Immigration Bill

Debate between Keith Vaz and Jeremy Corbyn

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz]

As a member of the Committee—there are four Committee members in their places this afternoon—I am not going to offer to take on more work, given our work load. As the hon. Gentleman knows, every quarter we look at the work of the Home Office on immigration, and I am certain that some aspects of the Bill will be included in the work that we do. We will therefore scrutinise some aspects of the Bill but not its entirety.

In pursuing an immigration policy that is fair and just, we need to be very careful with our enforcement methods. We also need to welcome decisions taken by the Government when they move in the right direction. The Home Secretary was right to shelve the ad vans, and I congratulate her on doing so. As the shadow Home Secretary and others have said, those vans caused enormous concern in the communities. We do not have a figure for how many people got into the vans and asked for a lift back to the airport, but the vans cost £10,000 and were out for six days in inner-city London. As yet, we do not know how many people have gone back. When the pilot is over, we will need those figures. Meanwhile, I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) for his superb Adjournment debate. It gives us all heart to know that we can call for an Adjournment debate to advocate the abolition of an aspect of Government policy and for it to happen two weeks later. It gives us comfort to know that we have some powers as Back Benchers.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Although I agree with my right hon. Friend about the ad vans, is he aware that immigration officials are still hanging around underground stations in London, stopping people at random and asking for papers? That creates a deeply unpleasant and hostile atmosphere. It is very ineffective in achieving its aim, but it creates much community tension in the process.

[Keith Vaz]

It worries me if that is happening; it is certainly not the best way to enforce immigration policy. The best way is to go through the proper process of making an application. If the result is negative, the person should leave the country. I have just had figures from Capita and the Home Office for the number of people who have left the country as a result of the £2.8 million contract that the Home Office gave Capita—although I cannot understand why it was not possible for Home Office officials to write the letters and send the e-mails instead of giving the job to a private company. According to those figures, 20,000 cases have been closed as a result of Capita’s activities.

I will come to my second bit of praise for the Home Secretary at the end of my speech, but I first wish to highlight a couple of issues that cause me concern. The first is the issue of landlords checking people’s passports, which will cause huge problems. The shadow Home Secretary said that people might have to look at 400 different European identity cards and documents. I am concerned that ordinary landlords who are not trained in immigration policy will simply not know the difference between leave to remain, indefinite leave and other Home Office statuses placed on non-British passports. Most landlords, when they grant tenancies, already ask for copies of people’s passports. The risk is that the only people who will be able to get accommodation are those with British passports. That means that a lot of people with a perfect right to remain here will not be able to get accommodation because landlords are too scared or do not understand the law.

I recently visited Calais to look at the border and I asked our excellent border officials how they were able to test whether certain passports and documents were forgeries. They brought out this very big, expensive machine. It was about 10 years old and not the most sophisticated piece of equipment, but they told me, “We use this to find out whether a document is a forgery.” We cannot expect landlords to have such machines—they would not be able to afford them—but if we do not train them or have regular inspections, which we could not afford, it is difficult to know how the provisions will work in practice. In theory, it is a brilliant idea, but it is totally unworkable in practice.

HEALTH

Debate between Keith Vaz and Jeremy Corbyn

Thursday 20th December 2012 Commons Chamber

Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)

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It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris). I share the concerns of all right hon. and hon. Members who have spoken so far about the importance of our national health service and our concerns about its current state. I think that the Minister—I have said this to him privately—is one of the most effective of the junior Ministers who have appeared at the Dispatch Box since the reshuffle. Because he is a doctor, I hope that he will take the concerns that I raise today on diabetes extremely seriously.

I suffer from type 2 diabetes—I declare my interest—having discovered it only five years ago after a routine test. I thought I had it under control, because I was taking my medication and doing a little exercise every day, walking from Norman Shaw North to the Palace of Westminster, until I read the national diabetes audit report published on 10 December. It states that people with diabetes are 48% more likely to suffer a heart attack, 65% more likely to have heart failure, 144% more likely to need kidney dialysis, 210% more likely to have leg amputations, 331% more likely to have part of a foot removed and 25% more likely to suffer a stroke. Overall, those with diabetes are, on average, 40% more likely to die each year than those without it. Members will understand my concern, as we approach Christmas, after reading statistics of that kind.

I know that other hon. Members have subsequently discovered that they, too, have diabetes. My hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson), who is in the Chamber, discovered he had it only after being tested here in Parliament by the Silver Star charity. He went to see his GP and then knew that he had been diagnosed.

We are facing a diabetes epidemic, and I ask the Government to take more note of what is happening as far as diabetes is concerned. Generally, people with diabetes look fairly normal—I do not know whether you think I look normal, Mr Deputy Speaker—and do not make a virtue of telling people we have diabetes, except in debates of this kind. That normality lulls us into a false sense of security. We need a national campaign on diabetes in the same way as for other illnesses. Because people are getting treatment and are able to go and get their Metformin or other medication on a regular basis, they feel that everything is going to be all right.

This issue will not only not go away but will get worse. At the moment, 3.7 million people have diabetes, and that figure will rise by another 700,000 in a few years. Some 80% of amputations are preventable with proper care and management. I say to Ministers that this is something we can help the population with now. If we do so, we can save the 10% of the budget that is currently spent on diabetes care and the £1 million an hour that is spent on medication and care in our hospitals. These issues are very much in our hands.

I welcome the new Minister with responsibility for diabetes, the Under-Secretary of State for Health, the hon. Member for Broxtowe (Anna Soubry), who has made an excellent start. The first thing she did was to hold a summit for those with an interest in diabetes. It included Diabetes UK, which does some fantastic work on the subject, Silver Star, a charity of which I am privileged to be the patron, and others, including clinicians. She said what very few Ministers have said in my career in this House—“I want you to tell me what I should do about this subject”—and she was given a lot of good advice and ideas about how to take these matters further.

One thing that we could do immediately is to send out the message to GPs, even in the current climate of ongoing changes within the NHS, that it takes only a minute to offer each patient who comes to see them a diabetes test. I know that we are having screening for those of a certain age and disposition, but people go to see GPs for all kinds of reasons. Campaigning organisations such as Silver Star and Diabetes UK are able to go out to communities and conduct these tests. Indeed, anyone can conduct them. I have my kit with me, and although I am obviously not medically qualified, I can still conduct the test on people and am happy to do so. It is very easy to do. We should say to GPs, “Don’t wait for the screening process—begin now by testing anyone who comes to your surgery.”

We need to send out through the Department of Health a message about what we eat. You have changed physically, Mr Deputy Speaker, in all the years I have known you. I know of your great interest in rugby. You used to be a very beefy character when you were first elected to this House, but you have slimmed down, perhaps since you have been an occupant of the Chair. If people look after their lifestyles better by taking exercise and being careful about what they eat, that could help them. Every time anyone drinks a glass of Coke, eight teaspoons of sugar go straight into their system. When I went over to Atlanta and met the chief executive of Coca-Cola, I asked him what he was doing about it, and he said that Coke Zero is the answer, but it is only part of the answer. The kids in our schools are offered drinks in vending machines which have a huge amount of sugar, and then they get addicted to it for the rest of their lives. This is about things that we can do ourselves and things that parents can do to bring down the bill for the NHS.

When I finish this speech, and after I have listened to the Minister, I will be going to the Tea Room. When we get to the very helpful people there, we find that we have chocolates and mince pies on offer to us. If we turn to the left, we see a lot of food that is totally unfit for diabetics. Of course, I continue to eat this food because we do not have a choice, but it would be possible, through labelling of the drinks and food that we consume, as for people with a nut allergy, to add the words “Suitable for diabetics” or “Unsuitable for diabetics”.

Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)

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My right hon. Friend is making an absolutely excellent speech. Does he think that we should take the bull by the horns and legislate to reduce the amount of sugar in all food products? If we look at any kind of food, we often find totally unnecessary sugar in it as well as in all the soft drinks that he mentions.

Keith Vaz

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Yes, I do. However, I remember that one time I met my hon. Friend when he was off to have dinner with his sons and was taking them to McDonald’s.

Jeremy Corbyn

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No, that is not true. I wish to place on the record that my right hon. Friend has been deeply misled on this matter. I have not taken my sons to McDonald’s, I have no intention of taking them to McDonald’s, and I have no intention of visiting McDonald’s myself. Is that clear?

Keith Vaz

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I will not tease my hon. Friend, but I think that the word “McDonald’s” did enter the conversation somewhere. However, I accept that his response is now on the record.

I would support legislation aimed at ensuring that we are very careful about the amount of sugar, and salt, in our diet. Indeed, I have introduced a ten-minute rule Bill that says exactly that. Denmark started a “fat tax” but then decided that it was unworkable because the food industry lobbied so heavily against it, and so the tax was removed. I am not saying that the Government are going to legislate on this; I do not think they will. The food industry is one of the most powerful in this country. The sugary drinks industry, from Red Bull, a can of which contains more than eight teaspoons of sugar, right down to the people who make Coke and all these other drinks, will fight very hard on this. In the meantime, let us send out a message and work together to stop this epidemic consuming and subsuming our country.

Protection of Freedoms Bill

Debate between Keith Vaz and Jeremy Corbyn

Monday 19th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz]

First, may I apologise for missing the opening speeches in this debate? I imagine, however, that they followed the usual form, with the Minister saying there are real problems with the retention of names on the database and the Opposition saying they ought to be retained because of the possibility that someone whose DNA is retained may well commit an offence in future, so it is better to hang on to it than to get rid of it.

My attention was drawn to this matter when a constituent of mine who had no previous convictions was at a pub and intervened to prevent a fight between two individuals. As a result of his intervention, his DNA was retained, and remains on the database. To be fair, the shadow Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), said it was important that Parliament as a whole should debate this issue. My position is that if someone has not committed an offence, their DNA should not be retained on the database. There is absolutely no reason to do so. We can either have a position, as set out by the hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards)—as I doubted whether I could pronounce his constituency, I almost called him the hon. Member for the whole of Wales—under which everyone is on the DNA database, so that is fair to everybody, or we can have a position whereby only the DNA of those who have committed an offence are on the database.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Is my right hon. Friend concerned about the disproportionate number of black and ethnic minority people whose records are kept and the disproportionate number of young people who are pulled in for questioning because of incidents in the street whose DNA is kept, although often no charge is made, and they are then under some form of surveillance? Does he think that that is very damaging to their relations with the police?

[Keith Vaz]

Yes, I do. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is a concern about certain other groups, as well as those in ethnic minority communities, whose DNA is retained disproportionately. We have proportionately the largest DNA database of any country in the world. I am sorry to say that at the end of the previous Labour Government we lost our way on civil liberties issues. That has been acknowledged and there has been a mea culpa; those on the Front Bench, leaders and candidates in the Labour leadership election have all admitted that this had been a problem for us. However, we now have an opportunity to pause and to look at these issues carefully again.

Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Bill

Debate between Keith Vaz and Jeremy Corbyn

Monday 5th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I welcome the inquiry that is to be undertaken by my right hon. Friend’s Committee. May I ask him also to consider the fact that the country has had renewable emergency anti-terrorism legislation for 37 years, that the legislation has always been renewed six-monthly, annually or after whatever period has been specified, and that on each of those occasions we have moved further from the principles of absolute equality and transparency before the law and further towards a degree of Executive power? Does my right hon. Friend not think that it is time to turn the clock back in favour of openness and transparency, through the use of criminal law and criminal law alone?

[Keith Vaz]

I am sure that we shall touch on that subject. We are, of course, primarily concerned with the question of why people become radicals and what system makes them behave as they have behaved, but the way in which legislation is—in my hon. Friend's view—rushed through Parliament might well be one of our considerations.

I think it healthy for the House to have heard the comments of my hon. Friend, of the hon. Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller) and of the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr Field), who observed that when Parliament discusses these matters the measures concerned go through on the nod. I believe that the role of the Opposition—my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) did a very good job in this regard—is to scrutinise and probe the Government, and that is exactly what happened when this Minister was the shadow Minister. Perhaps we regret not being more robust on issues of this kind when we are in opposition, but I hope that that will happen now. The five-year period for the review is probably too long; we need to consider it earlier and much more objectively, and that might be one of the issues that we can examine as the debate progresses.

I have three points to make. The first concerns the process that the Government appear to have adopted. I hope that the Minister will reassure me about something about which he did not manage to reassure me when I probed him earlier, namely the role of Lord Macdonald. I understand that Lord Macdonald was appointed by the Government to review legislation. As a former Director of Public Prosecutions and a distinguished lawyer, he is someone whom I think we ought to consult as we present new proposals. Has he seen the Bill, and, if so, what were his comments on it and on the changes that have been made in the last few days?

The same applies to Lord Carlile, who gave evidence that was diametrically opposed to that of Lord Macdonald. He wants to keep control orders, but, as colleagues will recall, when he appeared before the Select Committee he proposed a three-tier structure that he felt could replace them. Will the Minister enlighten the House on the process that was adopted, and confirm that there has been widespread consultation with the very people—Lord Carlile and Lord Macdonald—whom the Government believed could contribute to the discussion?

Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

Debate between Keith Vaz and Jeremy Corbyn

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I hope you are enjoying your birthday, Mr Speaker, and that this is an appropriate way to celebrate it.

I hold no brief for Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan, and I do not wish to defend or support them in any way this evening. However, I want to follow the points made by other hon. Members on the process, which is not satisfactory. We add to the list of banned organisations during a Parliament, but the additions cannot be amended and the subject of the proscribed list is not open to general debate. There is therefore an argument for reviewing that process, and I hope the House heard what the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee said—he seemed to indicate that his Committee might well be prepared to conduct an inquiry into the process.

The legislation is now 10 years old. According to the list that I have just downloaded, 46 organisations are proscribed under the 2000 Act, and a further group of organisations are banned in Ireland—presumably that ban applies in this country too. The list contains organisations that clearly no longer exist, and organisations that have changed their names and exist under others. It therefore seems to me to be high time to review the whole question.

I take the point made by the hon. Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins). Proscribing an organisation from a particular country or community affects that country or community, and it affects the attitudes that officials take towards them. It is therefore necessary to consider such things very seriously. For example, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) asked about the LTTE, but it no longer exists and the situation in Sri Lanka has changed dramatically. I would have thought that we ought to look at that as a way of promoting political discourse and dialogue to ensure that the Tamil community has a place for negotiation, representation and political action. That is surely what we are trying to achieve.

[Keith Vaz]

Another point is the pressure that proscriptions put on the police and their resources. We must be very careful how we proceed with proscription, because the police must go out there and interview members of the community, and possibly prosecute people.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Indeed we must, because proscription puts a requirement—not just a pressure—on the police to do those things. Therefore, there is the potential for an enormous waste of resources, not to mention damage to community relations. After all, in this country, as I understand it, we try to include and incorporate, and to build good community relations rather than divisions.