trained teachers and proper resources. That will not solve the whole problem, but it will help.

--- Later in debate ---

[Fiona Mactaggart]

I will be brief, Mr Deputy Speaker. I want to thank everybody who has contributed; it has been an excellent debate. I am grateful to hon. Members for pointing out that sex and relationships education based on zero tolerance to violence might be part of the solution. However, it is by no means all of the solution. We have had many excellent contributions about the other issues that need to be taken on board to bring to an end to violence against women and girls—we need to bring this violence to an end. We have made progress on some of these issues. We have to make practical progress now, and that is why I tabled this motion.

I want us to vote on the motion, because we have heard one voice against it, and I will speak to the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies). In my political life, I have campaigned strongly for all victims of violence. In the past year, 109 women have been murdered by the people they loved. Domestic violence, the violence we have talked about in this debate, and the control that goes on inside ostensibly loving relationships, terrorises all of women. That is why this is a specific issue, and that is why we need to deal with it. Unless we can teach young men and young women that wherever we go, however we dress, no means no and yes means yes, we will not have a society in which women are safe.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House notes the One Billion Rising Campaign, and the call to end violence against women and girls; and calls on the Government to support this by introducing statutory provisions to make personal, social and health education, including a zero tolerance approach to violence and abuse in relationships, a requirement in schools.

Oral Answers to Questions

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Esther McVey]

There is no undermining of the judicial review process. In 1974, 160 applications were made, but last year alone, there were 11,000. Only about one in six of those applications was granted; fewer still were successful. We are ensuring that the right appeals proceed and that the unmeritous ones do not. This is about ensuring the integrity of the judicial review system and the smooth running of the legal process.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

A phenomenon that I see in my constituency is that private landlords are saying, “No housing benefit.” The Minister knows that it is illegal to say, “No blacks, no Irish” and so on, but disabled people are more likely to be dependent on housing benefit than other people. Does she believe that what those private landlords are doing is legal or illegal? If it is illegal, will she enable disabled people’s organisations to take cases through judicial review to stop the landlords doing it?

[Esther McVey]

Good local authorities work with good local landlords. As I have said, we will ensure that the correct cases go through. We want to ensure the integrity of the system, and those people who need to take cases to review will be able to do so. We are on the side of disabled people and we will ensure that their views are heard.

Oral Answers to Questions

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

The Home Secretary was kind enough to write to me after the last Home Office questions to say that she is working on the group of lost cases, but I have a number of current cases of constituents who are losing their jobs because the Home Office has not replied to in-time applications, so they have no papers that they can show their employer and there is no way they can prove their right to work, as a result of which they are being sacked. Will she stand up in this Chamber and say that nobody who has an in-time application and who had permission to work should be sacked because of the Home Office’s inefficiency?

[Mrs May]

What I say to the hon. Lady is that we are working through and with UKBA to ensure that we can improve the processes that it operates in relation to applications. If she has particular cases that she wishes to raise with Ministers, she is free to do that. It is important that we ensure that, through the work that is developing to deal with the problems that still exist, UKBA is able to provide the efficient service that we all want to see.

Crime and Courts Bill [Lords]

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Straw]

The truth is that my right hon. Friend had to make those ministerial decisions because visitor appeals had not been introduced at that stage. Ministers will end up with a lot more demands on their plate, among other things, if they take the route of abolishing visitor appeals.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that this provision is more important than it was when he introduced it, because a number of our constituents will not be able to satisfy the current price of bringing a husband, for example, into the country, and it is therefore likely that there will be many fathers who can never even see their children in this country?

[Mr Straw]

I entirely accept what my hon. Friend says.

Like the Joint Committee on Human Rights, I have looked at the analysis put forward by the Home Office, and I am afraid that I am sceptical about the evidence, which collides with my experience and, I believe, that of my right hon. and hon. Friends and Government Members who have large immigration case loads. It is rare, in my experience, for constituents and their relatives abroad not to have produced the evidence first time round. Much more frequently, they produce the evidence and it is then overlooked. Time and again, my office and I face the situation where the evidence has been submitted and it has been overlooked by the entry clearance officer or has got lost. It may appear to the tribunal to be new evidence, because for sure it is new evidence to the entry clearance officer, but it is not correct to draw the conclusion that that evidence has never gone before immigration officers. Even if that is the case, the fact that a third of appeals are upheld shows that there is important merit in having such a right of appeal. To argue—I hope that the Minister does not do this—that it would be just as satisfactory to re-submit an application is, frankly, disingenuous in the extreme. I have seen constituents re-submit applications in respect of non-family cases, where there is no right of appeal, and all that happens is that the application is turned down again and they have wasted their money.

My final point relates to judicial appointments. I strongly support the proposed changes in respect of diversity. The apparently prosaic change to allow for the number of judges to be counted by full-time equivalents and not by full-time numbers will make a very important contribution to the employment of the part-time judges, typically female, at every level. Also very important are the tipping-point provisions to allow for the Judicial Appointments Commission to take into account somebody’s gender or colour if two candidates are of equal merit.

Oral Answers to Questions

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Monday 7th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

Absolutely—it is this Government who are willing to look at the issues, make the tough decisions and take action to put tough policies in place. In relation to the balance of competences, we will be looking in detail at free movement. That work has not yet started but will start in the not-too-distant future. There are other things we are doing outside that work. I am working across the European Union with other member states to look at how we can ensure that we reduce the abuse of free movement—through sham marriage, for example—and we are also looking at the pull factors that encourage people to come to the UK, rather than other member states, such as access to benefits.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

But how many people are in that group who made an application a long time ago and were told that their cases would be determined by July 2012 but have still not received a decision?

[Mrs May]

As the hon. Lady knows, the whole question of the legacy case load was looked at recently by the chief inspector. He found some problems with the way the UK Border Agency has dealt with that. I am happy to write to the hon. Lady with the precise number of people in the category she describes. There are problems with how that was dealt with and we are working through them.

Human Trafficking

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Thursday 20th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

I was not expecting to be called at this point, Mr Robertson. I have not carefully prepared a speech, because I have just hauled myself off my sick bed to be here.

I care passionately about this issue, and I am concerned that the report has initially been half-buried by the Home Office. It was not scheduled for debate by the Government. After I raised in business questions the issue of debating the report, I had a very nice letter from the Minister—it arrived on 18 December, so very recently—saying, “Oh, we are doing all these things”.

The problem with the report is that it does not do what it says on the tin. We are told that we have an Inter-Departmental Ministerial Group on Human Trafficking. I share the view of the chair of the all-party group, the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), that the title would be a long one for any organisation. The group was originally conceived by the previous Government as a mechanism for driving achievement on a set of targets in their anti-trafficking strategy by ensuring that different Departments took the actions required to achieve those targets. Departments had taken responsibility for that, but frankly they are not doing so now.

I wrote to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills on 19 November about the important issue of slavery in company supply chains. That is absolutely an issue for BIS, which is currently considering how regulations will apply. It has said that it will regulate human rights reporting, which in my view ought to include reporting on the use of slavery in company supply chains, particularly after the shocking revelations about a company of the status of Marks and Spencer using slave labour to supply chickens. Some time later, I received an e-mail from something called the BIS transfers team—obviously, there is a whole team to get rid of irritating letters from people such as me—that stated:

“Thank you for your letter about use of slavery in the supply chains of UK companies. Your correspondence has been transferred to the Home Office in view of that Department’s responsibility for the matters raised in your letter.”

It suggested that I should follow that up with the Home Office, which has not responded, and it also apologised

“for any delay in advising you of the transfer of your letter.”

It seems to me that the job of an interdepartmental ministerial group ought to be to do what Ministers do, which is to run things, to ensure that policy is delivered and to develop new policy. I do not think that the group’s members are doing that and, as the chair of the all-party group said, neither are they an independent rapporteur. Britain has a great tradition of independent inspectors and rapporteurs helping our public services to do a good job. If we look at the chief inspectors of prisons and of schools or at the ombudsmen, we can see that we have pioneered independent reporting mechanisms. Yet the group is not one of those, and the report is weaker for that, because it does not have a comprehensive picture of all that could be or is being done.

Unfortunately, because the report was made by the Government about the Government, in my view it suffers from spin. As I have said, I have not been able to prepare a detailed speech from my sick bed, but I will give the Chamber two examples of that spin, which are to do with legislation and its effectiveness. Paragraph 5.97 of the report proudly cites a piece of legislation that I helped to push through Parliament. The hon. Member for Wellingborough mentioned Anthony Steen’s efforts to push through his Anti-Slavery Day Bill in the dying days of the last Government. Section 14 of the Policing and Crime Act 2009 was the legislation that I pushed through. Many Ministers thought that I would not be able to do so in the dying days of a Government, but I did. The paragraph states:

“The UK is committed to tackling the harm and exploitation that can be associated with the sex industry”.

It refers to good progress

“in terms of legislation. In 2010 an offence which criminalises those who pay for the sexual services of a prostitute subjected to force was introduced. Section 14 of the Policing and Crime Act 2009 created a strict liability offence”.

My hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Gavin Shuker) has uncovered the fact that there were 43 prosecutions for that offence in 2010, which was a year when we had a high public campaign on the matter. I remember looking at the artwork for a poster that suggested to young men using men’s lavatories that they could go in a punter and come out a criminal. There was a campaign that was designed to raise public awareness of the offence and to secure a commitment in police forces to prosecute the offence.

The figure for subsequent years is not available—I fear that it might be fewer than 43, and yet we all know that many more than 43 men are paying for sex with women who are under duress.

[Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that, in addition to the facts that she has so eloquently expressed, the maximum sentence under section 14 is £1,000, which is a lot of money to some people and not a lot to others, and yet none of those 43 people who were found guilty of the offence was fined that? They got away with paying sums of £200 to £300 for what is a very serious offence.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Indeed. Unfortunately, that is one of the risks of a strict liability offence; it tends to have a lower penalty. It would have been good had there been something tougher, but what I am hearing from the police is, “Oh whoops, we can’t prosecute because we have to prove both that she is under duress and also that he has offered to pay her.” The police keep telling me that they cannot do two things at once, which is a bit sad really. What they need is someone to drive them to do it. The only person who will do that is the Minister who will reply to this debate. I am expecting him to do that, and I hope that the figures that we see over the next couple of years will be an improvement on the 43 prosecutions that we know of already.

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

On that specific point about the priority that police forces should attach to prosecuting the offence, it is not I who should drive that. The right person to do that and for MPs to raise this with is the police and crime commissioner. The police and crime commissioners will be setting out the policing plan for their particular areas and they will need to tell the chief constable that this matter is important and is something that they should be making a priority. Then they should make it clear that the resources are available.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

The Minister is right from a month ago, but up until a month ago—for the whole of 2011 and for most of 2012—it was he and his predecessor who were responsible. In 2011 and 2012, I expect to see a pathetic number of prosecutions, because the number in 2010 was pathetic. I have already spoken about the matter to the police and crime commissioner in Thames Valley whose main concern seems to be with wildlife crime—I will not go down that route right now. That is what happens when a person does not prepare a speech and has just got out of their flu bed.

This is a very serious issue for the Government, and it is not sufficient to say that the police and crime commissioners must let the flowers bloom. Human trafficking is an international crime that needs national effort to solve. There will be parts of the country that say, “It does not happen here,” and the Minister knows that they are wrong. I remember the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) telling the all-party parliamentary group that that had been his experience after the discovery of the horrible events in his constituency. He described how shocked people were to discover that in a very pleasant part of the country, such exploitation could occur. This matter needs national Government leadership. It is spin to claim, as the report does, that action, which I am proud to have been an author of, is going to do much more than it has done so far.

The second claim of spin is in paragraph 7.29, which states:

“Whilst traffickers’ attempts to move victims”—

of domestic servitude—

“to the UK illegally are likely to continue, the changes to the route of entry for overseas domestic workers coming to the UK to work in the private household of their employer means that”—

wait for it—

“fewer will be eligible to come to the UK and as a result the risk of abusive relationships developing in this visa category should reduce further.”

Well, that is nonsense. Every single study of this matter, of which, I think, there have been three by the Home Affairs Committee, has concluded unanimously—many of the parties involved had believed that kind of nonsense to start with—that the overseas domestic workers’ visa was one of the best protections against human trafficking. In the report “Service not Servitude”, which I wrote last year to mark international slavery day, there is compelling evidence to show that the introduction of the overseas domestic workers’ visa reduced exploitation. It did not end it—I am not claiming that—but it reduced the levels of abuse and exploitation experienced by migrant domestic workers. If we compare the level of reported abuse in 1996 with that in 2010, we will see that the number of migrant workers who were expected to work 17 hours a day or more was halved. The visa cut significantly the proportion of such workers who were denied time off and who had faced psychological abuse. It more than halved physical abuse and it reduced sexual abuse by a quarter. Those are just one set of figures showing the impact that the visa has had on migrant workers.

This Government are not alone in thinking that abolishing the visa might be one way of controlling immigration and that it actually might be a sensible thing to do. Previous Labour Governments thought so too, and started consultations on doing it. I was part of the campaigns that prevented them from doing so because we were able to produce compelling evidence that showed the extent to which trafficking for domestic servitude increases. I am shocked and sad that the report, which is supposed to be the report of a rapporteur, is actually promoting spin about Government policy. Every single independent analysis of the overseas domestic workers’ visa makes it quite clear that it was one of the best protections for overseas domestic workers against domestic servitude.

Consequently, I am depressed about this debate, not only because it has got me out of my sick bed but because we are better than this, we care more than this, we can do more than this and we do not want to be “spinners”. We believe that we can be transparent, frank and honest about our successes and failures in dealing with this appalling crime. However, as can be seen from just the two examples I have given, the report falls down on those requirements. I do not believe that the Government want to fall down on this issue; I do not believe that. I am not saying that the intentions of the Government are malign—they are not.

Nevertheless, there is an ineffectiveness to this kind of report. It attempts to big up things that are good, for example joint investigation teams. However, when we look under the surface of those things, difficulties arise. When I talked to Steve Gravett, it looked like joint investigation teams had a short future.

Is it not time for us to be big enough to be completely open about the effectiveness of what we are doing on international trafficking? What we are doing is not as good as we want it to be; it is not good enough, but it is better than what we did before. That is fine, but it is not fine for the Government to produce something that is too much in the way of spin. That is sad and I expected more of this Government, and of any British Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Selous]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Minister for making that point. The case required considerable resources from Bedfordshire police, which is a fairly small force. It, too, had to do months and months of surveillance, as well as all the work after the raid. Assembling all the information needed for the trial made a considerable demand on its resources. Now that convictions have been made, I hope that at least some of the ill-gotten proceeds of the Connors family in Bedfordshire will be used to recoup the costs incurred by Bedfordshire police in manning the operation. I hope that the same can happen in Gloucestershire.

Going back to what happened in Gloucestershire, some of the victims had been working on Traveller sites in Gloucestershire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire—and also outside the United Kingdom—for nearly two decades. Physical violence was a regular part of what they endured. They were beaten, hit with broom handles, belts, a rake, and a shovel, and were punched and kicked. They were stripped and hosed down with cold water. They were given so little food that in many cases they had to scavenge from dustbins. The people they were working for—it was the same in Bedfordshire—had luxury caravans and top-of-the-range kitchens. They enjoyed expensive foreign holidays and drove a Mercedes and even a Rolls-Royce.

Similar levels of work were required. Again, the work was in the block paving business or laying manholes. The victims were often required to work six days a week, sometimes seven, from dawn until dusk. One of them said that slaps were a way of life. One of the victims ran away from the Gloucestershire site back to Leeds, where he was from, but Miles Connors went to Leeds that day to bring him back, which shows the level of fear and intimidation. I make no apology for putting graphically on the record the events in these two cases.

I want to focus on what all of us can do to try to bring such cases to an end. We all have a role, particularly the customers of the Connors in both Bedfordshire and Gloucestershire who actually bought block paving from them and had their drives block-paved. It is not simply up to the police, the local council and Members of Parliament to spot these things. Yes, we all absolutely have a role, but the police can fully do their job only if the public are their eyes and ears. If someone is having their drive re-laid and the people re-laying it look as though they have not had a square meal in ages, and look fearful, frightened and emaciated, that person has a duty to contact the police to alert them to their concerns. It is much better to make that call and find that nothing is wrong than to stay silent and allow victims to go on being intimidated year after year. It is not just Traveller sites; whether we are in shops or restaurants, or visiting factories, we all have a duty, and we all need to see what can be done.

I pay tribute to Councillor Kristy Adams from the Newnham ward of Bedford borough council. She shares our concern and passion on this issue. She has done something that I have been trying to do for a long time, which is to provide a checklist of signs to look for to try to spot victims of human trafficking. She has produced a little bookmark with a list of signs and information on what to do if someone has suspicions. I will read out what it says, if I may, so that it is on the record, because it is so helpful. At the top of the bookmark, it says:

“Is the person you are with a victim of Human Trafficking?”

It has a number of pointers:

“Doesn't know home/work address? Expression of fear, distrust, anxiety? As an individual or group, movements are restricted by others? Limited contact with family and/or friends? Money deducted from salary for food and/or accommodation? Passport/documents held by someone else? Recognise any of the above? Please call 101 or Crimestoppers 0800 555 111.”

Councillor Kristy Adams is going to make sure that the bookmarks are with the police, local authorities, and as many people as possible in Bedfordshire who can take action. She wants to provide the bookmarks to raise public and front-line workers’ awareness of human trafficking. She wants to provide training on how to identify a trafficked individual and who to contact, and she wants to set up a human trafficking working group in Bedfordshire to deal with these issues. That is a fantastic initiative from a local councillor.

We all have a role—Members of Parliament, local councillors, local authorities, the police and members of the public. Here is a great initiative from Bedfordshire, and I commend it to colleagues. I am sure that together we can take further action.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

I commend the initiative of the local councillor. Stop the Traffik has produced resources that help people, including a “travel safe” resource. Can the Minister tell us whether posts overseas have produced such resources to give to those who are accompanying people, under the new visit system, as a migrant domestic assistant? That would be a simple way of helping to reduce exploitation in domestic servitude of the kind that I talked about.

[Andrew Selous]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising that question. I can see my hon. Friend the Minister has made a note of it; I am sure that he will pick up that point when he responds to the debate.

[Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

I am pleased to take part in this debate, and particularly to follow the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), who has outlined horrendous events. For the reasons he explained, I joined the all-party group and went with the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) —he is my hon. Friend for this afternoon—to the Backbench Business Committee to ask for this debate. It is incredible that we live in a country that has slavery. Indeed, the Government could take one small initiative and change the name of their working group to the “ministerial counter-slavery group”, so that we are very clear about what is going on here. It has been going on for decades.

Although I was shocked by the circumstances that have been described, I was also pretty shocked by the lightness of the sentences. When we think that two decades of some people’s lives have been taken away—there are several of them in several areas—to merely get a sentence of a decade or three or four years is pretty small beer for the wickedness committed. There are many wickednesses in this world. Of those that are human-made, this clearly must rank as one of the great ones. I find it puzzling that there is not much anger and interest in the country to counter this evil that stalks among us. What would Wilberforce have made of this if he had come back or been contacted in a séance? What would he make of his campaign and our behaviour that follows it?

Although I welcome and congratulate the Government on the landmark publication in October of the first annual report of what I would like to be called “the ministerial counter-slavery group,” which is a step forward, I do not want anyone to be complacent. I do not want to part company with my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough, but if we look at it, our record in Europe is pretty appalling. Most of us, including me, have a superior attitude to Europe, but we are many, many years behind our European partners. Belgium, for example, has published 15 reports, and we have published one; this is a priority of the coalition Government, and we have one report. That is not the only thing Belgium has done, because it has been quite active.

Although I thank the Backbench Business Committee, it is extraordinary that, for what is a Government priority, we had to go to the Committee to ask for a debate. If I were heading a Government and this was a priority, I would want to talk about it, report on it and gain as much support for it as I could. We should not get too complacent. One of the many things we might ask the Minister is: when are we next going to debate the topic on the Floor of the House in Government time?

Secondly, most European countries allocate parliamentary time to discuss and debate their reports and the recommendations made by their rapporteurs. Again, I emphasise the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart): there is all the difference in the world between a group of Ministers occasionally coming together to debate a topic of the day, and having a person with a small number of staff and the responsibility to drive the policy. We would know that that person is responsible and will be ridiculed—or perhaps even sacked—if they do not do what Parliament wishes them to do.

The report is a small beginning, and I hope, as both my hon. Friends the Members for Slough and for Wellingborough said, that we have clear timetables from the Government on how they will achieve certain priorities. As my hon. Friend said, it is true that we had to use parliamentary questions to find out how many times the group met. It is extraordinary that for what is a Government priority—we did not have to use the Freedom of Information Act—we had to use parliamentary questions. The Government saw the priority as so important that they made the group secret. Although there has been some improvement in attendance, the group’s function, other than sharing information with other Government Departments, seems pretty unclear.

However good, the group will now be under the Minister. I do not underestimate his abilities. In a sense, we have events on our side, because he is at the stage of his parliamentary career where he wishes to advance quickly: self-interest and the public good, when combined, can promote many changes, which we will support. Things are clearly going to change, but, however good he is—and, obviously and quite properly, he wishes to promote his own career—conflicts will occur between making trouble and advancing further up that greasy pole. The first thing for a Government with that priority is to give us a rapporteur with the smallest staff possible. I totally agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough on that point.

The report states that the Inter-Departmental Ministerial Group on Human Trafficking—I almost want to give up the will to live with such titles—fulfils a role equivalent to a national rapporteur. All of us who have spoken so far know that that is not true, and the Government ought to drop it. The UK is obliged to establish a rapporteur by the Council of Europe’s trafficking convention and by the incoming EU directive, although there is weasel room to change things. Dishonourably, the Government have taken that little get-out to present a ministerial group without a rapporteur. Just imagine what it would be like if there were a ministerial group working with and supporting a rapporteur, advancing their interests and backing them when they are in difficulties. Might that not begin to match the issue we face? There is slavery in this country. People are taken against their will either inside the country or outside it and made to work. Is there anything more shameful going on? What a move it would be if we had a ministerial group driven by the Minister—I do not doubt for a moment that such a group would be ably driven—and backed up by a national rapporteur.

My concern is that, unless we make that breakthrough, we will not make the progress that I hope the Minister will tell us he hopes to achieve. No other group in this country believes that it should act as judge and jury on its own case. It is important that the Government have an independent jury to consider what is going on, for the report goes into great detail on the number of initiatives introduced by the Government. That progress, of course, is to be cheered and welcomed by everyone with an interest, but little effort has been made to analyse the impact and effectiveness of those initiatives. Where in the report can we look at outcomes? What outcomes are being set by the interdepartmental ministerial group—when its members can find the time to turn up? Why should that be so? The answer is plainly obvious: there is naturally a conflict of interest between the Government retaining responsibility for both the design and implementation of anti-trafficking strategies, and the subsequent evaluation of their effectiveness.

An independent rapporteur is necessary to analyse Government policy robustly, to identify shortcomings and to suggest improvements. That is not an anti-Government move. I slightly disagree with my hon. Friend the Member for Slough, because an independent rapporteur would give the Government a lot of powerful ammunition to spin, if their aim is to put over what they are achieving.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

I was not suggesting that an independent rapporteur would be important as a powerful anti-Government move. My right hon. Friend is right that, where the Government have had successes, an independent rapporteur would strengthen the account of those successes, but it would also have the power of independence, meaning that those bits of the report that I cited, which spin legislation as working when there is no such evidence, would not have been part of the report. The report was damaged by such things existing within it.

[Mr Field]

I agree. I will develop that point, because the interdepartmental ministerial group lacks statutory powers to request information from all relevant Government authorities. I am sure the Minister will not have difficulties in getting such information, but he lacks the statutory authority to do so. That statutory power could be given to the rapporteur.

As a result, the interdepartmental ministerial group relies heavily on information from what is called the national referral mechanism, which is a data-gathering mechanism that can supply only a snapshot of the reality. It cannot give us a moving picture, as mentioned by the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire, which we would get in these reports if there were somebody the only point of whose existence, as far as paying the mortgage was concerned, was to report on this great evil.

Where can we look for best practice? In the Netherlands, the Dutch rapporteur is chaired by a former judge and in Finland by a former Member of Parliament and a member of the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe. Both have a small team of staff who sit apart from the Government, the police and public authorities and actively work full time—unlike the ministerial group—at all levels and with all groups in the community. In contrast, the ministerial group only managed to gather information from one public agency, the UK Human Trafficking Centre. That is entirely at odds with what happens, as other hon. Members have said, in other European countries. In Portugal, for example, the Portuguese Observatory collects and manages information from a wide range of sources and sets benchmarks that we should follow. If we had greater and more accurate data, it would be easier to set those benchmarks.

A glaring failure of the Government’s report is the lack of accurate and meaningful data. I accept that the statistics in this area will always be difficult to collect, but the report is undermined by statistical inconsistencies. Let me illustrate. In 2010, the police’s Project Acumen found 2,600 female adult victims of trafficking. How is that consistent with the report’s predicted total figure of 2,000 for human trafficking victims in the UK, which is for 2011, just one year on? The figures do not add up, which again suggests that if one Minister in the ministerial group had had time to read the whole report, they might have actually spotted that.

The report offers a good overall view of activities undertaken by the Government, but it reveals little in terms of analysis of the problem or the impact of the work undertaken. The picture is clearly so much more complicated than can be provided in a snapshot. How can people be imprisoned in this way—for example, in mid-Bedfordshire or Gloucestershire—for such periods without anybody coming across it, without anybody noticing, and with nobody saying anything or raising the matter? Goodness, gracious me! What level of human sympathy do we have when that can occur?

More of these examples would come to light if we had a situational analysis and impact assessment of how we can more effectively combat trafficking. For example, the report lists the training that was delivered, but no information is provided about the impact of training on improvements in services, the numbers of victims identified, and so on. Similarly, in a number of places the report mentions different Departments or authorities being responsible for implementing elements of the policy. Where is all this brought together? However, it does not go into detail about how and whether these responsibilities are carried out, how they are assessed and what the concrete outcomes of the work undertaken were. We need to see an evaluation from each of the Departments and authorities of the implementation work that falls within their areas of responsibility, and for them to report to the Minister, and for the Minister to report to the House of Commons.

We need a much better analysis of what is happening within the various sectors where victims are exploited, including explanations of rises in particular nationalities, of geographic distribution and of flows and movement of the problem across the UK over time. Again, it would appear that the problem is static and that, somehow, we are dealing with a group of people who do not change their approach. People may say, “Why should they change their approach? They are doing so well with a single approach now.” But they will change if the Government get serious. Spotting and guessing the movements are crucial if we are going to save people from slavery. By “various sectors”, I mean areas into which victims are trafficked. My hon. Friend the Member for Slough cited companies whose products we use that are produced by slaves, including in legal sectors such as agriculture, construction, hospitality and care and domestic work, and illegal sectors such as the sex industry and drug production.

We are also provided with little detailed analysis of the methods of recruitment. How are people trapped in this way, and stripped and publicly humiliated in the way that we have heard? How can that go on for decades? In other countries, breakdowns of incidence of trafficking by region are available, as well as an overall view of police force activities, which courts have dealt with cases, what the outcomes of those cases were, and what the sentences were.

Why do I raise these questions? The answer is pretty obvious. Our lack of data is a key barrier to a more effective response. Much effort in combating human trafficking, or slavery, has focused more on anecdote and sensationalism than on analysis of the problems. We simply do not know to what extent industry in this country, or sections of industry, are dependent on slaves to be viable or what the profit margins of using slaves are for those firms and sectors of our economy. If we had such information, that would alert us to where slavery is operating in our country.

Human trafficking, which, as the Government acknowledge, is modern day slavery, today functions for the same purpose as slavery throughout history: to maximise profits by minimising or eliminating the cost of labour. But there are several key differences with modern slavery that make it more expansive and more insidious than ever before. Slaves today can be exploited in dozens of industries that are intrinsically woven into the global economy, as opposed to just domestic service and agriculture, as was the case when Wilberforce dealt with the issue. It is much more difficult now to locate where slavery is going on.

Of course, the costs today of acquiring a slave and the time taken to transport him or her from the point of acquisition to the point of exploitation are minuscule, compared with those of old world slavery. Victims of human trafficking—again, I would insist on the word “slaves”—are more accessible, expendable, exploitable and profitable than ever before. That is why this evil is so terrible, huge and growing.

Two centuries ago, the average slave could generate, we are told by the experts, a 15% to 20% annual return on the investment for his or her exploiters. It is of course vulgar to use such terms when describing victims, but it is not unhelpful, sometimes, to look at the economic power and force behind the problem. Today, the return is several hundred per cent. per year—not over the life of the slave, but per slave per year—and more than 900% per year for those who are trapped as slaves in the sex industry. This is perhaps the primary reason why there is such demand among exploiters to acquire more slaves through the practice of slave trading. There are more people in slavery today than in the entire 350-year history of the slave trade: more today than ever before, collectively. A snapshot is set against that collective total. A lack of detailed understanding of how and why slave-like exploitation functions in various sectors of the global economy is a primary barrier to a more effective response.

That brings me to the all-party group on human trafficking, and NGOs. Perhaps we also need to change the name of the all-party group, so that it is clearer and shorter. Since 2006, the activities of the all-party group, both inside and outside Parliament, have resulted not just in a significant raising of awareness about the extent of human trafficking in the UK, but also a number of concrete achievements. It influenced the previous Administration—our Labour Government—to join the 2005 Council of Europe convention on action against trafficking and persuaded the current Administration to sign the EU directive on preventing and combating trafficking in human beings and protecting its victims. Were I Prime Minister, the thought that I might get the hon. Member for Wellingborough out to support me would have made me sign the directive without even reading what it was about. Were it not for the demands in February of the hon. Gentleman, the chairman of our group, no annual report would have been written, nor would his efforts have been debated. That is, however, only a snapshot of a few of the many important achievements of the group.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

Yes, I will. My hon. Friend the Solicitor-General, who sits on the interdepartmental ministerial group, is obviously responsible for prosecution policy. If my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough gives me some specific examples of that policy perhaps having not been followed, of course I will look at them and, where appropriate, discuss them with the Solicitor-General to see whether we need to take further steps.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

About six months ago, I spoke at a meeting of the Thames Valley criminal justice association at which a number of defence barristers were present. They said that their universal experience was that young Vietnamese gardeners in cannabis factories were always prosecuted.

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Lady gives me a link into my next point, about children who are being ruthlessly abused to run cannabis farms. Again, the guidance from the Association of Chief Police Officers is clear. It says that we should look at the circumstances and be alert to the fact that the children may well have been trafficked. If that is the case, there should be a child welfare response rather than a criminal justice response. I absolutely hear what the hon. Lady says about whether that is actually happening in practice. I will speak to my hon. Friend the Solicitor-General to see what data there are about the position on the ground—I know we have gathered some from Crown prosecutors—to see whether we can be better informed. She is quite right: if people have been trafficked and are under duress, we should treat them not as criminals but as victims. That is what we intend to do and what the guidance says, but I accept that what is supposed to happen in theory does not always happen in practice.

The hon. Lady made a number of points. I am pleased that she is here, and I wish her a speedy and full recovery from the flu. I would not have known that she was ill apart from the odd cough. Her illness did not seem to detract from her performance. If that is how she performs when she is suffering from flu, woe betide me in the next debate when she is not.

Let me disabuse the hon. Lady of her main point. We absolutely did not try to bury this report. We chose to launch it to coincide with anti-slavery day. We did our very best to make people pay attention to it. We had some success on social media. We worked with NGOs to promote it and we did a very good piece on the BBC, which took this matter very seriously and covered it extensively on its news bulletins to raise awareness. I am pleased to talk about the report at every opportunity, and I do not think that we buried it at all.

I thought that the hon. Lady was a little unfair about the report, and, by the way, if she could only find two examples of what she called spin—I do not think that they were spin—she cannot say that this whole exercise is about saying that the Government are doing a great job. Genuinely, I looked at her two examples, and did not think that spin was a fair characterisation of the report or the way it outlines what the Government are doing. I am sorry she thinks that, because that is not in the spirit of the way in which we have engaged in this report. The report was an attempt to give a fair picture of some of the data that show what the Government are doing to develop a human trafficking strategy. I rebut what she says and feel just a bit disappointed.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

In what way does the Minister believe that the abolition of the domestic worker visa makes it less likely that people will be trafficked into domestic servitude?

[Mr Dai Havard (in the Chair)]

May I remind you, Mr Harper, that we must leave three minutes for Mr Bone?

Oral Answers to Questions

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Monday 15th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. I know from experience in my county that the difficult financial decisions that police authorities and chief constables have had to take can easily be combined with ensuring that there are more resources on the front line and that some of those excellent neighbourhood policing priorities are maintained. The election of police and crime commissioners will ensure that those neighbourhood-focused activities are not only continued but strengthened.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

Is the Minister aware of reports in the newspapers today that five mainly rural police authorities have found 26 million depraved examples of images of child abuse on the internet and elsewhere, at the same time as the budget for the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, which reported two and half times as many reports of child abuse this year as it did two years ago, is due to be cut by 10%. What is he going to do about that and will he reconsider the cuts to the funding for dealing with child abuse?

[Mr Harper]

I have briefly seen that report in the newspapers this morning. Of course, our plans to take CEOP into the National Crime Agency will enhance the ability of our police officers and crime fighters to deal with such images and such appalling crimes, which I am sure that everyone in the House would deprecate.

UK Border Agency

Fiona Mactaggart Excerpts

Wednesday 4th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz]

As the hon. Gentleman will know from his case load, it is a continuing process. He will hear about more of these cases on Friday when he holds his surgery. The Select Committee is saying that the backlog must be cleared, not just put in a different part of the UKBA. It cannot just move the files from Croydon to Liverpool and expect the situation to be sorted out. It must clear the backlog once and for all. With the willingness to do so and the £1 billion of resources that are available each year, that should be possible.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Richard Fuller (Bedford) (Con)]

rose—

[Keith Vaz]

I will give way twice more, but then I must make progress because other Members want to speak.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

I concur with what my right hon. Friend has said about clearing the backlog once and for all. One of my concerns is that, in the present exercise of dealing with legacy cases and the backlog, instead of making a final decision on cases—people used to be given indefinite leave to remain or were returned—lots of people are being given three years’ discretionary leave, which means that a new backlog is being created for three years’ time.

[Keith Vaz]

No one in this House knows more about these issues than my hon. Friend, having been the chair of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants. She is right that decisions are being put off.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Ward]

If the hon. Gentleman does not mind, I would rather make my speech than the one he probably wants to make. If he makes that speech, I shall intervene and support him, but I would like to finish mine first.

We are told that the number of complaints is a direct result of the complexity of the cases and their impact on individuals. Yes, that is the case to some degree, but the truth is also that the complaints arise from sheer mismanagement—lost files, poor administration and so on. That would not be so bad if the services provided value for money, but they are hugely expensive—as much as £1,000—which means that people rightly demand, and are entitled to, a good service. Given that the appeals process can cost another £120, which they do not get back if they are successful, they have a right to a first-rate system, yet that is clearly not being delivered. Will the Minister indicate what is being done to improve the level of service? I believe that the website talks about a six-month turnaround time. Nobody believes that. They are lucky if it is eight months. So there is this question of value for money.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

The hon. Gentleman says that nobody believes the turnaround time, but the problem is that many applicants do believe it, and then they come to people such as us and say, “Why am I being picked on?” I say, “You’re not being picked on. It’s like this for everyone”, and they do not believe us. It is time that the Home Office was at least honest about how long it takes.

[Mr Ward]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. In fact, everyone is being picked on, so in that sense it is fair really. But that is the claim on the website, and it simply is not being delivered. We need a sense of realism. Not only are these services very expensive, but on the delivery side there is a huge let-down, which makes it even worse when people come into our offices. So I would like the Minister to respond to those issues: value for money, intelligence and the issue of account managers and retaining that local connection.

--- Later in debate ---

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

In addressing the subject of this debate, we must always remember that it involves families, and that is what I shall concentrate on today. Those families often pay huge fees. The £1,800 that it will cost a spouse to get settlement in this country is 10% of the income that the sponsor needs for the spouse to qualify. There is a lot of money involved, and those people have a right to a decent service. At the moment, however, they are not getting it.

I readily admit that the problem is not new; it has not developed under this Government. Indeed, when I was first elected in 1997, I remember discovering the antecedent of the controlled archive. It was in a room in the bottom of a building in Croydon, where the air was so poisonous that staff could not go in. It contained a huge heap of files that had been amassed there, and nobody knew what they were. So this is a long-standing problem.

We need to address the problems of inefficiency and the bad ways in which the system works, and I want to use the debate to make a series of specific requests of the Minister. Even though he and I do not agree on the entirety of the policy, I believe that he will be able to meet those requests. The first relates to dealing with legacy cases. At the moment, all the cases involving those who are to be granted indefinite or discretionary leave have to be checked by security and by the police national computer—and quite right, too. Unfortunately, when the UK Border Agency asks for the information, further checks have to be carried out, and photographs, vignettes and biometrics have to be obtained. That process often takes so long that the security clearance, which last only three months, has expired by the time it has been completed. I ask the Minister to instruct his staff to grant leave in such circumstances none the less. When the problem is the result of inefficiency in the system and involves further rounds of checks and further delays, let us not make his staff carry out those further checks and go through those further delays, using up time and capacity that they do not have.

My second point is one that I am sure many hon. Members will be familiar with from their constituencies. It relates to cases in which a woman—it is usually, but not always, a woman—has been deceived by a partner and been abandoned the day after he is granted indefinite leave to remain. Under the previous Government, after a long struggle, I managed to persuade the then Minister that such women should get a proper response when they requested information on their husbands’ immigration status and on what the Home Office was going to do about their situation. I got an agreement on that, and for a very short time, Ministers would write not only to me to tell me what was happening with the case, but to the women who had complained. That has now stopped.

I put it to the Minister that reinstating that practice would a much more effective means than the “dobbing-in” system on the Home Office website, because those women have specific information about their cheating spouses. He should give them the respect of a full response to their inquiries. He should also follow up those inquiries. In my view, it would be perfectly possible under the immigration rules to curtail the leave of husbands who had behaved in the way that I have described, on the grounds that their presence in the UK would not be conducive to the public good, particularly if—as is often the case—they had a record of being vicious and violent towards their spouses. I would be really grateful if the Minister made that commitment today. I think that my request is fairly straightforward, and reinstating that practice would go with the grain of what he has been saying about using intelligence.

My next point is about the new immigration rules, which are due to come into force next week. I remember, when I was director of the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, getting a telephone call from a country solicitor who said, “I’ve got this person here and I’ve got the Immigration Act in front of me, and it refers to these things called the immigration rules. What are they?” I told him, and I felt rather scared that that person thought he was qualified to give immigration advice. Actually, he was being honest. He was trying to find out the best advice to give his client, but—as other hon. Members have pointed out—there are solicitors who are not in the least bit honest.

Actually, even the honest solicitors are going to find these new immigration rules completely incomprehensible. There is no statement of changes in the immigration rules; they are not numbered; there are typographical and other errors in them. I do not agree with their content, but if I were the Minister, I would say, “We aren’t going to bring them into force until we have done them properly.” Frankly, they are not proper at present. I would like the Minister simply to say that he will not bring them into force until he has got rid of the errors. I pray against them and hope he will not introduce them, but from his own point of view, if he does not get them right, he will make much more work for his officials, who will be constantly subject to representations and appeals because of the confusion that arises. Speaking as someone who has dealt with these issues for some 30 years, I have to say in the context of today’s discussion about the administration of the UK Border Agency that if the Minister persists in implementing these rules at this point—irrespective of whether they are the right thing to do in the long term—he will create much more unnecessary work for his people.

[John McDonnell]

Like me, my hon. Friend has prayed against the rules. Today is not the time to debate them in any detail, but does she agree that the Government should now give us the opportunity to debate the rules thoroughly on the Floor of the House?

[Fiona Mactaggart]

I think it would be helpful to do so, but in a way that is not the point here. The point is that if the Minister accepts that there are errors in the draft—I know that they are errors and not deliberate—he should take the opportunity to withdraw the rules until they can be remedied, to ensure that the immigration system is properly administered. Given the problems of administration—the queues at Heathrow and other issues, and the problem with posts overseas where we have had good reports from the independent chief inspector responsible for entry clearance, highlighting that the wrong decisions have been made—perhaps the Minister could do something about them.

One thing I have learned from my long involvement in these issues is that the biggest problem is trying to get the Home Office administration to do what it says on the tin—to do what the rules say to make sure that the administration is effective and efficient. It is not, and it has not been for decades. The simplest thing to do would be to try to drive out unnecessary processes and to use the people subject to immigration control as allies in making the system more efficient. The vast majority of people who are trying to join their families here or to visit Britain are trying to do the right thing. If we can work in a way whereby the people trying to do the right thing can help to make the system more efficient, we could envisage a system in which not everyone was subject to the degradation—frankly, it is degradation—that is a product of the gross inefficiency and bureaucracy of that system.

I have made some specific proposals, and if the Minister were to say yes to them today, we could take a couple of little steps in that direction. Many more are needed.

[Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)]

I am pleased to have the opportunity to make a few short points in the debate. My first is about the structural changes taking place within the UK Border Agency. Does the Minister have strong views about these proposals? In his view, will they make a significant contribution to making UKBA an organisation or agency that is fit for purpose? He will be aware of the specific changes to operational areas, with specific directors and cross-cutting directorates being established.

The Select Committee on Home Affairs has played a central role in tracking developments at UKBA over recent years. I refer briefly to the 15th report published in November last year. That report rightly identifies initial decision making as central to much of what we are debating and covers appeals, which are clearly a two-way process. Yes, officials may well make wrong decisions, but it is equally clear from the information I have received that appeals are often successful because the information was not supplied correctly the first time round. The appeal was not based on a decision, but was one in which supplementary information led to a positive outcome. Making the right decision at the outset is key, as is ensuring that the right information is supplied by applicants.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bradford East (Mr Ward), who is no longer in his place but will return shortly, highlighted the importance of intelligence, and I certainly support what he said. When people come to MPs with intelligence about the activities of individuals who they think are here illegitimately, feedback is essential so that constituents can see that some action has been taken as a result. I appreciate the difficulties associated with data protection when providing feedback that is specific to an individual case, but we need to ensure that feedback is provided in some shape or form.

On correspondence between the MPs and the UKBA, contrary to what the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) said, my experience suggests that things have improved. They are not perfect, but there is no doubt about the improvement, and my staff would confirm that. I no longer experience the sort of thing that happened back in 1997, when many people I saw in my surgery had been in the UK for perhaps 10 years, yet their status had still not been determined. That is changing, which does not mean that things are perfect.

What MPs do quite successfully is to use individual cases to identify areas with a pattern of poor performance. I will not reel off a long list of individual cases, but I shall refer to one case of a family—I shall call them Mr and Mrs J—who were granted visas on appeal in February last year in Colombo, but who have still not received them. I do not know whether a specific problem in Colombo has caused that to happen, but if such cases help to identify an issue in a particular mission, I hope that the Government would respond.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

May I assure the right hon. Gentleman that this is not just specific to Colombo? This pattern is common; I have a number of such cases in Islamabad, for example.

[Tom Brake]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, which shows that it is essential for us collectively to identify such problems; we might believe that these are individual cases, but when the feedback comes in from all MPs, we see that the issue is a much wider one.

A number of Members have referred to data. Clearly, without strong data, it is difficult to determine whether policy is effective. I greatly welcome the fact that, following pressure from the Liberal Democrats on an issue that we have been running with for a number of years, exit checks will be reintroduced. Ultimately, that is the only way to secure high-quality data that can effectively inform debate.

On the problem of backlogs, I am sure the Minister will have received the briefing from the Immigration Law Practitioners Association, which many of us, too, have received for today’s debate. The briefing refers to the definition of a review, and it challenges the UKBA statement that reviews have been carried out in respect of all asylum backlog cases. That might involve a definitional issue involving what constitutes a review. A paper review may involve no contact with either the legal representatives or the individual who is the subject of the review. In any event, the ILPA is concerned about whether every case has been reviewed.

I do not know whether the Minister was quoted accurately when he was reported to have said:

“The UK has been forced to launch a global charm offensive to convince foreign students it is not against immigration”.

The quotation comes from a BBC report headed “Please come to UK”. The Minister is shaking his head, so it appears it that is not an accurate representation of what he said. Whether it is or not, however, I should like him to tell me whether the capacity exists to make what I accept is a difficult distinction between students who, having applied to attend a college here quite legitimately, find that between their application and their arrival the college has been shut down—for perfectly legitimate reasons—and has taken their money but will not give them what they wanted, and those who are not students but have colluded to come here for purposes other than study. It would be helpful to be able to distinguish such people from students who fall foul of the rules through no fault of their own.