Immigration Bill

Debate between Mark Reckless and Yvette Cooper

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Commons Chamber

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

The Home Secretary and the Prime Minister have made a series of claims about immigration and the Bill, many of which do not stack up. They said that there would be action against illegal working, but there is nothing about that in the Bill. The Prime Minister promised action against those who

“deny work opportunities to UK workers.”

Again, there is nothing about that in the Bill. They promised to reduce the “pull factor” for people from the EU. Again, there is nothing in the Bill about that. They promised to

“reclaim our borders and send illegal immigrants home”,

but border control has got worse and fewer people are being returned than ever. They promised—the Prime Minister said “no ifs, no buts”—that net migration would be down to the tens of thousands by the election. It is currently at 176,000 and recent figures show that it has gone up. There has been a lot of rhetoric and a lot of confusion, and people are concerned about immigration.

We know that over many generations, people have come and contributed to this country: they have built our biggest companies, worked in our public services, and become great scientists, Nobel prize winners and even Olympic medal winners. We also know that in a global economy, in which people travel and trade more than ever, pulling up the drawbridge on all migration is not good for Britain.

Stronger controls are needed. Migration needs to be managed and, yes, we should have a proper debate about measures to control immigration, deal with its impact and tackle illegal immigration. Unfortunately, that is not what we have heard from the Home Secretary today.

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

Does the shadow Home Secretary realise that we have already gone a little over half the distance from the very high levels of net migration that we saw under the last Labour Government to our target of tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands? Will she congratulate the Home Secretary on that progress?

[Yvette Cooper]

The most recent figures for net migration show that it has increased. The hon. Gentleman has chosen to support a target that ignores illegal migration altogether and that includes university students who contribute to the economy. Furthermore, he can claim that progress has been made in meeting the target if the number of British citizens who leave the country or who fail to return to the country increases. That is the target that he is pursuing.

2014 JHA Opt-out Decision

Debate between Mark Reckless and Yvette Cooper

Monday 15th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

I am going to come on to the substance because our view is that we should not be opting out without proper guarantees and assurances in place about the key measures we think it is vital to be opted into.

Let me turn to the substance of the plan. Clearly, without time for scrutiny it is hard for the House to take a view on the mix of measures and the overall plan. I welcome the Home Secretary’s proposal to opt back into some of the measures, and I am glad she has ignored the Eurosceptic voices and has chosen to support the European arrest warrant. She is right about the seriousness of the cases in which it has been applied, and to support the arrest of Arunas Cervinskas, returned from Britain to Ireland after his attempted rape and serious assault of an 18-year-old girl, and the arrest only a few days ago of Mark Lilley, who was found hidden in a luxury Spanish villa after 13 years on the run for drug smuggling and dealing. He will soon be back in the UK to face his long prison sentence. Then there is the example that the Home Secretary used last week and again today of Hussain Osman, who was extradited back to the UK, after attempting to blow up a tube train, in less than two months. She is right to say that we cannot go back to the days when it took 10 years to extradite a terror suspect to France or when it took 11 years to get Ronnie Knight back from the costa del crime.

I am glad, too, that the Home Secretary has ignored the Eurosceptic voices and decided to support joint investigation teams; she has decided to support Operation Golf, in which 126 suspects from a Romanian crime gang were arrested for benefit fraud, money laundering and child neglect, and more than 270 trafficking victims were saved. We cannot go back to the days when foreign crime gangs were untouchable, allowed to damage our society or cause serious harm to victims. So I am glad that she has decided to ignore the Eurosceptic Back Benchers—to ignore the Fresh Start group—and instead to agree with the arguments made by Labour Members, by the police and by the Liberal Democrats.

I am glad, too, that the Home Secretary has accepted the exchange of criminal records, Eurojust, the co-operation to protect personal data, the co-operation to combat child pornography and measures on football hooliganism. She has come a long way since the Prime Minister described the European arrest warrant as “highly objectionable”. I am very pleased that the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister have done a U-turn on this; it is a shame that it has taken them so long.

Let me turn to some of the measures that the Home Secretary wants to opt out of—again, it is very hard to take a view without full scrutiny of the measures that the Government have set out.

[Mark Reckless]

Before the right hon. Lady goes through her list, will she give us some understanding of why the Labour Government left us with this block opt-out, binary choice rather than allowing us to pursue the measures on an intergovernmental basis, without the oversight of the European Court of Justice, in the way successfully negotiated by Denmark?

[Yvette Cooper]

I am not sure that Denmark and the opt-out negotiations is the best possible example to refer to, because Denmark’s experience of going through its opt-out and opt-in process was that it was turned down by the Commission on some of the measures it wanted to opt back into. I want to come on to deal with that point shortly.

We have said before that it is right to look at the proposals in the opt-out and we have no objection to the principle of opt-outs. Indeed, the Labour party negotiated the opt-out in the first place. However, it is also right to make sure that proper assurances and guarantees are in place for the key measures that we believe—and we now understand the Home Secretary believes—we should stay part of.

Police (Detention and Bail) Bill

Debate between Mark Reckless and Yvette Cooper

Thursday 7th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My right hon. Friend is right. He makes his points diplomatically, but the complacency of Home Office Ministers is worrying. They seem to think that they have done everything right in this case, that there have been no delays and that everything has moved as rapidly as possible, but that clearly is not the case. I hope that they will learn lessons for the future from this incident because there clearly has not been rapid movement every step along the way. Whether that applies to what Home Office officials should have done when they received the note on this case, what work they should have done, or what further information they should have sought either from the judge in question or through legal advice at that point, it is their responsibility to prepare options for Ministers, so that Ministers can take rapid judgments, know what their options are and move very fast. That is especially true given the significant risks from this case to the operation of police work and to justice.

My right hon. Friend’s point about the role of the Treasury Solicitor’s Department is important. The point of having the Attorney-General and those solicitors is to be able to seek additional legal advice from them. The Home Secretary said that it is not normal practice for the Government to confirm whether and when they have sought legal advice, but in fact it is very common for Ministers to say that they have had legal advice from the Attorney-General or others. They might not reveal the detailed content of that advice but in this case the Home Secretary is not even confirming whether she has had or sought separate legal advice or whether the Attorney-General provided any such advice to set out options, so that the Government could move fast and deal with this matter considerably faster than has been the case.

[Mark Reckless]

Will the shadow Home Secretary accept that the Government and the Home Office were not parties in the proceedings? We can see from the judgment that counsel for Greater Manchester police were asked at the end of the oral judgment whether they would like to apply for a certificate in relation to an appeal. To the extent that questions have to be asked, surely they should be addressed to Greater Manchester police about why they did not apply to the judge for a stay or for a certificate despite having been specifically asked about doing so. We should be addressing those questions to Greater Manchester police, who are party to the case, rather than trying to twist this in relation to the Home Office.

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Gentleman is right that there are issues for Greater Manchester police in terms of how fast they respond and react and whether they apply for appeals and stays, but the issue for the Home Office is that, in the end, it matters to the Home Office if policing practice and the protection of victims right across the country are jeopardised. His point goes to the heart of my concerns about the way in which the Home Office and Home Office Ministers have responded. There seems to be an attitude that “We’ll let Greater Manchester police and ACPO do their bit; we’ll just sit back and wait until it all comes to us.” Ministers finally acted only when ACPO said that emergency legislation was needed, rather than Ministers and the Attorney-General recognising that they would have to take responsibility for the consequences. Even if Greater Manchester police did not take the first steps, there was still a responsibility on the Home Office and the Attorney-General to go and talk to Greater Manchester police about whether they had applied for a stay of judgment or appeal. That is where there have been delays and, frankly, incompetence in the way the Home Office has responded.

Government Reductions in Policing

Debate between Mark Reckless and Yvette Cooper

Monday 4th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

We have always said that efficiency savings can be made. That is why we set out 12% reductions, but HMIC said that

“a cut beyond 12 per cent would almost certainly reduce police availability”.

The hon. Gentleman also cited the HMIC figure on visibility, but he is misusing the figures. In fact, HMIC said in its most recent report that it is right that forces should try to increase visibility, but pointed out that policing is a 24/7 service. The report stated:

“HMIC estimate that between five and six officers are needed in order to provide one on duty 24/7…This suggests that, overall, the police are operating at the upper end of the efficiency range.”

That is not my conclusion, but that of the independent HMIC.

Chief constables are being put in an impossible position. They are doing their best within their budgets to deliver strong policing and to reassure the public, but the rug is being pulled out from underneath them. Whichever way we look at it, the evidence from the police and the expert witnesses is clear. The sheer scale and pace of the cuts mean that front-line services, and not just front-line numbers, are being hit. The Home Secretary and her co-defendants can change their story as much as they like, but every claim collapses under interrogation. The evidence from the police and the expert witnesses is damning, and the mood among the jury, as Lord Ashcroft’s polling proves, is already hostile, even though the cuts have barely started to bite. It is little wonder that the Ministers are backing softer sentencing; they know that they are going to be found guilty as charged.

Whatever Ministers say at the Dispatch Box, in their offices and in the TV studios, they are a long way from the reality in the police stations and out on the beat. They are out of touch. They think that if they talk fast enough and loudly enough in management-speak about efficiency, bureaucracy, visibility, availability, back office, middle office and even Middle Earth, it will somehow make the real cuts go away, but it will not. This is all a far cry from their pre-election promises. The Prime Minister promised that the front line would be protected. The Lib Dems wanted 3,000 more officers, not 12,000 fewer. Even the Policing Minister told his local paper, just a year before the election:

“I will continue to press for more PCSOs and police officers”.

So much for that, then.

As for Ministers’ claims that there would be no link between the cuts in police numbers and crime, influential members of their own coalition see things rather differently. Before the election, the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg) said that

“putting 2,700 more police on the beat in England and Wales will lead to 27,500 more arrests and an extra 24,500 crimes being solved.”

I am not sure that I would sign up to his level of precision, but he made his point. And one prominent Tory Front Bencher said the following:

“The case can certainly be made that the increase in police officers in the last few years has had a positive effect both on providing reassurance to the public and on reducing some crimes…I am making an argument in favour of an increase in police numbers”.—[Official Report, 3 May 2007; Vol. 459, c. 1671-73.]

Who said that, in this House? The current Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice.

Let us listen to the concerns from the top police. The South Yorkshire chief constable has warned of the impact of higher unemployment, shorter sentences, cuts in probation and cuts in police on increasing crime. The Kent chief constable has said that a 20% cut was

“quite a significant drawback into police numbers, both civilian staff and police numbers, and clearly there’s a potential impact that crime will rise.”

[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

I am a member of the Kent police authority, and the chief constable of Kent has also said that he sees this as an opportunity to deliver a more efficient and effective force. He is increasing the number of neighbourhood officers by more than 75%.

[Yvette Cooper]

I welcome anything that the Kent chief constable is able to do to support neighbourhood policing, but the hon. Gentleman will know that Kent police are having to lose more than 500 officers and about 1,000 support staff. That means that they will be under pressure in a number of different areas.

What on earth has happened to the Conservative party? The traditional party of policing and crime is throwing it all away. They have left the Liberal Democrats in charge of policing powers and sentencing policy, and they have left the management consultants in charge of the police. They are taking serious risks with crime and communities as a result. Over the 13 years of a Labour Government, crime fell by more than 40%, but most of us think that it is still too high. We want it to come down further. But instead of building on our progress, the Government are putting it at risk.

The Government’s amendment today

“welcomes the Government’s comprehensive proposals to cut crime”,

but what are those proposals? In 13 years of falling crime, Labour increased the number of police officers and got more of them on to the front line, increased the powers of the police through ASBOs and other measures, increased the use of CCTV and DNA, increased crime prevention through youth services and intensive family support, strengthened sentencing and, yes, sent more people to prison. What are this Government doing? They are making cuts in the number of police officers and cuts in the number on the front line. They are cutting the powers of the police and ending ASBOs. They are cutting the use of CCTV and DNA. They are cutting prevention, youth services and specialist family support. They are cutting sentencing, cutting prison places and cutting probation, all at the same time. They are increasing unemployment and child poverty, too. Those do not sound like crime-cutting proposals to me.

The Government are whipping up a perfect storm. None of us knows when it will blow, but they should think again before it is too late. Let me say this to them: they used to be the party of law and order once. Not now.