Asylum Reception Centre: Linton-on-Ouse

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Yes, I think the hon. Member is absolutely right, and she does great work on the all-party group on immigration detention, which is heavily engaged with me on these matters. Whatever we do with these facilities, we have to plan them properly. That did not happen at Napier, hence the trouble. This is a better-planned site, there is no doubt about it—some of the issues of dormitory accommodation and other things have been solved, and the accommodation itself has been planned better—but it is much worse for accessing amenities and public services for the service users, which leads to all other kinds of problems.

As I say, we are where we find ourselves, but I do not think it is right that we can effectively use this village, which is clearly not the right the place for this facility. Everybody can see that. I am really interested to hear whether the Minister will defend this choice, because I have not heard a Minister or an official do that yet. There is lots of finger pointing going on.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

Although I am from the other side of the Pennines, I find the hon. Gentleman’s case completely compelling. Is this site intended to be permanent or is it temporary? I would be grateful if he could explain that.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I think it is more than temporary. We are not quite clear, and I appreciate the hon. Member’s support. Clearly, the Home Office is putting quite a big investment into this. It is putting a gym, a library and facilities for multi-faith worship activities on site. It is clearly a big investment, so I can only imagine that it is not a two-year but a decade-long thing, if not longer, depending on how the wider asylum and small boats issue carries on. I think people’s lives are going to be blighted for a decade at least—that would be my guesstimate—and that affects things in so many different ways in the village, not least the liberties that people should reasonably expect.

To me, the plans are half-baked. I cannot put it any more kindly than that. On the call today with Home Office officials, the words were, “This is going to be a journey.” I just do not think that is right. I just do not think we can treat a community of 600 people like that. Of course these matters are controversial wherever we put such facilities, but nevertheless it is clearly easier and more likely to work as part of a local community in a bigger community, for so many different reasons—not least the fear of crime, of course. In a bigger conurbation, when someone is walking down the street there are likely to be other people on that street, but in a village such as Linton-on-Ouse there often is not, so people are going to feel like prisoners in their own home much of the time there.

I said right at the start that this is an abuse of power, and I do not think that is putting it too strongly. The Home Office is using its emergency powers, with a Q notice, so it did not have to go through the planning process for this material change of use, which it undoubtedly is. The reason for those powers—why is it an emergency?—was, we were told, covid. Well, we thought that covid was actually largely behind us, especially at this time of year. I do not think it is right to say that covid can be one of the reasons why we are using emergency powers in this way. I know that Hambleton District Council is looking at enforcement action against the Home Office to find out the exact reasons behind the emergency powers, which should be used exceptionally rather than on a more frequent basis. So this really does not seem to have been properly considered or thought through, and it is ill-informed.

Where do we need to go now? There are other sites available. My belief is that this should stop completely. It is not just about putting mitigations in place; it is the wrong place, and there is no way to mitigate this facility in a way that will make residents feel safe and be safe, so we should stop completely. I have a list of other sites that could be considered. I am interested to see what the Minister says about the consideration of other sites, but the Linton-on-Ouse action group has put together a list of other sites, all from the MOD disposal list. I think that is where we should go next. We should suspend these plans, look at this and consult on other sites. We absolutely should delay right away, and there should be no talk of this happening in a week’s time. The police have asked for at least a month’s delay. If the police want a month’s delay, the Home Office surely cannot ignore the police and crime commissioner’s recommendation, which has the support of her senior officers, and carry on regardless without listening to the expert advice of those people.

The line of least resistance is that the Government simply change tack, have a change of heart, reverse their plans and look at this again, which I would welcome. If that is not going to happen, and I have no indication that it is, then as I have said, I will be working with Hambleton District Council on a legal challenge. I think it is serious enough that we should challenge the basis of the decision and the process by which it has been made in the courts if the Government do not change tack. I do not think it is right to do that unless we have a serious chance of reversing the plans completely and blocking them altogether. If all we were to achieve were simply to delay things or give the Home Office the opportunity it should have taken in the first place to consult properly, I would not want to waste taxpayers’ money. We are still waiting for legal advice, but if there is a realistic chance that we can block the proposals and make the Home Office think again, we should do that on behalf of those people who live in the village.

I am told all the time by Home Office officials that this is a political decision. It will take the Minister or the Home Secretary to intervene, either to own the decision and say, “This is my decision, this is the right thing to do”, or to own up and say, “It is not my decision, and this is the wrong place.” There is lots of finger-pointing going on, but it cannot be that the fortunes of that village hang on a decision that no one will take ownership of. That is very much where we are. I would like to understand who owns the decision, and the rationale behind it in the context of other sites. I want the Minister to tackle the issue that I believe is at the heart of all this —tell me I am wrong—that it is not simply that the availability of the site has superseded the suitability of the site. I cannot see any other justification for the selection of Linton-on-Ouse as the place for this asylum reception centre.

Oral Answers to Questions

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Monday 8th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

I will correct that, Mr Speaker. In the broadest possible sense, we cannot have this situation where local authorities literally refuse to engage with us while at the same time saying that consultation is not taking place.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

We know that Greater Manchester police are in special measures and that the chief constable is on gardening leave. We know that victims of crime in Greater Manchester are at risk. We even know that police officers going out on calls are at risk, because they are not getting the information. The Mayor of Greater Manchester tells us that he is not getting the information from the police. I know that the Home Secretary has previously replied that she is not getting the information from Greater Manchester police. Can she tell the House when she expects to get the information from Greater Manchester police that will enable us to know if there is an improvement in the appalling situation?

[Priti Patel]

The hon. Gentleman is right: it is an absolutely appalling situation. He will also know that the Mayor’s responsibility is to ensure that Greater Manchester police act immediately on the force improvement plan. My hon. friend the Minister for Crime and Policing has been working assiduously on this and has met the deputy Mayor and the acting chief constable. We have a force improvement plan and we intend to use it to get information and data as well as to hold everybody to account over what has happened with that failure in data collection and, ultimately, the impact that has had on victims.

Oral Answers to Questions

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Monday 9th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

First, if the hon. Lady has not received a response, I will ensure that she receives one. The fact of the matter is that we are doing everything in our power to support the NHS heroes who have been working flat out throughout this coronavirus crisis, and there will be more activity on this front to come.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

Greater Manchester police officers keep blowing the whistle to the Manchester Evening News about the failures of the new computer system, iOPs—the integrated operational policing system. Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary has said that the system is putting vulnerable people at risk of harm. The system released the details of victims’ names and addresses online earlier this year. The £27 million scheme is massively overspent. Has the Secretary of State made a recent assessment of the project?

[Priti Patel]

As the hon. Gentleman is aware—he has referred to this—we have sent Her Majesty’s chief inspector of constabulary, Tom Winsor, to look at what has been going within Greater Manchester policing with iOPS. The cases that we have seen and the inability to record crime data—the points that the hon. Gentleman has made—are clearly unacceptable. We are keeping it under review, and we will keep him and other hon. Members informed of the progress of the work that is being undertaken on this front.

Operation Augusta

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered Operation Augusta.

This is a story of the gross failure of public policy, and the implementation of public policy, to protect vulnerable children. Andy Burnham, the Labour Mayor of Greater Manchester watched “The Betrayed Girls”, a BBC programme about the sexual abuse and exploitation of young people, in 2017. Afterwards, he set up what became the independent assurance review of the effectiveness of multi-agency responses to child sexual exploitation in Greater Manchester. I want to discuss part 1, which is an assurance review of Operation Augusta.

I watched “The Betrayed Girls” on Sunday evening on BBC iPlayer, and it was a harrowing experience. Reading the report, one varies between despair and outrage at the failures of Greater Manchester police and Manchester City Council to protect mainly young girls, but young boys too, from predatory sexual exploitation.

If we had the same rules as the US Senate, I would ask for the report to be read into the record so that people could read it, but we do not, so I will have to summarise it. Part 1 focuses on Operation Augusta, which was set up following the death of Victoria Agoglia on 29 September 2003. She died after being injected with heroin by a 50-year-old man. Shockingly, although she died in 2003, the report states that there has been no follow-up investigation into her death, despite the fact that Peter Fahy, the chief constable, told her relatives afterwards that he was quite happy to look at the case again, which led them to believe that it would be. Since then, Peter Fahy has said that he was just being open. I think that is dissimulating to the point of dishonesty. It was clearly the intention to reassure the family that the death of this girl would not be forgotten.

There has been no investigation, although there has been a coroner’s inquest. Four of my colleagues from Manchester and I have written to the Attorney General asking for a fresh inquest. Reading the report, it is difficult to see why the coroner came to the conclusion he did. It is particularly difficult because the current coroner is refusing to release documents. In the absence of those documents, we would like the Attorney General to order a fresh inquest.

The coroner’s conclusion was that

“there was no evidence of a gross failure to meet Victoria’s needs that would have had a significant bearing on her death”

and that there could be no inference that the events leading to her death were “reasonably foreseeable”. She claimed she had been raped, sexually abused, assaulted and plied with drugs for two years, and the coroner could not see how her death was reasonably foreseeable. The social workers knew what was happening; they had given her recommendations about what to do. I think her death was eminently foreseeable, so I hope that the Attorney General will agree to order the opening of an inquest and that the Home Office will support that.

That was the genesis of Operation Augusta, which was set up to see whether many children—mainly girls aged between 13 and 16—were in the same situation as Victoria Agoglia. A dedicated team of police officers was set up with embedded social workers to look at the situation. Relatively quickly, they found that there were 57 girls in a similar situation and 97 suspected perpetrators of this kind of vile abuse.

The report makes it clear that although Operation Augusta was successful in identifying those girls and suspected perpetrators, it was bedevilled by a lack of resources and territorial disputes between three police divisions in Manchester and about access to HOLMES, the police computer that records cases. The situation was difficult, and it is clear that leadership was lacking. After 16 months, Operation Augusta was wound up.

One of the many worrying factors about this report is that the social workers and more junior police officers have vivid and clear recollections of the operation.

[James Daly (Bury North) (Con)]

The report is scandalous, harrowing and difficult to read. I quote one thing with reference to what the hon. Gentleman has just said:

“the decision to close down Operation Augusta was driven by the decision by senior officers to remove the resources from the investigation rather than a sound understanding that all lines of enquiry had been successfully completed or exhausted”.

On its own merits, that is scandalous. That is in the report. I also read—

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

Could you resume your seat, please?

[Graham Stringer]

The hon. Gentleman is underlining and emphasising my point about the lack of resources and leadership.

Two of the senior officers became chief constables afterwards, and their recollection of events is either non-existent or hazy. I simply do not believe that someone who had been in charge of such an operation and received such awful reports would not remember—the junior officers have clear memories of how it was finished. That, of course, meant that the perpetrators, who were known about by the police and social workers, carried on, as the report says, in plain sight. A lot of the abuse took place above Indian restaurants on Wilmslow Road—the so-called curry mile—in south Manchester. Cars were known to pull up with girls, and the police did nothing—in fact, they withdrew from acting on that information. As the hon. Member for Bury North (James Daly) said, that is scandalous.

Since the termination of Operation Augusta, the response of Greater Manchester police and Manchester City Council to this quite shocking report has been to apologise and to say that they are improving co-ordination and intensifying work to identify people, and they have done that. The awful thing is that, for the last 50 years, many of the children who have been abused and murdered have become the subjects of well-known operations. Reports always make 80 or 90 recommendations after such failures, and those are always agreed to, but we carry on writing reports, and children carry on being abused. Although I believe that Manchester City Council and Greater Manchester police are sincere in their attempts to be more effective and to get their act together, we need to understand the issue more deeply by asking why these things have happened time and again and what can be done to prevent a report from being written in 16 years’ time about children who are on the streets now, while we discuss this situation.

I referred to the clear memories of the more junior police officers and the amnesia of the senior officers involved. If there had been a different culture and stronger protections for whistleblowers, allowing those junior police officers and social workers to report such cases in the knowledge that they would not lose their careers, I believe more would have been done. In no sense would the public have put up with what happened if they had known about it—they expect our children’s services departments and the police to protect the most vulnerable young women—but they know about it only 16 years later. We need stronger protections for whistleblowers and an acceptance that bringing such issues to the attention of the public and senior politicians is a good thing.

Although there were disputes about resource allocation in the police force and between Greater Manchester police and Manchester City Council, one has to remember that, at the time, police numbers were going up and local government was better funded. That is no longer the case; there is not a children’s department in the country that is not short of resources for the protection of children. We cannot wish, as I do, for better service provision for those vulnerable people without providing the resources. Police numbers have also gone down. However, that decline in resources does not apply to the time of Operation Augusta.

Another point that was made in “The Betrayed Girls” and in the report, and that has been made more generally, is that the vast majority of the men involved were of Pakistani origin and of the Muslim faith. The police, who probably had good intentions, made a mistake in saying, “We will be accused of racism if we point this out.” Nazir Afzal, the previous director of public prosecutions in the north-west and a practising Muslim, said that such activities are against the teaching of Islam and of the Koran, and that the vast majority of Pakistani people are as appalled by what has happened as the rest of the population. That is not to say that one should hide what has happened on Wilmslow Road or in other parts of the country, such as Telford, Rotherham, Rochdale, Oxford or Ipswich—one can go on and on listing different towns where such cases have happened.

A final point on resources is that a number of requests have been made for the Home Office to do serious research into grooming. My hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) recently asked that of the Home Office, both by letter and on the Floor of the House. It is a mistake to think that the grooming of children, as described in the report, is the same as paedophile rings. The Home Office has done good research on paedophile rings. They are understood by the police and the Home Office, which know how to disrupt them. However, very little research has been done on grooming gangs. For instance, we do not know whether there are “Mr Bigs” behind the gangs at a national level or whether the cases represent major crime or decentralised local activity. That is important for our understanding; if it is major crime, organised on a national and international basis like drug crime, the National Crime Agency should be involved in disrupting that activity. I would be grateful if the Minister explained when the Home Office will fund and sponsor research into grooming gangs.

As I said, if people had blown the whistle, a stop could probably have been put to these things, because the public would not stand for them. I want to mention two people who have stayed with this issue and have continued to bring it to the public’s attention since the first Rochdale and Rotherham cases came to light. Sara Rowbotham, who worked in Rochdale as head of its crisis intervention team and is now a Rochdale councillor, and Margaret Oliver, who was a detective on the Augusta team before her maternity leave, have constantly brought it to the public’s attention. Margaret has argued very strongly, alongside the family of Victoria Agoglia, for the case to be re-opened and for the police to take more action against the perpetrators. Those two women deserve serious praise for what they are doing. I do not want in any sense to trivialise this serious debate, but they are more worthy of being nominated to the House of Lords than some of the people who have been put forward by the Labour party, which has put forward a pretty eccentric list, to put it mildly.

[James Daly]

I agree completely with the hon. Gentleman on that. Why has nobody from the GMP or Manchester City Council been held accountable for the failings identified in the report?

[Graham Stringer]

I am not sure that I have a good answer for the hon. Gentleman. Some people, such as Pauline Newman, who was in charge of children’s services at the time, have moved on. The senior police officers who took the decision to wind up operation Augusta have moved on and are not co-operating—one is not talking at all, and the other says he cannot remember. In such circumstances, when people are no longer employed by the city council or Greater Manchester police, it is difficult to know what action could be taken or by whom. However, the hon. Gentleman asks a good question. A line of accountability is needed. When one reads the report and some of the reports since, records of meetings or of attendees at those meetings are absent in some cases. That makes things difficult. However, if his point is that somebody should be held accountable, I agree with him. That is clearly right.

The final point I want to make in this sad story is that the police and Manchester City Council have said that they will improve. Today, however, Greater Manchester police have declared a “critical incident” in the introduction of their iOPS computer system, which 90% of police officers rely on to get information. The system cost £29 million and is not working. With the best will in the world, if the officers whose job it is to look into these allegations do not know what is happening, they cannot do their job. We need not only resources—more police officers—but the proper use of resources and computer systems. Currently, when I have no doubt that many perpetrators are still walking the streets of Greater Manchester and other cities, we need Greater Manchester police to do better.

This is an awful and shocking story of the failure to protect some of the most vulnerable people in the country. One of the failures, which was a mistake, is that action was not taken in some cases because the police said that the girls were not reliable witnesses. However, there have been policy statements to the effect that we do not have to rely on the victims to protect themselves in order to take the perpetrators to court. I hope that the Home Office and all the councils in the country will redouble their efforts to ensure that such activities, which I am sure still happen, are stopped.

Kerslake Arena Attack Review

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Wednesday 28th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

My daughter was at the arena not that night but a few weeks before. The arena is a hub for many teenagers in that part of the world. Being a north-west MP, I attended the first Cobra meeting in the morning not down in the Cabinet Office but from Manchester. The point my hon. Friend makes is the very point I made, which is that these teenagers will go back to their schools and their communities, which are not necessarily in the city centre or near the seat of the explosion. Have we put in place the messaging to our education authorities and so on to pick up on that? I was assured that the answer is yes. I asked them to go back and redouble the messaging, and we hope that was done. If it was not, I would be happy to hear from colleagues on both sides of the House to ensure that we follow up on those assurances. One lesson to remember is that people come to big cities from all over the country, and they will disperse back and take their injuries, whether mental or physical, with them.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

In extreme adversity, this may well have been Manchester’s finest hour. Andy Burnham, Richard Leese and Eddy Newman were a model of civic leadership during that period. The people of Manchester behaved heroically, as did the first responders to this terrible event. The force duty officer, in ignoring protocol and using his judgment, gave support and possibly saved lives in the immediate aftermath of the bomb.

Having paid those tributes, I would like to ask the Minister whether, if such a tragic event happens again in Manchester or anywhere else in the country—we all hope it does not—the Vodafone system, as of today, is up and working. We cannot afford another catastrophic failure of the communications system.

[Mr Wallace]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. Not only have I sought and been given assurances about the Vodafone system, I have also asked that we explore a back-up system or contingency plan if something like this does not work in future. There is always the potential for something to go wrong with technology, which is why we need to exercise it, but we also need to consider alternatives should the technology fail on the night.

The one thing on which I can give the hon. Gentleman some assurance is that, before and after, the technology worked successfully at, for example, London Bridge and Westminster and elsewhere, but it is not good enough that the technology did not work on the night when it was needed in Manchester.

Proscription of Hezbollah

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Thursday 25th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Joan Ryan]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman and thank him for that intervention. He is completely right to say that there is no distinction and we need to be clear about that.

Hezbollah’s actions are driven by a deep-seated, intractable and vicious hatred of Jews. The House does not need to take my word for it; Hezbollah’s leaders have proudly boasted of their anti-Semitism:

“If they all gather in Israel,”

declared Nasrallah,

“it will save us the trouble of going after them worldwide.”

Nor is Nasrallah a lone voice. Naim Qassem, Hezbollah’s deputy leader, has said that

“the history of Jews has proven that, regardless of the Zionist proposal, they are people who are evil in their ideas”.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is making a powerful case. Does she agree that, as well as being anti-Semitic, Hezbollah has assassinated and murdered Christians? As the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) has said, any distinction between a military part and a political part of Hezbollah is entirely without meaning.

[Joan Ryan]

I have no difficulty agreeing with my hon. Friend on that point. Hezbollah has killed probably more Muslims than anybody else, as well as Christians, Jews and others.

Hezbollah’s leaders and its media peddle classic anti-Semitic tropes and lies. They refer to Jews in the basest of terms, labelling them “apes and pigs”, and suggesting that

“you will find no one more miserly or greedy than they are”.

Hezbollah’s leaders and media make spurious claims about Jewish conspiracies and world domination, and they deny the Holocaust, suggesting that

“the Jews invented the legend of the Nazi atrocities”.

Hezbollah’s hatred of Jews is a noxious mix, which, in the words of one writer, fuses

“Arab nationalist-based anti-Zionism, anti-Jewish rhetoric from the Koran, and, most disturbingly, the antique anti-Semitic beliefs and conspiracy theories of European fascism”.

Forensic Evidence: Alleged Manipulation

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Monday 27th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

As I said clearly at the outset, I do think that the situation is extremely serious, but I agree with the hon. Gentleman’s diagnosis that it may be a rare one. Again, I repeat the view that the regulator has reached about the efficacy of any standards of regulation to prevent

“determined malpractice by skilled but corrupt personnel”.

Again, I place on record the progress that has been made since 2011, when the regulator published the first codes of practice and conduct for forensic science providers. I do think that there is increased stringency in the standards and quality requirements for forensic science, and that matters enormously because of the way this underpins confidence in forensic science within the criminal justice system.

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

The Minister does himself no credit when he says that this is a tribal issue. I direct him to three reports—not one or two—by the cross-party Science and Technology Committee that criticised his Government’s Home Office for not consulting Professor Silverman, who was the scientific adviser to the Home Office. I also suggest that he reads the evidence—three times—from Dr Tully, the Forensic Science Regulator, who said that murderers and rapists will go free because of the changes that the Government made. Not one party but all parties came to that conclusion. Given what appears to have happened in my constituency, will the Minister, after the courts have dealt with the matter, look into conducting a full review of forensic science services?

[Mr Hurd]

As I have made clear, this is an enormously important issue. We need to get hard evidence of what happened and its impact on the system, and all lessons will have to be learned from that process. I know that the Opposition do not like it, but the point I am trying to make is that the urgent question was about what happened at Randox, not about the privatisation of the Forensic Science Service. As the independent regulator said, there is no link.

Persecution of Religious Minorities: Middle East

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2016 Westminster Hall

[Jim Shannon]

All the hon. Lady’s interventions have been applicable to the issues, and I thank her for that. It gives us a focus. I am conscious of time, Mr Stringer, so I will try to head on.

Despite the systematic persecution of religious or belief groups in Iraq—some expert bodies think that the situation with the Yazidis amounts to genocide; I think that, too, as do many others in the House—the UK’s Gateway, Children at Risk and Mandate resettlement schemes have helped only a few hundred in the past year or so. While some Iraqis may fit all the criteria under the current Syrian vulnerable persons resettlement scheme, they are not eligible for asylum in the UK because they are not Syrian nationals.

The all-party group that I chair is urgently calling for a modest expansion of the Syrian scheme to create an Iraqi vulnerable persons resettlement scheme. That would permit Iraqis who fit the current vulnerability criteria and are recommended by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to be made eligible for asylum in the UK. That would be a small change and a small number, but it would be a significant move that would enable those subject to persecution to have an opportunity. In the wake of the Chilcot report, the UK cannot absolve itself from assisting Iraqis. Prioritising Iraqis alongside Syrians for resettlement in the UK is the least we can do. Daesh does not discriminate depending on whether individuals are Iraqi or Syrian, and neither should we.

Finally, the all-party group’s latest report, “Fleeing Persecution: Asylum Claims in the UK on Religious Freedom Grounds”, which I referred to a few moments ago, highlights what happens when individuals who have been persecuted for their religion or belief reach the UK and claim asylum, and the lack of understanding and misperceptions of religion and belief among decision makers working in the UK asylum system. We are trying to be constructive. We are not pointing the finger or trying to be nasty. We want to point out where constructive changes could be made to help the system and those people who have every cause to be here and can no longer live in their own country. In religious persecution cases, Home Office caseworkers have often based their decision on whether an asylum seeker is genuine on quick internet searches, as the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant) said, on informal staff-made crib sheets and, in the case of Christians, on Bible trivia questions including, “What colour is the Bible?” It could be black, white or red. Does it matter what colour it is, for goodness’ sake? What is in the Bible is what matters. The word that it contains is the important issue. I sometimes wonder how these things happen. Such methods limit the capacity to differentiate between individuals who are genuinely part of a religious community facing persecution and those who have learnt the “correct” answers, as has already been referred to. Misinterpretation also plays a large role in the errors occurring in such cases. I urge the Home Office to recognise its genuine shortcomings and equip itself with well-trained staff and suitable translators to ensure a fair hearing of all cases.

I hope that the Minister agrees with the importance of addressing persecution in the middle east in both short and long-term strategies so that we in this House can, in conjunction with our partners abroad, secure the most stable world possible.

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

I intend to call the Front-Bench people to sum up at 10.30. There are three people standing; the arithmetic is straightforward.

--- Later in debate ---

[Julian Knight]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, which returns to what I was saying about how the countries that indulge in such activities are actually bad investments. In effect, they are proving themselves to be unworthy of the aid that we are giving them. We need to be thoughtful about exactly how economically engaged we are with those countries.

In Turkey, we have seen increasing intolerance. Under Atatürk, the formation of modern Turkey was about a secular society—religion still played an enormous part in society, but the governance of Turkey was secular. It is now moving away from that and, too, hanging on to religion some of the darker elements in that society. We have to be very aware of that in an important neighbour on our doorstep. In 1999 or 2000, I think, when we were looking at the crisis in the Balkans, we were saying, “Isn’t it horrific that this goes on on Europe’s borders?” but Turkey is on Europe’s borders as well. We should be thinking about that in connection with our sphere of influence.

To conclude, we need to consider the APPG report. When we deal with individuals—after all, this is about individuals—we have to be much more thoughtful and better trained in how we do so. The better statistics help, so that we know the reasons why people are coming to this country—are they fleeing religious persecution?—as does better training for Home Office and UK Border Force personnel, in particular to assess whether an asylum seeker is a victim of religious persecution.

I imagine that it can be difficult for people to speak up, especially if they are members of a minority and have had to hide their religious light under a bushel. When they come to another country, the person they are seeing is not only in a uniform—perhaps not the reassuring figure that we might see, but a threat and authority—but someone from whom they would have kept things quiet, and now they are having to open up, often in a foreign language, and in a completely alien environment. I understand how people might find that incredibly difficult and their silence might be perceived as something different. We need to spend time with such individuals, and we need to support our staff to do so, in order to help all such people not only in our country, but in the camps, close to the conflict zones.

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Before I call Peter Grant, I assume that the proposer would like two minutes at the end of the Minister’s speech.

[Jim Shannon]

indicated assent.

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

I call Peter Grant.

Asylum Support Contracts

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Wednesday 10th February 2016 Westminster Hall

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Order. I intend to call the Front-Bench spokespeople at 10.30 am. That leaves us 34 minutes. There are seven people standing. The arithmetic is straightforward.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy McDonald (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) for securing this incredibly important debate. My constituency has the highest concentration of asylum seekers anywhere in the United Kingdom. In December 2015, we had 1,042 asylum seekers, which is way in excess of the cluster limit. The Minister may say that the number has been reduced by some small amount, but the figures are clear. In some communities, there is an asylum seeker for every 18 residents, and I hope the Minister will take that fact on board.

I am terrifically proud of Middlesbrough’s long history of compassion and support. We have Justice First, the Churches—Methodist Action, the Catholic Church and the Anglican Church—and other faith groups, charities and individuals. A fantastic network of love and compassion underpins all that work, and I am delighted to celebrate it.

It was the red doors issue that brought this matter into focus. While I do not criticise Andrew Norfolk of The Times for his excellent piece of work that brought the issue into the light, I do not agree that the local contractor, Jomast, deliberately set out to mark the properties occupied by those seeking sanctuary, but it was clearly known to the contractor. They were its properties and it painted the doors red, so for it to plead ignorance of the issue is indicative of the arrogance that characterises how it goes about its business. However, it was not deliberate so let us paint the doors in other colours and move on.

G4S is the main contactor in my region. It has no record of running housing contracts and yet it still got the contract. The local subcontractor, Stuart Monk of Jomast, then had them over a barrel. He held out for the best deal that he could possibly extract, because he had the properties and G4S did not, and he has made a mint. G4S says it does not make any money out of the contract. Well, diddums. If it does not like it, let us bring the contract to an end and get G4S out of the picture as quickly as possible. It has demonstrated that it should be nowhere near Government public service business. Just look at what it did in our prisons. We only have to cast our minds back to the dreadful fraud it perpetrated on the taxpayer over the prisoner tagging contract. It is not a fit and proper company and the sooner it is out of our national life, the better.

The arrogance and contempt that characterises so much of G4S’s behaviour was never more evident than when John Whitwam, a managing director, recently appeared before the Home Affairs Committee. He quite deliberately tried to leave the Committee with the impression that the local authority was totally engaged throughout the process, but that is simply not true. Indeed, the problem is that local authorities have no standing in the business of housing asylum seekers and have been cut out of the loop. Following Mr Whitwam’s suggestion that local authorities are somehow involved in the approval and inspection of properties, I trust that the Minister will speak to the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee because I think that Parliament was grossly misled and I hope that action follows.

What on earth are we doing as a country? Why do the Government think that the right thing to do in response to a humanitarian crisis is to create a structure that is all about making money—profits created by handing over taxpayers’ money to private companies? There is something wrong here. Of course, we want to carry on providing succour and support for our sisters and brothers, but the Government simply abuse our good nature. That support and sanctuary should come with a commitment to support the local services that have to respond. My town has been hammered by the lunacy of austerity. My local authority has suffered cut after cut, so that I am now questioning whether it can even begin to discharge the barest of statutory functions.

In addition, what do we learn today on the back of the abolition of the revenue support grant, which will cripple communities up and down the country? In The Guardian this morning it is laid bare: again, the Tory Government punish Labour councils and give support to their Tory boroughs. The Government’s behaviour is partial, inequitable, grossly discriminatory and ill-becoming a party that purports to govern for the entire country. It is beneath the shires and City bankers to trouble themselves with such matters—leave it to the northerners, the Scots and the Welsh—because those in their cosy world do not want to be troubled.

It will escape no one’s attention that in the Prime Minister’s constituency we will not find a single person seeking sanctuary, even though areas such as his receive the favourable local government finance settlement transitional relief, while areas that take asylum seekers get nothing at all. The unfairness is stark. Perhaps the Prime Minister’s mother should write him a letter. Understandably, the Tories will say, “Look to the regions, look to the Labour heartlands. They won’t protest, they won’t complain, so we can get away with it.” Therein lies the dilemma.

We are proud of our compassion and of the welcome given to strangers in our communities—many of us and the people we represent have been strangers too. We try to recognise our good fortune and to be generous to those who have not been so fortunate. Yes, we will not walk by on the other side of the road and we will try to treat people as we would like to be treated ourselves, but we look to the Government to behave in a patriotic, fair and balanced way. That means that we respond generously as a nation and we do not leave it only to those parts of our country that are already facing immensely difficult times.

We look proudly at our history as a nation. We are rightly marking the 71st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. We rightly remember the Kindertransport of the 1930s as a positive response to the crisis faced by thousands of children throughout Europe. It therefore pains me to hear the Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland describing the modern-day Kindertransportees as a “bunch of migrants”. I want better from our country’s Prime Minister and so do millions of our fellow citizens. I am afraid that that laid bare the true thinking of this cruel and pernicious Government.

If every town and city in the United Kingdom welcomed 5% of the distressed, vulnerable and persecuted people that my wonderful town of Middlesbrough does, no one would even notice that they were here. What happens instead? The whole exercise has been turned into a profit-making, value-extracting one for the likes of Stuart Monk and his company Jomast to make millions of pounds of profit from.

The Minister is a decent man and I look forward to further discussions with him about how things might be progressed. However, I met with him in November 2014 and many of the issues that are being raised now were raised with him then. I regret to note that absolutely no progress has been made since. I hope that he takes on board the comments of hon. Members from throughout the United Kingdom today and accedes to the request for a formal review of a rotten contract. Let us start behaving properly.

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Before I call Stuart McDonald, I advise the Minister that the proposer of the motion does not require the two minutes or so at the end of the debate.

EU Justice and Home Affairs Measures

Graham Stringer Excerpts

Wednesday 19th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)]

I congratulate the shadow Home Secretary on putting before the House a simple and straightforward motion. This difficult and complicated issue involves sovereignty, international crime and the future of the European Union, so it is right that elected Members—even those of us who do not agree with the shadow Home Secretary—can vote on such a straightforward motion.

If the debate was just about the improvements that the Government have made to the European arrest warrant, it might be possible to vote for it, although as my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) pointed out, many of those improvements do not go as far as they should. If this was simply a matter of the speed of getting through the judicial process, it would be easy to vote for it, for the reasons given by the right hon. Member for Ashford (Damian Green). But it goes much deeper than that. There are justices and injustices involved.

I do not know how to balance the injustices suffered by some people against the undoubted benefits derived from the European arrest warrant. How do we say to Symeou, Dark, Hainsworth, the Kings, Dines and other people who have suffered injustices, “Your injustice under the European arrest warrant is worth going through because it enables us to bring other criminals to court more quickly”? We cannot balance things that way. If we could, I would be interested to know what metric could be used.

The basic issue is not the speed of justice or improvements to the EAW. It is the fact that by entering the European arrest warrant system, we are giving recognition to courts throughout the European Union and passing sovereignty over to the European Court of Justice. To anybody who has read the accession documents just on Croatia—the same comments could be applied to Romania, Bulgaria and a number of other European countries—it is almost beyond dispute that those countries do not have a criminal justice system like ours. Theirs is subject to corruption and political interference, yet we are saying that the European arrest warrant procedure agreed in those countries will be recognised and followed through in this country.

I do not see how we can honour what has been honoured in this country for nearly 800 years—habeas corpus—when we allow British citizens to be taken by foreign courts that are subject to political interference and corruption, and locked up without the evidence being produced.

[Sir Oliver Heald]

It is not as though nothing is being done about that. The group of states against corruption, of which the UK is a very strong member, is doing work on these very issues—on corruption in courts and in Parliaments. It is going through the countries that the hon. Gentleman is talking about, reporting on these issues, highlighting them and pressing the Governments.

[Graham Stringer]

That is a fair point, but anyone who had been locked up in Romania or Croatia would not be pleased to hear that the situation will improve at some time in the future. The debate is among British politicians who are pragmatic; the arguments put forward by the Home Secretary and the shadow Home Secretary were powerful, pragmatic arguments about how there would be immediate benefit, but that is not the argument going on in the rest of the European Union.

Like many of the changes in the European Union, acceptance of the European arrest warrant is seen as a way of furthering integration. We are not entering into arrangements for the European prosecutor’s role, but I can almost guarantee—as much as one can guarantee anything in future—that in four, five, six or seven years’ time we will have adopted the European arrest warrant, this country will be in Eurojust and it will not look right if we are not in the European prosecutor system. We may well get a decision from the European Court of Justice that says, in effect, that we have to be in the European prosecutor system.

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that, through the use of the European arrest warrant, British citizens could be extradited to face charges under the European public prosecutor’s office anyway if prosecuted for those charges?

[Graham Stringer]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and that might be one of the arguments used to drag us into the process. The European Union is a thin-end-of-the-wedge organisation; once it has started, it will move on to further integration.

The right hon. Member for Ashford made a powerful case, as have many Members, for dealing with international crime and keeping terrorism out of the country, which we all want—there is nobody in the House who does not want to deal with international terrorism—but what we have with the European arrest warrant is Hobson’s choice: we must either take what is put before us or have a poorer system, in pragmatic terms, in the short term. If the Government are serious about renegotiating our position in Europe, they should not be giving up negotiating positions like this. We should be asking for a better position, rather than saying, “Yes, we’ll go along with that because there is nothing else available.”

The right hon. Member for Ashford also made the point that many of our crime-fighting agencies, such as the police and the security services, like the European arrest warrant. They do not always follow the rules themselves, but our security services have for some time preferred to have terrorists in London, rather than elsewhere, so that they can watch them. I think that is a bad policy, but I mention it because I do not think that we should always take at face value what is said by police forces and the security services.

I will finish with a powerful point made by the shadow Home Secretary in the previous debate that I think is worthy of an answer. She said that the fact that there have been miscarriages of justice under the European arrest warrant does not mean that we should get rid of it. We do not remove the police’s power of arrest just because they sometimes abuse it. That is absolutely right, but it does not mean that, when opting into something, we should not look for something better than what we are getting from the European arrest warrant.