Immigration and Home Affairs

George Freeman Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2024 Commons Chamber

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that there are different types of crimes and different types of prisoners, and that many people in our prison system at the moment, particularly those responsible for relatively low-level, non-violent antisocial behaviour, could powerfully serve much better and more rehabilitative community sentences? I do not want chain gangs in Norfolk and Lincolnshire, but good community service, where people can see that they are actually putting something back into society, would ease a lot of pressure on the system.

[Sir John Hayes]

Community sentences can play a part, that is true, but my hon. Friend will recall that the problem I described earlier of misunderstanding crime as an illness to be treated has its roots in thinking that stretches right back to the 1960s. You will perhaps know, Mr Deputy Speaker, that the Children and Young Persons Act 1969 began intermediate treatment orders, which essentially rewarded young people who had committed crimes with the kind of community activities that my hon. Friend describes. People were sent to the Brecon Beacons when their law-abiding neighbours had to make do with a week in Clacton. I mean no disrespect to Clacton or its representative, I hasten to add. [Laughter.] That is not the kind of response to crime that the vast majority of my constituents—or, I suspect, those of my hon. Friend—expect. Yes, community sentences can play a part, but they must not in any way distract us from the fundamental truth—I think it was Grotius who said it, Mr Deputy Speaker—that criminal justice has to have at its heart the idea of an ill suffered for an ill inflicted. I hope that the new Government will recognise that to crack down on crime, they really do have to restore public faith in the fact that, as I said, justice will be done.

It is fact that 10% of convicted criminals are responsible for half of all convictions. It is true, too, that those individuals are known and can be identified and must not be released in the way that has been suggested. Yet, disturbingly, the new Prisons Minister is on the record as saying:

“We’re addicted to sentencing, we’re addicted to punishment. So many people who are in prison, in my view, shouldn’t be there.”

That is both the opposite of the truth and anything but what most people think.

I welcome the attention given in the King’s Speech to shoplifting, but again I fear that the Government’s approach amounts to little more than wishful thinking. We have a shoplifting epidemic in Britain. Police forces do not respond to almost nine out of 10 serious incidents and UK retailers already spend around £1 billion each year on trying to deal with a problem with which they struggle to cope. Many offenders persistently commit crimes and get away with it.

So let us, in this debate and in the programme that follows it, not simply rely on wishful thinking but face up to the profound truths which seem to have escaped the notice of Labour Governments forever and, too often, of Conservative Governments too: reflecting the sentiments of the vast majority of law-abiding people means the guilty must be punished and the innocent must be protected.

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[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

It is a great honour to speak in this new Parliament, my fifth, and particularly to follow the hon. Member for Barking (Nesil Caliskan), who spoke with dazzling eloquence about her constituency, but also about the importance of diversity in our democracy. It is wonderful to see such diversity in the new Parliament. I congratulate the new Prime Minister and his team of new Ministers on that, and on their laudable tone of humility and public service. In the same spirit, I thank our Leader of the Opposition for both the fantastic tone in which he conceded on election night, and the tone in which he started his new role. One can say many things about the politics of the last few years, but our Leader of the Opposition was not doing this for money; he was doing it out of a very deep sense of public service in the finest traditions of this country.

At a time when so many democracies around the world are struggling, democratic trust is under threat. I want to highlight what a wonderful 10 days it has been here, because we have seen the transfer of power with such peace and stability. The pictures from this Chamber that are going around the world show how this Parliament still stands for the very best of democratic civility. As a new generation of newly elected MPs and new Ministers take office with a mandate for change, all of us who have served in government and seen how hard it has become to deliver real, lasting reform will wish them well in the spirit of the late, great Jo Cox. As democratically elected parliamentarians, we do indeed have far more in common than divides us.

Whatever our politics, we share a deep and urgent need to show that MPs, politics and Parliament can make a difference, that there is serious respect for Government accountability throughout this House and at the sweaty corners of the Dispatch Boxes, and that Government is not—as I fear so many have, sadly, come to believe—an inevitably unaccountable, bureaucratic machine that always wins, no matter who people vote for. For my part, in the field of science and technology, I stand ready to help this Parliament and this Government see through the vital work needed to unleash the science, technology, engineering and mathematics economy.

Mr Speaker, you may be asking how I survived the Chernobyl meltdown of conservatism in Norfolk—we delivered not one but three Portillo moments on the night. I thank the people of Mid Norfolk for electing me for a fifth time, and I will quickly share with the House the key messages that they gave me as I knocked on 29,000 doors. They said that they wanted a politics of honesty, integrity and accountability first and foremost, and they wanted the new Government and the new Parliament to tackle three key issues. The first was immigration. It was very clear across the whole of my constituency that people feel that our security and our sustainability, both economically and in terms of public services, require the new Government to go further in tackling the wave of immigration that has hit this country in the last few years.

The second issue mentioned was housing and planning. There is deep exhaustion with the way that too many big developers are running rings round our councils and dumping big commuter housing estates in the wrong places, with no investment in infrastructure. We need new towns on railway lines to drive a net zero and sustainable model of living.

The third issue was the NHS and healthcare. People are fed up with our pouring billions of pounds into the system in London, because they are not seeing properly integrated mental health provision, social care and healthcare on the ground locally.

As we debate the King’s Speech, it is important that we are honest about the legacy of the last 14 years. It has not been 14 years of failure and cuts, as one or two Government Front Benchers have portrayed it. The truth is that we were hit by an extraordinary legacy from the financial crash in 2008, which caused £700 billion of debt. Then we had the Brexit disruption, followed by the pandemic, which led us to spend £400 billion on relief. The war in Europe has cost us £40 billion. Any one of those events would have knocked the breath out of the great Lady Thatcher.

This has been an extraordinary period of unprecedented shocks, and there is much in the last 14 years to be proud of. I would cite the introduction of universal credit; the tackling of welfare fraud; the school reforms; the 5 million apprenticeships; the degree apprenticeships; the huge reduction in youth unemployment, which was at a scandalous level when we took office; the progressive tax cuts for the lowest paid; huge improvements in life sciences, technology and innovation; green growth—we are the only country to have halved emissions while growing our economy; and the pensions triple lock.

On a personal note, I am deeply proud of the work that we have done in the life sciences and in the creation of the new Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, the 10-year science and technology framework, the creation of the Advanced Research and Invention Agency, our re-entry into Horizon and our groundbreaking international collaborations. If we are to make this a decade of national renewal, the innovation economy is completely key to driving investment, opportunity and clusters around the country, and to harnessing the regulatory leadership needed for this country to be the dynamic innovation economy that we can be. In that vein, I welcome the new ministerial team and wish them all support as they seek to unlock that mission.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Medicinal Cannabis

George Freeman Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

I hope that I can do better than that by inviting the clinical panel, once it is set up, to look at the case raised by the hon. Lady. The point is that, within the rules at the moment—as we are trying to demonstrate through the Alfie Dingley application—we are prepared to look at individual licences in exceptional cases. Will it be as quick as I, or anyone, would like? No, but this is new and difficult. We need to get it absolutely right, not least to ensure that these licences stand up to scrutiny and legal challenge. I hope that we are going to get there very soon. I have given the family my absolute assurance that we are going to drive this process as hard as possible, as we will with other applications in the new system that we are setting up.

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

As the former Minister for medicines regulation, may I welcome the intervention of the Home Secretary and the Policing Minister this week? When I tried to look at this issue as a Minister, the message that I got was that it was the Home Office that was so tough on cannabis law that it would not countenance changes. I welcome the fact that Ministers are looking at this issue and, more importantly, the Prime Minister’s announcement today that she is supporting a review. I urge the Minister not to overcomplicate this. Patients around the country are suffering from acute conditions. It should not be beyond the wit of Ministers to put together a simple licensing and registration scheme so that those people are able to possess appropriate cannabis oil in a way that does not open up the market for recreational use.

[Mr Hurd]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments and recognise his passion and leadership on the subject. I come back to this point: it is all very well for politicians to express their passionately held views on this subject but, at the end of the day, the people we have to hear from are the clinicians.

Extremism

George Freeman Excerpts

Monday 9th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

Thank you, Mr Speaker.

As I said, the investigation was concluded; it went to the Prime Minister; he looked at its recommendations; and, as hon. Members will know, my special adviser resigned on Saturday.

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s track record on actions speaking louder than words, as she has excluded more hate preachers than any predecessor and has achieved successfully the legal deportation of Abu Hamza and the review of the Prevent strategy—a strategy that the former Chairman of the Select Committee referred to, as my right hon. Friend may be aware, as lacking

“clear-sighted and consistent ministerial leadership”—[Official Report, 10 July 2006; Vol. 448, c. 1123.]

under the last Government.

[Mrs May]

I thank my hon. Friend for reminding us of that quotation from the Chairman of the Select Committee. It would appear that Opposition Members have forgotten what was said by a Committee of this House about the strategy that applied under the last Government. We have changed that strategy and made it more effective. We in the Home Office are focusing more clearly on the counter-terrorism aspects, and, as we have heard, the communities integration aspects are being dealt with by the Department for Communities and Local Government.

Oral Answers to Questions

George Freeman Excerpts

Monday 28th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

I congratulate and thank the Home Secretary for the excellent measures in last week’s Immigration Bill, which is strongly welcomed by my constituents. Have Ministers seen the recent report stating that the NHS is currently losing £2 billion a year on health care to non-UK residents who should not be here? May I encourage the Home Office, with other Departments, to do everything possible to continue the good work to clamp down on illegal citizens taking public services from our citizens?

[Mr Harper]

We will be doing the first stage of that in the Immigration Bill by ensuring that people who come here as temporary migrants make a fair contribution to the NHS before they can have access to it. The Secretary of State for Health will also introduce separate measures to ensure that hospitals become more effective at charging people who have no right to free access to health care paid for by our taxpayers.

Oral Answers to Questions

George Freeman Excerpts

Monday 15th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

10. What steps the UK Border Agency is taking to deter health tourism to the UK.

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

11. What steps she is taking to tackle abuse of UK public services by illegal immigrants.

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[Mr Harper]

I can give my hon. and learned Friend that assurance. Part of the reason for the Home Secretary’s decision is to have two very clear cultures within what was the UK Border Agency, so we have both high-quality, fast decisions for those applying for leave to enter the UK and stay here and a very good enforcement function with a clear law enforcement culture. That is what we are building and will continue to build.

[George Freeman]

First, may I congratulate the Home Secretary on the excellent news of Abu Qatada’s deportation? Does she agree that nothing symbolises the broken covenant of citizenship or fuels political disengagement more than the inability of Government to ensure that public services such as welfare are there for citizens who pay for them, rather than illegal immigrants who do not?

[Mr Harper]

I agree, and that is part of what we are trying to achieve in our proposals on the health consultation, on landlords and on the consultation we published last week on cracking down further on illegal working. We want Britain to be a welcome place for those who come here to contribute, but we want to deter those who do not, and make sure those who are here without any legal status are removed or leave the country.

Abu Qatada (Deportation)

George Freeman Excerpts

Monday 8th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely valid and important point. It is about the interpretation of human rights laws. We all agree that it is important to have a legislative framework that protects people’s human rights; it is then about how that is interpreted. It is also about the relative balance of responsibilities between this Parliament and another body that is external to it.

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend in the strongest terms on behalf of my constituents, who watched with growing disillusionment as the will of the people and Parliament of this country was profoundly defied by a decade of spin and drift costing over £1.7 million in legal fees. I especially welcome her announcement that illegal immigrants and criminals will be deported. Does she agree that nothing fuels disillusionment as much as state-sponsored abuse of protections that are rightly the privilege of British citizens, not foreign criminals?

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I share people’s frustrations and concerns when they see foreign national offenders whom we wish to be able to deport unable to be deported. He refers to illegal immigrants. One of the benefits of the change that has been made by scrapping the UK Border Agency and setting up the immigration enforcement part of the Home Office is that we will be able to put a far greater focus on ensuring that we remove illegal immigrants.

Violence against Women and Girls

George Freeman Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford). This morning, I was not intending to speak—not because I was disinterested or uninterested, but because it seemed to me appropriate that this debate should be led by women. I have, however, been inspired by the clarity, compassion, cross-party consensus and expressions of support for the importance of this debate. My decision to speak was also provoked by my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), who is not in his place. I share with him a great interest in horseracing and I have a great affection for him. I thought he made some good points, but I profoundly disagree with him on one or two central points.

I have rearranged the day in order to speak up for many of my hon. Friends whose absence should not be misconstrued as lack of interest in this important subject. I want to put on record my personal commitment to this issue; I also want to speak on behalf of women and girls in my constituency and elsewhere who perhaps fear that men are not listening, and to speak up for a modern, compassionate, progressive conservative strain of thinking, which takes this issue very seriously and applauds the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary for their leadership on it.

It seemed to me that the central point made my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley was to insist on an equality of treatment and to deny the need for any gender-based policy approach. That denies something very fundamental: that men and women are different and, in respect of sexual and physical violence, are not equal.

Around the world—here, too, but especially in the developing world—we are witnessing a shaming prevalence of violence against women and girls, which we have a duty to tackle. I do not pretend to be an expert, but one does not need to be an expert to see the urgency of the problem. If we look around the world, we can see that the emancipation of women and the education of girls has been a profound force for good in our society and in human progress. On the subject of the education of girls, I know from my own area of science that we have a huge problem and a huge challenge in Britain to ensure that more of our girls are educated in a way that allows them to take part in the great opportunities of the modern economy.

Around the world, too, we have a huge problem of sexual violence, which has been a long-standing part of too many conflicts. We heard earlier from those more eloquent than me about the problems of genital mutilation, forced marriages, sexual slavery and the human trafficking of boys and girls. We are all mindful, too, of the appalling story of gang rape in India, which I think has triggered huge public interest and has fired people’s sense of moral outrage. In a world whose economic globalisation we celebrate day on day, we all face a challenge to take responsibility for other impacts of globalisation that are perhaps less visibly, immediately or directly seen as our responsibility. We need to take both those sides of globalisation together.

My main point, however, is that we have a serious problem here in the UK. In recent decades, we have seen an epidemic of sexual and violent crime, the casualisation of media attitudes to sex and violence, an explosion of pornography, and in recent years casual online sexualisation and prostitution and huge problems relating to stalking and even classroom abuse, as we heard in the eloquent speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison). It is the casualness of all this that is worth highlighting. Such things are not any more considered by our media or our commentariat to be serious crimes. That, I think, is the most serious crime of all.

We should all be shamed that London has become a global centre of human trafficking and sexual exploitation. Far from this being, as my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley suggested, a distraction from the serious business of Government, I suggest that it is a vital and topical issue that affects more than half of our population.

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for his eloquent speech, reminding us all that not every male member of the Conservative party is blinkered or bonkers on this subject. Does he share with me the hope that better health and sex education in school can help prevent the real blight of sexting? As a Member of Parliament and as a parent, I must confess that, like others, I am only just beginning to understand the gravity of that situation.

[George Freeman]

I agree. The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point, which I feel personally, too, as the father of an 11-year-old daughter. I also think, however, that as a Parliament and a Government we need to be brave enough to realise that advice on sex must be put within some kind of moral framework. We need to be brave enough to acknowledge that young children require of us some guidance about what is right and wrong. Difficult territory though it is, there is no excuse for simply suggesting that there is no sense of appropriate conduct that we should be conveying.

This is a vital and topical issue which affects more than half our population, and it is an issue of global and local significance. I believe that our generation in this great institution must address it, and that we all have a duty to take it seriously. As I said earlier, I am the father of an 11-year-old daughter, but I also speak as the husband of a wife and as the son of a mother. We are all, in one way or another, linked to this issue, and, as a compassionate Conservative, I am proud that this generation, and this Prime Minister and Foreign Secretary, have provided such leadership on it. The Prime Minister said recently:

“I want to see an end to violence against women and girls in all its forms. I’m proud to add my voice to all those who stand up to oppose it. Too often these horrific crimes have gone unpunished. We want this to change and that is why we have criminalised forced marriage, widened the definition of domestic violence and made stalking illegal.”

I believe that, as a result of cross-party consensus, our generation may be able to look back on what we have achieved and be proud of it. I congratulate the Backbench Business Committee on arranging the debate, which, given its significance, I should have preferred to take place on a Monday rather than a Thursday. I also congratulate the sponsors of the motion, and those who are speaking about this important topic this afternoon.

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[George Freeman]

rose—

[Gavin Shuker]

I will give way.

Oral Answers to Questions

George Freeman Excerpts

Monday 9th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

As my hon. Friend will know, scrutiny of the draft legislation is only just starting. I understand that the first sitting of the Joint Committee is due to take place this week. Officials from the Department will consider this matter and give evidence to the Committee. I will commit to keeping the issue under review as the legislative process develops, because we recognise the need to ensure that the Bill and the scrutiny that we will respond to are effective. We need to recognise that this is an important matter in ensuring that crimes continue to be prosecuted.

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

5. What steps she is taking to help the police prevent crime in rural areas.

[The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice (Nick Herbert)]

The Government fully recognise the vulnerabilities of rural communities to particular crimes. The central grant to police forces continues to take into account the needs of rural areas. The election of police and crime commissioners will give rural communities a voice in determining local policing priorities.

[George Freeman]

I thank the Minister for that answer. His is a strong voice in reassuring people that the Government take crime in rural areas seriously. Will he join me in welcoming the excellent work that Norfolk police authority has done to clamp down on crime in rural areas? Does he agree that the central tension that such rural authorities face is between centralising work to prevent hardened crime from taking hold in rural counties and decentralising to maintain a strong footprint? Does he agree that joint working, as between Norfolk and Suffolk, is important in targeting resources?

[Nick Herbert]

I agree with my hon. Friend about the value of joint working and collaboration between forces, as is happening between Norfolk and Suffolk. That is a good example of how savings can be made. It is one reason why Norfolk has been able to increase the proportion of its officers who are on the front line, according to last week’s report by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary.