Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

John Baron Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 12th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

I will not give way yet, as I have just started.

Last year, a third of all those arriving in small boats to the coast of this country were Albanian. This year, we have returned 5,000 Albanians, and arrivals from Albania are down by 90%. But in recent years, some of the Government’s efforts to tackle illegal migration and deport foreign national offenders have been frustrated by a seemingly endless cycle of legal challenges and rulings from domestic and foreign courts.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

rose—

[James Cleverly]

I will give way in a moment. Of course, this Government respect court judgments, even when we disagree with them, but Parliament and the British people want an end to illegal immigration and they support the Rwanda plan.

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[James Cleverly]

The hon. Lady raises the case of Australia. It had 55,000 illegal migrations by boats and that has trended pretty much down to zero—deterrence works.

[Mr Baron]

I am sure that my right hon. Friend will agree that the British are world champions at queueing. We do not like queue jumpers, which is why illegal immigration grates with us. Will he confirm that the Government will take all steps to ensure that we remain within international law, not just now but going forward? In that case, I will certainly be supporting the Bill tonight. Does he also agree that some colleagues in this place need to be careful what they wish for?

[James Cleverly]

I am confident, and indeed the conversations I have had with the Government’s legal advisers reinforce my belief, that the actions we are taking, while novel and very much pushing at the edge of the envelope, are within the framework of international law. That is important because the UK is a country that demonstrates to the whole world the importance of international law. We champion that on the world stage and it is important that we demonstrate it.

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[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

I beg to move an amendment, to leave out from “That” to the end of the Question and add:

“this House, while affirming support for securing the UK’s borders, reforming the broken asylum system and ending dangerous small boat crossings, declines to give a Second Reading to the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill because the Bill will not work to tackle people smuggling gangs, end small boat crossings or achieve the core purposes of the Bill, will lead to substantial costs to the UK taxpayer every year whilst applying to less than one per cent of those who claim asylum in the UK, threatens the UK’s compliance with international law, further undermines the potential to establish security and returns agreements with other countries and does not prevent the return of relocated individuals who commit serious crimes in Rwanda back to the UK.”

I join the Home Secretary in expressing our sympathy for the family and friends of the asylum seeker who has apparently died on the Bibby Stockholm. I understand that the Home Secretary cannot say more about that at the moment.

This should be a debate about how we prevent lives being lost, about how we strengthen our border security, about how we stop dangerous boat crossings, and about how we fix the broken asylum system. Instead, we have just got total Tory chaos. What a fine mess this weak Prime Minister has got them all into, and got the country into as well. They are tearing lumps out of each other over a failing policy while letting the country down.

A Home Secretary has been sacked, an Immigration Minister has resigned, and the Tories have spent almost £300 million of taxpayers’ money on Rwanda without sending a single person. The Home Secretary seemed to confirm today that, in fact, it is £400 million without a single person being sent. More Home Secretaries have been sent to Rwanda than asylum seekers—that is about £100 million per trip. The climate Minister, the right hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart), has been called back from the Dubai COP for the vote. Well, I guess the Government can say that at least one flight has taken off as a result of the legislation.

We have had the third Tory Home Secretary sent to Rwanda in two years, the third bilateral agreement with Rwanda in two years, and now the third Tory law on asylum and Rwanda in two years. And they are about to write their fourth cheque to Rwanda. It turns out that they set up a direct debit: hundreds of millions of pounds for a failing scheme that is only ever likely to cover a few hundred people—less than 1% of those claiming asylum last year—and has become a proxy for the deep civil wars in the Tory party.

In this carousel of Conservative chaos, we have the European Research Group, the Northern Research Group, the New Conservatives, the old Conservatives, the One Nation group, the implausibly named Conservative Growth Group, and if you thought that was an oxymoron, Mr Speaker, we also have the Conservative Common Sense Group. Seriously, there are so many fighting factions, but they all have one thing in common: they do not believe in the Bill.

The Prime Minister was forced into an emergency breakfast meeting this morning—less a smoked salmon offensive; more buttering up his MPs with bacon butties, and sides of briefing and backstabbing—promising his MPs amendments and then rowing back, telling them that he really wants to break international law but that the Rwandan Government will not let him. He is hiding behind the Kigali Administration because he is too weak to even defend his plan. Weak, weak, weak.

The Prime Minister says that his patience is wearing thin. Well, how do the Tories think the country feels when watching this chaos? He is hoping that his party will calm down over Christmas, but they all know who the Christmas turkey is, and he is sitting in No. 10.

[Mr Baron]

The Prime Minister has come up with a plan. He is committed to it. We have had assurances from the Dispatch Box that all steps will be taken to stay within international law. What is the official Opposition’s plan?

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Gentleman hopes that his Prime Minister has a plan, but no Back Bencher on either side of the House seems to agree with it. We are clear that what we should be doing is using the hundreds of millions of pounds that the Government are wasting in cheques written to Rwanda for nothing—for a scheme that will send, at best, only a few hundred people—to strengthen our border security, go after the criminal gangs, and make sure that we clear the asylum backlog and save the taxpayer billions of pounds. [Interruption.] Actually, he has not. The Home Secretary likes to claim that he is doing that; he likes to claim that he is bringing down the number of people in hotels, but in fact that number has gone up to a record high of 56,000. Since the Prime Minister said he was going to end asylum hotel use, it has gone up by a further 10,000, because he is failing.

I welcome the new immigration Ministers to their posts, one of whom, the hon. Member for Corby (Tom Pursglove), has been an immigration Minister before. I think that during the time he was immigration Minister, net migration trebled and the number of boat crossings also trebled, but I am sure nobody will hold that against him. The Government have obviously appointed two immigration Ministers this time in case another one resigns because he thinks their policy is totally failing and too weak. In the words of the ex-immigration Minister, the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), this new law will not work, “doesn’t do the job”, and is

“both legally and operationally fundamentally flawed.”

Safe Asylum Routes: Afghan Refugees

John Baron Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2023 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Immigration (Robert Jenrick)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I congratulate the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) on securing the debate. I am grateful for his contribution, and I suspect that there will be some interventions from other interested right hon. and hon. Members. Clearly, 30 minutes is not long enough to do justice to a topic as complex and important as this, but I hope that I can provide some reassurance in my remarks and when answering interventions.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for giving way. As chair of the British Council all-party parliamentary group, I put on the record our thanks to the Prime Minister for his direct intervention in changing the guidance to allow contractors who are hiding from the Taliban in Afghanistan to continue their applications in the safety of a third country, typically Pakistan. I put it to the Minister that there is now a logjam not only because there is a shortage of houses in the UK to which to send people from Pakistan, but because the ACRS pathway 3 scheme has a quota of 1,500, which we are nearing. Can the Minister provide an assurance or update as to what the Government will do, from a housing point of view, to get those contractors to the UK as soon as possible? Can the Minister also undertake to lift the cap to allow those eligible under ACRS to come to the UK?

[Robert Jenrick]

In a moment, I will come to the specific question around the numbers and how they relate to both British Council workers and GardaWorld employees. If time allows, I will come on to my hon. Friend’s question about the limiting factor of accommodation as well. Clearly, it is a significant challenge for us. The primary responsibility rests with the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities and the Ministry of Defence. The Ministry of Defence in particular is responsible for bringing forward service family accommodation and ensuring that it is available and of a suitable quality, so that once families have been granted their visas, they can come to the UK safe in the knowledge that they will have somewhere to stay, rather than being housed in a hotel, which I think we all agree is an unsatisfactory way for anyone to live for a prolonged period and which we have consciously moved away from. My hon. Friend will have seen the effort to which the Government went in the first half of this year to close the hotels that were housing 8,000 Afghans who had arrived around the time of Operation Pitting.

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[Robert Jenrick]

We do have a family reunion policy. I appreciate that the hon. Member for Brent North feels that it is insufficient, but it has enabled more than 40,000 people to come to the UK to reunite with other refugees. I would be very happy to look into the specific case that the hon. Member for York Central raises. I know that she raises it in a sincere way on behalf of her constituents and she is clearly very concerned.

As time is short, let me answer more specifically some of the other questions that were raised by speaking to the pathways that underlie the scheme. On pathway 1 specifically, we recognise the challenges of the evacuation, which caused families to be split, and are working to establish a route to address this. Once in operation, this will allow eligible individuals to refer one spouse or partner and dependent child for resettlement. We are working to get the route operational as quickly as possible, and I can say that we expect to receive referrals in the first half of 2024 if not sooner.

[Mr Baron]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Robert Jenrick]

I will answer, if I may, my hon. Friend’s first question. On pathway 3, I am pleased to share that we will now consider for resettlement all eligible, at-risk British Council and GardaWorld contractors and Chevening alumni who expressed interest during the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office’s window of opportunity. This means that the Government will exceed the original allocation of 1,500 places for the first stage of ACRS pathway 3. These are individuals who directly supported the efforts of the UK and the international community in Afghanistan. It is important to ensure that all those who are eligible, at risk, and remain in Afghanistan and the region, are able to reach safety in the UK. The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office will shortly contact all remaining individuals assessed as “eligible in principle” under the first stage of ACRS pathway 3 with advice on their next steps. We remain committed to honouring our commitments under these schemes, including, where capacity allows, working with international partners and non-governmental organisations to welcome wider groups under the second stage of pathway 3. I hope that answers my hon. Friend’s question.

[Mr Baron]

I thank the Minister for that. It is excellent news that the quota system has now been pushed to one side for those individuals that he specified. I suggest to him, however, that there is still a sense of urgency. If people are stuck in Pakistan and cannot get over to the UK, with Pakistan suggesting that it is going to repatriate back to Afghanistan, there may still be a big problem. Will the Minister confirm that he will look at this as a matter of urgency? We need to cut through the red tape and help these people who helped this country.

[Robert Jenrick]

I can assure my hon. Friend, and indeed all right hon. and hon. Members here, that we are considering that with great urgency. Those who are in Pakistan are supported by the British Government, or by partner organisations such as the International Organisation for Migration, which will provide them with accommodation, food and support. I appreciate, however, that those conditions are not desirable, and the recent statements by the Pakistan Government are concerning. That is why we are looking again at what more we might be able to do. I will give way one more time.

Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill

John Baron Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 7th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

The right hon. Gentleman makes a very important point; I am pretty certain that he has raised several times in this House the need for legal protections, finance and an approach that gives law enforcement the tools it needs. The Bill is doing that, and we are acting not only through legislation, but through the wider way we help agencies and law enforcement to function, operate and go after those who have been undermining our system.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

Following on from that point, the Bill is very welcome, but many of us believe it could go further, which is why we have supported and tabled various amendments. Legislation and regulations are worth their salt only if they are properly enforced. The National Crime Agency, for example, has had cuts to its funding in recent years. Will the Bill put that right not just for the NCA, but for all enforcement agencies?

[Priti Patel]

That is a really important point. This is about how we operationalise the Bill—how we use the tools that we are giving our agencies. Yes, resourcing is required. We have already stepped up with a new kleptocracy unit in the NCA and have put more resources into it. We are absolutely not going to stop—we cannot stop. We are catching up in many quarters, we really are, and we want to use the full force of legislation and the full force of the law to go after many of these individuals.

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[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

I can tell the hon. Lady that there are concerns across the House on this issue, as she can see from those of us who have signed various amendments. In the last five years the number of prosecutions for money laundering has fallen away. The number of prosecutions from the Serious Fraud Office has fallen away, and the National Crime Agency has managed just five prosecutions a year on average. Does she agree that laws and regulations are only worth their salt if properly enforced, and that we need to come together on both sides of the House to address this issue and make sure moneys are available to properly fund our enforcement agencies?

[Alison Thewliss]

I very much agree with the hon. Member and acknowledge the strength of cross-party support in the House on this issue. I am sure he has read the Treasury Committee’s report on economic crime, which highlighted that not enough has been done on enforcement or invested in the law enforcement agencies to give them the skills that they need. Without that, the crooks will continue to be several steps ahead of the law enforcement agencies, which do not have the resources, the skills or the talent to get around these schemes and stop them in their tracks.

I agree with the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) about the loophole in the Bill that she highlighted, which allows individuals or their assets to be exempted if so doing would be in the interests of the economic wellbeing of the United Kingdom. That gives the Government a whole lot of scope to exempt people from the Bill. There are clearly huge sums of money involved, and the economic wellbeing of the United Kingdom is ailing in many respects because of many things—not least Brexit—so they could look to that as a loophole. That must be closed. I do not think I got in to put my name to amendment 4 in time, but I fully support what she puts forward in it.

On sanctions, the Bill sets out a series of reforms that are likely to intensify sanctions enforcement. The SNP pushed for greater action on sanctions and their enforcement back when the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018 was going through the House. There are limitations for the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation: as I mentioned earlier, when we do not know where people are hiding their money, it is difficult to track them down, impose sanctions on them and enforce those sanctions. A great deal more needs to be done in that regard as well. As my colleague on the Treasury Committee, the hon. Member for Wallasey (Dame Angela Eagle), mentioned earlier, the OFSI has only 37.8 staff, which does not seem sufficient to the size of the task it faces. I hope that it will be able to get more resource to do that. Clearly no one could have quite anticipated the scale of the current sanctions, but it needs further resource for sanctions, both so that it has the expertise it needs and to ensure that our sanctions are aligned with those of other jurisdictions around the world.

Finally, according to figures put out at the weekend by the Minister for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency, although the UK’s sanctions are only a fraction of the EU’s or US’s efforts, they have captured more in value than either of them. That is an interesting and curious point, and a serious one if it indicates how much Putin-related cash is swilling around in London’s economy. If the figures are to be believed, the UK has more in assets belonging to oligarchs than the EU and the US combined, which really shows us the scale of the problem that the UK Government have got themselves into.

The SNP supports the measures in the Bill that will strengthen measures on economic crime. Although they do not go far enough or fast enough, they are long overdue. We look forward to moving some amendments later this evening—and, if the Government have any sense at all, they will accept them.

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[Dame Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)]

I will try to keep my remarks short. Like others in the House, I welcome the Bill, but it should never have taken the nightmare of a war in Ukraine for us to act and to halt the avalanche of dirty money that has been allowed to enter Britain today. We are the jurisdiction of choice for not just Russian oligarchs, but kleptocrats, money launderers, people traffickers, smugglers, terrorists and other villains. That is the result of the failure of this Government and previous Governments to act. The Labour Government also had some responsibility for this, but the inaction over the last decade or so is down to this Government and the previous Conservative Governments.

As every other hon. Member has said, the Bill has to be the first step. I look forward to a further Bill coming forward swiftly at the beginning of the next Session so that we can enact other important measures. The other point that other hon. Members have made is that the Bill is not something great or inventive. It was first promised to us by David Cameron; I think that was in 2015, although others think it was 2016. There was then a massive consultation, pre-legislative scrutiny and a Bill in 2018. It was in the Queen’s Speech in 2019 and reinforced in the G7 summit in Cornwall, and then we heard that there was not going to be an economic crime Bill. It was all gone, and then war came in Ukraine and suddenly it has re-emerged.

The implications of the Bill go well beyond Ukraine, although the Bill is vital as we try to put pressure on Putin and his utterly dishonourable gang of cronies, and to de-escalate the conflict through economic sanctions. We need to move faster and go further. Some very important amendments have been tabled; I will not use my time on them now, because hon. Members will want to talk about them in Committee, but they include freezing an oligarch’s assets while lawyers consider the case for sanctions, and ensuring appropriate funding so that we do not just put something into law without using it to go after the oligarchs properly.

[Mr Baron]

Is the right hon. Lady as concerned as I am that some estimates put the cost to this country of economic crime at nearly £300 billion, yet we spend something like only £850 million on all the nationwide enforcement agencies? Other countries spend a lot more and seem to have a higher prosecution success rate. Is that a coincidence?

[Dame Margaret Hodge]

No, of course not; I completely concur. The latest figure I have seen for the cost of economic crime to the economy is £260 billion, so the Government must provide tougher regulations, more effective enforcement, proper resourcing and clear accountability—those are the key things we need.

I thank the Government for listening to our representations. Even the Bill before the House includes some very welcome changes, such as tougher penalties and greater accountability, with an annual report to Parliament—I remember arguing that case as the legislation went through, and it being resisted. The Government’s new clauses will speed up the processes, and I hope that in Committee there will be further improvements.

When the Minister winds up, will he say whether he has looked at amendment 3, which stands in my name and that of other hon. Members? It would address the loophole that I think the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Sir Robert Neill) mentioned; I think it is a drafting mistake, but it looks as if individuals could escape the transparency that the Bill intends by using nominee directors and corporate trust providers. We have received legal advice, a copy of which I have shared with the security Minister; I wonder whether the Minister answering this debate has looked at it and whether he will respond on the drafting issue.

This is not an economic crime Bill; it is important legislation that should have been put in place years ago. The economic crime Bill is still desperately needed and I look forward to urgent discussion of it. In the meantime, I hope we will have time for the proper consideration of our amendments.

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[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

It is an inconvenient truth that no matter how good the legislation, no matter how robust the rules and laws, they can be made ineffective if they are not properly enforced. To be properly enforced, they have to be properly funded, so although many of us on both sides of the House welcome the Bill and some of us, at least, think it should go further—we have tabled various amendments to that end—I suggest to the Government that, fundamentally, we need to look at the issue of funding. This Bill should be called the economic crime (transparency, enforcement and funding) Bill. I look forward to hearing from Ministers what importance the Government attach to this issue and, more important, what hard money will be put into reinforcing many of the new regulations and rules on transparency that are being introduced.

Various estimates, including those of Spotlight on Corruption, suggest that over the past five years, the number of prosecutions for money laundering has dropped by nearly a third; the National Crime Agency has obtained only five successful prosecutions a year, on average; and the number of individuals convicted by the Serious Fraud Office is on a downward trend. We speak strong words in this place, but what is happening on the frontline is that the people committing economic crime are winning, and winning big time. It is as simple as that. In an intervention, I suggested that the extent of economic crime in this country could be approaching £300 billion, yet we spend less than 0.1% of that figure—£850 million—on all the nationwide law enforcement agencies. That cannot be right.

Look at the comprehensive spending review over the next three-year period. The investment of £42 million in economic crime over that period set out in last autumn’s Budget represents just 0.1% of the £4.2 billion increase allocated to the Home Office. We should remember that the National Crime Agency has received a decrease in its core budget over the past five years, with the outgoing director general calling for a 54% increase in funding for that agency. We must ensure that our law enforcement agencies are properly funded, which is why I will be supporting—among a number of other amendments—new clause 2, which stands in the name of the right hon. Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge). It is also why I tabled my more expansive new clause 24, which addresses the resources required not only to enforce the measures in this Bill, but to police economic crime more generally. In the long term, we could introduce measures that would let our law enforcement agencies take a share of the proceeds of successful prosecutions—why not? Some overseas agencies do. However, in the short term our agencies need to be properly funded in order to bring them up to speed and take these many criminals to task.

Putin thinks that the west is weak, and he thinks this country is weak when it comes to this issue. It is up to this House, on a cross-party basis, to prove him wrong, but to do that we need to fund our enforcement agencies properly. I look forward to hearing from the Minister how the Government are going to set about doing so—if not in this economic crime Bill, then perhaps in the one that I hope will come around the corner very soon.

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[Jonathan Reynolds]

My right hon. Friend’s point about donations is absolutely well made. His earlier point was about how some of the things we are seeking to address with this legislation we know about because of whistleblowers and investigative journalists. It is only because of them that we have been able to get some sense of the scale of the problem, and that is what should worry us, because we have to decide, as British Members of Parliament, about the proportionality of the concerns about this. I would ask those people who have such concerns to understand that the lack of transparency in the UK, as things currently operate, does not just open us up to risks of criminal activity, but is now a threat to our national security.

Like many people, I once believed that, as countries developed and became wealthier, that created an irresistible pressure for political reforms—for strong institutions, independent courts and the rule of law—but the fact is that that has not happened in many parts of the world. We are all too familiar with stories of people who have looted the national wealth of their countries, and then stashed those assets safely here in the west. There are examples from Nigeria, Kenya, Indonesia, China, Afghanistan, Russia and many others, and I would like to thank Transparency International for its campaigning and advocacy on these matters. Ukraine itself was once a major victim of this under the corrupt presidency of Viktor Yanukovych. Such corruption often leaves behind countries that are poor and dysfunctional, where the state is starved of the resources and legitimacy it needs to function properly, and where millions are denied the path to prosperity that they deserve. In that space, extremism and terrorism can thrive, so we simply cannot allow this to go on.

Tackling this properly clearly requires international co-operation, but when it comes to registers of beneficial ownership, that co-operation does now exist. That is why there is clear consensus on this happening in relation to property in the UK. This debate has shown that the principal difference of view between ourselves and the Government, which we will obviously discuss in Committee, is what length of time is reasonable to give people to register the beneficial ownership of the near 100,000 properties that will be affected. I think people know that we want 28 days. The Government originally proposed 18 months, and I do acknowledge that they have moved some way in reducing that to six months. I also acknowledge that this is a significant change for some people in relation to their property rights.

However, I would say that this change was announced in 2016 by David Cameron. The pre-legislative scrutiny took place in 2018, and my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) outlined some of the history of that. So this change has been a long time coming, and people have known it was coming. It is not really the 28-day implementation period we are seeking, but the six years and 28 days that that adds up to. That is why I believe it is reasonable, proportionate and necessary to ask the Government to act at speed.

The second part of the Bill proposes changes to unexplained wealth orders. I raised the problems with these orders when we had the urgent question. I am pleased to see them included as part of this Bill, and I again acknowledge that the Government have already accepted several Labour amendments on this matter. The problems with these orders relate to issues with implementation that have occurred in the courts, so it is clearly good to see those addressed. However, many Members went further in their speeches because there are concerns, because of the way that Russia operated in the 1990s, that it can be hard to use unexplained wealth orders to take the action required now. Several Members have proposed a new set of powers that could freeze relevant assets while cases are made, and again we can deal with those amendments in Committee, but I am sympathetic to the arguments put forward.

The third part of the Bill relates to sanctions and their application. People are asking us as Members of Parliament why those who have been subject to sanction by the US and the EU are not currently sanctioned by the UK. The debate today recognises that the regime laid out in the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018 is not sufficient. There is clearly a widespread desire to see this improved, and proposals in this area are welcome. However, I would also say, separate to this, that there are the issues of resources and enforcement. My right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) and the hon. Member for Basildon and Billericay (Mr Baron) made that point in detail. My understanding is that, as a country, we are under-powered in the resources and capacity we devote to this. Just last month, the former Leader of the House—now the Minister for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency —said he wanted to cut 65,000 civil servants over the next three years. However, this is a clear example of an area where we need more capacity, as well as the right legal regime, to do what is required. The seriousness of these matters means that the Government must devote the resources required to do that.

[Mr Baron]

Very briefly, we are going to see a second economic crime Bill come through, and I think it would do the House a great service if the Labour party actually put forward concrete proposals when it comes to funding that would perhaps gather more support across the House than the hon. Member imagines. At the moment, the Opposition are just talking in very vague terms, but everybody seems agreed, so we need to see some concrete action.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

I am always happy to be of service to the hon. Gentleman, and we will be looking to do that. He will of course know that a comprehensive spending review is imminent.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Paul Scully)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds) and I thank him for his engagement over the last week, because it is important that, despite any differences in terms of finessing this Bill, we are all in agreement, as I think we are, and it is very important that this Parliament and this House are united in our drive to right the wrongs done to the people of Ukraine and to drive Russian money out of London and indeed to punish the oligarchs. I shall cover as many of the points raised by hon. Members as I can in the time available, but first I want to remind the House about what the Bill signifies and what we are hoping to achieve and believe it will achieve.

The Bill will improve transparency about the ownership of companies and property in the UK and strengthen the enforcement of financial sanctions. It will create a register of overseas entities to crack down on foreign criminals using UK property to launder money. The new register will require anonymous foreign owners to reveal their real identity to ensure criminals cannot hold property behind secretive chains of shell companies. By legislating now, we will send a clear warning to those who have used, or are thinking of using, the UK property market to launder ill-gotten gains, particularly those linked to the Russian Government.

[Mr Baron]

The Minister is absolutely right and this Bill is of course welcome, although many of us believe it should go further. However, putting that to one side for the moment, do he and his Front-Bench colleagues accept that all these well-intended regulations and rules will come to nothing if not enforced properly? When will the Government bring forward concrete figures on the proper increase in funding required to make sure that these rules and regulations, and others, have full effect?

[Paul Scully]

I will come to those figures because I totally agree with my hon. Friend that the rules and new laws must be enforced. We can talk as much as we like, but this is about action, and we are leading the way on action.

This Bill will also reform unexplained wealth orders by removing the key barriers to their use by law enforcement and include amendments to financial sanctions legislation, helping to deter and prevent breaches of sanctions.

Questions have been raised today about why it has taken this long to come up with the legislation. We had prelegislative scrutiny on the register of ownership a couple of years ago, which obviously was interrupted by the pressures of covid on parliamentary time. None the less, that means we have been able to adapt the paragraphs that have already been drafted, undergone prelegislative scrutiny and had a clean bill of health from Committees in this place to the new norm following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Baron Excerpts

Monday 18th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Tom Pursglove]

I would expect nothing less from the hon. Gentleman given that we are beginning line-by-line consideration of the Bill tomorrow in Committee. I have no doubt that he will have studied every single clause very carefully and will be interrogating me on each of them. We do not want to see anybody persecuted. As I have said previously, as a country and as a Government, we are absolutely determined to make sure that there continue to be safe and legal routes, so that people who qualify can continue to access sanctuary in this country. Also, of course, through our international engagement, we always press home that human rights must be respected and upheld at every turn.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

I warmly welcome the Minister and, indeed, the Government’s forthcoming legislation on this issue, but may I urge on him the utmost haste and speed in delivering it to this House for our consideration? The trade, as it were, of human trafficking is a hideous crime. Lives are being lost now. It is making a laughing stock of the two systems on both sides of the channel. We need to put a stop to it. It should not be beyond the wit of the Government to do so.

[Tom Pursglove]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend who has consistently raised these matters. He is right to say that we want to deliver the provisions of the Nationality and Borders Bill as quickly as possible, because we believe that they are fundamental to preventing these dangerous channel crossings as part of an overall package to deliver on that. I hope that the Bill will command support across the House.

My hon. Friend is also right to raise the issue of collaboration with our international partners; of course, the French are integral to that. We have an arrangement with the French. It is bearing results, but there is clearly still more to do. This issue cannot be resolved entirely without that collaboration.

Windrush

John Baron Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd May 2018 Commons Chamber

[John Cryer]

Of course, I agree.

My second example is more unusual and involves a woman who came from Jamaica when she was a baby. She was abandoned by her parents and grew up in a nunnery, which—Members can tell what is coming—was closed down and demolished after she left, and its records were lost. Again, this is somebody with a broad east London accent. She is quintessentially British and has the right to stay here, but she was told, after she had been through all that, “We’re going to deport you.” That is the sort of culture that we are dealing with at the Home Office, and I suspect that it goes across Government, which I will come to in a minute.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

I actually agree with the hon. Gentleman. There are aspects of this case that are deeply concerning, and I hope that the Government learn from it. May I suggest that, at the end of the day, we have to protect Government records and civil servants’ advice to Governments to ensure that civil servants can give advice with candour? Given that we will have an inquiry, which we all hope will go to the heart of the matter, we should look to it to take the issue back to where it began, which was before 2010.

[John Cryer]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman about the inquiry, but this is an issue of transparency. He and I agree about an awful lot of things, but we are on opposite sides of the fence here. The documents should be put in the public domain. We can redact certain things, such as civil servants’ names, but the names of elected people should not be redacted.

Both the cases that I mentioned earlier resulted in victories, but I am dealing with many other cases. Over the past two or three years—this goes back a long way—I have spent an awful lot of time writing to schools, former employers, colleges and the police. In one case I even had to write to the Army to try to check the records to prove that people who had every right to be here could assume that right.

This country has close ties with the Caribbean and with other Commonwealth countries, and we should bear in mind that this debate will be watched across the Commonwealth. Thousands of people will be watching us in countries such as Jamaica, India and Pakistan. Those close ties with the Commonwealth, and with the Caribbean in particular, have their roots in an appalling institution: the empire. It was built on piracy and slavery, but nevertheless the one good thing to come out of that poisonous institution was the Commonwealth, which has always given relatively small countries, often with little political and economic clout, a platform for their voices to be heard, especially here and particularly at the Commonwealth Heads of Government meetings.

After the war, a series of Governments in this country and in others worked to foster the bonds with the Commonwealth, but those bonds have now been loosened. It is not simply that communities in this country have been given cause to fear what might happen, which is bad enough; we have also undermined relationships with countries across the globe. I never thought I would see the Prime Minister of Jamaica standing in Downing Street, expressing his dismay at the British Government and their policies. That goes way beyond what any previous Jamaican Prime Minister has said, and previous Prime Ministers were fairly critical—I am thinking of Michael Manley and his father Norman. Nobody has expressed such sentiments in the heart of the capital. This Government’s job now is to rebuild links with the affected communities and reassure them that they are safe and not under threat. The Government also need—this includes the Foreign Office—to rebuild links with the Commonwealth countries that have had their faith in Britain shattered.

Rights of EU Nationals

John Baron Excerpts

Wednesday 19th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Newlands (Paisley and Renfrewshire North) (SNP)]

It has been 118 days since the EU referendum—118 days of blunders, slap-downs, in-fighting and conflicting statements from this UK Government. It is a case of life imitating art, as this shambolic response from the UK Government is more akin to a plot line from “The Thick of It” than a co-ordinated response to a deeply challenging and serious situation. It would be laughable if the consequences of Tory Brexit were not quite so serious.

It might be 118 days of in-fighting and a failure to govern, but it has also been 118 days when 3 million of our citizens do not know what the future holds for them or their families. Since 23 June, 3 million EU citizens, who pay an estimated £14.7 billion in income tax and national insurance contributions, have been referred to as “bargaining chips” in a Tory game that no one ever wanted to play in the first place.

But this is not a game and our EU-born nationals are not “bargaining chips”, “pawns” or “playing cards”. They are our wives, our husbands, our neighbours, co-workers, doctors, nurses, teachers and our friends. Instead of throwing fuel on the fire and making a very worrying situation for them even worse, this Government should be doing all they can to provide the assurance to the 3 million EU citizens in the UK that their future is secure here.

This debate says a lot about what kind of country we are. It might be an inconvenience for a few in the Brexiteer camp to think of the UK as a diverse country, but that is exactly what we are. We are better as a country because of the 57,000 NHS staff who were born elsewhere in the EU. Many sectors of our economy are world-leading not in spite of EU workers, but because of their expertise and skills. Times Higher Education highlighted how UK universities are world-leading, and this is in no small part because of the excellent level of teaching and research that EU nationals provide.

The Prime Minister’s short-sighted refusal to provide our EU nationals with the assurance that they are entitled to represents a slap in the face despite their hard work and the contribution they have made to our society.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[James Berry (Kingston and Surbiton) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

My hon. Friend is exactly right. I regret to say this, but if one has been following the foreign news reports of the statements made by Jean-Claude Juncker and other people, it is clear that there is an air of menace around. I am not saying that it is universally expressed, but there is a view that somehow the British people acted defiantly or insolently towards the EU and that we should be punished as a consequence of the vote on 23 June. I regret having to say this, but it is a fact that people on the continent in high positions in the EU have made such statements.

[Mr Baron]

Many of us, leavers and remainers, have great sympathy with the position expressed in the motion, but where we part company is with the final six words

“should the UK exit the EU.”

Brexit means Brexit, and that is pure mischief-making by the SNP. That is why a lot of us will not be supporting the motion.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I think there are a number of reasons—

EU Migrants: National Insurance Numbers

John Baron Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

It is important that we focus on the issues at hand this morning—namely, the national insurance numbers and the best measure for assessing long-term migration. That is what the Office for National Statistics has clearly set out, and that is the issue that we should focus on. The hon. Gentleman makes an important point about the national insurance number system, but clearly that is not the best mechanism for assessing the overall impact.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

These figures clearly lay bare the fact that the Government are powerless to control EU immigration for the benefit of our public services. How do the Government justify our present immigration system, which unfairly discriminates against economic migrants from outside the EU? Would it not be better, on leaving the EU, to design a fairer immigration policy with a level playing field for nationals of all countries, some of whom might be better qualified?

[James Brokenshire]

I will leave it to the hon. Gentleman to make the case for having a visa system for all EU nationals, which is what he appears to be suggesting. The Government have a clear approach to controlling migration from outside the EU through our skills-based visas and through other routes, as well as to dealing with the pressures that we have highlighted, with economic competitiveness and with draws such as the welfare system.

Criminal Law

John Baron Excerpts

Monday 10th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

I agree with my hon. Friend. He will hear some of us attempting to stay in order—desperately, Mr Speaker—while making those arguments, but he will be unable to vote explicitly on them; he will have to vote on whether we have a vote on another day or we close down the debate today. That is not the way Parliament is designed to work. I am afraid, therefore, that this is a travesty of democracy.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for making his comments. Would not the solution be for the Government to make it clear from the Dispatch Box that they will make time available to allow us to discuss the issue properly, as the country wants and as Parliament wants, and then we can move on? It is within their scope to do that now.

[Mr Davis]

It is, of course, within their scope, and I was very tempted at the beginning of the exercise to suggest to the Home Secretary that she shoots the Opposition’s fox—that she says, “We’re going to have a day’s debate tomorrow. There you are. All over.” They would have looked stupid and we would have looked very democratic. Sadly, that did not happen. I will not vote for the proposal today. I may abstain, I may double-vote, but I am not going to vote for the proposal because I do not want us to leave uncovered an extremely important debate in the history of this House.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Baron Excerpts

Monday 10th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

A constructive debate on immigration was exactly what my hon. Friend was contributing to, and I do not accept the right hon. Gentleman’s description of his speech. As I said in answer to the question from my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Mr Robertson), the immigration Minister was pointing out that uncontrolled immigration has greatest impact on those at the lower end of the income scale. I would have thought that as a Labour Member of Parliament, the right hon. Gentleman should care about that.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

23. Given that freedom of movement within the EU is the elephant in the room of the immigration issue, what plans do the Government have to reform that part of the EU strategy? It might have been suitable for the founding fathers, but given that there are now 28 member states with disparate economic cycles, it is past its sell-by date. Otherwise, we should stop talking about targets.

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about free movement. I have been party to discussions and have raised the issue, particularly on the question of the abuse of free movement, within the EU. Many other member states are concerned. We are taking action with them to cut out the problems of the abuse of free movement.

My hon. Friend also mentioned the disparity of incomes among accession countries. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, in an article he wrote some weeks ago, suggested that a future approach might be not allowing full free movement rights until accession countries have reached a certain income level compared with the rest of the EU.

Syrian Refugees

John Baron Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I am very happy to liaise closely with the Welsh Government, and any opportunities or support that they can give on the relocation of individuals who come to the UK as a result of this scheme will be welcomed. There are different types of status for individuals. We will consider the matter further, but we currently propose that these individuals will be given temporary residence here, but with access to the labour market and other benefits in the same way as refugees would have.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

As someone who was critical of the Government’s position on this, I congratulate the Home Secretary on this announcement. Will she confirm that, when looking at the criteria, children will not be separated from parents?

[Mrs May]

I assure my hon. Friend that there is no intention to separate children from parents.