Proceeds of Crime

Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts

Tuesday 12th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

It is certainly true that bilateral arrangements can be structured. All that I am seeking to say is that negotiations on the directive provide the UK with an opportunity to have an influence. They do not affect our decision, reflected in the motion, not to opt in at this stage because of the serious risks and operational requirements that I have identified.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

I urge the Minister to be very cautious about mutual recognition, because it means that countries that do not have a legal system that is as robust as ours can have their orders enforced in this country. It therefore threatens the rights of British subjects.

[James Brokenshire]

I certainly hear my hon. Friend’s point, and we will monitor that carefully in relation to the directive. As I have indicated to the House, there is currently no proposal in the directive dealing with mutual recognition.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

I am grateful to have been called so early in the debate to represent the European Scrutiny Committee, replacing my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash), who is away. I apologise if, in comparison to him, I am more loquacious.

I want to start by raising a few points relating to scrutiny. The Minister was gracious in accepting that there had been problems with it. The document was first made available for an opt-in decision in the middle of March, with a three-month time scale for making a decision which ends on 15 June. It is a pity that Her Majesty’s Government could not have made up their mind on this matter slightly earlier in the process.

I also want to raise a point about the other place. The debate in this House was cancelled on the ground that we were unable to debate the matter until the Government had made up their mind, but in the same circumstances the other place was able to debate it. I am not entirely sure whether that is a discourtesy to the other place or to us, but it seems odd that such a rule should apply in one place and not the other.

[James Brokenshire]

Perhaps I can help my hon. Friend. There was a distinction, in that the debate in the other place was on an Opposition motion, rather than a Government motion.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful for that clarification. I should also like to say, for future reference, that I have been given hope that the Government might occasionally listen to what the House says, and that having debates before a decision is finally made would not necessarily be a bad thing. It might be a pious hope that speeches made from these Benches might influence the wise thoughts of Her Majesty’s Government, but it is one that I hold to. I am grateful to the Minister for his explanation, but I hope that we can have better scheduled debates in future. From a personal point of view, I believe that the slot at the end of business on Wednesdays is extremely convenient for most people.

It is also a shame to be having this debate now, when half the members of the European Scrutiny Committee are away in, of all places, Europe. They are visiting Cyprus, in preparation for Cyprus taking over the European Union presidency. I was glad to have the opportunity of staying in the House. Like you, Mr Speaker, I prefer not to leave. I believe that you require specific permission to leave the country, and I would not mind being under the same constraint myself.

I shall move on to the substance of the opt-in decision, and to the Minister’s comments. It is tremendously important that, under our current law, any freezing order requires the order of a court, but that would not be the case under the proposed document from the European Union. It is unsatisfactory to allow the administrative freezing of assets without a court interfering. That is an important principle of justice, and on that basis alone it would be wise of the Government not to opt in to the directive.

As the Minister said, the directive would offer no direct benefit to our domestic asset recovery regime. That being the case, the only argument for opting in would be to have more Europe, and that is not the policy of Her Majesty’s Government, who are committed to keeping Europe closely under watch and limiting any extension of its powers. It is therefore difficult to see what changes to the draft directive the Government would find acceptable in order to make it better, or whether there is any prospect of their insisting that anything that happened under it should require a court order before being implemented. It would be interesting to know from the Minister what would be the consequences of our not opting in—by what would we be bound in our existing agreements and how would they develop, and what would be our ability to maintain bilateral arrangements with other member states in future? Might that not be a more suitable way of approaching the matter?

There are concerns about the standing of the directive under European constitutional law. As the Minister and other Members know, we have the ability to opt out of a great number of the crime and justice directives in 2014, but—and there is a but—if we signed this proposed directive, it would not be part of that block opt-out and it would remove our ability to opt out of three other directives that we have so far opted into. The block opt-out does not apply to EU policing and criminal justice legislation adopted following the Lisbon treaty’s entry and coming into force where the UK decides to become bound by it, and neither does it apply to pre-Lisbon treaty legislation that was amended once the Lisbon treaty came into effect. The three pieces of pre-Lisbon EU treaty legislation that we would lose are on money laundering, the identification, tracing, freezing, seizing and confiscation of instrumentalities and the proceeds of crime under the framework decision 2001/500/JHA on the same subject, and another framework decision on the confiscation of crime-related proceeds. We would thus be tightly binding ourselves into all our future confiscation and money laundering policies being determined at the European level.

[George Eustice]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, which is that the longer we delay our decision about whether to exercise our block opt-out under the Lisbon protocol, the more it can be undermined by subsequent directives such as this one coming along. Does he agree that we should make a decision sooner rather than later about whether or not to exercise that block opt-out?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am in complete agreement, and the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) might not be surprised to know that I would opt out of everything at every possible opportunity—and I am more than happy to admit that and to have it held against me in evidence by suitable authorities in future. It is important not to get sucked into more changes through the development of existing pre-Lisbon directives that then become binding and are not subject to the opt-out.

The other important aspect is that this directive does not apply exclusively to cross-border activities, as it applies in the UK alone where we are enforcing standards that apply to crimes committed purely in the UK, so we need to raise the question of what the European dimension is in all cases. If any directive is suitable, is it this directive, or should a completely different one be reframed relating to cross-border activities? That poses all the questions about recognition of foreign countries’ laws and enforcements that we raised with the Minister.

We have those problems to face in a once-and-for-all decision, but I also want to look at what the European Union document states on this issue and the basis on which it has been produced. The two legal bases are article 83(1) and article 82(2) of the treaty on the functioning of the European Union. Article 83(1) includes provisions on organised crime, which the European Commission has decided includes almost any serious crime that could be mentioned, so we can see immediately in that justification part of the general European creep in using the treaties to extend the Commission’s remit—indeed, the EU’s own documentation admits that.

The other legal basis, article 82(2), is all about the facilitation of mutual recognition, so although the current document is not about mutual recognition specifically, this is part of the basis of the directive coming into force. There is some broad contradiction between how the directive will be applied and the legal base used for it. I think we should be suspicious of the EU extending its powers on a basis that it then does not wish to use. Why is it doing it that way?

I know that many other Members wish to speak, but I want to say a little about the way in which the European Union reached its decision. As can be seen in the document provided for the debate, it considered five policy options. The first was the status quo, which it immediately rejected as being completely unsatisfactory. Each of the subsequent options had a slightly more European context than the one preceding it. The second option was non-legislative:

“promoting implementation of existing confiscation obligations… and promoting… existing mutual recognition obligations”.

The European Union did not like that one.

The third option was the “Minimal legislative option”, involving

“transposition and utilisation workshops plus additional policy actions addressing identified deficiencies in the existing”

legislation. Lo and behold, the European Union did not like that one either.

The fourth option was the

“Maximal legislative option without mutual recognition”.

I do not think that “maximal” is a word, Mr Speaker, but your vocabulary is better than mine. Perhaps I should ask you to rule on it later in the day. That option, it was said, would provide many benefits, and

“would consist of all policy actions which do not involve legislative action in relation to mutual recognition.”

Finally, there was policy option 4.2:

“Maximal legislative option including mutual recognition”.

We can see exactly how the process operates. The European Union issues a discussion document and considers all the options. “What should we do? Should we just leave it to the nation states? No, that will not do: we cannot trust them. Should we just do a little bit that will ease the process and make it a bit better? Should we round some of the corners to make them smoother? No, we had best not do that; the European Parliament would not like it.” That is one of the arguments that it uses. “We must go for the maximum option. We must go for the most federalist option. We must go for the option that brings in the European Court of Justice to rule over laws that apply purely in the United Kingdom and purely in the criminal justice area.” That is how the European Union operates.

Her Majesty’s Government were absolutely right to decide not to opt in at this stage, and they should remain right by robustly refusing an extension of EU powers which is, as always, being introduced in the area where it is hardest to oppose. The suggestion is that there are all those nasty people out there, and that if we all club together we will be able to deal with them. However, a Bulgarian enforcement order on some Englishman who has mislaid a parking ticket is not a way of reducing crime. What we need is a robust British system—which I think we already have—that is subject to fair controls and court orders. We do not need a further power grab by the European Union.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg). I do not know whether he was implying that the Government were holding the debate this evening because the European Scrutiny Committee had gone to Cyprus, but I am glad that he was left behind—or remained behind—to participate in it.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I should have thanked the Government rather than criticising them, because they gave me a chance to speak for a little longer than normal.

[Keith Vaz]

I am sure that the Government are most grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s thanks.

Last night I was present at the launch of a document produced by the hon. Member for Bournemouth West (Conor Burns) about the operation of the European arrest warrant and what it has delivered over the last few years. I know that the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) is a frequent commentator on its justice and home affairs implications for our country.

I think that we should be cautious in dealing with these matters. The EU document needs to be considered with great care. I am not one of those who believe that we need a directive in order to secure co-operation between EU partners, but I think that my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) deserves the explanation that he seeks. I think that he deserves to be told why the Minister in the other place was so enthusiastic about the directive, and why the Government have apparently changed their mind. Of course, if there is a valid explanation, and if the various agencies—the Serious Organised Crime Agency being one of them—make representations to the Government pointing out that this is going to create problems for our legislation, it is important that that advice is shared not only with the Minister, but with the House.

The hon. Member for South Ribble (Lorraine Fullbrook) and I recently returned from an official visit to Colombia as part of a Home Affairs Committee delegation, where we were looking at the drugs trade. We noted a very important fact: only 2.6% of the profits from the trade in cocaine remain in Colombia. Some 97% of cocaine profits are administered and laundered within the European Union—in our country and other countries of the EU. That means that our existing structures are not used appropriately enough to catch the people who are responsible for drugs having become the biggest illicit activity in the world.

Even though a directive would help, it will not provide the answer. The Government are right not to opt in unless and until there are further negotiations, therefore. We need to make sure that the structures that are in place in the various countries of the EU can work together to catch those responsible for laundering the profits from drugs. I hope that the Government will use the time that will be available to them as a result of their decision not to opt in constructively and productively, and that they look at the institutions and organisations and make sure that that co-operation is improved. There are, of course, organisations—such as Europol and Interpol—which can be used effectively. I do not think Europol is used enough. We have a very good British director of Europol, Rob Wainwright, who was trained at SOCA. We must co-operate much more closely, without legislation from Brussels being needed.

Drugs is one example. The other is human trafficking, which is the third biggest illicit activity in the world, with profits of £32 billion a year. Through our co-operation with the Romanian authorities in Operation Golf, we showed that it is possible to have mutual co-operation with other EU countries without having a further directive, if there is willingness on the part of our European partners to work with us to deal with illegal activity.

Protection of Freedoms Bill

Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts

Monday 19th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hanson]

It was mature and sensible reflection when we were accused of kicking the matter into the long grass in 2009-10, when I was a Minister in the Home Office. I am pleased that the hon. Gentleman has planted his flag in the ground on this issue, because he is holding true to the Conservative manifesto commitment. I am genuinely surprised that there are not more Government Back Benchers wanting to hold the Government to account for why they are not fulfilling their manifesto commitment. Perhaps he will do that in due course.

My colleagues in another place supported the amendments, so that we could have this debate today and get the Minister’s comments on record. Concerns were raised, for example, about the term “trading standards officers”, which is not a recognised term. I would welcome him addressing those concerns.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) suggested, we have some concerns about the review provided for under clause 42. It places a duty on Secretaries of State to review the powers of entry for which they are responsible and report back to Parliament within two years of Royal Assent, following the necessary detailed analysis. As I said, we were accused of kicking the matter into the long grass, but the Government must consider 2013 shorter grass than 2011, which is when we would have had the review.

That aside, the purpose of the review under clause 42 will be to have each individual power of entry examined, to determine whether it is still required or whether it should be repealed, have safeguards added to it or be consolidated with similar powers to reduce the overall number. As we are already two years into the Government’s time in office and face the prospect of another two years before we hear back from the review, I do not believe I am far amiss in saying to the Minister and the hon. Member for Wycombe that the Government are potentially ducking the issue and leading the review into longer grass than we planned.

I would like some updates from the Minister on the points we have made. How long does he expect each Secretary of State to undertake the review? Does he expect the reviews from each Department to be completed before the end of the two-year period? Will he report back on the reviews en masse, when all Departments have completed them, or will he do so when individual Departments have completed reviews on their areas of responsibility?

Does the Minister expect to report back earlier than in two years’ time? As I have mentioned, what are the sanctions on Secretaries of State who do not meet the target? Will he report back on that? How does he expect Secretaries of State who have not met the target to report to the House? Can he guarantee that Parliament will have an opportunity to debate the review in full once it is published? Will he give some indication of how many legislative proposals on power of entry he expects to be reviewed and in due course repealed? According to the Conservative quality of life manifesto, there are 1,242 state powers of entry. Will the Minister indicate whether he has set targets for the outcome of the review? How many of those will be in place at the end of the review? Will he indicate how many of those powers of entry will in due course be on the bonfire that he promised in the manifesto?

The Conservative Government promised to cut back intrusive power of entry into homes. I am interested as to whether the Minister and his team will ultimately achieve that objective. We need clarity about the review. The Opposition will not support the amendments because we do not feel they are valuable, and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response in due course.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

The Minister’s opening remarks gave a degree of reassurance on the Government’s position, but I feel that the starting point should be that the forces of law and order and of the state should not as a matter of routine have the right to enter people’s houses. One of the most important freedoms that we enjoy as British subjects is that if somebody comes into our house without our invitation, it must be because some important crime has been committed, or there is some emergency or another immediate reason. The problem with the Minister’s reassurance is that there is always a suspicion that Governments do what is convenient rather than what is right, and that the bureaucrat always feels that it is easier to enter somebody’s home or office than to go through a complex procedure—to get a warrant or to obtain a justice of the peace’s authorisation—to go into somebody’s property.

I remember listening to a brilliant speech by the present Attorney-General when the Conservative party was in opposition and when pulling back on such warrants was our formal policy. As the Minister has done today, my right hon. and learned Friend went through the vast numbers of powers that have built up—600 have been introduced in recent years and there are as many as 1,300 in total. How minor some of them are. If a council inspector believes that there is a flea infestation, he can enter somebody’s home to see whether fleas are hopping about. That was introduced in the 1930s, so it is not part of the recent accumulation of powers, but it reflects a century of belief in the big state and of allowing increasing powers to the state to take steps that are more convenient than necessary.

This House is always here to protect the rights and liberties of the individual against the over-mighty Executive. Although I believe the present Government are undoubtedly the greatest Government in the history of mankind, it is none the less in the nature of Governments to try to increase the powers they have, because it is always more convenient to do so. One can imagine the advice from officials to Ministers—“Minister, it will be easier and quicker and save money if we do this”—but that must be weighed by the House against the historic and ancient rights that we have enjoyed and that are so important to us.

We have enjoyed these freedoms to the great benefit of our nation and prosperity. The feeling of security that people have in their home—the feeling that they can go about their lawful business in their home without the forces of the state coming in to question what they are doing or how they are living—has allowed us to become one of the most prosperous countries in the world. Those ancient freedoms have underpinned all of that not just in recent years, but over many centuries. We have always been one of the freest countries in the world and one that has protected the property and rights of subjects against an over-mighty Crown more strongly than other nations have been willing to do.

Although I have received—I think—sufficient reassurance from the Minister to support the amendments, I hope that the Government will carry out the review with the greatest urgency. Many people would have been more sympathetic to the Government’s view if, instead of just a rejecting motion, they had tabled an amendment with a bit more detail on the time scale, or perhaps a requirement that if the review is not finished in two years, any power that has not been reviewed must fall or be the subject of a warrant or the agreement of the person whose property is to be invaded.

I will end my brief remarks by reminding the House of the words of Pitt the Elder—known as the Great Commoner, that proud upholder of liberties in the 18th century. What he said should ring true today for all subjects of Her Majesty:

“The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It may be frail, its roof may shake; the wind may blow through it; the storm may enter, the rain may enter—but the King of England cannot enter”.

That is a principle that we ought to uphold and fight for. The Government should push ahead as fast as possible to ensure that these 1,300 powers are cut right back purely to those that are essential in the fight to maintain law and order or to put out fires.

Abu Qatada

Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

One of the important messages comes from part of the Court’s decision, which is that where we have memorandums of understanding in relation to the treatment of individuals, that was upheld by the European Court. That is an important part of the judgment. Obviously, as I have said we vehemently disagree with the other part of the Court’s judgment in relation to the issue of a fair trial, which is why we continue to do what all hon. Members have said they want, which is to see if there are ways we can move to Abu Qatada’s deportation.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend referred to the current legal framework. Will she confirm that it is open to Parliament to change this legal framework, and would it therefore be possible to repeal any rights of the European Court to interfere in our affairs and to return this matter to British courts—and could a Bill to achieve this be introduced tomorrow?

[Mrs May]

We are signatories to the European convention on human rights, and we remain signatories to that convention. That has been the policy across Governments in this country. As I have said in response to a number of questions, we are doing what we can at this time, with our chairmanship of the Council of Europe, to bring change to the way the European Court operates.

UK Extradition Arrangements

Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts

Monday 5th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

It is a real privilege to follow my learned hon. Friend the Member for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) and to speak in this debate, called by my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab), who is so right to be defending the ancient rights of the British people. My hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) got it absolutely right when he said that we spend a lot of time talking about the human rights of people in this country until, suddenly, extradition comes up and then—bingo!—they have gone, and they are sacrificed to transportation to a foreign land.

The point that we should focus on is the first principle of why we have such protections for the innocent in the criminal law. We have, as we know, a powerful state. The state provides the police and the prosecuting authority, and the state pays the judges and reimburses the juries, and, because of that great power, the state then feels it is right to put in place protections for the individual who is charged: the right to trial by jury; the right to habeas corpus; and the right to be presumed innocent until found guilty. These are the foundation rights of our criminal justice system and have a history stretching back 1,000 years.

But, when it comes to extradition, people can go to countries that do not have or follow that tradition. We have heard about how it works in Hungary, and the criminal justice system there, so one is a protected British subject if charged here, with all sorts of possible ways of defending oneself, but suddenly, if one comes under the European arrest warrant, one can languish in a dank Hungarian jail, with all those protections removed.

The United States is our greatest and closest ally, and a country with which we want to have the friendliest of relations, but we have already heard about the extraordinary approach it takes to plea bargaining: one may be threatened with 400 years without the option of parole, or if one pleads guilty one gets a week in a resort near Canada, as happened to the man who was prosecuted at the same point as Lord Black of Crossharbour—his noble lordship. One of them was offered an enormously long sentence, and the other was offered a Canadian golf club.

[Michael Ellis]

We do not have a system of plea bargaining in this country, but does my hon. Friend not accept that people who plead guilty in the United Kingdom’s courts will almost invariably receive a lower sentence than if they are found guilty after trial? There are good public policy reasons why.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

There are, indeed, but that is of a completely different order of magnitude: one gets a little off one’s sentence if one pleads guilty early—rather than being threatened with hundreds of years against a week in a golf club. That does not happen under the British system, but we know that it happened to the man who turned the equivalent of Queen’s evidence against Conrad Black. We know that it happens in the United States system, but we are willing to risk British subjects going over there.

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is always worth listening to, even if his arguments are not the strongest of cases. He began by espousing the benefits of English—I must add—history, but surely we share that system with our colonial cousins, so having made great merit of the English judicial system he cannot then criticise our American friends.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. It is up to the hon. Gentleman who takes the intervention, but the Member had only just come in.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

But it is such a pleasure to hear from the hon. Gentleman, and the tone of the House is raised by his gracious presence, so I will respond. Yes, of course we should have a hierarchy of countries to which we feel comfortable extraditing people, and of course New Zealand, Australia and Canada would be very high up on those lists—and the United States would be pretty high up too.

However, I do not think that the ambassador to the Court of St James—the extraordinary plenipotentiary of the United States—behaves in a diplomatic way when he starts telling this House how we ought to consider our business. I like to think what the noise would be in Washington if our ambassador there decided to suggest to the Senate or to the House of Representatives how they ought to conduct their business. Sitting as he does in his grand fortress in Grosvenor square like some Persian satrap, he should not be telling the House of Commons how to conduct her business. Of course we should have friendly extradition arrangements with the United States, but crucially ones that protect the ancient rights of the British subject whereby they should be innocent until proved guilty and should remain within the jurisdiction of this country until evidence is produced against them.

If we are worried about the United States, how much more worried should we be about some European countries, which can, in effect, arrest people and have them removed from this country without so much as a by-your-leave? We are risking people’s freedom and liberty. This House exists to protect the freedoms and the liberties of the British subject. Yes, I know that some of them will be guilty and will deserve severe punishment for the crimes they have committed, but have we not set up our justice system on the basic principle that it is better for 100 guilty men to go free than for one innocent man or, indeed, woman, although women commit fewer crimes—[Interruption] It is true; they do—to be imprisoned when innocent? If that is the starting point of our justice system, then surely we ought to apply it when it comes to extradition, and therefore the Government ought to review the arrangements that they have with the United States.

[Michael Ellis]

Does my hon. Friend give no credence to the fact that in the 500-page Scott Baker report, commissioned by Her Majesty’s Government, eminent jurists came to the conclusion that the imbalance that he is assuming between British and American relations regarding extradition does not exist?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

Had my hon. Friend paid closer attention to the excellent speech by my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton, he would understand that there are differing views on that. It is well known that, with Government reports, the people are appointed who will provide the report that is wanted. That has been practised over many centuries.

[Mr Raab]

My hon. Friend is making his case in his usual passionate way, laced with history and forensic analysis. Does he agree that lawyers and judges give their legal opinions, but ultimately it is for accountable and elected lawmakers to decide on these matters?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. Of course, we are the ones who must decide what is right for the country, and we must do so on first principles.

Although the American extradition treaty is not entirely satisfactory—I was very much persuaded by my hon. Friend’s introductory remarks—I am much more concerned about the European arrest warrant, which risks the freedom of innocent people in this country. I really would rather that we did not manage to arrest a foreign criminal if the exchange for that was allowing an innocent English person to be transported abroad—[Interruption.] Or a Scotsman, a Welshman or a Northern Irishman. I do not particularly want the southern Irish to languish in jails unnecessarily either, but that is not my business. It is therefore important for the Government to reinstate these protections. In fact, it would be quite encouraging if, in our efforts to renegotiate with Europe, we started with this.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

The Committee makes it clear in its report that the

“EAW is based on the principle of mutual recognition of judicial decisions and… mutual trust”

between the judicial authorities of EU states. That is a legitimate position for us to adopt, just as it was adopted in 1991 by the Conservative Government when they signed us up to the ECE—[Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman is chuntering, but I cannot hear what he says. Unless he wants to chunter louder, I am at a loss—[Interruption.] He says he will chunter more quietly, for which I am very grateful.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Bryant]

Of course I will give way to the hon. Gentleman—he will chunter from a standing position.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I will indeed. I cannot believe that the hon. Gentleman, wise and sensible as he is, thinks that justice across all European states is equal. It self-evidently is not: some systems are much less good than ours, and none is better.

[Chris Bryant]

That kind of casual British superiority sometimes does not carry the day when it comes to making decisions about our legal systems—[Interruption.] It was a joke. I am sorry. I clearly missed that.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Immigration (Damian Green)]

It is a terrible ministerial cliché to stand at the Dispatch Box and say that this has been a good and useful debate, but tonight it is true. Particular thanks should go to my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) and to members of the Backbench Business Committee for securing time in this House to debate these important issues. My hon. Friend made some kind remarks about me at the start of the debate and I should reciprocate by praising not just his energy in pursuit of this campaign—this is our second debate in nine days on the subject—but the considerable legal expertise that he brings to the subject, as well as his contribution to the Joint Committee on Human Rights, whose Chairman also contributed to the debate.

As I made clear in the debate in Westminster Hall, the Government are currently considering what action to take to ensure that this country’s extradition arrangements work both efficiently and fairly. I welcome multiple debates on these matters and of course the Government will take them into account when responding to Sir Scott Baker’s independent review of extradition along with the work done by the Joint Committee on Human Rights and the Home Affairs Committee.

The debate on extradition in recent years has focused in large part on a number of high-profile cases. Like others tonight, I pay tribute to the hon. Members who have spoken on behalf of their constituents, including my hon. Friends the Members for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie) and for South Dorset (Richard Drax). We understand and take full account of the concerns raised by right hon. and hon. Members in respect of individual European arrest warrant and extradition cases involving their constituents.

As I indicated during the debate, and as my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has said repeatedly in the context of the extradition review, it is vital that we strike the correct balance between effectively bringing offenders to justice and seeking redress for the victims of crime while protecting the fundamental rights of those who are sought for extradition. That point was made well by my right hon. Friend the Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis). For that reason, this further debate is warmly welcomed.

Many interesting points have been made this evening, but the only one with which I flatly disagree was made by my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), who said that 1,000 years ago habeas corpus was an important part of our constitution. I would normally defer to him in matters of mediaeval history, but I do not remember in the dying decades of the Anglo-Saxon kings, underrated though they are in history, that habeas corpus featured particularly highly.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

As it happens, one can trace habeas corpus back an extremely long way, but I do not think that I said that.

[Damian Green]

The record will tell us which of us recollects correctly.

Moving rapidly to the 21st century—

Equality and Diversity (Reform) Bill

Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts

Friday 21st October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Bryant]

Well, no, not quite. Let us say, for the sake of argument, that the ambulance service, which the hon. Gentleman mentioned earlier, turned up at the household of a young Muslim woman who was in labour and having a difficult childbirth, and had absolutely no understanding of what was acceptable in a Muslim household. It would not be able to do its job properly. That is precisely why all public services need to be culturally sensitive not just to how Britain has always been but to how it is today.

When homosexuality was illegal—that era is fortunately long gone—and when David Maxwell Fyfe, as Home Secretary, ran a particularly nasty campaign of entrapment of gay men, some friends of mine, a couple who had lived together for many years, were burgled, but because they had only a one-bedroom flat, they were terrified of bringing the police round, because they knew that the police would investigate them for buggery rather than investigating the burglary.

I am afraid that there is a lack of understanding in far too many public services of how work could be improved by sensitivity to the ways other people live their lives—I would not say that there is deliberate prejudice, out-and-out racism, homophobia or sexism. In addition, many minority communities are simply forgotten by local authorities and the health service when they make their spending plans. That is one issue that needs to be addressed and one reason why the Bill is wrong.

Incidentally, there is significant cultural prejudice against the Catholic Church. I passionately disagree with the Pope on just about every issue, starting with transubstantiation. However, all too often prejudice against Catholics in society is quite marked and that is why it is not a good idea to ask people to give the name of their primary school when they are applying for public sector jobs. People will say, “Aha, this person went to the Cardinal Vaughan school! We’re not very keen on Catholics, so we won’t shortlist them.” It is illegal to do that, but it would be simpler and better if that element were taken out of the equation.

The hon. Member for Shipley said that he wanted a tolerant society. That phrase is very often used—I believe that an Archbishop of Canterbury started calls for a tolerant society in the 1960s. However, I dislike the concept of a tolerant society, because I think that a respectful society is far more important. “Tolerance” implies that although someone completely and utterly disapproves of someone who lives in a different style—

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

rose—

[Chris Bryant]

I will tolerate the hon. Gentleman in a moment. Unfortunately, “tolerance” smacks of reluctance.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am surprised that the hon. Gentleman starts tolerance in the 1960s, because surely John Locke did that in his essay on tolerance. The theme has run through Whiggish behaviour, of which he is symbolic, ever since.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I cannot see anything about tolerance in the Bill. I think we will stick with the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Bryant]

I do apologise, Mr Deputy Speaker. It is just that clause 2 is entitled “Definition of ‘affirmative or positive action’”. The Prime Minister is seeking to change the legislation at the meeting of Commonwealth Heads of Government next week and I worry that that could be seen by the hon. Member for Shipley as positive discrimination on the grounds of sex, listed in paragraph (b), and religion, in paragraph (g). I would hope that the hon. Gentleman was in favour of equality in the succession.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Chris Bryant]

How could I resist?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I wonder whether it might be right to look at the matter the other way round. Is this actually a rather dangerous Bill that would impliedly repeal positive discrimination in favour of Protestants in the order of succession—and, of course, of men as well? Has the hon. Gentleman considered that point?

[Chris Bryant]

I do worry about the prejudice in favour of Protestants, although the issue is even more complicated. It is not quite in preference of Protestants, but in favour of somebody who is able to take communion in the Church of England and subscribe to its articles of religion, a difficult thing even for most Anglican clergy, as well as be a member of the Church of Scotland. That is quite a tall ask.

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that clause 2(1)(g) might be problematic for true equality. Incidentally, I would not often say this but I support the striving for equality in the House of Lords advanced at present by Baron Fellowes, who is worried that his wife will not be able to inherit her title, because women in this country are not allowed to inherit titles.

There is still a problem in this country. Only 22% of Members are women. In the Labour party, all-women shortlists have played a significant role in trying to bring about a more equal and representative House of Commons. When we move forward to an elected second Chamber, I hope that we will be able to use the same legislation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

We have heard that the great lady, the noble Lady, the Lady of the Garter, Baroness Thatcher, is not to be called upon in this debate, so let us call upon Queen Elizabeth I instead. As she so memorably said, though her body might be weak, she had the heart of a king—and a King of England at that. She did not need special measures, advancement and protection to get her going; she did it through her own vim and vigour, her force of character and her great and noble ability that set the path for this great country for centuries to come.

[Damian Green]

I merely make the point that had the genetics fallen in a different way, she would never have become Queen, because of discrimination within the system of primogeniture.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

But she did become Queen. That is the point—that she was able to become queen because our constitution has always evolved gently and happily so that more and more people become included in it without necessarily being given a helping hand or a lift up. This is the key point to the Bill: we want to have equality of opportunity as an objective, but not equality of outcome. I think that is what has always divided the Conservative—the Tory—from the socialist: the socialist always wants equality of outcome. Socialists want to meddle and muddle; they want to socially engineer—or perhaps to engineer socially for the benefit of Hansard who do not like their infinitives to be split—and they want to make sure that they direct and control so that everybody should be made into a neat little machine. We have had this terrible socialist proposition recently that the elderly should sell their homes so that they can be put into properties that have fewer rooms. That is what it is all about; it is about controlling people, guiding their lives and taking away their freedoms.

When it comes to this Equality Act, to which my hon. Friend’s Bill would make splendid improvements, with some caveats that I may come to, it is desperately condescending to women. They do not want to be looked down upon as if they cannot cope. I am going to speak of the example of my younger sister Annunziata Rees-Mogg, who was the candidate for Somerton and Frome, where she fought a noble campaign. I discussed this with her and I said, “Actually, for the political advantage of the Conservative party,”—I am all in favour of the political advantage of the Conservative party—“perhaps we should have all-women shortlists.” It might not have helped me but it would have helped her and it might have answered a political problem for the party. She could not have been more strongly against it because she viewed it as condescending. She wanted to get the nomination for a seat on her own great merits—and very considerable her merits are, too. She did not want to be told she was a poor little thing: that is the sort of line an elder brother can use to a sister but it is not the sort of line that should be used by political parties or by the state. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) points out, from a sedentary position, that she lost. Well, she did because the Labour vote went down to 4%. Labour lost its deposit and that was to its horror when it discovered that the Lib Dems then supported us, so the aim to keep the beastly Tories out by voting Lib Dem failed miserably. Without that, she would have won by a landslide and I expect that next time around that will be the happy occurrence.

It is condescending to women to assume that they cannot cope without special measures and to people from what are genuinely minorities, because of course women are not a minority. Some of the time they are in the majority, although not at birth. There are more live births of boys than of girls, but women tend to live longer and therefore can easily be a majority of the population.

We have discussed Catholicism. The hon. Member for Rhondda said that he disagreed with the Holy Father on transubstantiation, but I cannot think why. It is clearly a very sensible and right doctrine. However, I do not think, as a Catholic, that I have any fear of discrimination, nor ever have had, although it did happen once to my father—my noble kinsman, as I ought to call him. He was going for a Conservative selection many years ago and was asked by one of the members of the committee if he would be able to go to the lord lieutenant’s funeral as he was a Catholic, at which point another member of the committee pointed out that actually the lord lieutenant was the Duke of Norfolk, so there would be absolutely no difficulty in my father’s attending his funeral. But he did not need special measures to help him. He had to get on and, if there was discrimination in those days, to overcome it, to strive and move forward—as, of course, Margaret Thatcher did and Nancy Astor too.

We have seen in the development and evolution of this House that it has become broader based. One might think that the days when it was simply knights of the shires, when the borough Members had not been let in, were glorious days when the knights of the shires could come in wearing spurs, as I believe we still can, to indicate that they represented a county.

[Chris Bryant]

Wrong!

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I believe it is true, actually.

[Chris Bryant]

It is not.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I believe it is true.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I do not think we are going to have an argument and a history lesson across the Chamber. I am sure the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) will either intervene or be slightly more quiet.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

Mr Deputy Speaker, I was shocked at such a sedentary intervention. I have never known such things in this House before.

But things evolved and we let the borough Members in, and we now look upon them as equals.

[Chris Bryant]

That probably takes the biscuit for lèse majesté—“We let the borough Members in”! I know that the hon. Gentleman has been here for a very long time in some shape or form, but to suggest that we have now become representative when he himself is the son of a peer seems a little odd.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his typically helpful intervention. Of course sons of peers should be represented, and they are a minority too. Perhaps as a son of a peer I should be given special help and intervention to help me to get through all the prejudice there is against sons of peers—not that I would ask for it or that I have ever noticed a particular prejudice against sons of peers. Mr Deputy Speaker, I hope that such prejudices never fall upon so distinguished a figure as yourself either.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend may have seen the press reports today regarding possible new legislation to allow females to take hereditary titles in the House of Lords. Does he agree that this is the way forward?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

Well, I do not really like change as a general rule, and I would be very nervous about intervening in the line of succession to the throne. I think that the line of succession to the throne works very well and changing the Canadian constitution is a particularly difficult thing to do. With Her Majesty’s fantastically successful visit to Australia, we want everything to have a settled continuity of that succession. However, I think that the world has changed and that it may not be unreasonable to allow hereditary titles to pass through the female line, particularly if they are in danger of becoming extinct, because it would be a great sadness for titles to die out over succeeding generations with no new hereditary peerages being awarded. I must briefly declare an interest, because my mother-in-law would be able to resurrect a title if this law were to be changed.

[Chris Bryant]

Could she not just petition the Queen to allow her to hold it sui juris?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am not sure that that is—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. I think we are getting into too much detail about one’s relatives and we are also drifting, once again, away from the Bill. As much we are all enjoying it I think we had better come back to the Bill.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for bringing me back on track. I remember that there was a wonderful slogan of the Conservatives at one point, “Britain’s on the right track. Don’t turn back.” That is really what we want in speeches from this side—we want to stay on this right, Conservative track. My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley is very much on the right Conservative track with his Bill about looking at opportunity, not outcome, and to place on public authorities a duty of fairness to behave properly and not to pick winners. We know that the state has tried picking winners in the past and it is not a good policy, because the state is not going to do that well. It wants to do things on merit.

I agree very much with my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley on political candidates as well. They ought to be the ones the local parties want and not people sent down from on high. If the local parties want a man, that is up to them, and if they want a woman, that should equally be up to them. Of course we want to ensure that there is a very fine list of the best possible candidates that they can choose from, but they should have the ultimate choice and the ultimate authority. Those of us who believe in localism would like the law repealed so that it is unlawful to discriminate in that way. In safe seats, such as Rhondda, discrimination could give somebody a seat for life, with a significant income, which would be unfair to people who might have done the job equally well and may have been more wanted by the electorate to whom they were accountable. Parties need to be conscious of their power in safe seats.

There is, as always, a but. I was concerned about the point made by the right hon. Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane) who said that the Bill would outlaw nunneries because they could represent discrimination by a public authority in favour of women. I am not sure that point is right, because if Her Majesty’s Government or any other public authority—the Charity Commission, for example—were to support nunneries and monasteries equally, there would be a balance, and as there may be more monks than nuns in this country it might be positive discrimination in favour of men, if it were any discrimination at all. I do not think that criticism of the Bill actually holds. [Interruption.] Does the hon. Member for Rhondda want to speak? It is very difficult to pick up all these sedentary interruptions, Mr Deputy Speaker.

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order. The hon. Gentleman does not have to pick them up; he can choose to ignore them.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. Your guidance is helpful to the nth degree. I am greatly appreciative of it and I shall now make sure that I imitate the deaf adder: charm the hon. Member for Rhondda ever so nicely, I shall not be able to hear. We remember the deaf adder from our scripture lessons; as the hon. Gentleman is a former vicar, he will no doubt be able to call it to mind.

I am slightly concerned that the succession to the Crown could be affected, but I think the Bill could be amended to make it absolutely clear that there will be no effect on the succession and that the discrimination that remains is germane until such time as it is settled on its own in a different way—if ever it is to be changed. As a Catholic, I do not think it is a good idea to open the succession to Catholics; it would make no sense to have a Catholic as the head of the Church of England and it would be a pity to disestablish the Church of England by accident.

I am broadly in support of the Bill. The real principle is that we must not be condescending to people who can do it for themselves. We must embrace freedom and liberty. We must let people have every conceivable opportunity and then let them strive, go forward and work to achieve what they can and what they will. We must not say that we have to make sure that the number fits the box. We must not take the broad principle, to quote a former Labour Cabinet Minister, that the man in Whitehall really does know best, because the man in Whitehall does not know best, and even if he becomes a woman she still does not know best. It should be left to individuals, and we should avoid this socialistic tendency to try to get equality of outcome, which we will in fact never achieve.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

It could have happened.

My previous comments related to positive action. Positive discrimination, affirmative action or discrimination generally means choosing someone solely on the grounds of their gender or racial group, or for any other factor, and not for their ability. We are now at the crux of the matter. I believe that, by definition, as soon as one positively discriminates in respect of any given group in society, one is automatically discriminating against another group. That cannot be right. The Bill makes a good start in tackling the problem, but it is just the first step on the long road to ridding this country of the culture of political correctness and dismantling the whole industry of diversity and equality.

There could be no better time, given the economic situation, for that to gather pace. I know from my experience as a practising solicitor that many small and medium-sized enterprises struggle under the burden of the legislation. We are not there yet—there is a long way to go—but if we could begin to remove the legislation that applies to public authorities, that would be a step in the right direction. All our public services are looking for savings but, because of the way in which the law is framed, the one area in which they are not allowed to look for them is diversity and equality legislation. They have to keep their army of officers to comply with the law and the tick-box legislation.

Under the Disability Discrimination Acts, positive discrimination in favour of disabled people is not unlawful, and if disabled people meet the minimum criteria for a job, they are guaranteed an interview. The only other exemption relates to the Sex Discrimination (Election Candidates) Act 2002, which the Bill seeks to abolish. The Equality Act 2010 includes a provision giving employers the option, when faced with two or more candidates of equal merit, of choosing one from a group that is under-represented in the work force. There is a whole Government Department—the Government Equalities Office—that exists solely for the purpose of issuing and enforcing guidance, red tape and regulations on that legislation. It has published guidance for employers on how to make those changes and use them in everyday life. The provisions on positive action in recruitment are, I am pleased to say, entirely voluntary but, as we all know, the public sector has seized on them with great glee. There is no requirement for an employer to use either the general provisions or those relating to recruitment and promotion.

Positive action in that regard will be used in cases in which an employer reasonably thinks that people with a protected characteristic are under-represented in the work force or suffer a disadvantage connected to that protected characteristic. As my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley made clear, the problem is where we draw the line. Why not, for example, protect and give help to those who are particularly tall?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

What an excellent idea—there should be special benefits for everyone over 6 feet.

[Mr Nuttall]

I am pleased that my hon. Friend is interested in this matter. If someone, for the sake of argument, is 7 feet tall—there are people of that stature in society—an employer might secretly think that they had better not take on such an employee, because they might complain about the size of the company’s doorways and it would have to spend a fortune going round the building and enlarging all the doors. One can easily see how an argument could be made for heightist, stoutist or shortist legislation to be introduced—

Drugs (Roadside Testing) Bill

Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts

Friday 10th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. When presented with such evidence, one has to question the motives. Why has the Home Office been so slow in coming forward with a specification against which it might be able to give type approval for these devices? It may be because it knows that were there to be such roadside testing, there would be a lot more work for the police to do, because many drivers have drugs in their system and if they were detected by such screening devices at the roadside following an accident, the whole process of law would come into play and many of them would end up with a conviction. We know that there is a cost associated with that, and I suspect that behind all this delay is a reluctance by the Home Office to open up a Pandora’s box of increased detection of offences and increased burden on the court system, and ultimately, perhaps, increased numbers of people in prison.

What could be happening? Funnily enough, on Wednesday of this week there was a short post from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation from the Limestone Coast police in South Australia, which said:

“Statistics released by Limestone Coast police have shown significantly more people are being caught driving under the influence of drugs, than under the influence of alcohol. Superintendent Trevor Twilley says 6 per cent of people tested for drug driving are coming back with positive results, while less than half a per cent are returning positive results for alcohol.”

That is a direct consequence of the state of South Australia equipping its police with the technology and the means to do roadside drug tests. It is relatively new in South Australia but it is already having a major impact. If it can be done in South Australia, why can we not do it here, and now?

My Bill, like previous Bills along the same lines, says that a type approval for this drug-testing device must be in place within 12 months. My original Bill, introduced under the ten-minute procedure in April 2007, had the exclusive support of those who were at that time Opposition Members. Among those who supported that and subsequent Bills are a number of distinguished Members of the House. The Bill that I introduced in December 2007, which was identical to my ten-minute rule Bill, was supported by none other than my right hon. Friend the Leader of House, who I am delighted to see in his place today, and also by four colleagues who are now Select Committee Chairmen, and one colleague who is now a Deputy Speaker of this House, as well as, of course, what might be described as the more usual suspects, my hon. Friends the Members for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) and for Shipley (Philip Davies). The legislation thus had a wide range of support, and that was back in 2007. The Bill then said that the type approval should be produced within one year. My right hon. Friend was obviously keen that that should happen. He is now in a very powerful position in the Government—arguably even more powerful than the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), who will reply to the debate.

Why cannot the Government, with the support of the Leader of House and that of the Minister with responsibility for roads, who was also a signatory to one of my Bills in identical terms on this subject, deliver on this reasonable proposition that we should have type approval for a roadside drug-testing piece of equipment? I am sure that it would result in far fewer people driving on our roads under the influence of drugs or with drugs in their system. Far too few people are being brought to justice at the moment, so people think they can drive with drugs in their system with impunity. It is relatively rare that the courts are asked to deal with people who are guilty of drug-driving, because it is quite hard to detect at the moment.

One of the most famous recent cases was reported on 14 September 2010 when somebody called George Michael was jailed for eight weeks for drug-driving. He crashed his car while under the influence of cannabis and was given a five-year driving ban. He had also been guilty of driving under the influence of drugs on a previous occasion. I am not sure what Members of the House will think about the sentence that was imposed, but it shows that this illegal activity of drug-driving is taking place in this country, and the police themselves suggest that it is much more widespread than has so far been recognised by the Government.

We have had any number of Government initiatives promising to clamp down on drug-driving and have a publicity campaign about it. Even this week, in the Mail Online, there is an article similar to that in The Sunday Times to which I have already referred, saying that the Minister is determined to do something about it. All he has to do, if he really has the will, is to go to Concateno and ask what type approval would be needed to ensure that we can have a roadside testing device. Concateno would be able to give him that information relatively easily and the specification could be drawn up and the testing device given type approval sooner rather than later.

In the Government’s most recent road safety programme, they refer to this issue but only in the most general terms. Even the target that was set as recently as March, that the type approval for the device that would be used in police stations would be completed, has not yet been met. It was said that it would done by the end of April, but we are now in June and it still has not been completed. I hope that my hon. Friend the Minister will be candid in explaining the reasons. For one reason or another, we have still not got the type approval that we need for both the roadside testing device and the testing device to be used in police stations. Until we get that we will not have an effective regime for dealing with the scourge of drug-driving.

The principle that Ministers should apply is this: where there is a will, there is a way. If the ministerial team has the will to do something about this and is prepared to override the block in the Home Office, particularly in its scientific branch, they will be able to deal with this. I think that it is an indictment of the Home Office’s scientific branch that, despite all its expertise, it is still unable to come up with the type approval specification.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

Is the Home Office not right to be cautious about approving a device that could lead to someone getting a criminal sentence, and possibly going to jail if the accident is serious enough? On this occasion, delay may be wise and prudential, rather than the folly of bureaucracy.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is certainly right that it is absolutely vital that the devices used in police stations to provide conclusive evidence that a person has drugs in their system are 100% accurate. We are on the threshold of having type approval for such devices. I am dealing with screening devices that could be used at the roadside and that are comparable to the devices used to identify those suspected of drink-driving. Those screening devices, which people have to blow into through a tube, indicate prima facie whether there is excess alcohol in the system. It might turn out that those people, even if they have a positive breath test, are found not to test positive when they get down to the police station and a blood sample is taken. The device is a screening device. It enables the police, following road traffic accidents or offences, to screen people they suspect of having alcohol in their system. I am suggesting that we urgently need a similar system for people who are suspected of having drugs in their system.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way again. Press reports are saying that the screening devices used for drug-driving will be made evidential in and of themselves, without a second test back at the police station. Would it not be rather peculiar to have two different standards for roadside testing, one that had to be checked at the police station and one that had become evidential in itself?

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend is right, but he has read reports that these roadside devices will be used to provide evidence of guilt in themselves. As a lawyer, not to mention as a politician, I would be rather concerned about that, because I think that trying to streamline the processes in such a way could lead to an enormous amount of injustice. On the most recent sitting Friday we heard that quite a lot of criminal records are inaccurate. If the criminal records are inaccurate, how can we be sure that a roadside device for indentifying whether someone has excess alcohol in their system will be 100% accurate?

In response to my hon. Friend’s reasonable concerns, I would argue that we should keep the existing system for detecting alcohol, which has proved successful and resulted in a significant reduction in the number of people driving with excess alcohol in their system. We should keep the system of a roadside test and apply the same screening principle to people suspected of having taken drugs or whose driving is impaired as a result. We should then ensure that there is a cast-iron, rigorous system at the police station for ensuring the accuracy of those tests.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) for showing such determination and persistence in bringing the Bill before the House. I think he has been hiding his light under a bushel to some degree, as he has attempted no fewer than four times to get his Bill a Second Reading. Today is very much a red letter day in the life of the Bill. It was first brought to the attention of the House in April 2007 under the ten-minute rule. A similar, if not identical, Bill was presented to the House on 10 December 2007. Sadly, as the time-honoured phrase “due to lack of parliamentary time” so aptly describes, it befell the fate of so many private Members’ Bills and proceeded no further than that first hurdle.

Unperturbed by this and remaining convinced of the merits of the case, my hon. Friend presented the Bill for a second time in the following Session and it had its First Reading on 26 January 2009. Sadly, the legislative gods again did not smile kindly on the Bill. Despite being on the Order Paper so many times, it failed to make any further progress. Until I looked at the list of sponsors of those previous Bills, I was unaware that I, as a sponsor of this Bill, was replacing one of the Deputy Speakers or the Leader of the House. Had I known that, I certainly would not have changed my decision to support it.

We have already heard my hon. Friend explain the thinking behind the Bill and what it seeks to achieve. I think it makes good parliamentary sense, because essentially it seeks to amend what is effectively a dormant provision in an Act of Parliament.

It breathes life into the provisions of section 6C of the Road Traffic Act 1988, so that rather than being just words they can be used in practice, which is no doubt what was intended so many years ago when they were introduced as an amendment to the 1988 Act. The whole purpose of the Bill is to make it easier for the police to detect those who drive under the influence of drugs.

My hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) quite rightly raised concern that if machines are not accurate innocent drivers might be convicted and receive a criminal record. I acknowledge that risk, but, as I will outline later in more detail, medical evidence shows that even an infinitesimally small amount of drugs can impair one’s driving ability. The reading from the machine will not represent proof beyond all doubt, because it will be for the courts to assess its strength and validity, but it surely must be better than what happens at the moment.

There are penalties for people who drive under the influence of drugs, and the police are advised about the steps to take if they think that someone is doing so. Five exercises are designed to assess their abilities: a pupil dilation test, designed to test for the presence of drugs; counting out 30 seconds; walking in a straight line, nine paces forward and then back—the classic test to check co-ordination and balance; raising a foot in the air 6 to 8 inches off the ground, which is designed to test the balance; and touching one’s finger to one’s nose with the eyes closed.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

It occurs to me that those tests are rather unfair on people who are not necessarily particularly numerate or athletic, and that standing on one leg with one’s foot 6 to 8 inches off the ground might be rather difficult for a lot of people on a normal day.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point. The police are concerned that many completely sound people, who had never been within a mile of a drug or been involved in any drug taking whatever, would fail such a test. I would doubt my ability to perform all those functions without some error, and I have to concede that it would be difficult for even a sober person to pass all those tests easily.

In the Romberg test, for example, motorists are asked to stand up straight, tilt their head back, close their eyes and count to 30. If they sway and lose count those are regarded as an impaired ability to drive. It is like a scene from a Hollywood movie, seeing a suspect have to walk nine paces in a straight line and then nine paces back, and the idea of somebody having to stand alternately on their left and right legs without falling over is really rather ridiculous, so anything that moves away from those subjective tests and puts things on a more scientific basis can only be a step in the right direction.

The evidence obtained by the police must be of sufficient quality to enable them or the Crown Prosecution Service to secure a conviction in court, and it is important to determine what is meant by “drugs”. We all might think that we know what is meant, but what does the legislation state? Fortunately for us, and for the purposes of the 1988 Act, we are enormously assisted by section 11, entitled “Interpretations of sections 4 to 10”. Section 11(2) states that

“‘drug’ includes any intoxicant other than alcohol”.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

That is an enormously important point. I do not know whether my hon. Friend reads the Daily Mail regularly, but it pointed out earlier this week that if one had five cups of coffee in a day one could hallucinate, so under the Bill will we roadside-test people who have had just one extra cup of coffee?

[Mr Nuttall]

That is indeed a problem, because caffeine can be regarded as an intoxicant, as indeed—I was very surprised to find out—can water. Those apparently harmless substances, if consumed to excess, can result in intoxication, so the definition in section 11 captures not just the obvious drugs that we think of when we hear “drugs”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Although the statistics show that thousands more people have been convicted of driving under the influence of alcohol than of drugs, whenever a survey is carried out we find that people, especially if they have been to a club, will admit that they are more likely to have been driven in a vehicle by somebody who has had drugs than by somebody who has had alcohol.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

This is a very interesting discussion of the effects on people’s behaviour. One of the most dangerous ages for driving is 18 to 25 for young men. If they are having accidents because they are going too fast, and cannabis slows them down, are you saying that they ought to be using cannabis when they drive?

[Mr Speaker]

I am not saying anything, but I think that the hon. Gentleman might be.

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[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way again; he is being enormously generous. Are not the same drugs sometimes illegal and sometimes legal? Drugs that are banned for use in the wrong circumstances, such as opiates, may be prescribed by physicians to treat pain. Such drugs would be illegal if you bought them—sorry, Mr Speaker, I mean if my hon. Friend bought them, because I think it inconceivable that you would buy them—in a corner shop in Cheam.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes the valid point that a drug that for all other intents and purposes is illegal becomes legal if it is prescribed by a GP. As Members on both sides of the House will be aware, we are often lobbied by those who feel that cannabis should be more widely available to make it easier for those with certain medical conditions to bear the symptoms. I understand that cannabis can make it easier for people to bear certain symptoms that are otherwise unbearable.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend raises a good point. With alcohol, the law sets a specific limit of 80 mg of alcohol per 100 ml of blood. It is relatively easy to test whether someone has more or less than the proscribed amount of alcohol in their blood, whereas a subjective decision has to be taken on whether someone is driving a vehicle under the influence of drugs. The 1988 Act is specific about that. That is indeed part of the difficulty that the Home Office has faced in proposing an appropriate device, because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch said, no standard for device specification has been set. As I will say later, some studies show that as little as 1 nanogram can adversely affect one’s ability to drive.

Fortunately, those who have to draw up the specification will be aided by the fact that some research has been carried out on the appropriate level to be set. A research programme was initiated by the Department for Transport, the Home Office, the Coroners Society and the Association of Chief Police Officers, aimed at establishing systematically the incidence of drug use among fatal road casualties—not just illicit drugs but those that are prescribed or sold over the counter. The interim results were released in February 1998 and included in the road safety White Paper entitled “Tomorrow’s roads: safer for everyone”, published in March 2003. That White Paper stated:

“Studies have shown that compared with ten years ago, five times as many people killed in road accidents had a trace of an illegal drug in their body. Cannabis was by far the most common illegal substance found. However, whilst it is likely that shortly after use the active ingredient of cannabis impairs driving, traces of the drug can remain in the body for up to four weeks, long after it has ceased to have any effect. This can present difficulties for enforcement until we have further research findings.

Class A drugs are most likely to have an adverse effect on driving. According to interim survey results, they were found in 6% of cases (compared with 12% for cannabis). This was a small increase compared with 10 years ago.

In the studies of road accident fatalities referred to above, it was found that there had been no change in the incidence of medicinal drugs over the period. There is scope, nevertheless, to improve enforcement and to make people more aware of the risks of driving while their ability is affected by drugs.”

The RAC has also surveyed a group of young drivers and found that young people are twice as likely to have been driven by someone who has taken illegal drugs than by someone over the drink-drive limit. A Transport Research Laboratory report on the effects of cannabis on driving was published in December 2000, and found that there were measurable effects on driver performance and that drivers could be impaired. A report on the effects of cannabis and alcohol was published in 2002, which confirmed the earlier observations and judged that the general medical examination and standardised impairment testing applied by police surgeons were generally effective in determining impairment.

It may well be that those reports led the Home Office to think that the testing that was already being done was generally satisfactory, and that the matter was therefore not as urgent as supporters of the Bill feel it is. However, there have been several other small-scale qualitative and quantitative studies that have examined patterns of recreational drug use and driving. I wish to refer in particular to one, undertaken by the Scottish Executive. It was published in 2001 and examined aspects of driving while under the influence of recreational drugs. It identified general patterns of personal drug use. When stopped on a toll bridge, some 3% of survey respondents aged 40 and over, and 13% of those aged 17 to 39, had taken an illegal drug in the previous twelve months. Among those attending dance clubs, 76%—three out of every four—had taken illegal drugs in the previous month. Drug-driving was particularly evident among those attending nightclubs.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend says that 76% of those who have been to dance clubs have been taking drugs before driving. Ought we therefore to have a test for people who have been to dance clubs, since it seems so many of them will be unfit to drive when they leave?

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point indeed. The statistics that I mentioned show the importance of the police monitoring closely those who seek to drive a car after leaving a dance club where drugs must clearly have been available.

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[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point indeed. That is one beneficial and happy side effect of the Bill. As a result of fewer people driving under the influence of drugs, there will hopefully be fewer accidents. Therefore, insurance premiums for everyone else would be much lower.

If I may, I shall continue my brief explanation of the contents of the Department for Transport consultation document, which states:

“The public rightly perceive users of these drugs”—

drugs that are controlled by the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971—

“as a danger to road safety. As this paper has shown, it is difficult for the police to deal with these offenders. The nature of the effects of the drugs they take mean it is inappropriate to regulate the use of impairing illegal drugs using a prescribed limit based on the same principles as the limit for alcohol, even if it was acceptable to do so…Such an offence could be framed in such a way that a driver could be convicted of a new offence if an appropriate test showed such an illegal drug in their body. The effects of particular drugs on different individuals are complex, and, as set out below, there would be a lot of further work to do to develop this possibility, but our ultimate aim would be to treat in this way any illegal drug that is capable of impairing driving…The penalties for drivers exceeding the prescribed limit for alcohol are the same as for those convicted of the alternative offence of driving while unfit through drink or drugs. We therefore envisage that penalties for the possible new offence should be the same as for the existing offence of driving while unfit through drugs, which is a mandatory minimum disqualification of 12 months; offenders may also be fined up to £5,000 and sent to prison for up to 6 months.”

That consultation closed in February 2009, and in December 2009 the then Labour Government announced that they would seek further advice on the matter from Sir Peter North—it was his review that I referred to earlier as the North review. Although Sir Peter North provided initial advice to the then Minister, Lord Adonis, before last year’s general election, his final report was not published until 16 June last year, which of course was after the change of Government. The main recommendations of the North review relating to drug-driving were that police procedures enforcing current drug-driving laws should be improved, and that there should be early approval for saliva testing. The press notice accompanying the review stated:

“The Review also assesses Great Britain’s less well-understood drug driving problem, challenging the lack of reliable statistics, out-dated research and police emphasis on drink driving detection. In the short term, Sir Peter recommends that police procedures enforcing current drug driving laws are improved, making it more straightforward for police to identify and prosecute drug drivers by allowing nurses, as well as doctors, to authorise blood tests of suspects. Medium-term, he recommends early approval of saliva testing of drug driving suspects in police stations, which will largely overcome the environmental problems in roadside use that had previously slowed technological development of so-called ‘drugalysers’.”

On the question of a new law setting banned drug levels, Sir Peter was keen to say:

“The focus should be on public safety. Any new offence should therefore focus on establishing levels of drugs in the blood at which significant impairment – and therefore, risk to public safety – can be reasonably assumed, as is the case now for drink-driving”.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way for what must be the dozenth time. Has the issue of cannabis remaining in the body for up to a month been settled in terms of this type of testing? If limits of this kind are to be set and people have not taken an illegal substance for a month, would it be reasonable to penalise them? Is the testing yet sophisticated enough?

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. It is one of the difficulties arising in this area. It might well be that the body retains chemical traces of an intoxicant drug—if I may use that term, as we have now learned that it is perhaps the correct way to describe these drugs. The question would be whether that trace was having any effect on the ability of that person to drive, and that would be a matter for the court to determine. The court might well decide that a person was guilty of the offence—if it were to be an offence—of driving while having drugs in the body. Were that to be made an absolute offence, of course they would be guilty of it.

I made the point that the focus should be on public safety, and that any new offence should therefore focus on establishing levels of drugs in the blood at which significant impairment—and therefore the risk to public safety—can be reasonably assumed, as is the case now for drink-driving. Responding to concerns from patients and health care professionals that people taking medicines would be banned from driving, Sir Peter stresses that this is not his intention. Instead, he highlights that although medicines can be as impairing to driving as illegal drugs, there is an important opportunity for the relevant parties to work together to improve public awareness and the driving patient’s safety.

The power that the police have to conduct roadside drug testing was introduced under schedule 7 to the Railways and Transport Safety Act 2003. However, in the absence of any approved device, testing was of a rather more subjective nature. Guidance was issued in December 2004 on the conduct of the preliminary impairment tests. As I mentioned earlier, the police may ask drivers whom they suspect are under the influence of drugs to perform a series of physical tests, usually at the roadside, such as walking along a straight line, touching the tip of their nose with their finger, and standing on one leg. The police also examine drivers’ pupils to see if they are dilated while checking for slurred speech and poor co-ordination. If the police officer is not satisfied, the suspect is taken to a police station and a blood test is undertaken.

The problem with these tests is that they are subjective and not scientific compared with breathalyser tests. However, the police still feel that they are successful in identifying those who have been taking drugs. Moreover, the law does not make a distinction between illegal or misused drugs and over-the-counter prescription drugs taken as directed by a medical practitioner. For these reasons, there were often problems associated with prosecuting those who drove under the influence of drugs. In practice, the police have preferred to use the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, as amended, if they stop a person whom they suspect of taking drugs. Section 5(1) of the Act makes it unlawful to possess a controlled drug unless authorised by regulations under section 7. It may more often be the case that drivers thought to be unfit to drive and found with drugs in the vehicle would be prosecuted for possession of drugs and not for driving while unfit. However, problems may arise with the prosecution of a driver found in possession on the basis of a positive blood or urine sample, because once drugs have been consumed their character is altered and the person consuming the drugs is no longer considered to be in possession.

The same problem was highlighted in the submission by the Department for Transport to the North review team last June:

“The complex nature of drug pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics makes it difficult to establish values that would represent impairment in the general population. The main challenges in determining suitable cut-offs include: individual variations, drug tolerance, interactions with other drugs, and the variable effects of the same blood concentrations of drugs depending on whether the concentration is rising or falling. One review of the evidence for levels of cannabis related to impairment has suggested a cut-off for THC in whole blood of between 3.5–5 ng/ml, although a population-based study in France suggests that impairment is evident at lower levels (above 1 ng/ml). Attempts to develop comparable levels for amphetamines, however, have found greater variation in the association between blood concentrations and tests of impairment and thus recommend that per se cut-offs are inappropriate for this drug group. Tolerance issues and interactions with other drugs suggest that identifying suitable cut-off values for other drugs may also be inappropriate. Within Europe, a variety of drug driving policies has been adopted by the different countries, ranging from zero tolerance per se limits (e.g. Sweden) to proof of impairment (e.g. current UK laws), each with subtle variations. A zero tolerance approach overcomes the difficulties associated with: a) proving impairment; and b) deciding on scientifically valid cut-offs from conflicting sources of data. However, zero limit per se laws also have the potential to penalise drivers who are not impaired and pose no risk to safety. Studies of the effectiveness of Sweden’s zero tolerance laws have found them to have been unsuccessful in deterring DUID”—

driving under the influence of drugs—

“re-offenders. Further research into the correlations between blood concentrations of certain drugs and impairment may help to move toward developing suitable cut-offs (like those developed over time for alcohol). However, ‘before’ and ‘after’ studies of newly introduced laws to evaluate the performance of these various approaches in practice may be more useful.”

Perhaps I should add by way of explanation that pharmacodynamics explores what a drug does to the body, whereas pharmacokinetics explores what the body does to a drug. It is also worth bearing in mind the infinitesimally small amounts of a substance that have to be detected. The review of evidence that I have just quoted stated that some studies had found impairment at levels as low as 1 nanogram per millilitre, and a nanogram is one billionth of a gram.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I know that we are tied up heavily with the European Union, but I wonder whether my hon. Friend could translate that into ounces.

[Mr Nuttall]

I am sure that there is a method of doing so, but I could not do it now. However, my hon. Friend will be pleased to know that I will briefly touch on the European Union later. In all seriousness, however, 1 nanogram is one billionth of a gram, which may account for why it has taken the Home Office so long to produce a realistic specification for such a device, given the extremely small—indeed, unbelievably small—levels that it is expected to detect.

With all that in mind, it is perhaps worth considering some of the tragic cases of people losing their lives as a result of drivers taking the wheel while under the influence of drugs. It is perhaps all too easy to get bogged down in the technicalities and the dry scientific details of the drugs that we have been considering, and to forget the human tragedies that lie behind the problem. The road safety charity Brake has briefly and helpfully summarised some of those cases on its website. For example, it cites the case of a 20-year-old young woman, Katharine Davis, who was killed by a banned driver, Lee Fitzgerald. The case was reported in The Northern Echo, which stated that Fitzgerald was not only almost two times over the legal drink-driving limit, but had taken a cocktail of drugs, including cocaine and ecstasy. He then got behind the wheel of a friend’s car and gave a lift to Katharine and a work colleague. As he was being followed by the police, he crashed the car and Katharine lost her life. Fitzgerald was jailed for five years.

In another case, a young girl, Lucy Bellamy, aged only nine, was hit and killed while on a pelican crossing by one Andrew Wilkinson, who at the time was just 20. Wilkinson admitted to police that he had been smoking cannabis through a makeshift pipe. He apparently had not even tried to brake, even though he was approaching a pelican crossing. He was jailed for four and a half years. Further such cases arise all the time.

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[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. Such education starts at school, with teachers and parents explaining the dangers of drug taking and the terrible damage that it can cause to the individual and, if they get behind the wheel of a car, to others. We would do well to send that message out loud and clear this morning.

Let me turn to the very heart of the Bill: the drug-testing device. For about a decade now, the Home Office has been developing a type approval specification for a drug- screening device—known as the “drugalyser”—that will help police at the roadside to detect the presence of drugs. A Metropolitan police trial took place between January 2001 and 2002. It had some success, but was hampered by the fact that testing had to be voluntary. In their February 2007 review of road safety, the then Labour Government stated that the first devices developed to specification could be available by the end of 2007, and that the Home Office was developing a prototype device that could both screen and analyse samples, and which was likely to be ready in two to three years. In February 2008, the then Minister told the House of Commons that the Home Office scientific development branch,

“in consultation with the Department for Transport, continues to discuss possible improvements to the field impairment test currently used by the police…HOSDB continues to investigate a possible impairment measuring device through established contacts working in this area. Opportunities for partnership with a suitable university or other outside agency continue to be sought.”—[Official Report, 19 February 2008; Vol. 472, c. 582W.]

This is rather like a mirage of an oasis in the desert—the nearer we get to it, the further away it appears to be. The Times subsequently reported that the Home Office was “preparing to approve” hand-held drug-screening devices, and that

“Philips…announced that it will start deliveries to police next year”—

that is, 2009—

“of a machine that detects five different drug groups, including cocaine, heroin and cannabis, in just 90 seconds from a single saliva sample”.

However, no type approval has yet been given. There is the rub: the Home Office might have thought that it was about to approve such a device, but, as we know, that never happened.

I have seen a picture of the machine, and it is a very simple device. A person is asked to provide a sample of saliva, which is placed into a small tube that is inserted into the machine. The sample goes into the measurement chamber, which contains magnetic nanoparticles coated with ligands that bind to one of the five different drug groups. This delivers test results in one and a half minutes. Philips had apparently been busy developing that device since 2001. It was built as an optical device that would be easy to mass-produce for law enforcement purposes.

Sir Peter North’s review reported on the problems as follows:

“To date a type-approval specification for such a device has not been produced. Consequently, while a range of commercial drug screening devices is available, none is suitable for enforcement purposes in the UK.

Home Office Scientific Development Branch has been working on the development of a roadside screening device based on surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) over the last 10 years, both in house and externally. A SERS based device would be a considerable advance over existing commercially available devices in that it would be capable of identifying any drug.

Following an expert peer review in 2008, the in-house development by HOSDB of the SERS substrates required for such a device was halted and the emphasis placed on developing external technologies, including those based on SERS. Following two calls for research initiated at the start of 2009, two external research contracts were placed, with the aim of developing prototype devices within the next three years.

With regard to drug screening devices for use at the roadside, the preferred matrix for analysis is oral fluid, which is easy and convenient to collect, and any drugs detected in this medium are indicative of recent use.

Early trials of roadside drug screening devices based on oral fluid…concluded that none of the devices tested at that time was suitable for use in enforcement at the roadside. However, recent evaluations of drug screening devices have highlighted continued improvements in sensitivity and the general performance of oral fluid drug testing devices, but also that the reliable detection of cannabinoid use and benzodiazepines still remains problematic.”

Mr Deputy Speaker, you can imagine my delight when I discovered that the long tentacles of the European Union had found their way into this subject. I promised my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset that I would touch on this matter. It appears that there is a project funded by the European Commission—using some of the billions of pounds that we contribute to the EU each year—and I hope that you will not think that I am straying from the subject if I mention the word “DRUID”. It is actually an acronym for the project funded by the European Commission, and it stands for “driving under the influence of drugs, alcohol and medicines”—[Laughter.]

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

That reveals another criticism of the European Union. They cannot even spell.

[Mr Nuttall]

It is a kind of organised acronym. We have the D and R from “driving”, and the U from “under”. Then we miss out the “the”, adopt the I from “influence”, miss out the “of”, adopt the D from “drugs” and miss out the “alcohol and medicines” bit. That is how we get to DRUID.

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[Chris Heaton-Harris]

My hon. Friend is correct: the saga continues. A game of table tennis seems to be going on between the Home Office and the Department for Transport. The public, and I, would like to see some action. Approval should be given for detection devices for use by police officers in testing. They have been developed, and a number of them are in existence. We ought to get our bureaucratic processes sorted out, so that we can have them available for use across the police forces of the United Kingdom.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bury North detailed the Department for Transport’s consultation document on road safety compliance back in November 2008. Produced just a handful of years ago, that paper stated:

“We could explore the viability of creating a new offence to target those who drive after taking illegal drugs—those that are controlled by the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971—which can impair a user’s ability to drive. The public rightly perceive”—

this had already been spotted—

“users of these drugs who drive as a danger to road safety”

and to everybody on the roads. The public wanted action to protect themselves.

People who drive under the influence of drugs increase the number of accidents on our roads, and they increase the cost of insurance for all those drivers who drive innocently and honestly on our streets. As we have heard, the human cost of the accidents that they cause can be massive.

The Labour party issued a consultation, which my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North detailed, and it asked the right questions and got the right answers. Sir Peter North’s consultation was very good and was received well on both sides of the House, although the final report was not published until 16 June 2010. The main recommendations of the North review relating to drug-driving were that police procedures enforcing current drug-driving laws should be improved and that there should be early approval for saliva testing and a device that can do that. Both those recommendations have great cross-party support.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I agree with my hon. Friend that there is great support for such a measure in broad principle, but is it possible to have a machine before we have clearly set out the limits?

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

That goes back to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North. In England, the law concerns itself with impairment to your ability to drive. You might be impaired three days after you smoked a joint—it is down to the individual. I do not mean you, Mr Deputy Speaker—a member of the public might be impaired.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I hate to think that we would think it more likely for a member of the public to take drugs than a Member of the House. Surely our electorate do not do such things—not in North East Somerset at any rate.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I am sure that my hon. Friend is completely correct—[Interruption.] Let us not go back down that route; I will stick to where I was going.

It is impairment of an individual’s ability to drive that we are seeking to identify—there is a line that one might cross, and different individuals’ bodies will metabolise drugs, as they do food, in different ways. We have already accepted that with regard to alcohol, so let us make a bold leap. Why not introduce tests for the five main types of recreational drugs—those listed by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North—that tend to be found in individuals who have caused an accident to which the police are called? This hinges on getting approval for a device, and that is the bureaucratic nonsense behind it all. Having accepted the principle of introducing a level—I would push for a zero level, as in Sweden, because that is much easier for everybody to come to terms with—why should we not bring forward such devices?

In his review, Sir Peter North said:

“The focus should be on public safety”.

The protection of our constituents from those who take drugs and then decide it is fine to jump in a car is one reason why we are all interested in this debate. Such drivers might not feel that their ability is impaired, and even if they do, they probably do not care too much for the other individuals concerned. Sir Peter continued:

“Any new offence should therefore focus on establishing levels of drugs in the blood at which significant impairment—and therefore, risk to public safety—can reasonably be assumed, as is the case now for drink-driving.”

That is a fairly simple statement. We have accepted levels for alcohol, so let us accept them for some of the more commonly used recreational drugs, and get the type review device approved by the Home Office and out on the streets, adding to the deterrents that we have.

Under schedule 7 of the Railways and Transport Safety Act 2003, the police have the power to conduct roadside drug tests, so there is no problem with that side of the argument. Guidance was issued back in December 2004 on the conduct of the preliminary impairment tests detailed by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North. There is a host of reasons why we should put more pressure on the Government to get on with this job.

Having had private conversations with the Minister, I think he understands that there is a great deal of anxiety about how long the process has taken. The crime is relatively new, but it is also one of the crimes most on the increase. As my hon. Friends have detailed, the problem is the scientific ability of drug-screening devices to detect what we would like them to identify.

For about a decade, the Home Office has been developing a type approval specification for a “drugalyser” that would help police at the roadside to detect the presence of drugs. The Metropolitan police took part in a trial between January 2001 and January 2002 which, although reasonably successful, was—according to the official phraseology—“hampered” by the fact that testing had to be voluntary at that time.

In their February 2007 review of road safety, the Labour Government stated that the first devices developed to specification could be available at the end of that year, and that the Home Office was already developing a prototype device which could both screen and analyse samples and was likely to be ready in two to three years. In February 2008, the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker), then a Minister, told the House that the Home Office’s

“Scientific Development Branch… in consultation with the Department for Transport, continues to discuss possible improvements to the field impairment test currently used by the police… continues to investigate a possible impairment measuring device through established contacts working in this area. Opportunities for partnership with a suitable university or other outside agency continue to be sought.”—[Official Report, 19 February 2008; Vol. 472, c. 582W.]

Clearly there has been no lack of work, and that work has been carried out for a host of years. However, someone sitting in the beautiful village of Flore in my constituency as traffic rattles along a road that desperately needs to be bypassed, and fearing that one night, on one of the bad bends, a person who has had far too much of a good time and used illegal drugs will pile into the side of their house, may feel that, given the length of time for which this deterrent had been talked about, a Government of any colour should have acted much earlier.

As we know, The Times reported in 2008 that the Home Office was “preparing to approve” hand-held drug-screening devices, and that

“Philips…announced yesterday that it will start deliveries to police”

early in 2009. I wonder where those deliveries have got to. There is a problem somewhere, and I hope that, in his considered reply, the Minister will tell us how he is trying to unblock the channels that seem to be blocked.

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[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

I almost entirely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Stevenage (Stephen McPartland), who put absolutely clearly and rightly his point that most people want this desperately serious issue to be dealt with fairly and forcefully. There is undoubtedly a scourge in the country of people taking illegal substances and then doing unwise things, which include driving cars, but, although we are talking about cars, we need also to talk about carts and horses, because with this Bill the cart is being put in front of the horse, for one very obvious and clear reason: we have the test, but we have not set the limits that apply.

We have heard learnedly from my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) about nanograms, a term that I had not previously been particularly familiar with, but if we are dealing with nanograms of substances in people’s blood we need to say whether a nanogram is a legal or illegal nanogram when we test it, because if we have not established that, we will not know what the benchmark is; hence the cart is in front of the horse.

In that context, a great deal more work needs to be done, because, as has been widely discussed, there are varying views on what level of substance in somebody’s blood could impair their driving and, indeed, what combination of substances could impair or unimpair their driving. Earlier, we discussed the person—the youth perhaps, or the dangerous driver—who was calmed by taking cannabis. But then he might have had a cup of coffee to pep him up, so how are we going to balance those substances in one little drop of spittle, which I must say is not an ideal way for the police to go around collecting samples?

I feel rather sorry for the officer on duty at the roadside who stops somebody driving in zig-zags and not absolutely on the straight and narrow and then has to get him to spit. I feel sympathy for the enforcers of law and order, given that we cannot find a better roadside test than one based on spittle. We need to be clear, as we are with alcohol, however, about the amount that is allowed before we can make the test effective.

If I have misunderstood this point, I hope that somebody will intervene on me to explain it more clearly, but the current law states that one has to be shown to be impaired, hence the roadside tests, the standing on one leg and all that, because the police can turn up in court and say, “Mr Bloggins couldn’t stand with one leg 8 inches from the ground for more than 30 seconds while counting up to 100,” or whatever the test is. That is evidence either that he is a poor unbalanced man anyway, or that he has taken illegal substances and that conclusion might be backed up by a blood test taken at the station, showing that an offence of operating a motor car when under the influence of drugs has been committed.

First, let us be absolutely clear: we have not set the benchmarks, so the test does not test anything particularly evidential. Secondly, however, there is the point, which my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North again made so wisely and rightly, about drugs themselves and what is legal and illegal. [Interruption.] Does my hon. Friend want to intervene? He looks as if he is about to spring from his perch, coiled as he is.

[Mr Nuttall]

I wish merely to comment on my hon. Friend’s previous point about what the offence is. He is quite right that it is not an offence merely to have drugs in one’s body, because that is not what the 1988 Act states. It states:

“A person who, when driving or attempting to drive a mechanically propelled vehicle on a road or other public place, is unfit to drive through drink or drugs is guilty of an offence.”

The difficulty facing the court is in determining, first, whether the person was unfit to drive and, secondly, whether it was as a result of drink or, in this case, drugs.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend, in his opening remarks, put it extremely clearly that the courts should determine these matters, but I do not agree. The courts should not determine the levels. They can determine the individual case. They can say, “Yes, we accept what the police are saying, yes we accept that that person was unable to hold his leg 6½ inches off the ground for two hours”—or whatever it is—“and that therefore he was affected by drugs.” However, it would not be right for the courts to establish the broad principle that 1 nanogram of some substance was the limit, or 2 nanograms. I could keep counting up to one full gram; on another occasion, Mr Deputy Speaker, I may find it advisable to do so, but not today. This should be decided by Parliament, because that is what we are here for—to determine the principles that are then applied by the courts.

I worry when we give either too little or too much discretion to the courts, because it depends so much on the area that is covered. When it comes to the appropriate sentence, we should set the maximum, and possibly the minimum, but we do not want to set the finer details. With quantities of drugs, likewise, we want to set the minimum and the maximum for legality, but we do not want the judges to develop their own precedent that gives them a power that rightly belongs to Parliament. That is why the Government are right to consider this. I have not suddenly decided that I am in favour of bureaucratic dithering, because it is not bureaucratic dithering; it is a right understanding of the very difficult issues that exist.

I move on to the question of what is legal and what is illegal. I thought of quoting Coleridge:

“In Xanadu did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure-dome decree”.

That was written under the influence of what would now be an illegal substance. Coleridge had been taking opium for some time beforehand, and he wrote out his poem until interrupted by a gentleman from Porlock, which is notably in the county of Somerset. Taking opium was perfectly legal at the time. He was not committing any offence by doing so, nor are some people today who are prescribed opiates for the relief of pain. If somebody is prescribed an opiate for the relief of pain and is driving perfectly well, is it conceivably reasonable to say to them, “We’ve found a nanogram of this substance in you and therefore you’ve committed an offence and must be banned from driving for a year”? It is not the same with alcohol, because very few people absolutely need to take alcohol. That is not entirely true, as I knew a man who was prescribed gin and tonic by his doctor towards the end of his life, but that was for more complex reasons than as a curative—I think it was more of a palliative. Some people need these serious and otherwise illegal drugs for good and proper medical reasons, and therefore a blanket test could be a very unfair and unjust way with dealing with them. That is why the Government are right to consider this thoroughly and properly so that ultimately we can not only set the limits but differentiate as regards where the limits ought to be set and what we are trying to include and to exclude.

Beyond the drugs that are illegal in certain circumstances and legal in others, there are the drugs that are always legal but can, in certain quantities, create an impairment. That leads to a balance of advantages. Lots of people suffer from hay fever, for example. If someone is driving along and has a fit of the sneezes, that is quite dangerous, as they could drive into a ditch, or something worse. If they take a more old-fashioned type of antihistamine, they may find that it makes them feel a little sleepy if they have that type of reaction to antihistamines. Are we suddenly going to say that someone who takes an antihistamine cannot drive because it is better that people should have a fit of the sneezes? Would it show up in the test anyway?

The broad problem that, I am afraid, often comes up on Friday mornings is that the laws that we look to pass are about motherhood and apple pie. They are saying, for example, “The world is simple and it’s all very straightforward—we’ll have a nice test, and bingo, we’ve got the drug dealers and the drug users off the roads.” But it is not quite like that; the situation is much more complex and nuanced, regarding not only the levels but the legality and the illegality, and then some of the broader general principles.

I want to return to the piece in the Daily Mail on coffee earlier this week. I was astonished to read that anybody who has five cups of coffee a day is likely to hallucinate. I should think that I have had at least five cups of coffee every day since I was a young teenager, and I have never, to my knowledge, hallucinated; it may be that one does not notice these effects. I would be very reluctant to see the Government introduce some hand-held device to test Members of Parliament as they drive out of New Palace Yard to see whether they have too much caffeine in their system. After some of our sittings that last until 4 in the morning, quite a lot of Members have a lot of caffeine in their system, not to mention some who might have other things in their system. I would not think it right for the police officers on duty to ask us to spit at them, as I mentioned earlier, which would be most unpleasant and improper. There are real issues and difficulties in how we deal with legal and illegal drugs, and the measuring of them.

There is also the general principle. I have a certain sympathy with the US constitution, and the fifth amendment in particular, which allows people not to incriminate themselves. We have made an exception for drink-driving. The motorist, oddly, is the one person in British life who is not protected from the general principle of non-self-incrimination. The motorist who does not reply to a speeding ticket is guilty of an offence and therefore incriminates himself, and occasionally members of his family. There are obvious questions over the breathalyser, because a failure to provide a sample without good reason is an offence and one incriminates oneself by failing to give one. Already with drug-driving, as I have said, it is an offence to refuse to stand on one leg for the specified time with the other leg a specified number of inches from the ground. That ought to worry us constitutionally.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. I know that it is unwise to interrupt his flow of words, eloquent and beautiful as it is, and especially so after five cups of coffee on a Friday morning. There is another group of individuals in the position that he has detailed. Sportsmen and athletes have to report in about where they will be going in hourly or three-hourly segments—I cannot remember which—and they have random drug tests. This is not just something that is proposed in the Bill; we accept the concept that drug testing should be allowed in some circumstances. Surely when a person is pulled over for a road traffic offence and the police suspect that they have been taking drugs, the police should be equipped with a device so that they can test the person there and then.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I think that my hon. Friend’s point is slightly disconnected, because belonging to a voluntary body, the rules of which state that one must subject oneself to a test, is very different from Her Majesty’s Government and Parliament, through legislation, taking away one’s right not to self-incriminate. One does not have to be an athlete—I never could be anyway. It is not compulsory to be a runner or a jumper. It ought to be compulsory to be a cricketer, but sadly it is not. However, if the Government get involved, one may commit an offence by going about one’s ordinary daily life and that is a higher degree of intrusion. The same point applies to the earlier intervention about the Home Office testing the people who work for it with these machines.

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

Where the hon. Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) is slightly wrong is that a sportsman who does not take a drug test does not commit a criminal offence, although he may be banned by his sport. However, I understand that it is a criminal offence for airline pilots and crew not to give samples when required by the aviation authorities. Is not the bar set so much higher for airline pilots and drivers because they are responsible for other people’s lives?

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I do not disagree with the hon. Gentleman. I was merely making the point that this is something that we should be concerned about, and that we should be aware of what we are doing. The fifth amendment in the United States gives a clear protection. Our constitutional system does not have such clear protections. It is therefore quite easy for Parliament to eat into them and gnaw away at them slowly, sometimes without really thinking. Once we have done it for drink-driving, we say, “Well, why don’t we do it for driving on drugs?” We then say, “Well, drugs are illegal anyway, so why not just test the whole population and see whether they are committing a criminal offence?” That might not be hugely popular in all our constituencies.

[Mr Chope]

My hon. Friend refers to the fifth amendment, but he will be aware that there is statute law in the United States stating that there is implied consent on the part of every driver of a motor vehicle. By taking out a driving licence, they are not covered by the fifth amendment, because by implied consent in law they agree to be subject to a test if the police suspect that they have an illegal substance in their body while driving. I am not sure that he is comparing like with like, because a similar statutory regime exists in the United States notwithstanding the fifth amendment.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend’s intervention is extremely helpful, but we can see how clear America is about understanding the process that is followed, and about what it is doing in relation to people’s constitutional rights. That is what I am highlighting.

If we do what is suggested in the Bill, we have to be aware of the very important principle that is, to some extent, being undermined. It is not necessarily disproportionate to do it, and it may be absolutely essential—I would not begin to say that we should not have the breathalyser and the assumption that if someone refuses a test, they have probably committed an offence anyway. I do not think that is disproportionate, but it is important to be aware of the risk that we are taking with our constitution, and we must ensure that we are very careful if we ever take the idea further. The next time an hon. Member introduces a private Member’s Bill that would do something that looks very good and would improve society, we must consider whether we are doing anything to the constitution that we should be very careful about.

That is another reason for supporting Her Majesty’s Government in this particular area. They are right to be slow and deliberative. The worst thing to do would be to get some fancy bit of kit introduced—made by Philips, as I think was suggested earlier, or perhaps by Samsung Electronics—that comes in, absolutely whizzo, and tests for all drugs but one, or takes just one reading. This “nanogram” thing really makes me suspicious, because it must be easy to find a nanogram from somewhere if that is what one wants to do, or for a nanogram to be stuck in the machine from the last person, who might have come from Gloucestershire. The police might cross over into Somerset, and then some good Somerset fellow would spit on this thing and find himself caught out by a Gloucestershire nanogram. I am very concerned about Gloucestershire nanograms.

I urge Her Majesty’s Government to be very careful about the testing of the machines, and to ensure that they really do what they are said to do. That is the other great point of complexity. When a Labour Transport Minister, one Barbara Castle, introduced the breathalyser in the late 1960s, it was simply a few crystals that changed colour if somebody was over the limit, and they then went for a test. The machines have obviously become much more sophisticated, but they are testing for one thing and one thing only. They are not about finding out whether someone has had five cups of coffee, or whether they have been in one of those dance clubs that we were hearing about earlier, where 76% of people have taken drugs. I must say, I was shocked by that. We have tea dances in Somerset, where I do not think such things take place. The machine that we have is accurate and accepted, but the machines that are yet to come in may be given increasing evidential value despite testing for so many things and being at greater risk of getting things wrong. The Government really need to be, and clearly are being, very cautious.

We have heard a lot of comparisons with Australia. It is not always the model for the United Kingdom to follow, although it sometimes is. In its drink-driving laws, it has accepted random testing for a very long time, because it felt that it had a very serious problem. We have never accepted that. Australia may feel, in its circumstances, that having something relatively untested is necessary in the light of the problems that it has faced.

I am sorry to say that I will not go on with such eloquence and at such length as my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North. I am full of admiration for him, and I wish that I could do so. I wish to conclude with some key points that we have to remember. First, I hope that the Minister will ensure that we put the cart behind the horse—we have to get things the right way around—by establishing the levels that make a substance legal or illegal. Secondly, we must look at the question of somebody using a prescribed drug that in other circumstances is illegal. Will we simply ban them from driving whenever they go through that course of treatment? If we take the zero-reading approach that an hon. Friend suggested, we would do so. Thirdly, we must always bear in mind the deep constitutional principle of non-self-incrimination. We may accept that it can be overridden, but at least we would know what we were doing. Fourthly, we must consider the quality of the machine, and ask whether it will really work. Finally, we must keep the process in the hands of Parliament and not delegate these nanograms to judges. Noble, lordly and wise as they are, we need to make the law, so that they can enforce it.

Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Patrick Mercer]

The hon. Gentleman’s intervention is helpful and timely, and I completely agree with him. The difficulty is that we are detaining those individuals undemocratically and improperly, which plays directly into the hands of our enemies.

Our foes—be they Islamist fundamentalists, direct action groups or animal rights groups, Irish individuals or whatever—all understand the power of propaganda. The one thing at which they are good is broadcasting their word. They understand that the spoken, the written and the broadcast word are more powerful than any bullet or bomb.

Before Christmas there was a series of events, with which I shall not detain the House, involving a serious plot against western Europe—a core al-Qaeda plot—that both failed and was foiled. To replace that failure in the eyes of the public, an extraordinarily ill-thought-through plot was mounted from Yemen involving ink cartridge containers on a certain number of aircraft—cartridges that, frankly, were unlikely ever to explode. However, for very little effort, our enemies dominated the media for four complete days at the end of October last year, making the point that terrorism had not gone away and that they still intended to terrorise people. They did so without killing or injuring anyone, and with very little effort on their part.

The point is that with control orders we continue to aid and abet our enemies in exactly those methods of operation. First and foremost, we fought Nazism, communism and Irish republicanism without having to resort to any of those methods, because we were a democratic nation fighting on democratic principles against non-democratic enemies.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

I agree with a great deal of what my hon. Friend is saying, but we did intern people in the last war and we did have extraordinary regulations—regulation 18B—to lock up people who were deemed to be a threat to the state, so I think it is fair to have extraordinary regulations for relatively small numbers.

[Patrick Mercer]

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend. He is absolutely right: of course we interned people in the last war, and we also carried out the disastrous policy of internment in Northern Ireland in the ’70s. I was not there at the time, but I was there in the follow-up to that policy, which was literally disastrous, not only in countering terrorism, but in aiding and abetting the recruitment of our foes in the battle with the Irish Republican Army that lay ahead. However, I hope that my hon. Friend does not mind if I do not go into that in too much detail.

If we retain the powers indefinitely and continue to treat that small number of people in that way, we will pass the most important tool that we can to our foes. We will be saying to our enemies: “Please understand that without letting off any bombs or killing any policemen, soldiers or civilians, you have achieved exactly what you want to achieve. In other words, you have destabilised our democracy. Without raising a finger, you have done exactly what you wanted to do: you have changed the way we live our lives.” That is not right. I celebrate the changes that the Home Secretary announced earlier. Without doubt, there have been some improvements. For instance, of the three measures for which I have long argued, and for which I shall continue to argue—the ability to question after charge, the use of intercept evidence and plea bargaining—one has been accepted. One is better than nothing—it is an improvement—but we must understand that our abiding aim is to get those individuals into court on a legitimate charge and with a legitimate trial, and to uphold the principle that they are innocent until proven guilty.

We have other methods of dealing with criminals. I am sure that, like me, the House remembers how a previous Prime Minister made it a point of principle that Irish republican terrorists, and indeed Protestant paramilitaries, should not be treated as they wished to be—that is, as soldiers—but as mere common criminals.

Protection of Freedoms Bill

Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

I shall support the Second Reading of the Protection of Freedoms Bill, although I hope that some of the reservations I am about to express will be taken note of in Committee. There are at least two unintended consequences in the Bill concerning not so much the protection of freedoms for the law-abiding, as making life so much better for two categories of antisocial people. The first are those who park illegally on other people’s property, and the second are those who cause undue misery with late-night parties and so on. I cannot believe that there is a single Member here who has not had casework from constituents complaining about late-night noise or antisocial noise on summer afternoons. If the Bill passes as proposed, with its subsections and so on, I regret to say that it will be an open invitation for the antisocial noise people to up their game in the confident knowledge that local authorities will have fewer powers at their disposal to deal with them.

I will, however, begin with the wheel-clamping provision, which has been added to the Bill because—I think—it was here to have things added to it. I am not here to defend the rogue firms of wheel-clampers. I do not think that anyone in the Chamber is prepared to speak up for those cowboys, although I always think that to describe them as that is an insult to cowboys. Nevertheless, there are companies and individuals who have abused the wheel clamp, which used correctly and in the right way is a tool that helps the law-abiding.

The Minister for Equalities started this debate on 17 August last year. I have raised the matter on the Floor of the House before and spoken to her, so I am not saying anything that will come as a surprise. She announced that the freedom Bill would provide for an outright ban on clamping on private land, where it is carried out by private companies. I can just about understand that if the private land is a commercial property, but I am not sure about the idea when applied to private land owned by individual householders. At the moment, the Bill proposes that if somebody parked in the Minister’s drive, he would be restricted in the action that he could take to deal with the problem.

I want to quote the case of the Balkerne Heights residential area, which is right next to a multi-storey car park on the edge of Colchester town centre. The communal parking for the area’s housing became a magnet for illegal parking by late-night revellers, weekend shoppers and so on. The notion that polite requests not to park in people’s private parking areas will be acceded to is a little optimistic. The people causing the problem generally responded with certain words, the second of which was “off”. The only way that those parking abuses were dealt with was through the introduction of the wheel clamp. I would say that the Minister’s front drive is exactly the same as the communal parking area of people living in flats or communal housing. It is their drive: it is where they park their cars.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

Looking at the Bill, it is clear that people will be able to close their gates and stop somebody removing a car that way. There is implied consent to allowing a restriction under clause 54(3)(a), and if the case is broader than that, the people or the commercial organisation involved can apply to the council to come and do the clamping for them. I think the problem that my hon. Friend is worried about is covered.

[Bob Russell]

I hope that my hon. Friend is correct in his understanding, but that has to be spelt out in the Bill, because it is not my understanding. If he is right, no problem—but if I am right, there is a problem. That is exactly the sort of thing that needs to be fleshed out and firmly written down, because clause 54(3)(a) refers to cases where

“there is express or implied consent by the driver of the vehicle to restricting its movement by a fixed barrier”.

Whether the barrier is up or down is irrelevant. Currently, the local planning authority may well refuse an application to start erecting barriers in carefully designed new housing areas, with landscaped grounds and all the rest of it, but if the Bill goes ahead, they will have to erect barriers to meet the very point that has quite rightly been made. Those are the unintended consequences.

I would argue that if residents living on a private housing estate with their own private communal parking areas wish to put a wheel clamp on, why can they not do so? It is an extraordinary state of affairs when the coalition Government are putting forward a Bill with a clause that would give more rights to the illegal parker than the person who owns the land where the car is illegally parked. The notion that residents could run off to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency or whoever else to get fines paid, and all the rest of it, is fanciful. Therefore, with the greatest of respect, what I would say is that more work needs to be done on that one.

The House of Commons Library has produced some excellent research—as ever, by the way—on the Bill. If Members who have the briefing would care to look at pages 26 through to 28, they will realise that the authors of the Bill need to dot a few i’s and cross a few t’s in Committee, because—I repeat—what we have at the moment is an opportunity for those who want to park illegally in other people’s private, communal, residential parking areas to do so almost with impunity. Under a heading entitled “The Bill’s provisions”, the research paper tells us:

“The Government had not previously indicated that there would be any parking-related measures in the Bill, or in fact that it was planning to make any changes to parking regulation at all.”

Therefore, those provisions have been bolted on. People who live in town centres have the advantages of the town centre, but sometimes one of the disadvantages is people coming into town, not parking where they should and abusing other people’s private parking areas. I ask the Minister to address that issue in Committee. I understand the need to tackle rogue wheel-clamping firms, but, with the greatest respect, I think that private home owners should have the right to use wheel clamps on vehicles parked on their private property, whether it is a private drive or a communal parking area.

The second unintended consequence of the Bill relates to those people whom we all love and who delight in causing problems for their neighbours by, among other things, having all-night parties. Chapter 2 of the Bill covers safeguards for certain surveillance under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. I am grateful to the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health for drawing my attention to the serious consequences of these provisions. There cannot be a Member here tonight who has not been contacted by constituents as a result of noisy antisocial neighbours.

As an aside, I would like to make an important observation as the former chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on noise reduction. I wish that the coalition Government would introduce regulations to require greater noise insulation in new house building. A lot of attention is paid to heat retention in such buildings, but nothing is done about noise elimination. Perhaps another Government Department could pick that one up.

It has been suggested that the Bill has been prompted by claims in the popular press of unjustified snooping by local authorities, because it contains provisions to restrict the surveillance activities of those authorities by inserting additional tests into the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act. One such test would require authorisations given by senior local authority officers to be approved, in addition, by a magistrate. That would make the process of authorisation more time consuming, and it would make things harder for increasingly stretched authorities—not least at night, when most complaints of this nature are made. The likely outcome of the proposal is that many fewer noise complaints would be investigated.

Immigration

Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Robert Halfon]

I did not inform the hon. Lady, because I did not know that I was supposed to do so. I apologise to the House, and I will write a letter of apology to her.

In conclusion, it is bad enough that Labour cut the number of immigration officers, and that at the same time they opened the floodgates and allowed the number of migrants to quadruple, it is bad enough that the previous Government did not always speak of the service with decency and respect, and it is bad enough that every day the immigration service must face the rising threat of terror from extremist bombers and separatists, but it is unacceptable that immigration officers have not been given the recognition they so richly deserve, and have not been awarded the golden jubilee medal. Their work of keeping our borders secure against great odds and on low pay deserves a public honour. Since I started this campaign in Parliament, more than 50 immigration officers have written to me independently, expressing their support. I am proud to say that many of them live in and around my constituency, as they work at Stansted airport.

I shall finish by quoting one of those letters from an official. He said:

“I have served as an Immigration Officer for over 25 years. We play an important role in the fight against terrorism, smuggling, people trafficking, crime and illegal entry.

During my own service I recall officers being called upon to assist with emergencies such as…The Herald of Free Enterprise disaster…The return of hostages from Kuwait…Hostage emergencies at Stansted...Deployments to Kosovo, the Czech Republic and Iraq.

Whilst Prison Officers won their battle to receive the Golden Jubilee medal, nobody considered immigration officers. Not surprisingly we feel we are the Forgotten Service, called upon when needed, cast aside when convenient.”

The immigration service has been forgotten for too long. For the sake of common decency, public sector morale and recognition of that service, I hope that the Government will right this wrong as soon as possible.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Will you clarify the forms of the House when hon. Members refer to other hon. Members who are not present? My understanding from perusing “Erskine May” is that hon. Members should notify another hon. Member if they make a personal attack, but not if it is the cut and thrust of political debate. I understood that what my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) said was the cut and thrust of political debate.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

The ruling is that it is common courtesy that before one hon. Member refers to another hon. Member—particularly to that Member’s conduct, which is a matter for debate—the hon. Member who is commenting on the other hon. Member’s conduct should notify them. This is not a matter for the Chair, but it is a matter of common courtesies and how Members are expected to behave.

--- Later in debate ---

[Christopher Pincher]

I am pleased to respond to my hon. Friend, and I think it depends on the jobs that people are coming here to do.

I was pleased to hear that the Minister was prepared to look at intra-company transfers to ensure that we do not disbenefit companies that want to bring employees into Britain to help the outsourcing industry—for example, by transferring employees into companies through the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations. We need to bring into Britain people from the Asian subcontinent, for example, who have good IT skills and understand the ethos of the companies to which they belong in order to train up those employees transferred through TUPE. It is important to recognise that the outsourcing industry needs transferable people with transferable skills moving around the world to help British businesses do business wherever they need to do it.

We also recognise that immigration can bring economic problems, and infrastructure is another issue, to which other hon. Members have alluded. Anyone reading the House of Lords Economic Affairs report, to which the noble Lord Lawson contributed—it shows the effect of large-scale immigration on housing, transport, health care and so forth—would realise that there are real issues that must be addressed.

Still another issue is social tension. We have all engaged in electioneering over the last six months. We have been knocking on doors and meeting our constituents. Cumulatively, we must have met thousands of them. Since then, we have received e-mails and letters from our constituents running into the thousands. If we are honest with each other, we will surely admit that one of the key issues that constituents continually raise with us is their worry about immigration. They are frustrated and concerned. They are frustrated because they believe that the last Government refused to recognise their legitimate concerns about large-scale immigration; and they are worried, frankly, that the new Government will also ignore them.

Having read the coalition agreement, I can say in all candour that the new Government are moving in the right direction when it comes to listening to people’s concerns. I do not mean that simply because we are introducing an immigration cap, which sends a message to the country and beyond that we are serious about immigration controls; because we are tightening up the student visa system, which was badly abused under the last Government; because we are introducing a border police force to protect our borders and ensure that those parts and ports of the country that lack protection will subsequently have it; or because we are insisting on minimum language skills so that people who come here can work and integrate. The most important thing the Government are doing as part of the coalition agreement to meet the challenge of uncontrolled immigration is to take control of the welfare system.

Our welfare system—“system” is a neat word to describe what is really a mess—costs us £194 billion a year, and it has locked hundreds of thousands of people into dependency by making it economically senseless for them to work. As a result, there are vacancies. To fill them, employers look for employees in all sorts of places, including abroad. The vacancies act as a magnet for people abroad to come and try their luck in Britain. It makes absolutely no sense to make hundreds of thousands of people not work—effectively, to pay them not to work—while importing hundreds of thousands more people to fill the gap in the labour market. As we know, those people place a strain on our social infrastructure, the fabric of our country.

I think that the Government are doing exactly the right thing with the Work programme, which aims slowly, steadily and surely to return people to work, to choke off the demand for labour, and at the same time to introduce stringent controls to stem the supply of immigrant labour. Getting that balance right is the way to deal with our uncontrolled immigration, and the Government have got it right. They are introducing a workable, fair system which, crucially, emphasises the importance of British workers getting into work and British businesses acting responsibly, as well as the importance of controlling inflow.

When he was Leader of the Opposition, the Prime Minister said that he wanted to take control of the immigration problem and deal with it quickly and effectively, so that we would no longer describe it as an issue. That is a sound and sensible aim. I believe that the approach that the Government are now taking is correct, and I commend it. I look forward to hearing less about this issue in future, but if we do have to talk about it, I hope that we will talk about it in the same sensible way.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

Will my hon. Friend say a little more about European emigration into this country, about how he thinks the Government ought to cope with new additions to the European Union, and about whether their entry could be rather more staged?

[Christopher Pincher]

As my hon. Friend will know, article 21 of the EU treaty means that we are unable to stop the free movement of EU citizens to countries that are already members of the EU. As for new entrants, we need to establish transitional rules to ensure that we do not have to admit the hundreds of thousands of Poles, Romanians and Bulgarians whom we have unfortunately had to accept in the past five or six years because the last Government did not introduce such controls.

The steps taken by the Government so far are fair, workable and balanced. As I said, I look forward to hearing less about this issue in future, but if we do have to hear about it, I hope that it will be discussed in the same sensible, balanced way in which it has been discussed today.

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

This is an important debate. The House will be aware that for much of the last century, and certainly under Governments who have approached the issue of immigration responsibly, the United Kingdom has taken a twin-track approach to the issue, limiting the number of those entering the country to appropriate levels while ensuring that new arrivals are properly integrated into British society. That approach worked very well until, perhaps, 1997, when—as Members in all parts of the House will know—net migration began to rise sharply, remaining high throughout the duration of both the Blair and Brown Governments. It is principally that rise that has led to the significant public concern to which the motion refers.

As the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) observed at the beginning of the debate, this is all about numbers. The fact remains, for those of us who are concerned about immigration into this country, that the figures are very stark. As the House has already heard today, provisional figures for net migration during 2009 indicate an influx of approximately 196,000. That is a great number of people, enough to fill the Emirates stadium—which I visit on many Saturdays—three times over with some to spare. It is a figure that many, including me—and, as we heard earlier, the Minister and the Government—regard as unsustainable. It is unsustainable both in terms of the integration into this country of those who are coming here and in terms of the pressure that this level of net immigration has placed on our public services at a time of considerable economic uncertainty.

As a number of Members have observed in the debate, this is not only an important point, but it is, perhaps, the crux of the issue. All of us have recently gone through a general election, and all of us have therefore heard on the doorsteps in our constituencies quite how important the issue of immigration is to our constituents. Indeed, it was not just an important issue at the general election; it is an important issue today, as the contents of all of our postbags testify.

I therefore congratulate the right hon. Member for Birkenhead—and my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames), who unfortunately is unable to be here today—on securing the debate. I also congratulate the Backbench Business Committee on the work it has done in ensuring that this important issue is discussed—for, as I now understand, the first time within the living memory of any Member of this Parliament. That might not be quite as bad a situation as my hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher) suggested in his remarks, but it is none the less very bad. Perhaps for the first time in a generation, we are having a proper debate in this country, without labels like “racist” and “racism” being bandied around, about what sort of immigration we want, what sort of country we wish to live in, and how we are to deal with what will be an increasingly important issue during the course of the 21st century as the world becomes ever flatter.

The important question is not, perhaps, merely one of numbers. It is, rather, how we as a society can maximise the benefits that immigration brings while minimising the strain on our public services, which have been stretched to breaking point by the uncontrolled immigration presided over by the last Labour Government, and which the previous Prime Minister and his predecessor permitted to occur.

The current Government are, in my judgment, entirely right to say we cannot, and should not, entirely halt immigration into this country. However, we have to bring down net immigration to a level that is reasonable, sustainable and capable of being supported by our constituents. We need to take this approach not just because, as a number of Members have said, we have always been a tolerant and reasonable society, but more because it is in our own interests to continue to attract the best and brightest to study and work in the United Kingdom, while ensuring that we do not place an unacceptable strain on our resources or overburden our peculiarly welcoming nature as a society.

These issues are particularly acute in my constituency of Sleaford and North Hykeham. To those of us who live in rural Britain, their significance is obvious. For communities like mine, an influx of migrants can increase the population in ways that existing public services find it difficult to cope with, and that serve to foment resentment and lead to the rise of extremist politics—a rise which all Members of this House would deplore. The last Labour Government, with their focus on urban, rather than rural, Britain, wholly failed to understand or grapple with that aspect when they came to consider the question of immigration.

Going forward, we must ensure that those entering this country to work provide skills that we do not have in our own work force. We have heard something of that in the debate, and we need to ensure that it is the case, particularly at a time when we are trying to get our own people into work as the size of the public sector reduces and unemployment rears its head again. The whole House will appreciate, and as is evident from this debate does appreciate, the benefits of workers from other countries filling the skills gaps in our economy. As other hon. Members have said, those gaps were too often created by the previous Government’s poor policies on higher education.

However, what we need to do throughout is to look closely at why those rushing to this country are willing to fill vacancies for which they say they have the skills, while those within this country who might already have those skills are not willing to fill those vacancies. In general terms it would be difficult to disagree with the proposition that the best way to boost our economy must be to incentivise the people already in the country—the people who are already British—to learn new skills, rather than to bring skills in from overseas and possibly, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley) hinted, to depress the wages of United Kingdom workers artificially as a result.

For all those reasons, what we have heard from the Minister today has been very welcome. I support the introduction of a limit on non-European economic area immigration, as I believe do most in the House. Reducing the number of immigrants from hundreds of thousands to the tens of thousands about which the Government are talking seems vital to ensure that we have a proper balance between the economic benefits of immigration and the sustainable use of our public services.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I wish to raise, once again, the point of immigration from the European Union and whether it is realistic just to focus on immigration from outside the EEA or whether we have to look at our treaty obligations to the EU. I know that my hon. and learned Friend is a member of the European Scrutiny Committee and pays close attention to these matters.

[Stephen Phillips]

Of course I must tell the House that my hon. Friend knows that because he serves on the same Committee, and this is indeed an issue about which he and I are concerned. He knows the current position, as indeed does the whole House, which results from our treaty obligations arising out of our membership of the European Union. There is very little we can do—it might be nothing—about migration from existing EU countries. As he is aware, this has become a difficulty in our country as a result of the limits that other EU members imposed on migration from new EU countries. The previous Government decided not to impose those limits here and, as a result, there was considerable resentment in our constituencies as migrants who might have headed for France or Germany made for the United Kingdom when the states of which they were citizens joined the European Union. This is perhaps not the focus of today’s debate, but there is no doubt that as and when further states join the EU, the Government of the day will have to grapple with this issue properly. They will have to show a courage that was not displayed by the previous Government to ensure that limits are placed on those who can come from new member states of the EU to this country. I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s intervention and I believe that he and I agree on this matter, as I suspect many Members of this House now do.

The points-based system has, to some extent, if not largely, failed to provide sufficient control over immigration to bring numbers down, as demonstrated by not only the figures to which I have alluded, but the position that prevailed under the previous Government for the majority of their time in power. In terms of social cohesion, we simply cannot afford not to have effective immigration controls in place in an increasingly globalised world. All in this House—I believe this is common ground on both sides—have a responsibility to restore the public’s faith in the immigration system by ensuring that those conditions are in place.

The lack of faith that we have witnessed among the public and our constituents has made it all too easy for people to blame new arrivals for social problems in their communities. Effective controls will allow us to face down those from the right and the out-and-out racists and to defeat the all-too-often expressed views that immigrants are a danger to our society—a view that is wholly inconsistent with the past, with the tolerant nature of our society, with the needs of a 21st century Britain and with our need to trade in a globalised economy and an ever-flatter world.

I believe that it is crucial that we should achieve in this Parliament a sustainable level of immigration. We had under the previous Government what often appeared to be—even if it was not—an open-door policy. I was heartened to hear the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) say that nobody on either side of the House any longer believes that to be appropriate. For my part, I have nothing but praise for how the Government have begun to address the entire issue—for the first time, I believe, in more than a decade—in an open and responsible way that shows that we are listening to the concerns of our constituents and of the British people and that ensures that we are dealing with the porous borders and the open-door immigration policy of the last Labour Government. For that reason, and for all those that I have given in my speech, I intend to support the motion.

European Investigation Order

Jacob Rees-Mogg Excerpts

Tuesday 27th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

The proportionality test is something that we intend to negotiate with other member states from the point of opt-in to the point at which the text of the final directive is determined.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

As the final text will be determined by qualified majority vote, how may we be certain that we will not cede powers to Europe? Does the Home Secretary recall the words of a great and noble lady who, when Europe was trying to snatch powers, once said from that very Dispatch box, “No, no, no”? Is not that a much preferable way in which to approach a further European grab?

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

“No, no, no” is the answer.