Illegal Migration Bill

Laura Farris Excerpts

Consideration of Lords message
Monday 17th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)]

If the principle of removal to a safe third country is not an adequate deterrent, why was that principle the flagship of the last Labour Government’s immigration policy in the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002? What was the point of section 94—its most controversial provision—if it was not about the swift removal of failed asylum seekers?

[Stephen Kinnock]

The crucial point is that for a deterrent to be effective, it has to be credible. A deterrent based on a 0.3% risk of being sent to Rwanda is completely and utterly incredible. The only deterrent that works is a comprehensive returns deal with mainland Europe. If someone knows that, were they to come here on a small boat, they would be sent back to mainland Europe, they will not come and they will not pay €5,000 to the people smuggler. The only way to get that deal is to have a sensible and pragmatic negotiation with the European Union based on quid pro quo—give and take. That is the fundamental reality of the situation in which we find ourselves, but unfortunately those on the Conservative Benches keep closing their ears to that reality.

[Laura Farris]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way again—I will not take long. Does he not accept that, in reality, there is no such thing as a returns deal with mainland Europe? The reason the Dublin convention was such a disaster and never resulted in us removing more people than we took in was that it was so incredibly difficult to get European countries to accept removals and make that happen. It is just an unworkable suggestion.

[Stephen Kinnock]

Surely the hon. Lady sees the direct connection between us crashing out of the Dublin regulation because of the utterly botched Brexit of the Government she speaks for, and the number of small boat crossings starting to skyrocket. There is a direct correlation between crashing out of the Dublin regulation and skyrocketing small boat crossings. I hope that she will look at the data and realise the truth of the matter.

Illegal Migration Bill

Laura Farris Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2023 Commons Chamber

Finally, I support Lords amendments 102 on safe and legal routes. It is clear that giving a two-month period for the Government to come back with a plan of implementation for safe and legal routes is a very sensible measure. The Home Affairs Committee made it clear in our report that safe and legal routes was one of the clear recommendations the Government should adopt if they seriously want to tackle the small boats problem. I also support Lords amendment 103 on the National Crime Agency and organised immigration crime enforcement, which I think is a very useful and helpful amendment, and Lords amendments 104 and 107 from the Archbishop of Canterbury on the 10-year strategy on refugees and human trafficking, which I again think would help the Government in dealing with the small boats problem.

[Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)]

I will begin with Lords amendment 2, which would remove the retroactivity provisions that state that the Bill would apply to anyone who arrived on or after 7 March 2023, which is the date that the Bill was introduced in the House. There is a good reason generally why we do not allow legislation to apply retrospectively: so that there is legal certainty and people are bound only by the obligations that apply at the time. I accept without reservation that the law would be in disarray, for example, if new criminal offences had retrospective effect and people found themselves criminalised for things that they could not possibly have known to be unlawful at the time.

I respectfully submit, however, that this is not that kind of point. There is no principled argument to be made. First, the Government made it clear that the date the Bill was introduced was the same date on which it would become effective. Secondly, a person cannot argue in any compelling way that they decided to make an illegal crossing to the United Kingdom in March because they believed that they might end up in a hotel in Southampton, but now that they know they might have ended up going to Rwanda, they would not have made the illegal crossing. I am afraid that that argument does not work at all. I accept the Government’s position that the only way in which the policy will have the desired deterrent effect is if it has retrospective effect, so that we do not create perverse incentives for people smugglers to surge the crossings immediately before the Bill receives Royal Assent.

The second tranche of Lords amendments includes those that the Immigration Minister identified as wrecking amendments—amendments 1, 7, 90 and 93—and I will deal with them collectively. Lords amendment 7 seeks to strike out clause 4(1)(d), which states that removal should take effect irrespective of whether there is a judicial review application. Lords amendment 90 seeks to strike out clause 52, which states that interim orders may not halt deportation. Lords amendment 93 seeks to strike out removal pending an age verification appeal.

There is a wider point about those amendments. Collectively, they seek to dilute the deterrent effect of all removal provisions. Whatever we disagree on in this Chamber concerning current migration, we can probably achieve a consensus on one point: this situation will not get any easier to resolve. Whether the UNHCR is correct in saying that there are 100 million displaced people, or whether there are tens of millions, the reality is that famine, climate change, flooding and conflict will result in more and more people leaving their countries of origin to try to come elsewhere.

Any nation that tries to resolve the situation in its domestic arrangements will have to follow a strategy similar to the one that the Government are pursuing. The first element of that strategy is to decide on a cap for admissions and then—likely with UNHCR support in the future—to give proper consideration in advance to who should come under the quota scheme. The current schemes that are working very well in relation to Ukraine, Afghanistan and Hong Kong provide a good starting point. The second element is to deter all illegal migration by ensuring, with only the narrowest of exceptions, that an individual gains absolutely nothing from doing this.

The objective of the Illegal Migration Bill and, by extension, the Rwanda scheme is to remove illegal immigrants quickly without prejudice to their wider right to challenge the deportation order later, because the rationale is that speedy deportation deters others from coming to the country. Many eminent people agree with that proposition. As the former Supreme Court Justice, Lord Sumption, said in his foreword to Professor Ekins’ recent paper for Policy Exchange:

“This objective is frustrated if deportees are able to hold up their removal for years while their challenge goes through potentially three tiers of appeal followed by a petition to Strasbourg. The process commonly takes years.”

He continued by stating that “whatever one thinks” of the Rwanda scheme, if

“interim measures are available in cases like this, it is probable that no legislative scheme for the prompt removal of illegal immigrants”—

could ever “succeed.”

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[Laura Farris]

I will come back on two points. First, under the Bill, annual quotas will be decided upon with the consent of various local authorities that will be responsible for accommodating those people, and that is the right approach. On illegal migration, people arriving through irregular routes should not take precedence over those arriving lawfully through safe and legal routes. We could not allow a system where one displaces the right of the other, and that is a feature of this Bill.

The second thing I want to talk about is the effect of judicial reviews. Lords amendment 7 would permit judicial reviews. I cannot improve on the language used by David Blunkett when he was Home Secretary, introducing Labour’s flagship immigration Bill, the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, which was supported at the time by the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper). I wanted to refresh my memory of what he said on Second Reading, because it was a powerful part of his speech. He said:

“At the moment the system is virtually unworkable. People can bring a judicial review during the process of the initial appeal, and when they reach the right to appeal to the tribunal they can judicially review the tribunal for not allowing the appeal to the tribunal. They can then judicially review the tribunal’s decision and they can judicially review whether they are entitled to go to the court of appeal following failure at the tribunal. The whole system is riddled with delay, prevarication, and, in some cases, deliberate disruption of the appeals process. Then they can judicially review the decision on removal even when the appeals have been gone through.”—[Official Report, 24 April 2002; Vol. 384, c. 355.]

We have simplified the system a bit since then, but effectively he is right. He was right then to seek to effect removal after one right of appeal had been exhausted, and the Government are right now to aim for swift removal without judicial review holding everything up.

My final point, briefly, is about the speech that the former Supreme Court Justice Lord Brown made on Second Reading of this Bill in the Lords. He sat as a Cross-Bench peer, and he died on Friday. He said:

“No doubt the Bill can be improved in various ways, but we must recognise that almost every amendment we make to soften it can tend only to weaken its essential objectives: stopping the boats… We really must…give the Government the opportunity by this Bill finally to confront this most intractable of problems.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 10 May 2023; Vol. 829, c. 1806.]

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I start by referring Members to my declaration in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests for the support I receive from the Refugee, Asylum and Migration Policy project.

Despite their lordships’ best efforts, this remains in my 18-plus years in this place comfortably the worst piece of legislation I have seen come to this House. That is not because I disagree with it—I have probably disagreed with most stuff in my 18 and a bit years here—but because it is based on several bogus understandings of the truth. Within it, there is a deplorable bias towards the inhumane.

To start with Lords amendment 1, we have an attempt to get the Government to do something massively radical: to comply with international obligations. The notion that we should not do that, or that we do not need to do that, is based upon the desire to depict the current situation—the boats situation and the asylum situation in the UK—as an emergency. I will come to that in a moment.

The two likely consequences of the UK habitually choosing to not comply with its international obligations are: first, that we become a pariah, and are seen internationally as not a team player, and thereby we are less effective in all parts of our policy around the world, whether economic, defensive or otherwise; and, secondly, that others will copy us and, as a consequence, the whole system breaks down. I often hear Members on the Government Benches say, “France is a safe country, why don’t people stay there?”. The simple answer to that is, “Yeah, it is. So is Spain and so is Italy.” If we end up in a situation where other people copy us, the whole network breaks down and we end up in a desperate situation. If we care about our position internationally, we need to care about that.

Let us turn straight to the Government’s justification for not complying with their international obligations, including issues to do with modern slavery and child detention, on which the Lords has made helpful amendments. Their explanation is that the situation constitutes an emergency. Does it? In the Home Secretary’s words, we are currently being swamped by refugees. Let us look at some facts to see whether either of those things bears any scrutiny. As we speak, Germany takes four times more asylum seekers than the United Kingdom, and France takes 2.5 times more asylum seekers than the United Kingdom. If we were to add the United Kingdom back into the European Union for statistical purposes, just 7% of asylum seekers would come to the UK and, per capita, the UK would be 22nd out of 28. Demonstrably, the United Kingdom has not faced an especial problem. We are not being swamped, and such language is demeaning of this country and of the office of Home Secretary.

The Government say, “Ah, but it’s different here, because we’ve taken in 250,000 Ukrainian refugees as well as those coming in through other routes.” I am utterly proud that the United Kingdom has been among those countries who have taken in the most Ukrainian refugees, but we have not taken the most. Germany has taken 1 million Ukrainian refugees and, as I said, it still takes four times more asylum seekers than us, and Poland has taken 1.5 million Ukrainian refugees. It appears that talking about our support for Ukraine and Ukrainian refugees is an excuse for the Government in seeking to avoid their international obligations.

Britain’s problem needs to be put into overall context. The reality is that 70% of the millions of displaced people and refugees on planet Earth flee either to a different region of their country or to a neighbouring country. A steadily decreasing trickle of people end up at the end of the line—and, my goodness, the United Kingdom, over the channel, is the end of the line. Again, for us to state that we face an especial emergency in terms of the numbers of people coming here is totally bogus. It is important to state that and put it on the record.

Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse: Report

Laura Farris Excerpts

Monday 22nd May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

The issue that the hon. Gentleman raises is precisely the reason why I am a passionate supporter of independent sexual violence advisers, as well as independent domestic violence advisers: they are also relevant for children who are victims of sexual violence. We have already increased the number of ISVAs available to victims of sexual violence, including children, so that when someone makes a complaint and enters the criminal justice system, they will have an independent professional who is on their side to help them navigate a very traumatic and daunting process, who can provide clarity and the vital support that can make the difference between a successful prosecution and an unsuccessful one.

[Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)]

I have previously declared an interest, because I was counsel to the inquiry from 2016 to 2017.

Given that the inquiry looked at cases that were often decades old, there is a risk that we see its conclusions as belonging to the past, rather than the present. One of the recommendations of the inquiry is creating a protective environment for children, and although that will have meant something different in some of the contexts that we looked at, we know now from the Children’s Commissioner that one of the biggest drivers of child sexual exploitation is the ubiquity of violent online porn, particularly when the perpetrator is also a child.

Can I therefore ask the Home Secretary what reassurances she can give that the Online Safety Bill really will protect children from viewing this kind of content? Rather more boldly, could I ask her whether she would consider working with her counterparts at the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport to regulate the content of some of the big porn providers such as Pornhub, which we know through a body of evidence hosts and promotes child sexual exploitation in some of its online content?

[Suella Braverman]

My hon. Friend speaks with expertise, and she raises a very important point with which I agree: the ubiquity, as she puts it, of online pornography and its accessibility by children is a major factor in the incidence of criminal behaviour of this type. The Online Safety Bill will mark a game changer in the protection of children online, and will take us forward in preventing children from accessing this heinous material. Through the Bill, companies will need to take a robust approach to protect children from illegal content and criminal behaviour on their services. They will also need to assess whether their service is likely to be accessed by children and, if so, deliver safety measures for them. Those safety measures will need to protect children, and there will be measures relating to age verification. In my mind, that represents a robust step change in how we protect children online.

Illegal Migration Bill

Laura Farris Excerpts

Report stage
Wednesday 26th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Sir John Hayes]

Edmund Burke said:

“Justice is itself the greatest standing policy of civil society; and any eminent departure from it, under any circumstances, lies under the suspicion of being no policy at all.”

Defending our borders and our ability as a sovereign nation to remove people who have no legal right to be here is a matter of justice—it is legally just and socially just. So is our right as a Parliament and a Government to say how many people should come here lawfully. I suggest gently to the Minister that he needs to look next at legal immigration—the record numbers of people coming here and the visa system that allows that. All that matters to my constituents. I humbly propose that it matters just as much to the constituents of Members of this House from Ruislip to Rhondda, and from Worthing to Walthamstow.

Every poll or test of public opinion says that the British people want to stop the boats crossing the channel. As the hon. Member for Rhondda (Sir Chris Bryant) said, not only does that endanger the lives of the people in the boats, it offends the principle that I just set out that a nation is no nation if it cannot control its borders. Despite the rhetoric that we have heard, Opposition Members are paying lip service to immigration controls. I believe, as do the vast majority of the people I represent, that there has been too much immigration into Britain for too long. Immigration is a salient for them in a way that it is just not for many Opposition Members.

Outside this place, the shrillest opponents of this legislation and the fiercest critics of the Home Secretary include those who are deluded and those who are devious. They are deluded in refusing to accept the reality that many of the people arriving in the boats are economic migrants, gamed by dodgy interest groups and devious lawyers to support spurious claims exploiting the capricious perversity of European judges, who no one in my constituency chose and who are not accountable to anyone in this Chamber or this country. The trouble is that some people do not believe in the integrity of our borders because, in essence, they do not believe in the integrity of our nation.

[Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Sir John Hayes]

I will happily give way to my hon. Friend, who I hope does believe in the integrity of our borders and our nation.

[Laura Farris]

I do. I listened to what my right hon. Friend was just saying about the problem of European judges, but can he refer to a case from the European Court of Human Rights where those judges demonstrated a lack of respect for our immigration laws?

[Sir John Hayes]

I gave the example of a case that was not about immigration but about something as vivid as the issue of immigration: prisoner voting. Successive Governments—Labour and Conservative—opposed prisoner voting, and in the end the matter was dropped. That is a very good example of where the European Court of Human Rights was dismissive of the traditions and character of how we do things here.

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[Liz Saville Roberts]

Indeed it is.

We know that our economy is suffering from chronic labour shortages, and that is in part down to Brexit. Why can we not think out of the box? Why can we not stop looking at people as a problem and start looking at them as part of the solution? I know this because Ysbyty Tywyn in my constituency has closed its wards because it cannot get staff. I represent an area with an older demographic, and we cannot get carers. And yet we are a week away from the local elections in England and this is what we are talking about. We are not thinking sensibly in the 21st century. Meanwhile highly skilled asylum seekers are sitting idle in detention centres, eager to work and keen to contribute to our society but banned from doing so.

There are 1.2 million job vacancies in the UK. Businesses are crying out for workers, and 70% of businesses want to give asylum seekers the right to work after six months. New clause 1 would allow those people detained for six months or more to apply for permission to work, including self-employment and voluntary work. This could do so much; it could be such a boost for our economy when we are suffering after Brexit. The right to work is a fundamental human right and it is crucial for the wellbeing of asylum seekers and their integration into society. It is also beneficial for the economy, as businesses want to be able to access the skills and experience of asylum seekers.

I call on the Government not to look at asylum seekers as a political threat but to see this as the thing that the United Kingdom is proud to do well. We should be proud to do this well and proud to hold our heads up high within the global order. These people are always a potential, not a threat, and we should be working with that potential as best we can.

[Laura Farris]

I spent considerable time in the last debate addressing the European convention on human rights, and the House will be relieved to hear that I am not going to do the same thing again today, but I will just say one thing. My right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) is correct to say that we have no say on who sits in the European Court of Human Rights, but no MP has any say on who sits in the Supreme Court in this country either, and the reason that nobody can give me an example of the European Court interfering with a material change to our domestic immigration laws is because there isn’t one.

I want to congratulate the Government on reaching an agreement with my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) on new clause 8, which I think gives the Bill moral clarity. The aim of this Bill is to extinguish a route, not a right. The Bill says that if someone enters the United Kingdom by small boat or any other illegal route, they cannot claim asylum now or ever, but we are maintaining compliance with our legal obligations under the refugee convention only when we can say in parallel that there are safe and legal routes that they could and should have taken as an alternative. It is already clear that this was envisaged by the Bill because it is dealt with in the provisions in clause 53 in the context of annual quotas agreed in conjunction with local authorities. It is plain that this is the direction that not only the United Kingdom but all our European neighbours are moving in, faced with the mass migration flows of the modern day that simply could not have been envisaged when the refugee convention was drafted.

I also want to talk about new clauses 22, 19 and 23 to 25. My first observation is how closely they resemble laws that were tried but ultimately failed under the last Labour Government. That is not me scoring a political point; this is difficult stuff. A lot of this is in the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 and the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc.) Act 2004 but it never really worked, and here is why I say that this is important today. I want to talk about identification documents, mobile phones and age verification, all of which I have experience of in immigration tribunals. All these things boil down to one critical principle: that he who asserts must prove.

I refer the House to the evidence of Dan O’Mahoney, the clandestine channel threat commander, to the Home Affairs Committee in September 2020. Asked about the number of small boat arrivals who have identification documents, he said:

“I can’t give you an exact figure, but I can tell you that it is almost none—very, very close to none. Generally speaking, encouraged by the facilitators, they will get rid of any sort of documentation …phones, SIM cards, anything…before they are intercepted by Border Force… They literally arrive in the clothes that they are wearing.”

I invite the House to contrast that with Operation Pitting. Every single person who left Kabul in haste in the summer of 2021 arrived in the United Kingdom with an identification document.

The lack of identification documents is a major problem, because it means the Home Office is entirely reliant on language tests and interviews to ascertain background facts. The best it can do is guess whether a claimant is genuine, which leads to a lot of economic migrants being given asylum when they probably would not have proved their case if they had documents. That has contributed to a huge degree of abuse in the system.

The same principle applies to mobile phones. In an era of mass technology, in which smartphones are as commonplace in sub-Saharan Africa as they are in London and in which 5 billion people use social media, it must be right that a negative assumption is reached about any individual who does not provide access to their phone as a way of establishing their identity.

I repeatedly dealt with age verification at the tribunal, the appeal tribunal and the High Court. It is not good enough to rely purely on a Merton-compliant test. Until very recently, we had no scientific method by which to establish a person’s age. Of course small children do not go through age verification, but the vast majority of children who arrive claim to be around the age of 17. We now have the technology to allow age verification, so it cannot be left as a matter of discretion or as an option for the applicant. If they say they are under 18, they must be obliged, as these new clauses require, to undergo proper age verification.

[Olivia Blake (Sheffield, Hallam) (Lab)]

Before I begin, I direct the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, which outlines the support I received from the RAMP project.

I support the amendments tabled by my hon. Friends the Members for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy), for Poplar and Limehouse (Apsana Begum) and for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson). These amendments attempt to mitigate the damage the Bill will do to some of the most vulnerable people, by requiring reports on how it will affect the pregnant, victims of modern slavery and the health and human rights of refugees.

New clauses 2 and 3 would safeguard pregnant women and girls from removal. I have spoken to people working on the frontline in detention centres who feel deeply uncomfortable and ill-equipped to deal with pregnant women in such settings, so these amendments are vital. In fact, every woman who arrives in a detention centre is given a pregnancy test because staff recognise that where they work is not appropriate for pregnant women.

New clause 4 would support young people under the age of 18 in their interaction with the asylum system. This stands in stark contrast to the Government’s obsession with trying to discredit and dehumanise children, either by proposing bogus scientific assessments to determine their age—I say that as a biomedical scientist—or by bizarrely claiming that granting safety to children is some sort of pull factor. Lobotomies were once widespread across the globe too, but that does not mean they were scientifically valid, accurate or moral. Just because someone else is doing it does not mean we have to do it here, especially when the evidence for the accuracy of these tests is so poor.

It is a damning indictment of this Bill that my hon. and right hon. Friends have needed to table this extensive list of new clauses. The protections they are attempting to introduce are outstripped only by the litany of rights that this Government are attempting to remove from some of the world’s most vulnerable people.

The Government’s contemptible proposals have been tabled for entirely cynical reasons. We all want to stop the boats. But when the Government say, “Stop the boats”, it is not because they want to end the crisis in the channel, because they want to have safe borders where people do not die on them or because they want to end the suffering of people who are trying to come here to claim asylum. It is not even because they want to end the horror of people drowning as they attempt to reach refuge in the UK. It is because they are intent on vilifying people who have survived some of the most harrowing and worst things human beings can go through. I know that because I have spoken to many, many refugees and asylum seekers who have come here on boats. The Government are taking this approach because on these big issues they have no answers, so they are resorting to scapegoats.

It is clear that that has been an agenda long before this Bill was presented and that the Government are being pushed around by a very small and extreme group within the Conservative party, as we see when we look at Government new clause 22. It shamefully bars UK courts from interim measures to stop someone from being deported if they bring a legal challenge. The Government claim that they are considering fairness and the rule of law, and that that is a key British principle and value, but this measure sheds that. The Government are only too keen to undermine these principles if it helps them in the scapegoating of the most vulnerable. They want to bypass the European Court of Human Rights and harm Britain’s standing in the world, eroding the foundations of the international refugee systems and the refugee convention, all to appease their Back Benchers and throw red meat to a small portion of their base.

Illegal Migration Bill

Laura Farris Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 27th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Kinnock]

Of course, the Ukraine scheme, the British national overseas scheme and the Afghan scheme—when it used to work—are very welcome; there is no debate about that. But I do not know why the right hon. Gentleman keeps making that point. That is not the point of this debate; the point of this debate is how to address the challenge that we currently face. As hon. Members have pointed out, many people are fleeing war and persecution in the world, and this Government have utterly failed to offer them safe and legal routes. As a result, they come by unauthorised routes—that is a simple fact of life. The other point, of course, is that the Government have allowed the backlog to get completely out of control. The idea that they are making life better and easier for people fleeing war and persecution is for the birds.

I also want to mention areas in which Members on both sides of the House are broadly in agreement, not least because the list is quite short. The Opposition support the principle of Parliament’s having a say each year on the quota or cap for safe and legal routes, as envisaged by clause 51. Every country has a responsibility to do its bit, alongside other countries, to help those fleeing persecution and conflict. However, we also believe that the Government’s policy on safe routes cannot begin and end with caps alone.

The Bill presents us with a rare opportunity to have a serious debate about how best to live up to our international commitments to offer protection to those most in need, especially those fleeing persecution and war. The fact that so many detailed, well thought through proposals have been put forward by hon. Members in amendments and new clauses speaks to the depth of cross-party support for making safe routes work and providing genuine alternatives to dangerous crossings.

[Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely scathing about the Bill, but he will be aware that, as recently as last summer, the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change was writing about a solution to the small boats crisis that involved annual quotas, new safe and legal routes, an absolute prohibition on any arrival by a small boat, and only out-of-country rights of appeal. That is identical to what effectively appears in this Bill. It was written by somebody called Harvey Redgrave, who cites himself as the Labour party’s home affairs policy adviser between 2011 and 2015.

[Stephen Kinnock]

As I have just said, we support clause 51; I do not know whether the hon. Lady was listening. We support the idea of safe and legal routes that are capped. What she needs to understand is that for people escaping war and conflict, the idea of being detained in a deterrence centre that does not exist or of being removed to other countries when no removal agreements are in place is not a deterrent. For a deterrent to be effective, it has to be credible. The Bill has zero credibility because it is impossible to operationalise. That is the key point that the hon. Lady seems to fail to understand.

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[Tim Farron]

I thank the hon. Lady for articulating the case so clearly. When all is said and done, we should ask why we have a problem. I have set out irrefutable numbers showing where we are in the world, and in Europe, in terms of the number of asylum seekers we receive on our shores: far fewer than most European countries, far fewer than many smaller European countries, and an absolute blinking fraction compared with the likes of Lebanon, for instance. Nevertheless, we have a problem, and why do we have a problem? Because the Home Office is dysfunctional.

It is outrageous that there are people sitting in hotels and hostels being jeered at by right-wing protesters, wound up by those on the other side of the House who have used—if I am being generous—intemperate language. Why are there so many people in those places? Because the system is broken. We are not “swamped” by refugees; we have an asylum system run by an incompetent Government, and what is perhaps the most morally outrageous aspect of this whole debate is the fact that these people, whether or not they are genuine asylum seekers—and we will not know whether or not they are unless we blooming well assess them—are being blamed for the Government’s incompetence. What a moral outrage. There is, of course, a case for making changes in the law, and I do not believe in open borders, but what the Government are proposing is uncontrollable borders. As I have said, language has consequences, and we should be careful about how we use it.

[Laura Farris]

We in the Home Affairs Committee heard from Dan O’Mahoney, the clandestine channel threat commander, that the number of arrivals on small boats with any identifying documents is almost zero, because the people smugglers encourage them to dispense with all “pocket litter”, as he described it—passports, phones and SIM cards—on the basis that it will confuse those at the Home Office and make it impossible for them to distinguish between asylum seekers who are genuine and those who are not. Is not one of the problems experienced by the Home Office the fact that it is confronted with people who cannot prove who they are? Is not that, and the direction given by the people smugglers, at the root of this issue, rather than Government incompetence?

[Tim Farron]

In which case, the hon. Lady would propose a Bill that aimed to stop the boats and undermine—

[Laura Farris]

rose—

[Tim Farron]

I am trying to respond to the hon. Lady’s first point. [Interruption.]

[Tim Farron]

If the hon. Lady really wanted to deal with the issue that she has just articulated, she would do something to undermine the business case of the people smugglers. Of course these people are doing what they are guided to do—

[Laura Farris]

rose—

[Tim Farron]

I am happy to take another intervention.

[Laura Farris]

The hon. Gentleman is challenging the Government to pass legislation that requires the arrivals to produce documents. The last Labour Government tried that with the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants, etc) Act 2004, which made an asylum claim contingent on the provision of adequate documents. I do not know what has happened to that legislation—perhaps the Labour Front Bencher who winds up the debate can illuminate us—but the truth is that successive Governments have tried to require the provision of identification documents, but 20 years later people are still arriving without them, and are being given asylum on the basis of what the Home Office cannot prove.

[Tim Farron]

I appreciate the hon. Lady’s intervention, but if she really wanted to achieve that, she would support safe and legal routes. That is the way to tackle those problems. The simple fact is that we are dealing with a political issue. Why? Because the Government have failed to retain control of the asylum process. They do not trust their own process. I believe in assessing people to establish whether they are genuine asylum seekers or not, and then returning them if they are not. I want a system that is fair and tough, but the Government are proposing a system that is unfair and weak.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joanna Cherry]

The Union between Scotland and England was freely entered into. I know that some people are under the misapprehension that now it is some sort of “Hotel California” situation, where we can check out but cannot leave, but that is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of the Union. The views that I am expounding about sovereignty are not just my eccentric views, but the views that have been expounded by many well-respected Scottish jurists, as the hon. Gentleman knows. It is worthwhile sometimes to take a step back. With all due respect to some of my English friends, they get a bit hysterical about parliamentary sovereignty. Sovereignty can be shared and, ultimately, I believe that sovereignty lies with the people. I will just leave it at that.

[Laura Farris]

It is genuinely a pleasure to follow the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry). I will try to avoid too much mince in my own speech, but to continue in the respectful tone that she has struck.

I wish to take a little of the heat out of this debate and to say that I think the British people would recognise in the United Kingdom a country that has honoured its commitments since the launch of the 1951 refugee convention to offer sanctuary to those with a well-founded fear of persecution. The record of the past seven years, where close to half a million people have been granted asylum on humanitarian grounds, bears testimony to that.

I think that the British people would also recognise that there are peculiar and unique problems that have arisen with the small boat crossings. Five years ago, in 2018, 300 people made that journey; last year, it was 45,000. Of those, 80% were men aged between 18 and 40, all of whom had paid a people smuggler and all of whom had the physical strength and wherewithal to make a journey across continental Europe through the small boat route. We know that a third of them arriving last year were Albanian.

I just want to read what Dan O’Mahoney told the Home Affairs Committee—I see that the Chair is in her place—when he appeared before it last October. I am quoting verbatim. He said about the Albanian arrivals:

“The rise has been exponential, and we think that is in the main due to the fact that Albanian criminal gangs have gained a foothold in the north of France and have begun facilitating very large numbers of migrants… Whatever sort of criminality you can think of…there are Albanian criminal gangs dominating”—

in this country—

“whether it is drug smuggling, human trafficking, guns or prostitution.”

He said that a lot of the Albanian migrants

“are not actually interested in seeing their asylum claim through… We typically put them in a hotel for a couple of days, and then they will disappear”

into the underworld.

That unique and specific problem requires a unique and specific answer. We all agree on safe and legal routes. I will not improve on the remarks made by my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) in his powerful speech. I heard from those on the Labour Front Bench, for the first time tonight, that they also endorse quotas, which is part of this Bill, and we agree with that.

In case my intervention earlier was not clear enough, I was simply saying that Harvey Redgrave, writing in a thoughtful piece for the Tony Blair Institute last July, talked about not only safe and legal routes, out-of-country rights of appeal and quotas, but an absolute prohibition on small boat arrivals. That really is the disputed issue in this legislation.

I rise to speak in response to amendments 131 and 132, which were tabled by two Conservatives, one of whom, my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger), is in his place.

[Sir John Hayes]

Before my hon. Friend moves on, many countries have a cap per se on immigration. In Australia, Parliament debates an annual cap; when David Cameron and George Osborne were running the Conservative party and my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) was Home Secretary, we said that that number should be counted in the tens of thousands. Perhaps that is what we should go back to.

[Laura Farris]

It is certainly true that the promise inherent in the refugee convention—an offer to the world at large, conceived in an era before easyJet, before people going on holiday to any country and before mass migration—must be looked at through a different lens in the year 2023. Many of our international partners are now talking in that way, and we may have to have a debate on a different occasion to talk about the issue more broadly.

[Wera Hobhouse]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Laura Farris]

I am just going to make a tiny bit of progress, because I have not really started and there is not much time.

I want to respond to amendments 131 and 132, which would do slightly different things but have the same effect. I will look at you, Dame Eleanor, and I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes will not be offended if he has to look at my back. Amendment 131 would exclude the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights and amendment 132 seeks to disapply the relevant sections of the Human Rights Act 1998 in so far as they may be relevant to decisions taken under this Bill.

I want to say at the outset that I understand the impulse that has brought my hon. Friend here—namely the frustration with the exercise of the rule 39 injunctive relief decision in July, which the hon. and learned Member for Edinburgh South West covered so well in her speech. She will know as well as I do that rule 39 is not an inherent part of the European convention on human rights; she said in her speech that it is a rule of the Court.

That decision was taken by a single judge alone. The hon. and learned Lady is right to point out that that is common and standard in injunctive proceedings, but it is none the less somewhat surprising to see that matter go through in the eyes of the High Court, the Court of Appeal here and, finally, the Supreme Court, and then be overturned by the decision of a single judge in Europe. We do not even know who the judge was, but we know that Tim Eicke, our own British judge who sits on the European Court, has never sat as a High Court judge. He is a barrister. I say that with deference to his brilliance, and of course I am not criticising him; that is standard for the European Court of Human Rights. However, it is odd to see our own Supreme Court, with some of the most brilliant justices in the world, being overruled, under a Court rule, by somebody who is probably not of their status. I think that is a true statement.

[Joanna Cherry]

I went on to say that in the case of Paladi v. Moldova, the Grand Chamber said that a failure to comply with interim measures amounts to a violation of article 34 of the convention, because the high contracting parties have undertaken not to hinder in any way the effective exercise of the right of applicants to bring their claims before the Court. Whereas it was originally in the rules of Court, the Grand Chamber has now said that failure to obtemper or comply with that would be a violation of article 34 of the convention.

[Laura Farris]

I take the hon. and learned Lady’s point. We are obviously adhering to that, but as a rule of the Court.

Moving on, I was glad to read recently, whether in a press release or in a tweet—I cannot recall—the Home Secretary saying she was glad that constructive talks were now taking place between representatives of the British Government and members of the European Court of Human Rights, focused on resolving that issue. I say that is good because I think it should be possible to resolve that issue, since it is a rule of the Court rather than a principle of human rights. I hope we can move on from there.

If I may say so, with great respect, I do not accept that that decision in itself justifies these two amendments. I think both are weak for legal and constitutional reasons, and I will set out why. First, on amendment 131, my right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Mr Clarke) said that he had relied on a paper written for Policy Exchange by Richard Ekins and Sir Stephen Laws. I challenge the expertise of both those people—I question it. One of them has contacted me in the past, but neither are practitioners, and it shows in their writing that they are not regularly in court.

[Sir William Cash]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Laura Farris]

I will in a moment; I am going to make my points.

On the first element of amendment 132, which seeks to exclude the operation of the Human Rights Act, the only realistic basis for someone who arrived via small boat to challenge their removal to a safe third country under the Human Rights Act would be either article 2 or article 3 of the European convention—the right to life, or not to have one’s life endangered, and the right to freedom from torture.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir William Cash]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Laura Farris]

I am sorry; I will come to my hon. Friend in a moment.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland and my hon. Friends the Members for Devizes and for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) wrote an article in “Conservative Home” today in which they said and endorsed:

“Individuals would not be removed if they are medically unfit to fly, or will face persecution in the destination country.”

That is the non-refoulement principle, which is at the heart of the refugee convention. One thing that shows the lack of expertise in this area is that the same principle ripples through the common law, the refugee convention and the European convention of human rights; it applies across the board. It is even set out in terms in this legislation. Therefore, it would be pointless to derogate from the Human Rights Act on that question, because the principle that protects people from persecution is so embedded in any event.

[Sir William Cash]

Is my hon. Friend going to give way?

[Laura Farris]

I will give way.

[Sir William Cash]

I just wanted to point out, in case other Members of the House do not know, that Professor Ekins is a professor of law at Oxford University and Sir Stephen Laws is a former first parliamentary counsel. I think those are rather good credentials compared with the views of what I would describe as ordinary barristers.

[Laura Farris]

No disrespect is intended, but it is clear that they are not frequently in court arguing these cases, because if they were, they would know the way the law ran.

[Joanna Cherry]

The hon. Lady and I do not agree about a lot of things, but I believe she has expertise in this area as a barrister—that is correct, is it not?

--- Later in debate ---

[Laura Farris]

Yes.

[Joanna Cherry]

The hon. Lady has expertise and has practised in this area, so I suggest to her hon. Friends that her views deserve a degree of respect.

[Laura Farris]

On the Government side of the House, I am probably the Member who has most recently been in the immigration tribunals, so I have an idea, but it is not my principal practice area.

The other thing that I think is relevant is that Parliament has in the past successfully recalibrated the interpretation of the convention and changed the way it is interpreted, and had no difficulty with that. The Bill already takes a number of novel steps in relation to established law. First, it creates an absolute duty of removal on the Home Secretary that applies irrespective of any human rights claim, with the exception of the non-refoulement principle. Secondly, the Bill expands powers of immigration detention, granting the Secretary of State a power to determine the period that is “reasonably necessary”, in some ways overriding established Hardial Singh principles. Thirdly, it limits the rights of appeal: the individual has a right of appeal, but that is capped at one. In my respectful submission, the Government must have the opportunity to see those clauses enacted, because I believe that they will be upheld by the European Court of Human Rights.

Back in 2012, the coalition Government changed the immigration rules in relation to the deportation of foreign national offenders and the application of article 8, which is the right to respect for private and family life. Parliament took the view that that was too often being interpreted in favour of the ex-convict, and, as a result, set new rules—from paragraph 398 onwards of the established immigration rules—to make it clear that there were limited circumstances in which article 8 should be engaged. Parliament said in terms that the balance should be struck in favour of the overwhelming public interest in deportation, above any article 8 claim unless there were very compelling circumstances to the contrary. That was upheld in successive decisions by our appeal courts, beginning with MF (Nigeria) in the Court of Appeal.

The decision by Parliament to circumscribe the ambit of article 8 when it applied to criminals was taken to the European Court of Human Rights for years, but the court would not hear the issue at all until 2017 in the case of Ndidi. I reminded myself today of how that case was approached. In fact, a quite compelling article 8 argument was made: the person had arrived in the United Kingdom as a baby and had never been anywhere else, and the offending was quite low level—drug dealing rather than any harm to the person. The courts here had said that he must be deported to a country that he had never been to before. He challenged that in the European Court of Human Rights, which said, “No, the British Government are absolutely entitled to circumscribe the application of article 8 in the way that they have.” His claim was rejected.

My simple point is that we can do things—in the way that the Government are seeking through the Bill—that may well be compatible with the European convention on human rights, and I have struggled to find any example of the court overturning primary legislation, which is what the Bill is, or constructing it in a way that is disadvantageous to the member state. The fact that so many Members refer back to the prisoner voting case does not enhance their argument. That case is 20 years old and has been reversed. I accept without reservation that it was wrongly decided—I think there was overreach—but I have heard no example from the last 20 years to suggest that the Court is still making the same mistakes.

We have talked about the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 not being a success, but that was not because the European Court of Human Rights said that it was unlawful or overreached; we simply concluded that it did not yet work. For those reasons, I think that the Bill already goes very far and should be given the chance to work through.

[Sir John Hayes]

This is a fascinating description of the three ways in which we can deal with this matter. One way is to leave the convention altogether, which is what I would favour but is not what we are proposing or debating tonight. The second is to have some kind of “notwithstanding clause” of the kind that has been proposed. The third is to assume, through the interpretation of the Court of the will of Parliament and Government, that we will have our way. My hon. Friend is making a good case for the third way, but the problem with that is that it places a great deal of faith—although she says that she does so on the basis of precedent—in the Court to honour the will of this House. I am not sure that I would have the same degree of faith. If she does not like the work of Professor Ekins and so on, I recommend that she look at the speech given at Cambridge University by the Home Secretary—when she was Attorney General —on the interpretative matters that my hon. Friend describes.

[The Chairman of Ways and Means (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I remind the hon. Lady that she should sit down when allowing an intervention.

[Laura Farris]

I am sorry, Dame Eleanor.

To respond to my right hon. Friend’s intervention, it is dangerous to conflate what has been understood on the Conservative Benches to have been called “overreach” in the application of rule 39—on which I agree—with an overenthusiasm of the Court to involve itself in primary legislation, which is what the Bill will be. I see no precedent for that concern, so I hope that I can allay my right hon. Friend’s fear to some extent.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

To add to the list of our right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes), is there not a fourth option in—call me old fashioned—ensuring that His Majesty’s Government meet our international obligations wherever that may be? That is option four, and one that I think commands quite strong support across the Committee.

[Laura Farris]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, which brings me to my final argument.

Wrenching change from either the applicability of the Human Rights Act or the jurisdiction of the Court is a dangerous path to go down. The European convention on human rights is fundamental to the devolution settlements in Wales and Northern Ireland, and it also plays a distinct role in the Belfast/Good Friday agreement. As we are so near to the 25th anniversary of that agreement, I want to read out how the European convention on human rights was framed as an integral safeguard:

“There will be safeguards to ensure that all sections of the community can participate and work together successfully in the operation of these institutions and that all sections of the community are protected, including…the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)…which neither the Assembly nor public bodies can infringe”.

At the time of the conclusion of that agreement, there was a climate of deep scepticism about British courts following the establishment of, for example, Diplock courts and other things that were controversial. The European Court of Human Rights is not just something to which lip service is paid; it is integral to the proper functioning of that agreement.

I must mention our proud history in the formation and construction of the European convention on human rights—it is well known that David Maxwell Fyfe was a Conservative MP. It is unsurprising, then, that we are one of the states with the lowest number of adverse findings. We should be very wary of quick fixes. We said throughout the Brexit debate that we would be taking back control of our borders, but it is more complex than that. My point tonight is that leaving the convention, or derogating from it, is not the answer. That will not do the job and will undermine the effect of the Bill, which I think will be upheld as lawful by the European Court of Human Rights in the event that it is referred there.

[Stella Creasy]

I wish to reassure the Committee that I will speak only to the amendments that have been selected for this evening—I know that we have debates on other amendments scheduled tomorrow, and I have amendments in both selections.

I beg your leave, Dame Eleanor, to reflect on the fact that, while this important debate has been taking place, Jess England, a member of my staff, has just won parliamentary staffer of the year. Jess has first-hand knowledge of the things that we are discussing because she has for years helped me work with people seeking asylum—refugees from around the world who have come to the UK and have a connection to Walthamstow. I put on the record my gratitude to Jess, whose award is long overdue. If she were here now, she could bring much light to this debate as somebody who knows about the reality for people fleeing persecution.

It is a genuine honour to follow the previous speaker, the hon. Member for Newbury (Laura Farris). We may be in different political parties, but I recognise how brave she has just been to make that speech and to speak up for the importance of human rights, which has increasingly become an extreme view in the Conservative movement. I recognise the power of her speech and its many points, and the expertise that she put on the record. The House benefits from light, not heat, in such debates.

There is clarity in that there is not a single Member among us who wants to help the smugglers; not a single Member among us thinks that small boats crossing the English channel is an acceptable or reasonable way to proceed. The difference is in how we address the issue; whether we pour oil on that fire or seek, in our amendments, to recognise the best of Britain—to be the actual patriots in this Chamber. So far, we have talked so much about the ways people travel, but not about who is travelling.

Different statistics have been bandied around. We know that the vast majority of people in those boats are from seven countries, so let us recognise first and foremost why it matters that the legislation meets the test not of the mode of travel but of who is travelling. People fleeing persecution do not form orderly queues at the border when there is a war. When they are facing persecution for their political or religious beliefs, they cannot turn to the state to ask for their paperwork to be put in order and emailed to them so that they may cross the border with copies of it.

I reflect on the fact that the former Member for Blackburn, who was responsible for incorporating the Human Rights Act into UK legislation used to say to me, “There was left and right in Parliament, and then there were those people who dealt with the UK Border Agency and those who did not.” When dealing with people who have fled persecution, we know at first hand that it is not a simple, straightforward linear experience that accommodates well the kind of bureaucracy and administrative process that the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) wishes for. That is why the refugee convention itself says that refugees should not be prosecuted for destroying their documents, for issues around immigration fraud or, indeed, for their mode of travel, recognising the reality that when the decision is life or death, life matters. I see no irony in suggesting that.

Metropolitan Police: Casey Review

Laura Farris Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

The exploitation of women and girls is unacceptable, whether by gangs or by individual perpetrators, or whether it is structural misogyny, as we have read in Baroness Casey’s report. Policing leaders need to do all they can to restore confidence among communities and among women and girls. We need to ensure that policing standards are increased, vetting is improved and training is reformed, and that there is a more diverse leadership pipeline. We need more women to come forward to take leadership roles within the police so that we see change.

[Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)]

Baroness Casey said that the Sarah Everard case should have been responded to with the seriousness with which

“a plane falling out of the sky”

would be responded to in the aviation sector. Yet some of those now responsible for implementing the fundamental reforms, particularly to vetting and disciplinary procedures, have worked for the Met police for years or even decades, as in the case of the commissioner. Is my right hon. and learned Friend confident that those already imbued with the structures and cultures of the Metropolitan police have the leadership skills to deliver the fundamental change that is now required?

[Suella Braverman]

My hon. Friend is right to say that we need to see change. Sir Mark Rowley has been in post for six months and he is clear that we need to see change. We have commissioned several independent reports. Baroness Casey’s is one, but we also have the one from Lady Angiolini—she is due to report on standards and culture. These independent voices will be vital in effecting change, but it is also clear that the independent scrutiny brought about by the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime and the Mayor of London will be critical in bringing about change.

Protection from Sex-based Harassment in Public Bill

Laura Farris Excerpts

Committee stage
Wednesday 22nd February 2023 Public Bill Committees

[Greg Clark]

The hon. Lady makes an important point that underpins the sense of consensus in this Committee. We need to be clear—so that the courts are clear and there is no ambiguity—that intended harassment will be punished.

[Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)]

One point that is getting into a little bit of a muddle is that any unwanted touching is already assault. We are talking about a different offence. The harassment provisions under section 26(4) of the Equality Act 2010 set out clearly the reasonableness test and it is applied in that sense—that is, any unwanted conduct that has the purpose or effect of violating a person’s dignity or causing them humiliation or distress. Does my right hon. Friend agree that in effect we are transplanting the civil test into the criminal law?

On the issue of intent, about which we have had a lot of discussion, surely there is not only the issue of mens rea, which is one thing, but, as in other forms of law on things like nuisance and antisocial behaviour, if the person is reckless as to whether their conduct has a certain kind of purpose or effect, that is also enough for intent. Any form of touching would already be assault: we are not into a reasonableness test because it is a different offence anyway. Putting an arm round somebody or squeezing their bottom is a different crime. If someone says something sexual to a person, it is sufficient to say that if the court says they were reckless as to whether that would cause offence, the harassment offence is going to be made out anyway. It is in common with all equivalent offences of this nature.

[Greg Clark]

My hon. Friend brings her extensive legal learning and experience to bear on this issue and makes two important points. First, we should consider, before Report, the interactions with other aspects of the law. That is certainly important and one of the key conclusions of this Committee. Secondly, we should reflect on the fact that, even as drafted, the Bill significantly moves the dial on the ability of prosecuting authorities to secure convictions for behaviour that would constitute the proposed specific offence of public sex-based harassment.

Police Conduct and David Carrick

Laura Farris Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

I have worked with cross-Government colleagues for several years in my former capacity as Attorney General on matters such as Operation Soteria. Operation Soteria is groundbreaking. It is producing real change in the way that victims of rape and serious sexual offences experience the criminal justice system. We are seeing an increase in referrals by the police to the Crown Prosecution Service. That is a sign of progress. We are seeing an increase in the rate of charge by the CPS passing the case on to His Majesty’s Courts Service. We will see an improvement in the number of convictions we secure. I agree that there is a lot to do, but progress has been made.

[Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)]

The first allegation of serious sexual assault was made against David Carrick in 2003. Over the course of the next 18 years, there were eight or nine allegations of rape. Through all that, he was not suspended from work. In fact, during that period he was actually promoted within the force. What is common to all these cases is that there appears to be some kind of omerta or closing of ranks between senior personnel when a criminal allegation is made against one of their brethren. Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree that the time has come to outsource disciplinary decision making to another force or, at the very least, an officer who does not know the policeman who is the subject of this kind of allegation?

[Suella Braverman]

My hon. Friend is right to point to the failings. In sum, the Metropolitan police should have carried out a re-vet of David Carrick in 2011. That was not done until 2017. The Metropolitan police acknowledges that this would not have necessarily changed the vetting outcome. Systemic problems are prevalent and that is why we need to take action to fix them.

Protection from Sex-based Harassment in Public Bill

Laura Farris Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 9th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)]

It is almost two years since Maya and Gemma Tutton from Our Streets Now first approached me in Parliament. I pay tribute to them for their campaigning. As the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) points out, there have been many voices along the way, but those two are notable because they are among the youngest campaigners and have been among the most persistent over the past two years. This Bill is in no small part a product of their efforts.

I have asked for laws on public sexual harassment a number of times in this place and have been met with two objections, both of which are legitimate and which I want to deal with at the outset. The first is the point about wolf whistling. Are we creating a de minimis criminal offence that will result in the police going on a wild goose chase after builders who have happened to wolf whistle at somebody? Gemma Tutton was asked that question when interviewed on the “Today” programme this morning. I will return to it later in my speech, but her answer was no and that what we are talking about is “really sexual intrusive abuse”. When we mention that in any roundtable we conduct in our constituencies or when we meet women’s groups, everybody knows an example of what is being referred to. The language used in that context would be completely unacceptable to repeat in this place, but such behaviour is pervasive and serious and the purpose of the offence is to address it.

The other objection that I have encountered in the past is that it is already a criminal offence under the Public Order Act 1986. The truth is that that is true in principle, but it is not really true in practice. Very rarely do women even know that they would have a right to go to the police to report public sexual harassment if someone said something really obscene to them in the street. On the very few occasions that I have encountered somebody who has been to the police, they tell me that they have been met with a really inconsistent and imperfect response by police officers who—and I say this respectfully—sometimes do not really know that there is such an offence and are unfamiliar with what they are required to do under the Public Order Act. I think that creates two imperatives to look at this.

I was very glad to hear the Minister respond positively at the Dispatch Box. I am going to expand on why the Government need to be enthusiastic about the Bill. It is right that the Government are responding to the recommendation of the Law Commission. I know that, when the Government have developed their work on tackling violence against women and girls, they have always wanted to do so following consultations and with a proper evidence base. After the comprehensive work the Law Commission did, it is difficult to say now that that has not come forward.

It is true to say that, in the last two to three years, the Government have increasingly shown that they are willing to enter the public sphere—the public, rather than the private—in the treatment of women. An example of that is when they outlawed upskirting. We are currently discussing the Online Safety Bill and the sharing of intimate images. My right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Dame Maria Miller) is leading the charge on this, but the Government have made positive indications, and downblousing, another form of intrusive imagery, is likely to be included.

It was this Government a decade ago who created a distinct offence for stalking. I want to make it absolutely clear that I am not suggesting stalking is comparable to public harassment. It can be a much more serious offence, but at its inception, the first time someone acts, there is the idea of fixating on somebody and thinking about how to encroach on their public space in a way that will humiliate them, cause them fear or have a predatory impact. That offence has something in common with what we are trying to achieve today.

The purpose of this commendable private Member’s Bill from my right hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) is in some way to draw all these strands together. I would respectfully say that it is far better that we talk in the wider language of public sexual harassment, rather than in a piecemeal way, where we deal with individual acts and offences as they arise, such as upskirting and downblousing. Even those slightly contrived expressions show that we are dealing with the issue in a piecemeal way, rather than looking at it in a more cohesive sense.

There is also an important point to be made about consistency with the law. Since 1975, there has been a prohibition on sexual harassment in the workplace and in educational settings. That was set out in the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, but it now appears in section 26 of the Equality Act 2010. It is clear that the 2010 Act has informed this Bill, because I notice that some of the statutory language is replicated. It is not as if the Government are unfamiliar with the law of sexual harassment, or that it does not exist anywhere. It does and it has been borrowed a bit here.

The whole sense of sexual harassment is something that has been brought into sharp focus since #MeToo particularly. We talk about sexual harassment in the workplace, but in the last year or so, particularly in educational settings such as universities, we have talked about non-disclosure agreements. That has been a big topic, and it is another part of what we are discussing today.

Another point, which we have all been tiptoeing around a bit, is how we draw the line at reasonableness and find the minimum threshold at which it would not be appropriate to criminalise somebody’s conduct. I would respectfully say that that already exists in law. I refer the House to section 26(4) of the Equality Act, which sets out a reasonableness condition that is necessary to establish, whatever the conduct complaint in the workplace, that it meets the threshold for unlawful harassment. It is not simply enough for somebody to assert that something has happened and on proving those facts establish that a civil tort has been made out. They must meet the reasonableness threshold set out in the Act, and I see no reason why equivalent terms could not be transposed into the criminal law, because the law is already used to looking at this.

It is true to say that there is a pervasive problem about women’s safety in public places. When I did a women’s safety survey in my constituency, 85% of respondents gave me an example of somewhere in the town of Newbury where they had felt unsafe. When specifics were given, they were much analogous to the kinds of harassment this Bill seeks to proscribe. Nearly every incident that I was given detail about had occurred in Newbury and at night, and I note that there have been two sexual assaults reported to the police in Newbury alone.

I want to pick up on another point that many MPs have made. I represent a market town in Berkshire; it is a low-crime area. None the less, in the three years since I was elected, the area has seen one violent murder of a woman by her partner, for which Christopher Minards was sentenced to life at Reading Crown court last September; a rape, for which Mark Tooze was sentenced to five years at Reading Crown court last July; a former Newbury police officer given a three and a half year sentence for abusing his position by coercing vulnerable women into sexual relationships; and a number of sexual assaults. Even in a low-crime area, very serious violence against women is happening, and therefore I do not take gateway issues, which I believe public sexual harassment can be, lightly.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) said, public sexual harassment is particularly directed at younger women and girls. Like her, I did a roundtable with some schoolgirls, and the girls at Park House, a big secondary school in Newbury, told me about being particularly targeted when wearing their uniforms and the men who kerb-crawl at the end of the day or wait at certain junctions, saying obscene things out of the window. The girls definitely thought that there was a link to wearing the school uniform and felt more vulnerable when wearing it. My constituency of Newbury is far from alone in this. Plan International gave me some data when I was preparing for the debate, and it shows that 75% of girls and women aged 12 to 21 have experienced some form of sexual harassment in a public space.

This is a very important and helpful Bill because it creates for women a clear set of contours so that they know when their rights have been infringed. It is also helpful to the police, because the words “public order offence” are quite vague, and if there is a public sexual harassment offence and police have training on it, it will be much clearer to them what they are expected to do and how they are expected to act when it is drawn to their attention. We can probably all agree that there has never been a more important moment for the police to reinject confidence in their relationship with the public, particularly in terms of how they are prepared to deal with violence against women and girls.

I want to end by agreeing with my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price): I cannot bear the expression “tackling violence against women and girls”. I regret that we use it and that we tolerate it in the passive voice. It is male violence against women, and as lawmakers, we should call it what it is; I really feel strongly about that. Overall, this Bill is an important and valuable tool in our long battle to completely overhaul women’s safety.

Solihull Murders

Laura Farris Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Miss Dines]

I understand that more than two thirds of forces have implemented the new training. Frankly, that is not good enough, and I know that the Home Secretary is keen to work with me in this area. I wish to remind the House that for the first time we have a national policing lead for tackling violence against women and girls—deputy chief constable Maggie Blyth. Curiously enough, I was supposed to be meeting her at this very moment. I will reschedule that meeting as a matter of priority. The Government are giving the extra investment, with £3.3 million to expand domestic abuse training for police, and we need to make sure that that is implemented in each and every force.

[Laura Farris (Newbury) (Con)]

The facts of this case beggar belief. Ten separate complaints were made to the police about incidents of domestic violence, and four calls were made on the night. I have read the IOPC report carefully, and it finds there was a failure to carry out sufficient intelligence checks, a failure to record and a failure to make the right recommendations. Ultimately, however, the outcome it recommends is increased training. Will the Home Office consider something like the criminal justice scorecards that it is pioneering in areas such as rape, to show the performance of individual police forces, so that members of the public can have faith in their local force?

[Miss Dines]

I am interested in those ideas and I would be delighted to meet my hon. Friend to discuss that. Training is the key. This case was heartbreaking. How many of us listened to the press meeting on Friday last week and to the tragedy of this? It simply did not need to happen. The police need to be better trained. That comes from the top, not only from Government but from the local PCC. We do need proper training in place. When a person—invariably it is a woman—says that they are in fear of losing their life and even says that somebody might be coming round with a knife, as happened in this case, the police need to take it seriously.