Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton Excerpts

Wednesday 9th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

Q1. If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 9 November.

[The Prime Minister (Mr David Cameron)]

I am sure that the whole House will wish to join me in paying tribute to Private Matthew Haseldin from 2nd Battalion the Mercian Regiment. Despite being in the Army only a short time, he had already proved himself to be a dedicated and courageous soldier. He has made the ultimate sacrifice for the safety of the British people, and we should send our deepest condolences to his family and friends. This week, we will, of course, pause to remember all those who have lost their lives in defence of our country, so that we can enjoy peace and freedom, and we are humbled by their sacrifice.

This morning, I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others, and in addition to my duties in the House, I shall have further such meetings later today.

[Dr Huppert]

May I add my tribute to the Prime Minister’s about the sad death of Private Matthew Haseldin from 2nd Battalion the Mercian Regiment, especially with Remembrance Sunday so near?

The Prime Minister is rightly concerned about jobs and growth. Crucial to that is consumer confidence. Does he think that telling 25 million workers that they have no job security and can be fired at will tomorrow will boost or reduce consumer confidence?

[The Prime Minister]

Clearly, we have to make it easier for firms to hire people. That is why we have scrapped Labour’s jobs tax, taken 1 million of the lowest-paid people out of tax, established new rules so that someone can go to a tribunal only after working somewhere for two years, and introduced fees for claims in employment tribunals to stop vexatious claims. Added to that, we are investing in the Work programme and apprenticeships—all as a way of helping to give young people jobs.

[Edward Miliband (Doncaster North) (Lab)]

May I join the Prime Minister in paying tribute to Private Matthew Haseldin from 2nd Battalion the Mercian Regiment? He showed immense courage trying to protect local people, and our thoughts are with his family and friends. With troops serving in conflict overseas, it is even more important that this weekend, on Remembrance Sunday, we honour all those who have served our country and who are serving our country today.

Will the Prime Minister tell us how many people entered the UK under the Home Secretary’s relaxed border controls?

[The Prime Minister]

The figures for the period between August 2010 and August 2011 for the number of people who entered the country are published in the normal way. The figures that I have are these: the number of people arrested was up by 10%, the number of drug seizures was markedly up, and the number of firearms seizures was up by 100%. However, we should be clear about what did, and what did not, happen here. First, the Home Secretary agreed a pilot for a more targeted approach to border control. This was for people within the European economic area, and it allowed better targeting of high-risk people and less for others, notably children. This did not compromise security. It was an operational decision, but one that I fully back, and which I think she was right to take.

Secondly and importantly, however, decisions were taken to extend that beyond EEA nationals. That was not authorised by the Home Secretary. Indeed, when specific permission was asked for, it was not granted. This did not mean that our borders were left undefended, and passports continued to be checked, but because this was unauthorised action—as it was contrary to what she agreed—it was right that the head of the border force was suspended. I back that action completely.

[Edward Miliband]

It is just not good enough. The Prime Minister cannot tell us how many people—how many millions of people—were let in under the relaxed border controls agreed by the Home Secretary. Is it not totally unacceptable that the Home Secretary chose to relax border controls in July, but, even yesterday, could not tell us which airports and ports that applied to, how many took it up and for how long?

[The Prime Minister]

The Home Secretary provided those figures, and the figures are as follows: firearms, 100% increase in seizures; illegal immigrants, 10% increase in arrests; forged documents, 48% increase. But the simple fact that the right hon. Gentleman—and, I think, everyone—has to accept is this. The head of the UK Border Agency, Rob Whiteman, who also did not know that such unauthorised action was taking place, said this, and it is very important for the House to understand it:

“Brodie Clark admitted to me on November 2 that on a number of occasions this year he authorised his staff to go further than ministerial instruction. I therefore suspended him from his duties. In my opinion it was right for officials to have recommended the pilot so that we focus attention on higher risks to our border, but it is unacceptable that one of my senior officials went further than was approved.”

That is why Brodie Clark was suspended, and that is why the Home Secretary backed that decision, but it is important to understand that he was suspended by the head of the UK Border Agency. It was a decision quite rightly taken by him—backed by the Home Secretary, backed by me.

[Edward Miliband]

Isn’t it utterly typical? When things go wrong, it is nothing to do with them—[Interruption.]

[Edward Miliband]

What did the Home Secretary say in the past, when she was in opposition and things went wrong on immigration? She said this:

“I’m sick and tired of…government ministers…who simply blame other people when things go wrong.”

The Prime Minister said yesterday, in his evidence to the Liaison Committee about the relaxation of border controls over the past few months, that

“clearly this is not acceptable and it is not acceptable it went on for so long.”

Why did the Home Secretary allow it to happen?

[The Prime Minister]

The right hon. Gentleman cannot on the one hand blame me for not taking responsibility and then quote very clearly my words taking responsibility and saying what is not acceptable. We are having a lecture on responsibility from a party that trebled immigration, let an extra 2.2 million people into our country, allowed everyone from eastern Europe to come here with no transitional controls, built up a backlog of half a million asylum claims, and made no apology about it. Even today, when the Leader of the Opposition was asked whether too many people were let into this country, his answer was a very simple no.

[Edward Miliband]

The right hon. Gentleman has been Prime Minister for 18 months. He cannot keep saying that it is nothing to do with him; it is his responsibility. One month ago he gave a speech on border controls called “Reclaiming our Borders”, but while he was boasting about reclaiming our borders, his Home Secretary was busy relaxing our borders. Does the Prime Minister not think that he should at least have known?

[The Prime Minister]

The pilot that the Home Secretary introduced meant more arrests, more firearms seized and more forged documents found. That is the truth of it. The fact is that officials went further than Home Office Ministers authorised. That is what is wrong, and that is why someone had to be suspended—and that was the right decision.

The right hon. Gentleman asked what we have done. Let me tell him. We are completing e-Borders, so that by next April every flight from outside the EU will be checked; we are creating the National Crime Agency, with the dedicated border police; in the first six months, we seized more drugs than in the whole of last year; and last year we rejected 400,000 visa applications and turned away 68,000 people without the correct documents. I am determined that we have tough border controls, and finally we have a Home Office and an Immigration Minister who actually want to cut immigration.

[Edward Miliband]

Anyone listening to the Prime Minister would think that his policy has been a great success. It is a fiasco—a complete fiasco. The one thing that he cannot claim to know nothing about is cuts to the UK border force. Can he now confirm how many UK border staff are going to be cut under his Government?

[The Prime Minister]

By the end of this Parliament there will be 18,000 people working for the UK Border Agency—the same number as were working for it in 2006, when the right hon. Gentleman was sitting in the Treasury and determining the budgets. He asks about what we have done on immigration in 18 months in office. Let me tell him. We have introduced the first ever limit on work visas from outside the European Union. We have stopped more than 470 colleges from bringing in bogus foreign students. We have cut student visas by 70,000. Anyone who comes here to get married has to speak English. We are ending automatic settlement rights and stopping the nonsense of people misusing the Human Rights Act. In 18 months we have done more to control immigration than he did in 13 years.

[Edward Miliband]

The truth is, it is a fiasco and the Prime Minister knows it. That is the reality. It is a pattern with this Government: broken promises, gross incompetence, blame everybody else. He is an out-of-touch Prime Minister leading a shambolic Government.

[The Prime Minister]

As ever, the right hon. Gentleman just completely lost his way. I think he should spend a little more time listening to the author of “blue Labour”, Lord Glasman, who said:

“Labour lied…about the extent of immigration”.

Where is the apology?

[Mr Gary Streeter (South West Devon) (Con)]

Q2. On Friday, 3 Commando Brigade will be marching through the streets of Plymouth on their homecoming parade after a successful but costly tour of duty in Afghanistan. I know that the Prime Minister will be with us in spirit, but will he send a message of support today to those brave and very professional Royal Marines, of whom we are all so very proud?

[The Prime Minister]

I will certainly join my hon. Friend in doing that. I know that the whole of the south-west—and the whole country—is incredibly proud of the Marines, and we are proud of 3 Commando Brigade, who will be marching through Plymouth. I send my very best wishes for the homecoming parade, and we should also put on record what they have achieved in Task Force Helmand. They carried out 37,000 patrols, found more than 400 improvised explosive devices and trained more than 1,300 Afghan uniformed police patrolmen. They have made a real difference to the safety and security of that country, and to the safety of our country too.

[Lindsay Roy (Glenrothes) (Lab)]

Q3. Does the Prime Minister think it right and proper or in any way defensible that the Royal Bank of Scotland, which received a massive bail-out during the crisis, should be paying out more than £500 million in bonuses this year?

[The Prime Minister]

No, I do not think it is acceptable. RBS has not yet set its figures for bonus payments. The British Government are a seriously large shareholder in RBS, and we will be making our views known.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

In joining me in giving our condolences to the relatives of the Red Arrows pilot killed at RAF Scampton yesterday, will the Prime Minister acknowledge the overriding need for safety? Our campaign to save RAF Scampton from closure is based not just on sentiment for the historic home of the Dambusters, but on the overriding need for the safe uncluttered skies above north Lincolnshire that the Red Arrows need to practise safely.

[The Prime Minister]

I am sure that the hearts of everyone in this House go out to the family of the pilot who was killed in that terrible accident, which comes on top of a second accident that happened in the Red Arrows. This has obviously been a tragic time for something that the whole country reveres and loves, and I know that the Red Arrows’ home in Lincolnshire is extremely important to them. We must get to the bottom of what happened, and I totally understand why my hon. Friend wants to stand up for the air base in his constituency.

[Gordon Banks (Ochil and South Perthshire) (Lab)]

Q4. The trade unions yesterday published data showing that Clackmannanshire in my constituency has seen the largest growth in youth unemployment in this country. Given that we will not have the opportunity to question the Prime Minister on unemployment numbers next week, will he tell me why he is letting young people down in my constituency?

[The Prime Minister]

Obviously we face a difficult situation with unemployment, including among young people, right across the country, and we need to do everything we can to help people back into work. That is why there is record investment going into apprenticeships and the Work programme. However, the real need is to grow the private sector, because, frankly, this is a time when whoever was in government would have to make reductions in the public sector. The hon. Gentleman shakes his head, but any Government would have to do that: look across Europe at the reductions that are having to be made. We need to get the private sector growing, which is what this Government are focused on.

[Peter Aldous (Waveney) (Con)]

Q5. Developing the considerable potential for jobs in the energy sector is central to economic recovery in my constituency, as is providing local people with the skills to take on those jobs. Will the Prime Minister ensure that the Government do all they can to fund the completion of the newly opened Pakefield high school in Lowestoft, which will play such an important role in skilling young people in a deprived area?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about the skills that that local school will bring. This year Suffolk has an extra £33 million in capital funds. It is obviously for the local authority to decide how to spend that money, but school capital available throughout this spending round and this Parliament amounts to £15.9 billion, so money is there for important school projects.

[Mr Gregory Campbell (East Londonderry) (DUP)]

Q6. This weekend the nation will pause to remember, paying tribute to our war dead. At cenotaphs across the nation, we will pay homage to the men and women who have made the supreme sacrifice in conflicts down through the years. Does the Prime Minister agree that where there is a desire to display that tribute in an entirely non-partisan way, whether in shops, schools, churches or on football tops, it should be not only allowed, but positively promoted?

[The Prime Minister]

I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman, and sense that the entire House does too. It is a remarkable achievement of the Royal British Legion and the country as a whole that we have reintroduced over past years the sense of the silence taking place at the 11th hour of the 11th day, which is absolutely right. It is particularly appropriate in Northern Ireland, where so many people have served so bravely in our armed forces. Indeed, whenever I visit the Royal Irish Regiment, I am always struck by how many people from both sides of the border have served so bravely in our armed forces.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

Q7. Less family breakdown would reduce the costs loaded on to our economy, so will the Prime Minister encourage health authorities throughout the country to take part in “Care for the Families: Let’s Stick Together” pilots, when health visitors and volunteer parents offer relationship support to new parents in the early years of their family life, which is when half of all break-ups occur?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend has a great record in pushing forward that absolutely vital idea. It is a tragic fact that so many couples break up after the arrival of the first child because of all the stresses and strains that can bring. That is dreadful for those couples and dreadful for those children. We spend a huge amount as a country dealing with the problems of social breakdown; in my view we should spend more on trying to help to keep families together. Relationship advice and support, as he says, is absolutely vital in that.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

Q8. On Friday the UN Security Council will consider the democratically conveyed Palestinian request for full membership of the UN. Might not the international community do more to advance the prospect of a two-state solution by doing more to create a two-state process? In that context, will he ensure that the UK representative casts a positive vote on Friday, and does not go for the cop-out of abstention?

[The Prime Minister]

My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary will make a full statement to the House on this issue in a few moments, but let me say this: the British Government are fully behind the two-state solution, but I profoundly believe that we will get that not through declarations and processes at the UN, but through the two potential states—Israel and Palestine—sitting down and negotiating. All our efforts should go towards helping to make that happen.

[Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)]

Q9. If he will make it his policy to endorse the Somerset Community Foundation’s 2011 Surviving Winter appeal.

[The Prime Minister]

The winter fuel payment provides valuable help to millions of people with paying their fuel bills. Individuals are of course free to donate their payment to a charity if they wish, but it must be a decision for them.

[Tessa Munt]

I thank the Prime Minister for that question. I would like him to congratulate Peter Wyman of the Somerset Community Foundation on having the brilliant idea of people donating some or all of their winter fuel allowance to those who need it most. Would the Government consider enabling such donations by including an option in the letter sent out about the allowance to allow an automatic donation to the Surviving Winter appeal?

[The Prime Minister]

I shall certainly look at that suggestion, but it is important to keep the promises that we made to Britain’s pensioners about keeping up the winter fuel payments and cold weather payments. I would not want to see any unnecessary pressure put on people to do something that might not be in their own best interests.

[Chris Leslie (Nottingham East) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q10. The operational instruction from the UK Border Agency on 20 July says:“We will cease routinely opening the chips within EEA passports…checking under 18-year-olds against the warning index”.Did anyone in the Home Office clear that document? Given the conflicting stories between the Home Secretary’s officials and her own version, will the Prime Minister publish all the ministerial instructions to the UKBA?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman is trying desperately to make up the ground lost by his party leader, but I am afraid that he has rather lost the House in the process. The point is that an inquiry will be carried out by the independent chief inspector of the Border Agency—the very person who found out what was going wrong in terms of operations undertaking that did not have the permission of Ministers, and all these issues will be aired.

[Tracey Crouch (Chatham and Aylesford) (Con)]

On Christmas day 1914, British and German troops put down their weapons and played a football match in no man’s land. The following day, the bloody hostilities resumed. Today, we wear the poppy in remembrance of our war dead. Will the Prime Minister join me in condemning the outrageous decision by FIFA to refuse the home nations’ request to wear the poppy on their shirts this weekend as a simple mark of respect and remembrance?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend speaks not only for the whole House but for the whole country in being completely baffled—and, frankly, angry—at the decision made by FIFA. If teams want to put the poppy on their shirts, as many teams do in our football league, they should be able to do so at national level, whether it is the English team or the Welsh team. This is an appalling decision, and I hope that FIFA will reconsider it.

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q11. As poverty is rising, the Prime Minister is removing the requirement for people to register to vote in Britain, thereby removing millions of people’s right to vote. Is he not taking their money with one hand and taking their votes with another? Is it not a grotesque distortion of democracy to force austerity measures on the most vulnerable while removing their voting power?

[The Prime Minister]

The point that I would make to the hon. Gentleman is that we are introducing individual voter registration, which is a Labour policy, so he should be welcoming it. I can understand why he does not necessarily support the idea of making all constituencies the same size, because his constituency has only 62,000 people in it, whereas his right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) represents 91,000 people. I think that it is a basic act of fairness to have seats the same size. It was a demand of the Chartists in the 1840s, and I think that it is time we introduced it.

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

Q12. Is the Prime Minister aware of the growing evidence of the increase in abuse, intimidation and harassment on park home sites across the country? Tackling those problems needs political will, not a large sum of money. Will he address the issues urgently, so that vulnerable park homers get the protection that they need and deserve as soon as possible?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Lady raises an important point. I have had constituency cases myself in which people have been treated very badly by park home owners. There are some extremely good park home owners, who not only obey the rules but demonstrate responsibility and compassion, but there are some who do not. We are committed to providing a better deal for park home residents by improving their rights and increasing protection against bad site owners. I will arrange for her to have a meeting with the Housing Minister so that they can discuss this urgent action.

[Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

In these difficult economic times, it is even more important for our politics to be in touch with the people we represent. Will the Prime Minister therefore welcome the first people to be successful in getting places on the Speaker’s parliamentary placement scheme, who are with us here today? They are inspiring individuals who would never normally have the chance to work in politics. Will he agree to meet them and listen to their views on the relevance of the issues today, and perhaps on how we are all doing in our politics?

[The Prime Minister]

I would certainly join the right hon. Lady in the point she makes. She has made a huge amount of impact on this issue of social mobility, of wanting to help people who have not had good chances in life. I applaud her for that. If there is time in my busy diary, I will certainly do as she says. I think there is an important opportunity for everyone in this House to look at organisations like the Social Mobility Foundation that provide opportunities for interns from inner city schools to come and have the experience of working here in Parliament. I have used this scheme, as have other members of the Cabinet, and I think it is an excellent scheme to give people a really good chance to see what we do in this place—not just on Wednesday at 12 o’clock, but more broadly.

[Karen Lumley (Redditch) (Con)]

Q13. Does my right hon. Friend think it right for hon. Members to take instruction from the GMB about how to vote on amendments?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend raises a serious issue—[Interruption.] I can hear, and I can sense, a bit of resistance, which is perhaps not surprising when 85% of Labour’s money comes from the trade unions. When we discuss legislation in this House, we should be bringing our judgment, our ideas and our arguments, not just picking up a tired old brief from a trade union.

[Cathy Jamieson (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q14. In my constituency of Kilmarnock and Loudoun there are over 3,000 people claiming jobseeker’s allowance, but the latest figures show that there were only 300 job vacancies available. Jobs are being lost in the public sector and the private sector. How high does unemployment have to go before the Prime Minister will accept that his economic policies are simply not working?

[The Prime Minister]

Unemployment is too high today, and I want to see it come down from its already high levels. What we have to do to make that happen is to put resources into the apprenticeship scheme and into the Work programme to make sure that we do all the things that help businesses to employ people. That is what this Government are doing. We are cutting corporation tax, introducing enterprise zones and doing everything we can to help businesses. We will do that in the hon. Lady’s constituency and throughout the country.

[Joseph Johnson (Orpington) (Con)]

Italian bond yields have jumped this morning by more than a percentage point to an unsustainable 8.1%. Could the Prime Minister please say what eurozone leaders must now do to stop the contagion?

[The Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. If you do not have credibility about your plans to deal with your debts and deal with your deficits, whether you like the markets or not, they will not lend you any money. That is what we are seeing in countries like Greece and now, tragically, in Italy, where the price of borrowing money is reaching a totally unsustainable level. It is a lesson for all of us to have sustainable plans to get on top of our debt and our deficits. In terms of Europe, the problem of contagion is that as we agree a decisive write-down of Greek debt, people inevitably start asking questions about other countries. As that happens, you need to have in place the biggest possible firewall. That is what the European Financial Stability Facility is all about, and eurozone leaders urgently need to put flesh on the bones and put figures on the size of that firewall, to stop this contagion going any further.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

Q15. Last year youth unemployment in Tameside stood at an unacceptable 20%—one in five. Today it stands at 34%, which is shocking. In light of that, does the Prime Minister still believe that the decision to scrap the future jobs fund was the right one?

[The Prime Minister]

Let me just make the point that under Labour youth unemployment went up by 40%—and the evidence that we received on coming into government was that the future jobs fund was three or four times more expensive than other job creation schemes. Indeed, in many parts of the country, including in the west midlands, the percentage of future jobs fund jobs that were in the private sector was as low as 2% or 3%. It was right to scrap the future jobs fund and put in its place apprenticeships, the Work programme and work experience that will make a difference to young people.

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

War is a failure of politics. The people who go to war are not politicians; they are brave service people who die in the service of their country. May I urge my right hon. Friend to write to FIFA to point out that the poppy is not a political symbol but a symbol that says that we respect the sacrifice that people have made on behalf of their countries?

[The Prime Minister]

I will certainly do as my hon. Friend suggests. I think that it is a question not just of writing to FIFA, but of asking its membership bodies, including the Football Association, to take a strong line. As my hon. Friend says, this is not an issue of left or right, Labour or Conservative. We all wear the poppy with pride, even if we do not approve of the wars in which people were fighting. We do it to honour the fact that those people sacrificed their lives for us. It is absolutely vital for FIFA to understand that, and I think that a clear message from the House and the Government can make it think again.

[Sir Stuart Bell (Middlesbrough) (Lab)]

Given that Italy is now on what the Prime Minister has described as a “credible fiscal path”, will he help the Group of Twenty’s Finance Ministers to meet and contribute to the creation of a European financial stability pact in a way that will assist the eurozone?

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman has made an important point. However, the first responsibility for building the bail-out fund must lie with the eurozone members. As we said in the House on Monday, the problem at the G20 is that the G20, the International Monetary Fund and countries such as Britain cannot be asked to do things that the eurozone members are not themselves prepared to do.

We do stand ready to boost the IMF, we do want to help countries in distress, and we do not want to see our trading partners collapse. We understand that, even though we do not support membership of the euro, if countries fall out of the euro it could be very painful for our economy. However, it is for the eurozone countries to sort out the problems. It is their currency.

[Mr William Cash (Stone) (Con)]

In reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Orpington (Joseph Johnson), the Prime Minister referred to a firewall in relation to the bail-outs. Does he accept that what we really need is structural renegotiation of the treaties, given the impact that this is having on the United Kingdom? If I may use a cricketing analogy of which the Prime Minister will be aware, he would not be sent in with a broken bat. He would be sent in with a new bat, and with a united Conservative team behind him.

[The Prime Minister]

There is a long history in my party of cricketing metaphors and Europe ending unhappily, so I will not necessarily follow my hon. Friend down that path. What I will say is that we will defend the national interest. When there was a treaty change in the European Council we got something back for Britain, which was the ability to get out of the EU bail-out fund. If there are future treaty changes—some European countries are pushing for them—we will make sure that we achieve a good deal for Britain and protect our national interests.