Home Affairs

Lord Field of Birkenhead Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Blunkett]

The truth is that we did not get it entirely right because no Government get everything entirely right. That is another part of rebuilding trust in the political system.

I mentioned day zero because the tendency to suggest that nothing that came before was satisfactory, adequate or even addressed the issues undermines fundamentally people’s belief that we know what we are doing, or that what happened in the past can be recorded as at least partially successful.

[Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Blunkett]

I will give way but I first want to tell the House about Peter Kellner, the president of YouGov. Earlier this year he pointed out that if the five major retailers in this country acted like political parties, nobody would shop at Tesco, Asda or Morrisons ever again. Although they compete—and rightly make offers to people, as part of the market—they do not trash the idea of supermarkets. If they did, people would turn, as they do with UKIP, to the corner shop. I will give way before I go too far on the analogy between corner shops and Nigel Farage.

[Mr Field]

Perhaps if I represented a Scottish constituency I would hold the same view on immigration as the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), given that very few of the newcomers wish to go to Scotland—they wish to settle elsewhere. Would my right hon. Friend accept that the ball is in the court of the vice-chancellors? They all have tough policies that students must pay outstanding fees before they get their degrees. If the vice-chancellors ran a similar system—refusing to award degrees until students fulfil their promise to go home—perhaps the Government would have a different attitude to the number of students coming here. It would not be a problem if they actually went home.

[Mr Blunkett]

There are all sorts of practical ways in which we could assist universities to ensure that people in those circumstances leave the country after graduating, such as the possibility of returning part of the fee. My right hon. Friend has strong and, I think, reasonable arguments to make on this issue, but I do not agree with him on some issues.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett). He said a number things that I agree with and made a number of points I disagree with. The idea that we should have a more sensible, rational debate is one I completely support. I cannot let go the comments made by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field). The idea that we would say to students that they have to leave the country before they can graduate strikes me as profoundly damaging.

[Mr Frank Field]

rose—

[Dr Huppert]

If the right hon. Gentleman would like to change what he is saying, I would be delighted to hear him clarify his remarks.

[Mr Field]

I will not change what I am saying, but I will say it more slowly and clearly so that the hon. Gentleman actually understands it. My right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) suggested that one way to modify the immigration figures is to take students out of them. One of the problems with doing that is that we have a large number of students coming here. They say they wish to study here, but continue to stay here and work. The change I would like to see is to challenge vice-chancellors to have as many students as they want, provided they undertake, on behalf of the Home Secretary, to ensure that those students fulfil their promise to come here, graduate and leave. The universities do—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. I am not having interventions that are speeches. Interventions are exactly that, and I think the right hon. Gentleman has got his point across.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

I cannot say how pleased I am to follow the hon. Member for Warrington South (David Mowat). On both the topics that he centred on, the Government pay much attention to him. On pensions, he sketched out the areas where the Government really have to face the issues that he raised, because they are important not only to the House but to our constituents.

I will talk on one topic, which is the Modern Slavery Bill. I apologise that I was not present to hear some of the opening comments and the kind comments that various Members made. I will begin by making the roll-call of those who should have credit for this measure. The hon. Members for Erewash (Jessica Lee) and for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) quite rightly said that slavery would not be a topic in the House or in the country if not for the work of Anthony Steen. It was Anthony Steen, through his Human Trafficking Foundation, who first made me interested in this topic, and it was Patrick White in my office who said how important it was, which led to my commitment to it. The hon. Lady was absolutely right that without the work of Anthony Steen—first, towards the end of his period as a Member, and then in the work that he has done to extraordinary effect with the HTF—we would not have had a Modern Slavery Bill included in the Queen’s Speech.

As I say, it is slavery on which I wish to comment, and I wish to continue to draw attention to those who should rightly claim credit for the Bill. The idea for a modern slavery Bill was set out in a report published a little over a year ago by the Centre for Social Justice, so the Government have responded extraordinarily quickly by presenting the Bill. I do not think that we would have had that report had it not been for Philippa Stroud, who now works at the Department for Work and Pensions, and Fiona Cunningham, who worked at the Home Office. Had they not been working carefully to ensure that this moved up the Government’s agenda, I do not think that it would have been on the list of topics that the Home Secretary thought should command her attention and, more importantly, her departmental time. The Bill therefore has three immediate heroes: Philippa Stroud, Fiona Cunningham and the Home Secretary.

My purpose in speaking in this debate is to draw attention not only to a glaring omission in the Bill, but to a provision in it that I do not think we would now see had it not been for the work of the Joint Committee on the draft Modern Slavery Bill and, in particular, the contribution that my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty) made to it. The glaring omission, as he knows—he piloted a private Member’s Bill on this very topic—concerns supply chains. Although the Bill will deal much more effectively with countering the horror of modern-day slavery in this country, the plain and brutal fact is that most of the slaves on whose labour our standard of living is supported work in other countries, producing the goods and services that we buy.

For all the reasons that were given to the evidence review for the Bill, to the Joint Committee and for my hon. Friend’s private Member’s Bill, I hope that Members will table amendments that persuade the Government that supply chains must be included in this measure. We know what the Home Secretary’s opinion is, because before she began talking about a Bill in detail, she said that she wished it to cover supply chains, so clearly there are other forces at work that overruled her in that respect. I think that we need to come to her aid and ensure that she wins the argument, not some officials in No. 10 who are against it. I hope that all those employers, large and small, that publicly support extending the measure to supply chains will now front up and lobby No. 10 to ensure that the Bill is complete in that important respect. If the Government still have some doubts about that, I hope that Members here and in the other place will ensure that the Bill is complete when it goes for Royal Assent.

[Sammy Wilson]

Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that businesses in the United Kingdom have a duty to check that their supply chains do not use labour that is tantamount to slave labour to produce cheap goods that can then be sold in this country?

[Mr Field]

I am immensely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, but I would take his argument a stage further. I think that the Prime Minister has a duty to protect British business men and women from undertaking activities that are deemed to be heinous crimes. I think that the Prime Minister needs to develop a level playing field, so that not just the good businesses ensure that their products are not tainted by slavery; those that are slower in coming up to the plate must also make their contribution.

[Emily Thornberry]

My right hon. Friend was not here when the shadow Home Secretary raised her concerns about the new domestic workers visa and the fact that 60% of people on it have no salary at all. Will he comment on that?

[Mr Field]

All the Joint Committee’s recommendations were unanimous, and they certainly were on that. However, to be honest, in listing the things that I hoped the Government would do, I did not think that they would jump to attention on that one, given that they deliberately made a change in policy. We did not include it in the Bill because changing it does not actually require an Act of Parliament; it requires the will of the Home Secretary. If this Home Secretary does not see her way to changing it, I hope that a future Home Secretary will.

One of the impacts of the evidence review on the Joint Committee has been for the Government to include in the Bill a section on victims. It is morally right that the Bill will be victim-focused. However, even if we cannot do it for the right reasons, we ought to do it for another reason: that the Government are serious about escalating the number of successful prosecutions. We will not increase the number of successful prosecutions unless those victims of slavery feel that they are secure in this country. I am immensely grateful to the Government for listening to the arguments put on that front and for including a major section of the Bill that transforms the position of victims of slavery in this country. I commend them for doing so.

For all the good measures in the Bill, it is still incomplete. Victims of slavery came to give evidence to us at all our evidence sessions before and during the Joint Committee. It is impossible for any of us in the Chamber to describe the horrors that people go through when they realise they have been trapped and now have a slave existence. How anyone recovers from that train of events, God only knows, but many do so, and we wish many more to do so. This crime is probably one of the most heinous in the world today. We now have an opportunity to make this not just a good Bill, because it is already good, but the very best in the world—a world leader. I hope that that will ring in all our ears when we start the parliamentary process in this place and, perhaps more importantly, in the other place, where it is easier for reason to prevail on a Government than it is here.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Percy]

Absolutely. Because I had criticised the uncontrolled nature of immigration into my own town, when I was dragged to the meeting with various agencies, I was told that the things I had said were unacceptable. Needless to say, that meeting did not last very long or end very well when I robustly thanked the people for coming from their lovely villages in the richest parts of the East Riding of Yorkshire, where they do not have to live with large amounts of uncontrolled immigration. I thanked them for sharing their views, but the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that when people raise legitimate concerns, they are patronised and spoken down to by people who, all too often, do not live in these communities.

[Mr Frank Field]

Were any of the people who came to the meeting, other than the hon. Gentleman himself, elected?

[Andrew Percy]

Absolutely none of them were elected; the right hon. Gentleman makes a good point.

I would like to conclude on two small points. The second issue that I hope the Home Office will address, and about which it can do something practical, is foreign-registered vehicles, which feed into people’s perception of unfairness. I asked a couple of parliamentary questions in the previous Session about foreign-registered vehicles overstaying the six-month limit, and found that on one occasion there had been four prosecutions in the whole of the United Kingdom for vehicles staying beyond the period permitted. When I asked a similar question on another occasion in the previous Session, I believe that precisely zero vehicles had been prosecuted.

The issue is one of vehicles not being recorded when they arrive at the United Kingdom border, or when they leave. People in my town see the same vehicles and report them to my office, and we report them to the police. They see vehicles that have been here a year, possibly even two, that are still in our town and are not registered, paying tax or subject to UK insurance. The Government must take a lead on this issue. The only way to solve it is through better control at the border.

Finally, I want to discuss prisons, although I am perhaps stretching a debate on home affairs, given the Ministers present. I recently visited HMP Lindholme in Doncaster on the edge of my constituency. I was staggered when the governor told me about the problem there with mobile telephones and how much crime is being directed from inside the prison. Something must be done about that. We were told that for about 1,300 prisoners they had recorded 600 or 700 mobile phone signals coming from inside the prison. The blockers are not in place, although the technology is catching up.

The Government could take a strong lead on something that the governor and her team raised with me: when they identify the contracts of the phones being used inside the prison, the mobile phone operators are not very keen to terminate the numbers. That could be achieved relatively simply, so I hope that Ministers will look at that and seek to take a lead on it. It seems to me, as it would to my constituents, incomprehensible that people can direct criminal operations from behind bars. Something really must be done about that.

Having danced around some issues that are important to my constituents, I will leave it there and look forward to the Minister’s response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Green]

The hon. Gentleman, who follows these matters closely, will be aware that changes to UK company reporting arrangements that require disclosure on human rights issues came into force last October. It is sensible to look at the effect of that change before coming to a firm conclusion. It is also sensible to let such reforms bed down before reaching a firm conclusion, which he seems to have reached already.

The shadow Home Secretary and several other hon. Members talked about domestic workers and visa abuse. The Government are taking action to help stop practices that exploit vulnerable workers and undercut local businesses that play by the rules. Various provisions in the Modern Slavery Bill will help to end that kind of exploitation, which frankly runs into slavery.

[Mr Frank Field]

The Minister might suggest to the Home Secretary, who is sitting next to him, that when she meets business leaders tomorrow she brings the article that she wrote in The Sunday Times in which she stated that she wished supply chains to be included in the Bill. A large number of people in both Houses of Parliament will support her wish.

[Damian Green]

I do not feel the need to transmit that message to my right hon. Friend, who has no doubt heard it. I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman.

I am grateful that there is broad support for many of the provisions in the Serious Crime Bill. It will make a significant contribution to the Government’s continuing fight against serious and organised crime, of which the National Crime Agency is perhaps the most visible manifestation.

Several hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and my hon. Friends the Members for Erewash (Jessica Lee) and for South Swindon (Mr Buckland), both of whom have great records of campaigning in this area, talked about the child cruelty clauses. I am sure that the whole House recognises that child cruelty is an abhorrent crime that needs to be punished. Every child should be able to grow up in a safe environment. The changes that we will take forward in the Serious Crime Bill make it absolutely clear that cruelty likely to cause psychological suffering or injury is covered under section 1 of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933. We are modernising the language used in that section to help the courts to implement it more effectively.

A number of other matters have been raised, including the fact that the Serious Crime Bill will create a new offence targeting people who possess any items containing advice or guidance that could be useful to someone committing or preparing to commit a sexual offence against a child—so-called paedophile manuals. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) not just for his kind remarks about ministerial action on this, but for the long-running and extremely effective campaign that he has carried out in this field, of which, as he said, this is one small step forward. I am delighted to have his support in this matter.

The Criminal Justice and Courts Bill, which is a carry-over Bill, delivers the vital next stage in this Government’s mission to deliver a more credible justice system. Much has been achieved to date. Prisons are now places of hard work and discipline; we have implemented fundamental reforms to transform rehabilitation by bringing together the best of the public, private and voluntary sectors; and all community sentences now contain an element of punishment. The Bill builds on those achievements, by ensuring that criminals are properly punished, young offenders turn their lives around through education and modern courts run efficiently and effectively.