Spousal Visas
Kerry McCarthy Excerpts(11 years, 3 months ago)
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Andrew Percy
I apologise, Mr Deputy Speaker, in the same way as I should have apologised earlier for wafting my petition. This is not the appropriate time to present a petition so I offer my apologies to you for that.
There is huge concern in the country about immigration. I understand the Government’s response to the issue, as I said previously, but constituents in my town, Goole, cannot understand why they see EU immigration being dealt with differently from non-EU immigration. We understand the legal position. I understand that the Minister cannot do anything about that under the current terms of our membership. Fortunately, we are on our way out of the EU, but it is hard to explain to my constituents why a British citizen with a British child in Cambodia, who works hard and is paying tax in this country, is unable to bring his family into this country, whereas we see increasing numbers of citizens coming from any EU country, without any English language requirement. It may not be a comfortable thing for people to hear but that is what people in my constituency have been saying about the rules.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
I echo the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart). I have a constituent who wants to be in Bristol to look after his sick parents. He has a Thai wife. They have moved to Spain so that they can take advantage of the laws there and eventually come to the UK. That is ludicrous. He has had to go and live in Spain with his wife and child although they have no connection with that country at all, as that is the only way round the rules. On the one hand we have EU-wide laws that apply to all EU citizens; on the other hand people in the UK are treated differently from people in Spain.
Andrew Percy
Absolutely. I thank the hon. Lady, who has campaigned on this issue and had a debate on it. She makes well the point that we have one rule for some people and a different rule for others. That option would not be available for my constituent, but perhaps those with a higher standard of education or more access to funds can get round the rules through another EU country, and that is a big concern to her constituents as it is to some of mine.
Oral Answers to Questions
Kerry McCarthy Excerpts(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
2. What discussions she has had with the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills on trends in the number of low- paid and unpaid jobs in the entertainment industry.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)
The national minimum wage underpins wage levels for those at work and applies equally in the creative sector as elsewhere. The Government support industry in its efforts to provide employment opportunities for young people in the entertainment industry through initiatives such as the creative employment programme, the charity Creative Access, and the forthcoming launch of UK Music’s skills academy.
Kerry McCarthy
I thank the Minister for that response, and I particularly welcome what he said yesterday about paid internships in the creative industries. It is still the case, however, that many professional freelancers are expected to work for nothing or for very low pay. Sometimes, everyone involved in a production is being paid except for the musicians and actors who are fronting it up. What will the Minister do about that?
Mr Vaizey
The exploitation of interns is unacceptable, and as I said, the music industry is working hard. In particular, UK Music takes a strong lead on the issue and is setting up the UK music skills academy. The charity Creative Access, with the BPI, will give work experience to 300 individuals who will be paid. I pay tribute to the hon. Lady who continues to campaign on this matter and many other issues in the music industry.
Maria Miller
I have to gently disagree with the hon. Gentleman. He will see that at the heart of what the Government are doing is ensuring that every person in this country can achieve their potential. The changes in the tax regime will support women, as will the increases in access to child care that we have already put in place. Actions very much speak loudly on this subject.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
4. What assessment she has made of the cumulative effect of Government policies on tackling violence against women.
The Minister of State, Home Department (Mr Jeremy Browne)
The Government are fully committed to tackling violence against women and girls. We have ring-fenced nearly £40 million of funding up to 2015 for domestic and sexual abuse victims’ services. We monitor the impact of our activity through our annually published action plans, inter-ministerial meetings and regular engagement with the women’s sector.
Kerry McCarthy
But the End Violence Against Women Coalition’s recent “Deeds or Words?” report gave the Government a score of 2.5 out of 10 and the Department for Education a woeful zero—nul points—out of 10 for their efforts to tackle violence against women and girls. Have the Government made any assessment of why they got such a woeful score? What are they going to do to improve their score in future years?
Mr Browne
I am grateful for the opportunity to put the Government’s side of the argument, because we have a strong story to tell. We have introduced stronger laws on stalking; we are in the process of criminalising forced marriage, in legislation that I am leading at the moment; we have the highest conviction rates for rape since recording began; and the Home Office is running a very successful campaign—“This is abuse”—aimed at addressing teenage sexual behaviour. The Government have a strong record and I hope that we can persuade more people of that when they write reports in the future.
Immigration Rules: Sponsors
Kerry McCarthy Excerpts(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
The issue of immigration is, as ever, highly topical—I cannot remember a time in my nearly eight years in Parliament when it was not—but I want to focus today on one specific aspect of the immigration rules that has put some of my constituents in a difficult position. I know from the responses I have received from other Members that it has affected some of their constituents, too. A number of Members have asked me whether I would be prepared to take interventions during the debate, and I am happy to do so.
The Government have introduced a new minimum income threshold of £18,600 for someone who wishes to sponsor the settlement in the UK of a spouse, partner, fiancé, fiancée or proposed civil partner whose nationality is not that of one of the European economic area countries. A higher threshold applies if the partner—I shall use that term as shorthand from now on—has a child who requires sponsorship, too. It is £22,400 for one child and an additional £2,400 for each further child. There are also rules about adult and elderly dependants, which I do not have time to address here. The British Medical Association, among others, has raised concerns with me about the operation of those rules.
Significant concerns have also been raised with me about the time it takes to process applications that meet all the rules but, again, I do not have time to address them in detail tonight. I will just say that no newly married couple wants to contend with delays when one partner is trying to join the other in this country, and it would be helpful, and humane, if such cases could be speeded up, especially when they comply with all the rules and it is just an administration problem that is holding things up.
Today, however, I want to talk specifically about the income limits. I accept, as do my colleagues on the Labour Front Bench in the Home Affairs team, that family immigration rules should be firm, but they also need to be fair. We need to keep the rules under review, and to adjust them as appropriate to deal with possible abuses and to manage migration at acceptable levels. I do not feel that it is right, however, that the rules should be used to prevent those in genuine, loving relationships from being able to share a life together in this country, when one of them is already a British citizen.
We have always had the “no recourse to public funds” rule, and I have dealt with many cases in which that has proved an obstacle to people wanting a partner to join them here, but I accept the need for such a rule to protect UK taxpayers, provided humanitarian grounds for exception can be applied. We are not, however, talking about cases where the people involved would be dependent on state support. We are talking about cases where the sponsor is in work and is a British citizen, but does not earn enough. By way of illustration, I want to outline the details of three cases. My constituents said they were happy for me to provide the details of their cases, but they did not want their identities revealed. I shall refer to them as Mr X and so on.
The first case relates to Mr X, who for 10 years has lived in Thailand with his Thai wife and their three-year-old child in a long-established relationship. He now needs to return to the UK to look after his elderly parents who are recovering from cancer and are no longer able to travel to Thailand—
Kerry McCarthy
As I was saying, Mr X needs to return to the UK to look after his elderly parents who are recovering from cancer. They used to go on a fairly regular basis to visit him, his wife and child, but they are now too ill and infirm to visit. Mr X has a professional job in Thailand, which he has held down for a long time. It is a decent salary according to local rates, but it is not the equivalent of the £18,600 earnings limit in the UK. It is enough to provide him with the same living standards in Thailand as he would have if he were on that sort of salary in the UK—it is obviously a lot cheaper to live there. Under the new rules, Mr X will have to leave his wife behind while he finds work in the UK, which he is not prepared to do—by which I mean not that he is not prepared to find work, but that he is not prepared to leave his wife behind. They are now considering moving to Spain instead, so that he is reasonably close to his parents and it will be easier for his wife to join him, perhaps becoming a Spanish national, which would then allow them to enter the UK.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. She is describing a situation that we on the all-party group inquiry into family migration have heard several times. Does she agree that there is a further nonsense to the situation she describes? If the family is not able to come in and look after the parents, instead of the family providing care, this will pile costs on for public social care and public health services.
Kerry McCarthy
My hon. Friend makes a very good point, as she always does. If I understand the Government’s ideological position on this issue, they want to support families and very much approve of carers taking on responsibility for elderly parents or others within their family network. The rule that we are talking about operates to prevent that from happening.
The second case features Mr Z and Ms Z who came to see me in my constituency surgery a few weeks ago. They were married in the UK in March 2011. She is a British citizen and her husband, who had been living and working in the UK for six years under a valid work permit, is South African. He was in highly paid professional work in the UK, but soon after they married, he was made redundant. Although he could probably have secured another job at a similarly high salary in the UK, they decided to take a chance and move to Cape Town for a couple of years.
After two years in South Africa, however, they have decided that they want to return to the UK, but the rules changed while they were away. He will not be allowed to join his wife in the UK unless she earns more than £18,600—despite the fact that he is a highly skilled computer programmer who could expect to earn perhaps £60,000 a year in the UK. Before they left for Cape Town, my woman constituent was earning £26,000 a year as a pub manager. As she has been out of work for two years in Cape Town, however, there is a gap in her CV, so she is unlikely to be able to walk straight back into a manager’s position, although she aspires to do so in a couple of years’ time. Wages in the pub trade are not particularly high, so it is likely she will start on a salary below £18,600. As I said, they would have a joint income as a family of about £75,000 because her husband could get a well-paid job, but under the new rules it is based on her income, so he would not be able to join her.
Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)
My hon. Friend cites a number of cases. I think this whole process is unfair because it is quite clear that families who can afford to maintain themselves without making any demands on public funds are being kept apart. My hon. Friend has cases of people returning to the UK, and just this week I have had two constituents contact me about similar issues. One case was a man returning here from India who has £82,000 in a UK bank. Clearly, he and his wife could properly maintain themselves. However, savings do not count. The man is self-employed, but will not have the long record of employment needed to meet the £26,000-plus requirement, so he is unable to have his wife here with him. The other person—
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Lady, but this is supposed to be an intervention, not a speech.
Kerry McCarthy
Perhaps when I have spoken for a little longer, my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) will be able to intervene again and make her second point. Indeed, if she intervenes several more times, she may eventually be able to tell the whole story.
I understand that those who earn less than £18,600 can top it up if they have savings, up to a maximum of £62,000. A constituent who was in that situation came to see me the other day. Perhaps the Minister will be able to clarify the position when he responds, but I think that people have to show that they have had the money in their accounts for six months and it has not just been lent to them.
The final case to which I want to refer is that of a constituent whose girlfriend is based in Hong Kong, but is of Philippine origin. He wants her to join him in the United Kingdom, but they cannot marry. She was married to an abusive husband in the Philippines—she fled to Hong Kong to get away from him—but divorce is illegal in the Philippines, which in itself raises interesting questions. What happens if someone from the Philippines comes to this country and wants to marry a British citizen? What will be the impact on that person’s immigration status if that is not allowed?
The couple cannot live in the Philippines together, which is an option that they explored. If my constituent were in a relationship with an undivorced woman in the Philippines, he could face seven years in jail and she could face three to four years.
It turned out, after we had looked into it, that my constituent’s income is just enough for him to qualify under the rules. He came to see me because he had heard about the £62,000 savings limit, and thought that he was expected to have that much money in the bank on top of his income. However, if he had earned just £100 a month less, he would not have been able to bring his partner to the United Kingdom either. They were exploring the possible options. His partner was considering going to Canada, and he thought that perhaps he would be able to join her there.
The situation is ridiculous. My constituent has family responsibilities, and is settled in employment in the UK. The fact that he would have been forced to go to the other side of the world to be with his partner when she could join him here seems nonsensical to me.
Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the rules go against the basic principle that families should be united rather than divided? These financial conditions are dividing not only husbands and wives but parents, grandparents and others. Are they not unfair and discriminatory, especially to those outside European Union countries?
Kerry McCarthy
I think that the Government are trying to avoid circumstances in which spouses or fiancées, for instance, are used as a form of chain migration. I have seen that happen, and I accept that the system is open to abuse and should not be abused in that way. I have come across instances in which people first apply for permission for a spouse to join them in this country, and then extend the application to elderly parents, or perhaps younger brothers and sisters. I accept that we have to manage migration to this country, and that we ought to control such situations. However, none of the cases I have cited involves anything like that.
People are increasingly working and studying abroad. People are going off to university in other countries, meeting their partners there, and then not being able to return to the United Kingdom with their partners until they have established themselves on the career ladder. It is not uncommon now for graduates to start work—if they can start work; they may be on unpaid or paid internships or low-paid jobs for the first couple of years after graduating—but to be unable to bring their partners into this country. I recognise the need to ensure that new migrants to the UK do not increase the burden on the British taxpayer, but many couples survive on less than the average income without being a burden on the taxpayer.
Fiona Mactaggart
The earning capacity of the spouse from overseas cannot be taken into account. I received a tragic e-mail today from a man who wrote “I cannot get the money. I fell in love with my wife. What can I do? I am really scared.” His wife speaks fluent English, and is a qualified science teacher in Algeria. She would have been able to contribute to science education in my constituency, but she is not going to be able to come here.
Kerry McCarthy
That is a valid point and I was about to come on to it. Why is this based only on the sponsor’s salary? As I mentioned, it is highly likely the couple currently living in Cape Town would have a joint income of £75,000 or more, so they would not in any way be a burden on the state.
Basing things solely on the sponsor’s income will inevitably have a differential impact on women who seek to bring their partner here, because, sadly, it is still a fact of life that women are likely to earn less than their partner. Of course, this is even more likely when a child is involved. If a couple wish to return to the UK because the woman is about to give birth—which means she will not be working for the next year or so—they will not be able to do so, even if the man has an offer of a well-paid job here, unless he meets the increasingly stringent rules for getting a work visa, which would mean he would have to work in a specific field where there is a skills shortage.
I want to make a point about flexibility, too. In the current economic climate, people can lose their jobs at the drop of a hat, and these rules do not deal with the realities of life. People can be earning a decent income one day but not the next day, and then be back in work a month or two later. How can the rules be sufficiently flexible to deal with such situations, rather than just penalise people?
What representations has the Minister received about cases that fall into this category? From the research I have done, it is clear there are many such cases. Stories have been reported in the newspapers, too, and many MPs have constituents who are caught up in this situation. What analysis has the Minister done of the sort of people caught under these new rules, and in the light of some of the human stories he has heard—stories of couples who simply want to be able to spend their lives together in the UK—has he given any consideration to revising the rules and allowing more flexibility in decision making?
Kerry McCarthy
It seems to me wrong that if someone is earning a modest income, their partner or child cannot access the NHS, but if they are wealthy, they can. Surely that goes completely against what the NHS is meant to be about. The Minister is saying that there is a different rule for people who earn more, meaning that their partners can get NHS treatment.
Mr Harper
No, the hon. Lady misunderstands me, which I am sure is my fault for not explaining the situation. The point is that if someone comes here and we say they have no recourse to public funds, they do have access to the NHS. I think the hon. Lady was arguing that because someone on a modest income who brings their family member here could not access public funds, that would not place a burden on the taxpayer. My point was that if, for example, that person needed to access the NHS, they could, and of course that burden would fall on the taxpayer, even though the income-earner’s contribution to the Exchequer may be very modest.
The other, wider, issue concerns the way our welfare system works. The presence of the partner may of course increase the benefits that the British national is entitled to. Although the migrant might not be entitled to housing benefit, for example, their presence may well increase the amount that the UK citizen is able to claim. That may give rise to a genuine issue about how our welfare system works—that is another debate—but given how it works, it is not quite as simple as saying that because there is no recourse to public funds there is no burden on the taxpayer from their presence.
I want to say something about a change relating to integration, albeit briefly as it does not fall within the category of finance. We think English language skills are very important, which is why, from October, we are increasing the level of English language skills we expect. That is partly to give those who come here the best possible chance of integrating—participating in the workplace and being part of the community.
Mr Harper
The hon. Lady makes a very good point, which I am coming on to address. In most cases—this comes back to the point about representations—including one of the cases the hon. Member for Bristol East raised and the one mentioned by the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), there is often an alternative way, through the immigration rules, of someone getting to the United Kingdom. So the reason we do not take into account—
Mr Harper
Let me just develop the point, because either I will answer it satisfactorily or I will not and the hon. Lady will then be able pick up the point she thinks I have not answered adequately, rather than getting in first. I will make two points. First, we do not take into account the previous income of the migrant partner when they apply for entry clearance mainly because what someone happened to be earning elsewhere is no guarantee of their finding work here. However, in the case she highlighted of the female British citizen with a South African husband and in the case that the hon. Member for Slough mentioned of the skilled science teacher, although the partner may not be able to get entry clearance to come to the United Kingdom as a spouse, they would of course be able to apply under our tier 2 skilled working visa to come to the United Kingdom. They could then get entry clearance on that basis and once here in work, earning an income, they would be able to switch into the family route. They could then show that they could earn that level of income and that would then be taken into account. So people who would be able to come here to work in a skilled job could come here under an alternative route and once they have established the fact of earning that level of income, they would be able to change their status under the spouse route, with the appropriate route to settlement. So certainly the South African husband could follow that route and it would work for him.
Kerry McCarthy
My understanding is that he would be able to do that only if his job could not be filled by a UK person. He is a computer programmer and, obviously, there are a lot of those in this country already, so he would not meet the criteria: no employer would say that the skills they required could be met only by him and not by anyone else. He has worked in the UK for six years under a work permit and it was unfortunate that the couple left the UK for a short time and the rules changed while they were out of the country. Had they not done so, they would have been able to go down the route that the Minister suggested.
Mr Harper
Under the tier 2 rule, it has to be a skilled job and they have to undergo a resident labour market test. So if he has a particular employer in mind, the rules may be a little more inflexible in the sense that he may not be able to say a specific employer, but if he has skills to offer, there are many occupations in which there is a shortage of people. If it is an occupation on the shortage occupation list, the employer is not required to undergo a resident labour market test. There are therefore opportunities in certain cases for someone to come here.
The hon. Member for Slough highlighted the issue of savings. Despite the fact that I managed to throw together some maths A-levels, that was a long time ago so I will not try to do the maths in my head. Savings can be used to make up the difference. We look at the amount of savings above £16,000, which is the threshold that is generally disregarded for income-related benefits. If someone holds savings for the period that they are hoping to come to the United Kingdom, which would be 30 months, the savings count as long as the applicants have them under their control for at least six months.
Animal Experiments
Kerry McCarthy Excerpts(11 years, 10 months ago)
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Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Crawley (Henry Smith) on securing this debate, and on outlining in such depth and detail the case against not animal experimentation per se, but the huge number of unnecessary experiments. He says that we need to get to a situation in which only absolutely essential tests continue. I would very much like one day to see a world in which there was no animal testing, but I accept that, at the moment, we should be lobbying and campaigning for a gradual incremental approach, highlighting the fact that there is so much duplication of unnecessary animal tests and that there are areas in which it is completely unethical to test products on animals.
Cosmetic testing is the one such area in which I think most people would support that kind of lobbying work. Indeed, public opinion polls show that the vast majority are against cosmetic testing on animals, which is one of those things that, if asked, people are very much against, but they struggle as consumers to put that into practice. People like me might spend ages looking at all the labels on everything—the Leaping Bunny logo is useful if people are trying to find a product that has not been tested on animals anywhere through the supply chain—but many others are misled by products such as Herbal Essences. People think that because something has “herbal” or “natural” in its name, all the ingredients must be derived from the plant world with no chemicals. They also extrapolate that those products are humane and not tested on animals, whereas we know that in most cases they are, or at least they are produced by companies that do a lot of animal testing.
It has taken 20 years to get to the stage where the cosmetic testing ban is about to come into force. In 1991, the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection set up the European coalition of leading animal protection organisations with the aim of ending the use of animal testing for cosmetics. We now have the ban on the import and sale of animal-tested cosmetic products and ingredients, which comes into force on 11 March.
I am interested to know how that ban will be enforced—I believe that that is the responsibility of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. I recently asked a question of the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson) and was told that her Department is working with trading standards to develop guidance for local authority trading standards services on implementing the ban. My concern is that trading standards has many other things on its plate, that it is not well resourced and that it is affected by cuts, as are many other public sector bodies. Will the Minister tell us whether the guidance has already been published? Will there be consultation? What is the timetable for disseminating that guidance to local authority trading standards, and what training will there be on implementing the guidance? What enforcement action are local authority trading standards likely to take?
There needs to be more proactive testing of cosmetics during the import process, rather than waiting to try to catch people in shops and market stalls who are selling products that are still being tested. We ought to be able to stop those products from coming into the UK in the first place. The BUAV suggests that that could involve an inspector checking documentation to ensure that batches are compliant. Not only would that act as a deterrent to companies that might want to chance their arm, but it would uncover anything before it reached the market. When we consider the way in which the recent horsemeat situation came to light, everyone would agree that we should not find out after the event that something such as horsemeat has entered the food chain; we want to stop it coming into the country in the first place. Will the Minister examine the BUAV’s proposal to ensure that the ban is properly implemented?
The pledge to end testing household products on animals was set out in the coalition agreement in 2010. I remember in the run-up to the 2010 general election there was an event in Parliament at which speakers from the three main political parties pledged their support. Obviously, there is political will to do something, and the Government have said that no project licences will be granted for testing household products on animals.
When I recently tabled a parliamentary question asking for the definition of “household product,” the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice answered:
“There is no authoritative definition of ‘household product’ in UK or European legislation.”
He said that new guidelines will apply to
“‘substances used in the household’”,
and that decisions will be made
“on a case by case basis.”—[Official Report, 22 January 2013; Vol. 557, c. 151W.]
Obviously, substances “used in the household” may cover a wide range of things, and I could imagine getting into a dispute about whether something will be covered by those rules.
As the hon. Member for Crawley said, there is no mention of any restriction on testing the ingredients of household products. As the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice confirmed, Government figures for 2011 show that the number of tests on finished household products was zero. So implementing a ban on the testing of finished products will not achieve anything; it is the ingredients that are important. When the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Lynne Featherstone), who was then a Minister in the Department, was asked about that in 2011, she said that when the ban is introduced, it will
“apply to both finished household products and their ingredients, although in practice mainly the latter are tested.”—[Official Report, 28 March 2011; Vol. 526, c. 80W.]
I would be grateful if the Minister elaborated on that. Does the ban apply to ingredients, as well as to finished products? If the ban applies only to finished products, how effective will it be? Or is the ban simply an empty gesture?
A new version of some household products seems to hit the market every few months. One moment we are told that a washing powder is the best ever and that it gets everything 100% white—it is marvellous, wonderful and cutting edge, and nothing could be better. Then, three months later, there is suddenly a new, improved version. That constant drive to get market share, to sell a new product and to present it as something different in some ways buys into the need to test more things that go into the product. Perhaps I am a bit old-fashioned, but we have plenty of household products that are capable of washing our clothes and cleaning our floors and windows. We do not need to introduce any new products or ingredients. We certainly do not need to do so at the expense of animals that have to have ingredients tested on them.
I hosted an event in Parliament on 16 January, which the hon. Member for Crawley attended. At that event, the Dr Hadwen Trust announced that it is funding the first professorial post in animal replacement science at Queen Mary, university of London. The post is an academic position, and another researcher will also be funded as part of the unit. They will be working solely on replacements for, and the reduction of, testing on animals. That means that the UK will be at the forefront of efforts to provide alternatives to animal testing. The new professor will be appointed in the next few months and will be based at the Blizard institute. The professor will particularly look at things such as developing in vitro models using human cells and tissue, and developing three-dimensional models in cutaneous gastroenterology and cancer research, which is a welcome move that provides credibility to the field of animal replacement.
People often think that the debate is just scientists against people who care about cuddly animals and have an emotional response, rather than people who are interested in the most effective scientific methods. At the launch, it was interesting that so many research scientists came up to me saying, “We don’t actually think that testing on animals is an effective way of doing it. We don’t think it gets the right results. Mice are genetically not the right animals to test something that we are developing to treat humans.” The professorial post creates credibility for the search for alternatives to testing on animals, which is important.
Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)
I welcome what the hon. Lady is saying. She talked earlier about science and new technology. Does she welcome the fact that, last year, the National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research established 15 PhDs to consider alternatives to animal experiments? I think it is great to see both more scientists and more funding.
Kerry McCarthy
That is another welcome development. The National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research has done some good work, but more can be done. As we know, the number of animal experiments has gone up, partly because of medical developments, new forms of testing, and so on. I will judge the centre’s success by the reduction in the number of overall animal experiments, rather than success in one area and increased tests elsewhere.
Angela Smith
Is it not also important that the key Departments work together on reducing the incidence of animals used in research? The Home Office regulates research, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs funds much of the research and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills often funds academia to undertake research on alternatives. Is it not important that those Departments should be committed to working together to deliver the coalition Government’s objective?
Kerry McCarthy
That is true, and I would add the Department of Health into the mix with its role in new drugs, safety standards, and so on. To an extent, the issue has suffered from being parked in the Home Office. The previous Minister, the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green, for example, had the equalities brief and so much else to deal with that did not sit neatly with addressing the animal experimentation side of things. There is a tendency for the issue to be sidelined and not given the attention that it deserves. It would have been better to pull it together in a cross-cutting way under one post.
I have a couple of questions for the Minister. The recent legislation carrying forward the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986 came into force in January 2013. It requires that alternative non-animal research techniques be used in medical research if available. Researchers must ensure that, wherever possible, a scientifically satisfactory method or testing strategy not entailing the use of live animals should be used, and the number of animals used in projects should be reduced to a minimum. How will scientists know whether a non-animal alternative method is available, given that no central database currently exists? Without such a resource, how will the Home Office be able to monitor compliance properly or encourage the promotion of alternatives?
As I mentioned earlier, that topic leads into the ongoing problem of duplication. Currently, researchers have no way of knowing the results of previous experiments involving animals. An experiment at Cardiff university, for example, which involved sewing up the eyelids of newborn kittens had already been done elsewhere; it had turned out to be fruitless in finding a cure for lazy eye in children. Has the Home Office assessed the feasibility of introducing a central database that licence holders would have to search before submitting a project application? I understand that it has been discussed recently at European level in working groups, but that no progress was made. Why, and what steps will the Minister commit to take to help those discussions progress?
Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD)
I thank the hon. Lady for giving way before coming to the end of her contribution. She is absolutely right about duplication, but one problem is that not all scientific work is published, because sometimes no journal is willing to publish it. Would it not be a good idea to have a system of open access, so that all work could be published on a database and everybody could have access to it, even if journals were not prepared to publish it?
Kerry McCarthy
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. It is partly that results of some research are not publicly disseminated, but there is also an issue of commercial confidentiality where products for sale are involved. People do not want to reveal in what direction their thoughts are headed, in case someone steals their research and comes up with a similar product. They do not want to give their rivals a commercial advantage. I can see why drug companies, for example, would resist the idea of a central database, but we definitely need to go down the path of open access.
Finally, I hope that the Minister will welcome the creation of the professorial chair at Queen Mary, university of London. Can he do anything in conjunction with his colleagues at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills to roll it out in the research departments of other universities in the UK?
Mr Adrian Sanders (Torbay) (LD)
It is a genuine pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Sheridan. I congratulate the hon. Member for Crawley (Henry Smith) on securing this important debate. The participants so far have certainly reflected quality rather than quantity.
Over the past few decades, many improvements have been made to the welfare of animals in research laboratories. We banned testing for cosmetic products and toiletries back in 1998, and conditions have improved under strict adherence to the three R’s. Unfortunately, as has been said, the number of animals used in scientific research continues to increase.
The guiding principles for the humane use of animals in scientific research are known as the three R’s: replace, reduce and refine. According to those principles, scientists must prove that there are no alternatives to using animals, use the minimum possible number of animals and refine their experiments to ensure that animals suffer as little as possible. The National Centre for the Replacement, Refinement and Reduction of Animals in Research is the organisation working on the coalition Government’s pledge to reduce the use of animals in scientific research. According to its research, drastic advances have been made in implementing the three R’s. As a result, thousands fewer animals are being used in certain experiments.
The problem of animal testing is global, and progress towards minimising its use has been hit and miss. As of March this year, EU law will prohibit not only animal testing for cosmetics within the EU, but importing any cosmetic products tested on animals outside the EU. Sadly, many companies responding to the growing appetite for cosmetic products among China’s middle classes are abandoning their cruelty-free status and resuming animal testing. Chinese law currently requires all cosmetics to be tested on animals to ensure that they are safe for humans. The law forces cosmetic companies to test every product in that way, even products that have been tested by other means and deemed safe.
There is knowledge within China of how to test cosmetics without animals. A grant from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals helped train a number of Chinese scientists at Beijing technology and business university to test cosmetic ingredients without using animals. Perhaps we should add the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to the long list of Departments mentioned by the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) and involve it in cross-departmental action and discussion on the protection of animals from cruelty.
Kerry McCarthy
The hon. Gentleman might be aware that one of my other hats is shadow Foreign Office Minister. I talk to animal welfare groups, and then I meet ambassadors or visiting delegations. People have raised with me the dog meat trade in the Philippines, for example, but the problem is that, if our Foreign Office representatives go over there, that issue will be so far down their agenda that they never raise it. There are far more important issues of trade, defence, security and so on to raise. I accept entirely his point that the FCO should be involved as well.
Mr Sanders
I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention.
I hope that the training will ensure that if China changes the law requiring mandatory animal testing of cosmetics, scientists will know how to test products without using animals. The only way that the situation within China will change is if pressure is put on the Chinese Government to change their laws.
The claim that animal testing is needed for safety reasons does not hold up, given that the EU and many countries around the world manage to ensure that products are safe without involving animals. It is important that we all encourage cosmetic companies to put principles before profits and, rather than reversing years of progress, to stay firm by refusing to conduct tests on animals. Testing on animals is not necessary, and the companies that have started using animals again are doing so only to increase their profits.
We have a number of great companies here in Britain, such as The Body Shop, Lush and many others, which refuse to stock products tested on animals. I hope that we can do more to promote such companies and refuse to buy from the growing number of companies that are selling out by needlessly testing their products on animals. I hope that the Minister can give us some reassurance that the Government are aware of the growing problem and will introduce measures to reduce it.
Mr Harper
My hon. Friend makes a good point. There is sometimes a caricature of those involved in research. If they had alternatives to using animals, they would implement them; they use animals because there are not currently alternatives in all cases. My hon. Friend puts his finger on the issue: the use of animals for experiments, particularly in a country such as the UK, which has high standards, is expensive. Companies use animals only because there are not more effective remedies. Also, they are conscious that they could develop effective alternatives that would also be more cost-effective. However costly—in several senses—animal experiments are, if there are no alternatives, those cannot be used; but many pressures are pushing researchers towards the use of alternatives when they are available, and that is welcome to all of us, including my hon. Friend.
We also accept that regulation must not be overly bureaucratic, so we have made some small but important changes, allowing us to simplify the detail required in personal licences and the way we process applications for them. Another important change in the revised Act is the requirement placed on member states to collect and publish statistical information, on not just the number of animals used, but the severity of the procedures applied to them. Publication of information about the experience of the animals will be an advance in transparency. Combined with the mandatory requirement to publish non-technical summaries of authorised projects, that will help to inform the parliamentary and public debate .
Kerry McCarthy
To what extent is security an issue affecting the making public of the kinds of testing that are going on? I do not agree with some of the more extreme, violent protests used to highlight animal testing. Would that prevent some experiments from being made public?
Mr Harper
The hon. Lady raises an important issue. This may be a good time to pick up on the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley about section 24 of the 1986 Act, which, as he said, currently prohibits the disclosure by Home Office Ministers and officials, other than in their discharge of functions under the Act, of confidential information about the use of animals in scientific procedures. There are two reasons for the provision. One relates to the hon. Lady’s point, and covers information that might put individuals at risk from those people who sadly are not content with democratic decision making and debate, but choose to use violence—something that we in the House would all abhor. In addition, the provision protects intellectual property. I think that I can say a little more on that than my hon. Friend did.
The Government agree that section 24 is not framed satisfactorily. There is little room for manoeuvre, and it acts somewhat as a blanket ban on disclosing information. It can, for example, make it difficult for Home Office inspectors to share good practice between establishments. The hon. Lady raised that, and so did my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley. The problem is that clear consensus about what we should do did not emerge in the recent public consultation on the transposition of the European directive—whether we should repeal the section or change it in some way. There was a range of views, and we wanted, as my hon. Friend said, to give it further thought. As to a timetable—I think that is what he was after—I can be a bit more specific. We are doing that work now, over the next six months, and aim to report our conclusions to Parliament before the House rises for the summer. I hope that that gives some reassuring firmness to the timetable.
The problem was that many of the people who responded to the consultation did not like the status quo, but there was no really clear sense of what to replace it with. We must be mindful of the two issues I raised: intellectual property, which it is legitimate for researchers to protect; and the extent to which we need to protect those involved in important work. Changes to the regime for animal welfare should be made by Parliament, after legitimate public debate. They should not happen because people take it on themselves to try to drive out of business through intimidation and violence those who conduct lawful work. Those are the things that we shall be thinking through: being as open as possible, but with those two constraints. I hope that that is helpful, and that that approach is widely shared in the House.
It is probably worth picking up the point about statistics, which my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley and several other hon. Members raised. He is correct to say that the latest statistics, for 2011, showed that the number of animals used in experiments and testing was higher than it had been for some years. It was not the highest ever number. The high point was reached in statistics produced under the Cruelty to Animals Act 1876, which preceded the current legislation: in the 1970s about 5 million animals were used. Thus there has been a drop, but my hon. Friend is right to say that the number is going up.
An interesting point arises in that context, which brings me back to a point made by the hon. Member for Ashfield, about the United Kingdom’s reputation as a place to do life sciences and bioscience. I understand that that industry is growing in the UK, more quickly than the increase in the number of animals used; so the usage of animals for each £1 of research, or however one might characterise it, is falling, but more such work is being done in the UK. It seems to me that that is a good thing, because we want that work to be done here; we want those generally well-paid jobs to be in the United Kingdom. Also, because we have high standards of welfare in our animal testing regime, it is better for animals, if research is to take place anywhere in the world, for it to happen in the UK. However, if the size of the business in the UK grows, that may mean that even if the number of animals used for every given type of research falls, the overall number goes up.
Of course, the quickest way to reduce the number of animals would be to drive the work overseas, which would not be good for the United Kingdom, for jobs or for animal welfare. We must be thoughtful about the numbers. We should consider the size of the industry and the work that is being carried out, and whether we are driving down the proportion of animals being used in that work. We need to think about the global position. It is a coalition Government objective to get more of the life sciences business—the bioscience industry—in the United Kingdom. As the hon. Member for Ashfield said, the Opposition support that, and if we attract such business here more quickly than we manage to deliver on the three R’s, the number of animals that are used will rise. However, we may be driving down the rate at which they are used, while the industry grows. That is a bit of a conundrum, and I do not have the answer, but it shows that care should be exercised in using statistics.
Oral Answers to Questions
Kerry McCarthy Excerpts(11 years, 11 months ago)
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Damian Green
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for raising this important issue. Alcohol-related harm costs the country about £21 billion a year. Absolutely the alcohol strategy is not designed to delay anything. As he knows, it sets out a range of measures to tackle binge drinking, to cut alcohol-fuelled violence and disorder and to reduce the number of people drinking at damaging levels. Just as the Government overhauled the Licensing Act 2003 to give local authorities the tools they needed to tackle alcohol-related crime and disorder, so we will take further measures as and when necessary.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
Over the Christmas and new year period, there seemed to be an abundance of adverts and public information campaigns telling women how they could avoid being raped or sexually assaulted—for example, by not drinking too much or dressing in a certain way. Does the Home Secretary agree that this gives out entirely the wrong message—that victims are somehow responsible for the crimes being perpetrated against them—and that we ought to be sending out the message that it is never okay for men to assault women?
Mrs May
I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady that we need to send out a very clear message that sexual violence against men or women is wrong. These are abhorrent crimes—rape is an abhorrent crime—and we should be doing all we can to stop them. I also agree that, although it is necessary to ensure that women, particularly young women, are aware of the potential dangers and circumstances in which they could be at risk and that they take appropriate action, it is the perpetrator of such crimes whom we should be bringing to justice. It is the perpetrator who is at fault, and we should never forget that.
Olympics (Security)
Kerry McCarthy Excerpts(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Mrs May
Police forces up and down the country have been working with private sector contractors for a number of years now. For example, when I visited Maidenhead custody suite, Reliance was working alongside the police officers and others. Indeed, it was the previous Labour Government who enabled forces to bring in private sector contractors to undertake detention and escort duties, which had previously been done only by police officers.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
Given that the Home Secretary has been caught out by her complacency towards this contract, has she given her personal attention to concerns raised with her by the noble Lord Prescott, among others, about the fire marshals contract that LOCOG has awarded to Close Protection UK? Does she think that company fit and proper to run those services, and does she have confidence in its ability to do so?
Oral Answers to Questions
Kerry McCarthy Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Lynne Featherstone
The hon. Lady raises an important issue. I will look at the areas that have higher rates of domestic violence, with an eye to seeing what has happened in those areas.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
What discussions has the Minister had with the Minister for Housing and Local Government about the need to rehouse victims of domestic and sexual violence in safe homes? There are a number of cases in my constituency where I do not feel that the council is stepping up to the mark in providing a safe haven for these women.
Lynne Featherstone
It is clearly very important that when women need a place of safety and refuge, they have such a place. Obviously women’s refuges and shelters are available, but there is always a blocking issue with housing. We keep a constant eye on that. Councils should hear the message loud and clear that they need to provide for women who need shelter from domestic violence.
Oral Answers to Questions
Kerry McCarthy Excerpts(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Nick Herbert
I agree: we are strengthening the police complaints system, while also proposing to strengthen police accountability through a democratic reform. Police authorities are invisible to the public. That will change when directly elected police and crime commissioners are elected by the people who will be able to hold their force to account; at the same time, the operational independence of chief constables will be protected.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
The Minister will be aware that Avon and Somerset police have had a difficult job recently in having to police disturbances in the city of Bristol. What help can the Department give that force as it tries to rebuild relationships with the community? More particularly, the cost of the policing operation over the bank holiday period was astronomical, so will any help be available for the force to cope with it?
Nick Herbert
We of course support the action the police took to uphold the rule of law. I particularly want to pay tribute to officers who were injured: violence against anybody is unacceptable, but it is totally unacceptable when it is used against police officers, and I am sure that the whole House will wish to support the police in their action. There are established procedures whereby forces can apply if they have incurred exceptional costs, and I am sure this force will know how to do so.
Oral Answers to Questions
Kerry McCarthy Excerpts(13 years, 9 months ago)
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James Brokenshire
The right hon. Gentleman will be aware that we are consulting on a new toolkit, whereby the tools are reduced in number to five core ones. The problem is that ASBOs have been used less and less and the number of breaches has increased. We are clear about the need for civil orders, which is why we are consulting on the new powers. They are better tailored and will ensure that the civil standard of proof is used to make the orders easier to obtain. They will also be able to put in place positive requirements to break patterns that may lead to antisocial behaviour and crime.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
In Bristol, the police have made very good use of the antisocial behaviour legislation—the acceptable behaviour contracts and ASBOs—to tackle kerb crawling and on-street prostitution, which blights the lives of many residents of the Eastville area of my constituency. Can the Minister assure the House that any replacement for the current antisocial behaviour legislation will continue to give the police the powers to tackle this problem?
James Brokenshire
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for highlighting that specific example and I hope that her community will take part in the ongoing consultation on the new toolkit, which will last until the middle of May. We are clear that the existing powers remain in place until such time as a new regime is introduced, but we are very focused on it being practical, supporting communities and having the effect that people want it to have in bearing down on antisocial behaviour and the crime that can lead from it.
Public Order Policing
Kerry McCarthy Excerpts(14 years ago)
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Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
I accept that the police had a very difficult job to do last Thursday, but last night when I met students at the university of the West of England who had been in London to carry out a lawful and peaceful protest, I was disturbed to hear their accounts of how they felt the police had overstepped the mark, to see video footage of horses charging into protesters, and told of injuries from truncheons and so on. Can the Home Secretary assure me that if I write to her giving personal accounts from people who were there on Thursday, she will treat their complaints seriously?
Mrs May
Of course the hon. Lady is free to write to me about those matters. There is a formal process which is appropriate if individuals wish to make complaints about the way the police have treated them, and a number of complaints are currently being investigated. However, let me point out to the hon. Lady and to any other Members who may agree with her that we should not focus on how the police responded. They should be accountable and complaints should be investigated, but we must ensure that we focus on those whose responsibility it was for violence to occur in the first place. That was not the police; it was the protesters.