Courts and Tribunals (Online Procedure) Bill [Lords]

Debate between Jim Cunningham and Stuart C McDonald

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons
Tuesday 16th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure as always to follow the Chair of the Justice Committee, the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), whose contribution was as ever thought provoking and valuable.

I welcome the opportunity to take part in this debate. I thank the Minister for explaining the background to the Bill and for taking the time to speak yesterday on the telephone about its provisions. While the Bill will have its most significant impact in England and Wales, it is important to remind the House that it will also have significant implications for Scotland and Northern Ireland, because of its application to various reserved tribunals operating in those jurisdictions. The employment tribunal for Scotland received 24,000 cases last year, and while we do not have Scotland-specific figures for the UK-wide first and upper tier tribunals, even a simple population share would suggest a similar number again taking up social security cases and asylum and immigration cases in those institutions. In due course, further tribunal functions will be devolved, but in the meantime the Bill is important for many people seeking access to justice in Scotland.

On the Government’s broad approach, we give a cautious welcome to the Bill. Who would not want to explore every opportunity available to use technology to make access to justice easier and less expensive? If online procedures can make access easier—and there is no doubt they can if properly resourced and planned—that is good from a rule of law perspective. The Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service has its own five-year digital strategy, and the approach set out in that document gets to the heart of how we should approach technology in the law when it says:

“Digital is not an end in itself—but it is clear that well targeted development and investment in digital technology can increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the services and support we provide to the judiciary, to all those who use our services and to those who work to deliver them”.

We get what the Government are trying to achieve and support the broad aims of the Bill. It should have a Second Reading and our approach today is one of constructive criticism.

I shall briefly flag up four areas where further debate is needed. First, as already touched on, it is interesting that the Government thought the best way to proceed was to ask one single online procedure committee to look at the possibility of online rules for a huge variety of proceedings in different jurisdictions. The alternative approach would have been to task existing procedure rule committees and rule drafters with expanding online procedures and options in each discrete area of law. These existing committees clearly already have considerable expertise in their particular fields. It would be interesting to know why the Government thought it best to proceed in this way.

The single online committee will potentially be dabbling in very disparate fields of law—from tax to family and social security, and lots in between—and sometimes will be making rules applicable in completely distinct legal jurisdictions. That suggests that a wide variety of expertise might be needed and possibly a committee with a considerable number of members, as the Justice Committee Chair said, yet the committee is comparatively small for such a major undertaking.

The Law Society argues—this was mentioned by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi)—that a committee with such significant powers to change legal processes should include at least one representative from each of the solicitor, barrister and chartered legal executive branches of the law, so that it has access to their varying professional experiences and skills. The fact that there is a solitary IT expert on the committee is also surprising, given the nature of its undertaking. We need to reconsider whether the Government have got the size and make-up of the committee right or whether these criticisms mean it should be amended—or are there other ways to ensure it taps into existing expertise, rather than trampling all over it?

There is currently no scope for representation on the committee from Scotland or Northern Ireland. This point was raised in the House of Lords. There is still a significant question about whether there should at least be the discretion to appoint suitably qualified legal practitioners or judges from those jurisdictions, especially when the committee is working on procedures that will impact directly on them. As I outlined earlier, many thousands of cases each year in Scotland and Northern Ireland could be affected. The Law Society of Scotland also argues that

“there should be capacity in the Bill to include representation from other jurisdictions if appropriate”.

There are different ways we could do that, and they could and should be explored in Committee.

We also need to carefully consider the issues of choice as against compulsion and whether the necessary support will be available to ensure that all can take advantage of new online procedures. As we have heard, there will be some who do not want or just cannot realistically use online procedures. The Minister himself acknowledged that. That might be because of infrastructure challenges. Ofcom’s “Connected Nations” reports remind us of the numbers who do not have access to good broadband or 4G. For many more people, there will be challenges around digital exclusion. There are various ways to measure that, but 10% of UK citizens—5.3 million people—have never used the internet or not used it at all in the past three months.

We must focus on the needs of vulnerable people and how online processes may impact on them and how they are protected. How do we ensure that online courts do not provide a back door for dodgy advisers and others offering dubious advice to people litigating online and that the advice being acted on is not being acted on without oversight?

We welcome the assurances that this is not about blanket compulsion and forcing online procedures on people and welcome the changes in that regard that were made in the House of Lords. In Committee, Members will be able to consider carefully whether those changes are sufficient to deal with the concerns that have been expressed.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman has made a valid point about people’s interpretations of online information. People often look up medical advice online and often subject it to their own interpretations. We must be very careful about this, because many people cannot go online, and those who can may not be accustomed to, for example, certain legalistic phrases. The language must be simple as well.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

The hon. Gentleman has made a good point, and a useful comparison.

I have mentioned people who may not want to or cannot go online. The other side of the coin is that people should not have to opt out of online procedures if appropriate support would enable them to use those procedures and benefit from their advantages. The Lords introduced welcome additional measures relating to requirements for the provision of support. The Committee will be able to assess whether those measures have sufficient teeth to ensure that concerns that have been raised have been properly addressed. The availability of appropriate support is fundamental to the success of the Bill.

Barely a Bill is passed in this place without the Government’s helping themselves to broad Henry VIII-style powers and leaving too much to negative resolution procedures. That issue arises again in this Bill, and it will no doubt be tackled in Committee stage or on Report. The Law Society suggests that affirmative procedures should be required in relation to regulations under clauses 7(5) and 8(6), which would allow Parliament better scrutiny of new procedure rules as they are developed. I agree with the shadow Minister that we should look closely and positively at its suggestion.

That brings me to a final simple but important point. We must proceed cautiously, and on the basis of evidence. The hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst was right to say that we should not rush. As we move forward, we must make sure that we understand the impact of moving things online and respond appropriately.

As the shadow Minister said, research and testing are vital. Let me give just one example. In 2013, the Bail Observation Project found that there were significant variations in the outcomes of immigration bail hearings: 50% of people who were heard via video links were refused bail, compared to 22% of those who were heard in person. Recent research conducted by Jo Hynes of the University of Exeter suggests that that massively differential impact still exists. We need to understand why it exists, and until we understand it, we should be cautious about replacing certain types of hearing in person with video-link alternatives.

Sadly, caution was not what the Public Accounts Committee found when reviewing the Government’s programme of court and tribunal reform last year. It concluded:

“The pressure to deliver quickly and make savings is limiting HMCTS’s ability to consult meaningfully with stakeholders and risks it driving forward changes before it fully understands the impact on users and the justice system more widely.”

We must not allow the development of online systems to outpace our understanding of their impact. We therefore need to look at the role that Parliament has in scrutinising the roll-out of online procedures and consider whether we need to put tougher provisions about post-legislative scrutiny in the Bill so that we can ensure that progress is made at the right pace.

We welcome these proposals, with a degree of caution, and will seek to be constructive critics of the details. They are not a panacea that will cure some of the real problems in accessing justice that have arisen—largely thanks to the terrible legal aid cuts in England and Wales over the past decade—but they can be part of a suite of measures that will allow legal proceedings to be simplified and made more accessible, and we want to support that goal.

HMRC Closures

Debate between Jim Cunningham and Stuart C McDonald

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered HM Revenue and Customs closures.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing me to open this hugely important debate. I also thank more than 20 colleagues from different parties for their support in making the debate happen—including you, of course, Mr Davies. Thank you very much indeed for your enthusiastic support.

We need this debate first and foremost for the sake of hard-working staff at Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, who face massive change and uncertainty. I know that many Members present represent HMRC employees in their own constituencies. I put on record my thanks for everything that those workers do, and I also highlight the hard work done by the local shop stewards in the Public and Commercial Services Union. The Government are fond of saying that there is no magic money tree, but there is the hard work of tens of thousands of public sector workers who are putting up with what has become years of uncertainty, thanks to endless change programmes.

This debate is hugely important for towns such as Cumbernauld in my constituency, which seem set to lose major employers.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

The HMRC office in Coventry is going to close very soon, costing about 300 jobs. People will be expected either to travel into Birmingham or to use modern technology. We all know that at least a third of the population is not familiar with modern technology, so they will have great difficulties in terms of travel, expense and inconvenience.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

The hon. Gentleman makes a series of valid points, and they are valid for the whole range of sites affected by the “Building our Future” agenda. In Cumbernauld, for example, HMRC is the largest employer, providing about 1,500 good-quality jobs. I am not making the argument that once a Government Department opens in a particular location, it must stay there forever. What I am saying is that, first, the implications for that town should form part of the Government’s thinking and, secondly, there should be very good reasons for closing any such office. “Building our Future” fails on both counts.

Immigration Rules (International Students)

Debate between Jim Cunningham and Stuart C McDonald

Wednesday 16th November 2016 Westminster Hall

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Absolutely. There is a feeling of uneasiness among the migrant community more generally in the light of recent events. Again, I urge the Government to rethink their rhetoric about not just students, but migration generally.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

Like some of my colleagues, I have two universities in my constituency: the University of Warwick and Coventry University. Students from abroad certainly make a major contribution—about £9 billion per year—to the British economy. That is a hefty sum. To put that another way, 380,000-odd students come to this country per annum. The Government are not really friendly towards students. As some colleagues will recall, the Government abolished the education maintenance allowance, and they do not show much enthusiasm even for apprenticeships and further education.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I agree with much of what the hon. Gentleman says. International students’ contribution to GDP is actually now £10 billion—even higher than the figure he quotes.

I will finish my praise for international students by turning to the St Andrews University students’ association, which put out a statement this morning that I think sums things up nicely:

“Universities... owe much of their value and their success to their diversity. Without a student or staffing body comprised of people of all races, religions, class or political allegiance, we cannot and will not achieve the level of quality—in research and personal character—to which the UK is accustomed. By mixing, debating, and learning from those with varied views and cultural backgrounds, we become better, more rounded, more tolerant and accepting individuals.”

Those views are broadly shared by around three quarters of our own students, according to a Higher Education Policy Institute survey.

Turning to where we are now, the UK has for some time been a world leader in attracting international students, but that reputation is in jeopardy.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I agree wholeheartedly. I will turn later to the contradiction that on the one hand, the Treasury appears to be all for increasing our education exports, but on the other, the Home Office includes students in its net migration target and therefore sees them as a ready target for trying to clamp down on migrant numbers.

In 2014-15, of the around 2.27 million students at UK higher education institutions, more than 125,000 were from other EU countries and more than 300,000 were from non-EU countries. In the most recent year that we have figures for, overall international student numbers just about held up, but the number of new entrants fell by 2.8%. Figures from June this year show that the number of study-related visas granted by the UK fell by 5% from the previous year. The British Council has stated that the UK is beginning to lose market share to competitors.

There are serious concerns about the UK’s performance in attracting students from key markets. The number of Indian students enrolling in their first year at UK universities fell by 10% in 2015 compared with the year before. The number of Indian students studying here has fallen by around 50% in the four years since the UK Government started to turn the screw while our rivals were all improving their offer. It is no coincidence that there is now a record number of Indian students in the US, which has, for example, opened up post-study work schemes.

Where do we want to go from here? If any other industry brought such a wealth of benefits to the country, the Government would be mad not to pull out all the stops to go for growth. Education is one of the UK’s most successful exports. In what other export market would we say that we were not going to bother so much with expansion and we were quite happy to see our rivals catch us up and overtake us?

The Government’s official ambition is for education exports as a whole to be worth £30 billion by 2020. In last year’s autumn statement, the Chancellor projected that the number of non-EU students in England alone would rise by just over 7% in the next two years and by 3.2% in the two years after that, but if the 0.6% increase in student enrolments last year is anything to go by, the Government’s goal, modest though it is, has no chance of being met.

The Government must be much more ambitious. While our share of international students is beginning to falter, international student numbers are growing much more significantly and strongly in countries such as the US, Australia and Canada—in fact, those countries are in a completely different league from us. International student numbers are expected to grow significantly around the world in the years ahead, so the opportunities are there if we want to take them, but countries such as Canada, Australia, Germany, New Zealand, China, Japan and Taiwan often talk about doubling their number of international students by 2020 or 2025.

Our universities are alarmed about the implications of Brexit, so the Government must step up to the plate to reassure rather than seek to complete what essentially would be a triple whammy, with another crackdown and a persistent failure to listen to rational arguments about a post-study work visa. One of the key underlying problems is, as the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) said, the inclusion of students in the net migration target. At best it seems inconsistent for, on the one hand, the Treasury to be targeting an increase in education exports and, on the other, the Home Office to be quite clearly seeing student numbers as a target for reductions.

To make matters worse, the Home Office appears to be motivated by international passenger survey statistics and a belief that about 90,000 students are not leaving when their courses end. That is not a good thing, because serious questions about the accuracy of those figures are now being asked not just by me, but by the UK Statistics Authority, the Select Committee on Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs, and the Institute for Public Policy Research, just by way of example. The main reason for the concerns is that the figures suggested by the Government are completely out of kilter with many other sources of information, from Home Office longitudinal studies to the destination of leavers survey and the annual population survey. We are talking about not just a few hundred students here and there, but many tens of thousands.

As the Minister will know, just a few weeks ago an article appeared in The Times that suggested that the Home Office has in its hands an independent analysis that shows that just 1% of international students break the terms of their visas by refusing to leave after their courses end. Sadly, as I understand it, the Home Office has refused to share that study with other Departments, never mind with MPs or the public. Perhaps the Minister will explain why.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

Has the hon. Gentleman considered that there is another dimension to this? Universities such as the University of Warwick export knowledge to different countries. They set up various sub-universities, for want of a better term.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

That is a good point that we should bear in mind. The export of education takes the form of not just attracting international students, but physically building campuses and other institutions abroad.

I ask the Minister to explain what is happening with the study that we are not allowed to see, because that study almost certainly takes into account new exit checks, which have been in place for about 12 months. Using exit checks and cross-referencing other data sources gives us a tremendous new opportunity to get a proper handle on student migration patterns. It simply is not common sense for the Government to press ahead with new goals for reducing student numbers until such time as the assumptions on which the proposals are based are thoroughly tested.

I know from speaking with the Office for National Statistics just this morning that it is taking on a body of work to look at this issue and that it will today put some information on its website to explain the nature of that work. Will the Government therefore undertake to share the exit check data with the Office for National Statistics, which is important for its work, and will the Minister wait until that work is complete, rather than pressing ahead with any rash policy decisions?

I turn finally to the policies we need, if hon. Members agree with me that we should be going for growth. What policies would allow us to do that? The obvious first answer is that we need to up our game on post-study work offers. Post-study work is something that our competitor countries are using as a key means to attract talented international students, and they are doing it much better than us. Canada has three-year visas with no salary threshold and New Zealand has one-year visas with no salary threshold. Australia conducted a big review on the subject back in 2010, when it was beginning to struggle to attract international students, and, lo and behold, it proposed a two-year post-study visa with no salary requirement, just like we used to have here, and now it is much more competitive than we are.

Immigration Bill

Debate between Jim Cunningham and Stuart C McDonald

Monday 25th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

In September 2015, Save the Children released a paper called “The extreme vulnerability of unaccompanied child refugees in Europe - a proposal for managing their relocation to the UK”. The paper charted the journey of unaccompanied child refugees to Europe: the war, conflict and violence in their home countries; and the abuse, exploitation, physical and sexual violence experienced during their long journeys to Europe, which often lasted months and years. Even if that was the end of the horror story, surely that would be enough fully to justify Lord Dubs’s amendment. In fact, it provides more than enough justification for us to say that we will take our fair share of responsibility for providing not just immediate aid and protection but the stability, education, support and care that these children require when arriving in Europe, bearing the scars of such dreadful experiences. But tragically the horror story does not end there. The scale of the crisis and the lack of co-ordination and solidarity between European countries mean that the arrival here of these children is barely the beginning of their troubles.

It is important to remind ourselves just how grim the experience in Europe is. The hon. and learned Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Stephen Phillips) did that powerfully earlier in the debate. In its paper, Save the Children looked at migrants and refugees on the Greek islands, in Calais and in Hungary and Macedonia. In Greece, it reported a lack of basic services and adequate shelter, toilets, clean water, health facilities and safe spaces, which put children and women at high risk of sexual harassment, physical violence and trafficking.

Unaccompanied minors are at particular risk. Save the Children reported

“a lack of adequate sanitation facilities which means that women and children have to share toilets with men or are forced to defecate in the open. . . Unaccompanied minors, once in the hands of the authorities, are sometimes placed in detention with adults, again exposing them to risks of sexual and physical harassment. . . Children interviewed recounted stories of war and death and described the terrifying journey crossing the sea to Greece. Parents reported symptoms like bedwetting, nightmares, fear and extreme attachment. Most of the children had been out of school for years and have a distorted view of what constitutes ‘normality’. Food distributions are limited and erratic … whilst more vulnerable individuals … often end up unserved. . . There is limited primary health care coverage across migrant and refugee sites”.

Finally, as a shocking matter of fact, Save the Children recorded that in Athens, in their attempt to leave Greece, women and children sleep in squares and parks that are frequented by drug dealers, traffickers and prostitution rings. During the period of the assessment, a 10-year-old boy was raped in one of these parks.

The fact that this is happening in Europe is not down to one or two European countries. It is a collective failure by all European states, and it is our collective obligation to fix it. As has been argued:

“Under specific criteria and safeguards, relocation is one of the few viable long-term solutions for the protection of the most vulnerable unaccompanied children”.—[Official Report, 8 December 2015; Vol. 603, c. 864.]

The need for such a scheme is every bit as great now as it was then, as recent reports by Save the Children and so many other organisations—too many to mention—have shown. I know that many hon. Members present tonight have seen these awful places at first hand and will probably share some of those experiences this evening during the debate.

When I read those reports, and having seen at first hand the situation in Calais and Dunkirk, I am furious—furious about what is happening to these children, and furious also that there is any doubt about whether we will stand by Lord Dubs’s amendment this evening, and I am at a loss to understand why that should be in doubt. A strange phrase has been dropped into the argument recently by the Government—that we need to use our heads as well as our hearts. With all respect to the Minister, who I know generally chooses his words carefully, I find that expression a little bit patronising.

This is not some hare-brained plan dreamed up by well-intentioned but misguided amateurs on the back of an envelope. It is a carefully thought through proposal based on years of professional experience from experts in the field, incorporating carefully considered criteria. It was a modest calculation of our fair share, based on circumstances at the time. It is not those who support the relocation of 3,000 children from Europe who need to start using their heads. On the contrary, it is the sceptics and cynics who need to start using their eyes and ears so as to understand the full horror, extent and duration of what is going on in our continent.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

We have a proud tradition going back centuries of taking in refugees. In particular, before and during the war we took large numbers of Jewish children in. Why can we not honour that commitment now?

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Absolutely. As we heard earlier, Lord Dubs was one of those who benefited from that very scheme.

I find other arguments against this very modest proposal equally disagreeable. Some have argued that we must not provide an incentive for others to come. Like the shadow Minister, I cannot believe for a second that any hon. Members are really saying that we should not rescue children from abuse and exploitation lest that create an incentive. If that is “using their head”, I have serious concerns for the sanity of those hon. Members. But if they are saying that someone else should rescue those children from abuse and exploitation, not only does the argument about incentives fall to pieces, but the question arises: if not us, then who? If the UK says “Leave it to Greece and Italy”, why should anyone else come to their aid not just in the short term, but in the medium and long term?

Even a child can understand that tens—or almost certainly now hundreds—of thousands of unaccompanied kids shared between 28 members states, although hugely challenging, is infinitely more workable than the same number left as the long-term responsibility of two or three countries. This country should not wash its hands of its responsibilities; it should roll up its sleeves and play its part.

The Government have again tried to win the day with their well-worn trump card—that we should focus on those in the conflict region. In these debates I have always welcomed what deserves to be welcomed. The support provided in the region in the form of aid has been incredibly welcome, as has the resettlement of vulnerable persons scheme and the new proposals for children, but the House of Lords passed this amendment by more than 100 votes, fully aware of all those other Government schemes, including proposals—in principle—to resettle children.

Their lordships were absolutely right to resist the attempt by the Government to set up a false choice. There are refugees in Europe, including children, who are every bit as much in need of our support as those in the conflict region. It is not a question of one or the other. Showing leadership in support of those in the region does not entitle Government to abdicate responsibility for children in Europe.

If we think about what is happening to these children on our doorstep, I shudder to think what it says about this Government and Parliament if we do not support the amendment, but what a positive message if we do. From whatever angle we approach this question, using our head or our heart; from a perspective of faith or of simple human decency; from human rights or common sense, there is only one answer. Lord Dubs’s amendment has the full support of SNP Members.