Counter-Terrorism and Security Bill

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Tuesday 6th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hanson]

Perhaps they were there on Second Reading. I might be a bit old fashioned, but I thought that one of the purposes of Government committees—when I was a Minister I served on many such committees in the backrooms and bowels of government—was for Ministers to thrash out what should be in a Bill before it is presented to the House. Today’s edition of The Guardian has an article on this matter—again, it must be true. It says:

“A fresh coalition row has broken out after Nick Clegg told the home secretary, Theresa May, that she will face a parliamentary defeat on the government’s counter-terrorism bill unless judges are given oversight of plans to impose temporary exclusion orders on some terrorist suspects returning to Britain.”

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

Is that the best the right hon. Gentleman can do—reading out bits of newspapers?

[Mr Hanson]

Well, it strikes me that when The Guardian newspaper reports that the Deputy Prime Minister is challenging the Home Secretary behind the scenes about judicial oversight, it is an important matter to bring before the House of Commons.

Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hanson]

This goes to the heart of the key amendments that the Opposition seek to impress on the Government to improve the Bill. The Minister will know that we have supported the Bill to date at Second Reading and in the discussions we have had so far, but we have had, and continue to have, some concerns over the need for two aspects in particular. The first is to ensure that there is in place a mechanism for a review of the role of the Act that may or may not be passed ultimately by this House and by the other place shortly. That review lies with the interception commissioner for communications, who could look at the Act and see whether the intention of the House was being met and whether there were developments or amendments that needed to be brought to the attention of the Government.

You will note, Mr Hood, that several amendments relate to this aspect. My initial amendment 3, which I tabled with my right hon. Friends this morning, would add the following at the end of clause 6:

“The Commissioner for the Interception of Communications must report on the operation of this Act six months following commencement of this Act, followed by subsequent reports every six months.”

That was intended to ensure an element of review to meet some of the genuine concerns raised by hon. Members of all parties. You will also see, Mr Hood, that we tabled new clause 2, which is a variation on the same theme. We did so to ensure parliamentary debate, given that we were not sure at that stage what amending provisions would be selected. The new clause effectively provides for the same activity.

We have helpfully tabled new clause 6, too, which provides for half-yearly reports by the interception of communications commissioner. It is linked to amendment 6 and to amendments 4 and 5, but all have the same purpose in life: they are all designed to ensure that the communications regulator is able to review the Act and has a statutory responsibility to do so, not just in six months’ time, following Royal Assent—given the Government’s timetable, that could be as early as Thursday this week—but formally. That would enable the commissioner to examine some of the concerns raised across the House, including by my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson).

There is a menu of options for the Government to look at and for the Minister to comment on. I would be happy if he supported any of those amendments; I have tabled three options for him to examine in detail and to establish whether any of them meet his particular obligations. He has an opportunity to give a commitment to establishing that one or all of them would be appropriate.

The second aspect relates to new clause 1, which I tabled this morning with my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition and other right hon. Friends. It would establish a “review of the powers, regulation, proportionality and oversight” and other issues that have been of concern to Members of all parties. Members were troubled about a number of longer-term issues, which need to be resolved before any action by a future Government on the storing of data and proportionality. We wanted to ensure that arrangements would be in place as soon as practicable for a review to be carried out by the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, David Anderson. It should include public consultation, and we need to ensure that the full terms of reference are published in consultation with not just Mr Anderson but the relevant Select Committees of both Houses of Parliament. That means the involvement of, for example, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) and the Home Affairs Committee and, indeed, that of the right hon. and learned Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) and the Intelligence and Security Committee, which could contribute to the discussion.

Since we tabled that new clause this morning, the Government have helpfully examined it and tabled their own new clause 7, which covers many of the long-term issues that I feel are necessary for us to consider. Crucially, it covers areas that my right hon. Friends and I are concerned about, particularly the point that the independent reviewer of terrorism must review the operation and regulation of investigatory powers and take current and future threats into account. We accept that there are current threats and there will be future threats. We need to examine our ability to deal with those threats, and, crucially, to think about how we can safeguard our privacy, given the challenges of new technologies.

I have been in the House for—dare I say it?—22 and a bit years, and when I was first here, we did not even have mobile phones. Now, time and pressure are moving on. I arrived late at Twitter, which I took up after the 2010 election, and I arrived at Facebook even later. There may be other technologies out there which I am not yet aware of.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

Instagram?

[Mr Hanson]

My daughters tell me that I should get involved in Instagram, but it is a foreign country to me at the moment.

The point that I am making—perhaps in a jocular way—is that new clause 7 refers to “changing technologies”, which include technologies that we would not have envisaged even a few years ago, and others that may be coming down the line over the next few years. Those are the technologies that the independent reviewer should be considering.

I am warming to new clause 7. It also refers to “proportionality” in relation to

“the effectiveness of existing legislation”,

and requires the independent reviewer to make a case

“for new or amending legislation.”

Helpfully, the new clause requires the independent reviewer to report to the House by 1 May 2015. Mr Hood, I suspect that you and I will be focusing on other matters on that day, given the potential date of the general election, but it is handily placed in that any incoming Government, of whatever colour and composition, would be able to pick up the report. I hope that that helps my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East. The report would be published by the Prime Minister of the day, it would be possible to ensure that it was open to the public and laid before Parliament, and any new Government could act on it in a way that I hope would be proportionate to whatever Members wanted to happen at that particular time.

Let me say, in summary, that there are two issues that I want the Committee to examine. First, may we have a regular review of this Act? There are many options, and I hope that the Minister will respond positively to one of them shortly. If we can agree on that, we shall have taken a major step towards meeting some of the concerns that have been expressed by people outside the House who have contacted us today.

The second issue relates to the longer-term review. My right hon. and hon. Friends and I have tabled new clause 1, and the Home Secretary has tabled new clause 7. My warm feeling towards new clause 7 suggests that the Minister could persuade me to support it. All that remains is amendment 2, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich East, which would shorten the life of the Act by changing the welcome sunset clause date of 2016 to 2014. I do not want to say too much at this stage, because my hon. Friend has not yet spoken, but I will make one point that I think deserves consideration and a response from him.

We are engaging in what is admittedly a very speedy procedure, involving a day and a half of debate, and the House of Lords will do the same when it debates the Bill over the next two days. My hon. Friend is proposing that the sunset date should be, effectively, December this year. That means that we would go through this procedure again in December, and in January and February next year, after only a short period during which the new arrangements will have been in place.

I suggest to my hon. Friend that the amendment that we have tabled, in three forms, proposing a formal review by the independent reviewer in December and every six months thereafter, would meet the concerns about the legislation and any flaws and faults that we see in it. I accept that my hon. Friend may not take the same view, but I am making him that offer. I think that there is a mechanism that can enable a report to say, in six months’ time, “This has worked well”, or “This it has worked badly”, and to suggest tweaks that can be made.

Female Genital Mutilation

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Monday 10th March 2014 Westminster Hall

[Keith Vaz]

Yes. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She is a distinguished Member—a former shadow Public Health Minister and a campaigner. She is viewed with huge respect in the community, and she is right to raise this issue. It is not just about one community; it is generally about families, and there is the reluctance that she mentioned. Somehow we need to approach the families, and I think we will develop that idea further in our contributions today.

Children should not need to give evidence against their parents. That is the sensitivity; it is not a cultural sensitivity. The issue is to do with how the prosecuting authorities need to approach the subject, but that should not be used as an excuse—I am sure my hon. Friend would not want it to be—for why there have been no prosecutions.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on securing this vital debate.

I started practising as a prosecution barrister in 1990. Prosecuting FGM cases involves the great difficulty of obtaining the evidence and securing convictions, and at that time there was the same difficulty with sexual abuse and child abuse cases. People were only beginning to come forward then, but the situation has changed during the past 20 years. When the right hon. Gentleman and his Committee consider this matter, they should learn the lessons of the ’80s and ’90s about how evidence can be given, including the use of televisual transmission, so that victims are able to give evidence about events that in many cases took place many years before.

[Keith Vaz]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention. He is not just a distinguished former barrister, but a distinguished author. He is right—things have changed. We should not stand by and allow crimes to be committed, especially given that how evidence can be given has been transformed since he started as a lowly paid legal aid barrister in the north of England. Things have changed, and the hon. Gentleman is right. New technology provides us with the ability to look carefully at these offences.

So far, the Select Committee’s inquiry has received 53 pieces of written evidence. That is higher than average— by the time we complete our hearings, I expect we will have even more. We are to report in July. We want to give the Government plenty of time to consider our conclusions, so that we can see whether they are serious about adopting the recommendations that we have made.

Of course, we will want to look at the legislation. Does the current legislation need to be toughened up? There are two relevant Acts: the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003 and the Prohibition of Female Circumcision Act 1985. We need to look at them together and see what further changes we need to make. I do not believe that there is a reason to toughen up the legislation; the issue is not about changing the law, but about how we implement the law. If I am wrong, I am sure that witnesses will tell us so as the inquiry progresses.

Hundreds of prosecutions have been successfully secured in France. Protection Maternelle et Infantile, a state-funded medical body, conducts check-ups on pregnant women and on children in the first six years of their lives. I am not sure that any equivalent body is doing that in our country. The process results in the highest rates of FGM detection and it is one of the most significant factors behind the high number of successful prosecutions.

However, we need to be clear that what is being done in France is controversial; it has not been met with universal support from individuals and community groups. We need to look at and build on the success of what has happened in countries such as France. I do not know whether the Minister has gone to France to meet his opposite number, but the Committee will want to do that as part of its inquiry.

I have just returned from Nairobi, where we have been looking at counter-terrorism as part of the Committee’s brief. We met a number of Kenyan officials who were pleased at the change in law in Kenya and other countries and wanted to share their experience with us. I was told on my way to this Chamber, by a number of people coming to watch these deliberations, that we should also concentrate on countries such as Sierra Leone, because there is a real problem there. As well as looking at our own country, we need to look abroad to see what is happening—in Africa and other parts of the world and in those European countries where there have been prosecutions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Guy Opperman]

I welcome the fact that the right hon. Gentleman is looking to take evidence from the French example, because surely that is the country we can best learn from; it has dealt best with this problem. Does he agree that we will need to be robust with the communities where the problem is taking place? As the French former Justice Minister, Rachida Darti, said,

“This mutilation has no foundation in any religion, philosophy, culture or sociology…It cannot be justified in any way”,

because, quite simply, it is a crime.

[Keith Vaz]

That is helpful. I am glad the hon. Gentleman quoted Ms Darti. I do not need to use that quote since he has cited it so eloquently.

Yes, we need to find out what is happening and we need to be robust, but we should also understand that this is an area of the criminal justice system; the hon. Gentleman described how it has improved. My hon. Friend the Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) warned us about getting children to give evidence against their parents. These are important issues. They are not cultural issues, but about how we approach our system of justice.

As well as hearing from the Minister and others, we hope to hear from health care professionals, the police—we need an explanation about why there have been so many years without a prosecution—and the CPS, because these matters go to the CPS. We have had an enlightened DPP in the past few years in Keir Starmer, who made some useful statements about the issue, but unfortunately no one was prosecuted while he was DPP. The inquiry will hear from Alison Saunders, the new DPP.

The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, which gave written evidence to the Committee, set up a helpline last year to see how many calls were received and from whom.

To date there have been 152 calls, e-mails and other communications to the helpline: 31 were from professionals seeking general advice on female genital mutilation; 56 were inquiries about more detailed information or training, and 65 were referrals by professionals concerned about specific young people. That gives us a good breakdown of the number of people involved in the study. I thank the NSPCC not only for submitting written evidence but for sharing that important information with us. The statistics prove that we need not only prosecutions, but education and awareness, without which we will not be able to get to the bottom of this terrible crime, and we will miss opportunities to prevent such crimes and to take appropriate action.

I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull East (Karl Turner) has joined us. In the House this afternoon he probed the Home Secretary on female genital mutilation and rightly praised the Government for their work so far, but he also urged more action. He has been one of the great campaigners on this issue, and I pay tribute to him.

[Guy Opperman]

I am most grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for giving way one last time. Does he accept that, although prevention is obviously the most important part of any campaign, the Crown Prosecution Service and the police must have a strong emphasis on prosecuting events that may have taken place 10, 20 or 30 years previously where there is evidence that allows such cases to be brought, provided that the victim is willing to come forward?

[Keith Vaz]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman, but I caution against taking a historical approach too far. I understand what he says. If someone has committed a crime, no matter how long ago, we have to follow the evidence and search for the truth, but the evidence is in front of us now. Female genital mutilation is happening now, so we have to prevent it from happening at this very moment. He is right that we need to go back to find those responsible. Debates, inquiries and discussions such as this, and the consequent media attention, will mean that many people come forward to talk about things that happened many years ago, and perhaps they will now feel stronger about giving evidence than they would have done when it happened to them.

The urgency is that, as we speak in Westminster Hall today, the statistics show that in some part of the country a young girl or woman is being subjected to FGM. It is happening as we speak. I do not want to say to how many people it will happen during this three-hour debate because I have already cautioned against being over-reliant on estimates, but it is happening. We need to act now.

I conclude by congratulating those who initiated the e-petition, without which we would simply not be holding this debate. It is true that we could have taken our place in line to apply to the Backbench Business Committee for a debate, but the e-petition has enabled us to come to Parliament with a body of opinion behind us in the country so that we could put that information before the Backbench Business Committee. I thank those who led and signed the petition to the Government, which amassed 106,281 signatures: Leyla Hussein, whom I have mentioned; the Daughters of Eve; and Efua Dorkenoo OBE from Equality Now. I also thank those who signed and organised the Change.org petition, particularly Fahma Mohamed—that petition obtained 229,925 signatures. Taken together, a third of a million people have signed petitions to ensure that female genital mutilation was brought before the House today.

Some things happened almost immediately, before this debate and before the Select Committee’s hearings, which begin tomorrow. I welcome the fact that the Secretary of State for Education, after meeting Fahma Mohamed and others, has agreed to write to all primary and secondary head teachers to remind them of their responsibilities. That is very important, but when the Select Committee produced a report on forced marriages because we were concerned about the number of young girls who were disappearing in the summer term to be married abroad and we asked the Secretary of State to write to remind head teachers to look out for sudden falls in the attendance rolls, he and his Ministers decided not to do so. The FGM reminder is an excellent opportunity to address that responsibility in relation to forced marriages.

--- Later in debate ---

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I shall speak briefly, because others should have the opportunity to speak. I confess I did not intend to speak until I saw the debate listed, but I felt impelled to come to support the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who introduced the debate, and my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham), who chairs the all-party United Nations women group. I congratulate the various newspapers who highlighted and publicised the issue. The point of a free press is to give exposure to such things and articulate the case. I pay tribute to The Guardian, the Evening Standard and various local papers, such as those in Bristol that gave particular support to the campaign, and to the individuals who signed the petition and brought the issue to wider recognition in the House and generally.

Normally I sit in awe of the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, so it is interesting that I should make any recommendations to the Committee, but I suggest that it might give attention to six matters. The first three are international prevention, local prevention and cultural change. The fourth is the identification and support of flag-bearers for potential prosecutions. The fifth is examining and making conclusions on the extent to which the two Acts that currently apply to the crime in question should be changed; and the sixth is addressing and identifying the legal processes by which the offence would be brought forward.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

Perhaps I should not add to the hon. Gentleman’s list of recommendations for the Select Committee, since I am on it, but there is one that might unfortunately be beyond our scope, and that is sex education in schools. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is a fundamental problem when sex and relationships education in schools is not compulsory? Parents can withdraw their children from it, so many children may not get information that would help them to understand the issues and what they should do—and, indeed, to use the type of language whose importance has been discussed in the debate.

[Guy Opperman]

Far be it from me to disagree with a member of the Committee, particularly before it has begun to sit, but my answer is yes and no. Yes, there is a need for greater awareness of sex education as part of the educational programme that is under way, but I do not think that that of itself will provide a panacea or solution. It is one aspect of the problem.

[Lorely Burt]

Perhaps I may elaborate on what my hon. Friend said. It is not just sex education but sex and relationships education that should be compulsory in every school in the country. Young people do not know how to behave, and that is a great sadness. Things are difficult enough for them when they get to puberty and hormones start rushing. You can give them sex education until you are blue in the face, but without guidance or explanation about how relationships work, that will not help those young people to become responsible, happy adults.

[Guy Opperman]

I endorse the broad thrust of what the hon. Lady says, but that is part of a package of measures. Let us not be blind to what we all acknowledge: there is no one single thing that will change the existing climate, the cultural approach, or the likelihood of a criminal prosecution. There are several different matters, and that is why I welcome the fact that the Home Affairs Committee will consider the matter and make recommendations, just as I welcome today’s debate.

The first issue I wanted to talk about is international prevention. I welcome the fact that the Government, following on the good work of previous Governments, are making international aid money available; the Secretary of State for International Development is committing several million pounds to education around the world, continuing processes established by her predecessors. Surely that must be the start, and there are lessons to learn from countries such as France, which has grasped the issue of the horrendous crime in question. Its approach is robust and no-nonsense, and all credit is due to it.

[Lyn Brown]

Does the hon. Gentleman think that the French approach has much to do with the French separation of church and state? We do not have the same culture here; is there a misguided liberalism around the issue, and is that something we need to understand?

[Guy Opperman]

The hon. Lady makes a fair point and I can only quote the words of Isabelle Gillette-Faye about Great Britain:

“You have a tradition of multiculturalism, but you cannot accept everything in the name of tolerance, and certainly not the abuse of girls through mutilation and forced marriage…You have to tell parents cutting is not acceptable and if they don’t listen you threaten them with prosecution and jail.”

She finishes with two simple words:

“It works.”

We must be blunt. There is no point beating about the bush. The problem comes from certain countries, and it will be necessary to engage with those communities. There is no question that in such countries as Burkina Faso and Mali the cultural tradition in question goes on—and, as the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) said, in some respects it is a normal cultural tradition in those places. That needs to be addressed, and the focus of the international aid money should be on the countries where it is prevalent.

We all welcome and support the campaigner Fahma Mohamed. We also welcome and support what The Guardian has done, and the changes brought about through the decision of the Secretary of State for Education to write to all the schools in the country, because of the campaign. It can only be a good thing for local prevention that several different Departments are engaged in the issue, as evidenced by the recent announcement from the Department for Education, the money allocated by the Home Office, and the actions of the Department of Health. It is right and proper to record the campaigning work done by the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison). She was raising the issue for some time before her promotion, and making it a priority was part of her brief at the Department of Health.

Clearly there is a need for extreme sensitivity about the religion and culture of the communities affected. However, there is also a need for a robust approach. It is unacceptable that after successive Governments have abhorred the practice, it is almost impossible to get a witness to give evidence against their parents or relatives. That is the harsh reality. My first question to the right hon. Member for Leicester East was about the comparison with the situation in the late 1980s and the 1990s, when there were child abuse and sex abuse allegations, and prosecutors encouraged children to give evidence against their relatives of that abhorrent crime. The issue we are debating is child abuse and sexual abuse just as much as that was. There is no difference.

[Bob Stewart]

I have been thinking about this carefully. If a successful prosecution were to go ahead, a mother and a father may well be indicted in court. Therefore, what would happen to the children if the two people who normally look after them were jailed?

[Guy Opperman]

I can assist my hon. Friend. Procedures are in place for prosecutions and, within the confines of the criminal justice and social services systems, whether the child is taken into care or fostered or supported, there are definitely support mechanisms in place. It is not easy. No one should pretend that someone giving evidence against their family members is easy in any way whatsoever. I will come to the degree of support that I want to see, but the individual campaigners must also look hard at their individual communities and ask themselves: where is the flag-bearer? Where is the woman who is prepared to stand up and say, “This has happened to me,” and to suffer what is—let us be blunt—a very embarrassing process? I have prosecuted well over 100 trials and giving evidence of sexual allegations against a lady or a man is exceptionally embarrassing at all times.

[Lorely Burt]

I suggest to my hon. Friend that we are talking about more than embarrassment. By doing that, someone would be dishonouring their own family and the repercussions of that can be much more severe than a little embarrassment.

[Guy Opperman]

I accept that at present the prevailing cultural interpretation is such a dishonouring. But when one compares the situation here with that in France, one sees that, slowly but surely, it has become the case that failing to come forward to make such a case is dishonouring the culture and community of which they are so proud to be a part. In the 21st century, it cannot be an appropriate part of that culture and community to condone, allow and positively encourage the continuation of this abhorrent act. In the French communities, we see a change in perception, with support for those individuals who give evidence from the very same people who perhaps five or 10 or 15 or 20 years ago would have named and shamed and made life very difficult for those individuals. That is an example of a country that has moved further forward and the impact of that change.

I come back to the point that this is an offence. Of course, we want to stop any such offending taking place now. Huge efforts will be made by successive Governments and various aspects of Government to stop this happening now, but the best possible preventive measure would be a successful prosecution for something that has taken place in the past. Again, I make the very strong point to the individual communities—they all know who they are—where such offending is taking place. They all have to consider this: given that well over 100,000 people in this country have suffered this fate, if the evidence is there and they have not come forward thus far, they are letting their community down if they do not come forward.

I want to discuss law change. I know and worked with the previous Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, who was an outstanding DPP. I do not know the present DPP—partly because I am so old and I was not practising when she was—[Interruption.] I am ageing fast. In her submissions earlier this year, she makes the fair point that it is possible that the law may need to be changed. As I understand the legal framework, if I were a prosecutor and the individual who had committed the offence was not a UK resident, it would be exceptionally difficult to pursue that prosecution. The Select Committee needs to look at that and it would be well advised to address that. However, while many are being taken away in order for cutting to take place, there are those who are definitely performing that act in this country, and they will have records and payment systems, so there is plentiful evidence that these things took place. Examinations should be done. Where a victim has suffered that crime in this country, where a prosecution is so much easier to pursue, and continues to live in this country, that is the best potential avenue for successful prosecutions, and that should be the direction of travel for the Crown Prosecution Service.

I finish on the issue of legal processes. When I started prosecuting in 1990, there was no such thing as a victim’s statement. The victim gave their witness statement and then, even in sexual cases, they gave evidence live. There were no screens and no TV monitors, and judges and counsel were not trained. We have advanced light years in the past 20 or so years: successive Governments have introduced everything from police officers who are trained to take statements, to processes that make it much easier for children to give evidence, and training for individual judges. I could go on. My point is this: just as we had to train judges, counsel and court staff in how to handle sexual offences cases—particularly child-based sexual offences, such as the abuse of five to eight-year-olds, who then have to give evidence in some shape or form—as the Home Affairs Committee reviews this matter and as the processes are gone through, we must make very sure that the appropriate mechanisms are in place, and that the appropriate judges and counsel are in place, to address this type of prosecution and take that forward.

Such a prosecution will not be easy to bring. It needs to be done with great sensitivity and profound awareness of all the cultural problems. I had not intended to speak, Mr Robertson, but I thank you for your indulgence.

Citizenship (Armed Forces) Bill

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Friday 17th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Lord (Woking) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

I thank hon. Members for taking an interest in this Bill and for attending this morning’s debate. I am particularly grateful to Members who attended the Bill Committee. We had a good debate, as we did on Second Reading. I am delighted with the cross-party support that the Bill has enjoyed to date, and I hope that this continues.

Foreign and Commonwealth citizens in Her Majesty’s forces who wish to apply for naturalisation under section 6(1) of the British Nationality Act 1981 may currently be at a disadvantage because of their time served overseas. This is because an applicant must have been in the United Kingdom on day one of the five-year qualifying period for naturalisation. As a result, some members or former members of our armed forces have to wait longer to apply than other people who are simply living in the UK on the required date. The principles enshrined in the armed forces covenant between the nation and our armed forces community make it clear that those who serve should face no disadvantage as a result of that service.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

Approximately how many armed forces personnel now serving in the forces would benefit from the change in the law that my hon. Friend’s outstanding Bill will bring about?

[Jonathan Lord]

The best estimate is that approximately up to 200 service personnel or ex-service personnel and their families could be helped by the Bill. This measure is not of vast significance and it will certainly not impact on our immigration or naturalisation numbers to any great extent, but I think my hon. Friend will agree that there is an injustice in the current rules and regulations which needs to be changed.

I believe that it is wrong for our armed service personnel and our former armed service personnel who fit into this category to be discriminated against in this way. It is anomalous, and it is something that this House and the other place can and should rectify. As I said on Second Reading, every day that members of our armed forces have spent in the service of our country abroad should have the same value in the eyes of the immigration authorities as a day spent in the UK. The Bill enjoyed a very thorough and far-reaching debate on Second Reading and I am delighted that no amendments were tabled. I therefore hope that we shall be able to conclude matters this morning without a huge or lengthy debate.

Clause 1 amends schedule 1 to the 1981 Act to give the Secretary of State discretion to overlook the requirement to be in the UK on day one of the qualifying period for naturalisation. This discretion will apply only in cases where the applicant is, or has been, a member of Her Majesty’s armed forces. I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Minister and the shadow Minister are in their places here today. As I say, I very much hope that the Bill will continue to enjoy cross-party support.

The Bill represents a small and sensible, but not insignificant, change to the way in which naturalisation applications from foreign and Commonwealth members of Her Majesty’s armed forces are considered. It enables us to remove the disadvantage currently experienced by certain forces and ex-forces personnel who happened to be outside the United Kingdom, serving their country, on that first day of their five-year qualifying period for naturalisation as a British citizen.

The Home Office takes its responsibilities under the armed forces covenant seriously, as I hope all hon. Members do. We have been steadily pursuing a range of measures to improve the various interactions that the armed forces community is obliged to have with UK Visa & Immigration. We recently implemented a new set of immigration rules for armed forces families, which include a number of practical improvements: a five-year visa; a dedicated application form; and the ability to make applications from overseas. Small things can make a big difference, and the small but important measure in this Bill is one such thing.

[Guy Opperman]

Anything that implements the military covenant, as this Bill does in a small but significant way, is a very good thing. What is the attitude of the various armed forces charities, which we all support, be it the Royal British Legion, Help for Heroes or Veterans Aid? What is their approach to the Bill?

[Jonathan Lord]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, and I am pleased to inform him that our armed forces charities, those that help not only those currently serving and their families, but ex-service personnel and their families, are hugely and universally supportive of this measure. I have been grateful to them for their advice and support during this Bill’s passage through this House.

The measure in this Bill was identified by the Armed Forces Covenant Cabinet Sub-Committee as a priority commitment. Once implemented, it will provide the Secretary of State with the discretion to overlook the current requirement in schedule 1 the British Nationality Act 1981. As I said a moment ago, it is not anticipated that the volume of naturalisation applications from forces personnel will increase dramatically as a result of the Bill. Rather, it will help a small number of applicants who will become eligible to apply for naturalisation earlier than would otherwise have been the case. The numbers benefiting will be modest, but important none the less. UK Visa & Immigration does not hold data on the numbers of service personnel and ex-service personnel naturalising as British citizens, but as I said to my hon. Friend, we reckon that the number is something in the region of up to a couple of hundred cases per year, and no more. Not all those cases will require the discretion provided for by this Bill, but where they do, it is only right and fair that the people involved should benefit from it.

I am grateful to the Home Office and to all Members from across this House for their support as we put this Bill together. Throughout the process, we have listened to the organisations that so ably represent members of the armed forces. I am grateful for their input and I hope that they will be pleased by the result of this Third Reading debate. Should the Bill pass this House this morning, I have asked Lord Trefgarne to pilot the Bill through the other place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Edward Leigh]

It is so pleasant to be here on a Friday morning, when everyone is so polite, nice and calm.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Woking because steering a private Member’s Bill through the rocks of parliamentary procedure is difficult, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (James Wharton), who is piloting the European Union (Referendum) Bill, is finding this very day to his cost. However, I am sure that, with the help of Lord Trefgarne, the Bill before us will have a rapid passage. I do not believe for a moment that the other place would want to commit the double whammy of resisting the overwhelming will of this House and the people’s right to have a referendum—it is doing that on the European Union (Referendum) Bill. I say that very quickly before Mr Speaker rules me out of order, and I return to the Bill before us.

Although this is a small Bill, it has a big heart, because it is about supporting our armed forces and ensuring that another building block of the armed forces covenant is put in place. I was not here during the passage of the British Nationality Act 1981, but it seems extraordinary that we have a sensible provision that someone has to be in this country for five years before they are granted citizenship or the process comes to fruition, yet a country should say that someone should be denied this opportunity to get citizenship because they happen to be serving that country overseas.

Let us consider the position of a foreign national, one of our brave soldiers, who is serving in Afghanistan and who has served our country for five years and whose greatest ambition is to become a citizen of this country. How amazing it would be if, having loyally served our country in the armed forces, they are told, “I am sorry, but five years ago you were in Afghanistan fighting the Taliban and you have to wait.” Such an approach is extraordinary. Although the number involved may be small—a figure of 200 has been cited—an important principle is at stake. In addition, although the specific number of people we think the Bill affects may be limited at the moment—it is perhaps only 200—about 8,000 foreign nationals are serving in our armed forces, so a considerable number of people are potentially involved.

One or two comments were made on Second Reading on the theme of, “Do we want to grant more citizenship? Are we not worried about immigration?” However, the number of people affected by this Bill is small, and surely it has always been a principle that when someone serves in the armed forces of a country and puts their life at risk, they are entitled to become a citizen of that country.

[Guy Opperman]

Is this not also about equality between the various troops who serve for Her Majesty’s Government and for the Queen? The arrangements should be no different for those who are overseas born and qualify in the usual way, subject to this calculation and this rule, as for a “normal” British citizen? There should be equal treatment.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

I entirely agree. As I said, all countries have had this principle that people who have served a number of years in the armed forces of the country should be entitled to become a citizen. Can we imagine some poor Roman legionnaire 2,000 years ago, freezing on Hadrian’s wall, applying to become a citizen of the empire, only for someone to say, “I’m sorry, five years ago, you weren’t sitting around in Rome. You were serving the empire on the Rhine”? It would be ridiculous. There is clearly something wrong with our present laws.

This is a good Bill; it will make a good Act. It is important because there is undoubtedly a problem with morale in the armed forces. Their whole role is changing; they are leaving Afghanistan; and there have been severe reductions in the military. In this House, it behoves us always to support our armed forces and if we find any area where there are glitches or unfairnesses, we should take time to iron them out, and we should always proclaim our support and admiration for them and the work that they do.

In conclusion, Mr Speaker, I thank you for allowing me to speak today; I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Woking; and I wish his Bill well as it completes its stages through this House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) and it is always a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh). As the Member of Parliament for Hadrian’s wall, I can assure him that many Romans—

[Mr Alan Campbell (Tynemouth) (Lab)]

Not all of it.

[Guy Opperman]

I hear chuntering from the Opposition Front-Bench spokesperson; I entirely accept that of the 85 miles of Hadrian’s wall—[Interruption.] Well, we can disagree. Some parts are in Newcastle and some parts are in Carlisle, but without any shadow of a doubt all the best bits are in the constituency of Hexham. However, I digress and it is wrong of me to take Opposition Members’ bait.

The most important thing is to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Jonathan Lord), because he has done a wonderful thing. As we all know, it is very difficult to navigate a Bill through this House, however lovely Fridays are, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough made clear, and however much a Bill is supported by the whole House.

The Army charities do such wonderful work supporting our armed forces personnel and their families, including any of those personnel who are injured or who have suffered misadventure. We all pay tribute to them for the work that they do; I am quite sure that I speak for the whole House in that respect. The particular charity that I would pray in aid is Veterans Aid, which has said of this Bill:

“We warmly welcome any initiative that removes obstacles to those who have served this country with honour from settling here legally…Veterans Aid, more than any other military charity, has championed the cause of Foreign & Commonwealth servicemen and women disadvantaged, through no fault of their own, by bureaucracy that is demonstrably at odds with the spirit of the Military Covenant. This was an injustice and we applaud the Government”—

and, as the quote says, my hon. Friend the Member for Woking—

“for listening. We still have many cases in being but this will definitely help us move things forward”

for many of the customers that it is assisting.

It is wonderful that the military charities are supporting the Bill, which is about enforcing the military covenant. That is so fundamental to the being of this country, and so important to how we assess and appraise the armed forces, that it is right and proper that we have updated reports on it. It is a wonderful thing that the House is provided with an annual report on the military covenant, and that the progress and development of the relationship between the state, the public and the armed forces is assessed on an ongoing and regular basis.

The Bill addresses two key issues that form part of the military covenant: the state of immigration, and the relationship between the state and its armed forces. Most of all, however, it is surely about justice and fairness. That is because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough accepted and made clear, it is only right and proper that all armed services personnel should be treated in the same way. I am pleased to say that the military covenant is a priority for this Government. It is about fair treatment for our forces and ensuring that we have an impact on the lives of military personnel.

I obviously represent the best parts of Hadrian’s wall, but I am also lucky enough to have Albemarle barracks in my constituency, where 39th Regiment Royal Artillery is based. In 2015 we will welcome a new regiment there, the 3rd Regiment Royal Horse Artillery. I cannot say specifically whether those individual armed forces personnel will be affected by the Bill, and it would be wrong of me to inquire about the specifics in advance of the Bill’s implementation. However, given the nature of those battalions, there will in all probability be individuals who are affected by it. My constituency also has RAF Spadeadam, which I share with my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart). The individuals who work in those facilities for the armed forces will be assisted by the Bill.

The covenant was established under this Government in May 2011. As we know, it is based on the principles of removing disadvantage from serving personnel in relation to access to public and commercial services. It also allows special provision in relation to access for the injured and the bereaved. Part of the ongoing process, which, I am pleased to say, this Government as a coalition have set up, is to address that relationship. If Members have not read the two reports on the military covenant, they really should look at them. The 2012 armed forces annual covenant report, which runs to almost 100 pages, provides a proper and detailed breakdown of the relationship between the state and the armed forces. There have been significant achievements, of which this Bill is one, relating to, among other things, health care, the medical rehabilitation that we have seen so successfully carried out at Headley Court, and housing. Frankly, this Bill would not be coming to fruition today were it not for the armed forces covenant, the hard work of the various charities and the dedication of the Government to make a genuine difference to that relationship.

I speak as a fifth generation immigrant. With a name like Opperman, I have more Saxon than Anglo in me. I endorse entirely the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough, who said that one must look only at those who have fought on our behalf in the past to see why this Bill is so right. During the battle of Britain, there were 145 pilots from Poland, 32 Australians, 28 Belgians, 25 South Africans, 13 French and one each from Sri Lanka, Jamaica and Zimbabwe. My hon. Friend may be surprised that the French were fighting on our side, but there are times when they have assisted us. I am sure that President Hollande would be grateful for our assistance right now.

My point is that in our hour of ultimate need in the second world war, it was not just British citizens who were protecting us and fighting against the Nazis, but a large number of men and women from many different countries. To deny those who had fought in the battle of Britain the ability to have British citizenship is abhorrent.

[Sir Edward Leigh]

As my hon. Friend mentions the Polish contribution to the battle of Britain, it is worth putting on the record that they came here in huge numbers and served our country with great bravery. Subsequently, we did not deal very fairly with their country. Let us pay tribute to our Polish friends. We should remember their contribution when people talk about Polish immigration now. We should always reflect on what they did for our country in the 1940s.

[Guy Opperman]

I entirely endorse what my hon. Friend says. It is right that we not only have a sensible discussion about immigration, but acknowledge that the communities from Poland have a great deal to offer this country and have contributed greatly not only in the past few years but down the generations. He will be interested to know that in the battle of Britain, of all the overseas troops who fought on behalf of Great Britain to defend us against the Nazis in the most pivotal and important aerial battle that there has ever been, the highest number of pilots was from Poland—higher than New Zealand, Canada, Czechoslovakia and Ireland. The Polish were the largest number by a significant degree. How we approach immigration must be measured and fair. We accept the brightest and the best, and we ensure that there is no exploitation. We must accept that they made a great contribution in the past and continue to do so, and I welcome what he said.

[Jonathan Lord]

In my constituency of Woking, we have a Muslim burial ground, which, I am pleased to say, will be renovated in time for the commemorations of the great war. It was built to house the remains and give proper dignity to, and proper commemoration of, the sacrifices made by those from the Indian sub-continent. Indian soldiers or those from modern-day Pakistan who served in the great war are commemorated there. We are talking about the new Commonwealth as well as the old Commonwealth and the European countries that served alongside our Great British forces in both of those great wars.

[Mr Speaker]

As significant tribute has now been paid to the respective immigrant communities of the United Kingdom, and that is perfectly right, the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), I am sure, will now wish to focus with a laser-like precision on the contents of the Bill as it stands at Third Reading.

[Guy Opperman]

Mr Speaker, I am delighted to say that you have prompted me to say that I am in the last minute or so of my speech. I could not finish, notwithstanding your strong instruction on matters of international domain, without pointing out that crucially this Bill will affect the 9,000 foreign and Commonwealth troops who are serving in our armed forces, 200 of whom are expected to fall foul of the five-year rule. It would be totally wrong of this House in the 21st century to allow a situation in which those 200 or 300 are disadvantaged and not treated as equals. They are no different from those troops who have so bravely served us in the past.

[Jonathan Lord]

rose—

[Guy Opperman]

Bearing in mind Mr Speaker’s words, I will take only a brief intervention.

[Jonathan Lord]

It is worth noting that the Bill has the support of not just the Home Office but the Ministry of Defence. On 11 July 2013, our Minister of State for Defence, who was then responsible for personnel, welfare and veterans, said:

“There has been a long tradition of Commonwealth citizens serving in the British armed forces and most recently on operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. We continue to value their service which provides an important contribution in defending the UK at home and abroad.”—[Official Report, 11 July 2013; Vol. 566, c. 31WS.]

That is one reason why I believe my Bill is so important.

[Guy Opperman]

I could not sum up my short speech any better than that and, on that note, I will sit down.

Citizenship (Armed Forces) Bill

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Friday 13th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Jonathan Lord]

The key point is that the Bill would remedy a simple problem. I know, from having talked to the Minister, that the planned nationality Bill will have specific needs in mind, and he would not necessarily wish to take on board this aspect of immigration issues in case it perhaps encouraged more mischievous amendments and additions.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on introducing the Bill, as it covers an issue that we should clearly pursue under the armed forces covenant. Does he have any information about support from the various Army charities for this proposal?

[Jonathan Lord]

I am pleased to say that most of the major Army charities, which do such wonderful work supporting our service personnel, our ex-service personnel and their families, are very supportive of the Bill. Like other hon. Members, I attend Remembrance day services and rattle tins for the Royal British Legion—the local branches in Woking and other areas of Surrey are hugely supportive of the Bill.

Veterans Aid, an important charity in this area, has said of the Bill:

“We warmly welcome any initiative that removes obstacles to those who have served this country with honour from settling here legally and have campaigned on this issue. Veterans Aid, more than any other military charity, has championed the cause of Foreign & Commonwealth servicemen and women disadvantaged, through no fault of their own, by bureaucracy that is demonstrably at odds with the spirit of the Military Covenant. This was an injustice and we applaud the Government and Jonathan Lord for listening. We still have many cases in being but this will definitely help us move things forward for quite a few of our clients.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Lord]

I have a large amount of notes relating to the naturalisation process and all the disqualifications that could block the path to British citizenship of a member of the armed forces. Factors such as dishonourable discharge and criminality could lead to disqualification, along with all the other kinds of things that one would expect a potential citizen of this country to be judged on, whether they were a soldier or a civilian.

[Guy Opperman]

The key point is that time spent overseas has placed people at a disadvantage. The new legislation could well apply to some of those at the barracks at Albemarle in Northumberland. The regiment that is now stationed there is moving to another part of the country, and a new regiment is coming in from Germany. Some members of that regiment could be covered by the Bill. The time that they have spent overseas is the key factor.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Lord]

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention, with which I of course agree absolutely. For those families affected—my hon. Friend is absolutely right that 200 is a realistic estimate—this Bill will make all the difference in the world. While we in this mother of Parliaments are incredibly proud to serve our constituents, the reason many people want to serve in our armed forces is that they know that this country has, over many years, served the cause of decency, democracy and the rule of law. If they are willing to put their lives on the line for this country and all that it stands for, I am sure that they would be equally proud, as my hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride) said, of the day on which they and their families took British citizenship.

[Guy Opperman]

Following what my hon. Friend the Member for Stourbridge (Margot James) said, does my hon. Friend agree that it is not just a matter of the families? Most of the soldiers I meet and talk to in the barracks in my constituency say that their true loyalty is not just to their family, but to the regiment and their battalion. I suggest that from the Army point of view, this is about not just the individual soldier and his family, but about the corps of the battalion and an individual soldier who is not a British citizen feeling part of the unit. Does my hon. Friend agree?

[Jonathan Lord]

Yes, absolutely. The regiment, the battalion and the way in which our armed forces tend to be arranged into smaller units, many of which have a distinguished history behind them and a wonderful record of service ahead of them, are all very important. That should make us reflect on how the relevant armed service personnel must think when they fill out a form and find out that they are disadvantaged because they were posted abroad five years ago in the service of their regiment or battalion. The whole ethos of this country, the battalion, the regiment and unit goes out of the window the moment these people put pen to paper on that form and realise that, by a quirk of bureaucracy and a small defect in the British Nationality Act 1981, they are at a disadvantage by comparison with other service personnel who served here or, indeed, any other ordinary citizens with a foreign or Commonwealth background who are able to go through the process of naturalisation and citizenship. What a terrible shock that must be for those people and their families.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Lord]

I am happy to tell my hon. Friend that they would indeed be included, and I am grateful to her for raising that point.

It cannot be fair that a regular civilian or a solider who has been based in the UK can successfully apply for residency but a soldier who was serving in Afghanistan, or a member of the Royal Air Force or the Royal Navy who was posted overseas five years before his or her application, cannot successfully apply for residency. Every day that members of the services have spent abroad should have the same value in the eyes of the immigration authorities as a day spent in the UK.

[Guy Opperman]

Is this not all part of what the armed forces covenant is about? It is about a situation existing for servicemen and women in which they are not treated differently from ordinary citizens in this country.

[Jonathan Lord]

That is the clear thrust of the Bill and the debate today. I hope that all Members listening will take that point on board and come to the ineluctable conclusion that what the Bill proposes is only fair.

In answer to a question asked earlier, the main nationalities that are likely to benefit from this measure will be Fijian, Jamaican, South African, Zimbabwean and Ghanaian, since they are the main foreign and Commonwealth nationals represented in Her Majesty’s armed forces. I am pleased to say that, in addition, Nepalese nationals who have served in the Brigade of Gurkhas will also benefit. Although Gurkhas are required to remain citizens of Nepal while serving in the Brigade of Gurkhas, those seeking naturalisation following discharge will fall within the scope of the new provision. I hope that in addition to the military and veterans’ charities that I have mentioned, that national icon, Joanna Lumley, will also look favourably on the Bill, and on the House if it decides to pass it.

The measures in the Bill will correct an unfairness that Parliament committed to resolve when it enshrined the armed forces covenant in law. I hope that, with the approval of Members, the Bill will send out a further signal to those servicemen and women who hold a UK passport, and to those who do not, that the public and their representatives in this House are on their side and working to ensure that they are treated with the respect and dignity that their hard work, dedication and sacrifices deserve. I commend the Bill to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Edward Leigh]

The short answer is that I do not know, but the Minister is sitting here, and no doubt he does know. What I will say is that although the private Member’s Bill procedure is often criticised, private Members' Bills are in fact scrutinised much more closely than Government Bills. The British Nationality Act was a large and important measure, but I am not a great believer in the conspiracy theory of history. I do not think that anyone in the Home Office wanted to disadvantage the armed forces. I am a believer in the cock-up theory of history, and if my hon. Friend wants my honest opinion, I think that that anomaly was simply a cock-up. Now it is being righted. That is what this procedure is all about.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Woking said, it is not right that the applications of people who put their lives on the line should be refused when the very reason for their absence is that we, the British Government—we, the British people—sent them overseas to protect our country. Why the anomaly arose I do not know, but it seems absurd to me, and that is why I think that the Bill, although narrow, is important.

The Minister has said:

“Making this change was a priority commitment under the Armed Forces Covenant. I am delighted to support this Bill which will ensure service men and women are not disadvantaged.”

So the Minister is on side. As has been mentioned, Veterans Aid is also on side, and put it very well when it said:

“Veterans Aid, more than any other military charity, has championed the cause of Foreign and Commonwealth servicemen and women, disadvantaged, through no fault of their own, by bureaucracy that is demonstrably at odds with the Military Covenant.”

The Army Families Federation has said:

“This legislation will make a big difference to the many soldiers and their spouses who are currently prohibited from applying for Citizenship because they were serving overseas or were on operations at the start the 5-year residential period.”

So this is clearly an important Bill, and it is clearly widely supported.

This Second Reading debate offers us an opportunity to try to tease out more information from the Minister about exactly how many people will be affected, how much further we can go in terms of the military covenant, and how we can improve morale and recruitment. A considerable number of people will potentially be involved. As of 1 April last year, 8,510 of the 166,110 members of the trained UK regular forces were non-British, constituting approximately 5.1% of our nation’s armed forces. That is quite a lot. It would be interesting to hear from the Minister whether he thinks that it is the right number, and what is the Government’s policy on recruitment.

I am not sure that I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), who intimated earlier that perhaps there were too many foreign nationals serving in our forces. The Minister, who is far more knowledgeable than me, will be able to confirm or correct that, but I suspect that the 5.1% figure is fairly constant. It seems a reasonably healthy percentage, but one would not want it to rise too far. It is important, particularly in times of economic difficulty and high unemployment, for our armed forces to consist overwhelmingly of British citizens.

Of those 8,510 forces, about 520 were Nepalese, and nearly 8,000 were citizens of the Republic of Ireland or Commonwealth countries. About 4.5% of the armed forces intake at the end of 2011 consisted of black and ethnic minority personnel. I may be wrong about this, but according to my research, there are currently no statistics stating how many non-British members of the UK regular forces currently desire to gain British citizenship. I suspect that the number is relatively low. My hon. Friend the Member for Woking mentioned a figure, but I do not know where he found it. Even if the number who will be affected is only in the low hundreds, I do not think that that necessarily means that the Bill is unimportant. It is the principle, rather than the number involved, that is important.

[Guy Opperman]

Is there not a distinction between the total number of overseas personnel in the armed forces and the number who are affected by the anomaly of the five-year rule, which by any standard is a much smaller number?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Of course. That is an obvious point.

I should like to hear a bit more from the Minister about the armed forces covenant. The covenant states that the Government’s aspiration is that no armed forces personnel be disadvantaged in “dealings with wider society”. Those are the Government’s words, and I think that they are rather vague, but they could extend to applications for British citizenship. Clearly, what we are doing today is entirely in accord with the covenant. Although the issue with which we are dealing is important, it covers quite a small area. What do the Government mean when they say that armed forces personnel should not be disadvantaged in “dealings with wider society”?

The covenant also refers to the Government aim of removing any social or economic inequalities between them and other citizens. It would be interesting to hear from the Minister whether there are any other bureaucratic anomalies in regard to either recruitment or citizenship which still need to be addressed under the armed forces covenant. I suspect that what we are doing today will not be enough for the Veterans Association. It will be happy with it—indeed, it has already welcomed the Bill—but it will, quite rightly, ask for more.

What is the Government’s aim? What obstacles do they feel that they should remove in order to get rid of any inequalities between our armed forces and other citizens? I also wonder whether the aim of the Bill is undermined by the fact that the families of members of the armed forces would have to apply for naturalisation via the normal and potentially lengthy methods. I have tried to study that, and my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch asked a good question about it earlier. We want to know how far this will extend. What exactly are we talking about, therefore?

Mention was made of cleaners. Those who clean also serve their country. Families are very important, too. My point is that the armed forces community is just as important as armed forces personnel. Does this anomaly not ignore the Government’s commitments in the covenant to the armed forces community, rather than simply to armed forces personnel? The Minister has many questions to answer, but he is a very capable Minister so I am sure he will address them comprehensively.

The levels of support available in the covenant to the families of armed forces personnel extend to

“positive measures to prevent disadvantage.”

What exactly does that mean? What further proposals will the Government make? As my hon. Friend the Member for Central Devon (Mel Stride) said, our armed forces are paid well but not over-paid and their accommodation is good but in some cases it is not over-good, and there are many other areas where our armed forces feel they are disadvantaged.

Families of non-British service personnel can be based overseas, potentially causing problems in their desire for UK citizenship. The Gurkhas, for instance, have bases in Nepal and Brunei. There are, however, already institutions such as the Gurkha settlement office which provide positive support for individuals wishing to apply for a visa or indefinite leave to remain in the UK. The existence of those institutions could be interpreted as fulfilling the Government’s commitment to minimise the impacts of such irritants on military life, but I suspect there are many irritants for our armed forces personnel which the Government still need to address. The measures we are addressing this morning are only a very small part of that.

[Guy Opperman]

I appreciate entirely the point my hon. Friend is making, but the implementation of the armed forces covenant is an ongoing process addressing many different aspects. The armed forces covenant annual report, a copy of which I am holding, is some hundred pages long and addresses a multitude of different issues, of which this is, I accept, a solitary one. Does my hon. Friend agree that there is a process of slow, incremental progress on a number of issues?

[Sir Edward Leigh]

Of course. We all know that the task facing the Minister is extremely difficult and it is better to make a small step than no step at all, but I think the question still needs to be asked. What we are talking about today is just getting rid of one very small little irritant. You are the expert on order, Mr Speaker, and I am not an expert on it, but it seems to me that this Second Reading debate gives us an opportunity to get more out of the Government on how they are trying to increase recruitment and other interesting issues. On other days, there is often not time to get adequate answers.

Let us talk about the British Nationality Act 1981.

--- Later in debate ---

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Jonathan Lord) on introducing this excellent private Member’s Bill. I am delighted to be here to speak in support of it, just as he was kind enough to be here to support my private Member’s Bill. The Minister, who is my neighbour, as he represents Forest of Dean, was also in the Chamber that day. Since then, he has been promoted to his current role, so I hope that the fact he is sitting on the Front Bench today augurs well for the Bill.

The Bill is an extremely worthwhile piece of legislation, but, as we were just hearing from my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), it is incredibly important that we scrutinise these pieces of legislation in great detail. Although the Bill appears short, containing few clauses, my scrutiny of it has found that it raises many questions in this important area, on which I seek the Minister’s clarification. I wish to ask him about the time an individual is required to spend, and where they are required to spend it, before the process of naturalisation can begin. I want to explore the Secretary of State’s discretion in these matters, which is clearly outlined in the Bill, and to ask the Minister further questions about the territorial extent clause. I also want to clarify whether the naturalisation provisions added to our general citizenship legislation since the 1981 Act—specifically the requirement to pass a citizenship test and how the test has been changed—would continue to apply in this case. Given that this is a Second Reading debate, I hope that you will regard all those areas of questioning as in order, Mr Speaker.

As I understand it, the provisions on timing relate only to the starting point of the application for naturalisation. As things stand at the moment, the individual making the application needs to be in the United Kingdom at the point at which the clock starts ticking for the five-year period. I would like that clarified.

I also want clarification on the territorial extent of the Bill. My interpretation is that clause 2(3) would extend the Bill to England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, which all seems very logical, but also to the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man and the British overseas territories. It is on the British overseas territories that my questions begin to multiply. It is worth putting it in Hansard that they are Anguilla, Bermuda, the British Antarctic Territory, the British Indian Ocean Territory, the Cayman Islands, the Falkland Islands and its dependencies, Gibraltar of course, Montserrat, Pitcairn, Henderson, Ducie and Oeno Islands, St Helena and its dependencies, the sovereign base areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia, the Turks and Caicos Islands, and the British Virgin Islands.

[Guy Opperman]

On the 300th anniversary of the treaty of Utrecht, my hon. Friend has mentioned Gibraltar. She may recall that it was taken under British command, but with the aid of Dutch and Austrian troops.

[Harriett Baldwin]

The question is whether those troops settled in Gibraltar and what the rules were for their naturalisation as British citizens prior to 1981. I can honestly say that I do not have the faintest clue, but that is an interesting historical point.

I was evacuated to the British sovereign base of Dhekelia as a child when, as a British citizen, I was growing up in Cyprus. We were living in Nicosia at the time, and we were often under threat of invasion by Turkish forces. I remember being evacuated to Dhekelia, and feeling incredibly safe and secure there, on British sovereign territory. My father, however, had to remain behind in Nicosia to do his job. He put a Union flag on the roof of our house, and we sincerely hoped that the Turkish air force would be able to spot it from the air should it decide to bomb Nicosia. However, I digress, Mr Speaker.

I am trying to find out how my hypothetical examples would be affected by the Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Woking told us that the provision would probably apply to a citizen of Fiji. Let us imagine that that citizen of Fiji joins Her Majesty’s armed forces, does exemplary service and decides—I do not know what the residence requirements would be—that he or she wants to remain in the British Indian Ocean Territory. Does the territorial extent of the Bill mean that the first date of the five-year period includes residence in one of the territories I have listed? That is my interpretation.

In relation to the questions asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough, a situation might arise in which, as we heard, a Jamaican citizen who joined our armed forces abroad and served with great courage with them in other parts of the world decides to settle in Gibraltar, or perhaps closer to Jamaica, in the Cayman Islands. From there, could that person apply for naturalisation as a British citizen, without ever having resided in what we might more naturally think of as the United Kingdom? I particularly want clarification on that point. I understand that the 1981 Act requires people to spend five years resident in the UK, but does the territorial extent in the Bill define the UK more widely? I look forward to hearing from the Minister about that.

The first residence requirement in the 1981 Act is that applicants must have been resident in the UK for at least five years, and I am again interested in the Minister clarifying the territorial extent of the United Kingdom in that regard. The second requirement is that they must have been present in the United Kingdom five years before the date of application, which is the provision that we are tackling; the third is that they are free of immigration time restrictions on the date of application; and the fourth is that they are free of immigration restrictions for a period of 12 months before making the application. Will that remain in force when the Bill is passed?

The fifth requirement is that the applicants have not spent more than 450 days outside the United Kingdom during the five-year period. I understand that that is covered by the Secretary of State’s discretion with regards to serving members of the armed forces. The sixth is that they have not spent more than 90 days outside the United Kingdom in the last 12 months of the five-year period. The final requirement is that they have not been in breach of the immigration rules at any stage during the five-year period. Can the Minister confirm that all those aspects of the residency requirements in the 1981 Act will continue to apply, and that the Bill will change only one particular area?

Since the 1981 Act, there has been one major modification to what it takes for someone to be naturalised as a citizen of the United Kingdom. I refer, of course, to the UK citizenship test. I do not know whether you have ever had the chance to see whether you can pass it, Mr Speaker, but in preparation for this debate, I thought that I would see whether I could do so. I looked at some sample tests, and I regret to inform the House that in the first sample test I failed to reach the necessary 75% required to pass.

Let me give some examples of questions that I did not answer successfully. I will not put you on the spot, Mr Speaker, although I know you are an encyclopaedically knowledgeable man. The following question stumped me: in which year did married women get the right to divorce their husband? To help the applicant there are four possible answers, and I am happy to take an intervention from anyone who can answer the question correctly. The options are 1837, 1857, 1875 or 1882. I do not know the correct answer, but I know I got it wrong. I am glad to say that I did know that it is not the Prime Minister who calls a by-election and that we have two Chambers in our national Parliament, so I sailed through some of the questions.

Here is another question that I failed miserably to pass: what is the number of children and young people up to the age of 19 in the UK? Again, Mr Speaker, I will help you out, but I will not put you on the spot. I will take interventions from colleagues who know the answer. The four possible answers are 13 million, 14 million, 15 million and 16 million. I failed on that one and I can see that the House has also failed on that measure of citizenship. I was getting rather depressed with my results from the test until I discovered a crucial fact. I compliment my hon. Friend the Minister on any involvement that he may have had in this crucial fact, which is that this Government have now introduced a much more sensible citizenship test. Those examples were taken from the citizenship test that can only be described as a new Labour fantasy about the level of knowledge that we would all have about our country.

I will not go on with further examples of questions that I failed—

--- Later in debate ---

[Harriett Baldwin]

Mr Speaker, I shall have that speech of yours printed and engraved. It is so eloquent that I can only—

[Guy Opperman]

May I draw my hon. Friend back to the Bill? Surely the point is that this country, whose virtues she is extolling, has a long history of support by overseas troops and forces to win key battles. Waterloo would not have been won without the Prussians, Wellington famously crying, “Where is Blucher?” I presume General Blucher could have applied, were he willing to change from Prussian to British, to become a British citizen.

[Harriett Baldwin]

My understanding is that he would have had to have been resident in the territories outlined in the Bill for a considerable period of time before applying.

I will bring to a conclusion this line of discussion, but I am pleased to report to the House—you will forgive me, Mr Speaker—that I was able to get 100% on the new citizenship test. I expect that all the people who go through the process will, as a result of these changes, be able to demonstrate not just the narrow technical points that we define on a page in legislation, such as the number of days, but the wider cultural and historical aspects of what it means to be a British citizen.

My next line of questions for the Minister relates to the Secretary of State’s discretion, which I understand is a crucial part of the legislation. That discretion is vital because someone serving in our armed forces might get into trouble with the law, either civilian or military, and might—I am sure that the numbers are very low—have to go through the ignominy of a dishonourable discharge. If a member of the armed forces has been dishonourably discharged, would that almost invariably mean that they would not meet the new criteria for applying for naturalisation? Perhaps the Minister will confirm that from the Dispatch Box.

That former member of the armed forces might have lived a blameless life for many years since, their dishonourable discharge having been some time in the past, so to what extent will the Secretary of State’s discretion be used in that example? Would it be the case that, however much time had elapsed and however honourable the person’s life had been since, the fact that they had been dishonourably discharged would be sufficient to count against their application for naturalisation?

Will the Minister, when he responds, clarify exactly how the Secretary of State’s discretion might be used in other situations? What other aspects of that discretion might be required? For example, if the person had had a magnificent period of service, left the armed forces, lived in one of the overseas dependencies I listed earlier and was then perhaps convicted of rape or murder, would that be something the Secretary of State would see automatically as a red line? My understanding is that it would, because being of good character is a requirement.

The other area of discretion I would like clarified relates to the requirement to be able to communicate to an acceptable degree in English, Welsh or Scottish Gaelic. Someone might have exemplary military service and fulfil all the conditions, and they might be one of the people who will be helped by the Bill, because at the beginning of their process of naturalisation they were on active service overseas, but perhaps their command of English, Welsh or Scottish Gaelic is not quite at an acceptable level. To what extent will the Secretary of State be able to use his or her discretion in those circumstances? It is a question of how discretion will be used to define good character. Similarly, how will discretion be used to define the ability to communicate in English, Welsh or Scottish Gaelic?

--- Later in debate ---

[Guy Opperman]

I endorse entirely my hon. Friend’s comments, but I would go one step further. Although there may be an unwritten contract between the public and the armed forces, the Government have brought in the armed forces covenant and will provide updated reports on its progress and changes to it. Not only do the public have the unwritten contract but we, the public and the state now have the covenant between ourselves and our armed forces.

[Mel Stride]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that extremely important point. We have the annual report on the armed forces covenant. The Bill proposed by my hon. Friend the Member for Woking addresses one key omission in the last annual report, namely the qualification or otherwise for naturalisation based on where a person happens to be five years prior to making their application.

Some have argued that that is a relatively narrow and small point, but it is a large and significant one, particularly now that it has gained huge public notice as a consequence of my hon. Friend’s Bill. Many of the military charities, including the Royal British Legion, have demonstrably shown support for it. It is therefore important that we give the Bill every possible support as it passes through both Houses.

--- Later in debate ---

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

The Bill is about two of the most important issues that we in the House of Commons debate—namely, the armed forces and immigration. Most of all, however, it is about justice and fairness, and that is surely what the armed forces covenant is all about. The covenant is not just a piece of paper; it is a priority for the Government. It is about fair treatment for our forces and about having an impact on the lives of the military personnel who serve in our communities. Its remit goes wider than that, however; it is about justice. The armed forces covenant is about an obligation on the whole of society. It involves voluntary, charitable and other bodies, as well as private organisations and it is about how all of us as individuals treat those who put their lives on the line for us. We all need to recognise that fact and to engage with it, so that we can implement the crucial elements of the covenant.

I urge those who are in any doubt about the process that the Government have entered into to study the covenant itself and to work their way through its history. The covenant was established in May 2011, and it was based on the principles of removing disadvantage from serving personnel in relation to access to public and commercial services, and of allowing special provision in some circumstances for the injured and the bereaved. The Government committed to rebuilding the covenant and established an armed forces covenant taskforce in July 2010. The taskforce reported to the Government, and many of its recommendations have subsequently been implemented. It produced two reports. The size of the second report—the “Armed forces covenant annual report 2012”, which runs to almost 100 pages—is testimony to the seriousness with which the Government are addressing these issues. It contains details of the specific measures that we are taking.

Significant achievements are to be found in many discrete areas of the covenant. Health care, for example, is a matter of prime importance for service personnel. Investment has been made in areas such as medical equipment in theatre and mental health care provision. Many of us have spoken in the House about the importance of providing support for our servicemen and women after they have been discharged from the Army, or when they are merely returning home on leave. I urge Members to visit Headley Court, the Defence Medical Rehabilitation Centre, which was opened with £17 million of assistance from the Government. A further £5 million is going towards wards and accommodation. Thanks to the armed forces covenant, there have also been developments in housing. Members of the armed forces are now being placed at the top of the priority list on the Government’s First Buy scheme.

The armed forces covenant is why we are here today. The anomaly that the Bill seeks to address is that a serviceman or woman who serves overseas for a considerable length of time does not satisfy the requirements for naturalisation in the way that others are able to do.

This has great relevance to my own constituency because I have the privilege of having Albemarle barracks in my Northumberland constituency. For many years, the troops based there have been the 39th Regiment the Royal Artillery. By reason of the basing review, they are moving down to Wiltshire. We shall therefore be welcoming in the near future the 3rd Regiment Royal Horse Artillery. Let me explain the relevance of this to the Bill.

The 3rd Regiment RHA has been based at Caen barracks in Hohne, Germany. Many soldiers have spent a considerable period of time there—overseas. I do not know the exact number of individuals, but if that regiment has overseas servicemen working there who, by reason of the British Nationality Act 1981, do not qualify for citizenship, they would be exactly the sort of individuals who would benefit from the fact that this Government are addressing this particular anomaly.

I speak as a fifth generation immigrant—one with a lot more “Saxon” than “Anglo” in my name. It is certainly the case that anyone coming from 3rd Regiment RHA should be able to benefit when, as we all hope, the Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Jonathan Lord), who has done great job bringing it before us, becomes law. I endorse entirely the support that various charities and Army organisations have expressed for the Bill and I welcome the fact that the Government have consulted them and got them involved. Like many others, I am a huge supporter of the Royal British Legion. I have raised funds for my local branch and it does a fantastic job. In addition, I welcome the fact that organisations such as Veterans Aid and the Army Families Federation have got involved and strongly supported my hon. Friend’s Bill.

[Mel Stride]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful case for the Bill. Is it not just as significant that, as far as we are aware, no organisations are hostile to the Bill, just as all the military charities are in favour of it?

[Guy Opperman]

That is the case. We need to recognise that there is a rich tradition of this country working with overseas soldiers in pursuit of the aims and objectives of the Queen and this country. One needs to think only of the battle of Britain. The Spitfire was not manned to the greatest degree by Anglo-Saxon men and women, as there were 145 pilots from Poland, 135 from New Zealand, 112 from Canada and 88 from Czechoslovakia; 41 were Irish and there were 32 Australians, 28 Belgians, 25 South Africans, 13 French, 11 Americans and one each from Sri Lanka, Jamaica and Zimbabwe. An interesting point that dovetails with our consideration of this Bill is that Jamaica will be particularly affected because its citizens continue to support and serve in our armed services to this day.

We appreciate the fact that the Bill is amending just one small part of the armed forces covenant, but it is certainly something that we should all support. As I reflect on the fact that there appears to be no opposition to the Bill and full support for it from a whole range of organisations, it makes me glad to be participating in private Members’ Bill proceedings for what I believe is the third time—I have a rich history over three years and three months with the Mobile Homes Bill and the Antarctic Bill, both of which I am pleased to say became law. I am very pleased to support my hon. Friend the Member for Woking on his Bill; he has done a fantastic job.

Scrap Metal Theft

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Allen]

I think that people from all parties will wish to support that. These procedures are full of trips, traps and minefields, but I will assist the hon. Gentleman if he wishes and I am sure that our combined experience, and that of our colleagues, will be able to placate any forces in the depths of Government that do not want private Member’s Bills to succeed. His Bill will be to the credit of everyone involved, including the Government, if it can be given a fair wind.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman rightly mentioned metal thefts in the north-east and those of us who represent constituencies there have been particularly concerned by metal theft from churches and war memorials. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that any future law on metal theft should have as an aggravating offence—and therefore attracting corresponding sentences—the theft from churches, war memorials and children’s graves?

[Mr Allen]

Those offences are especially odious. There is no good theft, but when people melt down the memorial to two children who were killed by the IRA in Warrington or personal emblems and memorials to those who have passed away, often for the sake of £10-worth of scrap, the hurt and damage done massively outweighs any profit to the criminal. If the hon. Gentleman finds his way on to the Committee that considers any relevant legislation, perhaps he could table an amendment on that specific point.

Let me turn to the areas for serious reform. I will take interventions on these points, as the Minister has kindly indicated that he wants to hear the voices of hon. Members. First, the Government must replace the current registration scheme and the police should be given greater powers to close unscrupulous scrap metal dealers. A range of sanctions should be created, perhaps like those mentioned by the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), against anyone operating without a licence or those found in breach of their licence conditions. It should be an offence for a scrap metal dealer to trade without a licence and a crime to sell metal to an unregistered scrap metal dealer.

Emergency Services (Interoperability)

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Tuesday 12th June 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mark Pawsey]

I shall come to local resilience forums and the useful part that they play in bringing people together. Communications are key, with people working together and understanding the different ways of operating. Clearly, through training at an institution such as the one in my hon. Friend’s constituency, emergency services personnel can get to understand more about the actions of colleagues not only in their own service but in other services. That understanding can be crucial in getting the right help to an incident as fast as possible. Not only must the police, fire and ambulance services be able to work with each other, but every individual force within each service needs to be able to do so as well. There are 53 police forces in the UK and their work often overlaps, most often at a force boundary but also when specialist forces such as the British Transport police are involved or when officers travel to another area to provide support at an event. Good communications are at the heart of such interoperability.

One organisation cannot work with another if it does not know what the other organisation is doing or trying to achieve. Sometimes that is straightforward, such as ensuring that all staff within a service use the same sort of language as other services. For instance, there is anecdotal evidence about the terminology used by the emergency services during the 7/7 bombings. To some, talk of “casualties” found in the tunnels meant injured people, but to those in another service a “casualty” was someone who had died, so when they heard the word, support was not prioritised because they believed it was too late. Another example—the blowing of whistles—comes from the time of the IRA bombings in Manchester in 1996. When the police blow a whistle, all available officers run towards the sound; when the military blow a whistle, everyone stands to attention; and when the fire service blows a whistle, everyone runs away because it is a sign that a building is in danger of collapse. There was no danger as a result in that particular incident, but the different responses to the sound of a whistle show how important it is to make certain that everyone responding to an emergency speaks the same language and works to the same procedures.

I am pleased to note that in July 2007 the National Policing Improvement Agency produced a guide to language to be used over the Airwave network, “AirwaveSpeak”. That was an early step to ensure that all police agencies spoke the same language. The development should be continued more broadly, to include other emergency services.

The quality of the technology is also important to ensure the achievement of interoperability. Before the Airwave network was rolled out nationally in 2005, the emergency services throughout the country used different systems and were not able to communicate easily with one another, leading to practical difficulties. For example, police officers working at force boundaries had to swap radio handsets regularly in order to keep in touch with each other. Now the situation has changed and members of all three emergency services and up to 300 other organisations have access to a common communications platform.

A recent example of the benefits of interoperability occurred last summer, during the 2011 riots, when unprecedented disorder took place in some towns and cities throughout England. An important point to note about those events was the sheer scale of the operations that the emergency services had to deal with. The number of police on duty in the capital rose from 6,000 to 16,000, and officers came to London from 25 different forces, from as far afield as Devon and Cornwall and Strathclyde. Crucially, even with such substantially increased numbers, all the forces involved were able to communicate with one another because they were operating on a common communications platform. Therefore, the necessary complex response to that event was co-ordinated and officers from different parts of the country could work together. There was criticism of the Airwave radio network—hon. Members may have read such criticism in an article in The Observer in December 2011—but the company’s rebuttal and subsequent media reporting clearly show that the network did exactly what it was created to do and supported interoperability in action.

A recent experience of our emergency services looking after a substantial number of people at an event was the diamond jubilee weekend, when the communications network helped the emergency services to work together effectively. I shall give an insight into just how many people used the network at the weekend. I have been told that, as we might expect, the key time was the river pageant on the Sunday. That was the peak day of operations, and during the 12-hour period between 6 o’clock in the morning and 6 o’clock in the evening, 125,315 radio handsets were used by the emergency services across the network. There were more than 1 million interactions across 135 sites. Some 74 organisations, including police, ambulance, fire and rescue services— emergency blue-light services—from all over the country were on the network and forces came from as far afield as the Isle of Wight, mid-Wales and Fife.

In addition to the police services, which were defined as clearly marked users, making use of the system, a further 93 users were recorded as having used the Airwave direct network, including groups such as the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, Transport for London, the Highways Agency and the Port of London Authority. The fact that emergency and non-blue-light services could talk to one another therefore led to success on that day. The Olympics are just around the corner and will start in 45 days. The diamond jubilee weekend was useful, early experience for our emergency services in preparation for what will almost certainly be the biggest test of working together. They can go into the rest of the summer with confidence.

I understand that the Port of London Authority, a user of the system, is looking forward to working on the Olympics and to facilitating

“a response which is both integrated and resilient”.

The Olympics provide a fantastic opportunity for our country. The eyes of the world will be on the UK and London in particular, and excitement is rightly starting to build in London as we approach the event. However, for our emergency services, the Olympics are their biggest challenge. Having visited the Olympics site with the all-party group on emergency services earlier in the year, I am confident that our services are well prepared for the challenge, and I look forward to their success.

One feature will be the armed forces’ contribution to Olympics security, and we will start to see interoperability between the emergency services and the military. The interest in the military’s role in providing security was evidenced by questions to the Secretary of State for Defence in the House just yesterday. The armed forces will use the same communications network as the emergency services, with about 8,000 military personnel having access to that service, making up around 3% of communications network users throughout the Olympics. They will act as reservists, and 13,500 personnel will be called up for the games, although, as my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch said, the police will be the lead service in terms of security.

I was interested to attend a recent all-party group on the armed forces briefing on the military’s contribution to Olympics security. Their role is divided into three sections: safety and security; support for operations; and a wider contingency role. It is clear that the planning is detailed, and the attention to detail is impressive. I was interested in a senior naval officer’s response when asked what success would look like. He said that he hoped that the 64 days of the summer Olympics and Paralympics will be the most boring of a servicemen’s career. I think that we all endorse that. I welcome the joining up of the work of the emergency services and armed forces.

I turn to shared assets. There is a link between services working closely together and their ability to share assets. Sharing assets is a big opportunity for public services more broadly to effect financial savings. I recently spoke at a Royal United Services Institute conference entitled “Blue Light Air Assets: Future Operations”, when particular consideration was given to the future of air assets. Sharing such assets is vital in helping the emergency services to work together with the coastguard and air ambulance services.

I pay particular tribute to the air ambulance service. In recent years, I have become involved with the Warwickshire and Northampton air ambulance service, which operates in my constituency. Air assets are used extensively and to great effect by all the emergency services, and in the UK the majority of those air assets are helicopters. RUSI’s research papers all point to the importance of the blue-light air service’s contribution. Crucially, in the UK, there is currently no co-ordination of those air assets, nationally or across agencies. Sadly, individual emergency services and regional forces currently operate their own air assets in isolation, and that goes back to the issue that I referred to earlier: silo thinking.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. Does he agree that, as we have the great benefit throughout the country of an air ambulance service for which taxpayers pay nothing whatever, the ongoing situation whereby the Royal National Lifeboat Institution is exempt from VAT on fuel, but the air ambulance service must pay VAT on the fuel that it uses should be changed? Will he join my campaign to put the matter before the Backbench Business Committee to try to persuade the Government to review VAT on the air ambulance service?

[Mark Pawsey]

I, too, am a great supporter of the air ambulance service as a charitable institution, and I know about its tremendous work to raise funds in and around the midlands. I share my hon. Friend’s concern that charitable funds are used to pay tax. I am more than happy to join him in his representations.

On silo thinking, the RUSI report argues that there must be much greater co-ordination in the use of our air assets. Its report on operations for the future makes it clear that the aim should be to ensure that organisations do not consider their air assets in isolation and that they investigate joint working and asset sharing with others. If those twin policies were pursued, there would be a welcome reduction in costs and improved efficiency in the use of assets. The report calls for, as I do, greater collaboration between Government agencies and asset sharing.

A helpful case study comes from Northern Ireland during the troubles when all helicopter assets were owned and operated by the Ministry of Defence in the UK in direct support of the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the civil authority. A single air-tasking cell enabled a helicopter in the air to switch from a life-saving mission to a police task, depending on need and urgency.

Given my background of owning and running a business over 25 years before first arriving at the House, I have always been keen to ensure the maximum use of any item of capital—effectively, to sweat the asset as much as possible—and it certainly seems that there is a great deal of sense in sharing key assets that might sometimes be idle. I would be interested to hear the Minister’s views on how sharing helicopter assets between police forces and other bodies could contribute to more effective working.

There are several examples of how interoperability can be a success. Existing emergency helicopter provision in north-west England contains many gaps, so there are proposals for a rescue helicopter in that area. Those looking to procure the new rescue helicopter point out that neither police helicopters nor air ambulances are equipped with a winch, and they therefore have to land to load or unload personnel and equipment. Air ambulances are classified as commercial aircraft and can therefore provide an emergency service only during daylight hours. To counter those problems, the proposal in the north-west is for a rescue helicopter that has a winch and uses night-vision devices. Such an asset will therefore have multiple roles and provide an affordable option that will allow all fire and rescue services in the north-west to enhance their response and service delivery, while providing support and resilience to other emergency services and rescue agencies. That is a good example of the widespread benefits that interoperability can bring.

My hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown) mentioned the local resilience forums that exist around the country, based on police authorities. The emergency responders—fire, police and ambulance services—meet as a group to consider the risks that affect their areas and to work out strategies to deal with them. That strikes me as an excellent example of interoperability in action that should be welcomed, and I look forward to the Minister’s remarks on how those local resilience forums can be built on.

What can we do in the future to improve interoperability? We have already seen how the adoption of a common platform for communications can significantly improve the performance of emergency services by enabling them to work together. There is, however, more that can be done. About 18 months ago, I attended a reception in the House of Commons for the emergency services. During the discussions that took place around the table between Members and representatives from all the emergency services, it struck me that it was one of only a few occasions in which members of the police had a detailed conversation with people from the ambulance and fire and rescue services. It was a great opportunity for people to network socially, and a greater understanding of each service is vital because, as we have already heard, different words mean different things to different services.

RUSI’s report on shared air assets states that, to achieve interoperability, agencies must fully understand one another if they are to work together effectively. The key question for people to understand is what their agency, and other agencies, are trying to achieve. The one-size-fits-all approach is not necessarily the best way for organisations to act in joined-up way; they need to identify which capabilities, policies, technologies and operational processes need to be shared and, of course, which are best not shared for perfectly good reasons.

We have spoken about the need for interoperability between Departments to help achieve interoperability between services. I understand that the Home Office is looking at the future of emergency services communications, and it is important that national co-ordination is maintained and strengthened to avoid any slipping back.

Interoperability can be enhanced in many ways, and I will refer to a letter that Roy Wilshire, the director of operational response at the Chief Fire Officers Association, has made publicly available to show how working together can be improved. He stated that incident commanders from all three services should train together to ensure that they understand where their procedures are the same, where there are differences, whether those differences are problematic and how they can be aligned—that returns to the point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for The Cotswolds. Furthermore, we should ensure that incident commanders understand each other’s roles and that throughout each service people understand the special skills that their colleagues in other services can provide and ensure that they are used effectively.

An emergency command doctrine should be jointly developed, setting out policies for responding at the earliest stages of a major incident. We need a national, Government-funded programme of exercises to deal with the main threats faced by the country. The Government should ensure that important information, such as Ordnance Survey maps and Met Office data, continues to be available free to the emergency services, so that they all operate using the same information. Finally, the Cabinet Office and Departments that sponsor the three blue-light services—the Home Office, the Department of Health and the Department for Communities and Local Government—should work together to ensure greater interoperability. I hope that all those suggestions have been borne out in my remarks, and I look forward to hearing contributions from colleagues and the Minister.

In conclusion, it is clear that interoperability between the emergency services has come a long way. The response to the 7/7 bombing and the riots in London last year showed that, by working together, emergency services can respond effectively to crucial events as they occur. I am pleased that the introduction of a common communications platform—currently through a company based in my constituency—has had a positive impact on the ability of the emergency services to work together. In future, each emergency service will greatly benefit from a greater understanding of the role played by their colleagues in other services. I look forward to greater departmental interoperability. If the Government have a concerted interoperable approach, a fully interoperable emergency service will be that much closer.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I suggest that we all owe a huge debt to our emergency services. Would we be able to deal with an ambulance situation, cope with an arrest or fight a fire? I suggest not. Those men and women are the cornerstone of our country and the cream of the crop whom we should support, laud and applaud. I am proud to record my thanks to them, both nationally and locally in my constituency.

This is an issue of great importance, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) on securing the debate. With the forthcoming Olympics, we have one of the most serious security operations ever mounted in this country, and credit must go to the many security and emergency forces that are preparing for the ultimate test. I have a friend who was trained as a senior nurse in the bulky green chemical, biological, radioactive and nuclear event outfits that make people look like something from Mars. They are extremely useful against nuclear attack, although they will not be troubling Usain Bolt during the 100-metre dash. Such things are good preparation, and as my hon. Friend said, it is clear that the emergency services are working much better together. As various events have tested them over the past five to 10 years, their ability to co-ordinate—under successive Governments—has much improved.

I applaud and welcome all the points raised by my hon. Friend, but most of the issues that I wish to address concern non-life-threatening scenarios. It is clear that we are getting better at dealing with very serious events—the 7/7 bombings are a good example—but I suggest that, in 2012, we are still manifestly struggling to deal with the day-to-day interaction between police, fire and ambulance paramedics. That is not working as it should. It is a question not just of how the services co-ordinate with one another on a day-to-day basis, but of the sharing of buildings, how the location issue is addressed and how people who represent the individual emergency services work together.

Questions asked in the House provide a telling illustration. My hon. Friend has made the fair point that the ambulance service is the responsibility of one Department, the fire service is the responsibility of another Department and the police service, of course, is represented by my hon. Friend the Minister responding to the debate today. The hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) asked a question of the Department of Health on 23 March 2011. She asked the Secretary of State for Health what discussions he had had with ministerial colleagues on

“arrangements to improve liaison between ambulance services and other emergency responders”.

The Minister of State, Department of Health, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelmsford (Mr Burns), said:

“The Department of Health, along with the Home Office and the Department for Communities and Local Government, continues to encourage and support regular communication across all emergency services.”—[Official Report, 23 March 2011; Vol. 524, c. 1195W.]

It is laudable that there is support for communication across all emergency services. Everyone would understand that, but I do not get the impression that it is actually happening.

The hon. Lady also asked a question of the Home Office, to which my right hon. Friend the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice replied. The hon. Lady asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department what discussions she had had with ministerial colleagues on

“arrangements to improve liaison between police services and other emergency responders”.

The answer was:

“The strategic defence and security review records Ministers’ agreed intention to improve the ability of the emergency services to work together during emergencies.”—[Official Report, 1 April 2011; Vol. 526, c. 556W.]

Again, it is wonderful that there is an agreed intention to work together.

Undaunted, my hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart) asked this question:

“Is the Minister satisfied that local forces are doing enough to share the costs of facilities such as human resources and IT with other public bodies and other emergency services?”

The Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice also replied on that occasion:

“It is important that police forces do more to take up such opportunities. We have already seen an increase in the collaboration between police forces over operational matters, but there are valuable opportunities to collaborate and share services for the back-office functions such as IT and human resources, which would result in significant savings.”—[Official Report, 12 December 2011; Vol. 537, c. 504.]

I endorse all those comments. I come now to the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) on 24 January 2012. He asked the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government whether he planned

“to review the level of joint training undertaken by fire and ambulance services.”

The answer from the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), was:

“My Department is working with other Government Departments and the emergency services to improve joint ways of working in response to particular identified risks. In particular, in response to the Report of the Coroner’s Inquests into the London bombings of 7 July 2005, the Government agreed that it would co-ordinate a wider review of multi-agency considerations in single-service training. The Cabinet Office”—

another Department—

“are co-ordinating this review and will ensure that results are made available once it is completed.”—[Official Report, 24 January 2012; Vol. 539. c. 137W.]

I accept entirely that efforts are being made and that steps are being taken down the road, but if ever there was an example of why we have this problem, it is the fact that I have just managed to cite four different Departments, including the Cabinet Office, of all people, having overall control of the review and implementation of the changes. I suggest that unless the Government—successive Governments have failed on this; let us be honest—take control of how we mesh the services together, we will struggle going forward.

This issue is particularly important in a time of austerity. In other countries, the main emergency services share buildings. It might be hard for some people to believe, but in other countries there might be a fire station, an ambulance station and a police station all in the same building, all working together without any fundamental problems from a union that says, “We can’t possibly co-exist with this other organisation,” without any particular problems of individual commanders saying, “We can’t possibly share a building,” and without the problem of Government being told, “We can’t possibly have a situation in which the IT is provided to this organisation but not paid for by this organisation; it’s going to come out of my budget.” There is a possibility that we can amalgamate the services and run them at far less cost to the taxpayer and with much greater efficacy.

[Geoffrey Clifton-Brown]

I commend to my hon. Friend and to my hon. Friend the Minister the example of what happens in Gloucestershire, where all three services have a common call centre at Quedgeley. Not only does that save costs; it works incredibly efficiently.

[Guy Opperman]

Clearly, in relation to call centres and IT, we are taking steps. There is clearly a positive way forward. However, in broad terms, we have got into a situation in which individual parts of the emergency services in local areas are fighting for their own turf to much too great a degree. It is perfectly understandable that people wish to have an all-singing, all-dancing fire service, ambulance service and police stations. We might totally endorse that, but we have to ask, given that taxpayers’ money is paying for it all, how can we integrate matters better? I suggest that we look not only at the example cited by my hon. Friend, but at examples from overseas, where progress on these matters has been made.

I have the great good fortune to represent more than 1,000 square miles of Northumberland. Parts of the area are semi-urban, but to the west and the north of Hexham is a vast expanse of territory that genuinely suffers from a lack of emergency services. Let me give an example. One of my local schools, a secondary school, has a catchment area bigger than the area covered by the M25. That will enable people to grasp just how large that area is. It is centred around the town of Bellingham, a place where I have spent a great deal of time assisting the Friends of Bellingham Surgery and attempting to understand how we can have ambulance, police and fire services in that location. Currently, we have a police station. I credit the chief constable of Northumberland for retaining that police station. We also have a fire station, but we do not have an ambulance facility. As everyone knows, ambulances are required to have a 75% reach to patients who need urgent medical assistance within eight minutes. In relation to places in the far west of Northumberland, it is patently extremely difficult for the ambulance service to provide that. There are, however, examples of how that situation could be changed. For example, the Friends of Bellingham Surgery and the practice itself have been working extensively—for years, I suggest—to try to get a localised ambulance service. It could be located on the site of the fire station. One would think that that was not a very radical step, but it is clearly quite radical when one considers that these examples are only just being considered at this stage.

Just a mile over the border in Cumbria, there are two examples of local success that I should like to share with the House. In Alston, which my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) represents so successfully, the community is setting up a community-run ambulance, with the backing of the league of friends of the local hospital, but also working with their local health trust and local GPs. The impression given—the project is at an early stage—is that that community ambulance would provide a rural area with a facility that is currently lacking.

Also in Cumbria, last December, the county council, the fire and rescue service and the police have come to an arrangement whereby the emergency services will operate from seven fire stations. Cumbria police have cut back the number of police stations, so the police and the fire services are working in the same building. In a large number of areas, the police have set up in fire stations, with cost savings to both parties and the benefit of interoperability. I suggest that that is clearly the way forward and something that, as police and crime commissioners come into being, individual commissioner candidates will need to consider.

On Saturday, I was delighted to select Mr Phil Butler, a former police officer from Northumbria, as the police and crime commissioner candidate on behalf of the Conservative party for Northumbria’s police and crime commissioner election. The candidates will need to look at the provision of individual police services in a rural area, how they interlink and the funds for the local community going forward.

I look at the individual examples of success in Cumbria and suggest that they are manifestly a good thing. We have to put them in the context of the disastrous FiReControl project. If ever there were an example of a disastrous Government project to provide a single-issue service without integrating it into other services, surely the fire service project—introduced, I am sad to say, by the previous Government—is it. The National Audit Office assessment, issued on 1 July 2011, of the FiReControl programme said:

“The FiReControl project was flawed from the outset because it did not have the support of those essential to its success—local fire and rescue services. The Department rushed the start of the project”

and failed

“to follow proper procedures. Ineffective checks and balances during initiation and early stages meant the Department committed itself to the project on the basis of broad-brush and inaccurate estimates of costs and benefits and an unrealistic delivery timetable, and agreed an inadequate contract with its IT supplier. The Department under-appreciated the project’s complexity, and then mismanaged the IT contractor’s performance and delivery. The Department failed to provide the necessary leadership to make the project successful, over-relying on poorly managed consultants and failing to sort out early problems with delivery by the contractor. The Department took a firmer grip of the project from 2009 and terminated the contract in December 2010 to avoid even more money being wasted”.

That is a classic example of a failure to take one service and work with the other services. That project was introduced at a time, not necessarily of plenty, but when there was an awful lot of money in the Government’s coffers. Notwithstanding the efforts of the Department for Communities and Local Government to fund projects on an ongoing basis, as it has successfully done this year—certainly in my part of the world—it is patently clear that, in times of austerity, it is vital that the emergency services work together.

I will go into the detail of that with an example from my constituency. Setting aside the amazing efforts of the GP’s practice and the fact that the paramedics are increasingly situated in the location of the practice—in other words, in Wooler, and in Bellingham going forward, a paramedic is working with the GP—if an ambulance was required and a paramedic was not available, for whatever reason, we would wait for the ambulance. I have met the area’s paramedic, who is outstanding. Why could not the individual police officer or fireman, with improved, suitable training, step in and act as first responder? It is manifestly wrong not to train individual firefighters and police officers to address such issues on an ongoing basis.

Aside from being a very fat jockey, I was formerly a business man. Just as in business there can be one man, two jobs and everyone works together and can mesh and interlink their respective jobs, so it should be with the individual firefighter, police officer and ambulance man. Another example is the community support officers who we already have in the police. They perform a manifestly brilliant role throughout the country. They are able to assist the police in the performance of their duties, but are fundamentally members of the public given basic training. Why can we not have a community support fireman or paramedic? Why is the fireman unable to interlink with individual police officers and assist the police officer as a CSO? I see absolutely no reason whatsoever why that cannot be the case. Surely, these things must be done in future.

I have discussed the suggestion with my local emergency services. Without naming the individual organisations, it is fair to say that there may be somewhat of a turf war and an issue with individuals protecting their domains. Whether that is about unions or about power, it is not the way forward. Given that these are shared services that we all need and enjoy, there must be a better way going forward. Speaking for myself, if I could secure the construction of one substantial building for the future—for example, in Bellingham—that housed police, fire and ambulance services, I would regard that as a major success.

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Havard. I congratulate the hon. Member for Rugby (Mark Pawsey) on raising this important subject. He made some very sound points about the need for national co-ordination, efficiencies and interoperability between emergency services. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response. Co-ordination is vital.

I am reminded, as you will be, too, Mr Havard, that only this weekend there were very difficult circumstances of flooding throughout mid and west Wales. Looking at the reports from places not too far from my constituency or yours, we see that major rescues were undertaken involving Royal Air Force Sea King helicopters from the military, inshore lifeboats, fire service rescue boats, Dyfed-Powys police, the Environment Agency, Ceredigion local council and voluntary agencies, all working together to respond to an emergency that flared up in a very short time.

A lot of planning is done for events such as flooding, major aircraft disasters, fires, building collapse, and indeed terrorist incidents. That planning is vital. Interoperability of the emergency services and the need to co-ordinate their efforts is an important part of the planning process, but, as the hon. Member for Rugby highlighted, it can be improved. Whatever any Government do, now and in the future, there are always efficiencies, improvements and information exchanges that can help those services to be provided in a much stronger and more efficient way and to prevent failures. I echo the tribute paid to those who put their lives on the line on any occasion. It is valued by all Members.

The flooding happened this weekend, but as has been mentioned, a simple, regular, unfortunate incident, such as a road crash, involves operability between services. Major events such as the recent jubilee weekend, the forthcoming Olympics and the events of 7/7 also demand responses from a range of agencies across the board. The riots of last summer involved police forces coming into London and needing to work with other police forces. I can recall as a Minister being in Cobra for 7/7, for fuel and prison strikes, and to look at the question of riots and services in Northern Ireland. There is a need for planning, but it is also vital that operability and information flow requirements are met.

The landscape that the hon. Gentleman outlined is indeed complicated. There are not only the three UK Government Departments that he mentioned, but, as I said in my intervention, the devolved Administrations, which deal with health and the fire service in Wales and Scotland and with much of everything in Northern Ireland. We have a range of bodies—the national health service, the coastguard, the police, the British Transport police, the Army and voluntary agencies outside Government, such as the air ambulance service, St John Ambulance and the Red Cross—that very often deal with emergency response.

The hon. Gentleman made some valid points, and I agree with him on the need for the dissemination of common language and an examination of efficiencies in equipment, and to ensure common equipment that is compatible with all services. I will return to Airwave in a moment, but I want to talk about common practices. I was struck by the example of arguments about whistles and what they mean. Common practice is important, and common information should be provided. I take the point made by the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) that there should be a drive toward shared facilities by Government and local authorities. The ambulance service in one town in my constituency is considering removing its station and sharing a facility with the police and fire service, to provide a better service—the same level of service but provided more efficiently. We can look forward to that.

In the few minutes available, I want to focus on the dichotomy highlighted by the debate between the need for greater central planning and control, with efficiencies driven from the centre through the Cabinet Office, Government co-operation and work with devolved Administrations, and the present Government agenda. I do not say that to be critical, because this is not the time to be critical; but it is fair to say that the Government agenda is driving many services into a more local context. That is true of a range of issues highlighted by the hon. Member for Rugby. Cobra will have an overarching view from the Cabinet Office, as Ministers and officials look at major international and national events, and there will be co-operation between the Department for Communities and Local Government, the Home Office and others at national level, but I want to put things into context and get a feeling from the Minister about how things fit together.

For example, on 15 November, England and Wales will get 43 police and crime commissioners, who will be able to set their budgets, issues and agendas locally. The National Policing Improvement Agency will soon be disbanded, as the hon. Gentleman mentioned. It recently issued guidance on issues pertinent to this debate. There is also the potential for the abolition of the Association of Chief Police Officers, which has a co-ordinating, overarching responsibility for many policing issues. The Government have not yet made it clear to me what will replace it for the co-ordination of operational policing services and the provision of operational guidance on the issues we are debating today. In the context of search and rescue and coastal agencies, the Government recently split and put out to tender private contracts covering two different parts of the country. As I understand it, the Government have so far failed to provide the assurances needed about how that will work operationally. Major changes are being made to the coastguard service at local level—again, devolving downs and removing services.

For me, there is the smidgin of a question about how things will fit in together at the local level, when the Government’s agenda, rightly or wrongly—I have my own views—is driving things down locally. How can the co-ordination that the hon. Member for Rugby so eloquently advocated be required when police and crime commissioners decide their budgets, the National Policing Improvement Agency has disappeared and ACPO is no longer in place? How can it be achieved when contracts are let to the private sector for coastguard services and local government is under pressure in relation to fire services, reportedly resulting in, at the last count, more than 2,200 firefighters being cut, 50 stations being closed and 1,000 non-operational staff being lost? A separate issue is the loss of 16,000 police officers, which I shall always mention, in every debate about emergency services.

The localism agenda needs to be examined in the light of how we co-ordinate services nationally. What are the Government’s thoughts when the demands of operational activity are becoming ever more national and regional—including the Olympics, the jubilee, the terrorist threat and major operational challenges such as the flooding at the weekend? Set against those are the Government’s drive to localism—local decisions and local budget control. How will the Minister and his Department deal with mandating services and co-ordinating the efficiencies to which the hon. Members for Rugby and for Hexham rightly drew attention, when the localism agenda says, “Do what you want in the regions and nationally we will stand back a little bit more than perhaps we have in the past”?

Airwave is an important topic in the constituency of the hon. Member for Rugby, and I have also taken an interest in it, both as a Minister in the Department and, recently, shadowing that Department. The Minister will know that the current contract for Airwave comes to an end in 2016. In a written statement on 26 March the Home Secretary said that the

“management of the contract for the Airwave radio system and its replacement (including associated staff)”—[Official Report, 26 March 2012; Vol. 542, c. 95WS.]

will be further considered by the Home Office shortly. She said that the matter will be transferred into the Home Office later this year. I have tabled questions to the Minister, and the answer I have had is:

“The programme is at an early stage and is in consultation with all stakeholders, including the police, to define their requirements.”—[Official Report, 17 April 2012; Vol. 543, c. 305W.]

I should be interested to know the Minister’s current thinking on Airwave, because in Government terms 2016 is not that far away. What is the Minister’s vision of Airwave’s replacement, post-2016? How does he envisage the replacement being commissioned? What does he think about the requirements for the system, taking on board the points that the hon. Member for Rugby made about operability, and the devolved Administrations and Government Departments? Does the Minister plan to have management of the system located in the Home Office permanently? What representations has he had from outside groups about the post-2016 contract? What discussion is engaged in with the Department for Communities and Local Government, the national health service, Scotland and Wales and other colleagues in his Department about the system requirements? It is important that there is efficiency in the system and value for money for the taxpayer, but it is also important to have something that works and meets the needs of the whole community.

I am anxious to give the Minister time to reply to the questions raised by the hon. Member for Rugby, but I want to mention the three driving forces that should come into play in his consideration. The first is effectiveness. The speed and type of response that the emergency services give save lives and prevent injury and are incredibly important. We need to ensure that whatever we do, and however we organise the system—I have some worries about the localism agenda supplanting the national and regional ones—there is a speedy and effective response to all incidents, and that it is planned in advance, measured on delivery, and evaluated afterwards for continuous improvement. There is a need for efficiency and cost to be considered by Ministers in relation to such matters as the potential helicopter contract now coming to light, and in terms of contracts generally. We need to consider how we drive efficiency and cost improvements in national contracts. Again I ask how, with 43 police and crime commissioners, the changes in the NHS and the localism agenda, the Minister believes we can drive the value for money agenda forward and make savings. Even more than in the past, the Minister will not be in control of how budgets are spent, unless he mandates forces and organisations to sign up to contracts, in which case he will have to set their criteria, and co-ordinate and oversee them.

[Guy Opperman]

The right hon. Gentleman is making an impressive speech, but I am a little curious about a couple of points. Clearly, there would always have been reductions and changes, even under the Opposition’s budgetary proposals. What would you have done differently to avoid the impacts that you describe as the Minister’s problem?

[Mr Dai Havard (in the Chair)]

I could outline what I would have done, but the right hon. Gentleman will no doubt want to say what he thinks.

Forensic Science Service

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Monday 27th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

Let me start by making a declaration that for the best part of 21 years I was a criminal barrister. In that time I prosecuted about nine murder cases, was involved in the defence of certain cases, and prosecuted and defended well in excess of 150 Crown court trials. Certainly, I will have done 30 to 50 forensics-based cases and worked with the Forensic Science Service a great deal. Like others, I praise the Forensic Science Service as a large body of individuals who work very hard, sometimes for long hours to keep to their deadlines. We have to acknowledge, though, that the system that has developed—I will not play the blame game—is such that there are financial and logistical difficulties that any Government would have to resolve.

I urge the Minister to take on board one point. As one who has studied the work done in the Birmingham six case and the famous Griess test that never was; as one who worked on the great Guildford cheque fraud that never was, when I learned to my detriment while trying to prosecute a case that people sign their name very differently when drunk than they do normally; as one who successfully prosecuted the bigfoot burglar of Blunsdon—I am pleased to see my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) in his place—who was apprehended thanks to the good efforts of the FSS and his size 12 boots, whose prints were identified in a large flower patch; and as one who has prosecuted many cases where hair and fibres, especially in sexual offences, as well as drugs and human anatomy, were relevant, I share Opposition Members’s concern about what assurances can be given on pressure brought to bear and on the transfer of exhibits, so that in future no shadow of a doubt can be cast, by those who defend, on the propriety of the process. I do not believe that such difficulties will arise, but it is vital for the Minister to give such assurances and explain how he will deal with that significant concern, which it is legitimate to raise.

I share that view because in the time I spent at the criminal Bar—from about 1989 onwards—I saw the development post-1990 of private contractors’ involvement. It is well known that the killers of Stephen Lawrence, Joanna Yeates, Milly Dowler, Vikki Thompson, Colette Aram, Rachel Nickell and Damilola Taylor have one thing in common: all were convicted with the help of evidence provided not by the police but by scientists working for privately owned suppliers of forensic services. Commercial companies have been providing the majority of the UK’s forensic science services for a considerable time, and I see no difficulty with the quality of their work. Even when, as a prosecution service, we were using the Forensic Science Service—and certainly on every occasion when I was a defence counsel—we would also commission a private report, authorised by the legal aid board, whereby a private company did exactly the same assessment. I see no reason why that will not continue.

[Andrew Miller]

I did not catch all the names that the hon. Gentleman mentioned, but the ones I did catch were all cases in which the service was provided by accredited laboratories. Does he agree with me that that is an important factor?

[Guy Opperman]

I accept that accreditation is important, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about that, but to a certain extent the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Prosecution teams and police teams will go to organisations that have proved their worth in past cases, but that is not to say that such organisations will always get it right. We have all seen, whether in shaken baby cases or in other cases where there is alternative forensic evidence, how the fact that an organisation may have performed perfectly in a previous case does not mean that it cannot make a mistake in the current case.

I will move on from the Forensic Science Service itself to give a topical example; I ask you to indulge me for a couple of minutes, Mr Deputy Speaker. I have a constituent, Tony Pickering of Haydon Bridge in Northumberland, whose son, Aidan, died in Delhi on approximately 8 March 2010. Aidan was only 24 and had only recently gone to Delhi. If there is an example of a forensic science system that is not working, where private organisations should be brought in, the Indian system is that example. A post mortem and toxicology tests were carried out in India in March 2010, and Aidan’s body was subsequently brought home. The coroner cannot carry out an inquest in Newcastle, however, because the toxicology results have not been assessed. I regret to say that it took more than a year for the samples to be sent from the local police station to the Rohini central forensic laboratory in Delhi. Another year has now passed, and the family of young Aidan Pickering still do not know what their fate is.

Sadly, this is not an isolated example. The high commission in India tells me that as of November 2011, it had 64 cases awaiting toxicology and forensic analysis. I urge the Indian authorities to look into this matter. In the context of this debate, this is a good example of how the involvement of private organisations could be a good thing, and could have assisted. I shall be visiting India in April to raise that case personally, and I should say that I have been assisted in this by the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who has been an assiduous Chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee. He has raised the issue of forensic science very successfully, not only here but in other places. He raised this particular case not only with the high commissioner for India but with the Home Minister of India, Mr Chidambaram, and I am grateful for his assistance.

I support the decision that has been made on the Forensic Science Service, although I seek certain clarifications that I hope the Minister will be able to provide. I urge him to move forward on this matter. I also urge him to enable the Home Office to assist in any way it can in the case of my constituents who are struggling with the forensic science laboratories in India.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Brokenshire]

I do not accept the analysis relating to burgeoning costs. If the hon. Gentleman talked to ACPO about how the transition and retendering processes have been created, he would find that savings have been delivered through a real focus on the manner in which forensics are used. It is important to view the concept of further burgeoning costs in that light—by recognising that forensic providers are already accredited and by looking at the process undertaken by the police and at the clear statements made at the time that there would be no transfer of services to a non-accredited environment.

The hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) talked about the Metropolitan Police Service handing back its accreditation. I tell her that this would happen to a commercial provider in that situation as well. It is not a reflection of any delinquency or limitation in the Metropolitan police’s standards, quality or approach; it is simply the fact that if new personnel and new arrangements are taken on, a process of re-accreditation has to be gone through, following on from all the processes and procedures that have previously been accredited. I wanted to give the hon. Lady that reassurance.

We have been working closely with key partners throughout the criminal justice system during the transition. A forensics transition board has been overseeing the process, and includes representatives from the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Crown Prosecution Service and the National Policing Improvement Agency, with a wider advisory group whose members include the forensic science regulator and the Ministry of Justice. The regulator has attended a number of meetings to offer his input.

I believe that, thanks to the hard work and commitment of FSS staff and partners across the criminal justice system, the transition has been successful. It has ensured the continued supply of effective forensic science services to the criminal justice system, and has created a stable and competitive market for forensics that will provide cost-effective and innovative forensic services to support the criminal justice system.

Over the past 12 months there has been a significant amount of work and operational planning to manage the transition of services from the FSS to alternative providers in a controlled way, in order to reduce risk and ensure continuity of service. The Association of Chief Police Officers and the National Policing Improvement Agency have re-procured forensic supply across the midlands and the south-east, and for the 14 forces making up the west coast consortium. The transfer of evidence recovery, interpretation and reporting of forensic science examinations from the FSS to the Metropolitan Police Service has been successfully completed, and in parallel the MPS has also re-procured its analytical forensics services.

It was suggested earlier that appropriate arrangements had not been made for the north-east. I think that that is partly because continuing contractual negotiations at the time of the publication of the report did not allow us to be entirely open. What I can say, however, is that there is a separate transition process in the north-east. Negotiations were concluded in December for a managed transfer of work to a new supplier for the north-east and Yorkshire. That followed close working between the FSS and the north-east forces. In the interim, the FSS has continued to provide forensic science services for the north-east forces to ensure that continuity of supply is maintained. The last new cases will be taken by the FSS on 1 March. That is the final part of the transition of its services to other providers.

[Guy Opperman]

Can my hon. Friend assure us that there is no fundamental difference between the situation facing the north-east and the situation facing the rest of the country?

[James Brokenshire]

I can say that one of the fundamental parts of the process, and one of the things on which I was absolutely clear throughout, was the need to ensure that there was continuity of supply of forensic services to the police and the criminal justice system, and I believe that that has been maintained throughout the process. I am hugely grateful for the considerable contribution of ACPO, the NPIA and the FSS to the reaching of these milestones, and for the way in which the process has been managed at national and local level. This has been a challenging time for FSS staff, who I believe have behaved with complete professionalism throughout. I want to record my, and the Government’s, appreciation for and recognition of their dedication and commitment throughout this difficult process.

The Government continue to support the orderly transition of work from the FSS. As part of that process, some of the current staff are moving to a range of other forensic services in the private and public sectors. We have pursued options to transfer elements of FSS business, including staff whenever possible. I have committed myself to providing an update for the Select Committee in June, following the completion of the process. We intend to conduct a survey of the private sector forensic service providers so that we can give a clear indication to the Committee, and therefore more publicly, in relation to the transfer of FSS staff from the FSS to other positions.

Protection of Freedoms Bill

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Diana Johnson]

That is exactly right, and our new clause sets out clearly that anyone wishing to issue tickets should be a member of the British Parking Association or an accredited trade association, and should comply with the code of practice agreed with the DVLA on proper signage and a proper appeals system. We believe that that would solve the problem.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I was retained counsel by the Automobile Association in 2000, in the case of Vine v. London borough of Waltham Forest, so I come to this matter with a degree of experience. Subsection (1) of new clause 15 attempts to create a criminal offence in certain circumstances. Does the hon. Lady agree, however, that those circumstances are already covered by the measures in the Theft Act 1968 relating to obtaining property by deception, or by consumer protection legislation?

[Diana Johnson]

It is quite clear that consumer protection legislation has not worked in the motorist’s favour in the past. Creating a criminal offence, as the amendment would do, would send a clear signal about how serious the matter is and how people who are going to issue tickets should be properly regulated. I am not sure that I agree with the hon. Gentleman.

I want to move on to the RAC, which gave evidence that the provisions in the Bill would not create a landscape for parking in which the motorist could be guaranteed a fair deal from the parking industry. I know that the Government have made much of the fact that they are on the side of the motorist, but when motoring organisations and members of the industry itself are saying that the system being proposed in the legislation is unfair, the Government need to think again.

As drafted, the right to challenge a ticket is very limited. It would apply only to cases in which liability could be enforced against a keeper. That means that if a person did not pay up to the parking company, the company could go after the keeper of the vehicle, whose information is held by the DVLA. The protection offered is that only a member of an accredited trade association—currently the British Parking Association—will be allowed access to DVLA information. However, the Government state in the impact assessment that they expect 74% of penalty tickets to be paid up front at the time the ticket is issued, rising to 82% when keeper liability is added in. The expectation is that people will just pay up and will not have the opportunity to lodge any kind of appeal. There is no independent appeal procedure. We understand that, under the Government amendments, members of the British Parking Association must have an internal disputes procedure, but we say that is not good enough: it is not fair and not independent. It is widely perceived that it must be independent.

I mentioned the example of the company that Edmund King suggested made a lot of money out of ticketing. Will the Minister respond on the issue of road parking companies that are not members of the British Parking Association but are able to get information about a vehicle—for example, the address of a commercial vehicle on the side of a van parked in a private car park—or to gain access to lists of customers’ details in a private car park? In those circumstances, the ticketing organisation could pursue the keeper without having gone through the DVLA. As I understand it, that could be done perfectly legally, but it could be threatening if money is demanded quickly in order to avoid the bailiffs coming round.

Will the Minister talk more about contract law and consumer protection? She made much in Committee of the fact that consumer protection law was already in place, but we made the case that that did not provide adequate protection for motorists. Will she therefore comment on the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 and explain whether she feels it needs to be strengthened or whether further information needs to be given to the public about its provisions?

Let me make some specific points about the amendments in the group. New clause 15 would ensure that anyone issuing a penalty ticket must be registered with an accredited trade association, that all ticketers were currently members of the British Parking Association who must abide by the trade association’s code of practice, which is agreed, in turn, with the DVLA. The new clause also means that tickets placed on the vehicle or those issued later through the use of ANPR—automatic number plate recognition—would be subject to an independent appeals procedure. This would ensure that the maximum fines on private land are the same as for those on public roads and that the same terms and conditions, the same right of appeal and the same prompt payment discount would apply. This has widespread support. The RAC and the AA have recently conducted a populist poll of 12,000 people, of whom 98% thought that there should be some form of licensing for ticketers. That shows that there is clear and overwhelming public support for this new clause, so I hope the Minister will think again and support it.

Will the Minister clarify some points about the other amendments in the group? We welcome Government amendment 21, which came out of the evidence given to the Committee by Patrick Troy of the British Parking Association and Edmund King of the AA. The Opposition took the view that the drafting of the clause dealing with a fixed barrier was ambiguous. I am glad that the Government have recognised the issue raised by the Opposition and have sought to amend the provisions. I know, however, that the BPA still has some doubts about the new wording, as it fails specifically to mention wheel-clamping.

Government amendment 76 passes liability from the car hire company to the person who has hired the car where appropriate. Will the Minister comment on the fact that she is making it easier to transfer keeper liability in those circumstances? Has she given any thought to the circumstances where, for example, a motorist takes their car to a garage and the garage parks it on someone else’s private land? In that case, can the liability be passed back to the garage? As currently drafted, keeper liability means that the individual car owner would be liable as the keeper, even though the actions were carried out by the garage.

Amendments 39 to 54 are technical, but will the Minister explain why she wants to move from the term “relevant contract” to “relevant obligation” in the wording of the affected clauses?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bradshaw]

No. I am making the same point that other Members have made: if we ban wheel-clamping, the danger is in the unforeseen consequences. As I hope that the hon. Lady will appreciate from her experience as a Minister, there is always a danger of moving the problem elsewhere. We are already seeing that happen in towns and cities such as mine. Her approach of a voluntary appeals process is wholly inadequate, given the problem out there; it certainly will not reassure my constituents who have suffered rogue fines.

I completely support the requirements in the new clause for any organisation enforcing a parking charge to be a member of an accredited association; for all parking signage to be clear; and for fine limits to be set at similar levels to maximum on-street parking fines. I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North will push the new clause to a vote, and that hon. Members will support her.

[Guy Opperman]

I used to be one of the Automobile Association’s retained counsels. That is not necessarily a recommendation, but it is a past fact that I must acknowledge. I am no longer one of its retained counsels, and I am no longer a wheel-clamping specialist, but I was the counsel who represented Mrs Marina Vine. On 6 March 1997, she went to Langthorne hospital in Leytonstone. She was suffering from ulcerative colitis, and effectively she was being tested for a type of cancer. She left hospital, and on her way home, she felt violently sick. She pulled over to the side of the road, went on to what turned out to be private land, and was violently sick approximately 15 yards away from her car, just around a corner from it. In the time that intervened before her return—approximately three to four minutes—her car was wheel-clamped. She literally had to beg the clamper to release her car, but they would not do so unless she paid £105.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Mark Spencer (Sherwood) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend have any sympathy with the small company that has a piece of land in front of its office for its staff to park on, only for a member of the public to abuse that car park and park inappropriately and selfishly? The company lacks the ability to enforce provisions on its own land in front of its own building.

[Guy Opperman]

Everyone would have sympathy with those circumstances. We have all, in the process of representing our constituents, encountered wheel-clamping cases that are to the detriment of the industry itself and the previous measures that applied.

I am mindful that other Members wish to speak on an important provision, so I shall merely make the point that new clause 15 adds nothing whatsoever to the existing criminal law. As much as I support the efforts of The Times and various organisations, what we have is sufficient.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

I am conscious, after the previous debate in which we discussed DNA, civil liberties and serious crime, that this may appear to be a mundane matter. However, as we have heard this evening and on other occasions, it is a source of great concern to our constituents up and down the country. I am pleased that it will be addressed in the Bill.

I very much support, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) said a few moments ago, the introduction of a ban on wheel-clamping. As the Minister pointed out, a ban has been successful for 19 years in Scotland, and it is high time that such a provision was introduced in England and Wales. However, I very much wish to echo the concerns outlined by the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) and the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) that we may be shifting the problem elsewhere.

The protections that motorists enjoy as consumers differ enormously, depending on whether they park on local authority-controlled land or on privately controlled land. Under the local authority system, which is covered extensively by legislation, as we have heard, there is an appeals process that is laid down in legislation, and there is a reasonable level of fining. If someone transgresses, or apparently transgresses, the rules in a council car park, they are issued with a penalty notice of about £50, which is reduced to half that amount if it is paid within 28 days. Some two thirds of people who appeal to local authority car-park operators are successful, because they can demonstrate that they did indeed buy a ticket, which perhaps fell off the dashboard, or they can give another legitimate reason for their appeal.

That contrasts significantly with the situation of people who park on privately available public car parks and those operated by rogue car park operators. I have had one of those in my constituency. I know from raising the issue in a Westminster Hall debate that many other hon. Members have had similar problems. People, often elderly and vulnerable, receive a threatening letter in the post demanding payment, sometimes of £70 or even more. Within a couple of weeks that demand is hyped up to perhaps double the amount. There are then threats to send in the bailiffs and threats to destroy credit ratings. Even people whom we would not describe as vulnerable get very concerned, understandably, that their credit rating might be affected, and they end up paying the so-called fine—it is not, of course, a criminal penalty—because they simply want the problem to go away.

Earlier in the Session I introduced a private Member’s Bill on the very issue of consumer protection in relation to private car parks. Of course my Bill is rapidly going the way of the vast majority of private Members’ Bills. In it I proposed that local authorities should have the ability to license the operation of private car parks, in the same way as they license publicans or taxis. That would allow a responsive approach through the democratic system at a local level. However, I accept that my Bill is unlikely to find its way on to the statute book.

I hear what the Minister says with regard to self-regulation through the British Parking Association. I have met the chief executive of that organisation on a number of occasions. My assessment of its operation has been that the pilots that it has run so far have not been overly successful. It tends to be the responsible companies that are involved in such schemes, and the irresponsible ones that, understandably, are not.

I recognise that we have enough regulation on the statute book, and that the self-regulation route is the best way to go. However, if we are to go down the self-regulation route, I note that the legislation has provision for reserve powers to have the matter reviewed. I seek an assurance from the Minister that when the British Parking Association and perhaps other accredited organisations introduce an independent system of appeals, that is reviewed in a timely manner. If, as I suspect—I hope I am wrong— self-regulation does not work, those reserve powers will have to be used.

--- Later in debate ---

[Guy Opperman]

Does the hon. Lady not accept that the Theft Act 1968, consumer protection legislation or, more particularly, the Fraud Act 2006 apply in exactly the same way as new clause 15?

[Diana Johnson]

Unfortunately, none of those Acts has ever been used to deal with wheel-clamping problems. I assume that the hon. Gentleman thinks that they could be used where people have obtained excessive amounts of money by wheel-clamping and immobilising a vehicle. However, our new clause has the support of the AA, the RAC and the British Parking Association. Furthermore, given the views expressed by 98% of the 12,000 people polled on this issue, I think that we are on the side of motorists and the British public, and I certainly wish to push the new clause to a vote.

Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.

Sex Offenders Register

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Wednesday 16th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

Of course, how a police budget is distributed to the different departments of each police force is a matter for the chief constable. The hon. Gentleman will know what I am about to say because the Government have made this clear a number of times. Police forces can take a significant sum of money out of their budgets not by cutting specialist units and visible policing, but by dealing with procurement and IT, and through collaboration with other forces. It is not just me saying that; Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary says it too.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I welcome the Home Secretary’s commitment to close the loophole that allows sex offenders to go abroad for up to three days without notifying the police. The previous Government had since 1997 to close that loophole, but did not take such action.

[Mrs May]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. I am just pleased that we could take that action today to ensure that we closed that loophole and the others that I mentioned in my statement.