Face Coverings (Prohibition) Bill

Debate between Keith Vaz and Gerald Kaufman

Friday 28th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz]

rose—

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Hollobone]

I give way to the right hon. Member for Leicester East.

--- Later in debate ---

[Keith Vaz]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. The hon. Gentleman, making his case in the passionate way in which he does, suggests that I was pulling a funny face at him. May I assure him that that was my normal face?

[Sir Gerald Kaufman]

Further to that point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. We can see that because my right hon. Friend is not wearing a face covering.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

The hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone), with whom I worked closely in the all-party parliamentary group on Palestine, talked about the traditional British way of life. I do not know what the traditional British way of life is. This country has been conquered and inhabited by waves of immigrants ever since the Romans came here. Manchester is called Manchester because the Romans went there and they had a camp, which was castra, which became the suffix chester. We have had the Danes and the Norwegians. Of my constituents, 40% originate from Ireland. They are as loyal and as British as anybody else. They worship in a Catholic church. I have a large number of Muslims in my constituency. I do not have so many Jews, but I am a Jew myself. I was brought up in Jewish surroundings with kosher food, going to Hebrew school and the synagogue on Friday evening and Saturday morning. Is that the traditional British way of life? It is part of the way of life. The way in which Muslims live in this country is another part of the British way of life. It is not for us to tell them how they should live.

I was mugged here in London by two muggers with balaclavas over their faces. There was no breach of the law in their wearing the balaclavas as distinct from the fact that they stole a great many things from me. The hon. Gentleman talks about identification when one is voting, but people are not identified when they go to the polling station on the basis of their faces. We do not have photo ID in this country. They are identified by their names and addresses. Muslim women wearing the veil vote in exactly the same way as everybody else.

The hon. Gentleman is an honourable gentleman, and while he says that he is doing this without pressure from constituents, there is a possibility that if he had 7,000 Muslim constituents he might have thought up another subject for his private Member’s Bill. It is not a question of us being here to obey our constituents whatever they say, and to reflect their views whatever their views may be. If constituents tell me that they are in favour of capital punishment, as no doubt a number are, I will not vote for capital punishment because some constituents want it. If constituents of mine are in favour of fox hunting and hunting with dogs, I will not listen to them just because they are constituents who may or may not vote for me.

This is a variegated country with variegated religions. When the Police and Criminal Evidence Bill went through the House, we had a deliberate provision with regard to stop and search that Sikh men should not be required to remove their turbans by the police. If one is going to say that people change or conceal their appearance, ultra-Orthodox Jewish women are required to wear wigs. They are not allowed to show their own hair. People live in different ways because this is a marvellous democracy with freedom of choice. Not many of the Muslim women in my constituency wear the veil, but I will stand up for their right to do so, because that is their choice. We do not live in a country in which the law tells people how to dress.

[Keith Vaz]

My right hon. Friend is making a passionate speech that draws on his wide experience. Has he received any representations from any groups in his constituency supporting what the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) wants to do, because I have not?

[Sir Gerald Kaufman]

I have not received any representations whatsoever in favour of the Bill, but I have received many that oppose it. However, even if I had not received a single such representation, I would still oppose it, out of principle. I would oppose it because we do not live in a democracy in which people can be restricted in the way they conduct their lives.

A little while ago the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) introduced a ten-minute rule Bill that would have required the labelling of halal and kosher food. I opposed it and had it chucked out, and I did so because small minorities have a particular right to be recognised and regarded. In this country we are ruled by majorities, which is absolutely right, but that does not mean that the minority must be overruled by the majority. I have received no indication whatsoever that people will be lining the streets to cheer the hon. Member for Kettering.

UK Border Agency

Debate between Keith Vaz and Gerald Kaufman

Wednesday 4th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) not only on the report of the Home Affairs Select Committee, which he chairs, but on what he said today, particularly how he ended his speech—on the abolition of appeal rights for visitors who are turned down.

If only because of the effluxion of time, as Winston Churchill called it, I have undoubtedly dealt with more immigration cases than any other Member ever has. At present, I have 71 cases on my “active” files, and as some are completed—occasionally positively but sometimes ending in despair—new ones flow in. When I hold my constituency advice bureaux, as I have done on the past two Saturdays, a preponderance of the cases I receive are immigration cases, and a substantial proportion of those who come to me are constituents of Pakistani or Bengali origin—although they do not all come from there; others are of African origin and so on. However, when I read in the newspapers, as I have done in the past few days, about a survey showing that people of Pakistani origin feel more British than anybody else in the country, I wonder how long it will last, given that the immigration service treats them as heartlessly, ineffectively, ineffectually and inefficiently as it does today.

I have dealt with Home Secretaries ever since I entered the House in 1970, but I do not deal with this Home Secretary because she is so arrogant that, unlike any other Home Secretary with whom I have corresponded, she will not touch an individual immigration case. For example, Douglas Hurd, among many other Tory Home Secretaries with whom I have had dealings, would not only deal with cases himself but, if I asked to see him about a case, which I rarely did, would immediately agree to see me. On one occasion, a man under a deportation notice said to me, “Let me see the Home Secretary so that he can tell me to my face why he is deporting me.” Douglas Hurd saw him, considered the case and reversed the decision, and that man is now living happily in Manchester with his family, who are now considerably grown-up. That was what Tory Home Secretaries such as Douglas Hurd, William Whitelaw, even Leon Brittan, were like. This Home Secretary believes she is too important to do what Douglas Hurd, Willie Whitelaw, Leon Brittan—and David Waddington and others—did.

[Keith Vaz]

In fact, given the abolition of the right of appeal, Members will want to go to Ministers much more often—that will delay Ministers and take up an enormous amount of their time—because there is nowhere else for them to go. They will be unable to go to the appeals system; they will have to go to Ministers.

[Sir Gerald Kaufman]

I accept that completely, but if my right hon. Friend will forgive me for apparently being patronising, he should not hope for too much from that process—in so far as it is a process.

It is not simply that the policy is a hard, harsh policy; individual cases are dealt with with a level of incompetence that would not be tolerated in pretty well any other area of activity. For example, last week the Minister for Immigration sent me a telephone number for a constituent to use when his DNA test had been completed—and it was completed successfully, I might say. The telephone number was wrong. That came from the Minister’s office, and with his signature. The Minister sometimes wonders why I insist on having my cases dealt with by a Minister. The answer is that the UK Border Agency is an agency, and a Minister’s signature on a letter is what a Member of Parliament has the right to have. We have only two rights: freedom of speech, within procedure, in this House; and access to Ministers. If we do not have those, we might as well not be here.

Let me give the House just a few examples of the botching that has gone on in cases I have dealt with. On 17 May, the Minister for Immigration wrote to me about a particular person, saying that a decision will be made on his application within the next four weeks. He came to me on Saturday, six weeks after that promise was made—no decision. Another constituent was told in a letter from the Minister that her application would be concluded within three months, yet it was not. What on earth is the point of him giving these specific commitments if they are to be broken?

Here is another one. The Minister wrote to me on 12 December 2011, saying that the case in question would be decided by the end of that month. By my calculation, we are into July 2012: no decision on that, after a promise by the Minister.