Article 50 Extension

Debate between Mark Pritchard and Steve Barclay

Wednesday 20th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Barclay]

My hon. Friend is right to say that businesses in Taunton Deane and, I am sure, elsewhere have made clear their desire to see this deal backed and to address the uncertainty that we face. People have been saying to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister that she should compromise. She has compromised—she did not want to have an extension. She has listened and acted on that, but the House has to compromise.

[Mark Pritchard]

Is not the only way to avoid no deal to vote for the withdrawal agreement, and the only way to vote against a long extension is to vote for the withdrawal agreement? Is there not some intellectual inconsistency in the Opposition’s argument? They say they want to put a vote back to the people based on a deal, but they are suggesting that the Prime Minister does not really want a deal and wants no deal. That is not consistent.

[Stephen Barclay]

My hon. Friend is right that not only the Prime Minister but the EU says that the only deal on the table after over two years of negotiation is the deal that she has negotiated.

EU Withdrawal Agreement

Debate between Mark Pritchard and Steve Barclay

Tuesday 18th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Barclay]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. It is perhaps not a surprise that, notwith- standing its 800 pages, one could finish reading it and still be left confused as to what the SNP’s position is.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Secretary of State for giving way. It is good to hear him have at least a few sentences before being interrupted by the SNP. Does he envisage any circumstances in which the Government might revoke article 50—a de facto extension of article 50—in order to give the Government more time to prepare for a World Trade Organisation-terms Brexit, or to prepare for a better deal given by Europe to the United Kingdom? Does he envisage any such circumstances within, perhaps, the next two months?

[Stephen Barclay]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend; he raises a point of substance. The point is that the court case was clear that one cannot revoke as a temporary measure with a view to the circumstances to which he alludes. That actually is not within the scope of what the court case says. I will come on to that if I get a chance to progress further in my remarks.

Let me pick up on a further point that the right hon. Gentleman made at the opening of this debate. He said that we should not be spending money on no-deal planning. Well, the reality is that I would prefer not to be spending money on no-deal planning.

Immigration (Bulgaria and Romania)

Debate between Mark Pritchard and Steve Barclay

Monday 22nd April 2013 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

The petition that generated such a response focused on the desire to extend for a further five years the restrictions in place. I very much support that objective while recognising the constraints in European law and the realpolitik of renegotiation that applies to the discussions held by the Minister.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames) spoke for many when he referred to the great concern and the need for a more muscular and robust response. My hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson) gave a good example of the sheer scale of new national insurance numbers that are being applied. I represent the adjacent constituency in the fens, and can attest to the pace and scale of migration that he highlighted and how that was not mirrored in census data or the funding formula under the previous or current Governments to address school funding for those for whom English is a second language. That backdrop frames our debate today and generates the concern that has led many to sign the petition.

I also recognise that in those renegotiations we need to be cognisant of the fact that many British people are benefiting from the rules allowing them to work elsewhere in Europe—even though that is not, in most cases, in Bulgaria and Romania—and that often, welfare reform issues are mixed up with immigration issues. Many in the farming community rely on seasonal workers and say that without them, the rural economy would suffer seriously. In other areas and in other debates, we need to address why such businesses are so reliant on labour from elsewhere in the EU at a time when others are not working. Sometimes we conflate different issues within the subject matter of the petition being signed.

The underlying concern behind the petition is one that I very much share, but I would like to broaden the discussion a little. Today’s debate has focused very much on low-skilled workers, but the difficulties with the free movement of labour and the automatic right to work are not confined to such workers. For example, it was in my constituency that David Gray was unlawfully killed by Dr Ubani, an EU-qualified doctor who could not speak English. He gave Mr Gray an overdose that killed him, and yet, as a doctor, he had the automatic right to work in the UK without passing any language test. For five years, we have been told that we can do nothing about that loophole, as the General Medical Council now calls it, because of EU law. When I raised the matter after being elected to the House—one of the first things that I did was campaign on the issue—I was constantly told that nothing could be done because of EU law, even though the French managed to have a workable system that generated language tests.

I simply highlight that case because I welcome the fact that the Government are fixing the problem, but also because it illustrates that the issue is not only confined to low-skilled workers. It is not just low-skilled workers who will come from Bulgaria and Romania. Where there are issues, for example, with doctors and their ability to speak English, those should be addressed. That case also highlights the risk-averse nature of much of the legal advice one often receives from Whitehall, which says to Ministers, “We cannot do things”. That is not a true representation of what EU law allows. It does allow the more robust approach that my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex spoke about.

[Mark Pritchard]

My hon. Friend raises an important point on the principle of always testing, because however expert the legal advice that is given by Government lawyers, it should always be tested and re-tested. He also makes an important point about those with higher skills. He may or may not be aware that, for example, veterinary surgeons coming into this country—of whom there are many from the EU—are not required to take an oral or written English test, and the same problems that he has highlighted arise with some of those vets.

[Stephen Barclay]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. In terms of veterinary science, I was not aware of that pertinent point. Of course, all Members welcome people with skills joining the UK economy and the benefits that they bring, but the specific point is about the speed with which officials are willing to react to the regulatory risks that arise—whether from a vet, a doctor or from others—and their willingness as part of the renegotiation to take on some of the sacred cows of EU law and what it is alleged that treaties require us to do.

I put on record my thanks to the Minister for the specific action that he is taking on the pull factors. A tremendous amount of work, on which he is leading, is being undertaken across Departments, and it is particularly important. The issue is often discussed through the prism of the British perspective. In common with my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), as a member of the Public Accounts Committee, I am concerned about the impact that much of that inward migration has on taxpayers—a burden is placed on the taxpayer, on our benefits system, or on our NHS, particularly from those who have not contributed.

The other reason why I think the Government’s action on pull factors is so important is that, often, the most vulnerable people in the community that I represent have been misled—they have been mis-sold too. A ruse that operates in an area such as Wisbech involves people being promised a job and accommodation if they come and work in the farming community. When they arrive, the gangmasters, who are often illegal, say, “This week, we only have work for two days, and next week, we only have work for three days. The week after, we only have one day.” What modest savings people might have are exhausted very quickly. The gangmasters will then lend them money, because it is very difficult for someone who perhaps has borrowed money from family members to face the embarrassment or even the immediate financial difficulty of going home. Therefore, these illegal gangmasters get people into the UK on a false promise, then abuse them by getting them into debt, and from there, they have control—“You must buy our counterfeit goods. You must come in the minibus and pay a high daily fee.”

What is scandalous is that many of the most vulnerable people in our community are affected. They are not voters, nor are they visible, and often, where they are subject to crime, it is not reported, so the police then have difficulty, saying “Should we take action and fund work on this? It is not reported crime.” I note that the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee is here, and I hope that he and his Committee might address the issue of known crime that is not reported and is affecting many of the most vulnerable, and how resources are used, because that is a tension in itself.

The pull factors are bringing people here who are then being abused. The debate is focused through a British prism—travelling to Bulgaria and Romania and telling people that they should not come here because they will not be eligible for some of the benefits that they think they might be is very much about defending the taxpayer. It is right and proper that we do that, but I put the case that such intervention is often in the interests of those who might be persuaded to come here, because they are misled into doing so and then are subject to the illegal gangmasters who abuse the process.

Although we welcome tighter action and controls within the scope of the law—I commend the Minister’s work on the pull factors—the main thrust of my remarks relates to those who are here. In a sense, that may be slightly counter-intuitive, because the Bulgarians and Romanians are not yet here, but we know that they will be. If one looks at what has happened so far, there has been a failure across agencies to take action on the abuses to which people are subject once they are here.

For that reason, I have been working closely, as the Minister will be aware, with the Home Secretary and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs on the multi-agency task force that we have now set up in the fens. The issues apply not only to Wisbech, which I represent, but to Boston and Peterborough, where my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough faces such problems, and to Spalding, King’s Lynn and other places across the fens. The issues are so often seen as urban, as city issues, when the concentration in certain rural communities is out of scale and out of proportion with the communities that are absorbing them. The work of the multi-agency task force is extremely important. It is at an early stage—I ask the Minister to meet me in a couple of months for us to review progress—but I would like to draw three specific points to his attention and that of Chamber.

The first relates to houses in multiple occupation. The automatic registering of HMOs only applies if there are three storeys. That may be an issue in London, but in the fens, most of the accommodation is not on three storeys. In one example, 22 people were living in a bungalow. The census just does not reflect that, and that then feeds into many of the issues about antisocial behaviour, because if lots of people are living in one house, where do they go? They tend to go and have a drink on the street. That upsets neighbours. It creates problems such as that of urinating in public places. It just is intimidating to many people to see gangs of people, even if they are acting lawfully.

In my view, there has been a failure by agencies to take on the issue of houses in multiple occupation. There has been a licence system more recently in Peterborough. We do not still have one in fenland; I believe that we should. This is not just an issue for London and other cities; it is an issue that is acute in North East Cambridgeshire, and the sums of money involved are not inconsiderable. Some hon. Members might think that the more people there are in a house, the less the landlord will get, but that is not the case. The going rate in Wisbech is £50 per person; the more they have in, the more they get.

Sometimes the landlord does not even know what is happening. Sometimes the landlord has rented the house to a couple of people and is living away and is not aware that it is being used as an HMO. Some of the letting agencies are breaking the law, because they are under a duty to conduct a review every six months, but they do not do so; and again, officials tend not to act. There is also an abuse in relation to council tax. There is an abuse in relation to the tax on that revenue that is being paid. However, Government tend to see this as a rural issue. It is a bit too far from the desks in Whitehall. There are not too many national journalists reporting it.