Home Affairs

Debate between Henry Smith and Julian Huppert

Thursday 9th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

It is a great pleasure to be called in this debate on the Queen’s Speech. It is also a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart). I usually agree with much of what she says and on this occasion I agreed with large chunks of it. I will not go through every constituent in my area who has had to wait years for decisions to be made; the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) made the point for me.

I was generally very pleased with yesterday’s Queen’s Speech. It contained a lot of good measures that the Liberal Democrats are proud to have championed for a long time. There was excellent news that will help us to create a stronger economy and a fairer society.

Aspiring businesses will be boosted by the legislation on the national insurance employment allowance of £2,000. That is a progressive way of helping businesses out, giving them a springboard for growth and, critically, encouraging them to hire staff. There are proposals to improve the intellectual property system. The Hargreaves proposals suggested that European Union unitary patents could lead to £2.1 billion in growth. That will be welcomed by a lot of the high-tech businesses in my constituency, although we must not go down the dangerous route of software patents. The Energy Bill, which will continue its passage, will provide green jobs. The High Speed 2 Bill will generate about 100,000 jobs. As we have heard, the £10,000 income tax threshold will lift millions of poorly paid people out of income tax and give money back to others that can be spent to grow the economy.

On fairness, the care Bill will put an end to vulnerable members of society having to sell their homes to pay for care costs in their lifetime. There will also be a new flat-rate state pension, help for carers and the continuation of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill. I hope that through cross-party agreement, that Bill will include the proposal to allow humanist weddings to take place in England and Wales, as they do in Scotland.

In government, we have fought for and will continue to fight for a stronger economy and a fairer society, but I will focus on the home affairs and justice measures in the Queen’s Speech. I will start with the contentious issue of immigration, on which I largely agree with the hon. Member for Slough. This country benefits massively from immigration. I am pleased to say that very clearly. If we were to take away the immigrants from my constituency, it would be disastrous. The hospital could not function without people who have come from overseas, universities and high-tech businesses would suffer massively, and the quality of society would be massively diminished. We should be delighted that we have successful immigration. Immigrants come to this country and make a huge contribution. I am very proud to support that.

However, our system does not work well. Under this Government, the previous Government and, I dare say, the Government before that, our border controls have simply not been good enough and we have not been able to keep track of people. We definitely want to ensure that the people who should be able to come into this country can get in easily and quickly. They should not have a struggle with bureaucracy or wait months for decisions, whether they are a wealthy businessman or somebody seeking asylum. Everybody deserves a prompt, correct decision. That is not what has happened. Improvements are being made and we will see whether they go far enough. It should be easy for talented business people, academics, researchers and genuine asylum claimants to come here legitimately. There have been far too many problems with that.

I have a constituent who had been sentenced to death in Iran for converting to Christianity. He applied for asylum under the previous Government and was rejected because, although he had a copy of the death sentence, it was deemed that there was not enough evidence that he would be at risk if he went back. Most people who are asking for asylum do not have a copy of a death sentence. That decision has been corrected and he is living in Cambridge and is very active there. The Home Office has been very helpful to members of his family.

We have to fix the system. I want exit checks to be reinstated. That is a long-standing Liberal Democrat position. If we do not know who is leaving, we do not know who is still in the country. That causes frustration because there are lots of figures that suggest that people are still in this country who should not be, when in fact they left many years ago. A lot of the figures on student migration include people who have left the country or who did not come here in the first place.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

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