Government Policy on the Proceedings of the House

Debate between Mark Harper and Peter Bone

Tuesday 10th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I do not dispute the hon. Lady’s thing. All I can say is that I was quoting from Hansard, when the Liberal Democrat health spokesman said:

“I feel that as the sole Liberal Democrat present it is my duty to intervene.”—[Official Report, 13 September 2017; Vol. 628, c. 862.]

If that is inaccurate, that is a matter for the right hon. Gentleman and he should correct the record. That is not my responsibility.

On the motion on the national health service on the Order Paper, my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary laid out the facts about the importance of a strong economy in paying for the health service. He laid out a lot of important facts about our record on the health service, but actually he was not arguing that we should vote against the motion at all. He frequently said it was a bogus motion and that he did not want to engage with it, so I do not think that that can be said.

[Mr Bone]

I really have heard enough from the former Chief Whip. Parliament voted, Parliament made a decision. He cannot get away from that. Does my right hon. Friend not agree that if Parliament decides on something the Government should listen?

[Mr Harper]

Yes I do. I read the motion very carefully. It said that the Government should abandon the 1% pay cap; and my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, in her response to the debate, made it clear that the pay review bodies for the next financial year would have more flexibility—so, in effect, she confirmed that part of it.

The second part of the motion referred to NHS staff getting a fair pay rise. We all agree that NHS workers—indeed, public sector workers generally—should get a fair pay rise. The point of political debate is to ask what “fair” means. We have to balance affordability for the economy, what public sector workers need to get paid for recruitment, retention and morale purposes, and what those in the private sector, who pay taxes to pay for our public services, are being paid. If we read the motion, I think we find it was completely consistent with the Government’s policy, which I suspect is exactly why the Secretary of State for Health did not feel it was sensible to urge Conservative colleagues to vote against it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bone]

I am grateful for that intervention, but may I give the new Liberal Democrat Member some advice? He should never agree with me if he wants to progress in his party.

Let me go back to another false argument that was used today. There was criticism of the Liberal Democrats for not being here for certain votes, and I have on occasion pointed that fact out in this Chamber. However, if we extend that to say that only people in this Chamber who know what the debate is about can go and vote, we would have quite a lot of different results in this House. It is not a bad idea.

A business of the House committee would solve a lot of these problems. That was proposed by Wright. It was supported; it was Government policy. Unfortunately, it was not Whips’ policy, and that is both lots of Whips. Many of the problems we have would be solved by having such a committee.

I am not sure whether anyone from the Government will be winding up the debate, but it would be useful to have a commitment from them on this matter. On an Opposition or a Backbench business day, if the House votes on something—we did vote; it is just that no one opposed the motion, so there was no recorded Division—that is the will of this House of Parliament and we should have a Government response.

[Mr Harper]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Bone]

Give way to a former Chief Whip? Alright.

[Mr Harper]

Presumably, my hon. Friend is asking the Government to say something only if the House votes for something that is counter to the Government’s existing policy. My argument was that the motion on the NHS was completely consistent with the Government’s policy, which is of course why the Government did not oppose it.

[Mr Bone]

I am grateful to the former Chief Whip for his intervention. As usual, he will not expect me to say anything other than that I completely disagree with what he said. I am saying that, if the House expresses a view, a Minister should come to the Chamber. The Minister can stand up and say, “I absolutely agree with the motion”, if that is what it is, but that should happen if, on an Opposition day, on a substantive motion, the motion is carried.

The issue of circus animals is the best example we have had in the House. There is no doubt that the overwhelming majority in the House wanted something done about circus animals.

[Mr Bone]

I am sorry, I do not think I have time to take another intervention.

We really do need this to be done: the Government must take notice of what the House decides. It is a fact that, when the Backbench Business Committee came into being, the Government used to take it seriously. They used to vote on the motion. Then a former Leader of the House decided that it would be a good wheeze just to ignore votes and carry on. The reason we did not vote against the motion on circus animals—we can deny it as much as we like—is that we would have been defeated. It would be good in this parliamentary democracy if the Government on occasion were defeated. It would not be the end of the world and the Government would take note of it. That lot on the Opposition Benches would cry about it, but so what? Let us get used to it. This is Parliament. The people sitting here are not members of the Government—they are MPs sitting on the Government side. No one tells me how to vote.

[Mr Harper]

That is true.

[Mr Bone]

The former Chief Whip knows that. If I had wanted to, I could have been the only one to oppose the motion on that particular day. However, I did not feel like that.

This is not a wasted debate. It is a chance for parliamentarians to say that Parliament should come first and the Government should listen to what the House says when it votes.

Parliamentary Constituencies (Amendment) Bill

Debate between Mark Harper and Peter Bone

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 18th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

If my hon. Friend will forgive me, let me start to deal with the Bill, as I said I would. I shall deal specifically with the proposals set out by the hon. Member for North West Durham, and I want to make a bit of progress before giving way to my hon. Friend.

The first point raised by the hon. Member for North West Durham was about the number of MPs, and I think she completely failed to answer my question, which was to what question was the answer 50 more Members of Parliament. She did not tackle the cost of her proposals. The current law says that the number of MPs will fall from 650 to 600. Increasing that number by 50 would come at an estimated cost—I think she alluded to this in her remarks—of about £10 million to £12 million a year. That means about £60 million across the Parliament. I heard no proposals from the hon. Lady about how that was to be paid for or any reason why the proposal was a good one at all.

[Mr Bone]

I wonder how my right hon. Friend came up with that figure. If we as Members of Parliament will have more work to do and more areas to cover, we will presumably have more expenses. Could it be that the figure produced by my right hon. Friend is fictitious?

[Mr Harper]

I do not agree with my hon. Friend. The figure is based on how much MPs claim at the moment and how much we are paid in salary. What my hon. Friend needs to remember is that there is currently a massive disparity between MPs in Welsh constituencies, for example, who have fewer than 50,000 electors, and others. Those Welsh Members are already in a part of the United Kingdom where a huge amount of domestic policy areas are dealt with not by them at all, but by Members of the Welsh Assembly. They get the same level of support as my hon. Friend, yet he has to serve a much larger constituency in terms of electors—and he serves them very diligently indeed. In England, there is not a devolved Administration, so English MPs have to cover the full range of domestic policy areas. I think it would be perfectly possible to deal with the fewer number of MPs without seeing a significant increase in the expenses budget for each of us. Those MPs who currently have very small constituencies will have to deal with no more constituents than many of us already have to deal with.

[Mr Harper]

Let me first deal with the seemingly reasonable points about the House of Lords made by the hon. Member for North West Durham. She made a couple of points. First—big tick here—I was, of course, the Minister responsible in the last Parliament for securing a much smaller, democratically elected and less costly House of Lords. I received a great deal of support, but not from Labour Members. If Labour Members had given their support to the programme motion that we would have brought forward, we would have been able to reform the House of Lords and have a democratically elected Chamber. That did not take place.

[Mr Bone]

No.

[Mr Harper]

I know that not all Conservative Members were enormously enthusiastic about it, but the fact is that we were not able to make that proposal.

[Mr Bone]

Will my right hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Harper]

Go on.

[Mr Bone]

We cannot allow this myth to carry on. The Second Reading of the House of Lords Reform Bill got the biggest majority of that Parliament. The fact is that the Government did not move the programme motion, so we do not know what would have happened. It should absolutely not have been programmed, as it was a constitutional Bill that should have been gone through line by line. Any parliamentarian such as my great right hon. Friend should have supported that.

[Mr Harper]

I will answer my hon. Friend’s question, but not at length, as I do not want to try your patience, Madam Deputy Speaker. My hon. Friend is right that Second Reading was well supported, but we had clear indications that the programme motion would not have been supported by Opposition Members, so the Government—quite rightly, in view of all the other challenges we faced—were not prepared to risk other legislation not getting through Parliament as a result. We were not able to make progress.

What the hon. Member for North West Durham needs to recognise, as my hon. Friend the Member for Pendle (Andrew Stephenson) said, is that the cost of the House of Lords has reduced since 2010—it has fallen, not increased. Since last year’s general election, there has been a net change in the size of the House of Lords of only 14 peers. What the hon. Lady forgets is that Members of the House of Lords are now able to retire and that a disproportionate number of those retiring are Conservative peers. It is true that there was a significant increase in the 2010 Parliament, but that was, of course, under a coalition Government, and a significant number of the new peers were Liberal Democrats.

Votes at 16

Debate between Mark Harper and Peter Bone

Tuesday 6th May 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Harper]

Although I used to be a great fan of tidying things up, one of the things that I have learned in my time in politics is that life is quite complicated and that some of those anomalies exist for very good reasons. For example, although the hon. Lady said earlier that people can get married and have children at 16, and it is perfectly right that they can legally do so, I do not think there are very many people who would advocate doing so or say that, as a general rule, it is a good idea for 16-year-olds to get married and start a family. I think that most people would consider that 16 is rather too young for someone to do that.

Also, regarding the hon. Lady’s point about children having sex and watching sex, I hope that she is not suggesting that the age at which children can participate in pornography should be reduced. As I said, I am very happy that the age for that is set at 18, which is not the same as the age at which people may have sex, for very good child protection reasons. Again, the trend has been against any reduction in the age at which children can participate in pornography.

All of the rules on age may not be logical and tidy, but a lot of them exist for very sensible reasons. The hon. Lady says that she would like to tidy some of the rules up. Some of the arguments about increasing the age at which people can buy tobacco and do a whole bunch of other things—use sun beds, for example—were championed by her party. I am perfectly happy to accept that there are people who think that we should change the legal age for doing lots of things to a lower level, and if they want to reduce the voting age as well, that seems logical and consistent. However, I find it very odd that people who support raising the age at which we let people legally do things such as using sun beds and purchasing tobacco—it is perfectly sensible to hold that view—simultaneously hold the view that people should be able to vote at a younger age. It is not logically sensible to hold both those views; to do so seems to make no sense at all. If someone votes, they are making decisions about who governs the country, about tax rates, about where we deploy armed forces and about all sorts of important issues. If people think that young people are capable of making those sorts of decisions, I do not see how they can also say that young people cannot purchase a packet of cigarettes. That does not seem to make any sense at all.

Let me just pick up on the point that the Electoral Commission made, which has been mentioned. In 2004, the commission published the results of a review that it had carried out on the age of electoral majority; the review took 12 months and was pretty extensive, and it was set up under the previous Government. Having carried out that research, the commission concluded that the minimum voting age should stay at 18. That conclusion was based on international comparisons; on the minimum age limits and maturity, although as I have already said the maturity issue is not one that I am particularly focusing on; and on research that the commission had carried out among the public, which suggested there was strong support for keeping the minimum voting age at 18 and which also showed that young people themselves were divided on the question. I will come back to that last point in a moment, because I have a relevant story about it of my own; it is similar to that told by my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), but has a different conclusion.

The commission also referred to voter turnout, although I have to say that the argument about voter turnout is not my strongest argument; just because people between the age of 18 and 25 turn out to vote at very low levels, that is not in itself an argument against reducing the voting age. Having said that, it is an odd argument that lowering the voting age will engage more people, because there is no evidence that suggests that 16 to 18-year-olds would turn out to vote in higher numbers than those aged between 18 and 25.

The commission recommended that the candidacy age should be brought into line with the voting age and thus be reduced from 21 to 18. That is a very sensible proposal. It seems to me that if someone is able to vote and make a decision about who their representatives are, they ought to be able to stand to be one of those representatives themselves. The House has debated the issue previously and I know that a number of younger people have been elected to local authorities, although no one under the age of 21 has been elected to the House of Commons. As I say, the suggestion seems perfectly sensible, but it prompts a question. If someone believes in reducing the voting age to 16, do they also believe that 16 to 18-year-olds ought to be able to be candidates at elections? I genuinely do not know the views of the hon. Lady and the Parliamentary Secretary on that issue; the hon. Gentleman might like to fill us in on what the Liberal Democrat view is.

Let me deal briefly with a number of the arguments that the hon. Lady made. The one that I thought was not very sensible was about the various previous campaigns about voting—for example, the campaigns to enfranchise women, first the campaign to enfranchise women generally, and then, of course, the campaign to reduce the voting age for women after they were enfranchised at a higher age level than many people wanted. That question arose when we were debating the private Member’s Bill on voting age. There is an obvious difference between enfranchising women and reducing the voting age. Unless something horrible happens, a 16-year-old will become an 18-year-old in due course and will then be able to vote. Women, who were unable to vote were never going to be anything other than women and therefore were never going to be able to vote. So giving the vote to women is qualitatively different from giving the vote to children, because a 16-year-old may not be able to vote today but will of course be able to vote in two years’ time.

That point relates to the issue that my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham, who is no longer in his place, raised earlier. As an MP, like all hon. Members, I am sure, I visit youth projects and schools. I visit schools right down to primary schools, where I talk to very young children, and right up to secondary schools, including sixth forms, where there are students who are old enough to vote today. I treat all the young people I meet with great respect. First, I respect them in themselves; we debate and have arguments. Secondly, I am of course very well aware as an elected Member that if I am talking to a 13-year-old today, in five years’ time that person will indeed be casting a vote. When I was first elected to the House in 2005 and I went round schools, I was very clear that in 2010, when I would be seeking re-election, any 13-year-olds to whom I spoke would indeed have a vote and would be able to make a decision on my future.

Consequently, I just do not follow the argument that just because someone is not entitled to vote today that we pay no attention to their views, because we only pay attention to people who can vote. I pay attention to the views of all my constituents. Some of my constituents—for example, Jehovah’s Witnesses—do not vote because they choose not to, but I still listen to their views and take their arguments seriously. About 30% of my constituents chose not to vote at the last general election, but when people come to me to state their views on something, I never engage in a conversation with them about whether they are likely to vote for me. I treat everyone’s views with great respect and I am sure that that is true of all Members, so the idea that we do not listen to young people and we do not pay attention to what they think—that we do not think about tuition fees, education or similar things just because young people under the age of 18 are not able to vote—does not hold water.

We have to set the line somewhere, and I think that the right place to set it is the age of majority—the age of 18—when we basically decide that children become adults. That is where I think the line is best left. I do not think that that means that we do not engage with children in debates and arguments in schools and colleges; I and all other Members do engage with children in that way perfectly well. Also, those who campaign on this issue because they think that it will in some way pay an electoral dividend for them—I am not putting the hon. Member for Rotherham in that category—should, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster said, be careful what they wish for. If we treat young people with respect and engage them in the argument, they will have more respect for us than if we just agree with something that some of them think because we consider that it will make us more popular. As I say, I do not put the hon. Lady in that category. The voting age should stay where it is—at 18—and I am against what the hon. Lady is proposing.

[Mr Peter Bone (in the Chair)]

Order. It might help right hon. and hon. Members to know that I would like to start the wind-ups at 10.40 am.

Immigration (Bulgaria and Romania)

Debate between Mark Harper and Peter Bone

Thursday 19th December 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Bone]

Go on!

[Mr Harper]

Tempting though I find the invitation from my hon. Friend to say more, I will just observe this: we were not, as we have discovered, blessed by the presence of any Liberal Democrats in this debate, but I note that there were only two Labour Back Benchers here—sadly, neither is here now. Interestingly, both support a referendum on our membership of the EU, and both attended the House on a Friday to support the excellent European Union (Referendum) Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (James Wharton). The right hon. Member for Delyn is a little isolated: the only Labour Members who were here today, aside from him, are in favour of a referendum on our EU membership, want us to renegotiate that membership, and were willing to vote for that excellent Bill. Perhaps he should reflect on that and think about whether it might be more sensible for the Labour party to change its official position to support the Prime Minister when he leads that renegotiation after we win the general election with a Conservative majority Government, and then support us when we put that new position to the people.

I will say a few words on our record. We have reduced net migration. I will act as referee between my hon. Friends the Members for Bournemouth East, and for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless): net migration is down by nearly a third since its peak. My hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood was right about the latest figures, but what my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East said was correct before those came out. The reduction is now nearly a third, rather than over a third. Non-European economic area migration is at its lowest level for 14 years, and is back to the level that it was at when we were last in power by ourselves. That is significant progress.

[Mr Harper]

It depends on the sort of visa applications. Some people coming to Britain do not count as immigrants, because they are not here for a long enough period of time. I will have to check the information, but my understanding is that our visa numbers suggest that the downward trend on non-EU migration will continue, based on our reforms. It is right to say—this goes to the heart of the debate—that the reason for the increase in the last set of figures was an increase in migration from the European Union, but not from eastern Europe. Interestingly, it was from the more traditional countries—the western European countries, with which there is not a massive disparity in GDP, although our economy has been rather more successful than theirs in creating jobs.

My hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley made a key point about employment. We might disagree about the solution, but his concern is well placed. My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East made this point strongly, too. Between 2003 and 2008, when the economy was growing under the previous Government, more than 90% of employment growth was accounted for by foreign nationals. Yes, the economy was growing under Labour, but the benefit was largely going to people who were not UK citizens—not the people for whom we all work. We have made a difference. Since the Government came to power, our immigration and welfare reforms have made it more worth while for British citizens to be in work.

Our skills agenda, more rigorous education and more apprenticeships are helping to make a difference. Since the second quarter of 2010, there has been a 1.1 million net increase in employment, and more than three quarters of that rise in employment has been accounted for by UK nationals, so the employment growth that we have seen since we came to power has largely benefited UK citizens, which is a significant turnaround. It is exactly what we wanted to achieve, and it is being achieved not only by the Home Office, but by our policies on immigration, on welfare, and on apprenticeships, training and education, which are all aligned and delivering the same outcome. That is significant, and it means that hundreds of thousands of families in Britain today have somebody in employment; they would not have had somebody in employment if the policies followed by the Labour had continued. That is welcome, and it is something of which we can be proud.

We are still committed to bringing down net migration. My hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood referred to the Prime Minister’s remarks. Just to be clear, he was drawing attention to the difficulty of the task, particularly given the problems in some of our western and southern European neighbours’ economies. In the interview, he reasserted the importance of delivering on our policy; he was simply drawing attention to the fact that it is a little more difficult than we had first thought, because of the difficulty in the European economies, but we are absolutely still committed to the policy.

It is worth putting the numbers in context. It is still the case with our reforms that, even having driven down migration from outside the European Union, 48% of immigration to Britain is from outside the EU, compared to 36% from the EU; the remainder are British citizens who have been overseas for more than a year and are returning to the United Kingdom. We should remember that many British citizens go to other European countries. According to the 2010 figures, there were 2.2 million EU nationals in the UK and 1.4 million Brits in EU countries. Interestingly, only five European Union countries have more than 100,000 citizens in the United Kingdom, and it is not the ones people might think: France, Germany, Ireland, Italy and Poland. In the case of Ireland, there are historical reasons not connected to the EU. Poland is the only non-traditional country that has a significant number, which is 500,000.

If we balance the figures with the countries in which our citizens live, there are only two European Union countries where the net number of EU citizens in the United Kingdom is more than 100,000. There are 145,000 more Germans living in Britain than vice versa, and Poland has a significant number—519,000 more. Of course, Spain is the opposite way round: there are 750,000 more Brits living in Spain. It is worth putting that in context, so that we can have the rational, sensible debate that the right hon. Member for Delyn talked about.

Turning to the specific points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley, and to his new clause to the Immigration Bill, it is worth remembering—I agree with the right hon. Member for Delyn on this point—that for that Bill to take effect, it has to go through our House and the other place. Whether we had debated the new clause this side of Christmas or the other side of Christmas, it would have made no difference, because the measure cannot become law until the Bill progresses through Parliament, and that is not likely to happen until towards the end of this Session. As the Leader of the House has said, the legislative agenda is quite packed. Only yesterday, five or six Acts of Parliament got Royal Assent, and—this is rather above my pay grade, so I have to be very careful, because the usual channels are in the room—the business will be scheduled in due course, but it will not make a difference to when the measure becomes law.

I fear that the right hon. Member for Delyn is right: the previous Government signed the accession treaties and we supported them. Of course I am not pretending that we did not support them. The treaty came into effect in 2007, and the seven-year transitional controls expire at the end of the year. It is worth being careful about language. We are not lifting them; they expire. They cease to have any legal effect, because of the terms of the accession treaties. I am not doing anything to lift them; they simply become legally ineffective at the end of the year, because of the provisions.

[Mr Bone]

Will the Minister give way on that point?

[Mr Harper]

If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I am trying to cover the points made in the debate. I have listened to the debate, and I only have three and a half minutes to try to cover the other points that people have raised.

Unlike the previous Government, who chose not to apply controls, we have extended them to the maximum length possible, so I feel that the strategy of my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley is not going to work. Although it is perfectly reasonable for colleagues to have concerns, I hope that they will have seen—of course, I knew these things were in the pipeline when we debated them in Committee, which, obviously, my hon. Friend did not—the order that I signed a couple of weeks ago, which puts in place tough rules about limiting jobseeker’s allowance to six months. It puts in place the controls that I talked about in response to points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering and the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey).

We will be able to remove, and stop returning to Britain, people who are here not exercising their treaty rights—who are here begging, rough sleeping and engaged in criminality. If Members look at some of those tough changes, they will see that they address things that our constituents are concerned about, so I urge Members who have signed the new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley, and those who have not done so, to look at the changes that we have brought forward. I think that they will see that they address many of their concerns.

My right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary have laid out their thinking about the discussions we need to have on the new accession countries and free movement generally. We can have that negotiation only when there is a new Government. We are constrained by the coalition with our Liberal Democrat colleagues. The renegotiation strategy is not the current Government’s policy, but it is the Conservative party’s policy, which we will put before the people at the election.

The final point is that we should remember that the transitional controls are about employment. A significant number of people—102,000 Romanians and 53,000 Bulgarians—are already here, according to the Office for National Statistics. They are working, or are self-employed, self-sufficient or studying. They are already in Britain. As one or two hon. Members suggested, some people already here might not entirely be doing what they purport to be doing. They might be working. We might find that they regularise their status in the new year. The point is that the controls are about whether people can work, not whether they can come to Britain. People can come to Britain for three months, but they can stay only if they are exercising treaty rights. We have given ourselves the power to remove people if they are here not exercising treaty rights—not working, studying or being self-sufficient—and we can stop them coming back to the UK to cause damage.

We want people who come here to work, contribute and pay taxes. The legislative changes that we will make with the Immigration Bill, and that we have made in secondary legislation, address the concerns. I urge hon. Members to study the changes. If they do so, they will be reassured that the Government are taking the tough action that our constituents want. We have a good story to tell our constituents.

Question put and agreed to.

Human Trafficking

Debate between Mark Harper and Peter Bone

Thursday 20th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Harper]

I accept that, but I felt slightly beaten up about the question whether the interdepartmental ministerial group was effective. I was also worried by the almost unanimously positive comments from Opposition Members about me and my future career—it is never good when Opposition Members over-praise Ministers; I always think that does us great harm—but I will take them in the spirit in which I am sure they were intended.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough and the right hon. Member for Birkenhead raised the question of data and of really understanding this issue, which is something I have raised internally. The cases referred through the national referral mechanism are only the tip of the iceberg. Globally, reports suggest that many millions of people are affected in the trade. One task that I have given my officials is to crunch those numbers and to understand the true picture, including how that plays out across the country.

As some Members have said—my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire made the point powerfully—and as the NGOs that I have met have echoed, the problem is not just in inner cities or parts of the country where people think this sort of thing goes on. On anti-slavery day, I met several people from what some might call leafy parts of the country, such as Surrey, who had seen this activity happening. They felt that, as my hon. Friend said, it is important to get people to think about the issue, to understand that it might be going on in their street or round the corner, and to be alert to what they should look for.

On data and understanding the problem, it is important to get the public to understand that there is an issue—picking up the point made by the hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk (Michael Connarty): telling a constituent why it matters to them, and making them understand that—and to focus on it. That, in turn, picks up the point made by the hon. Member for Luton South (Gavin Shuker) about pressures on police forces and constabularies. People must understand that this is a big problem and that there are interconnections, in that people involved in trafficking are also involved in wider organised crime. This big economic problem generates lots of money that is then used for other criminal activities. It is not a small problem located in one place; it is very wide and police forces ought to take it seriously.

I will not go through this issue at length, but it is worth saying on police and crime commissioners—I take the point made by the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) that they have been in existence for not quite a month—that the Government are making sure they are aware of their national responsibilities as well as their purely local ones. In other words, they must be aware of the types of crime with a national or international dimension that will impact on them, so that, in setting priorities, they understand that their police forces must think about such matters.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough mentioned the National Crime Agency. It will have within it the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, the Human Trafficking Centre and the Border Policing Command. It will be a repository of good intelligence gathering and an analysis operation. It will have its own operational police and law enforcement officers but, as my hon. Friend said, it will also have the ability, if necessary, to task police forces for particular operations. Clearly, it will be much better if it engages such police forces by debating and explaining the issue and getting them on board voluntarily, but it also has a tasking power that may ultimately be important, certainly in getting people to pay attention, as my hon. Friend rightly said.

My hon. Friend and other Members raised the issue of the protection of children, which the Government take very seriously. The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) spoke about training in the UK Border Force and the UK Border Agency. On meeting front-line Border Force officers who are at the primary checkpoints as people come into the country, and the staff of the UKBA, I have been struck by how aware they are of the child protection issue and the need to be alert to it, of all the signs of children travelling with people who are not their parents, and of what we need to put in place to protect those children. I am not saying we are perfect—we can always do better—but I have been pleasantly surprised by that. Before doing this job, I was not really aware of how much training and expertise is available at the border for those officers as people enter the country. As I have said, I am sure we can do more, but we are very focused on that area.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough also raised the issue of how we look after adult victims of trafficking. We have the contract with the Salvation Army to look after adult victims because there was no existing process for looking after them. There is an established mechanism for child protection that, as my hon. Friend said, is delivered through local government. I absolutely heard what he said about its effectiveness. There have recently been several cases in which—if we are in any doubt—we can see that trafficked children are not always well looked after by local government. I listened carefully to the examples he gave of projects that are under way to find a better approach. I do not want to prejudge their outcomes, but I assure him that I and other members of the ministerial group will consider those results closely to see whether there is a better way. He specifically referred to the Barnado’s pilot project for safe homes for children, and that and various other pilots will provide us with evidence about what works best, and we will be guided by what the evidence shows is effective.

Another thing worth saying is that the failures there have been will drive change in how we deliver care for children generally. Not only have trafficked children not been as well protected in the care sector as they might have been, but many UK-based children who have not been trafficked end up not being well looked after. We will need to see what various reports suggest the Government should do instead before we respond. The protection of children is one of the most important things—my hon. Friend said it was the single most important thing—and that feeling was generally shared by the Members who have spoken.

My hon. Friend also flagged up that the report did not specifically mention the all-party group on human trafficking or the Human Trafficking Foundation. I assure him that, if so, that very much falls into the cock-up and not the conspiracy camp. There was certainly no deliberate intention not to mention them, and he was right to put on the record what he said about the Human Trafficking Foundation, which I have already echoed. He was too modest to mention, although others did, the excellent work of the all-party parliamentary group—that is not a catchy description either. It is important and helpful to get together people from across Parliament not only to take evidence, but to visit other countries and see what goes on. In a previous debate, my hon. Friend invited me to attend a meeting of the all-party group and if he wishes me to do so at an appropriate time, I would be delighted to attend, both to listen and to talk.

The hon. Member for Linlithgow and East Falkirk mentioned child guardians, which we have not introduced because there are existing mechanisms. However, I have signed off funding for the Refugee Council and the Children’s Society, which he mentioned, to undertake a joint independent scoping review of the practical care arrangements for trafficked children in care. That will look at the experience of trafficked children and practitioners to find examples of how people have been treated in the care system, and will report by the end of spring 2013. When we commissioned the report, we wanted something that told us about the experience of real children who have been through the system rather than a piece of desk research. We will look very carefully at the evidence to see whether it leads us to change policy in this area.

There are trafficked victims who end up undertaking criminal activity. We want to protect them and ensure that they are not turned into criminals. Let me be clear: if the circumstances of the arrest, or the evidence referred to by a prosecutor, suggest that someone may have been trafficked, the guidance is clear, as was I think acknowledged. In such a case, prosecutors should obtain further information, and work with the police to get more evidence. Where there is evidence that a suspect has been under duress, the prosecutor should not proceed. That is clear in theory, but I understand the concerns of Members about the extent to which that theoretical plan is carried through in practice.

[Mr Bone]

If non-governmental organisations provide me with specific cases of people being prosecuted when they should not have been, will the Minister undertake to look into them?

[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.

Fixed-term Parliaments Bill

Debate between Mark Harper and Peter Bone

Thursday 8th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

Listening to the Minister’s opening remarks, I entirely agreed with him that there was no need for a sunset clause, but shortly afterwards he spoke of a review allowing the opportunity for such a clause. If there is no need for it—I agree with him on that—why bother to table the amendment? Moreover, I do not think that it will be possible for the Prime Minister to organise a review in 2020, because by then there will be a House business committee, and it will be for it to make the decision.

[Mr Harper]

The amendment in lieu does not concern a sunset provision. If the committee that was set up, having examined the operation of the Act and of fixed terms, concluded that the Act should be amended or, indeed, repealed, it could make such recommendations, but Parliament would then have to go through the full normal legislative process, with its checks and balances. There would not be a simple on-off provision that could be triggered in some constitutionally innovative way.

As for my hon. Friend’s point about the House business committee, it would of course deal with the business of the House. The committee set up by the Prime Minister would have to consist of a certain number of Members of Parliament—although it would not be composed entirely of Members of Parliament—to make recommendations. It would not deal with the timetabling of parliamentary business. My hon. Friend is, of course, a big supporter of both the Backbench Business Committee and the establishment of a House business committee.

United Kingdom Parliamentary Sovereignty Bill

Debate between Mark Harper and Peter Bone

Friday 18th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

I believe that my hon. Friend is correct in saying that the explanatory notes have changed, so I am of course happy to agree on that fact. There are still matters of debate, but you will be pleased to know that I will not repeat those, Mr Deputy Speaker, because this is not a debate on the European Union Bill. I want to touch on issues other than the European Union because the Bill before us goes much wider, and there are other reasons why it should be opposed by Members.

[Mr Bone]

May I ask the Conservative Minister whether he stood on a manifesto at the last election that pledged that a United Kingdom parliamentary sovereignty Bill would be introduced if he was a member of the next Government? Has he changed his position?

[Mr Harper]

I dealt with that point when I intervened on my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Mr Cash). Conservative Members stood on a manifesto that made a number of commitments. Indeed, he put it quite well in saying that we sought from the British people a mandate to do certain things. As I pointed out to my hon. Friends, much to our disappointment we did not get that mandate from the British people to the extent that we had hoped. We fell short, and that is why we formed a coalition Government. The coalition Government have set out our agreed programme. It contains quite a lot of what we wanted to do in our manifesto, and some of what the Liberal Democrats wanted to do in theirs, but we were not able to agree on all of it. The British people failed to give us that mandate so we are not able to do everything that we set out in our manifesto. That is disappointing—I find it disappointing and my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) finds it disappointing. However, we are democrats and we have to live with the decisions of the British people.

[Mr Bone]

Look, there are not very many people here. People have gone home and nobody is really listening. Why does the Minister not give his own personal view rather than the coalition view on whether the United Kingdom Parliamentary Sovereignty Bill would be a good thing?

[Mr Harper]

As my hon. Friend knows, I am here to set out clearly what the Government’s view is. I would never say, just because there may not be many Members present in the Chamber, that words spoken in this House are not heard far and wide. We should be very careful about what we say and should weigh our words carefully, particularly when speaking in a Chamber of a sovereign Parliament.

I hesitate to say this because I am sure that it will provoke my hon. Friend the Member for Stone, but I think it is worth saying that the Minister for Europe dealt with the issue of sovereignty in detail in relation to clause 18 of the European Union Bill in this House and in the European Scrutiny Committee. He said that the Government’s view was that an amendment that my hon. Friend the Member for Stone tabled, which was similar to what is in this Bill, would have invited exactly the sort of speculative consideration by judges that my hon. Friend feared. It is the Government’s view that the approach in this Bill would make things worse rather than better.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bone]

The Parliamentary Secretary seems to be making specific points, which are more relevant to Committee. This is a Second Reading debate about the principle and we should not be discussing the detail. He should do that in Committee with us.

[Mr Harper]

I disagree. A disappointing aspect of the debate—I was disappointed even if no one else was—is that, in their comprehensive speeches, my hon. Friends the Members for Christchurch and for Stone spent much time on some issues, but little time on the actual Bill. I thought it was important to draw the House’s attention to the consequences of passing the measure and why the Government will oppose it if it is pressed to a Division.

The debate was helpful but the Government have concluded that, rather than strengthening and upholding parliamentary sovereignty, the Bill would undermine it for the reasons that I and others have set out. I therefore urge my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch to withdraw it. If he does not and he tests the House’s opinion, I urge hon. Members to oppose it.

Parliament (Amendment) Bill

Debate between Mark Harper and Peter Bone

Friday 4th March 2011 Commons Chamber

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

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) on bringing this Bill, as well as the Further and Higher Education (Access) Bill, before the House on one Friday. Thinking back to the time when he and I were in opposition, I do not remember him being as keen for private Members’ Bills to make progress as he is when his own name is attached to them. I seem to remember that he was keen for them to make little progress.

The speech from the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) was probably the shortest Friday speech that I have ever heard from him. He used to wax lyrical on Fridays.

One of my hon. Friend’s key points in his opening remarks on the Bill was how widely those views were shared. I note that his Bill has 11 supporters on both sides of the House. I looked carefully around the House as my hon. Friend was setting out his case. He may correct me if I am wrong, but I did not manage to spy a single one of the 11 supporters of the Bill who had troubled themselves to attend the House today to lend their support in person. My hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) is looking at me askance, but I look carefully at the names on the Bill and I do not see his name among them.

[Mr Bone]

I and other Members were eager to sign our names to the Bill, but unfortunately there was no space. We would probably have had about 100 names on it otherwise.

[Mr Harper]

I take my hon. Friend’s point, but if he is correct—I have no reason to think otherwise—about the incredible support for the Bill, it is surprising that of the 11 Members who beat him in getting their names attached to the Bill, none of them have troubled themselves to be here. Given that my hon. Friend has taken the trouble to be present, he might want to have a conversation with some of those who supported the Bill.

Prisoners (Voting Rights)

Debate between Mark Harper and Peter Bone

Tuesday 11th January 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend makes a helpful point by referring to the Greens and M.T. judgment. This comes down to what several Members have said about whether we have the option of doing what the previous Government did, which was nothing. I am afraid that we do not. In that judgment, the Court gave the UK Government six months from the date that the judgment becomes final to introduce proposals. I can say to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) that there are various ways of dealing with it, but the Government will introduce primary legislation in the House. That should deal with questions raised by several Members, including my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), who is a member of the Backbench Business Committee. Proposals for primary legislation will be put before the House, and Members will have an opportunity to debate them fully. We will not try to think of a different way to implement the judgment, but we want to ensure that we have a debate in the House.

[Mr Bone]

When?

[Mr Harper]

In terms of the timetable, we have to introduce proposals, not pass them. The Government’s responsibility is to introduce the proposals before 23 August this year; in other words, before the House rises for the summer recess. The Court has suspended the 2,500 or so cases of people claiming damages on the basis that we will introduce proposals within the time limit. If we fail to do so, the cases will be revived and there will then be a serious risk that the Government will be faced with paying damages.

Let me deal with some other questions. To respond to my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering—this is his debate—the problem would not be fixed by somehow getting rid of the Human Rights Act 1998. Even if we were to sweep it away tomorrow, we would still be a party to the European convention on human rights and the ruling would stand. The debate on the Act is important, but it is not relevant to this matter.

My hon. Friend asked whether the UK was being singled out. We have to act because British prisoners took cases to the Court, on which it has ruled. Some of the other countries that still have a blanket ban have not been put in that position. If no prisoners had brought a case against the UK Government, we would not be acting. We are acting only because of the legal judgment. The hon. Member for Rhondda said that it had been his Government’s preference to do nothing. It is our preference to do nothing, but we face a legal obligation.

Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill (Programme) (No. 2)

Debate between Mark Harper and Peter Bone

Tuesday 12th October 2010 Commons Chamber

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

I look forward to a rigorous debate on the issues in the Bill during its Committee stage. I am grateful to the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee—whose Chairman, the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) is in his place—for the report that it published yesterday and for the considerable amount of work that it put into taking evidence from, among others, the Deputy Prime Minister and myself. Concerns were expressed about the amount of time available to the Committee, but that was clearly not a barrier to its producing a comprehensive report, and I thank all the members of the Committee for their diligence.

The motion before us allows for five days of debate on the Floor of the House. I know that some Members have expressed concern that there will not be enough time to debate the provisions in the Bill, and we have tried to keep rigid programming to a minimum. As I said on Second Reading, however, we want to ensure—we have taken steps to do so in the programme motion—that the House will be able to debate and vote on the key issues raised by the Bill. In our view, the programme motion will allow that.

For this 17-clause Bill, we have proposed five full days of Committee on the Floor of the House and two days for Report, which we think adequately recognises the importance of the issues. We have had discussions through the usual channels with the Opposition, who have not presented any objections to the timetable.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the progress he is making with this Bill, but will he explain why there is closure at 11 o’clock this evening? This is a constitutional Bill of vital importance, so why should we not be able to talk for as long as we want on the issues today?

[Mr Harper]

Given the previous Government’s record on this matter, I would have thought that my hon. Friend would recognise that we are allowing extra time today to take account of the fact that we have just had a rightly lengthy and well attended statement. We granted extra time so that that statement did not unduly eat into the time available for debating this Bill. As I said, I would have thought that my hon. Friend, given his concern for Parliament, would have welcomed the progress made. We may not have gone as far as he would have wished, but I think that even he would recognise that we have gone some way further than the previous Administration did. I see him nodding his assent.