Home Affairs

Mark Lazarowicz Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

The hon. Gentleman’s intervention gives me an opportunity to tell the House that it is not true that the number of staff at the Passport Office has gone down; the number has gone up. In the first few months of this year, we saw a significant increase in the number of applications for passports, both renewals and new passports, and I am pleased to say that even given the unprecedented levels of applications, we are still meeting the service standards of 97% of straightforward applications being returned within three weeks, and 99% being returned within four weeks. We are not complacent. We continue to consider whether further contingency measures need to be put in place, should the significant increase in applications that we saw in the first few months of this year continue. I recognise the importance of this issue for the hon. Gentleman’s constituents and for mine.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

Surely the Home Secretary will know from her own constituency experience that there has been a big increase in such problems in the last few weeks. Has she not seen that in her constituency?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

Before my main comments, I want to say a few words about the crisis in the Passport Office, about which some hon. Friends have already spoken. I was disappointed that at the start of the debate the Home Secretary did not seem to take this issue very seriously. It has attracted considerable media attention in the past few days, but I—and, I suspect, practically every other MP—have been grappling with it for weeks, as we have dealt with more and more people whose holidays and work have faced disruption and cancellation because their passport applications have been delayed and who are making inquiries but are unable to find out what has been going on, with the whole process causing great stress and worry. I could refer to many examples, but I will not go into them in detail given the pressures of time.

I have had more problems with the Passport Office over the past three weeks, as a Member of Parliament, than in the previous 13 years. Bluntly, the Government need to take action to sort this out, or lots of holidays will be ruined and business opportunities lost. This mess should have been sorted out months ago. If management and Ministers had been on top of their jobs, they should have realised there was a problem long ago and taken the necessary action. Let me be clear: this is not the fault of the front-line staff in the Passport Office, who have clearly been overwhelmed by a situation not of their making. They have been very courteous and helpful when my staff have made inquiries. The source of the problem is clearly at the very top, with, I suspect, cutbacks being a major contributory factor. I suspect that it is also the result of a Secretary of State whose focus, to put it kindly, has been directed elsewhere. I hope that the Minister will give some indication of taking this more seriously and ensuring that action is taken to deal with the problem and the backlog.

The main thrust of my comments is on the wider issue of immigration policy. I welcome the clear commitment given by my party leader and my Front Benchers to reject anti-immigrant rhetoric and promote policies that deal with the real issues of migration. Many people have concerns about immigration; I hear them frequently in my constituency. Some of those concerns can be well-founded, and they must be addressed. This debate should be based on facts, as many Members have said. The fact is that the many people who are immigrants, or descended from immigrants, make, with only few exceptions, a positive and beneficial contribution to our society and our community. They make a direct contribution through the taxes that they pay. They often provide key workers in sectors of the public service, such as the health service, and have proved vital to many private sector businesses as well. They have made, and still make, important contributions to our culture and our sporting life, to the academic world and research, and to much else besides—even, indeed, to our political life in this Chamber and beyond. That is not surprising, because, reflecting our history, our country has always been a country of migrants, whether from Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean or many other parts of the world. That is the nature of our society and our country, and it is a source of strength, not weakness.

Inevitably, the arrival in any part of this country—in any country of the world—of large numbers of incomers over a relatively short period, whether migrants from other countries or people moving from elsewhere in the same country, will have an effect on society and is likely to put pressures on social infrastructure and the employment market. The way to respond to those pressures and concerns is not to ramp up anti-immigrant rhetoric—or to set unworkable targets, as this Government have tried to do time and again—but to provide a real solution to real concerns and a positive response where possible. That can be done by recognising the need to improve social infrastructure and taking the necessary steps to put it in place, while challenging those myths and rumours that are not well-founded. It is also important, as my Front-Bench colleagues have emphasised today and elsewhere, to stop the exploitation of workers—UK citizens and those from elsewhere—which lies at the heart of many of the concerns raised by constituents.

One aspect of immigration policy—not just in the UK, but worldwide—needs to be considered as part of the backdrop to any debate on the issue. Given that the world population has been doubling over a relatively small number of decades and that many countries are suffering from war and conflict, it is not surprising that people seek to come to countries that are relatively wealthy, stable and secure. The UK is clearly too small to have an open-door policy, which is why it is right to have a firm immigration policy, but it is worth bearing in mind the overall context, because if we do not also do as much as we can to solve some of the underlying reasons that people want to migrate, we will, bluntly, always have pressures on migration, no matter what policies we or any other Government of any other country adopt. That is why we should be working to reduce conflict in the world and why we should seek to do what we can to support international development, to try to reduce the pressures on migration to the wealthier countries, of which we are one.

Perhaps the starkest indication of those pressures is the fact that, perhaps at this moment, somewhere on the southern shore of the Mediterranean a boat is setting off and over the next few days its occupants may well drown and die horribly in those waters. Thousands die each year on that journey, as do others on journeys across the sea to more attractive parts of the world, such as north America and Australia. Over the past 10 to 15 years, 25,000 people are known to have died in the Mediterranean sea when seeking to travel to the shores of Europe. That small number is probably only a proportion of those who have died making that journey, because many more will have died without anyone knowing anything about it, except for their grieving relatives back home.

Of course, people should not seek to cross borders illegally in the Mediterranean or elsewhere, but the fact that so many are in such desperate circumstances that they are prepared to take the risk should demand recognition from us of the forces that lead them to make the journey and of the need to tackle some of the underlying causes of migration. The situation also requires a humanitarian response from us as fellow human beings.

I understand that a European Union institution—probably the Justice and Home Affairs Council—will meet in the next few weeks to discuss the future direction of EU policy on borders and asylum. Amnesty International has made a number of proposals on the approach that the UK Government should take at that meeting, including:

“Safe routes to Europe for refugees from countries like Syria so they are not forced to take dangerous journeys, for instance, through resettlement quotas”.

The Government have made some moves on that, but they should do a lot more. Amnesty International also suggests:

“Increased search and rescue capacity in the Mediterranean to identify boats in distress and save lives”,

and

“Human rights at the heart of migration control agreements with neighbouring countries”.

Those seem to be a set of reasonable policies that not only reflect humanitarian concerns, but are practical.

I should like the Minister to tell the House in his closing comments how he and the Government will respond to the calls for a European-wide policy to tackle the crisis in the Mediterranean and off the shores of southern Europe. That tragedy is an issue not just for the countries involved, but one that must also be addressed in our national interest. The fact is that people who take that route to southern Europe may, in due course, also seek to travel to the UK. The situation requires a coherent response across the European Union, and I should like to hear what our Government are doing to make that coherent response possible.