Foreign National Offenders (Removal)

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend is always willing to come forward with practical proposals on this matter. Steps have been taken to deal with those who would otherwise be released from prison, and to ensure that foreign national offenders who are subject to deportation orders are not being released into open conditions. On occasion, immigration judges do release foreign national offenders into the community, and release them on bail, so it is not simply a question of what is happening in relation to people who are in our prisons already. I recognise my hon. Friend’s concern and say that we will continue to look at the measures that we can take to improve our ability to deport these foreign criminals.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

The Home Secretary is right that successive Governments have failed to get a grip of this complex issue, but will she look at some of the Select Committee’s recommendations? For example, when a foreign national is arrested, their records should be checked by the Association of Chief Police Officers’ Criminal Records Office. Fewer than half are currently being checked. On sentence, an e-mail should be sent to the Home Office from the courts; it should not be a fax that is put on the records manually. Finally, the warnings index is just not fit for purpose. We need to sign up to one or two of the databases that will allow us to know who is entering our country, so that we can, if necessary, prevent them from coming here in the first place. Will she please consider those sensible recommendations, which we have made in the past?

[Mrs May]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his points. The Home Affairs Committee has considered this issue on a number of occasions and has taken it very seriously, and we look at the proposals that it makes. Next month the Met will be introducing the full checks against the ACPO Criminal Records Office, so action is being taken in that area. Of course it is under this Government that the links between immigration enforcement and, initially, the Metropolitan police through Operation Nexus were put in place, and that has meant that we have seen more than 2,000 foreign criminals being removed from this country. Operation Nexus has expanded into other parts of the country, and I hope that we see it expanding throughout the United Kingdom. In relation to stopping people coming here in the first place, we have been working on agreements with other countries. Membership of the European Criminal Records Information System, which has been part of the 2014 debate and is one of those areas that we wish to opt back into, is an important part of the process.

National Crime Agency

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

I hope that during the debate I will convince the hon. Members for South Down (Ms Ritchie) and for Foyle (Mark Durkan) that the right thing to do, with the assurances that are in place, is for their constituents and the people of Northern Ireland to take this issue on board. As I continue with my remarks I will elaborate on why it is so vital to the people of Northern Ireland to have the NCA there.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

May I re-emphasise what the hon. Members for North Down (Lady Hermon) and for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) have said? The director general of the National Crime Agency, Keith Bristow, recently appeared before the Home Affairs Committee. We see him at most only twice a year, so the settlement in Northern Ireland is much better as far as the accountability of the NCA is concerned.

[Mike Penning]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his comments. His lending weight to this argument is ever so important.

The continuing peace process in Northern Ireland cannot stand still; it must progress and go forward. Some political parties in the five-party coalition in the Executive have concerns, and we have heard examples of the effects of not having the NCA in its full capacity—it does operate with some capacity—in an area of the United Kingdom that has the only land border. I do not mean that criminalisation in the Republic of Ireland is different from any other part of Europe, but that the situation is fundamentally different because of our open border with the Republic.

We have heard about the number of gangs—that is the polite word for them these days—and people who come together to disrupt, corrupt and sometimes brutalise our communities, whether in England, Scotland, Northern Ireland or Wales. As has been alluded to, however, it goes further than that. Organised gangs are smuggling cigarettes or diesel—I hope the new marker works as it is important for the economy of the Province to prevent such smuggling. Where do the profits go? As a former Northern Ireland Minister, I know where some of that money goes, and it is truly frightening. As we have seen, a paramilitary organisation—it loves to call itself the new IRA, although I always found it difficult to call it that—wants to continue to disrupt the peace, and kill and maim innocent people in Northern Ireland.

--- Later in debate ---

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) and I congratulate him on his knowledge and breadth of experience of these issues. I was so impressed that I shall remind him that there is a vacancy on the Home Affairs Committee; I hope he will put his name forward. I also want to pay tribute to the right hon. Member for South Leicestershire (Mr Robathan), a fellow Leicestershire MP, who has announced that he is stepping down. He has been in Parliament almost as long as I have, and does not look like “the late Minister”; he is still moving about. I wish him a career outside the House that will be suitable for his skills.

Two documents produced by the Home Affairs Committee—written and oral evidence—are tagged to the motion before the House. On behalf of the Committee, I fully support every word of the motion, which was eloquently expressed by the right hon. Member for Belfast North (Mr Dodds) and his colleagues. I was going to say that this is an unusual debate for Northern Ireland politics, but I do not know because I do not attend many of them. However, it is great to see unanimity in this House—so far, anyway—on the issue of the National Crime Agency. Unfortunately, I cannot stay to the end of the debate, so I do not know what others will say, but I will of course come in for the wind-ups.

The Home Affairs Committee is clear that this is a national crime agency. We have just begun a review of the NCA’s work, one year on, and only last week we took evidence from Keith Bristow, its director general, who is responsible to the Home Secretary. Of all the changes in the landscape of policing, the long-lasting one will be the National Crime Agency. I thought I got a hint from my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), the shadow Home Office Minister, that the next Government—if it is his Government—will support the retention of the NCA. If so, I welcome it, because the creation by the Home Secretary of an organisation that deals with the fight against organised crime, online crime, gangs and serious and organised crime has been extremely important. Even after a year and a half, it is doing better than its predecessor organisation, the Serious Organised Crime Agency.

I am not clear whether the landscape of policing will be as uncluttered as the Home Secretary would like in the end—when the dancing stops and everyone looks at the bits before and the bits afterwards—but this organisation has certainly won support and done a very effective job since its inception. However, as we said to Mr Bristow last week, we were concerned that an organisation that has cost the UK taxpayer £500 million has so far seized assets of only £30 million. We felt that a lot more work needs to be done.

Perhaps one of the reasons is that obstacles are being put in the way of the NCA’s operation by some in Northern Ireland. I went for a brief visit to Northern Ireland at the invitation of my hon. Friend the Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley). I visited the Gallaher factory in his constituency, which sadly will close shortly, with the loss of many jobs. I also went to the constituency of the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), where we met a number of his local police officers. I also met Matt Baggott, to whom I want to pay tribute for his work in Northern Ireland. He was a very low-profile chief constable in Leicestershire and did not interfere to any great extent in too many things. When he got the Northern Ireland job, I said, “Well, you won’t be able to do that in Northern Ireland”, but he has proved to be a very effective Chief Constable and I wish him well.

I discussed with Matt Baggott and colleagues the effect of the difficulties being put in the NCA’s way on the work of the police in Northern Ireland. Although he was extremely charming and careful in what he said to me, I got the feeling from the discussions that this was going to be a major problem. Although arrangements have been made, I doubt whether they are sufficient.

Accountability—an issue raised by the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson)—is much stronger in Northern Ireland for the NCA than it is even in our Parliament. We will get to see Mr Bristow—not that he wishes, I am sure, to see the Home Affairs Committee that often—most probably once or twice a year. He is of course a civil servant and will therefore be responsible, first and foremost, to the Home Secretary. However, the arrangements put in place in Northern Ireland for scrutiny of such an organisation are better than one could ever have expected.

If we send out a strong message to those who are putting obstacles in the way of the National Crime Agency, they will understand that the fight against organised crime, which has been very well elucidated by the hon. Member for Beckenham, the Minister for Policing and the shadow Minister, can only be enhanced if the writ of the NCA is to run in Northern Ireland in the same way as it runs in Leicestershire, Northamptonshire or Avon and Somerset. That will allow the organisation, which we all support, to do its work effectively and to catch those criminals who are doing their best to undermine the values of our society. That is why I fully support this motion. It is clear in the Home Affairs Committee’s reports and in the evidence we received that the obstacles should be removed and the NCA’s writ should run in Northern Ireland in the same way it does in the rest of the United Kingdom.

Oral Answers to Questions

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Monday 13th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that point. Following my statement to the House in June, we introduced more staff and more telephone lines for the MPs hotline. A number of MPs were complimentary about the service they received, but I recognise that he had a different experience. We want to make sure we learn all the lessons necessary for the future, and we will be reviewing the service.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I warmly commend the Home Secretary for her decision to abolish the agency status of the Passport Office, which occurred 10 days after it was recommended by the Home Affairs Committee—we look forward to her accepting our recommendations on other matters as promptly. Last month, however, it emerged that officials at the Passport Office received £674,000 in bonuses, whereas citizens had to pay £103 for a fast-track passport before she allowed that process to be free. Will she stop those bonuses and instead give the money to those who suffered so badly over the summer?

[Mrs May]

As I pointed out in my answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Sittingbourne and Sheppey (Gordon Henderson), I did commission a review of the status of the Passport Office. I think that the report of the right hon. Gentleman’s Home Affairs Committee came between considering the response to that review and the decision, but we are at one in thinking that the correct action was taken. A number of people did receive some financial help. Following my statement to the House, people whose holidays were in danger of being cancelled as a result of the problems at the Passport Office received free upgrades in relation to the handling of their passports. It is important that we ensure that the forecasting at the Passport Office is right and that the office is able to deal with people in an appropriate time scale, so that we do not see a repeat of the problems that we had this summer.

Child Sex Abuse (Rotherham)

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

In my discussions with the chief constable, we discussed the investigations that are currently in hand in South Yorkshire, as well as the resource requirements involved. We also discussed the need to ensure that the work that the police are now doing with the council involved better cohesion to ensure that the victims are being properly supported. My right hon. Friend is absolutely right to suggest that it is terrible enough to be subjected to these kinds of abuse, but that to see the abusers walking free and no one taking any action is absolutely appalling. I believe that South Yorkshire police are now working on investigations to ensure that the perpetrators can be brought to justice.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

There is rare unanimity between the Front Benchers about the seriousness of this situation. As the Home Secretary says, the chief constable of South Yorkshire will be appearing before the Home Affairs Committee this afternoon. I have spoken this morning to Commissioner Wright, and he will be appearing before us next week. Last June, the Committee published a report on Rochdale and Rotherham, and child grooming nationally, making 130 recommendations. One was specifically about getting an Ofsted investigation by last December and a second was about collating good practice. Can the Home Secretary assure the House that that has now been done? Although it was the Committee that urged her to pause before she announced her panel and the name of her chairperson, the length of pause is slightly longer than we anticipated. We would hope that she has that name and panel in place as soon as possible. I know that she has been careful, and I appreciate that, but the time is right for us to have that name.

[Mrs May]

The right hon. Gentleman raised specific issues about the recommendations his Committee made when it looked into Rochdale and Rotherham. I understand from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education that Ofsted will be going in again to look at these issues, and that is important. Obviously, some of the findings that have been developed in previous reports of that sort have gone into the work the national group has been undertaking. It is chaired by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Crime Prevention.

Police Reform

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his observation, and may I also take this opportunity to thank and commend him for the work he did in the Home Office as both Immigration Minister and, latterly, as Policing Minister, while also being a criminal justice Minister. He is absolutely right. The code of ethics from the College of Policing is a very important step forward and it is about exactly what he says: ensuring that the high standards of honesty and integrity that we see from the vast majority of officers apply to every officer.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I welcome the Home Secretary’s statement, which is very much in keeping with the recommendations made by the Select Committee over a number of years. Through her, may I welcome the new Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims to his Front-Bench post? The Committee considered the case of the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), a 30-second incident that has so far cost £271,000. If her proposed reforms had been in place, would that have meant that that case, for example, would been dealt with in a different way? Does she accept the basic principle that whether a case is serious or minor the police should never be left to investigate matters themselves without proper oversight?

[Mrs May]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question. He refers, of course, to a case that involved not just misconduct hearings inside the police but the Crown Prosecution Service considering the potential for charges and criminal investigation. Of course, the changes I have announced would make no difference to any criminal investigations, but if misconduct hearings were to be heard in public, that would make a difference. As for his last point about the importance of ensuring that people can have confidence that complaints and misconduct issues are being dealt with properly, that absolutely underpins the reforms.

Child Abuse

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 17th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

May I commend my hon. Friend for the work he has done in this area over the years? He and I joined this House at the same time, and I know that he has consistently led on child protection issues and has put a lot of work into this area, both when he was children’s Minister and outside that time, and he continues to do so. I will certainly be happy to ask the Minister for Crime Prevention to report to the House on the child exploitation action plan that my hon. Friend developed as the children’s Minister and also on how the group that was set up subsequently is taking that work forward, looking at how it can build on it in a number of other ways, so that we are always looking to ensure that we have the best possible response.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

May I join the Home Secretary in congratulating those involved in Operations Endeavour and Notarise for the work they have done, which shows the importance of the expertise of CEOP? She is right not to rush in and name a new chair for the inquiry. This needs to be done with care and full consultation, so that the chair can help to choose the panel and fashion the terms of reference. However, I am concerned that not enough is being done by the internet companies. Will she confirm that at the very least she is getting a list or a number of the websites that have been closed down as a result of the summit that took place last November? The public need to be reassured that these websites are being closed. If she gives us regular updates, that would be extremely helpful.

[Mrs May]

I recognise the right hon. Gentleman’s concern to ensure that as much information as possible is made available to the House on these matters. We have seen action by industry, but we continue to talk to industry about how these issues can be addressed. We will be represented on the UK-US taskforce by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims, whom I welcome to his new position in the Home Office. We are working very closely with industry. It is important to ensure that industry is able to undertake the tasks that we wish it to. It is doing that, but we want to work further with industry to ensure that we are getting the blocking and the filtering absolutely right, so that we can have the maximum impact.

Relocation Scheme (Syrians)

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Wednesday 16th July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Sarah Teather]

I did see similar things. There is one set of difficulties for refugees living in camps and another for refugees living in communities. The thing that really bothers refugees living in camps is the lack of privacy and the shared toilet facilities. Most of them are living in tents, although the UNHCR has gradually been trying to replace the tents with more permanent caravans. The lives of people living in camps are extremely hard, and many get to a point at which they can no longer cope. That is when they move out into the community. However, in the community, they are not having their housing costs paid, so they find that they run out of money. Some people cycle between one and the other as they try desperately to find a bearable situation. It is quite obvious that a lot of agencies are not reaching people living in communities. Those who are living in the cities and have been picked up by an agency are luckier than others.

I do not want to go too far into the question of aid, because I am trying to outline some of the conditions before moving on to talk about the relocation scheme, but I hope that the hon. Lady finds the opportunity for a detailed debate on the issues relating to aid in Lebanon and other countries, because they are very important.

I was talking about the five countries—Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq and Egypt—that currently host 2.8 million refugees. I am going to say that figure again because it is really important: when we talk about the numbers in this country, it is worth bearing in mind that there are 2.8 million refugees, half of whom are children. Of those children, six in 10 are not enrolled in school. Of all households, one in four is headed by women, who face a lone fight for survival. It is extremely difficult for them.

Despite the conditions I saw, nearly every refugee I spoke to was desperate to return home. They consider the phase they are in to be temporary and are desperate for peace to begin so that they can start their lives all over again. However, with no end in sight to the conflict in Syria and with the crisis in Iraq growing bloodier by the day, as we discussed a moment ago, the pressure on neighbouring countries to cope with the constant influx of refugees continues to mount and the prospects for safe return to Syria continue to diminish.

By contrast to Syria’s neighbours, Europe has been relatively unaffected by the refugee crisis. Excluding Turkey from the figures, only 4% of all Syrians who have fled their homeland have sought asylum in Europe. That is a total of 123,600, of whom a mere 4,084 have applied for asylum in the UK. I am going to repeat the number I cited a minute ago: 2.8 million. Of 2.8 million refugees, 4,084 have applied for asylum in the UK. That is a drop in the ocean.

Last September, the UNHCR called on countries to admit 30,000 Syrian refugees on resettlement, humanitarian admission or other programmes by the end of 2014. That 30,000 sounds like a big number, unless we keep repeating 2.8 million. We then remember that it is a really small number. In February, with the refugee crisis growing by the day, the UNHCR expanded its call, seeking an extra 100,000 places in 2015 and 2016. So far, 31,817 resettlement places have been offered by European countries, including Germany offering 20,000, Austria 1,500, Sweden 1,000 and Norway 1,000. The USA has an open-ended number of available places.

What about the UK? The British Government have been among the most generous donors to the humanitarian response to the Syrian refugee crisis, and I want to place on the record my congratulations to them on their strong leadership. However, they have been much slower to move on resettlement issues. In the words of the UNHCR representative to the UK, Roland Schilling:

“this is an extraordinary crisis requiring extraordinary measures”.

He also said:

“International solidarity and burden sharing is now an imperative if we want to ease the suffering of Syrian refugees, assist the neighbouring counties and avoid further destabilization of the region.”

Back in January, I was delighted that the Government announced that the UK would set up the vulnerable persons relocation scheme, which would run in parallel to the UNHCR’s resettlement scheme. The Government were late to make that decision, and it took concerted effort and leadership from the UNHCR, the Refugee Council and Amnesty International, among many others, to persuade them to make it, along with strong advocacy from MPs from across the political spectrum. Nevertheless, the Government did make that very welcome announcement.

I was not concerned that the Government were running their own scheme in co-operation with the UNHCR rather than as part of the UNHCR scheme; what is important is that those vulnerable refugees for whom returning home is nigh on impossible—for example, those who have suffered sexual violence, or who would face persecution or need specialised medical care—are offered resettlement in the UK. However, I am extremely concerned that, six months on, very little seems to have come of that announcement.

Answers to parliamentary questions show that so far only 50 refugees have been resettled through the Government’s scheme, although perhaps the Minister will correct me if I have the wrong figure; if it is out of date, he can update us. When the scheme was announced, the Government said that there would be no quota but that those who were deemed the most vulnerable would be prioritised. However, despite the Government’s not providing a quota, it was suggested that the scheme would support

“several hundred people over the next three years”.

Will the Minister explain why the number of people who have managed to come here has so far been so very low? Assurances were given to the House that the Government were committed to the scheme. What has happened to delay the resettlement of refugees? Why has the take-up been so slow?

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate and on her outstanding work as chairman of the all-party group on refugees. We will miss her hugely when she leaves the House next May.

One important element might be the involvement of the diaspora community in this country. I have been approached by so many members of the Arab diaspora, including Syrians who have been settled here for many years, who want to help the Government and to assist in bringing more people over. Does the hon. Lady agree that it is important to include members of the diaspora? They might be able to help to increase the numbers from the very low figures we currently have.

[Sarah Teather]

The right hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. There are obviously going to be some sensitivities relating to why a person is so vulnerable that they need to be resettled, but there are certainly areas of the country with a significant Syrian diaspora population and the Government should encourage councils in those areas to work to ensure that support systems are in place. I encourage the diaspora to pressure the Government and councils to take part in the scheme and try to increase the number of people we are able to resettle.

I return to the questions I was asking a moment ago. Will the Minister comment on how the figure of “several hundred people” was reached? The VPR scheme appears to be based on need, and that need is obviously increasing, as shown by the UNHCR’s call for more resettlement places. Has the Minister considered re-evaluating that “several hundred” figure upwards? If not, why not? What are the Government doing to ensure that their commitment is delivered and is not just an announcement?

It is worth re-rehearsing the reasons for beginning the scheme in the first place. In the run-up to agreeing to the VPR scheme, Ministers argued that it was more favourable for Syrian refugees to remain in the region and for us to supply aid rather than resettlement places. I and many others made the point that it was not an either/or but a both/and situation; doing one does not preclude the possibility of doing the other well in a targeted and effective way. Both are necessary to cope with the ongoing crisis and to support those countries in the region that are supporting by far the brunt of the refugee population.

The scheme was necessary for the following reasons: first, because some refugees simply cannot adequately be resettled in the region because of their particular vulnerability, as recognised by the name of the scheme; secondly, because, as Roland Schilling hinted at in the quote I read out, there is an acute need to show political solidarity with the countries most affected by the refugee crisis—if we are going to argue that they must keep open their borders so that refugees have a chance at life, we must do something to demonstrate our equal commitment; and thirdly, because if we do not provide safe routes for refugees to travel, they will find unsafe routes, as we are already seeing.

Neighbouring countries are struggling to cope with the numbers, resulting in increased numbers of refugees making dangerous journeys to Europe to seek safety. In 2013, the number of people who arrived in Europe by crossing the Mediterranean sea reached nearly 60,000—almost three times the number who arrived the previous year. That increase has been driven at least in part by the ever-increasing numbers of Syrians taking to boats in the Mediterranean, mostly departing from Libya, Egypt and Turkey. For example, last year Syrians were the No. 1 nationality arriving by sea, with one in four arrivals being Syrian or Palestinians from Syria. Many of them were children, with more than 3,600 Syrian children arriving in Italy last year alone, including 1,224 who were unaccompanied.

This year, the trend has continued. During the first six months of the year, 60,000 people arrived by sea in Italy alone: a fourfold increase on the same period in 2013. Those are not journeys that people choose to take lightly. They are the actions of people who are desperate and see no other option.

In December, some parliamentary colleagues and I boarded a migrant boat on the Thames outside Parliament for international migrants day. It was a tiny boat that had brought around 30 migrants into Lampedusa from Libya. We were given permission to have just eight on board after modifications for safety, and on a fine day on the Thames the boat rocked in ways that gave me a real insight into the dangers that people face travelling on an ocean in an overcrowded boat.

Resettlement programmes offer safe and legal routes for refugees to find safety in Europe. Each year, the UK takes around 750 resettled refugees through the gateway protection programme, something that we as a country should rightly be proud of. We cannot watch the tragedies happening in the ocean around Lampedusa and pretend that it does not have any relevance to us and that we bear no responsibility. Unless we are prepared to offer safe routes into Europe, we bear responsibility for some of those people who drown in the Mediterranean.

I want the Syrian vulnerable persons relocation scheme to be something we can be proud of, like the gateway protection programme. For that to be the case, the Government need to be bolder and more ambitious. The UNHCR now predicts there will be 4.1 million Syrian refugees by the end of this year. Through the vulnerable persons relocation scheme we are on course to have offered only 100 resettlement places by the end of this year. That is 0.002% of all Syrian refugees. We have to do better than that.

We have a proud history of offering sanctuary to those fleeing violence, and we have shown real leadership on humanitarian aid. It is time we lived up to that reputation here and resettled more refugees.

Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Tuesday 15th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Lady is right. Although we know that there are issues about the Court judgment and its implications over the summer, there will be considerable concern about the pace at which this Bill has been introduced and has been debated in Parliament. The short-term debate would be easier if there had been a wider longer-term debate about the question of a sensible framework in which the public could feel involved and have their say. If emergency issues came up, as they will from time to time—for any Government in any circumstances there will be court judgments that suddenly mean that an emergency response is needed—it would be so much easier to have the emergency debate against a backdrop in which the broader issues of security and liberty, and how we balance them in an internet age, are being properly debated and discussed, with public involvement.

Those of us who believe in the vital work the police and agencies need to be able to do should be the most ready to debate both the powers and the safeguards that are needed, because they must have public consent. We cannot hide behind a veil of secrecy. Of course, that debate must be handled with care so that we do not expose important intelligence capabilities that need to be kept secret to be effective, but we can have a debate about the legal framework, about the principles and about the powers and safeguards we need.

We know the vital work that we want the police and agencies to be able to do: building the intelligence that foils terrorist attacks; providing the fast response needed to find the last location of a missing child or murder victim; and stopping online fraud and cyber-attacks, which are escalating with every month. We also know that people will only continue to support those vital powers if they also know that there are proper safeguards: protection for innocent people’s privacy; public reassurance about what that protection really is; safeguards so that powers cannot be abused; safeguards, checks and balances on what the police and intelligence agencies can do; and a Government and Parliament that recognise that this is difficult and do not try just to sweep it all under the carpet and deny the public a say.

The lack of a wider debate is making it harder to have a short-term debate today. This is not the right way to have this debate. However, I also believe that we cannot reject this legislation now; it would be wrong to do so. We need to support it today, but we must also use it to get the wider debate that we need.

Let us be clear about what is at stake. The Court judgment means that the regulations on data retention need to be replaced; otherwise, they will fall altogether. This is about the requirement for companies to hold their billing data and other communications data for 12 months. This does not refer to the content of the calls and messages; it just covers the communications data. If the police are investigating a crime or pursuing an emergency that involves risk to life or limb, they can get a warrant and ask the companies to hand over the data relating to the suspect. As the Home Secretary has said, these data are used to identify conspiracies, prove alibis, locate missing children and find out who is committing online crimes or sending online child abuse. The police need warrants to do this, and the data do not tell us what people are saying. They cannot tell us the content of an e-mail—that is private—but they can help us to solve crimes.

These data are particularly important in dealing with serious and organised crime. For example, they can show that drug dealers who claim not to know each other have in fact been calling each other every week. They can show who the armed robber called to help him get away from the scene of a crime, or where a missing child was when their phone was switched off. They can also help to trace who a terror suspect contacted before they went to Syria, for example, and to work out who might be grooming or radicalising more young people to go there.

These data are used in court in 95% of the serious and organised crime cases that reach prosecution. They are particularly important in relation to online child abuse, because they allow the police to get warrants, to contact companies to find out the name and address of the person who has sent vile images of child abuse and to rescue children who are being hurt. A recent Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre investigation resulted in the arrest of 200 suspects and identified 132 children who were at risk of abuse. The prosecutions and actions needed to rescue those children were made possible only through the use of communications data. A similar investigation in Germany, where communications data are not held, led to only a handful of cases being investigated.

The Assistant Commissioner of the Metropolitan police has described the importance of communications data to rape investigations. She has said:

“As to robberies and rapes, it is very usual for phones to be stolen. The stranger rapist, on many occasions, will take the phone from the victim and within 24 hours we find the rapist.”

The data also protect our children’s safety. In one case that the Joint Committee looked at, an online help service contacted the police, worried about a child who had posted on their website a threat to commit suicide. The police contacted the relevant companies, which helped to track down the service user’s name and address, then sent the local police to the door to find that the child had hanged himself but was still breathing. Fast action and communications data saved his life.

It is because we recognise how crucial this evidence is to so many investigations that we believe it would be too damaging to the fight against crime and terrorism for the police to lose this information this summer. The Government have rightly made changes to ensure that the new legislation can comply with the ECJ directive. They have narrowed the number of organisations that can access the data, for example, and introduced further safeguards to ensure that the process is necessary and proportionate.

The second part of the Bill is more complex, as it addresses the global nature of our telecommunications. Increasingly, the companies that help us to communicate with each other, with the family members we live with and with our neighbours and friends down the road, are based abroad. They should not be excluded from UK law just because of where their headquarters are based. International companies have been covered by and complied with RIPA for many years. Indeed, the legislation has always made it clear that companies should be covered if they provided services in the UK. We recognise, however, that other court judgments have made it more important to be explicit about legislation that has extraterritorial effect, rather than just leaving the arrangements implicit in the legislation. Again, it would jeopardise important intelligence if we were to ignore this factor.

Similarly, on telecommunications data, we have sought assurances from the Home Secretary that these measures are not an extension of powers and that they are only a clarification of the arrangements that already exist and of practices that already take place. It is important to recognise that this is not just about the legislation. The Home Secretary has now given the House assurances that the way in which she issues warrants will comply with that intention not to extend those powers, and that this is simply about maintaining the powers that are already in place.

This means that the safeguards are extremely important. The safeguards in the Bill and in the regulations are welcome. They ensure that the legislation is temporary, as well as restricting the purposes of the legislation so that it cannot be used only for purposes of economic well-being, and restricting the number of organisations that have access to data. We welcome the proposals for a privacy and civil liberties board, although we will need more debate about how that should work and how it should fit with our proposals to overhaul the commissioners and ensure that there is stronger oversight.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is important to have the widest possible consultation with as many groups as possible before the names are put forward for the new board?

[Yvette Cooper]

My right hon. Friend is right, and I would certainly expect the Select Committees to play an important role in that process. There needs to be a debate about the way in which the board should work. It has considerable potential. Wider, more substantial reforms of the existing framework are needed, including, for example, to the structure relating to the commissioners, who in theory have oversight of different parts of legislation, and to the role of the counter-terrorism reviewer, which is more effective than the work of some of the commissioners. We need to look at the whole framework in determining how the privacy and civil liberties board will fit in with the wider reforms that we need. That might need to be a two-stage process: the introduction of the board and reforms made to the commissioners’ structure in the light of the wider review that we are calling for. We have tabled amendments to secure such a review.

The review of the legislation is particularly important. For some time, we have been calling for an independent expert review of the legal and operational framework and in particular of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000. As a result of the communications data revolution, the law and our oversight framework are now out of date. As my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) has said, new technology is blurring the distinction between communications and content, and between domestic and international communications, as well as raising new questions about data storage. We therefore need to reconsider what safeguards are necessary in an internet age to ensure that people’s privacy is protected.

We need stronger oversight, too. We need to know how far the new technology is outstripping the legal framework, and what powers and safeguards are needed for the future. We need to determine how warrants should operate, who should have access to data, and whether the police and intelligence agencies have the lawful capabilities that they need. The police need to be able to keep up with new technology, but the safeguards need to keep up, too. All those elements should be included in the scope of the first stage of the independent review by the counter-terrorism reviewer, David Anderson.

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[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is a huge pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), who has an unrivalled knowledge of these issues. He is right that we should be cautious in dealing with legislation of this kind. The latest figures we have are that the number of tweets being issued every year is 150 billion, the number of mobile phone contracts has reached 82 million, the number of landlines is 24 million, and the number of broadband connections is 21.7 million. So a lot of data are flowing about. That is why it is extremely important that we consider these matters very carefully. I for one associate myself with the wish of all those who have spoken, including the Home Secretary, that we had longer to scrutinise this legislation so that we could raise the kind of issues that have been raised so far but in much greater detail.

Yesterday, the Home Affairs Committee took evidence from the Home Secretary, who was subjected to quite robust questioning from members of the Committee on this issue. In particular, the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert), who is something of the expert in these matters, was able to raise a number of points that Members had concerning the speed of the legislation going through the House and its detail. Of course it is not satisfactory that we had only one session. We would have liked to have had more sessions. We would have liked to have had the Minister for Security and Immigration before us, but that was not possible given the time scale.

The Committee wrote to the Home Secretary supporting the Government’s view. My hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick) is right: he did not support the letter being sent, nor its contents, but every other member of the Committee did, representing every other major party in the House. As he knows, he often finds himself in a minority of one on issues that are voted upon in the Committee. That in no way means that we do not take his view seriously. Of course we do. He is a very distinguished Member of the House. But that was the view of the Committee, as I correctly reported to the Home Secretary in my letter last night. It echoed what the Prime Minister said to me and other Select Committee Chairs when he said that this was not a land-grab; that this was existing legislation and not about additional powers. I and the Committee support this on the basis of the assurances given by the Prime Minister to me at Downing street, and to other Select Committee Chairs, and to members of the Committee only yesterday by the Home Secretary, that no additional powers are being sought by the Government. I think that that is the basis upon which the shadow Home Secretary and the official Opposition also support the Government.

There are two issues that I hope the Minister will take on board in Committee. The first, of course, is the need to ensure that the scrutiny process is as robust as possible. The Home Affairs Committee recently published a report on counter-terrorism. Its conclusions—I will not go through them all because they are too long—talked about enhancing the role of Parliament and the various commissioners. We felt that it was unacceptable that at least one of the commissioners was part time, with a part-time secretary to deal with these very important issues. We felt that some of the commissioners should be amalgamated to produce full-time people who are able to scrutinise the work of the security services.

The second issue is that the Committee felt that David Anderson should be given additional resources. A feature of our reports over the past few years has been that we have praised the role of the counter-terrorism assessor and asked that he—only men have occupied the post—be given additional support in order to do his job effectively. We rate David Anderson’s work, but we think that he could do much better if he had more resources. He has not asked the Committee for more resources; it is our view, having looked at the evidence and heard from various parties.

That is why it is extremely important that we have a privacy and civil liberties board that is widely representative of those with an interest—all the stakeholders. I urge the Government to consult widely, including with the Select Committee and others outside Parliament, before the names of the board members are announced so that they can work with the independent assessor and do a job that is robust, fair and has the confidence not only of this place, but of the British public.

Reluctantly, given the time scale, we support the Government, accept the assurances that have been given and hope that they will return to Parliament frequently to inform us of any additional information or powers they seek so that there can be proper and appropriate scrutiny, which we have recommended should be conducted by our successor Committee once it is formed in the next Parliament.

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[James Brokenshire]

I hope that in Committee we will be able to get on to the role that the statutory code of practice may play in that regard. The hon. Gentleman will note that there is reference to that in the Bill, and we will be able to discuss it shortly.

It is important to note that the Intelligence and Security Committee has endorsed these proposals, with one notable exception. Indeed, the Home Affairs Committee has done the same, obviously recognising that there may not have been unanimity in that respect. It is important to say that Committees have reflected on and examined this and seen that it is about protecting the status quo.

[Keith Vaz]

It was 7-1, like Germany and Brazil.

[James Brokenshire]

The Chair of the Committee has made his point in his inimitable fashion.

It is important to understand that this is about protecting powers, not adding to them. It is about ensuring that our law enforcement agencies and security agencies have the powers that they need. That is what the proposal in this Bill is about. While I note the clear concerns over the balance between security and liberty, this is about protecting powers, not enhancing them. I commend the Bill to the House.

Question put, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

Communications Data and Interception

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 10th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I note my right hon. Friend’s point. Of course, the question of whether some form of legal or judicial authority—a magistrates court, perhaps—should look at access to communications data was considered by the Joint Scrutiny Committee. It looked at the processes that are in place today and accepted that they were absolutely appropriate and suited the requirements.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I apologise to the Home Secretary for missing the start of her statement. I welcome the briefing that she and the Prime Minister gave to me and other Select Committee Chairs yesterday. I support these proposals. Keith Bristow has said that it is vital that we retain this information in order to protect the public. On scrutiny, she is due to appear before the Home Affairs Committee next week. I hope that that will be part of the scrutiny process for the Bill. Will she reassure the House that David Anderson will be given the resources he needs, because at the moment he is doing a very important job, but he needs the resources to do it even more effectively?

The UK’s Justice and Home Affairs Opt-outs

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Thursday 10th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

There are two issues in relation to that. First, people often say, “That’s what Denmark has; it is able to negotiate directly because it has a complete opt-out on these matters.” However, Denmark does not have any other legal avenue for opting in to those measures. As the Commission has made clear, given that there is another legal avenue for the United Kingdom—as negotiated by the previous Government—that is what should be pursued, rather than a separate extradition treaty with the EU. Secondly, I say to right hon. and hon. Members who think that some form of bilateral treaty would be a way of getting around the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice, that Denmark has been required to submit to the jurisdiction of the ECJ as part of the conditions of agreeing a treaty with the European Union.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

The Home Secretary is right that the European arrest warrant is needed and right in principle, but the Home Affairs Committee was concerned about the way it has operated. I know she has worked hard to put forward changes, with forum bars and other such issues, but at the end of the day she does not have control over the judiciary in a country such as Poland. Some of those countries are issuing warrants that are executed in our country, and it is extremely difficult to control that.

[Mrs May]

That is one of the issues we are addressing. One problem that has been raised—particularly in relation to the country that the right hon. Gentleman mentioned—is the number of arrest warrants being issued for offences at the lower end of the scale that would perhaps not be treated in the same way in the United Kingdom. That is why we have considered the issue of proportionality, and introduced the requirement that a British judge will consider whether the alleged offence and likely sentence is sufficient to make someone’s extradition proportionate. We have written the need to address that issue of potential disproportionality into our legislation, and it will come into effect soon.

[Keith Vaz]

I am grateful for that information. Further to what the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) said, the Committee also decided, because of the concerns of so many Members, that there should be a separate vote specifically on the European arrest warrant when this package comes before the House. Will the Home Secretary agree to give the House a separate vote on that?

[Mrs May]

I am well aware of the views that the Committee put forward in its report, and as I indicated in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh), we have not yet agreed absolutely the final package with other European member states and the European Commission, and some technical reservations have been made. We are working on that and expect to be able to remove those reservations, and the House will have an opportunity to vote in due course.

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[Mrs May]

Our police forces of course co-operate with other police forces throughout the world in bringing criminals and perpetrators to justice. The European arrest warrant—I will repeat myself—is an extradition arrangement that improves on the extradition arrangements that we had previously. I recognise that there have been concerns about it, but we have legislated on those concerns here in this Parliament.

I was describing the Prüm system, which is about the easy, efficient and effective comparison of data when appropriate. We have been clear that we cannot rejoin that on 1 December and would not seek to do so. However, in order for the House to consider the matter carefully, the Government will produce a business and implementation case and run a small-scale pilot with all the necessary safeguards in place. We will publish that by way of a Command Paper and bring the issue back to Parliament so that it can be debated in an informed way. We are working towards doing so by the end of next year. However, the decision on whether to rejoin Prüm would be one for Parliament. Unlike the Labour Government, who signed us up to that measure in the first place without any idea how much it would cost or how it would be implemented, the Government will ensure that Parliament has the full facts to inform its decision.

On another subject, I know that my right hon. Friend the Justice Secretary will want to address the probation situation in his closing remarks—that is another measure we have successfully resisted rejoining.

The Government propose to rejoin other measures in the national interest. We wish to rejoin the European supervision order, which allows British subjects to be bailed back to the UK rather than spending months abroad awaiting trial. That will stand alongside the reforms we have made to the European arrest warrant, and make it easier for people such as Mr Symeou to be bailed back to the UK and prevent such injustices from occurring in future.

We are also seeking to rejoin the prisoner transfer framework decision, a measure that my right hon. Friend the Justice Secretary considers important. The framework helps us to remove foreign criminals from British jails—prisoners such as Ainars Zvirgzds, a Latvian national convicted of controlling prostitution, assault, and firearms and drug offences. In April 2012, he was sentenced to 13 and a half years imprisonment in the UK. Last month, he was transferred out of this country to a prison in Latvia, where he will serve the remainder of his sentence. Had it not been for the prison transfer measure, he would have remained in a British prison, at a cost to the British taxpayer of more than £100,000.

We wish to rejoin the measure providing for joint investigation teams, so that we can continue to participate in cross-border operations such as Operation Birkhill. That collaboration with Hungary, funded by Eurojust and assisted by Europol, led to five criminals being sentenced at Croydon Crown court last month to a total of 36 years’ imprisonment for their involvement in trafficking more than 120 women into the United Kingdom from Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland. One of those convicted, Vishal Chaudhary, lived in a luxury Canary Wharf penthouse and drove a flashy sports car bought from the money he made selling those women for sex. Chaudhary and his gang managed their operation from a semi-detached house on a suburban street in Hendon, and operated more than 40 brothels across London, including in Enfield and Brent. Their victims were threatened with abuse if they tried to contact their families. Some were forced to have sex with up to 20 clients a day. These are the victims of crime that the measures we are debating today help. Joint investigation teams are a vital tool in the fight against modern slavery, a crime this House so passionately demonstrated earlier this week it wants to see tackled. I hope the House will support rejoining the measures that will help us to do that.

[Keith Vaz]

I support everything the Home Secretary has said in respect of these policing issues. However, why have we not rejoined the European criminal information system, which would have provided us with information on those who come into this country and already have criminal convictions?

[Mrs May]

We discussed the measure the right hon. Gentleman refers to in front of his Committee and other Committees. There are a number ways in which we deal with these matters in terms of exchanging information. I want to be sure that I am looking at the measures to which he is referring and I think that they are Council framework decisions 2009/315/JHA and 2009/316/JHA. They require member states to inform each other about convictions of EU nationals and are an important tool for sharing data. The reason I am hesitating here is that we were certainly discussing the possibility of rejoining this particular measure. [Interruption.] It is in the 35. Yes, that is why I was hesitating. The right hon. Gentleman said we were not in it and I thought it was in the 35 measures we are rejoining, precisely because it gives us the opportunity to share this information.

We also wish to rejoin the Naples II convention, the principal tool for customs co-operation. Operation Stoplamp, which used this measure to exchange vital information with our partners, resulted in the seizure of 1.2 tonnes of cocaine with a street value of about £300 million—again, an outcome I am sure everyone in this House will welcome. We are also seeking to rejoin Europol, which played a key role in helping our law enforcement agencies to fight those criminals who tried to exploit British customers by adulterating our food with horsemeat. It is doing excellent work under the leadership of its British director, Rob Wainwright.

Those are just a handful of examples that illustrate why our participation in these measures is in our national interest. Today’s debate is not about the flawed treaty to which the previous Labour Government signed us up; it is about the decisions we must take now to protect the public and keep the British people safe. The Government’s policy is clear: we have exercised the opt-out and negotiated a deal to rejoin a limited number of measures that we believe it is in the national interest for us to remain part of.

I look forward with interest to the speech from the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), as it would be helpful to know the Opposition’s position on these various measures. Every time we debate them, we see a slightly different position coming forward. I am sorry that the shadow Home Secretary is not here to tell us herself, but perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will be able to tell us whether they would have exercised the opt-out that they negotiated. Would they have remained bound by all 130-plus measures, rather than negotiating a limited number in the national interest? Would they have changed the law to protect British citizens, as we have done in relation to the European arrest warrant? Would they have risked infraction proceedings by rejoining Prüm without fully considering the facts?

The evidence suggests that the Opposition do not share the determination of this party and this Government to reduce the control Brussels has on our criminal justice system. Their position has always been to say one thing and do another. There was a manifesto promise for a vote on the Lisbon treaty, but they refused to hold a referendum. They said they would protect British red lines, but they gave up our veto in policing and criminal justice matters. They negotiated an opt-out and then voted against using it. That contrasts with the position taken by this Government. We support, and have exercised, the United Kingdom’s opt-out. We support the return of powers from Brussels to the UK. We support acting in the national interest by rejoining a limited number of measures to protect British citizens and the victims of crime. This is consistent with our approach to the Europe Union as a whole.

--- Later in debate ---

[Keith Vaz]

Will my Opposition Front Bench colleagues support a separate vote on the European arrest warrant? It caused the Home Affairs Committee a great deal of concern.

[Mr Hanson]

I am relaxed on that, but I do want the European arrest warrant put in place. We have had some safeguards, but I will outline in due course why I want to see it put in place. It would be helpful to have clarity on when the discussions will be concluded and can be voted on. I appreciate that the Home Secretary has some difficulties, but it would be helpful to the House, for the reasons set out by my right hon. Friend, to have an indication on when we can expect to have a complete package to vote on.

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[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), and as I have not done so previously, may I congratulate him on the knighthood that has been bestowed on him, which was very well deserved, and may I also say how pleased I am to see the right hon. Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) here today, because I understand it is his birthday? What a glorious way to celebrate a birthday, talking about the European arrest warrant and the prisoner transfer agreements!

I welcome this debate. As the House has heard from the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), the Chairs of the three Select Committees wrote to the Justice Secretary and the Home Secretary asking for an early opportunity to debate these issues, and our letter was received very courteously and we now have a debate as a result of our representations. In the view of the Home Affairs Committee it would have been much better if this debate had taken place before the negotiations began. That was one of the recommendations we made after we took evidence from the Home Secretary and others about these important measures, because we felt strongly that if Parliament had made its views clear before the Home Secretary and Justice Secretary started their negotiations, that mandate would have bolstered them in their negotiations with their European partners. Unfortunately, such a debate did not take place before the negotiations began.

I agree with the Chairman of the ESC that there ought to be a vote on this issue. I am glad the Government have said they will have a vote. I would be surprised if there was not a debate before the vote. Even though we are probably only going to have the usual suspects here, I think it should be a long debate, rather than an hour-and-a-half debate, because these are very important measures. What we have asked for—I will come on to this later when we look at the European arrest warrant—is a separate vote specifically on the European arrest warrant. The Committee produced a unanimous report, and those who serve on the Home Affairs Committee have different views on the European Union, so getting a unanimous decision on something of this kind is quite difficult. The Committee unanimously decided, however, that we should be asking for this because of the representations we had received from so many people, including hon. and right hon. Members, about the way in which the European arrest warrant operated.

We have heard what the Home Secretary has done, and I welcome all the steps she has taken, and also the views of the Opposition Front Bench in Committee when it looked at the way in which the arrest warrant was operating. We heard specific evidence in the Committee from, among others, the hon. Members for Enfield North (Nick de Bois) and for South Dorset (Richard Drax) about individual constituency cases where the European arrest warrant had gone wrong. I and the Committee accept the principle of the European arrest warrant. We believe this was an important measure to enable countries that are members of the European Union—and, indeed, beyond, through bilateral agreements —to bring back into the country and offer up those who are wanted in respect of criminal matters. So the principle is fine. However, our concern was the practice, and the examples we received caused us enormous concern.

There was the Andrew Symeou case, which was told to us by the hon. Member for Enfield North, and the case of Michael Turner—a gentleman who was extradited to Hungary and incarcerated there and who never faced any charges and who is a constituent of South Dorset—and other examples that caused Members to say that the European arrest warrant was good in principle but not necessarily good in practice and had caused their constituents a great deal of concern.

As we have heard, the number of requests to our country far exceeds the number of requests that we make. The total cost of executing an incoming European arrest warrant in the United Kingdom is approximately £20,000. The 999 received by the United Kingdom in 2011 are estimated to have cost around £20 million. So this is not justice on the cheap. It costs a great deal of money to execute these warrants.

Our concern was the way in which they were being requested by certain European countries, and I have mentioned Poland but there were other examples. Indeed, if we look at the requests made of Germany and other countries where people are wanted, we see the figures are just as high. The Home Secretary has great negotiating skills, charm and powers of persuasion, which I saw for myself at the Police Federation conference earlier this year, so she is no pushover, and I am sure she went in there and negotiated strongly on behalf of our country, as Ministers have to do, especially knowing the views of Parliament. The fact is, however, she does not have control, and neither does the Justice Secretary with all his great skills and ability, of the Polish judiciary. They do not have control of the Latvian system of justice. They do not have control of the way in which these warrants are issued in the first place. They do have control over the execution, but not over the issuing.

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

There are some other issues around the European arrest warrant and trying to reform it. While we might want to have reforms that make it function better, is it not the case that the European Commission, in co-decision with the European Parliament, has to have the final say on these matters? So we might want to have this reform, but it might never come forward, and that is a fundamental problem about the opt-in, because we give these powers away completely once and for all.

[Keith Vaz]

I defer to the knowledge of the hon. Gentleman with all his vast experience of European affairs. Having served as an MEP for so long in the east midlands, he sought asylum here in the House of Commons and he has rightly raised one of the big issues. We can negotiate, but at the end of the day it is an issue that we need to confront. How are we going to persuade the European Commission on these very important matters?

We have heard about the wheelbarrow case—the man accused of stealing a wheelbarrow who was the subject of a European arrest warrant—and those absconding from prisons on day release or those accused of minor drugs offences. There was a man who gave false details on a £200 bank loan that had already been paid off. A warrant was issued, it had to be executed and that cost £20,000. So the Home Secretary is right to give us the headline examples—as the shadow Immigration Minister also did—of people who commit terrible crimes in other parts of Europe and whom we feel obliged to give back as quickly as possible, but many, many examples go the other way and that shows there are still problems with the warrant. The Home Secretary has made big efforts to make these matters more effective by introducing the forum bar and giving more powers to the judges to look at such cases, but that is not enough when European partners are not prepared to reform their judicial systems, where so many warrants are being issued.

The Home Secretary is often reluctant to tell me about her travel plans after she has been to some of these countries but I am sure that, like me, she has been to Poland. I went there with members of the Committee and we talked to prosecutors there. The first question they asked was, “Are you coming to talk about the European arrest warrant?” We said, “Yes we are, because we are really concerned. Why are the Polish judges issuing so many warrants when, in our view, they are not merited?” These warrants undermine the principle of the EAW when they are issued for such trivial reasons as the theft of a wheelbarrow. Obviously, it is extremely important for the person who has lost the wheelbarrow, but in the whole history of the world, to coin a phrase of the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), it is not that important—it is certainly not worth £20,000. So more work needs to be done.

Even when that work is done, the Committee is very clear that we must have a separate vote on the EAW. We are happy to have the package as a whole put before the House. I am not sure how many of these 35 measures can go through the House within a parliamentary day, but we draw a line in the sand about the EAW: Parliament is concerned about it and we therefore need a vote.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

We could debate all 35, with a full day’s debate for each one—we are not exactly overwhelmed with business.

[Keith Vaz]

That is a good point, but luckily I do not have control of the parliamentary day. These are representations we need to make, and we will see what the will of Parliament is. Let us recall some earlier ministerial words:

“I hope that today I have conveyed to the House not only the Government’s full commitment to holding a vote on the 2014 decision in this House and the other place, but the importance that we will accord to Parliament in the process leading up to that vote.”—[Official Report, 15 October 2012; Vol. 551, c. 35.]

It could be that Members want a vote on each of the 35 measures, but the Committee definitely wants a vote on the EAW, because we think it stands out in the business that the Home Secretary and Justice Secretary are currently discussing in the EU.

I welcome what is being proposed on Europol, and the Committee is a great fan of Rob Wainwright, the British head of Europol, who is doing a terrific job. Anyone who has visited Europol will have seen the work being done there, which is impressive and effective, and helps in the fight against organised crime. Europol works well with Interpol, although I know comments were made about Interpol. I and others have visited Interpol, which provides a huge benefit to cross-border action against serious and organised crime, illegal migration, people trafficking and all the other issues about which the House is very concerned. At the moment, there are 3,600 internationally active organised crime gangs operating across Europe. We cannot deal with those on our own, especially as far as cyber-crime is concerned; we have to deal with them through Europol. The Home Secretary is right to opt back in to those proceedings. I am not sure about one or two of the other Europol decisions, but if we are going to have further discussions, we will raise those at that stage.

[Sir William Cash]

In this context, does the right hon. Gentleman regard Albania’s candidacy for the European Union with equanimity? [Interruption.]

[Keith Vaz]

I apologise, but I could not hear the hon. Gentleman because the hon. Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Sir Richard Shepherd) was muttering so I was looking at him. I wonder whether the hon. Member for Stone would repeat that.

[Sir William Cash]

I just wanted to know whether, in the context of the issues of justice and home affairs and all the matters we are discussing today, the right hon. Gentleman regards with equanimity the proposed candidacy for EU membership of Albania, given its very serious crime, trafficking and all the rest of it.

[Keith Vaz]

Anyone can apply to join the club; we do not mind people wanting to apply to join. The problem is that there are serious issues for all applicant countries to address, and Albania has to recognise that there is a big problem with organised gangs operating from there. A huge amount of work still needs to be done before Albania becomes a full member of the EU, and the hon. Gentleman is right to focus on that. Let me touch on what we must do with applicant countries—here is a mea culpa, if I am allowed to make one on behalf of the previous Government. Those of us who were enthusiastic about enlargement of the EU—I still am—should have realised that once a country has joined we tend to allow it just to continue on its own, without providing the support—not financial support, but all the other support—needed to make it a full member of the EU. That is why we need to work with countries throughout this period. We always invite countries to join, but when they are in we leave them on their own, and that is a mistake. There is a lot of work to do on Albania, and I am sure the Albanians understand that and are going to have a lot of help along the way.

I am glad that we are opting in to the European criminal records information system, because it allows the courts to make the right decision on those who appear before them. We need to know when dangerous criminals are coming into our country, which is why it is good that we are opting in to that measure. I am sure the Justice Secretary welcomes the prisoner transfer agreement, because he has worked hard to get it going. Two of the top three countries in respect of the 10,695 foreign prisoners we have in our prisons, who are costing us £300 million, are EU countries—Poland and Ireland. Anything that helps us work with European colleagues to make sure that people go back to their country to serve their sentences is to be welcomed.

I welcome the progress that is being made. We must have another debate in Parliament. The process of scrutiny must continue, but at the end of the day there has to be a vote on these measures, as the Government have promised, and specifically on the EAW. That is the strong feeling of every member of the Home Affairs Committee, and I hope I have conveyed that to the House today.