Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill

Debate between Julian Huppert and Mark Field

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mark Field]

I am grateful. I will keep my contribution as short as possible, because other Members want to get on to some of the more important amendments to clause 6 and it is clear that there is no appetite to divide the Committee on this matter.

As the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Sir Alan Beith) said, it is worrying that, all too often, the “economic well-being” head has been drawn so widely that many aspects of it could be seen as part and parcel of something that could fall within the ambit of RIPA and this Bill. One need only look at the controversy around the alleged bugging of the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, by the National Security Agency, if the Snowden reports are to be believed. On the grounds, presumably, of economic well-being, there was an opportunity to listen to particular conversations. That is not a healthy state of affairs.

Many of the public concerns about the Bill that are close to all our hearts reflect an understanding and an appreciation from many of our constituents that certain intelligence needs to be picked up, but the process needs to be necessary and proportionate. Therefore, trying to draw a narrow view—not an overly restrictive view, but as narrow a view as possible—will command more public confidence.

“Economic well-being” is one of the various heads that come under the auspices of RIPA—the 2000 Act that controls most of the surveillance that is dealt with in the Bill. Rather worryingly, permissible purposes under the Bill, as under RIPA, will include

“any purpose (not falling within paragraphs (a) to (g)) which is specified for the purposes of this subsection by an order made by the Secretary of State.”

That is almost a Henry VIII-type provision that relates to the issue of public confidence that is close to all our hearts.

I agree with the right hon. Member for Knowsley that we should be trying to define the terms more narrowly. Perhaps now is not exactly the right time to do it, but I hope we will be able to do so in the months and years ahead when it comes to having a fully fledged Bill on these very important matters.

I agree that we have to look at economic well-being as focusing on the security of the critical national infrastructure, defence contracts and—something close to my own heart—the stability of the UK currency, banking and financial systems, particularly with the ongoing and likely to become more acute issue of cybercrime, and cyber-security issues that will come as part and parcel of that.

I do not wish to detain the Committee any longer. It is important that we put some of these concerns in place. As I say, they have a more general bearing on the idea that if we are to get a sense of public confidence about this sort of legislation, we need to try to define it as narrowly as possible rather than having broad definitions in place. I think that that is what the right hon. Gentleman had in mind in tabling the amendment and I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

[Dr Huppert]

I have heard several comments that clause 3 does not need to be in fast-track legislation, and it does not relate to an impending emergency, but I would not like to see it removed. It is a good, pro-civil liberties, pro-privacy clause, which just trims down what was always quite a bizarrely broad definition. It restricts the issuing of interception warrants on grounds such as national security—fair enough; serious crime—or the UK’s economic well-being, which is a broad concept, as was being discussed. The wording is taken from article 8(2) of the European convention on human rights, which is why we have that idea, but it could be interpreted broadly. There have been a number of discussions about whether, for example, it would enable lawful intercept to be used to find out what other companies are bidding against British companies. That is something that I think the House would be clear now is simply not acceptable—the Government have a stated policy on that—but it is not excluded by law. I think we would all say that it is simply not appropriate, so I am pleased that we are taking the opportunity of this legislation to trim this down; to try to make sure that it is only economic well-being as it relates to national security.

I appreciate that this is a probing amendment, but I have a number of issues with it. In particular, I am concerned that some of the language around

“the conduct of defence contracts”,

and the

“manufacture and design of UK defence systems”,

sounds worryingly as though it is saying that the House believes that it is okay to have interception to win defence contracts against a foreign bidder, or to make sure that we do well. I hope that that is not what is intended.

Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Julian Huppert and Mark Field

Tuesday 4th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Dr Huppert]

I do not have the list of exactly who proposed what. The Government amendment we have is neutral; the one that Labour peers supported in the other place was not tenure-neutral. I hope the hon. Gentleman agrees that that was a flaw in it, although the other principle was there.

I welcome the change, although I remain surprised by the position of the Opposition, who felt that the version that left this place was both too draconian and too liberal. I am glad that their position has moved in a more liberal direction. The new approach is far better than the failed system of ASBOs, which many young people collected as a badge of honour. A huge number of people broke them; they simply did not work. I think that this non-criminalising approach will work much better.

Let me turn now to some of the other issues. Lords amendment 10 is important and concerns the principle that we should not be using these rules to throw children out of their own homes. The Lords pushed for that, and it is a shame that we did not manage to get it fixed in this place. The importance of care for the under-18s should have been emphasised more strongly during the Bill’s earlier stages, and I am glad that it has been emphasised more strongly now. This is another of the issues that were dealt with by the Home Affairs Committee. I am also pleased that Lords amendment 11 proposes the removal of clause 13, because it discriminated on the basis of tenure.

Lords amendments 23 and 24 deal with the rights of free expression and free assembly. The Home Affairs Committee recommended that we should ensure that dispersal powers were not used in a way that could damage those rights. Before my hon. Friend became a Minister in this Department, the Government moved some of the way towards this, and I am glad that he has now been able to persuade them to move the whole way, so that we can protect all forms of free expression and free assembly.

Lords amendments 59 to 64 deal with cases of riot. Riot is of course very serious, and we have already seen what it can lead to in this country. As a result of what happened, the Prime Minister said that he wanted stronger powers to deal with the families of people who were rioting. Many of us felt that, although we could understand the tensions that existed at the time, his suggestion went too far. It did not seem appropriate to throw everyone out of a house because a 16-year-old child had committed a minor offence where a riot was happening. I do not in any sense condone either the riot or the behaviour, but throwing an entire family out of their home seems to be a disproportionate response. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Minister for his work in this regard, which has led to the proposal that an automatic eviction should take place only if the offence is committed by an adult, and only if it is a serious, indictable offence. A trivial offence that happened to be committed near a riot would not lead to such an eviction; nor would an offence committed by a child.

Finally, let me raise two issues that we had very little time to discuss during our initial debates in this House, and that were not particular topics of interest at that stage. The first involves surveillance and the Terrorism Act 2000. Lords amendment 102 and related amendments deal with the powers of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal to deal with complaints about the surveillance commissioners and their decisions. The IPT does not necessarily work as well as it needs to, and it is not as transparent and open as it needs to be, but I am glad that we are taking a step towards more transparency. Surveillance oversight is an extremely important subject, and the Bill does not finish what we need to do about it. There is much more to be done, but although the amendments represent just a tiny piece of the jigsaw, I welcome them.

Lords amendment 100 and related amendments deal with schedule 8, which amends schedules 7 and 8 to the Terrorism Act. Schedule 7 became very topical at the time of the detention of David Miranda. I am pleased that, after a great deal of argument in this House, we have managed to get some changes made in the House of Lords. People must be questioned within an hour of detention, reviews must take place within two hours of that, and people’s right to consult a solicitor is made clear. That fundamental right was omitted by the Terrorism Act when it was passed by the last Government. There is much more to be done about that as well, but I am very pleased with all the amendments. I commend the Minister and his team for their work, and look forward to our passing the amendments promptly.

[Mark Field]

I agree with the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) that it is a shame that the Government did not take more account of the pre-legislative scrutiny, relying instead on the other place. I accept that all too often, whichever Government are in play, the electoral arithmetic ensures that legislation is rushed through and guillotined here in the House of Commons, and some sensible suggestions are then made in the House of Lords, many of which—as in this instance—we end up not seeking to oppose. Given the relative paucity of legislation in the House of Commons over the next 15 months, I hope that we will pay the House a little more respect, and ensure that whatever Bills come before us during the fifth year of this five-year Parliament are given proper scrutiny.

I support what the Government are doing in Lords amendments 40, 41 and 44 to 47, which relate to public bodies that can issue a public spaces protection order. That has particular resonance in my constituency, and I am glad that a number of friends—in the broadest sense—of the City of London corporation in another place were able to make some important changes. Numerous other bodies which operate open spaces under local Acts—such as the Wimbledon and Putney commons conservators, to name but two of them—will also benefit from what the Government are doing. The proposed new clause would enable bodies other than local authorities administering open spaces under byelaws to use public spaces protection orders. I believe this is particularly relevant to trustees or local conservators who operate under byelaws inferred by private Acts of Parliament, many of which go back not just many decades but some centuries. I hope the Minister agrees with that point.

The City of London corporation operates some of the most important open spaces in London and the south-east, including Epping forest and Hampstead heath. There are also important local authority parks. In Newham there is West Ham park and there is Queen’s park in the London borough of Brent. It was often under private Acts of Parliament, frequently through bequests of what were the curtilage of large mansion houses, that these local parks and amenities were founded, often back in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Conservators have exactly the same issues as local authorities in terms of the public open spaces they administer, so it is sensible to include these places in order not to have duplication but to ensure there is not an opportunity for some of these powers to slip through the net. Conservators are not required to use the orders, and they can keep to the local byelaws if they so wish. If they do make an order, however, and the local authority for the area makes its own, the local authority’s order will take precedence. That is right.

These clauses are sensibly drafted. The powers of the City of London corporation would not in any way usurp those of the relevant local authority, but this does provide a belt-and-braces approach to ensure there is a proper focus on public order within those important open spaces.

I wish the Minister and Government well in getting this change into the Bill and I hope there will be no opposition from any corner of this House.

Intelligence and Security Services

Debate between Julian Huppert and Mark Field

Thursday 31st October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Dr Huppert]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her intervention. No one is saying that we should make illegal the collection of communications data; that would be a problem. She is also right to say that we need evidence; we cannot have a vacuum. That is exactly why it is helpful to know some of what is being said. We have heard people who say that we should never publish anything that would inform this debate. I want an informed debate, and I am pleased that we can have one.

[Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman refers to the Stasi and to the different cultural approach that we have here in the UK towards many of these issues. A view that is shared by people with a similar mindset—perhaps it is one that he thinks is not true—is that somehow the intelligence agencies are able to intercept at will. Will he go into some detail about precisely the protection—the amount of warranty and the legal framework—that is absolutely necessary before any internet account or telephone can be tapped?

[Dr Huppert]

The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point, and there are a number of routes to that. For communications data, he will be aware that no warrant is required. He will also be aware that, with the sole exception of evidence collected by local councils under RIPA, there is no judicial oversight of any kind at any stage. I am not aware of exceptions to that, and that is a weakness. There is an internal process—I do not doubt the good intentions of the people who work on this—but there is no independent external oversight from a judicial process, which is what many of us would like to see.

Let me return to the ISC. It works extremely hard, but its reports are redacted by the security services and the Prime Minister, and it is hard to know whether that is done in the interests of national security and not just to avoid embarrassment. Sir Francis Richards, a former senior intelligence official, has said that it is

“not a very good idea”

for an ex-Minister to head it. There is the problem of people being asked to scrutinise the consequences of decisions that they made, and that makes it hard to develop the right sort of relationship.

The ISC is under-resourced and not properly accountable to Parliament. There is a real issue to understanding the detailed technological components of much of this. I am not certain whether there is enough support to ensure that members understand the consequences of fake secure socket layer certificates and how phishing or man-in-the-middle attacks work. I am sure that the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) will be happy to explain them when she speaks later.

We need better scrutiny generally and not just of the Intelligence and Security Committee. We keep hearing messages about the risk of “going dark”—we heard all about that in relation to the draft Communications Data Bill. It is simply not true. There is far more information available now to the intelligence and security community and to the police than at any time in the past. People now carry mobile phone devices that keep track of where they are almost constantly. I do not blame the agencies. Of course I can see the argument that there will always be for having more information, but we must provide a counterbalance. Dame Stella Rimington, former head of MI5, said:

“It’s very important for our intelligence services to have a kind of oversight which people have confidence in. I think that it may mean it is now the time to look again at the oversight.”

I agree with her.

We have seen further calls for even more information to be collected. The previous Government established the interception modernisation programme to create a vast database designed to log all details of text messages, phone calls and e-mails in the UK. In the interests of cross-party unity, I will not go on about other authoritarian measures: the drive for 90-day detention without charge, ID cards, control orders and allowing people to be forcibly relocated. They are all now things of the past, and I am pleased that that is the case.

Given such concerns, I was pleased with much of the coalition agreement. We Liberal Democrats insisted on a particular element, which was a commitment to ending

“the storage of internet and email records without good reason”.

That was accepted by both parts of the coalition. I am not sure whether the Home Secretary saw that, because she then pushed ahead with the draft Communications Data Bill, which would have required the storing of e-mail and internet records for everybody, which blows a hole through the idea of “without good reason”. It was envisaged that an extra £1.8 billion would be spent over 10 years to keep those extra records. That would have allowed the Home Secretary to require internet service providers to keep track of every website that everyone in the country goes to—everything that we do on Facebook or Google—with a huge growth in surveillance.

Immigration Controls

Debate between Julian Huppert and Mark Field

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

It says much about 21st-century Britain that my hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel) should have introduced this debate. Although I am a proud Englishman, that is only part of my story. My late mother was twice a refugee by age 15, having been born during the early months of the war in Breslau, or Wroclaw, in what was then Germany and is now Poland. By age 15 she ended up in West Germany, where a few years later she met my father, who was serving in the British Army. Immigration has had an impact on me, given that one of my parents was an immigrant to this country, and both my hon. Friend’s parents were immigrants to this country. We love this country and the opportunities that it has given us. Despite much of what she said, we do not necessarily see immigration simply as a problem; it has some very positive sides. It is important that those elements are put on the record from time to time as well, and I shall endeavour to do so in my contribution.

We are going to hear the mantra that net migration has been cut by a third. It has become a key campaigning tool in recent months for the Conservative party, and it will no doubt be heralded as one of the Government’s central achievements as we approach the 2015 general election. Undoubtedly, important work has been done to crack down on some obvious immigration abuses, and rightly, as trust in the whole immigration system has reached an all-time low among our fellow Britons.

The Government should be applauded for the work that they have done to clamp down on bogus colleges, sham marriages, fake students, health tourists and the like. I noticed only this morning that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health rightly announced that we should not become an international health service. We should be proud that the NHS is free at the point of delivery. I have been an MP for central London for the past 12 years, and I have no doubt that health tourism has become increasingly acute in some areas, such as Paddington in my constituency. My constituents are suffering, and hard-working individuals’ taxes are not being used for their own purposes.

The Government have also been striving to address some of the pull factors that have hitherto made the UK such an appealing destination for those who wish to abuse generous western welfare and benefit systems. Nevertheless, we should be wary of the notion that the imposition of a cap alone and a broader clampdown mean job done on immigration. For all the talk about the squeeze on numbers, all too many Britons experience a different daily reality on the streets where they live and read a different story in their newspapers. Meanwhile, precisely the type of person whom we seek to attract to our nation—successful business people, entrepreneurs, investors, the highly skilled, top students and high-spending tourists—have encountered great difficulties entering the UK, just as we have been rightly discussing the need to compete in the global race. I fear that the disparity between the headline figures and reality is breeding ever more cynicism while doing economic damage.

I appreciate that time is relatively tight in this popular debate, so I will focus on three key concerns of mine. The first is the entry of business people to the UK, which as one might imagine is an acute day-to-day constituency issue for me as the Member for Cities of London and Westminster. The second is student visas and the third is the specific downsides in my central London constituency of the EU migration to which my hon. Friend referred.

Let me start with new migration broadly. As long ago as January 2007, I led a debate in the House of Commons on the possible impact on London of the accession of Romania and Bulgaria to the European Union. In particular, I sought to increase funding to Westminster City council, which was, even at that stage, being overburdened by the significant increase in rough sleeping, crime and antisocial behaviour following the 2004 accession of the so-called A8 countries, such as Poland and the Czech Republic.

Unfortunately, the things of which I warned at the time have come to pass as Romania and Bulgaria edged closer to fully fledged EU membership. Many of us have seen at first hand the Roma gypsy encampments that have sprung up around Marble Arch; others appeared in the vicinity of Victoria station during last year’s Olympics. Some of the people living in those encampments were part of an organised begging operation, deliberately targeting the lucrative west end tourist market in the Marble Arch area. That encampment has since become merely the most visible example of a growing problem, with similar camps appearing outside the Imperial War museum—south of the river, near the constituency of the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey)—and around the 9/11 memorial in Grosvenor square, to name just two sites here in central London.

Meanwhile I am receiving, and continue to receive, weekly reports from exasperated constituents who find spontaneous bedrooms in the doorways of their homes, as well as litter, excrement and worse in garden squares. There is also the issue of constituents and tourists who come into central London being harassed by aggressive beggars daily. Some local residents have even witnessed such issues in broad daylight. The people living in those eyesore encampments have, in my view, no intention of legally exercising their treaty rights to be here. Nevertheless, due to international treaties, particularly the EU-related treaties, they are incredibly difficult to remove, as the Minister is well aware.

Westminster City council and our local borough policing teams are now diverting vast resources to street cleaning operations, translation services and operations to tackle begging and organised crime. They are even spending vast sums of taxpayer’s money on transport to send problem migrants back to their countries of origin. Of course, little can be done if those individuals, within a matter of days, decide to return to the UK.

It is mostly local taxpayers who are paying the financial cost of national policy decisions. Until such problems are tackled, and until we find a way of stemming the vast tide of people coming from the EU, I am afraid that many of the Government’s declarations to have got a grip on immigration will mean precious little to average Britons. We therefore risk introducing a whole lot of cynicism to the system.

A number of constituents have written to alert me to schemes in ailing southern European economies to give non-EU migrants a fast track to citizenship if they invest in their nations. They know that a prize such as citizenship is enticing because it gives the applicant the potential prospect of moving to any country in the European Union.

It is terrible. Day in, day out, we see awfully desperate people from war-torn parts of northern Africa crossing the Mediterranean. We have seen the particular tragedies, which I suspect are only the tip of the iceberg, around the coast of Italy and Malta in recent weeks. The truth, however, is that many such individuals are able to make their way into the European Union. As a result, they could end up on these shores as well as in other parts of the Union within a matter of weeks or months. That provides yet another example of how difficult it will be to keep headline net migration numbers under control without resorting to the clampdown that we have seen in the past on highly skilled people from non-EU nations.

That brings me to my other concerns. I continue to be lobbied by business people and those in the education sector about the coalition’s visa regime, which continues to deter the highly skilled from engaging with the UK. I am aware that the Chancellor has made it clear in China that he sees that to be a problem, and that he wants to try to smooth it out.

Since the coalition took office in 2010, it has rightly made building the United Kingdom’s trade and export sector a core part of its economic strategy. That must be the case. We must have a sustainable recovery, which will not be built on ultra-low interest rates and a further boost in the housing market. It will have to be through investment from abroad in the globalised world in which we live, as well as ensuring that the export sector goes from strength to strength, particularly among small and medium-sized enterprises. It is a matter of some national shame that when it comes to China and India, two countries with which we have had long-standing connections, it is the Germans and, to a large extent, even the French who are teaching us some lessons. We need to ensure that we provide export credit guarantees that make it easier for our SMEs to thrive.

Foreign investment in the UK must and will continue to remain a hugely important source of financing, helping to support infrastructure development, employment and economic growth. However, those who wish to do business in the UK face a series of unnecessary obstacles, despite the Government’s best intentions. Such barriers include the perceived complexity of the UK visa system. I know that we will get some improvements, but there will still be that perception about time lags. It deters high-value business investors, visitors and workers. Along with resourcing issues at the UK’s borders and within certain embassies overseas, and the perceived lack of capacity at UK airports, that issue is potentially problematic.

I am not suggesting that we should just make life easy for tourists who come to this country, but there are some high net worth individuals—global citizens—living in places such as China who will come to London and spend £40,000 or £50,000 in one afternoon at Selfridges or Harrods. It seems madness that we are saying, “Don’t come here. Go and spend that in the salons of Milan, Rome or Paris.” That is the message that has hitherto gone out. I know that there are some improvements, which the Minister will no doubt tell us about.

The City of London corporation, in my constituency, regularly receives complaints from business. It believes that practical steps could be taken to improve the first interaction with our visa system. They include availability of own-language application forms and Schengen equivalence. The City corporation welcomes the announcement on the latter following the Chancellor’s recent visit to China, but the ambiguity of the Home Office’s subsequent statement has also been noted. The Government must work swiftly and clearly to make that announcement a reality.

Chinese applicants may have to travel up to 500 miles to appear in person at a visa-processing centre. Even after April 2013, applicants have had to submit to fingerprinting and face a non-refundable charge of £70. They have also had to supply a letter from their employer to prove that they have leave from work to travel. It is again perhaps not surprising that one study found that nearly a third of Chinese potential visitors abandon the UK visa process and instead visit other destinations, many of which may be in Europe.

The future is not just about China. There are anecdotal reports that, in countries such as Brazil, applicants are faced with taking several days off work to get visas processed. Anyone who needs to travel regularly is understandably reluctant to hand over their passport for what might be an unspecified period. The City corporation has been told that in some centres, passports can be surrendered for up to three to six months without feedback from the UK Border Agency as to when to expect a return of documents. While I would not say that that is an acute problem, as Member of Parliament for this constituency, that issue is not entirely unknown to me.

In contrast with the UK, key competitor countries have, since 2010, sought to simplify their procedures. For example, a visa for Australia can generally be processed in just 24 hours. The United States, which has been widely criticised for its visa bureaucracy, particularly in the aftermath of the terrible events of September 2001, has also overhauled its systems since President Obama gave the State Department 60 days to reassess its visa regimes for Brazil and China.

Before I turn to student visas, I must declare an interest as I have, for the past eight and a half years, been a member of the advisory board of the London School of Commerce, which is a private higher education establishment.

Britain’s world-beating education sector draws fee-paying students from across the globe, which we should be incredibly proud of. The standards and our high regard for our exam system mean that a British degree is regarded highly across the globe. Many young students who come to study will be in this country for only a short time—a year or two, and perhaps staying for a year after graduating to embark on their first taste of employment. They will return to their home nations as tremendous ambassadors for the UK for decades to come as they build wealth in their homelands. A 2011 Home Affairs Committee report suggested that no fewer than 27 contemporary foreign Heads of State were educated in the UK.

Our universities have hitherto been exceptionally good at tapping that ever-growing market, with a 9.9% market share in 2009 and export earnings calculated at about £7.9 billion. The value of international students to London as well as the UK, on the Government’s own figures, is believed to exceed £20 billion, and there is huge potential for that to grow.

I accept that there is no cap on international student numbers, but the Government’s explicit objective has been to reduce student numbers to bring net migration below 100,000 by the next election, in May 2015. The treatment of student and post-study work visas has become a regular complaint among top universities in my constituency, not just in relation to any of the bucket shop language schools or sham colleges. At one élite central London institution in my constituency, the numbers of applications from Indian and Pakistani students for postgraduate taught programmes are down by 14% and 11% respectively, as future employment prospects are a key motivator in those markets.

Another institution faces recruitment difficulties in disciplines such as accounting, economics, finance, management and law, and is finding it increasingly difficult to obtain transfers for high-level researchers to maintain an academic staff of the highest international repute and pedigree. Prospective overseas staff now perceive that it is more difficult to get a visa for the UK, and prefer to move to the US or Australia instead. There are other complaints about what is regarded as a very bureaucratic system, with enormous forms to be completed, and extortionate visa fees, which compare unfavourably with those of our western competitors.

We should not underestimate our global talent. One reason that our universities are so strong is that some of the finest and best academics work here. They should not just be regarded as overseas employees, because the reality is that many academics have to spend time abroad. They may have a visa to come to this country, but they need to go to a range of different events abroad to lecture and to find out more, and the sheer bureaucracy that administrative departments of our universities have to go through, daily marking where academics are at any one time, is an increasingly strong disincentive.

[Dr Huppert]

I agree with much of what the hon. Gentleman is saying. He is raising some real concerns, but is he also aware that academics find other processes frustrating, such as the fact that to be paid a couple of hundred pounds to examine a PhD viva somewhere, they have to go through the bureaucracy of proving their immigration status? That is completely disproportionate, because nobody comes to this country to get rich examining PhDs.

[Mark Field]

I sincerely hope that that is not the case. The hon. Gentleman, who represents a prime university town, will be well aware of such concerns. I am sure that such matters give the impression that we are not open for business in the way that we should be if we are to appeal to the brightest and best across the globe. It has to be said that many fledgling but highly reputable universities across the world are looking to attract some of the brightest talent in this country with absolutely open arms, and they would certainly not provide the evidence of reciprocal negativity that we see in elements of a bureaucratic, tick-box culture in the UKBA and the Home Office. It is a cliché to say that a reputation may take many years to build up but can be lost in an instant, but there is a real risk that the UK will lose its hard-won reputation as a country that welcomes trade, investment and the most talented students from across the world, at a time when the need for that international expertise and capital is very high.

I believe that there is a need for a change of rhetoric, because misconceptions are as damaging as actual practical barriers. The Government rightly wish to ensure that the UK is open for business. A passionate restatement of that goal both here this morning and in the main Chamber this afternoon, combined with some practical improvements to the visa process and the operation of our borders, should help to generate significant trade, investment and diplomatic benefits.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby, and to follow the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field). I agree with many of his concerns about what our policies are doing and about many people being put off from applying to come here. The issue is not only the facts of the process, but the rhetoric and the impression that is given, as will always be true of any complicated system.

Let me give my assessment. I think that legal immigration has a substantial benefit financially and in the generation of jobs. We also benefit culturally from people coming here and bringing an international mixture, as we saw in the fantastic sporting achievements in the Olympics of people who have not, or whose families have not, been here their entire lives. We in this country benefit from immigration.

We need a system that works, that is fair and fast, and that discriminates accurately between people coming here legally and those trying to break the rules, but that is not happening. The Government must actively promote our country to the world to encourage people who would benefit the UK to come here—we have seen a bit of that in relation to China—rather than send out messages about our being so determined to clamp down on immigration and so fixated on a numerical target that we are prepared to accept the consequence of driving people away.

Like the hon. Gentleman, I find that when I talk to companies in our fantastic and world-leading high-tech centre in Cambridge, one of the two top issues they almost invariably raise is concern about the immigration system. Sometimes the issue of transport is raised first, but normally it is immigration, because those companies are trying to get staff and are experiencing delays. Bad decision making holds them up. If errors are made, they have to let people go: they simply cannot wait, because they need staff who can travel.

Companies sometimes cannot get customers to come to the UK. One company I recently visited told me that prospective clients in the US whom it wants to invite over to look at a product, which sells perhaps for £500,000, are increasingly not US citizens, but citizens from China, India or elsewhere, so they cannot come into the country. It does not help British sales and exports if the person to whom companies are trying to sell cannot get into the country in a reasonable time scale. That hits our exports and reduces our ability to sell around the world. Such issues come up time and again.

The Minister kindly came to Cambridge to meet a small selection of organisations, and I hope that he found it an interesting experience. I believe that his heart is absolutely in the right place. I am sure that he does not want our approach to cause harm to Britain, and that he would like nothing better than to get rid of the problem—the bureaucracy and other issues—but that problem absolutely must be tackled.

There are no doubt problems associated with illegal immigration, but that is a very different category. People have come here illegally, been brutally exploited by gangmasters and become stuck in a grey economy or trafficked, which is certainly not the right route. We want people to apply through the correct process, but we need to treat them correctly and make appropriate decisions, which we are not doing.

If we are to have a good debate about immigration, we need more accurate numbers, with correct information about who should be here and who actually is here. We simply do not yet have that information, or the competence required, which undermines the ability to make rational arguments or have confidence in the system. Until recently, we had no idea how many people who applied as students were here and had overstayed, let alone who they were.

We should target people who are not here legally, and not get it wrong. Some of the texts sent out by Capita, based on Home Office data, were targeted at people who are British citizens. There are a huge number of errors in those data, and there continue to be problems. The Vine report on e-borders—even the bits not redacted by the Home Secretary—have highlighted that about 650,000 alerts about potential drug and tobacco smugglers were accidentally deleted. That is not the standard of competence that we need from the Home Office.

The problem is not new. The previous Government had the problem of an asylum backlog, with some 500,000 cases discovered sitting there and awaiting a decision. Such bureaucratic incompetence is a problem for all Ministers, none of whom would want such things to be going on, but the problem is still there.

[Mark Field]

It is only fair to put it on the record that the redaction on the part of the Home Office should not necessarily be seen as sinister or as trying to pull the wool over British people’s eyes; some genuine security-related issues were obviously in the Home Secretary’s mind in that regard.

[Dr Huppert]

Indeed. I do not want to go into that issue in detail, but the Home Affairs Committee has asked the Home Secretary to let it see that document in private, but so far she has said that she will not do that. I hope that she is not suggesting that the Select Committee is a risk to national security; I am sure that she would not want to say that.

We must have exit checks back in place. We need to know who is leaving, so that we can tailor our resources more appropriately. When someone applies for a repeated visa, we have no idea whether they leave promptly every time, or whether they stay until just before they reapply. That absurd system means that we cannot tell the person who has been repeatedly breaking the rules from the person who has been repeatedly sticking to them. Exit checks were scrapped many years ago by the previous Government, and it is now a struggle to bring them back in. We must fight for their return, even though the Vine report was not encouraging on that.

The hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster talked about students, from whom we benefit massively. Education is one of our biggest exports. Students who come here to study pay very large fees. They contribute to society while they are here, and many want to stay on and work here, and it is fantastic to keep the people whom we have just trained. Those who go back benefit us in many other ways. As the hon. Gentleman said, many world leaders and company leaders have trained here. We do fantastically well from a network of people who go on to act as British ambassadors. None the less, the messages that get sent out are problematic. The hon. Gentleman spoke about post-study work. We should make it far easier for people to come here and work and use the skills that we have given them. I hope the Government will move on that matter, because there are great benefits to be had.

We also have an issue around rhetoric, which is becoming increasingly unpleasant and inaccurate. A recent headline in The Telegraph said that there were 600,000 unemployed European Union migrants in Britain. The definition of unemployed in that instance was interesting, because it included schoolchildren, pensioners and a range of other people whom one would not normally think of as unemployed. They were not a problem, but that is the rhetoric that we see. The Government have touched on that matter. I am sure the Minister and I will disagree over the appropriateness of the “Go home” vans and of some of the other messages that are put out. Today, the Home Secretary has announced that the “Go home” vans will no longer be used. I am pleased about that because they were deeply inappropriate. We must not play into that unpleasant media rhetoric that criticises the benefits from immigration.

We must fix the decision-making process around individuals, because such errors are replicated. People get concerned when they hear stories of errors being made, and there are too many. Anybody who has a constituency case load will see bizarre decisions being made and things that do not make much sense. The Home Office tries to correct such decisions when they come up. I pay tribute to the regional account manager, Saleah Ahmed, who has helped me with a huge range of cases, but it should not be the role of MPs to spot that people have got things repeatedly wrong. Those decisions make a big difference and they get around the world. A perverse decision was made in a recent case: an Indian student who was required to have a certain amount of money in their bank account ended up being just £20 short of a large sum, due to currency fluctuations just before the decision. Any reasonable system would have spotted that the reason was a drop in the rupee by a few per cent., and would have concluded that the person deserved to pass the test, rather than failing them and causing huge problems.

We must do more work on those errors, which must be the bane of the Minister’s life. The number of successful appeals is quite alarming, as is the number of cases which the Home Office ends up not even defending because it accepts that it has got it wrong. The Home Affairs Committee has detailed many examples of such cases.

On the separate issue of asylum and refugees, which none of us wants to see conflated with general migration, the Select Committee recently published a detailed report on the asylum position. We found people waiting some 16 years for a decision on what should happen. I have constituents who are waiting. They contact the Border Agency every year asking for a decision and are told, “Not yet, we will let you know later.” That is totally unacceptable. We cannot put things in a box marked “complex cases” and then leave them there. These are people who have been stuck in this country for years. One constituent of mine has been waiting for 14 years. They are uncertain of their future and of what to do. We should never do that to people. People deserve a decision, and those decisions need to be correct and accurate. One problem with appeals is that the Government lose so many of them. I am sure that there are people who are trying to delay making a decision, but there are also those who have a genuine problem and a genuine case.

One of my constituents had been sentenced to death in Iran because he had converted to Christianity. He applied for asylum and included a copy of his death sentence and was told that that was not enough evidence that he was at risk. I would love to know what sort of proof most people have. That situation has now been corrected, and it did happen some five years ago.

We need better training and a system that is focused on ensuring that decisions are right. We have staff who appear to believe that their job is to try to stop people claiming asylum. That was highlighted by the independent inspector, who said that caseworkers were selective in the use of information to support the case for refusing asylum. Caseworkers should aim to make a decision that is correct rather than one not to let people in. There have been some horrible cases. In one case, the caseworker quoted

“independent country of origin information which stated that women in Iraq could gain effective help from a local police station, but omitted the preceding sentence which stated that ‘women have been sexually assaulted by the police when reporting to a police station.’”

That somewhat undermines the support one could expect from a police station, and makes it a far more reasonable action not to go there. We are trapping many of these people in a cycle of hopelessness, leaving them very vulnerable. I suggest Members look at that report and the British Red Cross report on destitution.

Let me summarise some of the good things that the Government have done. They have ended the routine use of child detention for immigration purposes. It was one of the great shames of the previous Government that thousands upon thousands of children were detained for immigration purposes; that should not happen. I am pleased that the Government have made the change. As has been debated in this place previously, however, more constraints have been put on family migration, making it hard for many of my constituents to be reunited with their families. Families are being torn apart, and I know the Government are looking more carefully at that.

There are also the oddities in our immigration system, which I have raised with the Minister before, and I thank him for his recent letter. For example, children born to unmarried British fathers before 2006 are not entitled to British citizenship due to a loophole in the way that the legislation was written under the previous Government. They would be so entitled if they were born after 2006. I am pleased that the Minister accepts that that should be changed. I hope that there will be some legislative vehicle to do that. Will he comment also on the related question of what happens to people in that category who are raised in the UK and who are effectively stateless? Other countries believe them to be British—they have a British father and they are in the UK—but we do not allow them British citizenship.

Another matter raised with me was the effect of border controls on families whose children have a different surname from the parent with whom they are travelling. Quite rightly, when that happens, the border force asks why such children are being taken out of the country; that is absolutely appropriate. However, it is incredibly frustrating for a parent who travels constantly, because they must carry with them seven legal documents, including a birth certificate and a marriage certificate. That seems inappropriate. A suggestion has been made to the Passport Office that parents’ names should be listed in a child’s passport. That would simplify the situation and enable us to stop cases where children are being abducted, and not stop families who are trying to travel properly. I hope the Minister will consider that matter.

We must have immigration controls, but we also need exit checks to be introduced competently so that we know who is here and who is not, which will result in better data. That will allow us to have a properly informed debate rather than the anti-foreign rhetoric that is heard far too often from both the media and political parties on the left and right. I want the Minister to ensure that we have a system that works and that makes the correct decisions so that the right people who will benefit Britain can come in quickly and easily and that the people who are not allowed here also get fair, reasonable and accurate rejections. I hope the Minister gets a reputation for making our decision-making process entirely competent and not politically sexy.

Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Bill

Debate between Julian Huppert and Mark Field

Monday 5th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Dr Huppert]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his excellent question. My short answer is yes; my longer answer is: by a bit. This is not the solution that I would most like to see, but it is a step in the right direction. I wish that we could go further, and perhaps the other place will be more able to achieve that than we are here. Perhaps the more enlightened Labour peers will take the hon. Gentleman’s perspective on this matter, rather than that taken by those on his Front Bench.

I move now to the subject of this group of amendments, which deal with sunset clauses. I argued in Committee that there were four reasons for having such clauses. One relates to debating the issue in question every year; another is about having a vote every year. As we have said, that method has not turned out to be very effective. It has been very much a token gesture. Although it is nice to see it in place, it has not really delivered. We still have the ability to debate this matter at any time, if some other change takes place. particularly in the light of the Government’s new approach to Back-Bench debates, Similarly, the Government could get rid of TPIMs at any time, as could any future Government. Five years is a maximum, not a minimum. The annual review has simply not been an effective tool, which is a great shame. It does not work very well, and Parliament should look at how effective it is at doing things like that.

The Government think that the review provisions are a really good thing. I would like to see them happening seriously and in detail, but the level of review that has happened under this Government cannot happen every year. It did not do so in the past, to that level. There was a quick look, and a quick renewal. That is not what we want. We want to look underneath what is happening, rather than simply taking the easy option.

I have asked the Minister and the shadow Minister whether, if either of them is in the next Government, they will ensure that a proper review is carried out. If I am in the next Government, I will do my very best to ensure that that happens—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”] I am delighted to hear that that has support on both sides of the House; we will have to see what happens. I would do my best to ensure that there was a review that moved us closer to the position that I would like—namely, a lower-risk solution that was also better for civil liberties.

[Mr Mark Field]

Does the hon. Gentleman not realise that this gets to the nub of the problem—that there is a distinction between would-be or former members of the Executive, whose view is almost “If only you knew what I know now”, and many other parliamentarians and indeed the public outside? That disconnect is one of the most dangerous elements of the entire debate.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Debate between Julian Huppert and Mark Field

Thursday 31st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Dr Huppert]

That is a very good point. A range of legislation applies, and in Committee we discussed some aspects that could or could not be used. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to make that point, but the question is whether the provisions before us are required.

I do not propose to detain the House by going through all the discussions we had in Committee, because I am sure that Members can read Hansard, if they have not already done so—I am sure that many Members have. Questions arise on the scale of activity. There is a spectrum and we need to consider: who should be allowed to do what; how often; and for how long? The worst of the Bill’s original proposals was the one to give council officials, or even non-council officials given authority by a council, the power to use reasonable force to try to deprive a protestor of an item of property. I was extremely alarmed by that. I am not comfortable with the idea that those people, who are not trained, should be allowed to use that power, and I was not alone. I thank the Minister for listening to me when I voiced my concerns early on and for having to endure our talking about it extensively in Committee.

In one of the Committee’s evidence sessions, I asked what our witnesses thought about that proposal. Shami Chakrabarti, from Liberty, made her position very clear:

“I am also very nervous about non-police personnel exercising those powers.”

None of us would be surprised about that. Metropolitan police Assistant Commissioner Lynne Owens made the point that police officers receive a lot of training and operate within a legislative framework and a misconduct procedure, but she said:

“The provision on the use of force would make us nervous.”––[Official Report, Police Reform and Social Responsibility Public Bill Committee, 20 January 2011; c. 113, Q32.]

[Mr Mark Field]

As the hon. Gentleman will have gathered from my contribution, I have considerable sympathy with what he is saying. However, how would he view the counter-argument, which is that there is a risk of upping the ante by having people in uniform—police officers—doing this work, rather than making this a local authority-related civil offence? Does he think there is a risk that bringing uniformed officers into the piece could turn a peaceable situation nasty?

[Dr Huppert]

There would be no requirement to bring the police in if one did not want to use “reasonable force” powers. I am very alarmed at the idea of a council official, who might not be particularly well trained, who might not be in uniform and who might not have any obvious form of authority, having the power to use reasonable force in such an instance. If I was involved in a situation like that, I would not expect that person to have such powers. If one did not wish to escalate the situation, one could simply not use reasonable force—one could use no force at all.

[Mr Field]

But does the hon. Gentleman not accept that the use of the words “reasonable force” in the legislation is to protect the council officer, rather than to reflect what might take place?

[Dr Huppert]

I think that that was indeed the intention, but “reasonable force” is not a beautifully defined phrase and it is tough to define it. It is particularly tough for people who are not experienced to work out what is and what is not “reasonable force”, particularly in a situation that may well be inflamed. I would not want to see council officials having to make those tough judgment calls.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Huppert]

rose—

[Mr Mark Field]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Huppert]

I am having trouble following the logic of the right hon. Gentleman’s argument. He is right to say that this is a place of deliberation, and I think we all share the belief that there should not be protests inside this Chamber, other than those made by Members of Parliament. However, we are not talking about that, we are not talking about protests in the Members’ Lobby or Central Lobby, and we are not even talking about allowing protests within the precincts of the Palace. We are talking only about protests outside the Palace of Westminster. That is outside of where the deliberation is happening. I would love him to explain why he thinks it is all right to protest outside Downing street, but not outside the Palace.

[Mr Field]

Does the right hon. Gentleman not accept the fear that many of us in this Chamber feel, that once we go down the path of saying that Parliament—