Criminal Finances Bill

Lord Deben Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 28th March 2017 Lords Chamber

My question is simple and goes back to the one which I asked originally: given that this money is coming into the country in huge amounts, why has no bank in the UK been prosecuted for laundering corrupt money here? The Minister implied at Second Reading that they had. It turns out that they have not—or are there other papers that we have not seen? Those are questions that need to be answered. The noble Lord spoke of the number of properties that the Land Registry had registered. Others have looked at the square footage. Millions of square feet of London homes are owned by these secret companies—owned by money from abroad. That must have come through the banks. The estate agent doing the selling has a duty to look only at one party in terms of the money; it does not have a duty to look at the others. The solicitors and the banks are all involved. How come no bank appears to have ever been prosecuted and why has the Minister obviously been given duff advice in answering questions?

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I support the amendment because I have been for many years concerned about housing. This issue is a matter not just of corrupt investment but of investment in housing for purposes which are other than housing. This is a very serious social issue in London and other cities. If the Government do not take it seriously, they will reap the whirlwind.

The number of such houses and flats—real estate—in London in particular, causes considerable resentment among those unable to buy their own home. It is no good any party any longer ignoring it. All parties have to admit that they have not solved this problem. This is not a party-political comment, but it is an increasingly serious matter because it is creating divisions in our society which are greater than they have ever been. I ask Members of your Lordships’ House to remember when it was possible for them as young people to buy a house or a flat in London, now to think about their children or grandchildren unable to do so and to recognise the divisive effect of that. It is against that background that this amendment should be considered.

The second issue is simply that most of us are fed up with the intrusive questions asked by people with whom we have banked for most of our lives, including being asked to send one’s utility bills to a bank with which one has had an account that has been in reasonable order for 60 years because it has to meet the perfectly understandable anti-money laundering arrangements. The second resentment is that normal, ordinary British people have to go through this amazing series of hoops to bank money or get money out if they wish to do anything which is slightly out of the ordinary, yet they know perfectly well that the banks must have been involved in the transmission of money in situations which are, at the very best, dodgy.

I, too, sought some figures about who has been prosecuted for this. It actually beggars any kind of belief that no bank of any kind has ever helped anybody to buy, with improperly gained foreign money, property in London. I am sorry but that does not stand up. So the second disillusion that comes is that decent people in this country go through this kind of unbelievable series of hoops knowing both that they must accept them because of the security that we properly wish to impose and that others avoid this to the tune of millions and millions of pounds.

The third reason this amendment is so important is that there is a real concern in this country, with the atmosphere of Brexit, about attitudes to foreigners. I am an absolute and continuous remainer and will not be pushed off that by anybody’s arguments, so I am biased. However, I do not like the society we are building in circumstances of antagonism to foreigners of all kinds. That makes it even more important that where dishonourable activities take place and money earned dishonourably elsewhere is invested in this country that is dealt with clearly and transparently, so that the kind of accusations that are and have been made against people who invested here honourably are totally distinct from that which has been unacceptable.

My fourth reason—and last, as the House will be pleased to note—is that we recently, honourably, passed the Modern Slavery Act. We are beginning to be serious about the way in which people are exploited and the benefits of that exploitation coming to people in this country. People are serious about this, the Government have been serious about it and it has all-party support. If we are serious about the Modern Slavery Act, we must also be serious about the proceeds of crime and often of exploitation being brought into this country and used in the real-estate world. That is why I beg my noble friend to take this amendment very seriously. It addresses some deep disillusion in our society and also some deep injustice in the society of the world. This is not just a passing amendment to tease out the Government’s position here and there but a fundamental amendment that challenges the whole of our society to behave in a way that we can be proud of, rather than one that facilitates activities we should condemn.

[Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood]

My Lords, I start with a very pedantic point. If this amendment is to go ahead, it needs to begin with an “or”. As the noble and very clever though not technically learned Lord points out, this is a further alternative to the two already listed in new Section 362B(4). The next point is that of course the property here envisaged, registered in the name of an overseas company in which the respondent has an interest, is not—I repeat, not—the same property as referred to in subsection (1), in respect of which one seeks to have an unexplained wealth order made. It is a different property altogether.

I have great sympathy with the amendment and the policy underlying it. Like the noble Lord, Lord Deben, I deplore the extent to which London properties are in foreign ownership nowadays. But I respectfully wonder how far the amendment would go—if any distance—in actually dealing with that problem and with money laundering. Surely with regard to most of the people who buy and own these London properties—if they are not already PEPs, or politically exposed persons, and we know that a lot of them probably are—nobody questions how much money they have. But would it not then be rather difficult to satisfy the earlier requirement —which, again, has to be satisfied to make one of these orders—in new subsection (3)? Each of the various requirements set out in proposed new subsections (2), (3) and (4) has to be satisfied. First you have to show that they hold property of the relevant value; then, in new subsection (3) you have to be satisfied that,

“there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that the known sources of the respondent’s lawfully obtained income would have been insufficient for the purposes of enabling the respondent to obtain the property”.

The property there being referred to is not property in London registered in the name of an overseas company, it is the property in respect of which you are seeking a UWO.

Those points need to be borne in mind before one goes down this particular road. It is not going to be the panacea that some who have contributed to the debate thus far seem to think it is likely to be.

Policing and Crime Bill

Lord Deben Excerpts

Report: 3rd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 12th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, as a non-lawyer, I hesitate to disagree with the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, but it seemed to me that he undermined his case right at the beginning when he said that there were allegations that were ridiculous and had no basis at all, yet the police announced these allegations to the world. I happen to know about this because, as I was seen at the funeral of my late friend and colleague, Leon Brittan, I was for some time followed by certain people claiming that they had evidence of his wickedness. They were silly enough to state that evidence, which was total nonsense. It was without any foundation. It could not have been true.

However, I do not want to talk about my friend. I want to talk about somebody whom I do not know at all, although I have met him: Lord Bramall. The allegation against Lord Bramall could have been proved to have been entirely wrong merely by looking at the date on which it was claimed, because at that point he was in a public place, at which it could not have been as alleged. The issue is not that we wish to restrict the opportunities of giving to others the chance to come forward. It is simply, narrowly, to say that somebody other than the police has to be involved before such an announcement is made in public.

There are too many examples of the police giving information to others in all sorts of circumstances. A relation of mine was in precisely such circumstances. What the police told the press was entirely proper and complimentary, but she did not want that to be given out. But the police did—they were clearly paid for it—and it resulted in a long and extremely congratulatory article. The issue was that the police decided that they would make that decision, when there was no reason for it. That was a happy example, but there are some terrible examples. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, that we cannot live in a society in which there is no guard against those who give out such information before a charge has been laid.

All we are saying—the two amendments have different ways of doing this and it may be that neither is satisfactory—is that it should not be up to an individual policeman or an individual police force to make this kind of allegation before there is any charge. It should go to someone else. If I may say so to the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, this someone else may not be able to judge whether allowing this will bring forward more witnesses, but what he or she is able to judge is whether it is a load of old rubbish. At least he or she can assess whether what is proposed as the basis for investigation has some foundation. That is why it is perfectly proper to say that a judge or a magistrate might take this role.

I therefore beg my friend—I can call him that because the noble Lord and I are usually on the same side—to recognise that it is too dangerous an insult to the British legal system for people to be seen as guilty when they are innocent on the say-so of an individual policeman. All I am asking is that it should be on the say-so, in the quietness and care of a proper circumstance, of someone whose future does not depend on the publicity, who can look at the evidence and say, “Really, officer, I don’t think there looks like being anything in that because of x, y and z. Perhaps you might find out more about it before you move in this way”. That is what we ask.

[Lord Pannick]

Before the noble Lord sits down, does he think it is in the interests of the potential defendant for a judge to determine that there really is something in the allegations, and therefore to authorise that publicity is appropriate? Is that not seriously damaging to the presumption of innocence?

[Lord Deben]

Not at all. The fact is that what the judge would be deciding is whether that name should be put forward at that point, and in most cases he would probably say no. I can think of very few cases when publishing the name in connection with an allegation would reduce the number of people coming forward if that name were later published at the point of an actual charge. It would therefore affect a limited number; in fact I do not believe there are any in this group. But if there were, I would want someone to be able to say, “In this particular case, it is so important that I will allow it to be done”.

[Lord Lester of Herne Hill (LD)]

My Lords, like the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, I was not intending to take part in this debate. However, with his great skill as an advocate, he has persuaded me to support my noble friend Lord Paddick’s amendment. I want to try to explain why. The main reason is that the noble Lord, Lord Pannick, with his usual brilliant, destructive analytical skill, has explained objections to the amendments but has not answered the fundamental question from the noble Lord, Lord Lamont: what safeguards does he propose to put in place of either or both these amendments? I am sure we will hear that from the Minister in her reply.

As a lifelong friend of Leon Brittan and his wife, during that one year while he was dying I witnessed the destruction of both of them through the callous misconduct of the police service, to which there was and is no effective remedy. The United States, which takes due process very seriously under its written constitution, has not abolished the grand jury. When the grand jury is investigating a federal crime, the one thing that is absolutely clear is that there must be no publicity for any of the evidence that it is investigating before deciding whether to recommend that the prosecution should be brought. The reason for that is the same reason that noble Lords have expressed today about the unsatisfactory nature of our legal system at present—it is the need to protect the innocent before the presumption of innocence has been applied at a trial.

Whether either of these amendments is acceptable or not, I believe that some kind of safeguard is needed—not just through guidance or a code of practice, but a binding legal rule that will protect people in the position of Lord and Lady Brittan from the kind of scurrilous allegations that were made, and the misconduct of the police in failing even to tell them before he died that they were satisfied there was no evidence against him. They allowed him to die not knowing that. There needs to be a prophylactic rule. If the Minister is against these amendments, I ask her to indicate in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Lamont, what the Government propose instead.

Policing and Crime Bill

Lord Deben Excerpts

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Wednesday 30th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Blair of Boughton (CB)]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lords who tabled this amendment. I listened to the explanation of the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, the chronology of which I understand, but which may be difficult for others to understand. I totally accept the passion with which he spoke on that issue. I support the amendment but make it clear that I am one of the few Members of the House who gave evidence to Leveson in person and on oath. I support the amendment precisely because it fulfils the previous government commitment. As I was the commissioner at the time the first phone hacking case appeared to arise, which concerned the royal household and to which the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, referred, it would not be appropriate for me to say in this House that I do not accept any further scrutiny of the Metropolitan Police or other police forces over this matter. Therefore, I very much support the idea that Leveson 2, in whatever form, or whether it is through this amendment, should be introduced.

However, given that I gave evidence to the inquiry, I need to make it clear that I shall be very surprised—at this point, I move towards the position adopted by the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham—if a new inquiry uncovers anything involving major corruption in recent years. To that end, I ask the House’s indulgence to allow me to read one paragraph—paragraph 49—of my statement to Leveson, which I made in 2012, which set out my position on the question. It refers to the Met and only to events post-2000. Therefore, it does not refer to Morgan or Hillsborough as that was the question I was being asked: what had I done since I had been the deputy commissioner and the commissioner? It was submitted in spring 2012 and says:

“Whilst I therefore accept that current enquiries may reveal that a small number of relatively junior officers took bribes from the press, I do not believe that corruption in monetary terms lies at the heart of any major problem in the relationship between the”,

Metropolitan Police Service and the press. We can now say that a number of junior police officers were convicted, and rightly so. I continued:

“I believe that where that problem may have become significant is that a very small number of relatively senior officers … became too close to journalists, not I believe for financial gain but for the enhancement of their reputation and for the sheer enjoyment of being in a position to share and divulge confidences. It is a siren song. I also believe that they based this behaviour on how they saw politicians”,

behaving with the press,

“and that they lost sight of their professional obligations. The MPS did not have adequate defences against this behaviour and in previous decades would probably not have needed it”.

In short, what will be revealed by such an inquiry, which I still say is necessary, is behaviour that was wrong, reprehensible and unprofessional, but largely not criminal.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, many of us wish that we were not having this debate at all. I will ask three questions of the noble Baroness who will reply. The first is: will she not agree that there is a promise, and that it is a serious thing not to carry that promise through? That is particularly true given the circumstances in which we live, where large numbers of people have ceased to believe in the integrity, the impartiality and, if I may use a non-word, the upstandingness of those in authority. Therefore when a promise has been made, to renege on it is always harmful but particularly harmful at this time, when not only in this country but elsewhere there is clearly a fundamental feeling among large numbers of people that they have not been dealt with properly by those who are in power, have authority and are able to change the lives of others. Therefore, first, there is the promise.

Secondly, there is the need. Will my noble friend explain why it is not necessary to clear the reputation of the police, and particularly the Metropolitan Police, given that so much has been said about them and so much is thought about them? As somebody who lives much of the time in London, I have to say that the Metropolitan Police’s reputation is not good, has not been good for some time, and needs to be improved. Therefore one has to ask why this would not be a valuable way to ensure that that happened. The noble Lord, Lord Blair, said precisely that—there is a need for that.

There is also a need for the press to face up to the fact that it, too, has perhaps the worst reputation in this country that it has had, certainly in my lifetime, which is getting embarrassingly long. This is a very unhappy time, when we think of the purveying of hate that has been on the front pages of so many newspapers, and the attacks on our institutions and their independence, which we have seen latterly. We therefore have to say to ourselves that this is an opportunity for the press, too, to clear that part of its name which is clearable. For my noble friend Lord Hailsham to stand up today and say that he expects the press kindly to arrange in future that it will sign up to not doing bad things suggests that he has not followed the news over the past months. This is not the mood of a press that is largely owned outside this country, by people who have little commitment to this country, and now has standards wholly different from those which perhaps we might have expected.

My third question to my noble friend Lady Williams is as follows. If the noble Baroness’s amendment is not agreed—or, more importantly, if it is not accepted—and if there is no alternative that we see as satisfactorily meeting the very powerful statement that she made, does my noble friend not agree that the public will think that we have not taken these steps due to the power of the press and our closeness to the constabulary, which leads me back to my first point? That is extremely dangerous at any time and particularly dangerous at the moment. The amendment attacks neither the press nor the police; it suggests that perhaps this is the moment to clear both of unfair allegations and to reveal real allegations, which seems to me a not unreasonable position to take. I hope that my noble friend will enable me to support her in the Lobbies by giving me an alternative to this amendment that meets those obligations.

Policing and Crime Bill

Lord Deben Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard - part one): House of Lords
Wednesday 26th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Condon]

My Lords, I support the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Harris. I do not turn my mind totally against this provision but, from my experience, the way you equip people heavily influences how they think about what they are doing: their role and how they react. Like other noble Lords, my inclination at this stage, subject to reassurance from the Government, is that the cut-off point for incapacitant sprays should probably stay at special constable, where there is a level of training, supervision, scrutiny and public acceptance of their role that there is not for volunteers. Incapacitant sprays can and have killed. To equip a volunteer who may have good but relatively basic training with a spray that can kill a fellow member of the public is an enormous step and we need reassurance from the Government that it is absolutely necessary.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, this has been a very useful discussion. I find myself slightly closer to the Government’s position than that of the noble Lord who spoke from the other side, but I have considerable sympathy with his argument.

There is a terribly difficult problem, which I hope my noble friend will address, of confusion about who these people are, who is in which category, and the like. I happen to have a close relative who sought to be a special constable and discovered that the difficulties of becoming a special constable are really quite considerable. I hope that my noble friend can help me by explaining that this is not a way of getting out of the difficulties of the one by producing something different, which would mean that we are not facing up to some really fundamental issues about how people become special constables and whether we are making it easy for people who would like to make this contribution.

What the debate has really raised are perfectly genuine concerns that this may not quite have been thought through in the way we would like it to be. As it is such a delicate issue, I hope it could be taken rather more widely than in the actual amendment, by thinking a bit about the way in which the public will understand the distinction between these categories. This bit of additional power given to people who decide to volunteer shines a light on the problem and on the confusion which I am not sure has actually been overcome in the debates that we have had so far.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. It is of course very difficult not to stray into other amendments when talking about something in the round. I thank my noble friend Lady Redfern for laying out her experience of using volunteer police officers in Lincolnshire. It must be one of the first areas in the country to do that, so it was very useful to have that information in the round. In thinking about my noble friend Lord Deben’s point about the importance of the public knowing the difference between a volunteer and a special police constable, or indeed a fully trained officer, I asked myself whether I wondered, when my children were at school, what the difference was between the teaching assistant and the fully trained teacher. In fact, as long as they both contributed to my child’s education, I was not that much bothered—but it may be an issue for some people and I recognise the point that my noble friend makes.

Amendment 167 returns to an issue that was debated at length in the House of Commons: namely, whether it is ever right for designated members of police staff, or the new category of designated volunteers, to carry these particular sprays for defensive purposes. The noble Lord, Lord Rosser, has also given notice that he intends to oppose the question that Clause 38 should stand part of the Bill.

I hope that I can assist the Committee by first explaining what Clause 38 seeks to achieve. It makes necessary consequential amendments to the Firearms Act 1968 to ensure that police volunteers come within the definition of “civilian officers” for the purposes of that Act. The effect of this is that they do not then need a firearms certificate or authorisation under either Section 1 or Section 5 of the 1968 Act in order to carry a defensive spray. The clause simply puts community support volunteers and policing support volunteers in the same position in relation to defensive sprays that police officers and police civilian staff are currently in.

Clause 37(6) makes it clear that police staff and volunteers cannot use other weapons within the meaning of the Firearms Act 1968 unless the Secretary of State makes regulations under new Section 38(9B)(b) of the Police Reform Act 2002. Any such regulations would be subject to the affirmative procedure.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

Yes, I totally take the noble Lord’s point, and I am hoping the clarification will arrive from my left in the next five minutes.

As we have made clear in our delegated powers memorandum, this is intended as a future-proofing provision to cover any self-defence equipment not yet invented—and I am not talking about guns. We are also taking the opportunity to make it explicit in the 1968 Act that special constables are members of a police force for the purposes of that Act, and therefore similarly do not require a certificate or authorisation under the 1968 Act when equipped with a defensive spray. This will avoid any doubt being created by the insertion of a specific reference to policing support and community support volunteers within the meaning of “Crown servant” in the Firearms Act.

I turn next to the various points that have been raised in relation to equipping staff.

[Lord Deben]

I did not quite understand the bit about things that have not yet been invented. The reason I did not understand is that I am not sure that I would be very happy about giving powers to give permission for the use of something that has not been invented, because I do not know whether what has not been invented would be something that I would like to give people the powers to use, if you see what I mean. This is a very dangerous route down which to go.

[Earl Attlee]

My noble friend does not need to worry about that at all, because it will be under the affirmative procedure, so Ministers will have to justify it. I have to say that future-proofing this seems to me to be a sensible thing to do, although on the other hand I slightly have sympathy for the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Harris of Haringey.

Immigration Bill

Lord Deben Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2016 Lords Chamber

In addition to the HMRC statistics published in 2014, figures produced by StopWatch show the scale of the problem in this country. From its analysis of British Crime Survey data produced in 2008 and 2011, StopWatch found that black and ethnic-minority drivers consistently reported higher levels of car stops: 33% of people with mixed black and white ethnicities reported being stopped; for both the black Caribbean and Asian Muslim communities the figure is 18%; for white drivers, the figure is just 11%. We already have lax stop powers on the statute book which allow individuals to be stopped without reason. Yet rather than working to address the discriminatory reality of this provision, the Government seek to tie this power to the immigration system, creating the obvious potential to ramp up discriminatory impacts and inflame existing grievances. I oppose Clauses 41 and 42: they should not be part of this Bill.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, it seems to me that a very serious proposition is being made by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, and I think that we ought to be very careful about it. The proposition being made is that, however valuable this clause is, it should not be passed because we cannot trust the police to carry it through properly. That is a very serious criticism. I have not been alone in my criticism of the police; I think that, particularly in London, there are very serious criticisms to be made. However, if we are to legislate on the basis that we cannot trust the police to behave properly towards the citizens of the United Kingdom, we had better look much more seriously at what we are doing with the police. We really should take it more much more seriously than is proposed here.

I think that many things happen in the police which are unacceptable. It is still true that relationships between the police and the press are far too close, and many of us have significant criticisms. But if the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, suggests that the police cannot carry through a necessary activity to ensure that illegal immigrants are properly dealt with and that the activity should be carried through not by the police but by immigration officials—who, evidently, can be trusted to behave in a proper way—then this is an argument not for this Bill but for a wholesale Bill about the nature of the police.

I do not believe that the British people would be very happy if this House decided that it would legislate in a way which was less likely to meet the needs as this Bill presents them simply because we have now accepted the inherent racism of the police force. That seems a fundamentally dangerous step to take. I would be very unhappy if the Minister were willing to be led down that route. Yes, of course, we have to have the toughest guidance; yes, of course, we have to make sure that whenever racist or discriminatory activities are found to be in the police they must be dealt with considerable severity; but we have to solve this problem—if it is a problem, and I am prepared to accept the views of the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, from his own experience—by reform and training in the police, not by saying that we will have less efficient laws because they cannot be properly and safely implemented. Are we going to say, therefore, that there should be no stopping of cars being driven in a dangerous condition because the police feel that they would be more likely to stop some kinds of people rather than others? We really cannot run a state on that basis. If this is a real problem—and I am certainly not saying that it is not—it is a problem which has to be dealt with by the Home Office and the police force, and not one which should lead us to make laws which are different from those that we would have made because we are afraid of the way in which they would be implemented.

Therefore, I hope that my noble friend the Minister will take this very seriously, not for the reasons that the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, has presented but for the reason that a democratic society has to have the laws which it needs irrespective of the differing feelings of people of differing ethnic or any other backgrounds. We are touching something fundamentally dangerous. It is precisely that kind of feeling that causes the resentment which one finds widely in Britain—a belief that we do not legislate in a colour-blind manner but in a manner which takes the view of the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, and therefore stops us legislating as effectively as we should. I hope that my noble friend will be very careful in the way in which he responds to this debate.

[Lord Alton of Liverpool]

My Lords, in briefly following what the noble Lord, Lord Deben, has just said, I say that there is a case for examining the way in which policing is conducted, and I agree with him that it is unfortunate that we have to have a debate in the context of the Bill. I support what the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, said, as I did in Committee. That is based not so much on a belief that all our police officers behave badly, but more on the experience I had more than 30 years ago, in 1981, when the Toxteth riots erupted. They did so in part because of bad policing, and indeed they were linked directly to the stopping of a young black man on his motorcycle in Lodge Lane in Toxteth. The riots led to a thousand policemen being hospitalised in Liverpool as a consequence. Everyone who looked at the events in Brixton and in Liverpool afterwards, notably Lord Scarman, found that the overuse of stop-and-search powers had been part and parcel of the problem.

I guess that the question for the House today is: will this take us back to that kind of regime? That is what the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, is asking us to address. I must admit that I looked carefully at the letter kindly sent by the Minister as part of the compendium of letters he has written during the passage of this Bill. They run to page 146, which probably tells noble Lords quite a lot about the volume of correspondence we have had, and that is to the Minister’s credit. I just want to mention two phrases set out in the letter because they help to bring some clarity to what is intended in the Bill and perhaps might reassure both the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, and the noble Baroness, Lady Lawrence of Clarendon. The first is that,

“it is important to bear in mind that the police will use the powers contained in these clauses reactively, after they have stopped a vehicle for an objective reason”.

Later in the same letter, talking not now about vehicles but about the entry into people’s homes, the letter states:

“The officer could then only enter premises where there are reasonable grounds for believing the driving licence could be found there”.

All this revolves around the words “objective” and “reasonable”. When the Minister replies to the debate, I hope that he will explain in a little more detail what kinds of circumstances he envisages as objective and those he regards as reasonable. That might give us greater confidence that the powers suggested here will be used properly.

I conclude by saying that it would be dangerous to presume that the police of our country are incapable of implementing the laws that Parliament passes in an objective way, and the noble Lord, Lord Deben, was right to remind us of that. But we must remember our story. In 1981 Sir Kenneth Oxford was the chief constable for Merseyside. Many people believed, as I did myself at the time, that the policing had been overly aggressive. It is notable that the young assistant chief constable who subsequently came to Merseyside, Bernard Hogan-Howe as he then was, would later rise to become chief constable of the area. He introduced very sensitive community policing, and I suspect that the extremely effective policing he developed during that period is one of the reasons he was appointed the Metropolitan Police Commissioner. Good community relations were built up during that time. I would therefore be very nervous of anything that destabilised that delicate balance, which is why I seek further clarity about the reasonable and objective use of these powers.

Immigration Bill

Lord Deben Excerpts

Wednesday 9th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my declaration of interest and the fact that for many years I have helped businesses trying to combat modern slavery. I am a little less critical than the noble Lord, Lord Alton, of the changes being made, because I think that they are necessary, but I agree that it would have been better, had we had the time, to make them in a different way. But we have this opportunity and not to have made them would, I think, have been a grave mistake. I support the noble Lord’s suggestion that the Government give an undertaking that we will come back to this in a year’s time to make sure that these necessary changes have done what we hope they will do.

I want to draw the attention of the House to something that is very often forgotten. It is that when companies look at their supply chain and seek to see where there is modern slavery, they usually start in some distant country. They think about somewhere where the rule of law is not as we would expect it to be. The shock, to many, is how much is found in so-called civilised and advanced countries—not just in Britain and the European Union but in the United States. It is very valuable that we have moved from the narrow attitude that you get this only in agriculture or with gangmasters, or that you get it only a long way away, to an understanding that we actually get it in almost every place, in almost every country and in the most remarkable situations.

I will quote an experience of mine. While I was working very hard on what we should do in countries in the Indian subcontinent, the very first and worst case happened in Manchester. We have to recognise that the issues with which we are dealing here are almost universal and a terrible indictment of man’s inhumanity to man.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, I want to ask about the information gateway provisions, and in particular Amendments 8 to 11. These are very substantial and intrusive new powers introduced at a very late stage of the Bill. Will the Minister elaborate a little on the justification for introducing them and why they were not thought of at an earlier stage of the Bill, even before Committee? They seem very wide, talking about the disclosure of information,

“for the purposes of the exercise of any function of the Director”.

Like my noble friend Lady Hamwee, I would be interested to know whether the Information Commissioner has given advice. If so, will the Minister share that advice and assessment with us? There is a need for safeguards to match the breadth and depth of the powers. It strikes me that, while mention is made of the Data Protection Act and the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act—which is not quite RIP—there is, of course, a new EU regulation on data protection that will be directly applicable and therefore will not have to be transposed into an Act of Parliament. Have these powers been health-checked against the new regulation, which may be somewhat tighter than the Data Protection Act in certain areas?

I want to ask specifically about medical confidentiality. In Amendment 9, which introduces a new clause after Clause 5, subsection (1) says:

“A disclosure of information … authorised by section (Information gateways) does not breach … an obligation of confidence owed by the person making the disclosure”.

Since health bodies—NHS trusts, the Care Quality Commission and so on—are on the list for information sharing, this obviously raises the question of whether medical information is going to be covered, which is likely.

There do not seem to be any similar provisions to those in new subsections (5), (6), (7) and (8) of the new clause in relation to intelligence information and information pertaining to HMRC, where there is an obligation not to disclose information,

“without authorisation from the appropriate service chief”,

or “from HMRC Commissioners”. There does not seem to be anything comparable for medical data. Clearly, these are sensitive personal data for which a higher level of stewardship is already required under the Data Protection Act, and even more so under the new EU regulation. I would like an assurance that these provisions have gone through the filter of the ICO and the new EU regulation.

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I think that I have responded to the majority of the points that were raised—

[Lord Deben]

I thank my noble friend for giving way. I still have a problem, and that is that we are making these major changes, but the Bill is still called just the “Immigration Bill”. Given that the Bill now covers things that are at a much further remove from immigrants, the Government really ought to think seriously about its Title. It really is something very different from that.

[Lord Ashton of Hyde (Con)]

My Lords, may I just remind the House that the Companion is very clear that, on Report,

“Only the mover of an amendment … speaks after the minister … except for short questions of elucidation”?

[Lord Deben]

If I may say so, I was asking for direct elucidation. I wonder whether the Minister would answer my question.

--- Later in debate ---

Is there not also a possible perverse result? If people are illegally in the country—I take the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, about asylum seekers not being illegally in the country; I assume that we are focusing on those who are—is not the priority to seek their removal? The proceeds of crime proceedings that could be taken against them could be very lengthy, and you would be finding a reason to prolong their stay in the country at the expense of someone—certainly the criminal proceedings would be at the expense of the taxpayer. It would be very hard to remove these people and therefore say that they could not be present at their own criminal trial, so you would give a perverse extension of the stay of people in the country who should not be in it. This does not seem to be terribly wise policy-making, as regards both the resources of the CPS and the perverse incentives to prolong people’s stay in the country.

[Lord Deben]

I wish simply to thank the Minister for these changes, particularly in view of the two codas from our legal friends on the dangers of the amendments and the explanation that my noble friend put forward about their real meaning. I hope the Minister will take back to the Government the great advantage to be gained from being seen to listen to sensible arguments in the House of Lords and changing the legislation as a result. There are many other occasions when we would get through our business much more quickly if sensible debate was ended by a sensible change of mind by government.

[Lord Green of Deddington (CB)]

My Lords, I will contribute a slightly wider point to the discussion. It is surely clear to all of us that a substantial number of people would like to come to this country and work illegally. As the Home Office will confirm, nearly half of those who apply for asylum have previously been working illegally and apply only when discovered. We have literally thousands of people queueing up in Calais wanting to get into Britain and work illegally. They know perfectly well that they will be illegal when they get here but they come because they want to work and send money home. Understandable though that may be, it is surely essential that there should be a disincentive to those people from making that attempt. The obvious thing is to make it illegal. There is no way that they will understand the intricacies of British law—indeed, the deputy mayor of Calais does not understand them—so it must be made illegal. If the Government can usefully adjust the law in terms of prosecutions, so be it, but let us keep our eye on the ball. There are literally thousands, if not many thousands, who would like to come and do this and they should be deterred.

Riot Compensation Bill

Lord Deben Excerpts

Friday 26th February 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I shall detain the House only for a short period, I feel that that this is another of those occasions where my intention is never to allow the lawyers to have it all their own way. As a non-lawyer, I should point out that Lord Mansfield was of course extremely prejudiced on this matter because he himself had been the subject of a riot. His house was entirely destroyed and his books thrown out in the Gordon riots. He was saved in his major house, Kenwood, only by ensuring that the rioters were liberally supplied with drink as they appeared on the edge of Hampstead Heath. Most of them having drunk enough, they decided it was better to go home than to burn Kenwood House. We owe our present ability to visit Kenwood entirely to the provision of drink by Lord Mansfield.

The only reason I know this is that the house I live in was occupied at the time by the magistrate who called the Riot Act as far as the Gordon riots were concerned. As a Catholic, I understand that those sort of riots were very uncomfortable. His house was marked by the rioters; they would go through in the daytime and mark the house with a cross, and because others were on their side you would not dare rub this cross out. However, he stood in front of the doorway and rubbed it out with his hand behind his back and therefore saved his house, although he was unable to save Lord Mansfield’s.

When we discuss this later we should not do so with too much dependence upon Lord Mansfield, who had every reason to want compensation.

Immigration Bill

Lord Deben Excerpts

Wednesday 20th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Sheehan (LD)]

My Lords, I lend my support to the remarks made from all sides of the Chamber in support of Amendments 151 and 159, which would provide for a proper evaluation of the right-to-rent scheme before we roll it out nationwide.

I have spent a fair amount of time volunteering with a local charity for homeless people in Wimbledon called Faith in Action. On one occasion I was asked to help a person whose documents had been stolen—an occupational hazard when you are a rough sleeper. It was a lengthy and frustrating morning and afternoon—and quite expensive to boot—and I was not successful in tracing the documents on that occasion. I say this because it is clear to me that homeless people, foreign nationals and those from a black and ethnic minority background who have a right to rent but are not in a position readily to produce the necessary documents will be excluded from the rental market as landlords inevitably become more risk-averse in the face of the harsh penalties that could be incurred.

A number of people have talked about the many different organisations that have put forward their case strongly and well. Crisis—a national charity for single homeless people and a member of the Home Office panel—is one of them. It states that, according to an evaluation of the Immigration Act 2014 in Birmingham, which other noble Lords have mentioned, six of the local charities surveyed said that people they represent have become homeless as a result of the scheme, while interviews with landlords found “potential” for discrimination. They, of course, are not alone in those findings. The Law Society raises similar concerns, as does Liberty. To that list I can add Shelter, St Mungo’s and the JCWI. In fact, any charity that works on the ground with homeless people or supports immigrants’ welfare will say the same.

So I can do no less than lend my support to Amendments 151 and 159. Surely it makes sense to delay implementation of the offences contained in this Bill and the rollout of the right-to-rent scheme until independent evaluations of the associated risks have been carried out.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, I find myself in a very difficult position. I have to say to my noble friend that there are three elements to this aspect of the Bill, which the amendments address, which seem to me incomprehensible. The first is that, if one is running a private business and is going to make a major change in the way it is run, one has a pilot scheme that one evaluates—preferably independently—and then decides whether or not it has worked. I do not understand how a Conservative Government who believe in private enterprise have not learned this from the private sector. It seems to me that you do not behave like this. You have a pilot scheme, you have it independently assessed, you announce the results and then you discuss what those answers mean.

So I have a problem of comprehension to start with. It is an important problem, because the second difficulty I have is that I find it pretty unacceptable in this country that people should have to prove that they are suitable for renting a flat before they are allowed to do so. I do not find that very attractive. I am one of those who have always believed in identity cards, which I think would be convenient for everyone. But this Government do not believe in identity cards and have tried to argue all the time that they are not necessary. However, we are now creating a sector, a section of the community, which in fact has to have an identity card. I object in principle to the concept that some should have it and others should not.

Central to that is the issue that, however one likes to dress it up, it is likely that landlords will be more suspicious of people of an ethnic minority or with a foreign accent than they will be of those who speak correct English with the crystal accents heard in this House. I do not think that many of us who have spoken today, even those with self-confessed “odd” surnames, would be refused rented accommodation, because landlords would not expect us to be unable to prove our suitability for that flat.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Bates]

I will of course come to that. I realise that there are some very detailed questions and I am certainly not skipping past them, but I wanted to put on record the Government’s response to the amendments before turning to the matters raised in the debate.

There are some interesting points here, the first of which is that, while this scheme has been rolled out into the private sector, the requirement to prove identity has been in operation in the social sector. It was introduced by the Labour Government in the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999. It provides a duty on local authorities to check that those entering social tenancies have a right to be in the UK. Indeed, it goes further and places a duty on local authorities to notify the Home Office where they come across people who do not have a right to be in the UK. What is new is that that requirement is being applied to the private sector.

On the criticism of the independence of the office of evaluation—a point made by my noble friend Lord Deben and a number of noble Lords—the Home Office Science evaluation had scrutiny of the consultative panel co-chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Best. It might be helpful for the Committee to have on record the members of the landlords consultative panel, co-chaired by James Brokenshire and the noble Lord, Lord Best. The representatives included: the Association of Residential Letting Agents; the UK Association of Letting Agents; the Residential Landlords Association; the National Landlords Association; the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors; the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills; the Department for Communities and Local Government; the Equality and Human Rights Commission; the boroughs of Sandwell, Dudley and Walsall; the National Approved Letting Scheme; Birmingham and Wolverhampton city councils; Universities UK; and Crisis.

[Lord Deben]

I did not criticise this as not being an independent group. My point was that the work should go on for longer before it is assessed, perhaps by the same group. It is not a question of complaining about the independence of the group; I fear that there has not been sufficient time to be able to draw the kind of conclusions which have been drawn. I think that is precisely what the noble Lord, Lord Best, indicated—that it would have been better to have had a longer period. All I was suggesting was that if you had a longer period and then had the independent assessment that would be better, given what a serious matter this is.

[Earl Cathcart]

I have a reservation. The Minister said that this is being done at the social housing level. However, it is relatively easy to get the message across to that sector because you just write to all the councils and tell them what it is. You cannot write to all the landlords because nobody knows who all the landlords are. There is no national register of landlords. I believe that is where the confusion has arisen in the pilot area, where 65% of landlords—two-thirds—do not understand the code of practice on preventing illegal immigration or the code of practice on avoiding discrimination. The message has not got to the landlords. When the Government roll this out, I wonder how the Minister proposes to get the message out to all landlords right across the country.

--- Later in debate ---

In terms of the unacceptable burden of checks, landlords are not being asked—

[Lord Deben]

Can I come back to single rooms that are let in a house? I have said to the Minister that I am perfectly happy to go along with him if I could know that we have looked at this particular issue. As far as I understand, we have not got very much evidence about the interaction between this legislation and people letting rooms in their own house. Do we know how many people have been interviewed on this? Do we know that it does not have the effect that I fear it has? If he can show that to me I will withdraw entirely but I just want to know and I am not sure that the evidence is there.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

To save the noble Lord from jumping up and down, our concern is that this could affect some people who have a perfect right to be here, such as British citizens—this is part of the point that the noble Baroness was making about people who are homeless. Vulnerable and disadvantaged groups—I talked about women fleeing domestic violence—may simply not have the evidence. A landlord who is in a hurry, and if there is great competition for space, is more likely to take the person who has all the documentation right at hand. It is not just between people who are not supposed to be here and people who are, because actually other groups are vulnerable to the unintended discriminatory consequences as well.

Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [HL]

Lord Deben Excerpts

Tuesday 12th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, can my noble friend give an assurance that these new powers, which are no doubt welcome, will not be used by park authorities to enable them unfairly to compete with people within the parks? Unfortunately, some national parks have behaved in a pretty high-handed way. I think that happens less now than when I was Secretary of State, when I had to deal with such cases. I just want to make sure that the new powers cannot be used in a non-competitive way.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, there has been much speculation about what these powers might mean in respect of fracking and so on. The whole purpose of the amendment is to give park authorities the scope to be more innovative, rather than to act in an unduly competitive way with each other.

The part of government Amendment 77 that amends Section 65 of the Environment Act 1995 is minor and technical and contains the amendments consequential on government Amendment 54. I hope that noble Lords will feel able to accept the amendment.

Identity Cards

Lord Deben Excerpts

Thursday 26th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

The noble Lord will be aware that we have had this debate before. The decision that was taken to abolish the national identity register and identity cards, which had been introduced by the previous Labour Government, was done on two grounds: first, on cost, because it cost £85 million to run and nearly £1 billion was required to maintain the register; and secondly, in terms of effectiveness, because the very people whose identity we might want to have would be the last people in the queue to comply with the requirement for the ID card. That is not to say that we are not doing anything about that; we are simply saying that we have a different approach. We have passports and driving licences—84% of the population have passports and over 60% have driving licences—and all people who come from outside the EEA to live in the UK for a period in excess of six months are required to have a biometric permit to do so.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

My Lords, with hindsight, would it not have been better to have corrected the faults in the Labour Party proposals and put them into operation so that now we would have a system which worked? Is it not odd that we are the only country in Europe that thinks that this system without identity cards is somehow superior? Should we not learn from others just occasionally?

[Lord Bates]

Of course we learn from others, and the reality is that we have a system of photographic ID—I have mentioned lots of types, such as biometric passports, but also general passports and driving licences, which we have in this country. At a time when our principal concern is national security, we have said that we choose to spend the investment that would be required to put in place a system of ID on better equipping our security forces and better securing our borders to ensure that we can keep people secure and safe.