Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mark Harper and Fiona Mactaggart

Thursday 26th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her question and I will be visiting her constituency tomorrow to speak to local businesses—

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

What a surprise.

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Lady says, “What a surprise”, but my hon. Friend is holding an event to talk about getting more disabled people back into work with a number of excellent local employers. The hon. Lady should congratulate her on that, rather than being churlish about it.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I cannot do better than report what the OECD said, which was that we had a long-term economic plan and effective economic policies, and that the performance of the labour market in the United Kingdom was “remarkable”.

Spousal Visas

Debate between Mark Harper and Fiona Mactaggart

Monday 9th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) for the opportunity to discuss this issue. He said very clearly at the beginning of his remarks that he very much supports the Government’s general position on the immigration system and the desire to restore some sanity to it after the uncontrolled immigration system that we saw under the Labour party, and I wholeheartedly agree with him.

As my hon. Friend correctly said in his opening remarks, the family rules have three aims. The first, which I know he strongly supports, is to deal with abuse, which is why we have extended from two years to five years the probationary period before partners can apply for settlement, to test the genuineness of the relationship concerned, which should help to deter applications based on sham marriages. Secondly, we are promoting the integration of family migrants by requiring those applying for settlement from 28 October this year to pass the new “Life in the UK” test and demonstrate that they can speak and understand English to the intermediate B1 level. That means that those intending to live permanently in the UK can communicate in the wider community and have a basic understanding of British history, culture and democracy. My hon. Friend said that he supported that as well.

The third issue, about which my hon. Friend has concerns, is the aspect of the rules seeking to prevent burdens on the taxpayer by introducing the minimum income threshold of £18,600 a year to be met by those wishing to sponsor the settlement of a partner. He said that that was an arbitrary number. It was the Migration Advisory Committee, the independent body that advises the Government, that proposed a range of numbers based on its analysis of the problem; we adopted a figure from the lower end.

In talking about regional pay, my hon. Friend touched on the interaction between the welfare and immigration systems. As I said in the Westminster Hall debate, it is interesting that Members who, in the context of this debate, say that £18,600 is a high number, often suggest—I am not suggesting my hon. Friend does—suggest in the context of a welfare debate that it is not high. We selected that number because it is broadly the amount more than which a couple must earn if they are not to be eligible for income-related benefits.

My hon. Friend is right that in the period when the migrant spouse is in the UK before they get indefinite leave to remain, they are not entitled to benefits, but they will be once they are settled and their spouse may be entitled to income-related benefits because of their being here—housing benefit, for example. As he said, we do not have a regional benefit system and that is one of the complexities of the case.

In practice, the previous requirement for adequate maintenance meant that any sponsor earning, after tax and housing costs, more than the equivalent of income support for a couple—about £5,700—was deemed to have sufficient funds to sponsor a partner. That was not an adequate basis for sustainable family migration and did not provide adequate assurance—

[Fiona Mactaggart]

rose—

[Mr Harper]

If the hon. Lady does not mind, I will try to address my hon. Friend, whose Adjournment debate this is. I want to deal with his issues.

The requirement provided little assurance of a sustainable basis over the long term. That is why we came up with the new financial requirement, based principally on the expert advice from the Migration Advisory Committee. It is the level of income at which a couple, once settled in the UK and taking into account children, generally cannot access income-related benefits. My hon. Friend said that his constituent had no intention of claiming benefits, but of course there is no way for us legally to enforce their not claiming benefits once they are in the United Kingdom.

We think that we have set out the right basis. The Migration Advisory Committee looked at whether there was a case for varying the income threshold across the United Kingdom, which is the substance of my hon. Friend’s point—I know that he did not want to make that point, but I will take it as a suggestion floating around that I can comment on. The Migration Advisory Committee looked at that approach but concluded that there was not a clear case for taking it. It would mean that sponsors, for example, could make an application when living in one area and then move around the United Kingdom. It would also penalise a sponsor living in a relatively wealthy part of a poor region; they would have a lower income threshold than a sponsor living in a deprived area of a relatively wealthy region. A single national threshold may not be more acceptable, but it makes things clearer for people than a much more complicated system of regional targets.

As my hon. Friend mentioned, I said in the previous debate that we would continue to monitor the impact of the new rules and make adjustments when appropriate. People who have raised issues with me—I see Members here who came to see me—will have noticed that in the immigration rule changes that I laid before the House on Friday last week, we set out changes in the flexibility of evidence, allowing details of electronic bank statements to be submitted. There will also be flexibility around the cash savings that people can have, to include net proceeds from the sale of a property owned by the applicant and a partner. That has been an issue in some specific cases.

We are also making provision for British sponsors returning from overseas to count future on-target earnings in some circumstances and to allow subcontractors under the HMRC construction industry scheme to evidence their income from that work as if it were from salaried employment. We have made changes.

On the change that my hon. Friend mentioned about taking account of the job offer of the migrant spouse, I have asked officials to look at that. The real challenge is how we could come up with a set of rules that were not liable to massive abuse. He highlighted that risk when he said that we would obviously have to deal with people being able to have fictitious job applications and people abusing those rules. I have asked for work to be done on that, and I will consider it. I know from the work that was done when the rules were introduced that it is not an easy issue to deal with, but we are looking at it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend mentions a case that she has raised extensively with me, including in writing, and I have set out a solution for her constituent. On self-employment, a couple of the changes we have made with regard to evidencing income will be helpful. We will continue to look at the detailed issues that are raised with us and we will, of course, deal with those that make sense and that we do not think are amenable to abuse. The rules have only been in place for a little over a year and we will continue to change them to make them more sensible where we think there are unintended consequences.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

I thank the Minister and am grateful for the changes he has made already; I think they are moving in the right direction. He has said that couples require a minimum income of £18,600 before they get benefits, but the problem with that is that the burden is placed on the British resident and citizen, not the couple. Will the Minister do more take into account the capacity of the migrant spouse to earn while they are here?

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Lady raises a perfectly good point, which was also raised in the Westminster Hall debate. The difficulty is dealing with the matter in a way that is not easy to abuse and to use as a way of driving a coach and horses through the system. We continue to look at the matter, but I know from the abuse we have seen in other areas of the immigration system that if we simply require, for example, a job offer without any detailed back-up, I am afraid there are plenty of people around who have—

Immigration (Detention of Pregnant Women)

Debate between Mark Harper and Fiona Mactaggart

Thursday 5th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I do not agree with my hon. Friend, for this reason. The use of statistics was mentioned, but we do not collect statistics on this matter because women are not, of course, obliged to tell the Home Office whether they are pregnant. They may tell us, and if they do, the information will be held on their individual case file and they will be provided with appropriate health care, broadly comparable to what is available from an NHS general practitioner. The women are under no obligation to tell us, and I do not think forcing them to disclose the information would be right. That is an issue about the statistics.

Making decisions about the imminence of removal is clearly based on our best intelligence, but as we know, the people who have no right to be in the United Kingdom and who should leave the country voluntarily often throw all sorts of legal obstacles in the way. We may detain a woman when removal is imminent and she may attempt to secure a last-minute legal challenge to throw a roadblock in the way of her removal, and we have no way of anticipating that before she does so. That provides my hon. Friend with an example.

If we were to do what my hon. Friend suggested and have a blanket policy of not detaining women, first, having read many cases, I fear we would find quite a lot of people saying they were pregnant as another method of delaying their departure from the UK. I have seen people throw many obstacles in the way when they have no right to be here, and I do not want this to be one of them. We are committed to treating pregnant women properly, providing proper health care and treating them well. I do not want this to be an excuse that women who are not pregnant dream up in order to throw a legal obstacle in the way. I fear that that would be the result of adopting the blanket policy suggested by my hon. Friend.

A logical follow-on policy from what my hon. Friend suggests would mean not removing the women from the UK when they were pregnant and allowing them to give birth to their child, but then seeking to remove both the woman and the very young child from the UK to their home country or country of origin—and I am not sure that that would be an improvement. If I anticipate correctly, if we did that, we would then be criticised for trying to remove the mother with her very young child back to their country of origin. As I say, I am not sure that that would be an improvement on the present situation, because the fact remains that these women have no right to be in the UK: they should not be here and they should leave voluntarily. [Interruption.] I cannot quite tell whether the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) is dying to intervene.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

I was squeaking—the Minister is right—because I cannot believe that someone is going to get pregnant in order not to be detained. Secondly, it is quite easy to find out whether someone is pregnant, so that bit of the Minister’s excuse proves his hon. Friend’s very powerful argument that this is a moral case. I fear that I hear in the Minister’s response a kind of Home Office “jobsworthness”, which I think he should be above and is usually above.

[Mr Harper]

I am not going to let the hon. Lady put words into my mouth. I did not say—I chose my words very carefully—that women would get pregnant; I said women would say they were pregnant in order to throw a legal challenge. I know it is perfectly easy to test whether women are pregnant, but we do not have the right to do that. The Home Office does not have the right to insist that a women disclose that she is pregnant. We do not have the right forcibly to test people to see whether they are pregnant. If I were to propose that, I doubt whether the hon. Lady would support it. To be clear, I did not say that people would get pregnant; I said that they would say they were to throw a legal obstacle in the way of their removal from the country. I have seen enough cases—and I know the hon. Lady has—to know that there are people who would stoop to doing that to delay their removal from the UK.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

However, the Home Office could easily say, “We will release you if you provide evidence of pregnancy.”

[Mr Harper]

That may be the case, but our objective is not to let the people out of detention, but to remove them from the UK. That it is the point, and it is one I think my hon. Friend is missing, too. The fact is that these women have no right to be in the UK and should leave. I am not sure that a policy that allowed them stay in order to give birth to their child, when we would immediately want to remove both the woman and the child from the UK, would be a better policy than the one we have today.

Border Force

Debate between Mark Harper and Fiona Mactaggart

Wednesday 4th September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend has made a sensible point about intelligence. Obviously, as I said in my response, we use it to guide the efforts that we put into freight checking. My hon. Friend has also made the sensible point that there are peaks and troughs in the number of passengers crossing the border. As well as our permanent work force, we have staff on whom we can call at those peak times to ensure that we continue to deliver a secure border, but we are also mindful, of the need to deliver value for money, which the National Audit Office mentions in its report. Of course, all Departments have to deal with the appalling financial legacy that we were left by the Labour party.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

The Minister has laid much stress on the quality of border checks. As he will know, at the end of the last Session I was privileged to be elected chair of the all-party parliamentary group on human trafficking, and in that role I have been meeting groups who work with trafficked people. Kalayaan tells me that it has yet to meet a holder of an overseas domestic worker visa who, under the new visa system, has actually carried his or her own passport through the passport check. The passport is always held by the visa holder’s employer. What will the Minister do about that?

[Mr Harper]

The operating mandate specifies that everyone who crosses the border must have his or her passport checked and must have the necessary documents. On the basis of what I know, I do not think that what the hon. Lady says is correct, but I will make inquiries and then write to her. I think that that is a reasonable way to approach the matter. In the meantime, given her position as chair of the all-party group, I shall be happy to maintain a sensible dialogue with her on human-trafficking issues.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mark Harper and Fiona Mactaggart

Monday 15th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

It is, of course, the case that people in the United Kingdom without leave are breaking our laws, but our primary objective for those here without leave is to remove them from the country. It would be self-defeating to prosecute all of them and lock them up in prison, as we would thus be keeping them here for longer and making sure the taxpayer paid a higher cost.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

12. What steps she is taking to make Britain more hostile to traffickers engaged in modern day slavery; and if she will make a statement.

Immigration Rules: Sponsors

Debate between Mark Harper and Fiona Mactaggart

Thursday 14th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) for giving me an opportunity to set out the Government’s thinking. As she was speaking, I was thinking through a number of responses, and I hope I can also respond to the multiple instalment story from the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), who finally got it all out, I think.

Let me first set out a bit of background to put this matter in context. As part of our general reform of the immigration system across all the routes coming to the United Kingdom, we undertook a major overhaul of the family routes. There were three aims: to prevent burdens on the taxpayer, to promote integration, and to tackle abuse. The hon. Member for Bristol East’s focus has been on the financial requirement, which is the minimum income threshold of £18,600 a year to be met by those wishing to sponsor a partner of non-European economic area nationality to settle in the UK, with higher levels for those who also sponsor dependent non-EEA national children.

The point of the requirement is to prevent burdens from falling on the taxpayer and to promote successful integration. To put the story round the other way and to throw it back at the hon. Lady and the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma), people can come here to establish their family lives, but we ask that they should not expect the taxpayer to fund that.

The hon. Lady raised the point about no recourse to public funds, which has always been in place, and suggested that was a sufficient protection for the taxpayer. The problem with that is twofold. First, under the immigration rules only some things the taxpayer funds are classed as public funds. The things that are not considered as public funds are NHS costs, social care, contribution-based jobseeker’s allowance, incapacity benefit, maternity allowance, retirement pension and statutory maternity pay. A range of funds, therefore, are not excluded under the no recourse to public funds measure. If someone comes to the UK under no recourse to public funds, we would still have to provide health care to them, therefore, which may well be a burden on the taxpayer.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Most of the benefits to which the Minister has referred are contribution-based, and therefore are not relevant. On health care, however, I think most of our constituents would be quite happy if there were a requirement looking at some way of paying for health care, because part of the point of this is that there are lots of cases where people will have enough money on any system, but not on this rule.

[Mr Harper]

Let me come back to that. The specific cases that the hon. Lady and the hon. Member for Bristol East raised can I think be dealt with elsewhere in the immigration rules; that comes back to the point about representations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

I do, and that goes back to the central point of the debate.

I was about to give a little background to how we arrived at the particular sums of money involved, because that is helpful—

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Will the Minister take this opportunity to commit to making sure that in every country, applicants who are trying to come here to join a spouse can actually get the qualifications he is going to require of them?

[Mr Harper]

My understanding is that people are able to do that. I can tell from the way the hon. Lady is looking at me that there is a point behind her question, so if she will do me the courtesy of dropping me a line, I will examine the argument she is making and get back to her, rather than diverting the debate away from its central point.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

Under the tier 2 rule, it has to be a skilled job and they have to undergo a resident labour market test. So if he has a particular employer in mind, the rules may be a little more inflexible in the sense that he may not be able to say a specific employer, but if he has skills to offer, there are many occupations in which there is a shortage of people. If it is an occupation on the shortage occupation list, the employer is not required to undergo a resident labour market test. There are therefore opportunities in certain cases for someone to come here.

The hon. Member for Slough highlighted the issue of savings. Despite the fact that I managed to throw together some maths A-levels, that was a long time ago so I will not try to do the maths in my head. Savings can be used to make up the difference. We look at the amount of savings above £16,000, which is the threshold that is generally disregarded for income-related benefits. If someone holds savings for the period that they are hoping to come to the United Kingdom, which would be 30 months, the savings count as long as the applicants have them under their control for at least six months.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Even if they are self-employed?

[Mr Harper]

I believe that the answer is yes. If inspiration does not strike me before the end of the debate to confirm that, I will write to her.

In the immigration rules laid today, we have made some changes to the evidential requirements. For example, we had cases in which people were in receipt of tax-free stipends from universities. The net amount was below £18,600 and the rules were previously unclear about whether people could gross it up. I had a couple of cases raised with me and I thought it self-evident that people should be able to gross it up. So we have made it clear that that is indeed the case.

Human Trafficking

Debate between Mark Harper and Fiona Mactaggart

Thursday 20th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Fiona Mactaggart]

Indeed. Unfortunately, that is one of the risks of a strict liability offence; it tends to have a lower penalty. It would have been good had there been something tougher, but what I am hearing from the police is, “Oh whoops, we can’t prosecute because we have to prove both that she is under duress and also that he has offered to pay her.” The police keep telling me that they cannot do two things at once, which is a bit sad really. What they need is someone to drive them to do it. The only person who will do that is the Minister who will reply to this debate. I am expecting him to do that, and I hope that the figures that we see over the next couple of years will be an improvement on the 43 prosecutions that we know of already.

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

On that specific point about the priority that police forces should attach to prosecuting the offence, it is not I who should drive that. The right person to do that and for MPs to raise this with is the police and crime commissioner. The police and crime commissioners will be setting out the policing plan for their particular areas and they will need to tell the chief constable that this matter is important and is something that they should be making a priority. Then they should make it clear that the resources are available.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

The Minister is right from a month ago, but up until a month ago—for the whole of 2011 and for most of 2012—it was he and his predecessor who were responsible. In 2011 and 2012, I expect to see a pathetic number of prosecutions, because the number in 2010 was pathetic. I have already spoken about the matter to the police and crime commissioner in Thames Valley whose main concern seems to be with wildlife crime—I will not go down that route right now. That is what happens when a person does not prepare a speech and has just got out of their flu bed.

This is a very serious issue for the Government, and it is not sufficient to say that the police and crime commissioners must let the flowers bloom. Human trafficking is an international crime that needs national effort to solve. There will be parts of the country that say, “It does not happen here,” and the Minister knows that they are wrong. I remember the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) telling the all-party parliamentary group that that had been his experience after the discovery of the horrible events in his constituency. He described how shocked people were to discover that in a very pleasant part of the country, such exploitation could occur. This matter needs national Government leadership. It is spin to claim, as the report does, that action, which I am proud to have been an author of, is going to do much more than it has done so far.

The second claim of spin is in paragraph 7.29, which states:

“Whilst traffickers’ attempts to move victims”—

of domestic servitude—

“to the UK illegally are likely to continue, the changes to the route of entry for overseas domestic workers coming to the UK to work in the private household of their employer means that”—

wait for it—

“fewer will be eligible to come to the UK and as a result the risk of abusive relationships developing in this visa category should reduce further.”

Well, that is nonsense. Every single study of this matter, of which, I think, there have been three by the Home Affairs Committee, has concluded unanimously—many of the parties involved had believed that kind of nonsense to start with—that the overseas domestic workers’ visa was one of the best protections against human trafficking. In the report “Service not Servitude”, which I wrote last year to mark international slavery day, there is compelling evidence to show that the introduction of the overseas domestic workers’ visa reduced exploitation. It did not end it—I am not claiming that—but it reduced the levels of abuse and exploitation experienced by migrant domestic workers. If we compare the level of reported abuse in 1996 with that in 2010, we will see that the number of migrant workers who were expected to work 17 hours a day or more was halved. The visa cut significantly the proportion of such workers who were denied time off and who had faced psychological abuse. It more than halved physical abuse and it reduced sexual abuse by a quarter. Those are just one set of figures showing the impact that the visa has had on migrant workers.

This Government are not alone in thinking that abolishing the visa might be one way of controlling immigration and that it actually might be a sensible thing to do. Previous Labour Governments thought so too, and started consultations on doing it. I was part of the campaigns that prevented them from doing so because we were able to produce compelling evidence that showed the extent to which trafficking for domestic servitude increases. I am shocked and sad that the report, which is supposed to be the report of a rapporteur, is actually promoting spin about Government policy. Every single independent analysis of the overseas domestic workers’ visa makes it quite clear that it was one of the best protections for overseas domestic workers against domestic servitude.

Consequently, I am depressed about this debate, not only because it has got me out of my sick bed but because we are better than this, we care more than this, we can do more than this and we do not want to be “spinners”. We believe that we can be transparent, frank and honest about our successes and failures in dealing with this appalling crime. However, as can be seen from just the two examples I have given, the report falls down on those requirements. I do not believe that the Government want to fall down on this issue; I do not believe that. I am not saying that the intentions of the Government are malign—they are not.

Nevertheless, there is an ineffectiveness to this kind of report. It attempts to big up things that are good, for example joint investigation teams. However, when we look under the surface of those things, difficulties arise. When I talked to Steve Gravett, it looked like joint investigation teams had a short future.

Is it not time for us to be big enough to be completely open about the effectiveness of what we are doing on international trafficking? What we are doing is not as good as we want it to be; it is not good enough, but it is better than what we did before. That is fine, but it is not fine for the Government to produce something that is too much in the way of spin. That is sad and I expected more of this Government, and of any British Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

Yes, I will. My hon. Friend the Solicitor-General, who sits on the interdepartmental ministerial group, is obviously responsible for prosecution policy. If my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough gives me some specific examples of that policy perhaps having not been followed, of course I will look at them and, where appropriate, discuss them with the Solicitor-General to see whether we need to take further steps.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

About six months ago, I spoke at a meeting of the Thames Valley criminal justice association at which a number of defence barristers were present. They said that their universal experience was that young Vietnamese gardeners in cannabis factories were always prosecuted.

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Lady gives me a link into my next point, about children who are being ruthlessly abused to run cannabis farms. Again, the guidance from the Association of Chief Police Officers is clear. It says that we should look at the circumstances and be alert to the fact that the children may well have been trafficked. If that is the case, there should be a child welfare response rather than a criminal justice response. I absolutely hear what the hon. Lady says about whether that is actually happening in practice. I will speak to my hon. Friend the Solicitor-General to see what data there are about the position on the ground—I know we have gathered some from Crown prosecutors—to see whether we can be better informed. She is quite right: if people have been trafficked and are under duress, we should treat them not as criminals but as victims. That is what we intend to do and what the guidance says, but I accept that what is supposed to happen in theory does not always happen in practice.

The hon. Lady made a number of points. I am pleased that she is here, and I wish her a speedy and full recovery from the flu. I would not have known that she was ill apart from the odd cough. Her illness did not seem to detract from her performance. If that is how she performs when she is suffering from flu, woe betide me in the next debate when she is not.

Let me disabuse the hon. Lady of her main point. We absolutely did not try to bury this report. We chose to launch it to coincide with anti-slavery day. We did our very best to make people pay attention to it. We had some success on social media. We worked with NGOs to promote it and we did a very good piece on the BBC, which took this matter very seriously and covered it extensively on its news bulletins to raise awareness. I am pleased to talk about the report at every opportunity, and I do not think that we buried it at all.

I thought that the hon. Lady was a little unfair about the report, and, by the way, if she could only find two examples of what she called spin—I do not think that they were spin—she cannot say that this whole exercise is about saying that the Government are doing a great job. Genuinely, I looked at her two examples, and did not think that spin was a fair characterisation of the report or the way it outlines what the Government are doing. I am sorry she thinks that, because that is not in the spirit of the way in which we have engaged in this report. The report was an attempt to give a fair picture of some of the data that show what the Government are doing to develop a human trafficking strategy. I rebut what she says and feel just a bit disappointed.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

In what way does the Minister believe that the abolition of the domestic worker visa makes it less likely that people will be trafficked into domestic servitude?

[Mr Dai Havard (in the Chair)]

May I remind you, Mr Harper, that we must leave three minutes for Mr Bone?

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mark Harper and Fiona Mactaggart

Monday 15th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. I know from experience in my county that the difficult financial decisions that police authorities and chief constables have had to take can easily be combined with ensuring that there are more resources on the front line and that some of those excellent neighbourhood policing priorities are maintained. The election of police and crime commissioners will ensure that those neighbourhood-focused activities are not only continued but strengthened.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

Is the Minister aware of reports in the newspapers today that five mainly rural police authorities have found 26 million depraved examples of images of child abuse on the internet and elsewhere, at the same time as the budget for the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, which reported two and half times as many reports of child abuse this year as it did two years ago, is due to be cut by 10%. What is he going to do about that and will he reconsider the cuts to the funding for dealing with child abuse?

[Mr Harper]

I have briefly seen that report in the newspapers this morning. Of course, our plans to take CEOP into the National Crime Agency will enhance the ability of our police officers and crime fighters to deal with such images and such appalling crimes, which I am sure that everyone in the House would deprecate.

Immigration

Debate between Mark Harper and Fiona Mactaggart

Thursday 6th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames) for moving the motion, and his right hon. Friend—at least for the purposes of this debate—and co-sponsor, the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field). I also thank my predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green), for the many steps he took to start to put our immigration system in good order. I look forward to continuing that. My right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex referred to the cross-party group on balanced migration, and if I receive an invitation I will do my best to attend to discuss these matters.

This is a Back-Bench debate, so there is not a huge amount of time. I will not, therefore, be able to deal with every question, but I will consider the points made by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead and my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex, and I may well hold discussions with them at a later date.

The Government have been clear on their commitment to bring control to the immigration system. The rate of immigration over the past decade has led to great public anxiety about its impact on transport, jobs, employment, change within our communities and the provision of public services. We have promised to get a grip on the situation, and that is exactly what we will do.

I will reiterate the comments of the right hon. Member for Birkenhead and thank the Backbench Business Committee and those members of the public who signed a petition for giving me an opportunity—just 48 hours into the job—to listen to the concerns of hon. Members and set out some of the Government’s views.

In just over two years following the general election we have reformed every route of entry for non-EEA migrants to the UK. We have increased the level of skill required to come to the UK for work, tackled abuse in the student sector and stopped family migrants who cannot financially support themselves coming to the country. The hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) referred to family links, and our policy is designed to ensure that those who bring family members to the country do not require support from the taxpayer. People should be able to bring family members into the country, but I do not see why they should expect them to be supported by the taxpayer.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

My point was that the previous rules required people to provide evidence that they did not need support from the taxpayer. The new rules, however, state that they need an income of more than £22,400. Plenty of people in my constituency—about half my constituents—live on an income smaller than that, without recourse to the taxpayer.

[Mr Harper]

My understanding is that income limits are set because they are linked to qualification levels for various kinds of income-related benefits. That is why limits were introduced and I think that is perfectly sound.

We have also broken the link concerning migrants who come on temporary visas and stay in the country for ever. A work or study visa no longer acts as a route to settlement, and we have made it clear that those on temporary visas are expected to return home.

Many hon. Members have noted that immigration brings significant benefits to the UK—my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex made that clear in his remarks. There are cultural, social and economic benefits and, as the right hon. Member for Birkenhead pointed out, sporting benefits such as those we have seen recently.

The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart), with whom I duelled across the Dispatch Box in my previous post, celebrated multicultural Britain and I am therefore confused why he and his party wish to break it up. As he will know, I campaigned strongly in a previous role to keep our United Kingdom together—a wish I believe is generally shared across the House. The United Kingdom is better together, and I fervently hope that the campaign will be successful and that as Immigration Minister I will never have to deploy the UK Border Force along the England-Scotland border. The Government will do their best to keep our country together. The United Kingdom is better together, which the hon. Gentleman suggested when he celebrated it in his contribution. That belief is shared by those in the Chamber, expect perhaps by the hon. Gentleman and the hon. Member for Angus (Mr Weir) sitting next to him. Other hon. Members will, I think, agree with my sentiment.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Mark Harper and Fiona Mactaggart

Tuesday 10th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I very much agree with my right hon. Friend. Later today, I will have the opportunity to set out my views at greater length, which I hope the House will find interesting.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

3. What progress he expects to make on reform of the House of Lords; and if he will make a statement.

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Mr Mark Harper)]

On the very subject that we were just discussing, the House will this afternoon conclude day two of the debate on the House of Lords Reform Bill. I look forward to the House supporting our Bill, which builds on a lot of the work that was done by the Labour party. We heard some good speeches from Labour Members yesterday, including the right hon. Members for Neath (Mr Hain) and for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), in support of the Bill.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

If, as looks possible, the programme motion is defeated tonight, will the Minister promise the House that he will move an allocation of time or committal motion before the recess?

[Mr Harper]

If the hon. Lady is committed to reform, which I believe from her record she is, I hope that she will support all the motions relating to the Bill on the Order Paper so that we can make progress—something that the Labour party never managed, despite the good work that it did, in all the years that it was in office.

Cabinet Office

Debate between Mark Harper and Fiona Mactaggart

Wednesday 20th October 2010 Ministerial Corrections

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

Let me say that the ward does not send Labour councillors to the borough; it elects Liberals, so no particular borough advantage was involved. However, the change respected the views of people about their communities. The real problem with the latter part of the Bill is that it does not do that. It specifically says that unitary authority boundaries—and all the authorities in Berkshire are unitary authorities—shall not be counted as local authority boundaries, so they are absolutely irrelevant. It also says that inconvenience to voters that comes out of the first boundary review shall be discounted by the Boundary Commission.

[Official Report, 6 September 2010, Vol. 515, c. 115.]

[Mr Harper]

I can assure the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) that the reference in the Bill to “counties”, which she discussed, does include unitary authorities. So the Boundary Commission for England will be able to take into account the boundaries of all the unitary authorities in Berkshire as it draws up new constituency boundaries, subject to the issues relating to parity.

[Official Report, 6 September 2010, Vol. 515, c. 129.]

Letter of correction from Mark Harper:

An error has been identified in the response given to the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) on Second Reading of the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill on 6 September 2010.

The correct response should have been: “the reference in the Bill to “counties” does include unitary authorities but not those of Berkshire.”

Individual Electoral Registration

Debate between Mark Harper and Fiona Mactaggart

Wednesday 15th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that suggestion. I said in my statement that I wanted to work with local authorities and with Members of the House to promote electoral registration. His second idea is a very good one, and I shall think about it some more and see what we can do, ahead of the registration for this December, to make a significant impact.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

In my constituency, five Conservatives were jailed or convicted following illegal registrations. They will probably be the last people to be convicted of that, because Lydia Simmons, whose seat was stolen, still faces a legal bill of hundreds of thousands of pounds, which were not available because the Conservative party did not pay the costs of its representatives. When looking at this issue, will the Minister see whether there are ways of making funds available to prosecute criminally illegal registration in such cases? I should also like to ask whether he is changing the law when he says:

“Whether a person chooses to register or not should be their individual choice.”

I did not think that that was the case in law at present, and I wonder whether his statement is announcing a legal change

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Lady would not seriously expect me to comment on individual cases, particularly when I do not have the details of them. On her second point, people are not legally obliged to register to vote. If they receive inquiries from the local authority—the household registration form or some other inquiry—they are legally obliged to respond to them accurately, but there is no obligation on individuals to register at all. When registration is a household matter, and a person is responsible for registering other people, it is right that that should be obligatory, but when individuals take responsibility for their own registration, it is perfectly reasonable to say that it is up to them whether they choose to register— [Interruption.] We live in a free society, and people are entitled to decide whether they wish to be registered to vote and to cast their vote. That is the position today, and it will remain unchanged.