Petitions
Debate between Keith Vaz and Peter Bone
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
I wish to present a petition that has been signed by 1,740 local residents, predominantly in Belgrave in Leicester. The petition was collected by volunteers in the local area: Mr Praful Mashru, Mr Kishorebhai Bojak, Mr Amratbhai Shyamji, Mr Vajubhai Madlani, Mrs Lilaben Doshi, Mr Vinod Kotecha, Mr Gagendrabhai Chhatrisha, Mr K. Koteeha, Mr A. Sevak and Mrs M. Mashru, and local councillors Mo Chohan, Manjula Sood and John Thomas.
The council proposes closing the Belgrave library and neighbourhood centre’s lunch club. The proposals have been brought forward by the assistant mayor, Councillor Kirk Master, who is consulting people and will consider what to do next, but residents are very concerned that these important projects might be closed, and that is why they are urging the city council to think again and to keep the library open—and the lunch club, too, which serves many elderly constituents, who have been going there for the last 40 years.
The petition states:
The petition of residents of Leicester East,
Declares that Leicester City Council’s plans to move the Belgrave Library will have a detrimental effect on the whole community, local school children and other members of the public; further that it will have to downsize the services currently provided such as access to computers, national newspapers, reading classes and book review sessions; further that moving it to Belgrave Neighbourhood Centre is not conducive to the atmosphere of what a library is and should be; further that the Belgrave Library is one of the few libraries remaining in Leicester; further that the residents are also concerned about Leicester City Council’s plans to remove the cooking facilities at the Belgrave Neighbourhood Centre, which currently serves the Belgrave Neighbourhood Centre Lunch Club which provides freshly cooked and culturally appropriate vegetarian hot meals to the elderly, disabled, diabetics and vulnerable people in the community; further that if the cooking facilities were to be removed, these communities would be deprived not only of a hot meal but also of their ability to be sociable and receive support on things that they do not understand; and further that they will become isolated and a burden on Leicester City Council who would need to provide more specialist individual care.
The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to encourage Leicester City Council to reconsider their decision to move the Belgrave Library to Belgrave Neighbourhood Centre and further encourage the Council not to remove the cooking facilities in Belgrave Neighbourhood as it provides a vital service to the elderly in the community.
And the petitioners remain, etc.
[P001977]
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
I rise to present a petition on behalf of the residents of Bozeat in my constituency. The lead signatures are those of Brian Gibbins, chairman of Bozeat parish council, and Margaret Docker and Sheila Alderman. The petition has hundreds of signatures, and it describes the problem of Bozeat post office, which is open for just two half-days a week. The postmaster would like to open for six days a week, which would be much better for my constituents and relieve pressure on the Wellingborough post office.
The petition states:
The Humble Petition of residents of Bozeat, Northamptonshire and the surrounding areas,
Sheweth,
That the Petitioners believe that the Bozeat branch of the Post Office should extend its opening hours to 9am until 5pm six days a week; and further that to accommodate greater usage of the facility and to prevent congestion at other facilities used elsewhere by the villagers.
Wherefore your Petitioners pray that your Honourable House urges the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to encourage the Post Office to extend the opening hours of their Bozeat village branch.
And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray, &c.
[P001976]
Immigration (Bulgaria and Romania)
Debate between Keith Vaz and Peter Bone(10 years, 11 months ago)
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Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries, and to follow the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who, as usual, is speaking good sense. I was delighted to hear a shift in his position on the EU; up to now, he has been entirely against us coming out of the EU, and he has moved to being probably against us coming out. That is really good news.
Mr Bone
I am surprised that the right hon. Gentleman has prejudged my position on the referendum; I want entirely to hear what our Prime Minister achieves.
I am delighted that the excellent Minister for Immigration is here. The only thing I have to say about that is that we know that the Government have decided to give that Member of Parliament the most difficult area to deal with—the one that they are in trouble on. It is good to see him here, but it is a worry that the Government are relying not on getting the problem sorted out, but on having a very able Minister defend an absolutely impossible position.
One of the cornerstones and key strengths of the coalition is its tough stance on cutting immigration, which Labour allowed to soar to eye-watering levels. In 2010, we pledged to
“take steps to take net migration back to the levels of the 1990s—tens of thousands a year, not hundreds of thousands.”
That is a common-sense policy, with overwhelming support. After a decade of Labour incompetence on the issue, it is long overdue.
The progress that we have made on cutting immigration to date is testament to the efforts of the Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May). I strongly believe that lifting the restrictions on Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants would jeopardise all the good work we have done, not only on getting immigration down, but on building new homes, improving public services and lowering unemployment.
Bulgaria’s new ambassador to the UK has claimed that hardly any Bulgarians want to move to the UK once restrictions are lifted, and that, more than anything, the change will hurt their economy. If that is the case, he should welcome continued restrictions. Government figures show that although overall immigration is down, eastern European immigration is bucking the trend, and is increasing. The number of people from Romania and Bulgaria settling in the UK has risen sharply, up from 37 in 2011 to 2,177 in 2012. Clearly, if the restrictions are lifted, those figures will increase dramatically, making them completely incompatible with the Government’s aim to reduce immigration.
Mr Bone
I am grateful for that intervention; my hon. Friend makes a very good point. He is right to say that Bulgarians and Romanians can come here if they satisfy the current requirements. I am absolutely in favour of continuing with that. The problem—it is a good point that he brings up, and it is one that I was moving on to—is that in Bulgaria the minimum wage is 73p an hour, and in Romania it is 79p, but in the UK the minimum wage is £6.31 for over-21s—nearly 10 times more than in Romania and Bulgaria. Bulgaria and Romania are two of the poorest members of the EU and do experience, I am afraid, levels of corruption. In 2010, gross domestic product per capita was £3,929 in Bulgaria and £4,682 in Romania, compared with Britain’s £22,426. Furthermore, there are 1.5 million people seeking work in Bulgaria and Romania.
It undoubtedly makes economic sense for individuals from these countries to migrate to the UK, regardless of whether they have the skills that we require. By lifting current restrictions, we leave ourselves wide open to a new wave of economic refugees, hoping to reap the rewards that this country has to offer. Those are pull factors that clearly cannot be addressed by reforming what benefits are available to immigrants. The UK is a fantastic place to live, and that is something to be proud of. Reforming the benefits system can only do so much; it cannot go far enough on its own when the fundamental issue is the lack of control that we appear to have over our borders.
The EU states that it has the power to control such reforms—common-sense reforms that are so badly needed to stop the abuse of public services by immigrants whom the EU is apparently forcing on this Government. There are still questions about how far the Immigration Bill can go before it is incompatible with EU law and the free movement of people. We are therefore left in a preposterous scenario in which the EU is trying to control not only who can come into this country, but what they can claim when they get here. It is an outrageous state of affairs, and we, the Parliament of the United Kingdom, need to say that we are ultimately sovereign over our own borders and the laws relating to domestic affairs.
The truth of the matter is that we do not know the extent of the upheaval that the removal of the restrictions will mean for our country, because we do not know how many people will come over. That is exactly the point that the right hon. Member for Leicester East made so powerfully. We learned that lesson from the 2004 influx of Polish immigrants. The Labour Government got it completely wrong and estimated that only 13,000 Poles would arrive; the figure turned out to be more than 100,000 a year at its peak.
Migration Watch UK has estimated that 50,000 immigrants will arrive from Romania and Bulgaria per year over the next five years. People might say, “Well, that’s Migration Watch,” but an independent think-tank, the Democracy Institute, has found to its surprise that
“the most alarming of the forecasts…is actually insufficiently alarmist.”
The institute projects that at least 70,000 immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria will arrive in the UK annually for the next five years, if the restrictions are lifted.
A poll by the BBC—not an organisation favourable to Eurosceptics—found that 1% of Romanians and 4% of Bulgarians said that they were looking for work in the UK. That would translate into 350,000 potential jobseekers in the UK. That is wholly contrary to our policy aims of cutting immigration and protecting the UK’s interests. At a time when we are making real inroads into cutting unemployment, the impact that an influx of immigrants would have on the job market would be detrimental to those looking for work and those on low wages.
Keith Vaz
In a very helpful intervention, the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) pointed out that of course Romanians and Bulgarians can at the moment work in this country as self-employed people, and the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) said that he was happy with that. Does he agree that if we were able to speed up the length of time that it took them to get national insurance numbers, that would be one way of ensuring that the system works without having to change it?
Mr Bone
I am grateful for that intervention. The simple answer is no. I think that we need to control our own borders. I do not think that we should be tinkering with the mechanisms; we should have complete control of what we do, as I think the right hon. Gentleman said in his concluding remarks.
A recent report on the economic effects of immigration found that those on the lowest wages feel the biggest impact of immigration, as immigration holds back the wages of the least well paid. We should be supporting those hard-working people, not eroding their wages by allowing uncontrolled immigration from countries with such vast economic differences. Moreover, although unemployment is down, youth unemployment is proving stubbornly high. With nearly 1 million under-25s still unemployed, the focus should be on helping them into jobs, not allowing into the job market an inpouring of immigrants who are looking for work.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Keith Vaz and Peter Bone(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
1. How many prosecutions the Crown Prosecution Service brought for human trafficking in the last 12 months.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
6. What steps he is taking to increase the number of prosecutions for human trafficking.
Anti-Slavery Day
Debate between Keith Vaz and Peter Bone(14 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the matter of Anti-Slavery Day.
It is probably close to 200 years since this House has debated slavery. As the chairman of the all-party human trafficking group, it is my great pleasure to open this debate, but it should not have been me opening it; it should have been the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart). I congratulate her on her pitch to the Backbench Business Committee and her success in securing this debate. However, once she had done so, she was immediately put into the shadow Government. She has risen like a phoenix from the ashes, and is now sitting by the Dispatch Box to answer for the Opposition. I congratulate her not only on securing this debate, but on her promotion.
William Wilberforce is a name that is synonymous with anti-slavery. In 1807, led by Wilberforce, an Act for the abolition of the slave trade was passed by Parliament. In 1833, the Slavery Abolition Act was passed. Why, therefore, are we here debating slavery, more than 200 years after the abolition of the slave trade? Perhaps we are celebrating the success of William Wilberforce; or are we here to congratulate ourselves that no slavery remains within the United Kingdom? We cannot do that. Slavery and trafficking are still far too common an occurrence. A frightening statistic is that there are estimated to be more than 27 million slaves in the world today. One in eight of them are in Europe, and at least 10,000 of them are here in the United Kingdom. How can that be true? When I walk around London or my constituency, I do not see slaves sweeping the streets or working in the fields. The fact that the problem is not as visible as it was in the time of William Wilberforce does not mean that it is not as important or as serious.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman rightly paid tribute to the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), but will he join me in paying tribute to the work of Anthony Steen, his predecessor as Chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on human trafficking, for all his excellent work on bringing to the House’s attention the slavery that is human trafficking? I am sure that he was about to mention him in his speech.
Mr Bone
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend—I shall call him my right hon. Friend today—for that intervention, but he will have to wait just a little longer before I mention the former Member for Totnes.
The three most lucrative criminal activities in the world are those associated with narcotics and with firearms, and the trafficking of humans. The first two criminal activities are well documented and vast sums of money are rightly invested in catching the criminals involved. Why then is the trafficking of humans—modern-day slavery—so badly documented, and why is so little invested in the fight against it? It takes place on the same scale as narcotics and firearms offences, and that gap needs to be addressed.
So where are all those slaves, and whom does this affect? In the United Kingdom, the main victims are women and children. They are often tricked into coming to this country, usually with a promise of some sort of job. When they arrive here, they are often locked up and forced to have sex with up to 30 men a day. I shall give the House an example. I met a 14-year-old Kenyan girl who had been trafficked into this country by a middle-aged white man on a passport that did not bear her name and did not have her picture on it. She was taken to Liverpool, locked in a house and forced to have sex with numerous men. Luckily, she escaped after a few days and was helped by a national charity. She was one of the lucky ones, if you can call it lucky to endure what she had had to. She managed to escape, but how many girls do not manage to do so? How many girls are locked in houses such as those while we are debating this issue today? Even if there were just one, that would be one too many, but there is not just one; there are thousands.
We have some fantastic non-governmental organisations working with trafficked victims, including ECPAT UK, the POPPY project, the Human Trafficking Foundation, the Bromley Trust, the Tudor Trust, and Kalayaan, to name but a few. Their work must not stop. I have one single goal, however: I want all those NGOs and charities to become redundant, because they are no longer needed. That is my aim. As I mentioned, they do fantastic work with trafficked victims, but I believe that prevention is the key.
How do we prevent human trafficking? That is a very difficult question to answer. I believe that making the public more aware of the issue is a good first step. On 18 October, the UK will celebrate anti-slavery day for the first time. I would like to take this opportunity to thank my former colleague, Anthony Steen, for working tirelessly to make the Anti-slavery Day Act 2010 his lasting legacy to the House. He pioneered an approach to human trafficking that I am very happy to follow. Quite simply, he put modern-day slavery on the parliamentary map. Anti-slavery day will mark out what we all hope will be the beginning of the end of slavery in the United Kingdom and make the public aware of the gravity of the problem.
What can be done? First, we need to identify victims better. Very few ever approach local authorities to complain, and even if they do, those authorities might not realise that the problem has resulted from trafficking and modern-day slavery. The police are on the front line of trafficking. The individual police officer on the beat is the best and probably the first person to meet a trafficked victim, but does every police officer know what to do, how to help and to whom they should send the victim? We need to help the police and make them more aware of trafficked women. There needs to be a national protocol to help victims.
We also need to enhance the border control system and stop the traffickers from bringing in the victims in the first place. That is the very best way to end trafficking. The UK must be a country that it is just not worth the traffickers using.