Extremism

Mark Harper Excerpts

Monday 9th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

On the specific allegations of extremism in schools in Birmingham and the wider question of how we confront extremism more generally, there are very important issues that I will come on to, but I should perhaps first remind the shadow Home Secretary of a few facts.

Under this Government, foreign hate preachers such as Zakir Naik and Yusuf al-Qaradawi are banned from coming to Britain. Under her Government, they were allowed to come here to give lectures and sermons, and to spread their hateful beliefs. In the case of al-Qaradawi, he was not just allowed to come here; he was literally embraced on stage by Labour’s London Mayor, Ken Livingstone.

I have excluded more foreign hate preachers than any Home Secretary before me. I have got rid of the likes of Abu Hamza and Abu Qatada. The Government do not give a public platform to groups that condone, or fail to distance themselves from, extremism. For the first time, we are mapping out extremists and extremist groups in the United Kingdom. We make sure that the groups we work with and fund adhere to British values, and where they do not, we do not fund them and we do not work with them. None of these things was true when the Labour party was in power.

The shadow Home Secretary asked about the “Ministerial Code”. I can tell her that, as the Cabinet Secretary and the Prime Minister concluded, I did not break the code. As she has no evidence for suggesting I did, she should withdraw any allegation of that sort.

The right hon. Lady asked about the letter, its presence on the website and why action was not taken, but action was taken immediately, because the Prime Minister asked the Cabinet Secretary to investigate, and he did.

The right hon. Lady referred to schools in Birmingham. I am afraid she will have to wait for my right hon. Friend the Education Secretary to make his statement; he will do so shortly, and answer questions about school inspections and oversight arrangements.

I would just say this to the right hon. Lady: I am responsible for the Government’s counter-terrorism strategy and, within that, the Prevent strategy, but she seems to misunderstand how the Prevent strategy works, so I think I should perhaps explain it to her. The Home Office sets the Prevent strategy and it is up to the rest of Whitehall, including the Home Office, as well as the wider public sector and civil society, to deliver it. There is always more to be done, things we can improve and lessons we can learn, but we have made good progress under this Government. Yes, we need to get to the bottom of what has happened in schools in Birmingham, but it is thanks to this Education Secretary that the Department for Education has, for the first time, a dedicated extremism unit to try to stop this sort of thing happening.

The shadow Home Secretary repeated her complaint that Prevent has become too narrowly drawn under this Government, but she does not seem to realise that we took a very clear decision back in 2011 to split Prevent into the bit that tackles non-violent extremism as well as violent extremism and counter-terrorism, and the Government’s integration strategy, which is quite consciously run out of the Department for Communities and Local Government. If what she is suggesting is that Prevent and integration work should go back to being together and being confused, she needs to think again because her Government’s approach was damaging and caused a lot of resentment among many British Muslims.

As the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), the former Home Secretary, said at the time we made that change, it follows

“the eminently sensible objective of keeping the ‘prevent’ strand of counter-terrorism separate from the ‘integration’ initiatives of DCLG.”

He continued:

“I completely agree with what the Home Secretary has said about Prevent.”—[Official Report, 14 July 2010; Vol. 513, c. 1011.]

The shadow Home Secretary should listen to her right honourable colleague.

What has happened in Birmingham is very serious indeed, and the Education Secretary will set out his response in due course. We need to do everything we can to protect children from extremism and, more generally, to confront extremism in all its forms. The Government are determined to do that. However, it is quite clear from what the shadow Home Secretary has said today that on extremism, like on so many other things, the Labour party would take us backwards, not forwards.

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

I am very pleased that the Home Secretary focused on the substance, rather than on the pointless process questions that the shadow Home Secretary focused on. I welcome what the Home Secretary said about the changes to Prevent. Is it not better to have our approach, rather than the last Government’s? The Communities and Local Government Committee said that the Labour Government’s Prevent strategy was wasting money

“on unfocused or irrelevant projects”.

[Mrs May]

I agree completely with my hon. Friend. That was an early decision by this Government. It was absolutely right to separate the two strands of work of the Prevent strategy: the counter-terrorism work and the integration work. It is right that the integration work is now under the remit of the DCLG. I repeat what I said in my response to the shadow Home Secretary: I suggest that Labour Members listen to the words of the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle in this respect. He agreed absolutely with what the Government have done.

Immigration Bill

Mark Harper Excerpts

Wednesday 7th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

Various people are attempting to catch my eye. I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper).

[Mr Mark Harper (Forest of Dean) (Con)]

I am listening carefully to what my hon. Friend is saying, and the House should realise that he is simply putting the law back to its position before it was changed by the previous Government. I listened carefully when we debated the issue on Report, and many of the concerns involved people who have no recourse to citizenship elsewhere being left permanently stateless. Government amendment (a) deals with the very real concerns of many hon. Members. It is a very welcome move that should be supported.

[James Brokenshire]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. I pay tribute to him for his work on the Bill and for the steps he took, quite properly, to consider not only this issue, but the provisions more broadly. We will no doubt move on to those provisions in considering the Lords amendments. My hon. Friend highlighted the fact that the law was changed in 2002. In many respects, we are seeking to bring the law back more closely to the pre-existing position. The law was changed in 2002, and changed again in 2006. There is, therefore, a long history, with clear precedents to setting provisions that comply with our international and UN obligations on statelessness.

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[Mr Harper]

I listened carefully to the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) because I respect her opinions on home affairs matters. It would not be appropriate to narrow the scope of amendment (a) in the way that she suggested. She missed the point that the individuals concerned are not always compliant and helpful in seeking a second nationality. Indeed, they often try not to do so. That is why the Home Secretary has to take a reasonable decision, taking account of the laws of the countries involved and the behaviour of the individual. If the amendment were narrowed in the way the hon. Lady suggested, I do not think that we would succeed in closing the loophole.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I remind the hon. Gentleman that the point of an intervention is not to comment on a previous intervention, but to comment on what the Minister is saying. If he wants to challenge what the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) said, perhaps he will try to catch my eye.

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[Mr Hanson]

If the hon. Gentleman will allow me, I will come on to that point in a moment. We abstained on 30 January because we wanted to ensure that we gave proper consideration to this matter, and we supported the amendment in another place to ensure that we did consider this matter. My noble Friend Baroness Smith of Basildon signed the amendment before the House today. We want to support the amendment today and return it to the Lords.

The Labour party and my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) will not do anything that puts the security of the United Kingdom at risk. I want to ensure that we do not remove citizenship without a proper right of appeal. I want to ensure that people know the grounds of that removal of citizenship and that the consequences are considered. I want, with the Minister, to tighten up how the Government intend to exercise that power. How do the Government intend to ensure that what is “reasonable” is deemed to be reasonable? I want to give the Minister the opportunity to explain that. This is a serious matter that needs proper parliamentary scrutiny. We have had a very short time in another place and one day in this House to consider this matter. We need to look at it in much more detail and we need to take evidence. A large number of people outside this place have raised concerns and we need to ensure, and not just in one-and-a-half hours, that the Minister justifies the opportunity and practice over a period of time.

[Mr Harper]

The more the right hon. Gentleman speaks, the more confused I am about his position. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary tabled the amendment in January, so more than three months have passed since she put this provision before Parliament. The right hon. Gentleman has now said, notwithstanding the fact that the amendment says the Committee will serve for the duration of the Parliament, that it could all be sorted out before the summer recess, which is only two months away. What does he expect to learn in the next two months that he has not learnt in the past three?

[Mr Hanson]

I think both Houses of Parliament should have an opportunity to take evidence, as happens during pre-legislative scrutiny, and I am not the only person who thinks that. Moving the amendment in the House of Lords, Lord Pannick said:

“A Joint Committee is required because Clause 64 was added to the Bill very late in the passage of the Bill through the other place—that is, 24 hours before Report and Third Reading…so there was no pre-legislative scrutiny of this proposal, no consultation and no opportunity for consideration by the Public Bill Committee of the other place. The absence of pre-legislative scrutiny and proper consultation is especially unfortunate in a context such as this.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 7 April 2014; Vol. 753, c. 1168.]

The hon. Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper) may want to steamroller the Bill through, but I think it important that we get it right.

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The Lords amendments would provide time for further reflection; the Government amendments are no substitute. Let us make sure that we support the Lords amendment; let us make sure that we look at this issue properly before going down this appalling road.

[Mr Harper]

Let me first remind the House what we are asking it to do today—to disagree with the Lords in their amendment. I have a reason for saying that. I listened carefully to what the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), the shadow Minister said, as he carefully avoided setting out his party’s view and quoted lots of other people back at us. His proposed solution was to spend the next two months before the summer recess coming to a rapid conclusion. I think that he accepts that there is a legitimate national security issue here, but what he said does not reflect what the amendment says.

Paragraph (2) of Lords amendment 18 talks about nominating a Committee that would serve

“for the duration of the present Parliament”,

with no deadline to reach a conclusion. I repeat what I said in my intervention on the right hon. Gentleman. I accept his point that there was not much time between tabling the amendment and the Report stage in this House. It is a perfectly fair point that we had discussions before the issues were discussed in the House of Lords. However, three months have elapsed and these matters have been considered in the other place, and I really do not understand what we are going to learn in the next two months that we have not been able to learn in the past three months.

[Mr Hanson]

The hon. Gentleman is right to say that the proposal is that the Committee shall serve for the duration of this Parliament. I was trying to be ever helpful by offering the Minister the opportunity that we could, through the usual channels, determine to examine these matters in a reasonable time. We could set that time informally even if the Committee did serve for the duration of the Parliament.

[Mr Harper]

I accept the right hon. Gentleman’s point, but that is not provided for. The Committee regulates its procedure. Nothing here talks about the balance of party members on the Committee. The Chairman of Committees in the other place will nominate the members from the House of Lords, and the Speaker of the House of Commons will nominate those from this place. There is no provision in the amendment to do what the right hon. Gentleman suggests.

If a Committee of members of both Houses considers the matter at length, it will produce a report. If we accept for the sake of argument that it manages to agree on the right outcome, it will only produce a report that will inform a further debate in this House. Members of this House will still be required to take a decision. We will still be required to weigh up the arguments that my hon. Friend the Minister for Security and Immigration so ably laid out before the House today and the Home Secretary did in January. We will still be required to consider the arguments that the shadow Minister did not put before the House; he simply recited the views of others. We will not be freed from the responsibility of taking a decision. It is the “kick the can down the road” amendment, which allows the House to avoid taking a decision.

These are difficult issues. I listened carefully to my hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Sir Richard Shepherd), whom I respect hugely on these matters, but there is a balance to be struck between defending the liberties of our citizens and protecting us from terrorism. I do not reach easily for the national security argument. I was pleased when I was elected to the House to vote against the provisions for 90-day pre-trial detention. But this is a proportionate and limited proposal. I supported the previous measure. The Home Secretary has listened to the debate on 30 January in this House and to the debate in the other place. Amendments (a) and (b) do two things. First, they ensure that we are not left with a situation of someone left unable to seek citizenship. She has to have reasonable grounds for believing that they are able to, and that addresses many of the concerns raised previously by the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee and my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert), who set those out on 30 January.

A review mechanism is now in place, whether by the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation or another independent person, which will enable the House to look quite quickly, after an initial one-year process, and then every subsequent three years, at the actual implementation of the legislation in practice, so enabling us, if there are issues, if some of the concerns set out by my hon. Friend for Aldridge-Brownhills or others come to light, to enable the House to amend the legislation. The concern that the Home Secretary set out with the al-Jedda judgment leaves a gap in our legislation, which leaves us vulnerable to those who would do us harm.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Given my hon. Friend’s expert knowledge on this subject, can he give the House some indication of how many people this treatment might be applied to? Are we talking about very few people?

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend the Minister set out how many individuals had been deprived of their citizenship on non-conducive grounds, so not using this power, since 2006, and it was 27. It is not possible to know in advance, but we are talking about very small numbers. We are talking about people who conduct themselves in a way that is seriously prejudicial to our national interests. It is a small number of people, but it is a small number of people who mean to do us serious harm, but whom we are not able to prosecute.

This is a proportionate use of the Home Secretary’s power. It is reviewable by the independent judiciary, so there is a check and balance in place. We have to ask ourselves whether we want to leave ourselves open to this vulnerability, exposed by the Supreme Court. We are, as I said, only putting the law back to what it was before 2002. I do not think that any of the scenarios set out by Members happened before 2002. I urge Members to disagree with the Lords in their amendment and to put amendments (a) and (b) on the statute book when we vote this afternoon.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Before I call anyone else to speak, let me say that we have a very short time in this part of the debate, so I urge Members to be brief in consideration of their colleagues.

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[Mr Hanson]

Their lordships have expressed their view clearly, and what the Minister has said today is known already. He announced that he had said in January that he would have pilots on the matter. The draft Modern Slavery Bill has been scrutinised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead, and there is a template that we should support, and that is why I reject the Government’s proposal.

[Mr Harper]

I think that the right hon. Gentleman is missing the fact that the amendments are narrowly framed. They deal only with children who come to the UK from abroad. On trafficking and modern slavery, I have constant representations about not just focusing on people who come from outside the UK. The Minister has set out a sensible point. If we reject the amendments, as the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) has said, the other place has the option of sending them back to us again, and we can consider them again if it does not think that the Minister’s representations hold water. That is the right course of action.

[Mr Hanson]

There is clearly a common interest but a disagreement on procedure. If the Minister has a view about the impact of children being trafficked in the UK, such as in the case in Rochdale that he mentioned, he has the draft Modern Slavery Bill to contribute to those matters. But there is a clear will from the other place, which was supported on a cross-party basis, and I would wish to see that as the template for discussion today.

[Mr Harper]

One thing that would not be helpful is to put these measures in place and have a procedure that deals with foreign national children when the draft Modern Slavery Bill, expertly scrutinised by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead, will put in place yet another process for children who happen to be UK nationals. It would be much more sensible to have one process that deals with all children who are victims of slavery. We should not make the system more complicated than it need be.

[Mr Hanson]

Imperative action is needed now. I have dealt with a number of Bills over the past few years and seen the Government bringing back amendments and amending their own legislation not six months after they introduced it. There is potential here today for a clear statement and clear action on the international trafficking of children. The pilots that the Minister brings forward can be undertaken.

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[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

I want briefly to seek clarification in relation to international students and the changes that have been made to the Bill in relation to landlord checks. I pay tribute to Lord Hannay and others who have pressed this point in the House of Lords. I regret that students are included in the Bill at all, and I know that many Members on both sides of the House feel that they have no place in this debate.

The point relates to the changes that have given powers to universities to nominate students to occupy accommodation. That is a welcome move, and I am glad that the Government have accepted it. Speaking for the Government, Lord Taylor said in the other place that

“nominating is just the naming of an individual as being a student at a higher education institution…It is a form of vouching for the genuineness of the student’s immigration status. That is all.”

Baroness Warwick asked whether it would be

“legal and proper for the landlord to enter into that arrangement even though at that point, because of the time involved and so on, the potential tenant has not actually got their visa?”

This is crucial, because there is a brief period between being accepted into an institution and being enrolled during which many students sort out their accommodation. In response to Baroness Warwick, Lord Taylor said:

“Yes, absolutely: that is the case.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 3 April 2014; Vol. 753, c. 1056-1057.]

That involves a potential contradiction.

Will the Minister confirm in his closing remarks, or in intervening on me now, that an institution can nominate a person who has accepted a university place and has been given a confirmation of acceptance to study, but is awaiting a visa, so that they can confirm their accommodation before they have been issued with their visa?

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful to be called to speak, Mr Deputy Speaker. I will make sure that I leave the Minister sufficient time to respond to the points that have been made. I will keep a close eye on you, and if you think I am not leaving adequate time, I am sure you will indicate firmly that I should sit down.

I support what the Minister said in rejecting Lords amendments 16 and 24. I very much want us to deal with those who have been trafficked and victims of modern slavery, but I want us to implement a system that will apply to all children who have been trafficked, and a system that works. I want that decision to be informed by the pilots that the Minister is conducting. That is because in England and Wales the local authority has the legal responsibility to look out for the best interests of those children. In some local authorities, that system works very well, but in many it does not. The legal position is clear, but what is important is not what the law says, by itself, but how it is implemented.

That is why I want to make sure that the Minister runs those pilots and looks at their results. He has clearly stated that he will make sure there is an enabling power in the draft Modern Slavery Bill and that the detail of how we bring these powers into effect can be informed by the pilots. He gave a very clear commitment at the Dispatch Box to use what is learned from the pilots to bring that into force. That is a sensible procedure. I agree with the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field): I think there is no disagreement in the points made by him, by the Minister and by the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), who has long experience of these matters. We all want to achieve the same thing, and I want to make sure that it is done in the most practical way possible.

I welcome the moves in amendments 5 to 9 and 29 to 34 to put on to the Statute Book the Government’s current policy on the family returns process. I previously gave some commitments at the Dispatch Box when this matter was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert), and when the Bill was going through Committee, in saying that the Government would bring forward those amendments in the House of Lords. I am very pleased that my hon. Friend the Minister and his colleague, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, were able to do so. That is a great step forward that locks these provisions into place.

The manuscript amendments tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) are not helpful. The issue of an individual living in a household with the child is important. Otherwise, those who have no right to be in the United Kingdom but who happen to have a child here for whom they have no parental responsibility and with whom they have no contact will use that child as a legal tool to avoid being removed from the UK. What is worse, it would encourage people who have no right to be in Britain—a judge set this out clearly in his legal judgment on a specific case in which he jailed the relevant couple—to have children for the specific purpose of avoiding removal from the country. That is not in the interests of children or of the proper working of the immigration system, so I urge the House not to support the manuscript amendments.

EU Readmission Agreement (Azerbaijan)

Mark Harper Excerpts

Tuesday 4th February 2014 Written Statements

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

The Government have decided not to opt in at this stage to the draft Council decisions concerning the signature and conclusion of the agreement between the European Union and the Republic of Azerbaijan on the readmission of persons residing without authorisation (European Union Document Nos. 15493/13, COM(2013) 745; 15494/13, COM(2013) 744).

There is little illegal migration from Azerbaijan to the UK and we have no operational problems with returns which an EURA would help to resolve. It would be possible for the UK to seek to participate in the agreement post adoption if these circumstances were to change.

Visa Regulations

Mark Harper Excerpts

Monday 3rd February 2014 Written Statements

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

I am today announcing proposals to change the fees for immigration and nationality applications made to the Home Office and for services provided by the Department. The Government review these fees on a regular basis and make appropriate changes as necessary.

In developing these proposals, the Home Office has sought to limit most increases to 4%. There are further targeted increases to bring dependant fees in line with main application fees, to register as a British citizen and some premium services. A staggered rise has been applied to the long-term visit visa (greater than six months) with a higher rise to the two and five-year visas to ensure the 10-year visa stays at its current level. We are also introducing a reduced fee for those applying to work within areas regarded as shortage occupations and to the direct airside transit visa.

The Home Office has given careful consideration to its fee levels, to ensure they provide the funding necessary to operate effective immigration controls and invest in improving service levels to customers. This is balanced against the need to ensure that the UK continues to attract and welcome the “brightest and best” migrants from around the world and those that make a valued contribution to British society. Given the ongoing need to reduce public spending, we believe it is right that we continue to reduce the contribution made by UK taxpayers towards delivering the immigration system by asking those who use and benefit directly from the system to make a greater contribution.

For certain application categories, we will continue to set fees higher than the administrative cost to reflect their value to successful applicants. This helps to provide resources to run the UK immigration system and enables the Home Office to set lower fees elsewhere in support of wider Government objectives to attract those businesses, workers, students and visitors who most benefit the UK. This includes the short-term visit visa which remains significantly below cost.

I have laid regulations for fees set higher than cost. In addition, I will shortly lay another set of regulations in Parliament for fees set at or below cost. Further details explaining all fees changes are provided in the explanatory memoranda for both sets of regulations. Subject to parliamentary approval the Government intend to bring new fees into force from 6 April 2014 with some fees for premium services overseas coming into effect on 31 March 2014.

The attached table, setting out all the proposed fees, includes indicative unit costs for financial year 2014-15. The unit cost is the estimated average cost to the Home Office of processing each application. Unit costs are published so it is clear which fees we set over cost and by how much.

Full details on how to apply for all of the Home Office’s products and services will be provided on the Home Office website: www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk.

Immigration Bill

Mark Harper Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

indicated dissent.

[Pete Wishart]

The Minister indicates that an LCM is not necessary, but does he agree that we are responsible for marriage and civil partnerships? We are responsible for the health service and housing in Scotland, but there has been no LCM to ask the Scottish Government if they agree to allow Westminster to legislate. We are totally unsatisfied with the Minister’s responses on this—

[Mr Harper]

rose—

[Pete Wishart]

We should have an LCM, but the Minister can explain why we are not getting one.

[Mr Harper]

With the greatest respect, I have had conversations with the First Minister and engaged in correspondence with Scottish Ministers. Our clear view is that the Bill deals with reserved matters for a reserved purpose, so we do not believe that an LCM is needed. The tone of the responses that I have received from Scottish Ministers—Scottish National party members of the Scottish Government—does not accord with what the hon. Gentleman says.

[Pete Wishart]

That is not my view of the correspondence that I have seen. I am surprised that the Minister says such a thing because the Bill is foreign to how we want to run our NHS. It has nothing to do with how we want to deliver our devolved services. We are not privatising the NHS like they are down here; we want to invest in it and ensure that it sticks to the ’45 principles of “from cradle to grave”. We fundamentally disagree with the Government about the need for such measures, and we want an LCM so that we can say clearly to them, “Stay out of our devolved services. Keep your race with UKIP out of our delivery of the NHS and other devolved services.” I still hope, although it is probably too late, that we will have an LCM.

A number of the measures in the group are pretty chilling, one of which is new clause 18, on which the Home Secretary spent such a good part of her hour and a half speech. What an appalling measure. This is about removing citizenship from people. Watching the Home Secretary’s attempts to respond to the many searching “what happens if” questions would almost have been comical were it not so sad. She could not start to answer the simple question—some of my hon. colleagues on this side of the House might want to revisit this during the winding-up speeches—of what happens to someone who is stripped of their UK citizenship but is not taken by any other country. I think I heard something along the lines of, “We might give them their citizenship back,” but if that is the case, what is the point of doing it in the first place? Who is going to take these people? Are we going to launch them into orbit and leave them circling round the Earth as stateless people without any sort of citizenship? Is France going to take them, or Germany? [Interruption.] What about an independent Scotland, I am asked. Where will those people go? This is the big question that the Home Secretary has been unable to answer: what will happen to those people once they have been deprived of their citizenship? What will happen to their children, or the people who depend on them? We really need to hear from her on that.

The Home Secretary is effectively asking us to agree to allow her to rip up the passports of people who live in this country. As I have said, these measures have been introduced so late in order to prevent Back Benchers from having the opportunity to speak about the most important parts of the Bill and so that they cannot be voted on, which is absolutely appalling. In fact, to say that the Government’s amendments look like they had been written on the back of a fag packet is to do a disservice to some fantastic speeches that I have heard delivered from the back of a fag packet. Little thought seems to have gone into them.

The plans for the revocation of citizenship have been made by the Home Secretary behind closed doors and without any sort of due process or transparency. Hon. Members might have seen the reports in The Independent today about how some people have subsequently been killed in US drone strikes or rendered to secret locations to be interrogated by the FBI. Perhaps that is what will happen to all these people. They are being betrayed by their own Government, whose duty is to protect them, not throw them under a bus in order to help powerful allies, which looks like what we will be doing. She said that we are simply returning to the situation that existed before 2003, but the UK has signed and ratified the 1961 convention on the reduction of statelessness, to which more than 50 states are signatories. We will now be breaking that.

I will speak briefly about new clause 15, tabled by the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab). We know, as has been said again and again, that Conservative Members do not much care for article 8 of the European convention on human rights. They would have us believe that there are all sorts of foreign criminals marauding across our communities, living the life of Riley on benefits and then going home to phone their expensive lawyers, saying, “Get me off on article 8.” That is the type of image they present. They continue to attack some of the great protections that we have secured over many decades on the back of the European convention on human rights. We are now seeing yet another attack on our human rights. It is no surprise that it comes from the Conservative Back Benches. I very much hope that we will resist it.

Charging Principles Response Document

Mark Harper Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2014 Written Statements

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

People who need permission to visit the UK and those who want to live, work or study here must pay a fee. It is important that we seek input into how we ensure that those who benefit directly from the immigration system and enhanced border control contribute appropriately to its costs in the future.

A targeted consultation looking at charging principles was held between 11 November and 3 December 2013. The consultation sought views on how the Home Office charges customers and the services it provides.

Views were sought from stakeholders who have an interest in the way fees are set, on the consistency and complexity of fees and on premium services. We also requested views on proposals on administrative reviews and refunds and how the Home Office interacts with third parties.

Responses to the consultation have been reflected in fee proposals for 2014 where possible and these will be laid in Parliament shortly. Other issues raised as part of the consultation will be considered over the next 12 months.

A copy of the consultation response document has been placed in the Library of the House and on the Home Office website.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Harper Excerpts

Monday 27th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

2. What her policy is on the payment of fees for a fast-track border control service at airports.

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

Border Force is committed to improving the experience of all passengers at our ports in support of the Government’s long-term economic plan, including the delivery of value-added services such as fast-track queuing. When such a service is delivered, it is appropriate that, at the very least, the costs of such a service are met by the passengers or airlines that receive the benefit.

[Mr Sheerman]

What seems to be emerging from this Government policy is a class system for going through airports. My ordinary constituents have to wait in long queues, and sometimes very long queues, whereas people who are wealthy—bankers, Mr Abramovich and people like that—have a special relationship that means that they do not go through security and are fast-tracked. I know that that is going on and it is a class system for who comes in and out of this country. What is the Minister going to do to reassure my constituents that that is not happening?

[Mr Harper]

It is difficult to know where to start; there were so many inaccuracies in that question. First, in the case of 99.6% of passengers, we meet our queuing requirements and we have now largely fixed the problems we inherited with Border Force and queuing. Secondly, everyone who comes through our airports has their details checked and it is clear in the operating mandate that 100% should be checked. We have fast-track approaches where people pay fees that provide extra resources so that we can deliver that service without damaging the service received by everybody else.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

London Gatwick airport in my constituency introduced automatic e-gates for departures for all passengers some time ago. May I seek assurances from my hon. Friend that Gatwick will be included in future fast-track border entry, which will be great for local business and great for that important gateway into the UK?

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. He will be aware that I recently had the opportunity to open the e-gates at the south terminal at Gatwick that mean that British citizens and European economic area passengers can get access to the United Kingdom more quickly with their chipped passports. We are looking into developing a range of services so that those who bring value, business, growth and jobs to the country can get here more efficiently. That is something that all Members should welcome.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

For many years, the Home Office, and before that, the UK Border Agency, have offered people premium or priority immigration services, with set timelines, but they have not always managed to meet those timelines. What progress is the Minister making on being able to deliver all immigration services within the time promised?

[Mr Harper]

As a member of the Select Committee on Home Affairs, my hon. Friend will know that the latest data, provided to that Committee, show that we have made considerable progress in reducing the backlog of applications. He will also know that we have published our new service standard—I will write to Members shortly, setting that out—which gives customers much clearer, more transparent expectations about how long they should wait for their immigration applications to be dealt with. That will be a considerable improvement in customer service standards.

[Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden) (Lab)]

3. What recent representations she has received on the effect of the cost of a certificate in knowledge of policing on the recruitment to the police of black and minority ethnic groups and disadvantaged groups; and if she will publish the equalities impact assessment of that policy.

UN Syrian Refugees Programme

Mark Harper Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Home Secretary if she will make a statement on the UN settlement programme for vulnerable Syrian refugees.

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

More than half the Syrian population of 9.3 million is in need of humanitarian assistance, and 2.3 million people have been displaced from Syria to neighbouring countries. This is a crisis of international proportions and needs a commensurate response from the international community. The Government are proud to be playing their part in that response, and share the view of the UN Secretary-General that the priorities must be to

“assist the Syrian parties in ending the violence and achieving a comprehensive agreement for a political settlement”,

and ending the suffering of the Syrian people. No one should underestimate the difficulties ahead, but we are determined to strive for a peaceful settlement through the Geneva II process, which starts later this week and is working towards the establishment of a transitional governing body for Syria.

The Government continue to believe that the best way to address the suffering of the Syrian people should be to provide humanitarian assistance to displaced people, in partnership with neighbouring countries and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Before last week, the Government had provided £500 million for the Syrian relief effort, of which more than £480 million had been allocated to partners in Syria and the region. That has helped more than 1 million people. Almost 320,000 people are being provided with food assistance each month in Syria and neighbouring countries, and more than 244,000 people in Syria have been offered medical help. The Government continually press for better access and protection for humanitarian convoys inside Syria so that aid can get to the millions in need inside the country. That represents the UK’s largest ever response to a humanitarian crisis.

We are leading the way in helping the Syrians suffering from the humanitarian crisis as the second largest donor, behind the US, helping refugees, and through consideration of Syrian asylum claims under our normal rules. In the year to last September, we had already recognised more than 1,100 Syrian nationals as refugees.

We are very aware that some, including the UNHCR, would like to see a more proactive programme of resettlement of refugees who are currently hosted by countries neighbouring Syria. We have considered those options very carefully and respect the views of those countries who favour a resettlement programme, but we think that our priority should continue to be to provide humanitarian assistance to displaced people in the region, in partnership with neighbouring countries, the UNHCR and other UN and non-governmental partners. Most of those who are displaced want to return home as soon as it is safe to do so, and protection in the region affords them that hope.

Beyond immediate humanitarian assistance, our priority must be to help neighbouring countries to provide sustainable protection in the region. That should be our focus, rather than resettlement or providing humanitarian admission to Syrians—initiatives that can provide only very limited relief and have only a token impact on the huge numbers of refugees.

The UK can be proud of its contribution but there is still more to do. Last week, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development pledged a further £100 million in aid at the pledging conference in Kuwait, taking our contribution to £600 million.

I recognise that this is a highly emotive issue and one that continues to require real action through high levels of international co-operation, both in the region and more widely. The UK has a proud tradition of providing protection to those in need, and this Government are committed to continuing to playing our full part in the international response to the humanitarian crisis in Syria. Our response to date is one of which we can be proud.

[Yvette Cooper]

I am sorry the Home Secretary has not come to the House for this question.

When the House opposed military intervention in Syria, both sides were adamant that we had an even greater moral obligation to provide humanitarian support in that dreadful conflict. The position is now desperate. Two million refugees have fled their country, more than half of whom are children.

Most of the support is rightly being provided in the region, particularly by Syria’s neighbours. Britain has led the way, through Government aid and the generosity of the British people, in providing outside help, but we have also been asked by the UN to join its programme for the most vulnerable refugees. I spoke to the UN this morning. The programme is for those whom the UN believes will find it hardest to survive in the camps in the region, such as abandoned children who have no other protection or support; torture victims, who may be suffering immense physical and mental distress; those who need urgent medical help; mothers of young children who have lost their husbands and relatives and are vulnerable; and those who have been abused in the camps. They are not asylum seekers. They cannot travel here or elsewhere to apply for asylum. They are already UN-certified refugees.

Other countries—France, Spain, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, even Luxemburg and Moldova, and Australia, Canada and the USA—have agreed to help. Those countries have offered places, taking the UN well on its way towards its target. Britain is being asked to provide only limited help as part of the wider programme, but the Government have refused. The Minister described such help as “token”, but it is not token for a child who is given a home. He dismissed the UN programme in favour of regional support, but it is not an either/or question. As every other major western country understands, some vulnerable refugees need a different kind of help. This is not about border control or immigration policy, but about our long tradition of sanctuary. How can we ask Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon to keep their borders open or to keep helping millions of people if Britain will not do its bit for a few hundred of the most vulnerable, or if we will not even take in those with British relatives who are desperate to help? Charities like Oxfam and Save the Children are urging us to join this programme. It would be shameful for Britain to refuse.

Will the Minister tell the Home Secretary not to turn her back on vulnerable refugees? Will he tell her to look urgently at how many places Britain can provide? The Prime Minister said:

“We should encourage other countries to step up to the plate”

and that we must

“fulfil our moral obligations to those people who will suffer.”—[Official Report, 18 December 2013; Vol. 572, c. 744.]

He is exactly right. This is a moral obligation. How can we encourage others if we do not act?

[Mr Harper]

Listening to the shadow Secretary of State’s response, I do not think that she could have listened to a word that I said. On the scale of help and support the United Kingdom is giving to the region, our level of aid support dwarfs that of most other European countries. Some countries are willing to take very small numbers—sometimes just two figures, by which I mean 10 or 20—and they are not providing financial support. We are the second largest donor: we are helping not hundreds but hundreds of thousands of people in the region by providing water, food and medical supplies. That has to be the right way. Indeed, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development has been one of the leading players working with UNICEF on a programme to help about 15,000 vulnerable children in Syria and the neighbouring countries. That has to be the right solution, rather than offering to take token numbers of people compared with the millions of people in need and the hundreds of thousands of people we are helping in the region.

We are stepping up and doing our part, not just on aid but in the work we are doing on the diplomatic front to help to bring the Geneva II talks, which my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary has been leading, to a successful conclusion. That has to be the long-term solution. It has to be in the region, making sure that those people can return home when the country is safe for them to do so. I am sorry that the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) did not acknowledge the work that we are doing, with our European partners, to lead that approach.

[Sir Menzies Campbell (North East Fife) (LD)]

There is no dispute that the Government have led the way in the provision of financial aid; nor is there any dispute that the Government have helped to lead the way in relation to a political settlement, but the children of Syria have suffered grievously. Are we really saying that we cannot take a few hundred of those who have suffered most, or are we now so intimidated by UKIP that we have abandoned our humanity?

[Mr Harper]

I agree with the right hon. and learned Gentleman that children are among those most at risk. One example of what we are doing for children in particular is our work with UNICEF in Syria and the region to provide help not to a few hundred children, but to 15,000. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development has been leading this initiative with UNICEF. In terms of the numbers we can help, it is better to help tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of people in the region than the frankly relatively small numbers that some European countries are talking about. They are taking very small numbers of people and they are not providing aid. This country is playing a leading role and we can be proud of that.

[Mike Gapes (Ilford South) (Lab/Co-op)]

May I declare an interest? I visited the Domiz refugee camp in Iraqi Kurdistan in November, where I saw facilities for the protection of children, because of some issues that arise in huge refugee camps. Will the Minister explain why he believes his Government should have a policy that is to the right of UKIP?

[Mr Harper]

I do not understand the hon. Gentleman’s obsession with other political parties. We are taking this view because we think it is the right way to get the maximum help to the largest number of people. The £600 million we are spending—not everyone agrees with our significant international aid commitments, but we have met our 0.7% aid target and are proud of the help we can give to those most vulnerable—is helping hundreds of thousands, not hundreds, of people in the region with food, water and medical attention. That is the right priority.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

The Government can indeed be extremely proud of what they have done in financial terms, and the tens and hundreds of thousands of people the Minister mentions of course have a great deal to thank us for, but does he not accept that what the UNHCR has asked for—that a small number of extremely vulnerable children be helped by coming to this country—we could do at a very limited cost to ourselves, and not as an alternative to the things he is talking about, but as well as?

[Mr Harper]

We have taken the view that the best way to help people is in the region. Most of the Syrian refugees do not want to come to another country; they want to return to Syria when it is safe, and by supporting them in the region, we enable them to do so. That is the right way to help significant numbers of people. Our support is helping not hundreds but hundreds of thousands of people, which is the right thing to do.

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

While in no way setting aside the overall disaster of the refugee situation caused by the Syrian conflict, I ask the Government to pay specific attention to the plight of the Palestinian refugees in the al-Yarmouk camp, who are being slaughtered and dealt terrible blows as a result of this conflict, which is not their conflict. The Minister says that of course one of our objectives is that the refugees should be able to go home, but the Palestinian refugees have no home to go to, and their plight must be given special attention in the overall tragedy. Will he give that specific commitment to the House?

[Mr Harper]

I am pleased to tell the right hon. Gentleman that actually we are helping. UK funding is supporting the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in its work with Palestinian refugees, providing support for more than 350,000 Palestinian refugees in Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. I am pleased to give him the reassurance he asks for.

[Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

France has been mentioned. Just how many refugees is it taking? Are we not spending 15 times more than France on humanitarian aid? Our Parliament refused to bomb Syria; France wanted to bomb it. Which approach is more likely to produce peace and light—our approach or the French approach?

[Mr Harper]

In my initial response, I deliberately did not set out details of our European partners, but my hon. Friend has specifically asked me to. Yes, France has offered to take a few hundred refugees, but it is only prepared to put in £25 million—a significantly smaller amount than us and several other smaller European countries. We are stepping up and doing what is necessary. I think that some other European countries need to reflect on their contribution—if they did, they might look to do a little more.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

Everyone agrees that Britain’s international aid effort is significant, but the Minister is missing the point about refugees. If Britain does not step up, other countries already threatening to shut their borders will see no reason to continue. The population of Lebanon, which I recently visited with World Vision, has grown by a third because of the refugee flows. We need to lead by example, and that is essentially the point of today’s question, which I hope he will take seriously, instead of referring to this as tokenistic. It is too important for that. We need to step up.

[Mr Harper]

If I may say so, I think the hon. Lady is missing the point. Neighbouring countries have significant numbers of refugees because they are neighbouring countries, and of course there are family connections. Ultimately, the refugees want to return home. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for International Development was in Lebanon only last week. Part of the point of our huge financial effort is to support Lebanon and Jordan to help them deal with the refugees. That is the whole purpose of our funding. We are not leaving those countries to give the support themselves; we are putting our shoulder to the wheel and assisting them in providing it in the region.

[Mr Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

Given that the cost of resettlement is a significant amount of money per person, surely that money is better spent on the ground, where it can immediately save lives. Given that other countries have not lived up to their donor responsibilities, what more can be done to persuade them to do so?

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend makes exactly the right point. Looking at how best to deploy our financial resources to help the largest number of people, we need to recognise that there is a difference between taking in refugees in the United Kingdom, as some are calling for us to do, and what we are doing through providing funding for the region. I think that helping hundreds of thousands of people in the region is the right priority, one of which we can be proud.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Will the Minister think again? Many of us welcome the amount of money the British Government have provided to assist refugees—we have no problem with that and fully understand the need. Syria as a whole, however, has hosted a very large number of refugees in the past, particularly Palestinians coming from Iraq, and as my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman) pointed out, they are being bombed in al-Yarmouk refugee camp. Will the Minister think again and join in a UN programme to give safety to the most vulnerable refugees who, should they remain in place, will be killed for political or social purposes?

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman talks about refugees who previously lived in Syria. Of course, the help we are providing is not just to the neighbouring countries; a lot of it is for people who are internally displaced in Syria. We are working very hard with our diplomatic partners to secure humanitarian access in Syria, as well as supporting neighbouring countries. I hope the hon. Gentleman will welcome that too.

[Sarah Teather (Brent Central) (LD)]

Before Christmas, I visited Jordan and the Zaatari refugee camp, as well as a number of organisations providing help for refugees living in host communities. I was particularly concerned about the plight of disabled children and children who have managed to travel on their own. The Minister is of course correct to say that most refugees just want to go back to Syria and do not want to come to Britain, but we are not asking for most refugees to come to Britain; we are asking only for those in exceptional need whom we could help to come to Britain. We should continue to make the arguments for Jordan and Lebanon to keep their borders open; otherwise, we really will have a catastrophe.

[Mr Harper]

As I think I said in response to the right hon. and learned Member for North East Fife (Sir Menzies Campbell), we are working closely with UNICEF in Syria and the region on providing support services and protection for 15,000 of the most vulnerable Syrian children and their carers, as well as for refugee children in neighbouring countries. We are providing that support, and we are able to help a significantly larger number of people than the numbers the hon. Lady talks about.

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

Is this not about trying to create a false set of alternatives? These strategies are not mutually exclusive. We recognise, welcome and acknowledge—this has been made clear by Opposition Members—the Government’s good record on total aid programmes and specifically their excellent record so far on providing aid to Syria. However, the Minister is belittling and undermining that effort by his stubborn and incomprehensible refusal to take part in a United Nations-backed programme targeted on those in most urgent need in Syria—primarily children—for no good reason that we Opposition Members can understand. Will he not reconsider?

[Mr Harper]

I could turn it around and say to the hon. Gentleman that we are providing support for those people in the region. We are helping hundreds of thousands by providing food, water and medical aid—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) says that it is the sixth time I have said that, but that is because it is true. It is the right policy, and I do not mind repeating it as many times as necessary. If I look at what some of our European neighbours are providing, I find that they are taking very small numbers of people and not providing any support. We are helping hundreds of thousands more people than most other European countries, and I think we can be very proud of that response.

[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)]

There is no doubt that all colleagues mean well, but the enormity of this humanitarian crisis means it is imperative for the Government to continue to help as many people as possible—and help the many rather than the few in this case rather than using helping the few as an excuse. Other agencies are helping, like the Lady Fatemah Trust in my constituency—a small charitable organisation that takes no administrative fees whatever—so what can the Government do to help support those charities? This one has already distributed 103 tonnes of food to Syrian refugees in Lebanon.

[Mr Harper]

I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for drawing attention to the work of that excellent organisation in her constituency. We are working with various organisations, including partner organisations, but the Secretary of State for International Development is present and will have heard the details about this charity. I am sure that she will discuss with my right hon. Friend whether we can do more to support its work in helping people in the region.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

Like most people in Scotland, I am appalled that this Government, unlike Governments in other small European nations, will not take refugee children. I know that they are terrified of UKIP, but even Nigel Farage recognises that there is a difference between a refugee and an immigrant. Why can the Minister not recognise that as well?

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman seems to be obsessed in a way that we are not. [Laughter.] I have made very clear what our policy is when it comes to assisting the largest possible number of people in the region, and I think that that is the right approach. It enables us to help hundreds of thousands of people by providing water, medical resources and food. We are supporting the neighbouring countries and helping them to do the right thing, and I think that we can be very proud of that support.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

I am proud of the fact that our Government is the largest donor to Syria. Of course we need a permanent and a political solution, and of course we cannot take every refugee. However, with the greatest respect, I disagree with the Minister. Surely there is room for more children in this country, particularly vulnerable children such as orphans and those who have been most severely disabled as a result of the conflict. We are not talking about taking everyone, but surely we can take some more, as well as helping on the ground.

[Mr Harper]

As I said in my statement, we granted refugee status to 1,100 Syrians in the year to last September, and we will continue to grant such status if we receive asylum applications. We should consider how we can help the largest possible number of people, including those who are vulnerable. As I said in answer to questions from Liberal Democrat Members, one of the programmes that we have been supporting is the UNICEF programme, which has been championed by my right hon. Friend the International Development Secretary and which has helped 15,000 of the most vulnerable Syrian children, and I think that that is the right thing to do.

[Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)]

This is rapidly becoming one of the largest humanitarian crises of the last 50 years, and it is producing a phenomenal problem politically in that very complex country, Lebanon. Surely the answer in every country must be “both…and”, not “either…or”. Would we not have much more moral authority if we argued to the French that we are doing “both…and”, not “either…or”, and would it not therefore be a good idea for us to start taking more of these children?

[Mr Harper]

There are 2.4 million refugees in neighbouring countries, and about 6.5 million displaced people in Syria. Arguing about helping a few hundred people misses the point. [Interruption.] We have put £600 million into the region—the hon. Gentleman is right: this is the biggest humanitarian crisis, which is why our response is the biggest humanitarian response that this country has ever mounted—in order to help hundreds of thousands of people there. That is the right thing to do, and we are helping an enormously larger number of people than any of our European partners.

[Mr Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con)]

I congratulate the Government on all that they have done for refugees outside the country. I recently visited the Nizip refugee camp, which is on the Syrian border in Turkey. The Turks do a tremendous job in delivering support, and it is far more cost-effective for the Government to provide for those refugees—particularly the most vulnerable—in situ, in a refugee camp or nearby. Does my hon. Friend not agree, however, that it is the tragedy within Syria that is greatest, and would he support an initiative at Geneva II to ensure that there are safe corridors inside the country so that we can maximise the safety of the majority of Syrians?

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s question, and the fact that it is informed by his recent visit to the region where he was able to see practically what our colleagues in Turkey—one of the neighbouring countries—are doing to help on the ground. In answer to his specific question, he is right: we have been pushing for better access within Syria and we need to continue to do so, so that we and the aid agencies can get access to the 6.5 million internally displaced people and provide the help they need, as well as providing help to those in the neighbouring countries.

[Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)]

The Minister is absolutely right to praise the Department for International Development for the work it has done, but it is his Department that has been called to the Dispatch Box today, not DFID, and he has undermined his own argument. He said that what is being asked of the Government is simply nugatory—that it is insignificant, that it is a token. If it is so small, why do the Government not do it? Is it because it will contribute to the Minister’s net migration figures? Is that what he is afraid of?

[Mr Harper]

First, Ministers speak at this Dispatch Box for the Government and set out the Government’s policy. We do not have different policies in different Departments. The hon. Gentleman ought to go away and have a look at that, because we have a collectively agreed policy and I am setting out the Government’s response to the question asked by the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper). The reason why I do not want to agree to the proposition the hon. Gentleman puts is that the Government do not think it is the right solution. We think that the solution we have set out, which is to provide the UK’s largest ever response to a humanitarian crisis, will be more effective in helping in the region, and I think that is the right thing to do.

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we need to have some policy coherence here? It is not coherent policy to call for the United Kingdom to admit refugees from Syria if one is not also simultaneously going to be calling for the UK to admit refugees from Darfur, South Sudan, Central African Republic and other jurisdictions. One cannot pray in aid just one country and say that the UK should admit refugees from that country. That simply is not a coherent position.

[Mr Harper]

My right hon. Friend makes a very good point. Our usual asylum rules are in place, and as I have said we have already granted asylum, in the year to last September, to 1,100 Syrian refugees and will continue granting asylum where someone has a claim that meets the rules on providing international protection. My right hon. Friend makes a very good point about the various crises around the world where we apply our normal asylum rules. In this case, I think we have more than stepped up to the plate. The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) said this was an enormous humanitarian crisis: it is, and that is why we have delivered our biggest ever humanitarian response.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

A few months ago the Prime Minister stood at the Dispatch Box and suggested that Britain was leading the world in the humanitarian response to the Syrian crisis. Why does that leadership not extend to doing the most human thing of all: giving a home to vulnerable children who have suffered horrendous atrocities at the hands of President Assad?

[Mr Harper]

I do not think anybody can say that this Government are not playing our full role on the diplomatic front. The Foreign Secretary has been leading efforts in trying to get a diplomatic solution and I am very pleased that those Geneva II talks will take place and start this week. They are, of course, a process, not a single point in time. I think we are leading. We are the second largest donor in the world and the largest donor in the European Union. Until very recently when the Germans stepped up, we had donated more money than the rest of the EU combined.

[Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

Going back to the question of Lebanon, does my hon. Friend agree that that frail state desperately needs two things: first, the splendid programme of aid we have, and, secondly, much greater assistance for the very brave, but very small and poorly equipped, Lebanese army, which is trying to hold the border and the ring within the country?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend is right. As well as the support we are providing in Lebanon to the Syrian refugees, we are of course making sure that we are providing support to it in order to promote stability. We are also providing help to make sure it can deliver the support it is having to deliver because of its location as a neighbour of Syria. I therefore think we are both helping refugees in Syria and providing the necessary support to Lebanon so that it can step up and do what it is required to do in the region.

[Ian Lucas (Wrexham) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman, whose views I respect, acknowledge that operating a blanket ban and excluding the most vulnerable few from admission to the UK is undermining the authority with which he speaks from the Front Bench? Will he listen to the mood of the House, which is clear for all to hear, and go away and change this policy?

[Mr Harper]

I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman; we do not operate a ban. As I have said, 1,100 Syrian refugees have been granted asylum in the United Kingdom under our normal rules in which people make a case for international protection. That is more than most European countries have done, and we are providing the largest ever humanitarian response—more than all our European partners combined. I think that is a record of which we can be proud.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

Seventy-five years ago, through the Kindertransport, this country saved some 10,000 children from what was happening in Europe. That was not the complete answer to the problems of the holocaust and its terrors, but it made a difference and saved many thousands of lives. The Government are right to be proud of the money they are now putting in, but in much the same way, they could now take further action and save the lives of thousands of children. With Holocaust memorial day coming up, will the Minister reflect on this matter and talk to the Home Secretary to see whether some progress can be made?

[Mr Harper]

It is sometimes a mistake just to talk about the money we are providing, which is why I have tried to set out some of the help that that money is providing in region. It is helping hundreds of thousands of people there, including tens of thousands of children and some of the most vulnerable people. That is enormously more valuable than what I am being asked to do by the Opposition.

[Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)]

Often when we discuss foreign or defence policy, we rightly talk about the need to uphold Britain’s standing in the world. Surely that applies to this situation too. Aid and sanctuary are not opposing policies, and the Minister can clearly hear the will of the House on this matter. Many countries are doing both; why cannot we do the same?

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Gentleman says that many countries are doing more, but I do not know who he could mean. We are providing more support to the neighbouring countries in the region than any other country except the United States of America. Of the 28 member states of the European Union, we were until very recently providing more financial support than the rest of the EU combined. That is a record of which we can be proud, and on which we lead.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I totally support the Government in the amount of humanitarian aid that they are providing, but let us be quite clear that the key to sorting this problem out is to stop the war. That will happen when one side or the other wins, but there is now a stalemate within Syria. Probably the only way ahead will be through a United Nations Security Council resolution. How are we going to get such a resolution, which would be the first step towards stopping what is happening in that very sad country?

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Gentleman’s question was extremely interesting, but it was a tad distant from the question of refugees. Perhaps with a degree of licence, however, and knowing the dexterity of the Minister, we can hear his response.

[Mr Harper]

You can be assured, Mr Speaker, that I shall not go much wider than what I have already said. My hon. Friend will know the challenges involved in getting a United Nations Security Council resolution. We have welcomed the announcement of the Geneva II process, which starts this week, as well as the positive news at the weekend that the national coalition has taken the difficult decision to involve itself in the process. That will be the best—and probably the only—solution to getting a sensible, peaceful settlement in Syria, so that those refugees can do as they want to do and return home to rebuild their country.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

I do not blame you for taking a deep breath before I speak, Mr Speaker. The purpose of these urgent questions is for the Minister, first, to outline what work the Government are doing and, secondly, to listen to the will of the House. May I urge him, once again, to listen to the voices in all parts of this House that are saying that it is not a binary choice between the excellent humanitarian aid the UK Government and UK people are currently gifting to the region, and receiving here in this country a few of the most vulnerable children? We should be doing both, and the Minister should listen to the voices from these Houses of Parliament.

[Mr Harper]

I am sure that your intake of breath was because you were spoilt for choice by the excellent number of colleagues on both sides of the House who are waiting to ask a question. Let me respond directly to the hon. Gentleman. The question for the Government is: with the resources at our disposal, how can we help the largest number and deliver the best support we can? Our judgment is that we can deliver that help and support best in the region, by providing the support we have—we are the second largest donor in the world. We are helping not hundreds but hundreds of thousands of people. We think that is the right solution, but we have also already accepted, under our normal terms, more than 1,000 refugees from Syria in the year to last September.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

I very much welcome the Minister’s statement. On resettlement in the region, have further discussions taken place with countries such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates? Those three countries are the ones pushing for change in Syria by supporting the opposition, so are they taking their fair share of refugees?

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend will of course know that we continue to talk to our partners in the Gulf on this issue, as on many others, and they and we keep this matter under review. I know that they are providing help and support where they can as well.

[Mrs Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab)]

We know that al-Qaeda and the Syrian Government have been targeting medical personnel, including British medical personnel who have gone to provide assistance. Given that there are problems with accessing medical aid in Syria and in the neighbouring countries that are providing asylum to refugees, is it not right that the UK offers humanitarian admission—not refugee status—to this country for those needing medical aid, including children, disabled children and those who have been tortured? Is it not our moral responsibility to act in that way?

[Mr Harper]

What the hon. Lady says about medical support for people who require it—critically injured or sick people—is very important, which is why the work we are doing with the World Health Organisation has supported, across Syria and in neighbouring countries, nearly a quarter of a million people. That is a significant number, and it is far more than anyone is talking about providing for in the United Kingdom.

[Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)]

We can indeed be rightly proud of the humanitarian assistance that this country has provided, which is second only to that provided by the United States. However, I urge the Minister to consider how much more we should be doing, despite the lack of action on the part of some neighbouring European Union countries. We are now being asked by the UN to take on some special cases, and that would not necessarily be a tokenistic response if we could combine that with the sheer number of special cases that other countries might be prepared to take. Will he at least not rule out our participation in such a programme in the future?

[Mr Harper]

We always keep these matters under review, but we judge that helping the largest number of people is best achieved in the region. As I said, we have accepted more than 1,000 asylum seekers in the United Kingdom, but we think that the help we are providing—not only food and water, but medical support, including to the most vulnerable and to children—is best provided in the region, working with our partners.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

The House has made it clear that this is not seen as a question of, “Either aid or refugees.” The Minister has belittled the number of refugees taken by some other countries in Europe. Does he not accept that if we took a number even proportional to the number Moldova has taken, we would be making a significant difference to the lives of hundreds of the most vulnerable children?

[Mr Harper]

When the hon. Gentleman talks about making a difference to the lives of hundreds of children, he should understand—I have set it out many times—that we are helping not hundreds of children but hundreds of thousands of children in Syria and the neighbouring countries, and that is the best way of helping. We are helping enormous numbers of people in incredibly important ways, such as by providing food, water, medical attention and shelter. We are also supporting the neighbouring countries that are doing so much to help. That is the right thing to do and something of which we can be proud.

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

The Minister talked earlier about how poor some countries have been at pledging in this crisis. Does he think that Britain can be proud of its Ministers and the work that they have done to get other countries to pledge, culminating last week in the Kuwait conference where $2.4 billion was pledged, $1 billion more than last year?

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. We have been leading on that approach. We have carried weight because of our own very significant donations. He rightly draws attention to the pledging conference. As I have said, up until last week, we had pledged £500 million, most of which has already been distributed, and is providing help to the region. Last week, the Secretary of State was able to increase that by a further £100 million, demonstrating that we put our money where our mouth is.

[James Duddridge (Rochford and Southend East) (Con)]

This debate has been typified by whether we should be doing either/or. In many ways, I congratulate the Government on doing both. By that I mean accepting the 1,100 refugees and also focusing on the other 2.3 million. On reflection, it is the right thing to spend the money in the camps, but could we have a differentiated response for that 2.3 million? We should look at helping categories of individuals, such as children, and use UK expertise effectively and efficiently in-country to help the maximum number. Rather than taking out just one or two—or 500 in this case—and bringing them back to the United Kingdom, we could help far more of them in their own country.

[Mr Harper]

I think my hon. Friend is right. Some of the work we are doing with UNICEF in Syria and in the region includes providing support services and child protection for 15,000 of the most vulnerable Syrian children and their carers, as well as for refugee children in neighbouring countries. That is a significant amount of help to many, many thousands of children.

[Stephen Metcalfe (South Basildon and East Thurrock) (Con)]

I, too, have recently visited Turkey and the Nizip refugee camp, which is receiving support from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. I have seen first hand the scale of the human tragedy that is unfolding there. It is hard not to be moved by the plight of the 2.4 million Syrians who have been displaced. However, on talking to them, it is obvious that their desire is not to come to the UK but to go home. The Government are doing the right thing in providing support on the ground to the most vulnerable people in the camps and in the communities, and we have to work tirelessly to allow all those people to go back to their own home country.

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his question, which was informed by his recent personal experience. He answered rather better than I did the earlier question about the support the Gulf countries are providing to Turkey. He is exactly right. We are providing diplomatic support to the Geneva II process, which is the best solution to a settlement in Syria, and we are providing help to the 2.4 million refugees and the 6.5 million internally displaced people in Syria, and that is the right thing to do.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Having visited Syrian refugee families in Lebanon, I find it staggering that this country should be accused of being uncaring towards Syrian children. We are the first country in the world to pledge 0.7% of our economy every year in international aid. As the second biggest donor to the Syrian refugee crisis, will the Minister confirm that we are helping the second largest number of Syrian children?

[Mr Harper]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question as he draws attention not only to the help that we are providing in Syria but to the help that we are able to provide across the world with our international development spending, which, although not universally popular, makes sense from both a humanitarian and a security perspective. He has put his finger on the help we are providing. By being the second largest global donor, it follows that we are almost certainly helping the second largest number of people after the United States of America.

[Mr John Leech (Manchester, Withington) (LD)]

The sizeable Syrian community in Greater Manchester makes a valuable contribution to that city and the wider area, so places such as Manchester are therefore best equipped to support Syrian children who have faced unmentionable suffering. Surely the Minister needs to think again.

[Mr Harper]

As I said, we are providing help and support to tens of thousands of Syrian children, including some of the most vulnerable, working with our international partners. The work we are doing in the region is more effective than some of the solutions proposed by hon. Members. I know that the hon. Gentleman does not agree, but I think that the Government’s policy is the right one and it is one that we will stick to.

Citizenship (Armed Forces) Bill

Mark Harper Excerpts

Friday 17th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

My remarks will be relatively brief. First, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Woking (Jonathan Lord). In his career in the House he has had remarkable success on private Members’ Bills, and if this one reaches the statute book, he will have been infinitely more successful than I ever was at getting a private Member’s Bill through. I am pleased that he chose this particular subject. He has steered the Bill well. At the end I will say a little about the Member of the House of Lords—as I believe we are now allowed to call it in this House—who will steer the Bill in the other place.

I join my hon. Friend, not in a full tribute, because that would test your patience, Mr Speaker, but in a tribute none the less to the foreign and Commonwealth members of our armed forces. The 1st Battalion The Rifles is based in my constituency at Beachley barracks, and a number of foreign and Commonwealth personnel have served on the battalion’s operational tours in Afghanistan. I have met those foreign and Commonwealth personnel, and they are as dedicated and committed as British citizens are to defending our country and serving Her Majesty the Queen.

It is right that the Bill addresses a matter on which those personnel could be disadvantaged by giving the Home Secretary the necessary discretion. The change is indeed small but sensible, and it is not insignificant. My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) put it very well: it is a small Bill with a big heart. That phrase deserves repeating.

The Bill enables us to remove the disadvantage faced by those forces and ex-forces personnel who happened to be outside the United Kingdom serving their country on day one of the five-year qualifying period for naturalisation. The Bill gives the Home Secretary the necessary discretion to overlook the current requirement in schedule 1 to the British Nationality Act 1981. The hon. Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed) asked whether the Bill is retrospective, and it is to that extent. Once the Bill is enacted, for anyone applying for naturalisation we will look back five years to what they were doing at that time, and the Bill will enable the Home Secretary to use her discretion, where appropriate, to overlook absences for service. The Bill will benefit people as soon as it gets on to the statute book. We will not have to wait five years for it to kick in, which is very helpful.

In the Home Office we take our responsibilities under the armed forces covenant very seriously. My hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) set out the background, so I will not test your patience by repeating it, Mr Speaker. We have been steadily pursuing a range of measures to improve how the Home Office deals with our foreign and Commonwealth personnel. Briefly, we have implemented new immigration rules for armed forces families, which include a number of practical improvements such as a five-year visa, a dedicated application form and the ability to make applications from overseas. The Army Families Federation said in its statement in the armed forces covenant annual report 2013 that the rules will

“address many of the inequalities that Foreign and Commonwealth families have been experiencing”.

The federation has been working closely with us and colleagues in the Ministry of Defence, and I am pleased that the Under-Secretary of State for Defence, my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison), is here today, because it demonstrates the Ministry of Defence’s close working with the Home Office. We have implemented the rules by having a transitional period in which those already on a route to settlement will be able to complete that route under the existing rules, and there will be clear rules for new foreign and Commonwealth service personnel.

Going back to a point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham and the hon. Member for Croydon North, we are not expecting a huge number of applications from forces personnel benefiting from the measure. We expect, anecdotally, some 200 to 300 cases a year of people who have served to naturalise as British citizens. Not all of those cases will require discretion, but where they do—even if there is only one case—it is right that someone who has served in our armed forces should benefit, and I am pleased that the Bill will enable that to happen.

We have had support for the Bill from the Army Families Federation, which has said that it will make

“a big difference to the…soldiers and their spouses who are currently prohibited from applying for Citizenship because they were serving overseas or were on operations at the start of the…period.”

The federation said that the current rule has been

“disproportionately disadvantaging members of HM Forces…and the AFF is fully supportive of the…changes”.

The other organisation, already mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham, is Veterans Aid, which warmly welcomes the change. Veterans Aid works for a range of former service personnel, and it works very hard for those who have had mental illness. I worked closely with the organisation when I was a shadow Defence Minister, and it works closely with foreign and Commonwealth personnel who have fallen foul of the system. Indeed, I met Dr Hugh Milroy, the organisation’s excellent chief executive, just yesterday to talk through some of the issues, and he has a very close working relationship both with my officials and with officials in the Ministry of Defence. Veterans Aid does excellent casework to support former members of our armed forces, both British citizens and foreign and Commonwealth personnel .

The Bill will hopefully get a fair wind today. It will then pass, as my hon. Friend the Member for Woking said, to the steady hand of our noble Friend Lord Trefgarne, who of course had six years’ experience as a Defence Minister in the 1980s, so he is well briefed on defence issues, and I know that this matter is close to his heart. He is also experienced in the equivalent Friday sessions in the House of Lords, and he will be expert in steering both this Bill and, assisting our noble Friend Lord Dobbs, the European Union (Referendum) Bill through the House of Lords. I hope that the Citizenship (Armed Forces) Bill will rapidly pass through the House of Lords and receive Royal Assent.

We have listened to the organisations that represent members of the armed forces, and will continue to work with them. The Bill does justice to those who have served our country from foreign and Commonwealth countries that support our armed forces. I am pleased to give the Government’s support to the Bill, which I hope will receive Third Reading today.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed.

Illegal Immigrants (Criminal Sanctions) Bill

Mark Harper Excerpts

Friday 17th January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Nuttall]

It is certainly the largest developed nation.

I do not want to detain the House for too long, because I am keen that the Bill should proceed through the House today.

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

I will be brief, but I cannot resist intervening, because I do not often have the chance to put right my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) on a constitutional matter. Her Majesty the Queen is of course the sovereign of 16 nations, not only six.

[Mr Nuttall]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

I have listened carefully to the debate. Although the Bill is not enormous, a wide range of issues have been touched on, including the scale of illegal immigration to Britain, why people may come here and the effectiveness of Government policy in removing people. My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) spoke about some of the visible enforcement activity that he has seen.

Before I turn to the detailed provisions of the Bill, it might be helpful to the House if I set out a little of the context, which Members can bear in mind when they consider how they will vote on the Bill if my hon. Friend decides to test the will of the House. Immigration is an important subject, as is the question of those who have no right to be in Britain. Some illegal immigrants never had the right to be here, but still entered the United Kingdom. A more significant number of immigrants came here lawfully, but overstayed their welcome.

Why are people concerned about this matter? It is perfectly reasonable to be concerned, given the significant amount of migration, both legal and illegal, that we saw during the period of the last Labour Government. We only have statistics on legal migration because, by definition, it is very difficult to get a good handle on the level of unlawful migration. Net migration during that period was 2.2 million people. Despite what Labour likes to lead people to believe, the majority of those people came from outside the European Union, so it had full powers to do something about it.

We know that people are concerned about immigration and that they want tougher immigration controls. That was my party’s policy before the election and it is this Government’s policy. We have had a fair bit of success, with net migration down by nearly a third since 2010. I am afraid that it is not true, as the hon. Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed) said, that that is to do with a change in the number of British citizens. The most significant change is the fall in immigration. That has been put clearly on the record by the independent Office for National Statistics. Non-EU immigration to the United Kingdom is at its lowest level since 1998.

To be frank, it is true that the most recent figures showed a small increase. That was largely because of an increase in migration from the EU. However, that has come not from the parts of the EU that have recently been giving the press in this country the vapours, but from more traditional EU member states such as Spain and other countries in southern Europe which have economies that are performing less well. It is important to put that in context.

On illegal migration, which is the subject of the Bill, I want to put two points to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch that I hope he will find reassuring. A significant number of people who want to come to the United Kingdom illegally try to get here through our sea ports or the channel tunnel. He will be familiar with the fact that we have juxtaposed controls, which means that our border is effectively in France. We check freight vehicles, passenger transport that comes through the tunnel and transport on the ferries. Our UK Border Force officers, whom he mentioned, do an excellent job of preventing people from entering the UK illegally in the first place. In the year to the end of March 2013, for example, they prevented more than 11,000 people from entering. That is important, because if people cannot enter the United Kingdom illegally in the first place, the provisions in his Bill are unnecessary. We stop them at the border, which, with the juxtaposed controls, is in France, so they never get to our shores.

[Mr Chope]

The Minister says that 11,000 people were prevented from coming, but how many of them have subsequently got in without detection?

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend asks an unanswerable question, but it is also worth considering the checks that our immigration enforcement officers make. When they encounter people who are working illegally, they look at when those people entered the United Kingdom to test whether they got through our juxtaposed controls. When we examine both sets of people—those we stop and those we encounter in-country—the evidence is that our controls are effective. I would not pretend that they are 100% effective, but they are very effective in reducing the number of people coming into the country.

As I said, most people who are in the United Kingdom illegally did not come here illegally. They came here lawfully but for a limited period. They are either a visa national—someone from one of the countries where we have visa controls—who has applied for a visa either to study or to work here and has overstayed, or a non-visa national from whom a visa was not required, but who has been allowed to come into the UK for only a limited period, perhaps as a visitor, and has overstayed. In one sense, my hon. Friend was right to raise his concern, because under the previous Government, if someone applied in-country for the renewal of a visa and was refused—I believe that was the example he gave—nothing happened. That was quite wrong. With our immigration enforcement organisation, we have started to change that.

It is worth mentioning in passing one change that I believe was generally welcomed in the House, including by the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who has already been mentioned in this debate despite his not being here. Many people criticised the UK Border Agency, and when the Home Secretary split it up last year, one benefit was that our immigration enforcement operation—the part of the business that enforces the law and deals with illegal immigrants—was given a clear and separate identity. It still works closely with its colleagues in the rest of the Home Office, but we are creating much more of a visible law enforcement culture, which I think is what my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch is looking for. He said that he had seen some immigration enforcement vans with their livery, which is a deliberate strategy to make people aware that we have legal powers and are taking action. In a moment, I will set out for him some statistics showing that we are stepping up that activity so that people know that we are being effective.

If we are to deal with overstayers, it is no good just having more effective controls at the border, because they were legal when they arrived in the UK. Clause 1 of my hon. Friend’s Bill refers not just to people who enter the UK without authority but to people who are present here, so it covers overstayers. He referred to overstayers being attracted to the UK because of their chances of being removed, but I will set out in a moment why I do not believe that was a correct conclusion. In the Immigration Bill, which is currently before Parliament and waiting for business managers to agree the timing of Report—that is well above my pay grade as a humble Minister of State, as he will know—there are a number of provisions to deal effectively with overstayers. For example, we will make it impossible for someone who is in the country unlawfully to rent property. They will not be able to get a driving licence, and if they have one we will be able to revoke it. They will not have access to a bank account, and we are toughening the law governing whether or not they will be able to work lawfully.

Importantly—several hon. Members have mentioned this—we are putting into primary legislation clear rules about the impact of article 8 of the European convention on human rights on our ability to remove foreign nationals, particularly if they are offenders. Judges have told us that despite having included such measures in secondary legislation, we have not given a clear enough steer to the judiciary. They have asked us to put that into primary legislation, and if my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch and other hon. Members have taken the trouble to look at the Immigration Bill—I am sure they have—they will know that it contains clear statements about what the public interest requires, particularly regarding those guilty of criminal offences. Except in the most exceptional circumstances, we would expect someone guilty of an offence to be removed from the United Kingdom, and the Immigration Bill will contribute well to that.

My hon. Friend might also have spotted last October that we created the National Crime Agency, so as to be more effective in dealing with serious and organised crime. One part of that agency is the border policing command, part of which deals with the issues he raised about organised crime groups—based both inside and outside the United Kingdom—who are involved in people trafficking. Such trafficking could be either completely against someone’s will or when people effectively con others into coming to the United Kingdom by suggesting that all will be well, and perhaps charging them a fee. When people get to the UK, they then discover that things are not quite as they were led to believe, and sometimes they are almost in some kind of slavery or bonded arrangement, and are indebted to those organised crime groups. Hopefully, my hon. Friend will welcome the measures we have introduced.

My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies), and my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch when he introduced the Bill, spoke about exit checks. My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley said that we currently have no idea about who leaves the country, but that is not correct. Around 80% of those going into and out of the United Kingdom do so by air, around 10% by rail, and 10% by sea. For the vast majority of those travelling by air we have what is called advance passenger information, not only for those coming into the United Kingdom, but also for those leaving it. We use those data to protect ourselves from people coming in and to detect people who have perhaps had no right to be here and are leaving. We have that ability, but it needs to be improved.

My hon. Friend the Member for Shipley will know—I think he drew attention to this—that implementing exit checks was one of the commitments in the coalition agreement, and we are in the process of improving the coverage and the amount of data we collect. He will also know that the Immigration Bill contains provisions about outbound journeys, so that where we do not collect advance passenger information, the Home Secretary has the power—if we are not able to do it on a voluntary basis—to direct the carriers to work with the Home Office and perhaps collect some of that information. Such information is already collected for other reasons such as security and booking information, and so that we have more effective information about those coming to and from the United Kingdom. I do not pretend to my hon. Friend that the current position is perfect—it is not, and there is more work to do—but it is not as bleak as he set out. We have also had meetings with those in the rail and maritime sectors to consider what more we can do for those modes of travel.

I detected in the debate one or two remarks from my hon. Friends the Members for Christchurch, for Shipley and for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) about European Union nationals, and the extent to which there are legal provisions to deal with those coming from the European Union. I know that all three hon. Friends take a close interest in such matters, and they will have spotted that in December I laid before Parliament amendments to regulations covering the European economic area. We have taken steps to restrict access to benefits for EEA migrants—that was the subject of the previous Bill, and I am not sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch has caught up with the extent to which we have already changed the law, but I will not dwell on that.

We have already defined in those regulations some abuses of free movement, such as when people are not exercising their treaty rights—for example, not working, not looking for work, not studying, not self-sufficient, but rough sleeping, begging or taking part in criminality. In those cases, we have given ourselves the legal power—the Immigration Bill is about putting provisions in statute to deal with offences—to remove those individuals from the UK and, importantly and for the first time, to prevent them from returning for at least a year, unless they can demonstrate that they will immediately be exercising their treaty rights. That is a significant new power that EU Schengen countries cannot put into effect because they do not have internal border controls. We can put it into effect because we do have those controls. I hope that gives my hon. Friend some confidence that we can deal with those abusing the free movement rules.

Finally, before turning to the detailed provisions in the Bill, I want to touch on serious criminality. I think my hon. Friends the Members for Christchurch, for Shipley and for Bury North all talked about people committing not just offences to do with their immigration status, but more serious offences. In case they are not aware, I draw to their attention the joint working that the immigration enforcement directorate is doing with police forces, starting with the Metropolitan police, as part of a project called Nexus. It is not surprising, given that one third of London’s population are foreign nationals, that one third of criminals in London are also foreign nationals—they are not more likely to be criminals, but they are not less likely either.

We have opened up a new set of powers, and we are helping the police to use their powers more effectively. It is sometimes difficult to get the required level of evidence to prosecute a person even for serious criminality—for example, if they are involved in gang-related activity, it can be difficult, because of intimidation, to persuade witnesses to come forward—but if that person is a foreign national, it is sometimes possible to use our immigration powers to remove them from the UK and prevent them from returning. Since we started Nexus a year ago, we have removed more than 1,000 high-harm criminals and are now rolling it out to other parts of the UK with significant foreign national populations. We are working with West Midlands and Great Manchester police and—this will be of interest to you, Madam Deputy Speaker—Avon and Somerset constabulary to help them deal more effectively with criminality perpetrated by foreign nationals, which is welcome. I hope my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch welcomes those provisions, if he was not otherwise familiar with them.

When talking about how attractive the Bill was, my hon. Friend, like my hon. Friends the Members for Shipley and for Bury North, mentioned the noble Lord Ashcroft’s extensive polling on these subjects. I am not sure what terms he used in his polling—whether he referred specifically to the Bill or just to its provisions—but it was probably correct to point out that the provisions were overwhelmingly supported by the general public. I am not at all surprised by that. One of my hon. Friends also said that the general public would be surprised that these things were not already against the law. I do not often agree with the Labour party, but the hon. Member for Croydon North was right that the provisions are already effectively in statute.

The general public are hugely in favour of these provisions—quite rightly; I would expect them to be—but, as I think my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley said, the general public are also right if they think that they already exist in law, because they do exist. It may be helpful, in trying to persuade my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch not to pursue his Bill, briefly to set out the existing powers.

The Immigration Act 1971 provides for the two criminal offences set out in the Bill. Section 24(1)(a) of the 1971 Act makes an offence of

“knowingly entering the United Kingdom in breach of a deportation order or without leave”,

while section 24(1)(b) makes it an offence to “knowingly overstay or breach” the conditions of leave. The maximum penalty for both those offences on summary conviction is a fine of £5,000 and/or six months’ imprisonment, which is the same as proposed in the Bill—a spooky coincidence. Under section 24A of the Immigration Act 1971, it is an offence to obtain or seek to obtain leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom by deception, or to secure or seek to secure the avoidance, postponement or revocation of enforcement action by deception—and the maximum penalty for that offence is £5,000 and/or six months’ imprisonment on summary conviction. On indictment, the penalty is two years’ imprisonment or an unlimited fine or both. I hope that Members can see that the offences proposed in the Bill are already on the statute book.

[Mr Chope]

I asked the Minister a question about the incidence of offences. Can he tell us how many people have been prosecuted and convicted in respect of each of the offences to which he has referred? In replying to the parliamentary question I asked him, he said that the information could not be obtained because it would be too expensive.

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend anticipates what I was about to say. He refers to a question he asked me a few Home Office Question Times ago. He basically asked me whether there was an offence in relation to this issue and why we did not prosecute people who are in this country unlawfully. I replied that that was against the law, but that our strategy was to secure such people’s removal from the United Kingdom. I think I made the point during that session of Home Office questions that it was not sensible, on the grounds of cost of the process, to prosecute everybody who is here unlawfully. My hon. Friend will know—he has expressed opinions about this before—that legal aid being what it is, the taxpayer would, even with our reforms, be likely to have to pay both prosecution and defence costs. Putting such offenders in prison would also be at taxpayers’ expense, and that would be necessary before we could remove them from the UK.

[Philip Davies]

The Minister talks about the cost of throwing these people into prison, but he was also bandying around the fact that £5,000 fines could be imposed, which I would have thought amounted to getting money into the Exchequer. If he does not want to send these people to prison because of the cost, will he tell us how many £5,000 fines have been levied on these people since he has been the Minister and since these marvellous laws that he has talked about have been in place?

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend will know, because he follows criminal justice matters intently, how much it costs to keep someone in prison. He knows that it costs very much more, even for six months, than £5,000. We are talking about costing the taxpayer significant amounts of money. I shall come on in a few moments to the number of people who are removed from the country; I would certainly not want to fund the cost of keeping them all in prison.

The current strategy is that we try to remove people who are in the United Kingdom illegally. Every year of this Government more illegal migrants have departed from the UK than in any year before 2010, and that trend was continuing in 2013. We remove two groups of people from the UK. Our preference is that people who are here unlawfully leave of their own accord. There is a clear reason for that: if someone leaves of their own accord, it does not put a huge financial burden on the taxpayer. If we have to go through the process of arresting and detaining someone, and going through an enforced removal, sometimes including escorts, the cost of removal can be upwards of £15,000 per person. I would rather not burden the taxpayer with that. In 2012-13, 44,000 people were removed from the country. It is worth repeating that figure of 44,000, because the polling seems to show that people think that nobody is removed from the UK, whereas the actual figure is significant. The number of people removed voluntarily because they found that it is not easy to be in the UK illegally increased by 30% between 2009-10 and 2012-13. That is the right approach to take. Part of the reason for the measures in the Immigration Bill is to make it more difficult to be in the UK unlawfully, so that more people will choose not to come here unlawfully in the first place and so that those already here will find leaving the UK a more attractive proposition than staying here unlawfully.

[Philip Davies]

Has the Minister not considered the fact that being much tougher on illegal immigrants might deter others from coming here? He seems to be suggesting that the worst thing that will happen to someone who comes to this country illegally is that the Minister, like Sergeant Wilson in “Dad’s Army”, is going to say, “Would you mind awfully leaving?” How is there any deterrent to stop anybody coming here in the first place illegally if that is the worst that is ever going to happen to them?

[Mr Harper]

Not only do 40,000 people a year leave, but in addition to those who leave voluntarily we enforce the removal of about 15,000 others, and that demonstrates that we are very effective. Part of the reason for the measures in the Immigration Bill is to make coming here illegally less attractive. We are also seeking to make it clear that people who come here unlawfully will find it difficult to be able to work; they will not have access to free treatment on the national health service; and they will not be able to have a bank account or a driving licence. In other words, it will be very difficult for them to be here. So it will be both less attractive to come here unlawfully and more attractive for those already here to leave, and the evidence shows that we are making progress on that.

The Bill contains another set of penalty provisions. The first set of penalties are the imprisonment and the fine, which of course are already in legislation. The Bill also proposes provisions on deportation and makes reference to the “public interest”. That doubtless relates to the points that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch made about the convention and the public interest test. Immigration legislation already provides for removal powers without the need to pursue a prosecution, so we have not only administration removal powers but deportation powers in criminal cases. Under schedule 2 to the Immigration Act 1971, immigration officers have the power to remove an illegal entrant. An illegal entrant is for these purposes defined as a person unlawfully entering or seeking to enter the United Kingdom in breach of a deportation order or of the immigration laws, or entering or seeking to enter by means which include deception. Unlike with the criminal sanction, there is no requirement for the migrant knowingly to be an illegal entrant. That is important, because it removes a defence which there would be in a criminal case in relation to the person having to know that they were breaching the law. Section 10 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 gives immigration officers a power to remove a person who remains beyond the time limited by the leave—in other words, an overstayer. Once again, for the purpose of removal there is no requirement for the overstaying to have been knowingly committed.

Part I of the 1971 Act sets out the Secretary of State’s power to deport an individual where it is deemed to be conducive to the public good or where there is a court recommendation for deportation, and the UK Borders Act 2007 further sets out that, subject to the exemptions listed, where a foreign national is sentenced to at least 12 months’ imprisonment the Secretary of State must make a deportation order.

That is the point, welcome though it is, that has fallen foul of the provisions of the European convention on human rights. I agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley said when he expressed frustration about that, but that is why I hope that he welcomes the provisions in the Immigration Bill, which I set out. If he has not looked at them already, I can tell him that we have set out very clearly in them the public interest test. In other words, judges can weigh up the private interests of the people concerned against the public interest test that Parliament will set out, if it passes that Bill. If someone is a foreign national offender and they have committed a crime, the normal position is that they will be removed from the United Kingdom.

I think that my hon. Friend will also welcome the fact that the test makes it clear that if someone is here unlawfully or in a precarious immigration position—in other words, they are not here for very long—the court should put very little or no weight on any private or family interests built up during that period. Someone cannot come here unlawfully, create a family relationship and then expect that relationship to count, and to be a way of their avoiding being removed from the United Kingdom. That is very welcome, because I think that most Members, and most members of the public, will have the same view that I do: if someone has committed a serious offence, it is not right that they are able to stay in the United Kingdom because they have created some sort of family relationship while they should not have been here. I think that provision will be very welcome, and I hope that it will receive my hon. Friend’s support.

It is also worth saying that the removal powers that I have set out do not carry an in-country right of appeal before removal can take place. In the Immigration Bill, we propose extending the use of non-suspensive appeals so that we can remove more criminals whose article 3 rights are not engaged—in other words, those who would not suffer torture or worse in the country we are removing them to—before they are able to appeal. They will still have an appeal right, but it must be exercised out of country. My hunch is that appeals will not then take place, because most of those appeals are filed by people to try to delay their removal.

My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch and other hon. Friends who support the measure are usually assiduous—this is a position that I welcome—and particularly on Fridays in persuading the House, whether by dint of argument or through their use of time, that where legislation is not necessary, it should not be passed by the House. I frequently marvel at their creativity. Sadly, as a Minister, it is an activity in which I am no longer able to partake. They give the House many reasons why many Bills which other Members may support should not be put on the statute book.

My plea to my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch and my other hon. Friends is this. I hope that I have effectively demonstrated, as the hon. Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed) did, that these provisions are already on the statute book and are well supported by members of the public, as one would expect, given that they are sensible measures. Knowing my hon. Friends’ general sense that we should not burden the statute book with unnecessary legislation, I hope that they will acknowledge that the offences are already on the statute book, and will think it not worth troubling Parliament to pass legislation that does not give us any more tools to deal with those who abuse the law.

Finally, I hope that I have demonstrated that this Government, through some of the operational measures we are taking and the provisions in the Immigration Bill, are absolutely determined to address this issue, although we welcome those who come to the country lawfully. The hon. Member for Croydon North was right to put on the record that those who wish to come here lawfully to work, study and contribute to the country, and to pay taxes that make us all wealthier, are very welcome indeed. The Government are absolutely determined that those who have no right to be here or those who abuse our laws should be dealt with.

Having provided that clarity, I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch will feel able to tell the House that he does not wish to proceed with the Bill, and I hope that I have not failed to convince him that that is the right course of action.

[Mr Chope]

I am grateful to the Minister for his thorough response. I shall look at it in great detail, along with the Immigration Bill, which I hope we will be able to discuss on Report sooner rather than later, because it is an important matter for the Government. I am surprised that they have delayed it so long. Taking into account what the Minister has said, I seek the leave of the House to withdraw the motion.

Motion and Bill, by leave, withdrawn.