Foreign National Offenders (Exclusion from the UK) Bill

Henry Smith Excerpts

Friday 11th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hollobone]

I will be delighted to give way to all those whom I can see. First, I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Henry Smith).

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is, as ever, making a very compelling case. Does he have any idea of the annual cost to British taxpayers of imprisoning foreign nationals? I know that many of my constituents are very concerned about this issue, and thank him for raising it.

[Mr Hollobone]

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for his pertinent intervention and question. He demonstrates not only his attention to detail and his determination to ensure that he represents his constituents here on a Friday, but that he can get straight to the nub of the issue. He is as concerned as I am about the cost to his constituents of any aspect of Government expenditure. The answer to his question is that if there are 10,500 foreign national offenders in our prisons, the estimated cost is something like £300 million a year. The Home Office figure for the cost of imprisoning a prisoner is something like £26,000.

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[Mr Hollobone]

That is a very intelligent observation from my hon. Friend, and I congratulate him on being in the Chamber to listen to today’s proceedings. I know that he represents his constituents with great assiduity. Obviously the Minister will correct me if I am wrong, but I think we now have two prisons devoted wholly and specifically to housing foreign national offenders. Clearly, if we did not have any foreign national offenders in our prisons that would be two prisons we could either not have or free up to imprison our own offenders. That would be a cost saving—we are talking about a potential sum of £1 billion—but some of us in the Chamber today would see the saving of that cost as an opportunity to implement a proper penal policy for our domestic offenders. We believe that if an offender is caught, convicted and sentenced to a term of four or five years, or whatever it is, they should then serve that amount of time in prison. We are constantly told that we cannot afford to do that, but here we are presenting the Government with £1 billion of savings that would enable us to implement a far more realistic and effective criminal justice policy.

[Henry Smith]

My hon. Friend is always skilful in the Chamber, and as always he is being very courteous. I am grateful to him for allowing me a second intervention.

I want to come back, if I may, to the personal effects of foreign national offenders in this country. In the last Parliament, I had a constituent who was the victim of a rape by somebody from north Africa. After the offender had served his sentence, he was released back into my local community and not deported. Will my hon. Friend reflect on how such a situation could come about? I suggest that the problem lies in article 8 of the European convention on human rights, as set out in the Human Rights Act. Perhaps we should repeal that Act and replace it with a British Bill of rights and responsibilities that better protects our constituents.

[Mr Hollobone]

My hon. Friend speaks not just for Crawley and its good citizens, but for the nation. He is spot-on. We need to get rid of the Human Rights Act and replace it with a Magna Carta-like domestic Bill of Rights that we can all understand and that implements justice in the way that the British people would like to see it implemented.

My hon. Friend probably has more foreign national offenders going in and out of his constituency than any of the rest of us, because of the location of Gatwick airport. I am shocked and appalled, as I know his constituents will be, that such a violent offender was released back into his local community. That cannot be right on any level. Such people need to be sentenced and convicted, serve their time in jail in full in their country of origin and not be let back into our country. Then the citizens of Crawley and the rest of the United Kingdom would be able to sleep safe in their beds at night.

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[Mr Hollobone]

I am grateful, Mr Speaker, for your ever wise guidance, but I am sure you will agree that the interventions have been most illuminating, helpful and constructive.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson) for his intervention. I can see that we might disagree on aspects of justice policy, but I believe that Bill Committees should be inclusive. Members who hold a range of different opinions should be included, so my hon. Friend is back on the Committee. That is one of the mistakes that the Government are making, most recently with the Enterprise Bill, where all those who were against extending Sunday trading suddenly found they were not on the Bill Committee. The result was the events of this week, when the Government lost that part of their legislation. Given his views, which might be contrary to those of other Members, my hon. Friend would play a very constructive role in debating these issues on Committee, so I encourage him to pursue his views with great vigour.

It is shocking that 160 countries around the world are represented in our prisons.

[Henry Smith]

rose—

[Mr Hollobone]

I shall read the list of shame of the countries that top that chart, based on the latest figures from the Ministry of Justice, but first I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley, as I promised.

[Henry Smith]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his generosity. I noticed that one continent was missing from his list—Antarctica. I do not mean to make light of a serious issue, but it illustrates the seriousness of the matter if every part of the globe except the most inhospitable part is represented in our prison population. That is an untenable situation.

[Mr Hollobone]

I am grateful for that intervention. My hon. Friend’s attention to detail, which he has just demonstrated, is legendary in this place. He gives me a good idea. I have been struggling to think of somewhere to send the 434 individuals who refuse to declare their nationality. I wonder whether the prospect of a prison place in Antarctica unless they state where they originally came from might encourage them to reveal their true identity.

At the top of the list of shame is Poland, because 951 Polish nationals are incarcerated in our prisons.

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[Mr Hollobone]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point.

Mr Speaker, you will be relieved to hear that I do not actually know any personal details of any of the Polish prisoners, so I will not trouble the House with that information, but I am grateful, as ever, for your wise counsel and guidance.

[Henry Smith]

Before my hon. Friend moves on to the next country, could he say—perhaps he will come to this point later in his remarks—whether the Bill envisages a minimum custodial sentence before somebody is exchanged, perhaps six months, or would it be on the provision of being sent to prison?

[Mr Hollobone]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely good point about a key issue, and I will answer it, but his intervention has reminded me that I did not answer fully the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch on the EU prisoner transfer agreement. Now that we have that agreement, apparently we can send back to EU countries those foreign EU nationals convicted and imprisoned in our country. But it is not working.

Specifically, Poland has a derogation until December 2016. Given that Poland is No. 1 on the list of shame, I would have thought that a key part of our renegotiation of the terms of our membership of the EU would have been for that derogation no longer to apply to Polish citizens living in the UK. As far as I am aware, however, Her Majesty’s Government made no attempt at all to tackle the issue during the renegotiation. Poland has the largest number of foreign nationals in our prisons, yet Her Majesty’s Government have done nothing, as far as I can see, to tackle the issue.

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[Mr Hollobone]

It is okay: my hon. Friend is back on the Committee. He has made an extremely good point, which I hope he can repeat in Committee. My hon. Friend is quite right: we need to define what a qualifying offence is.

Clause 1(1) says that

“the Secretary of State must make provision in regulations for any foreign national convicted in any court of law of a qualifying offence to be excluded from the United Kingdom.”

Subsection (4) of the clause—there are, of course, only two clauses—then defines a qualifying offence as meaning

“any offence for which a term of imprisonment may be imposed by a court of law.”

That is important.

[Henry Smith]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way—he is the very model of generosity. I asked specifically whether the clause meant any custodial sentence, because we had an arrival over new year who was a resident of the Netherlands but an Afghan national. He assaulted a member of check-in staff at Gatwick airport. He was then released on to the streets of Crawley without any address. A few days later, he assaulted a female police officer with a hammer. He was then, finally, arrested again. I put it to the House that this foreign national should never have been allowed into this country. He also had a previous murder conviction in the Netherlands. I am therefore pleased to support the Bill, which would mean we were able to remove people from this country at the earliest opportunity.

[Mr Hollobone]

I knew the situation was bad, but the example brought to the House by my hon. Friend makes me think that it is a lot worse than I had feared. I invite him to intervene on me again to update the House on where this individual is now.

[Henry Smith]

I understand that this man is still being processed through the criminal justice system. I sincerely hope that, for two assaults within a week in my constituency, this Afghan national, who is a convicted murderer in the Netherlands, will receive a custodial sentence. I only wish that my hon. Friend’s Bill were on the statute book so that this man could be deported back to the Netherlands to serve his sentence. Alas, I do not think that your Bill will make it on to the statute book in time, but I hope this case illustrates that the Bill is very necessary.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Two things. First, “pithiness personified” is normally the title that I would accord the hon. Gentleman, and I hope that he will want to recover that status. Secondly, he referred to “your Bill”. Debate, of course, goes through the Chair—I have no Bill before the House, but the hon. Member for Kettering has.

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[Mr Hollobone]

I have not received any such helpful indications from the Government, but I do not usually receive helpful indications about very much at all, so I am not necessarily taking the lack of an indication as a negative. I would hope that, given the presence of so many hon. Members here today, the Government might realise that the issue is important to our constituents and needs to be taken seriously.

I am still in a state of shock, having heard the intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley. We are told that we are safer being a member of the European Union, but my hon. Friend has given the House a clear, explicit example of how we are not safer. Here we have an Afghan national—he is not even a national of the Netherlands, but a resident there—who is a convicted murderer, but who can none the less fly into this country. Border Force does not know anything about him. He then commits an offence and is out on the streets in Crawley before being apprehended again. How on earth can we be safer and more secure in our nation with rules such as that?

[Henry Smith]

rose—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Just before the hon. Member for Kettering takes an intervention from the hon. Gentleman, I just remind him that the Bill contains two clauses, the first of which is the only substantive clause, containing four subsections. The second clause is simply the short title and commencement date of the Bill, and the Bill itself takes up a little over one page. As the hon. Member for Kettering has now dilated very eloquently and with great courtesy for 53 minutes, he might perhaps consider focusing, with that laser-like precision for which he is renowned in all parts of the House, upon the first clause of his two-clause Bill.

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[Henry Smith]

rose—

[Mr Hollobone]

I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley.

[Henry Smith]

Before you leave the Chair, Mr Speaker—two esteemed Deputy Speakers are standing nearby—I just want to say that I am very disappointed in myself for not being pithy earlier and not observing the parliamentary protocol, so I offer my sincere apologies. I say to my hon. Friend that I think that one of the reasons why the majority of people in Crawley will vote to leave the European Union on 23 June is that they are so disappointed with this function of that organisation.

[Mr Hollobone]

I am grateful for that intervention. My hon. Friend speaks not only for his constituency, but for the nation in saying that we will have a better, safer, more secure and prosperous future outside the European Union.

I had mentioned No. 1 on my list of shame. I know hon. Members have been anticipating who No. 2 might be, and it is our good friends the Irish Republic. There are 783 Irish nationals in our jails. It seems to me that we have had a number of opportunities to negotiate their repatriation, not least when this country lent, I believe, £7 billion to help bail out—

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[Mr Hollobone]

It is not quite all we want to do. We actually want to stop convicted criminals coming into this country in the first place. I readily admit that that is not clear in the Bill as drafted, but that is something that we could strengthen in Committee. I am sure that that would enjoy my hon. Friend’s support. The main aim of the Bill, however, is to send back foreign nationals convicted of offences to wherever they come from.

[Henry Smith]

I encourage my hon. Friend to consider, in Committee, greater controls and information flows from other countries, so that we can stop people who are already convicted criminals in other countries entering the United Kingdom in the first place. Our constituents would assume that that already happens, and if they found out that it does not, they would want—

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[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is incumbent on us to point out when such things happen so that people can draw their own conclusions as to what the problem is. It seems that the law, which is clear and was created with all the right intentions—I do not criticise the previous Labour Government for that—has been thwarted by judges who have clearly decided that they do not agree with it. I have no problem with a judge who does not agree with a particular law, but if that is their position and if they want to affect the law, they should quit being a judge and try to get themselves elected to Parliament. They should not use their position to thwart the will of Parliament. That is not what they are for, but that is clearly what they are doing.

The point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson) about the qualifying offence is an issue that has arisen in previous debates in the House on these matters. My right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight) raised the issue the last time that such a Bill was debated and also thought that the qualifying offence was perhaps a little too wide, which is something that we should consider today. The Bill states that the qualifying offence

“shall mean any offence for which a term of imprisonment may be imposed by a court of law.”

As my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole quite rightly said and as my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire said in a previous debate, that does not necessarily mean that the offender has to have been sent to prison, just that they have to have committed an offence that may be punishable with imprisonment.

The problem is that I am not entirely sure what that means. Other people may also not know what it means. Most importantly of all, judges may not know what it means. It could mean that if somebody is convicted of an offence that could lead to a prison sentence, they are automatically deported. That may well be the Bill’s intention; I get the impression from my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering that that is the intention, and I have no quibble with that. In fact, to be perfectly honest, I would prefer it to go a bit further and say that the imprisonment does not matter and that if anybody commits a criminal offence—full stop—they should be deported from the country. I would make it very simple so that there is no argument at all.

[Henry Smith]

That is precisely the point that I wanted to make when I intervened on my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) to refer to the case in Crawley over the new year, in which an Afghan national, a Dutch resident, committed a violent offence against check-in staff at Gatwick airport and yet was released on to the streets of my constituency. Such measures would have prevented that from happening.

[Philip Davies]

I agree with my hon. Friend. The problem is that we see all the time how difficult it is to be sent to prison in the UK. Someone either has to commit serious offences or be a persistent offender. Even if someone is a persistent offender, the chances are that they may not get sent to prison.

In fact, a while back, I asked a parliamentary question about the proportion who are sent to prison of people who come before the courts with 100 previous convictions. Would you believe it, Madam Deputy Speaker: if someone goes to court with more than 100 previous convictions, they are statistically more likely not to be sent to prison? If the Bill referred only to people on whom a term of imprisonment is imposed, that would be hopeless, because people will be getting away with crime after crime, being given community sentence after community sentence, and still causing havoc in the community.

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[Henry Smith]

My hon. Friend is rightly focusing on foreign nationals who are given a custodial sentence. However, over the past decade or so, UK Government statistics have shown that less than 10% of those who are convicted of a crime receive a custodial sentence. That suggests that the number of foreign nationals who have been convicted is in the region of 80,000 or more.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend is right that much of the debate this morning has focused on the foreign national offenders who are in our jails, who, by definition, are those who have committed the most serious offences. As my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley said, even those who have committed 100 offences are more likely than not, when appearing before the courts, not to be sent to prison. When somebody is convicted of a minor offence, it is pretty difficult to sentence them to a term of imprisonment.

The latest figures from the Ministry of Justice on the prison population, up to 31 December last year, show that 978 foreign national offenders have committed crimes so serious that they are subject to extended determinate sentences. The same figures reveal that 2,399 foreign national offenders have sentences of less than four years, so those people could well be—and most likely will be—back on our streets before the next election.

The Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), confirmed in a written answer on 23 March last year, in response to a question from the hon. Member for Wirral South (Alison McGovern), that the foreign national prison population in the UK included 1,657 people who had committed violence against the person, 1,035 who had committed a sexual offence, 1,192 who were in prison for drug offences, 527 who were in for robbery and 400 burglars.

Let me bring those thousands of offences to life with just one example. Mircea Gheorghiu is a Romanian national who served a six-year sentence for rape in Romania, where he had also been jailed twice for cutting timber without a licence. He reportedly entered the UK in 2002 following his release, after serving only two years and eight months of his sentence. He remained in the country while his wife and children stayed in Romania. In January 2007, Romania joined the EU, so he was allowed to stay in the UK. He was arrested for drink-driving and convicted in November 2007, and banned from driving for 20 months. When his criminal past was uncovered, the Home Office rightly deported him under the new “deport first, appeal later” scheme. However, following an appeal at the immigration tribunal, the press reported on 28 February that because Mr Gheorghiu was an EU citizen, incredibly he was allowed to return to the UK. Why? Because the two judges in the tribunal ruled that his crimes—he had originally been convicted of rape in Romania—were not serious enough to warrant deportation, and that EU citizens should be removed before their appeal hearings only in exceptional circumstances because of their right to free movement and the human right to family life.

Oral Answers to Questions

Henry Smith Excerpts

Monday 11th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

As Minister for Policing, Crime and Criminal Justice in the Home Office, I work closely with the Secretary of State for Transport who is responsible for the British Transport police. I am sure he will have heard the hon. Lady’s comments, and I will talk to him about them, but this is not a matter for the Home Office.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

Last week, an officer in Crawley suffered an appalling hammer attack. I am pleased to say that he has now recovered. Will my right hon. Friend pay tribute to the professionalism of Sussex police, which now has the prime suspect in custody?

[Mike Penning]

Let me say what a fantastic job that officer does, along with other officers. I hope that a full recovery happens soon. Body-worn cameras are going to transform policing, particularly assaults on officers, as can be seen from the roll-out of the pilots. Evidence like that is putting away the sort of criminal people who assault our officers.

Counter-terrorism

Henry Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 5th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

We constantly look at the measures that we need to take here in the United Kingdom to protect against an attack. Following the Charlie Hebdo attack, discussions were held by the police with various media outlets to discuss with them their security. Of course, following the terrible attacks that took place in Paris on 13 November last year, we have looked further at the whole question of protective security. The right hon. Lady is right—the current national terrorist threat level is at “severe”—a terrorist attack is highly likely. The decision as to what that threat level should be is a matter for the independent joint terrorism analysis centre.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

In 2014 I was very grateful to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary for increasing Prevent funding to Crawley constituency. Can she give assurances to the House that she will continue those efforts to ensure that young British Muslims are not tempted by the vile and sick propaganda of Daesh that she has rightly condemned?

[Mrs May]

I can absolutely give my hon. Friend that assurance. We have taken a number of steps in relation to an uplift in Prevent funding that is taking place. Also, an important step that we took was putting the Prevent duty on a statutory basis. From everything I have heard, I think that is already having an impact out there and ensuring increasingly that those in the public sector who come into contact with young people and others, but particularly young people, are looking to spot the signs that somebody may be being taken down the route of radicalisation, and to take appropriate action.

Paris Terrorist Attacks

Henry Smith Excerpts

Monday 16th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I assure the hon. Gentleman that I regularly meet the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police to discuss a number of issues relating, obviously, to the policing of London, but also to any wider responsibilities he has.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

I very much welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement, particularly with regard to the doubling of resources for airport security during this Parliament. She will know that, over the weekend, Gatwick airport had to be closed after someone with a firearm—likely to be a French national—was foiled. Will she join me in paying tribute to Sussex police and all who work in security at Gatwick airport for their vigilance?

[Mrs May]

I am aware that an incident took place at Gatwick airport, which was dealt with very professionally by the police. I certainly commend the work of the Sussex police at Gatwick airport, but also for their wider work to keep people within the county safe.

Migration

Henry Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 16th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I am tempted to say that very few of us work to Brussels office hours, but he is absolutely right that it has to be a 24/7 operation. We need co-operation across Europe, but we also need to work with the countries in Africa where the criminal gangs are operating. That is why the National Crime Agency has ensured that its new organised immigration crime taskforce has people in Africa who are able to work at a local level, with European input, to break the criminal gangs.

We also have the proposal from the European Union, which has been masterminded by High Representative Federica Mogherini, to take action off the Libyan coast through the common security and defence policy. Of course, that depends on the consent of the Libyan Government. As the right hon. Gentleman will know, that is not something that is possible at the moment, but work on the stability of Libya is part of the important work that needs to go on.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

In recent days, we have seen the closure of the German-Austrian border. Does my right hon. Friend, whom I commend for her statement, agree that that shows the naivety and nonsense of the Schengen treaty? Will she rule out this country ever being a signatory to it?

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend tempts me to talk about Schengen, as did the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry) who spoke for the Scottish National party. I simply say that we are not a member of Schengen. Decisions on borders within Schengen and the operation of the Schengen border code are matters for countries that are within the Schengen zone. We are not a member of it and we do not intend to be a member of it.

Immigration Detention

Henry Smith Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

I am conscious that a number of hon. Members wish to contribute to this debate, so I will keep my remarks brief. I congratulate the all-party groups on migration and on refugees on securing this debate, and on taking the time to compile their report.

My constituents in Crawley are concerned about high levels of immigration, but they are also compassionate about vulnerable people who come to this country seeking asylum and refuge. As Members across the House will be aware, the issue has been particularly highlighted over the summer with the Syrian refugee crisis, and people have expressed concern about people entering this country, but also compassion for the welfare and well-being of the victims of dictators, traffickers and terrorist groups. My hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) is right to say that this week we have had a great opportunity to discuss aspects of those important matters.

I will confine my remaining remarks to immigration detention and removal centres in my constituency. We have Brook House and Tinsley House immigration removal centres, and on the outskirts of my constituency is the Cedars pre-departure accommodation centre. Before I was elected to this place I was leader of West Sussex County Council with a social care responsibility, and I remember visiting those immigration detention centres in the last decade and being shocked—at the time there was a backlog of more than 450,000 cases being dealt with in this country—at some of the conditions in those centres. I was particularly troubled when I came to the family block in those centres, and I pay tribute to the previous coalition Government for announcing in May 2010 that children would not be held in immigration detention centres, and for following through on that. The Cedars centre on the periphery of my constituency has done great work in co-ordination with Barnardo’s and we now have the lowest ever number of children in immigration detention, which I welcome. I believe that in May this year that number stood at 12, down from a significant high of several hundred children being detained in 2009.

I welcome the Government’s review of immigration detention that will be led by Stephen Shaw, the former head of the Prisons and Probation Ombudsman for England and Wales. I am confident that that report, aided by the good work of hon. Members across the House, will come forward with some conclusions on how immigration detention can be effective to ensure an effective immigration policy, compassionate to ensure that the most vulnerable people are properly supported, and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller) said, cost effective. This issue is top of the agenda for many of our constituents, and we must get it right. I have confidence that the Home Secretary and the Immigration Minister will properly address this issue.

Finally, I pay tribute to the Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group, which is based in Crawley. It does fantastic work, and I am grateful for the briefings it gives me. We are truly fortunate to have the dedication of many people in such groups and in immigration removal centres, as they provide the best possible support to those in immigration detention.

Calais

Henry Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 14th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

The secure area will be in place in the autumn: we are working on putting it into place. I would expect it to be policed by the French police, because the British police do not police in other member states. We are providing £12 million, and the security arrangements we are putting in place in Calais will be paid for from that sum of money.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

I commend my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary for her comprehensive statement on tackling attempted illegal immigration from Calais. Can she assure me that the UK Border Force will not be diminished at other points of entry, such as Gatwick airport and elsewhere, where attempted illegal immigration can occur?

[Mrs May]

I recognise the significance of Gatwick airport for my hon. Friend and his constituency, and I assure him that UK Border Force is constantly looking to ensure that it is able to maintain security at all types of ports. That includes looking at security arrangements at some sea ports which have perhaps not had the same focus in the past.

Modern Slavery Bill

Henry Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 17th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Karen Bradley]

I shall address later in my remarks exactly what is envisaged through the amendment in lieu to give support specifically to people on an overseas domestic workers visa who are victims of slavery.

The Bill means that all victims of modern slavery will have major new protections such as the statutory defence to prevent them from being treated inappropriately as criminals. I understand and share the sentiment behind Lords amendment 72. When my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and I looked at it and considered how to respond to the Lords vote, our priority was to improve the protection for victims of modern slavery. I know that that is in line with the spirit in which peers passed the amendment and I am grateful for their careful scrutiny of the Bill. That common focus on supporting and protecting victims of modern slavery is why I am not simply proposing that this House should disagree with the Lords amendment. Instead, even at this late stage of the passage of the Bill, we are proposing to add additional protections for overseas domestic workers who fall victim to modern slavery.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

It is essential that we get this Bill on the statute book before the Dissolution of Parliament next week. Although the amendments coming from the other place, including amendment 72, have absolutely the right sentiment, does the Minister agree that it is vital that we ensure this legislation gets on the statute book at the earliest possible opportunity so that these fundamental and important protections can become the law of the land?

[Karen Bradley]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. He is right: we are at a very late stage and we want this Bill to become an Act of Parliament. We want the Modern Slavery Act, the first piece of anti-slavery legislation for 200 years, to be on the statute book. We must make sure we achieve that, but in a way that provides all victims, including victims on an overseas domestic worker visa, with the support and protection they need.

Counter-Terrorism: Conflict Zones

Henry Smith Excerpts

Monday 2nd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

We are finalising the Prevent guidance that is going out to universities and the other public sector bodies that are involved, and I understand that the police did have discussions with the school that the hon. Lady mentions.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

I commend my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary for the diligence she has shown in introducing various Prevent programmes to Crawley. Gatwick airport is also in my constituency, so can she say a little more about passenger name record checks for intra-EU flights, not just for those coming from outside the EU?

[Mrs May]

The whole question of exchanging passenger name records for intra-EU flights is one that I and others have been putting forward in the debate in the European Union arena for some time now. I am pleased to say that other member states have recognised the need for an EU PNR directive. It was one of the issues referred to at the recent European Council meeting. I am clear that any such directive should include the exchange of PNR for intra-EU flights. Failing that, it is open to member states to undertake bilateral agreements to that effect.

Foreign National Offenders (Removal)

Henry Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

Can the Home Secretary confirm that approximately 400 of the missing foreign criminals arrived in the country under the previous Labour Government?

[Mrs May]

It is certainly true that a number of cases still in the system predate this Government’s coming to power in 2010, but we continue to work on those cases, as we do on the most recent ones.