Debate on the Address

Debate between Keith Vaz and Baroness Hoey

Wednesday 8th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz]

We could have our picture taken with the band.

Let us move on to the serious issues of the Gracious Speech. It is right that, as well as commenting on the proposals that were in the speech, we should refer to those that were not. I join the hon. Member for South Antrim (Dr McCrea) in commending the work of our troops abroad, especially in Afghanistan. I was disappointed, however, that the Prime Minister did not make a definitive statement about the position of Afghan interpreters. Many of them have served with our troops loyally and with dedication, but as yet they do not know whether they will be given sanctuary in this country. They will face enormous difficulties if they remain in Afghanistan.

I was also disappointed not to hear more about the summit on Somalia that the Prime Minister chaired yesterday. Bearing in mind that Somalia and Yemen are both countries of interest for the United Kingdom, the support given to Somalia by the Prime Minister and others at yesterday’s summit was similar to that given to Yemen four years ago. Sadly, half the money pledged to the Yemeni Government has still not materialised, even though we all say that we support that country. I hope that when we debate other aspects of the Gracious Speech—perhaps in the foreign affairs debate—we will have a chance to explore those points.

I want to concentrate on three aspects, the first being the immigration proposals. I understand that there is no Bill as yet and that immigration policy will be consulted on for several months. It will be some time, therefore, before we know where the Government stand on a number of the issues they have raised.

I welcome decisions taken in the past few weeks, such as that to abolish the UK Border Agency, which the Home Secretary described as “closed, secretive and defensive”, and the new leadership she has put in place at the immigration and nationality directorate, starting with the permanent secretary, Mark Sedwill, and the new head of immigration and visas, Sarah Rapson, whom I met a couple of weeks ago in Croydon. Now that the UKBA has been abolished and returned to the mother ship of the Home Office, there is a big opportunity at last to get an organisation that is fit for purpose, so that Members who write to it about immigration cases actually receive replies from Ministers or officials, and not the standard letter saying, “This case is part of a backlog,” which, of course, currently stands at 325,000—about the size of the population of Iceland.

It would be great if the administrative changes result in real change to immigration administration before the new Bill is introduced. As the right hon. Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) said, there is a tendency to legislate in the hope that it will solve the problem, but if we do not have the right people implementing the policies, that is never the correct thing to do.

I hope that the immigration legislation will deal with illegal migration. In particular, I hope that the allegations database will be put on a statutory footing. After all, the Prime Minister said on 10 October 2011:

“I want everyone in the country to help…by reporting suspected illegal immigrants”.

People took him at his word. The latest figures show that between July and September of last year, 28,243 people made allegations of illegal migration to this country. However, there have been only 561 arrests because of those 28,243 allegations and the Home Office does not have the figures on how many people have been removed. It is all very well asking people to report illegal migrants and having the political will to remove them, but if people are not told what is happening to those whom they have made allegations about, the system will not work. I therefore hope that the Bill will include something about the need to tackle illegal migration.

Let us move on to Romanian and Bulgarian migration. I am glad that the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice, the former Minister for Immigration, is here because he gave a speech on 21 October 2008 in which he said that one of the greatest failures of the last Government was the failure to predict the consequences of enlargement in 2004. That is exactly the problem. The failure to predict is the real issue with Romanian and Bulgarian migration.

Frankly, since we have signed the treaties, it is not possible to do anything about the number of Romanian and Bulgarian people who will come here. What the Government can do is to ensure that we have sufficient research and analysis to know approximately what the number will be. That is possible to predict, even though Ministers have said before the Home Affairs Committee that they do not regard the estimates thus far as being accurate. Migration Watch has estimated that 70,000 people will come every year for the next few years. The Romanian and Bulgarian ambassadors have put the figure at between 10,000 and 25,000. Estimates will continue to be made unless there is proper research and analysis of what will happen. I urge the Government to take action and commission that research. If we know approximately what the numbers will be, the changes that need to be made to domestic policy can be made rather quicker.

[Kate Hoey]

My right hon. Friend is giving his usual professional view of this matter and I am glad that he takes such a huge interest in it. Does he agree that it does not matter what the numbers are? Whether it is 500 or 50,000 people who come, the crucial issue is whether they should automatically get access without making any contribution whatsoever to our country. Does he agree that that is what needs to be addressed?

[Keith Vaz]

I agree with my hon. Friend. That comment was made to me and the shadow Minister for Immigration when he came to my constituency recently by the settled British Asian community and others who feel that people should make a contribution. However, the figures show that of the 500,000 Poles who came to this country after 2004, only 7,000 claimed benefits. The other almost 500,000 made a huge contribution to our country. However, she is right that nobody should assume that on arrival they can automatically claim for benefits to which they have not contributed. If we stick to those principles and put aside the arms race that seems to be developing on immigration, we will do much better.

I think that the only way to settle this issue is to have a referendum on whether we should stay in or come out of the European Union. I have said that many times before, and I know I am in a minority on the Opposition Benches. I did not favour that when I was Minister for Europe, but it is important that the British people have the say over whether we should stay in or come out. I actually think that it should happen before the general election. I do not see why we should wait until after the negotiations have occurred. Frankly, I am not as optimistic as the Prime Minister that he will get many concessions from the 26 other countries of the European Union, and I think he will be bitterly disappointed. Why pretend to the British electorate? They understand the issues, and it is quite right that we should put our views to them now. That should be part of a wide public education campaign that would allow people to understand the issues involved and not just rely on a few tabloid newspapers.

I am glad that there is a policing Bill in the Queen’s Speech, because we have some unfinished business as far as policing is concerned. I support the Government’s ambitious programme for a new policing landscape, but the problem is that the jigsaw is not complete. Many bits are still missing, and we are running out of time.

UK Border Agency

Debate between Keith Vaz and Baroness Hoey

Wednesday 4th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to open this important debate about not only the Home Office estimates but the Home Affairs Committee’s reports into the UK Border Agency. I am pleased to see the Minister and shadow Minister and so many right hon. and hon. Members who have direct experience of dealing with the UK Border Agency.

I particularly welcome members of the Home Affairs Committee who are here today. My hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson) and the hon. Members for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) and for Northampton North (Michael Ellis) have made enormous contributions to the reports that the Select Committee has published in the past few years. The main feature of our reports is that they have been unanimous. Another feature has been our hope that with a succession of very carefully worded but carefully thought out reports we will be able to improve the quality of the UK Border Agency.

Right at the start, I want to make something clear. I have chaired the Home Affairs Committee for five years. We have produced our reports about the administration of the UKBA on a regular basis under the previous Government and the current Government, and we have been as critical in the former case as in the latter. There is no party political point in this; it is about trying to get the best possible service that can be provided to those who use the UKBA. We decided at the start of the Parliament to look regularly at how the UKBA operates, so every three months we revisit our report to see whether there has been any improvement in the system. We also decided to put up a number of key indicators by which we judge how the UKBA operates. It is not the usual kind of Select Committee report that has big and long recommendations; rather, we make specific suggestions that we want the UKBA to follow.

As the estimates indicate, the UKBA’s budget for 2012-13 is £1 billion, and it has a staff of 12,835, while the UK Border Force’s budget is £509 million, and it has a staff of 7,333. A number of ongoing issues arose under the previous Labour Government, and I shall touch on some of those. The first issue is foreign national offenders. There are 3,900 foreign national criminals living in the community who are subject to deportation, 57 of whom are part of the famous 2006 cohort who are still unable to be traced. In 2006, 1,013 foreign prisoners were released without any attempt being made to deport them. Of those, 844 people’s cases have been concluded, 399 people have been deported, 445 have not been deported, 93 are still in the process of being deported, 19 are serving another sentence, and 57 are untraceable. That situation has been ongoing for the past six years or so, and we will continue to monitor it until every one of those foreign national criminals has been found.

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

Did my right hon. Friend’s Committee consider why, when someone is found guilty of a criminal offence in this country and sentenced to prison, we cannot find a way of sending them back to serve their sentence in the country that they came from, instead of having them serve it in our prisons so that we have problems years later in trying to send them back? My constituents are always asking me about this.

[Keith Vaz]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. These options need to be considered, as they were under the previous Labour Government in respect of Nigeria. Last Thursday, I was in her constituency with members of the Select Committee and we went to Brixton prison, where the governor told us that a third of the prisoners were foreign nationals and that he could not remember a single occasion when such a prisoner was removed at the end of their sentence; they were either taken into the community or made to report to a detention centre.

The Government need to be given credit for the fact that the average time taken to deport has been reduced from 131 days in 2008 to 74 days in 2011, but that is still far too long. There is still a lack of cohesion between the National Offender Management Service and the Home Office. UKBA staff are stationed at Brixton prison, but the problem is that the UKBA is not informed about cases involving foreign national criminals right at the beginning of the process, at the time of sentencing. We have recommended in successive reports that that should happen in order to shorten the period between the release of the prisoner and their being removed to his or her country.

In all the years I have been in this House, the main issue that has dogged the border forces has been the continual delays and backlogs that have gone on under successive Governments. We only recently discovered as part of our inquiry that a number of new, almost virtual reality, filing systems exist at the UKBA. There is the controlled archive which dates back to 2006; I prefer to call it the Tardis, because files go in there and seem never to come out. The controlled archive is the place where files are dumped in cases where the UKBA does not know where the people are.