Net Zero Targets and Decarbonising Transport

Debate between Lyn Brown and Caroline Nokes

Tuesday 4th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Ms Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

I am very grateful to serve under your chairship for the first time, Ms Nokes, and I look forward to doing so again in future.

I am grateful for the opportunity to talk about the green transformation that our transport system needs. More than anything else, we need affordable and accessible public transport, with electric buses and zero-carbon trains, right across the country. We need to make good green investments now, and to stop making dirty investments.

City residents already emit far less carbon from travel. Londoners’ transport emissions are less than half the UK average. That is because we have a decent bus, tube and train system—we have to invest those systems to create the benefits in our cities and towns—but we still have to make London’s transport greener.

We must stop making dirty investments. The dirty investment closest to my constituency is City airport in Newham, from which I am sure that many hon. Members have flown. It is a lovely little airport, I will admit, but I have constantly opposed its expansion. As a young woman, I even went to the public inquiry to advocate against it being built. I heard all the rubbish that residents and my friends and neighbours were told about how the airport would be contained, would not grow and would not impact on their lives. When I visited my mum and dad in the block of flats where I grew up, however, the back of my throat was coated with fuel—I could taste it. Dad has had throat cancer and mum has had breast cancer, although I am sure that none of that is related.

It is not just about airports. I want to focus on another big local decision: the Silvertown tunnel. In east London, we have a problem with public transport connections across the river. Some might say, “Who wants to go to the south side?”, but some people do and the lack of connections is a major problem. The lack of decent public transport links means that people drive—they see no other option. The Blackwall tunnel and all the roads around it are hugely congested; the queues go on for absolutely miles, pumping out carbon and deadly pollution all the while. The new tunnel is not the solution.

I am told that building Silvertown will cost an estimated £1 billion, using a private finance initiative, so local residents will have to pay for the construction of the new tunnel through tolls. To ensure that the tolls pay, we will also toll the Blackwall tunnel and probably the Rotherhithe tunnel, while the crossing down at Thurrock is also tolled. So, the people of east London, where child poverty is massive and poverty in general is undeniably high, will pay for the joy of going south of the river, while the people of west London can pop across a number of bridges. There are also good transport links in west London—but not in the east. That, however, is not the only reason I am against Silvertown. I am against the tunnel because its construction alone will cause massive carbon emissions: more than 153,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide, the same as the total emissions of more than 28,000 UK residents last year.

If everything that the tunnel’s big business backers say about the construction of the tunnel were true, at least there might be some benefits from having it once it is built. I am afraid I do not believe that, and I am sure that many Members in the Chamber would not believe it either. We know that when a road is put in, people use it. They see it as an even better opportunity to get into their car and to drive and, before long, that road too is congested. I am not the only one who does not believe in those benefits, because on the record are my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook) and Newham, Hackney and Lewisham Councils. We all oppose the tunnel, as do more and more of my residents as they find out what is happening on their doorstep.

The truth is that the roads leading up to the tunnel are already massively congested, and no one is planning to widen them, so the congestion is likely to continue. In a best-case scenario, the queues will possibly die down in the immediate lead-up to the tunnel—to begin with. Even if that happens, however, I fear that all the extra traffic will simply be diverted to a bottleneck further down the road towards Barking and out to the east, or on to our already choked local roads, as people attempt to divert around the problems. Congestion might therefore not fall at all, despite the new tolls on all the crossings in the east—I think I mentioned that, but it is a bit of a bugbear.

Why is big business so in favour of a tunnel at Silvertown? It will be taller than the Blackwall tunnel, which was built almost 150 years ago, I think, and massive lorries will therefore be able to go through it from south to north. Also, those heavy goods vehicles, unlike bicycles, have been promised a special lane of their own—they will share the bus lane. HGVs, the big nasty polluters on our roads, will get special concessions to get through the new tunnel. We know why they are so keen to see HGVs going through the Silvertown tunnel: conveniently, a three-storey, 24-hour warehouse and lorry park is planned for not far away from it. That will be at least 2,500 extra lorries a day from that distribution centre alone.

The stakes are high in such decisions—we all accept that. In Newham, 16,000 children attend schools close to the feeder roads in Silvertown, with a similar number in Greenwich. We already have high air pollution at illegal levels. Newham, where Silvertown is—in case anyone was in any doubt—has the worst toxic air quality in the country. The British Heart Foundation estimates that breathing the air is as bad for health as smoking 159 cigarettes annually, stunting child development and leading to 96 premature deaths every year.

The impacts are not just local. This is not only about Silvertown but about the type of decisions that we are making. We need to make the right decisions now in order to prevent a climate disaster. We need to protect our children from these outrageous decisions that will significantly impact on their health. I plead to anyone who will listen: please, think again: stop expanding Heathrow or City airports, stop the Silvertown tunnel and do not build that lorry park. Let us invest in green transport links instead.

[Caroline Nokes (in the Chair)]

I now put Members on a five-minute time limit.

TOEIC: Overseas Students

Debate between Lyn Brown and Caroline Nokes

Wednesday 24th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)]

Let me help the Minister maybe. If she is absolutely confident about what she is saying from the Dispatch Box—I have to say I would be very surprised if she is—can she commit to covering the legal costs of any student who has had to pay for legal representation as a result of Home Office inadequacy? Surely that must be applicable and appropriate for those who win their appeals.

[Caroline Nokes]

The hon. Lady will know that when it comes to court hearings, judges will decide whether people have a valid claim to remain in the UK. We continue to look at all the options, including whether there is a need for those who feel they have been wronged to be able to ask for their case to be reviewed. As I have said, my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary intends to make further announcements in due course. However, it is right to reflect on the fact that this is a complicated issue, and it is right that we take time to make sure we get it right—[Interruption.] The hon. Lady may chunter at me from a sedentary position, but it is important that we make the right decisions and do not just give blanket promises that we will allow people to stay and will pay their costs, when it may be the case that they have cheated.

TOEIC Visa Cancellations

Debate between Lyn Brown and Caroline Nokes

Tuesday 4th September 2018 Westminster Hall

[Caroline Nokes]

Unfortunately, I cannot provide a live update on criminal investigations, but I will write to the hon. Gentleman providing him with that information.

The majority of individuals linked to the fraud were sponsored by private colleges, not universities, many of which the Home Office had significant concerns about well before “Panorama”. Indeed, 400 colleges that had sponsored students linked to ETS had already had their licences revoked prior to 2014. ETS had its own licence to provide tests within the UK suspended in February 2014. That licence expired in April of the same year and ETS was removed from the immigration rules on 1 July 2014. Approximately 20% of the tests taken in the UK were provided by ETS prior to its suspension in February 2014.

Over the course of 2014, as we have heard, ETS systematically analysed all the tests taken in the UK dating back to 2011—some 58,458 tests. Analysis of the results identified 33,725 invalid results and 22,694 questionable results. People who used invalid ETS test certificates to obtain immigration leave have had action taken against them. Those with questionable results—more than 22,000 individuals—were given the chance to resit a test or attend an interview before any action was taken.

In appeals, we have sought to provide sufficient evidence to discharge the evidential burden of establishing that fraud was used to obtain a certificate from ETS. The courts have consistently found in our favour that our evidence for invalid cases is enough to act on and creates a reasonable suspicion of fraud. It is then for individuals, through either appeals or judicial reviews, to address that.

Before addressing some of the specific points raised, I add that the issues covered in today’s debate have been looked into very thoroughly by the Home Affairs Committee, which ran an inquiry in 2016. During that inquiry, Ministers and officials from the Home Office answered well over 100 specific questions, and those answers are still detailed on the Committee’s website.

Where we have made removal decisions against those with invalid certificates, we have ensured that any appeal against the decision is properly exercised after removal from the UK. Under the appeals regime that was in place in 2014, many of those who we believed to have committed fraud were given an out-of-country appeal. That had been the position since 2003. As a result of the Immigration Act 2014, there is now a right of appeal only where claims raising asylum, humanitarian protection or human rights issues are refused.

[Lyn Brown]

I have time for the Minister—I often find her speeches considered and reasonable—but I am struggling with what she is saying here. We know that there is a problem, and she is defending, it seems to me, taking people’s liberty away and threatening them with deportation, despite the fact that we know there is a problem with the process. I really want to hear an apology from her, and some understanding of just how unfair, unreasonable and unjust this has been.

[Caroline Nokes]

I am moving on to some additional comments, but we have heard today repeatedly the use of the word “deportation”. Those who have followed this matter carefully will know that deportation happens only to foreign national offenders. Those who have been subject to removals have been removed from the country, not deported. There is a very clear difference between those two scenarios that the hon. Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) may not agree with, but it happens to be a fact.

The action that the Home Office took was based on information from ETS, but it is incorrect to suggest that we relied exclusively and unquestioningly on the material that it provided. Yes, a senior delegation from the Home Office visited the USA in order to obtain a thorough understanding of the process, but following that, and fully considering the seriousness of the issues for the individuals concerned, we commissioned a further independent expert report from Professor Peter French, chairman of J P French Associates, the forensic speech and acoustics laboratory, and professor of forensic speech science at the University of York, into the reliability of the evidence.

That report, unlike the report produced as part of earlier legal proceedings and quoted extensively in recent coverage of ETS issues, was produced with the benefit of additional evidence about the specific systems that it used to verify matches. With the benefit of more information, Professor French specifically concluded that findings that the previous expert made around high error rates in other models are not

“transferable to the ETS testing”

and that the number of false matches would in fact be very small. He concluded that the triple-lock approach that ETS took was much more likely to give people the benefit of the doubt than falsely flag people as having cheated. The courts, at every level up to the Court of Appeal, have consistently said that that standard of evidence is sufficient to justify making an accusation of fraud. It is then up to an individual to establish an innocent explanation for their involvement, and they can challenge the finding, where applicable, through a judicial review.

A number of Members mentioned the case of Ahsan and out-of-country rights of appeal. That case was indeed heard at the Court of Appeal last year, but did not look at the evidence that the Home Office had relied on to establish that fraud had taken place. The narrow issue that the Court looked at in the Ahsan case was whether an out-of-country appeal would be an effective remedy to the accusation of fraud. It concluded that, in such cases where there was no mechanism for the individual to give oral evidence, that was unlikely to be the case.

Since then, the Home Office has put in place practical arrangements, including video conference links from overseas, to enable appellants to give live evidence at their appeal. Those overseas with outstanding appeals can apply to the tribunal that is hearing their appeal to indicate if they wish to give live evidence. It will then be for the tribunal to decide whether the arrangements that the Home Office can put in place are sufficient or whether it is necessary for the individual to return to the UK.

Immigration Rules: Paragraph 322(5)

Debate between Lyn Brown and Caroline Nokes

Wednesday 13th June 2018 Westminster Hall

[Caroline Nokes]

I am sorry; I only have a few minutes and I want to explain what paragraph 322(5) is for. It is for refusing applications where the evidence shows that an individual has not played by the rules. While there has been a focus on the minority of judgments that go against the Home Office, more often than not the courts have supported our refusal decisions.

[Lyn Brown]

Will the Minister give way?

[Caroline Nokes]

I am sorry; I simply do not have time. I have about three minutes left.

To pick an example, in May this year the upper tribunal agreed with us that an applicant’s explanation was simply “hopeless”, and noted the timing of the amendment in relation to the ILR application. Paragraph 322(5) is a long-standing provision within the immigration rules, dating back to 1994.

[Lyn Brown]

Will the Minister give way?

[Caroline Nokes]

I have already told the hon. Lady that I will not. Paragraph 322(5) was not introduced to support compliant environment policies, as has been suggested, as it long pre-existed those policies. It does not mean that any particular individual represents a threat to national security, but for obvious reasons we do not seek to isolate national security refusals from others.

However, I also recognise that it is not enough simply to talk about circumstances that happen more often than not. Each case is individual and must be treated on its own merits, which is why we are using this review to make sure that no one who has made an innocent mistake has been caught up in tackling the wider abuse. That is why we have had this review, which is still ongoing. The first phase is complete, and I just wanted to indicate specific numbers. There were 281 in the first phase and 1,671 in the second. While I do not wish to prejudge the final conclusions, it has been very clear that they are broadly in line with what I have said this afternoon. I will report the conclusions of the review to Parliament once it is completed. [Hon. Members: “When?”] The first phase of the review, as I indicated, is already complete. As soon as the second phase, which is a significantly higher number, is done, we will report it to Parliament and to the Home Affairs Committee, as I said.

We are aware of 427 appeals and judicial reviews in progress. Many are still outstanding, but no applicants have been successful at judicial review, and only 38 appeals have been allowed, mostly on human rights grounds. All current cases are on hold, and while it is the case the applicants’ statuses are protected, that means that those who applied before their existing leave expired can continue to work, and their other rights, to rent and to NHS services, are also unaffected.

In 50 of the cases we have considered, there has been a discrepancy in excess of £10,000 between the income claimed to HMRC and the income claimed to UKVI, and 34 of the applicants sought to amend their tax records only within the 12 months preceding the submission of an application.

It is very important that we have a rigorous review that reports when the findings are clear. However, I would like to inform Members this afternoon that we have taken a very thorough approach with this, determined to find out whether there are any genuinely wrong refusals and to put them right.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered paragraph 322(5) of the Immigration Rules.

Minors Entering the UK: 1948 to 1971

Debate between Lyn Brown and Caroline Nokes

Monday 30th April 2018 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Immigration (Caroline Nokes)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) and all right hon. and hon. Members across the House who have participated in the debate. They have spoken with passion, knowledge and indeed determination.

As we can clearly see, there is significant public interest in today’s debate, and rightly so. I thank members of the public who have attended, as well as all those people—nearly 200,000 of them—who added their name to the petition. The debate was obviously scheduled before the tabling of the urgent question, and I am probably at somewhat of a disadvantage compared with those Members who could be in the main Chamber for at least some of the earlier debate. The message conveyed by the new Secretary of State for the Home Department makes it clear that he is absolutely, personally invested in this issue.

Let us be in no doubt about the debt of gratitude that this country owes to the Windrush generation. As my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay described in his opening speech, they were invited to come to the United Kingdom immediately after the second world war and in the decades that followed to help us to build modern Britain.

As I said, the new Home Secretary was on his feet in the main Chamber when this debate began. He has rightly made it his clear priority to address Windrush, building on the work of his predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd), who showed commitment to addressing the issue. It was a pleasure to work with her in the Home Office, and I look forward to supporting the new Home Secretary in continuing that vital work.

I would like to do justice to the comments, questions and individual cases raised by Members this afternoon. All of them are important. Many Members will have noticed that I took copious notes throughout the debate, but I mention first the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) even though, somewhat shamefacedly, I wrote very little about his contribution. That is because I preferred to listen—to his passion and to his determination to convey to me, Members, the public and the Government how strongly he feels that we must right this wrong. We are determined to do so.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk), who is not in his place, on his tone. In fact, I congratulate all hon. Members who have contributed on their tone. There has been real consideration of the issue and real determination to convey the message to me as powerfully as possible. I therefore wish to start by saying that of course I feel shame and of course I am deeply, deeply sorry.

The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) raised three cases, highlighting real and personal stories, which were similar to the personal stories that I heard over the weekend when I was in Croydon and in Sheffield with caseworkers who are on the frontline, doing their best to help people through the process. I have to say that I was very impressed with the determination of those caseworkers to be sympathetic and understanding, and to talk people through the process as gently as they possibly could while at the same time enabling them to give their stories and to provide a picture of their life in the UK—helping them through a process with which we should have been helping them much earlier.

We cannot fail to be moved and to be ashamed when confronted with the individual stories, but as a result, be determined to get the wrong righted, to sort the cases out and to make sure that the legal status is confirmed. The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) mentioned three cases; we have done a very rapid trawl of those appointments that are already scheduled and I believe that one of those cases will hopefully be resolved tomorrow.

It is important that we as Members convey to our constituents and to the public at large the fact that this process is designed to be constructive and to help. When I first spoke on this issue, I tried to impress on everyone the fact that we needed to have confidence built in the system, so that people would have the courage to come forward. Undoubtedly, the strongest advocates are the people who have been for their interviews and had their status confirmed, who have been willing to speak to the media to confirm that that has happened.

My hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) spoke of the melting pot of Cardiff; I represent part of the city of Southampton, another area that has a very large port. I was very fortunate last Thursday night to go and meet, albeit in the road that crosses the edge of the constituency, one of my constituents called Don John, who for many decades has been a leader of the Caribbean community in Southampton.

I discussed the issue with him, knowing very well that this weekend, the hon. Member for Bristol West (Thangam Debbonaire) was holding an event in her constituency attended by Home Office officials, in order to give confidence to those from Bristol who might be affected that the Home Office is there to help. I said to Don on Thursday night, “Let’s see how the event in Bristol goes, but what I can do as a local Member is to make sure that people in Southampton have the opportunity to have an event. I will make sure that there are Home Office officials there.” I say that to all Members: where there is a significant community that they think will be affected, let us reach out to communities; let us not be just a reception centre in the various places that we have up and down the country; let’s make a real effort to go to communities and make sure that events take place in places that are comfortable for people.

I am the first to acknowledge that there can be barriers to coming and making contact with the Home Office. Working with my right hon. Friend the new Home Secretary, they are barriers that I am determined to beat down, because they should not be there.

[Lyn Brown]

I am genuinely delighted to hear what the Minister has to say. She is a very competent Minister, but there is an issue of trust. I do not see my communities beating their way to her door, because that trust has been badly damaged.

[Caroline Nokes]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right to talk about trust, which is why I take her comment on the chin. We have a duty to rebuild that trust, and I am determined that we must do so through demonstration and through action, and through an assurance from me and those working on the taskforce that no case will be passed to immigration enforcement. When somebody contacts that helpline, we have absolutely undertaken that none of those details will be passed on to immigration enforcement.

--- Later in debate ---

[Caroline Nokes]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that point, which I have made to officials. I was very concerned that people might be turned away at airline desks. We absolutely must not let that happen. Equally, the Border Force in the UK has to understand that this is a generation of people to whom we owe a duty to get things right from this point forward. We cannot allow this dreadful situation to arise again.

[Lyn Brown]

On the issue of trust, my constituents are concerned that deportations are continuing, despite our debating the issue and despite reassurances from the Minister, the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister. One of my constituents, Zita, contacted me to ask about flight PVT070, which she tells me is about to go to Jamaica with people on board who are being deported.

[Caroline Nokes]

indicated dissent.

[Lyn Brown]

I would be grateful if the Minister put that shake of the head into words and on the record.

[Caroline Nokes]

It is absolutely not. We are looking very closely at all our enforcement practices to make sure that nobody can be impacted in this way, and that is crucial.