European Council

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Monday 22nd October 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The Greek Prime Minister, attending his first European Council, raised that issue, which is clearly putting pressure on Greece. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, the British Government’s position is that we should continue to support the organisations that deal with these issues, such as Frontex. If there is pressure for more resources, we can consider that. We should always bear in mind, however, that when it comes to migration into Europe it is the countries of the north, including Britain, that face the greatest pressure from asylum claims.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

Since the Government have raised the possibility of opting out of the European arrest warrant, which is vital for tackling human trafficking, organised crime and terrorism, did any of our European partners at the summit express the worry that Euroscepticism might make the UK go soft on crime?

[The Prime Minister]

No one mentioned that to me, no.

Immigration

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Thursday 6th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Nicholas Soames]

I will not. There are some who try to wave away those figures on the basis that they are only projections. The fact is, however, that for the past 50 years the Office for National Statistics has been accurate to plus or minus 2.5% on its 20-year projections. The other claim is that Britain is not really crowded. That, of course, is a matter of opinion, and the public are crystal clear on it.

Faced with that chaotic situation, the Government have gone about things in the right way. They have carried out a careful and thorough review of the three major immigration routes: students, economic migration and marriage. I commend my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and the former Immigration Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green), for their grasp of the issues and their determination to tackle them.

This House should be under no delusion: the public demand and expect the Government of this country to deal with and fix these matters. The most recent numbers are rather disappointing, but it is too early to expect any substantial effect on net immigration. Last week’s figures apply only to the first full year of the coalition Government, and that time was needed to review the complex system that they inherited.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Nicholas Soames]

I will not because I have a very short period of time in which to speak. Of course, the rules cannot be changed for those who have already arrived. Numbers will come down, but a renewed effort is needed.

Where should that effort lie? I do not suggest any early changes to the regulations on economic migration. Business needs stability and predictability, as well as a system that works quickly and effectively. The first priority, therefore, must be to reshape the shambolic points-based system that was introduced in the last years of the Labour Government and has resulted in hundreds—about 800—pages of guidance, as well as enormously long forms to be filled in by applicants for visas or work permits. I will be writing to my hon. Friend the Immigration Minister about some particularly disgraceful and inefficient episodes in that regard, concerning distinguished people who need to come to this country and whom the country wishes to welcome.

Instead of relying on the common sense of an experienced immigration officer, we now rely only on a box-ticking exercise, which is emphatically not the right way to proceed. The last straw was the introduction of the hub-and-spoke system where decisions are often taken in a consulate miles away—indeed, frequently in a different country altogether—with none of the local knowledge that is vital in such decisions. The futile attempt to base decisions on so-called objective criteria is, in practice, impossible given the huge variety of circumstances among the 2 million visa applications received every year. Common sense has gone out the window. Bureaucracy has taken over and the Government must deal urgently with the issue and get it fixed.

The Government must now take four steps. First, as I have explained, they must move away from this disastrous experiment and get some rational thought into individual immigration decisions. Secondly, they must greatly expand the number of student interviews to ensure that bogus students are refused. There is clear evidence from the National Audit Office and the Home Office pilot scheme that tens of thousands of bogus students have been admitted to this country in recent years. Thirdly, the Government must reduce the validity of visitor visas to three months, and strengthen the powers of immigration officers so that an element of judgment is reintroduced for visitors as well as students. Finally, they must strengthen the removal system, and especially its link with decisions that visas should not be extended.

That will require further sustained effort over many years. The devil will always be in the detail, but the outcome is of the first and most critical importance for the future and stability of the life of our country. The Prime Minister has given his word that the Government will bring net migration down to tens of thousands. Failure to do so will leave our population rising inexorably, pressure on our already hard-pressed public services building up relentlessly and, as a result, mounting social tension. We must stop that happening. I commend the Government’s actions thus far, but I warn them, and the House, that the stakes are high. There is a long way to go, difficult decisions to take, and the time scales are unforgiving.

We must all seek at every possible occasion to speak candidly about the serious social and policy implications of mass immigration, and continue to search for an effective, humane and fair way ahead that will command the support of the British people.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Field]

If only the Government knew how to achieve that sharp reduction. There is clearly no possibility of doing so in the near future. The task is proving much more difficult than some Back Benchers and some in the Government would have thought when they made a commitment on it.

[Martin Horwood]

I am concerned about the tone of some of the right hon. Gentleman’s remarks and those of the right hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames). Does the right hon. Member for Birkenhead agree that immigrants can make a positive contribution to our economy and culture, and that we need to take a balanced, evidence-based approach to the debate and not use language that will inflame fears among minority ethnic communities in this country?

[Mr Field]

I have always underscored those points, but hon. Members who put them to me also need to look at the evidence. What did the House of Lords Committee say about the contribution overall that immigrants make to our economy? It is minuscule. Of course immigrants earn their way and make a contribution, but to think that we are pounds in is mistaken. If hon. Members want to dispute the figures, they will catch your eye, Mr Speaker. I am saying that unlimited migration on the scale that we have seen is not such an economic advantage to this country as some of the proponents of open doors would wish us to believe.

I wish to pose another question to the new Immigration Minister: if he accepts those projections, what measures will he take that make a target limit of 70 million people possible? My third question is about the sources of the growth in immigration. If one looks at the net figures, one finds three major sources: people who have work permits; people who, under the conditions, bring their families here; and students. We know that the work permits that the Government make available are not all taken up, so it is not as if work permits are a main driver of the stubborn level of net migration. On people who bring their immediate family over, the figures show that families do not account for a net migration figure each year of in excess of 200,000.

On students, my question is whether the attempt to meet the Government’s target will mean looking critically and resolutely at the size of the student population that probably stays. We have only one piece of information about students returning home. It was a Home Office survey, which showed that after five years one could account for 20% of students who came here under certain conditions who were still here legitimately to work. We simply do not know what happened to the other 80%.

House of Lords Reform Bill

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Monday 9th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[David Tredinnick (Bosworth) (Con)]

Thank you for calling me, Mr Deputy Speaker.

I much enjoyed the contribution of the hon. Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Jim Dowd). I too am a party loyalist, but there is one small difference between us: in my 25 years in the House, I have never voted against my party’s main business. I am proud of that record, and to illustrate the importance of loyalty, I should like to share with the House an exchange of letters between the person whom I used to call “my right hon. Friend the Member for Finchley”—in other words, Mrs Thatcher, as she then was—and my party association chairman, who had the temerity to write to her, on 5 April 1990, complaining about the community charge. On 18 April she wrote back, very commendably, saying:

“I entirely agree with you that splits within the Party only damage ourselves. It is essential that all”—

the word “all” is underlined—

“members of the Party should direct their fire at the real enemy: the Socialists. To do otherwise is… to assist our opponents.”

This is not just a Government Bill; it is a fundamental constitutional Bill. I have underlined the first three words in the next sentence of my speech three times: “I am against an elected Lords.” We have not heard much in this debate about the great history of building up the House of Commons through the 1832 and 1869 Great Reform Bills, although the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames) did talk about that. We cannot have it both ways. We either have an appointed other place over which the Commons has influence, or we have an elected other place, which will, in the end, compete with us. My hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray), who served in the Army as I did, knows about mission creep. We are going to have Lords creep. The new versions of the Lords will come a-leaping. They will want more power. That is very worrying.

The list system is the worst possible system. How can any of us stand up and talk with a straight face about getting rid of patronage and bringing in a list system? Opposition Members have spoken eloquently about the evils of that, but when we couple it with the absurd proposition of an elected House with 15-year terms, we see that this entire proposal presents an opportunity to get elected and then go and live in the south of France. Those elected would never need to come back, because they will never stand for election again. This is a recipe for lazy peers. Why should anybody want to turn up for that length of time? There is no accountability either.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

The average term of office in the current House of Lords is 26 years.

[David Tredinnick]

Well, I am grateful for that intervention.

There is another Bill that solves about half of these problems. I mentioned it in an earlier intervention. It is Lord Steel’s Bill. He is a Liberal Lord, and his Bill give peers the opportunity to retire if they want, which will reduce the numbers. If they do not turn up, they get disqualified. On the criminals issue, the bad guys would be disqualified, too. That Bill therefore deals with at least a third of the problems with this Bill.

I say to those who are dissatisfied with the way in which we get our peers that I personally do not object to former senior politicians going to the Lords, as I think they make an important contribution. If the regional balance is wrong, we do not have to turn the Lords upside down; we could have regional commissions, perhaps, or a debate about allocating peers.

As for the insulting notion that the experts in the Lords are not important, anyone who has attended a debate on health issues in which peers such as Lord Winston or Lord Walton participated will have listened in awe—and the same applies to those with military experience, as has been said. Listening to a Lords debate can be an awesome experience.

We are being told that because Lords reform was in the parties’ manifestos, this Bill has to go through, but we barely touched on the issue in our manifesto. It merely said that we must find some form of consensus. The Steel Bill presents the ideal way to achieve consensus, and therefore to get us out of this corner.

Many years ago, I served on the Anglo-Irish parliamentary forum. I remember talking, in County Tipperary or somewhere else, to Irish Members who suffered two-Member constituencies. Did they like it? They hated it, because they were always campaigning against each other through the whole term. Nothing got done and constituency interests were not paramount.

Let me say a few words about the veiled threat from my new-found Liberal hon. Friends, who occupy what used to be our other Front Bench before it was taken over by them. I forget after which election that happened, but perhaps we will get that Bench back at some point in the future. I say to them, “Please don’t threaten us over the boundary changes that we need. We gave you the AV referendum and it was a straight fight.”

Finally, we must think about the new constituencies—with seven Members and larger than a country, as a colleague put it. Do we really want to superimpose that in our areas? I do not think so. We already have MEPs covering similarly vast areas.

As a party loyalist, I hate doing this—I really do—but I cannot support this Bill. I do not think it is in our national interest or Parliament’s interests, and it is certainly not in my party’s interests.

Rio+20 Summit

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Tuesday 26th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

My understanding is that there are European Union standards that seek to ensure that the biomass industry adheres to basic environmental standards, but it is one industry of many in which this Government are keen to ensure that there is more, rather than less, investment, in order that we get the diverse mix of energy sources and energy generation that I referred to earlier.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

I commend my right hon. Friend and the Secretary of State on the positive stand taken by Britain in Rio, but given the lack of any landmark agreements comparable to the original Earth summit, how can Britain now promote rapid, timetabled agreement on issues such as GDP-plus and the sustainable development goals?

Civil Service Reform

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Tuesday 19th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

Those decisions will be taken by those Departments themselves. We do not expect to do that by central diktat. So far as civil servants in the devolved Administrations are concerned, that is of course the responsibility of those Administrations. The Northern Ireland civil service is slightly different as it is separate, but in Scotland and Wales, the permanent secretaries of both those Administrations have been involved in the development of these plans.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

Civil servants at GCHQ and elsewhere in my constituency already deliver what I call a gold-plated service to government, despite serious challenges to recruitment and retention. Will these reforms strengthen the hand of unique institutions such as GCHQ in the face of serious private sector competition for highly expert staff?

[Mr Maude]

I am very aware of the amazing work done by GCHQ and of the extraordinary talents that get attracted to Cheltenham, and by and large retained there, in support of work of the highest importance for the safety of the nation. There is certainly nothing that we are doing that will inhibit the ability of organisations such as GCHQ to do what is necessary to recruit and retain the very best.

Oral Answers to Questions

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd May 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

That is Christmas cracker stuff from the hon. Gentleman. As I said earlier, we have extended the period of consultation on that issue. I recognise the strength of feeling about the issue from him and from many Members on both sides of the House. We have listened very closely to the representations of many figures in the industry and I hope that we will be able to make proposals shortly.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

On 10 May, Rosehill street in Cheltenham was devastated by a major gas explosion. Within 24 hours, 600 residents of Hatherley in my constituency had also been evacuated following a police explosives alert. Will the Deputy Prime Minister join me in congratulating the emergency services, the council and residents on their response to that unprecedented combination of emergencies and send a letter of special support to the jubilee street party in Rosehill street, which is going ahead anyway in a great show—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. We are grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I do not want to guide the Deputy Prime Minister unduly, but I should say that there is no violation of parliamentary rules in offering the House an answer that consists of a yes or a no.

Debate on the Address

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Wednesday 9th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davis]

The simple truth is that when the House reacted understandably to the horrific events of 9/11 and the preceding terrorist events, such as the USS Cole and the east African embassy bombings, and introduced a couple of measures—the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 and the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001—it took away many previous protections. Before RIPA, the agencies would approach British Telecom or Cable & Wireless and ask for the data, which were sometimes—not always—handed over voluntarily. The companies exercised some responsibility. In about two thirds of cases, the agencies got warrants, and the information had to be handed over. The central, though not the only issue is whether the databases are available to the agencies of the state without a warrant. They are currently available without a warrant. If we want to make such practices acceptable in a civilised, liberal state, we should have warrants first.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

As a Liberal Democrat, but also as the MP for Cheltenham, I ask the right hon. Gentleman whether he agrees that it should be possible to strike a perfectly good balance between the absolute need to protect civil liberties and traditional British freedoms and apply the principles behind the existing legislation that he mentioned to new and fast-developing technologies to prevent our security services from falling behind.

[Mr Davis]

Of course, but frankly, talk about falling behind is a bit of a red herring. The security services today can collect more data by several orders of magnitude than they could when I first became a Member of Parliament, simply because technology allows that. In 1987, one pretty much had to get a BT engineer to plug in a bug in the local exchange. People do not do that now—they could almost do it from my office through software. I could listen to all hon. Members at once—[Interruption.] Hon. Members’ conversations are too boring to bother with.

Of course, the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) is right and there is a balance to strike. No one has ever been foolish enough to suggest that I favour helping terrorists, making it easier for them or harder for our agencies. However, we must act under judicial control and return to the prior warrant process that applied before RIPA for the systems to work.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Amess]

I believe that the Bill will achieve that end and that it will be effective. I know how tough things have been for farmers, particularly in Northern Ireland.

It is important to have a balanced grocery market, where suppliers get a fair deal. There will be further benefits for consumers, because they will be able to buy the best of British produce, which will make the market more sustainable.

The hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier), among others, mentioned adoption and family matters. Pro-life Members will have been sad to hear that Phyllis Bowman died at the weekend. With the late Lord Braine, she did iconic work on pro-life matters and I pay tribute to her.

I was delighted to see that there will be a Bill on adoption and family matters. Some years ago, my hon. Friend the Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier) introduced a measure on adoption, but we badly need updated legislation. It will remove the absurd barriers that make the adoption process difficult. A new six-month limit on care proceedings will be introduced in England and Wales, and the law will be changed to ensure that more children have a relationship with their father after family break-up. All Members get letters from constituents about that difficult issue.

I welcome the provision for mothers and fathers to swap their parental leave allowance after the birth of a child. The Leader of the Opposition said that the Opposition would support the measures. The Prime Minister is right to be passionate about giving children a good start in life.

I welcome the measures to deal with the royal succession that were announced by Her Majesty in the Gracious Speech. Very much in the future, when there is a change of monarch we shall have King Charles, but if Princess Anne had been the oldest child she would not have succeeded. Anyone who knows Princess Anne applauds her hard work; she does a wonderful job. I am delighted that there will be a change to the law on royal succession. As a Catholic, I suppose I am biased, but I am also delighted that Catholics will finally be allowed to marry into the royal family.

I am already sick to death of hearing about Lords reform, even before we spend 18 months going on about it. If anyone wants to know what is wrong with the House of Lords, I can tell them that it is the Labour party, which completely messed up the House of Lords without a plan for dealing with it. I do not address my remarks to Labour Members elected in recent years, but it was a bit rich to listen to speech after speech from Labour Members who condemned the House of Lords and everything it stood for, and the next minute accepted a peerage. There is no consistency.

When the Labour Government took office in 1997, they thought for narrow class reasons that they would get rid of the House of Lords—all those hereditaries, all terribly posh—but there was no actual plan for reform. As a Conservative Member of Parliament, I am totally against the Americanisation of our system, so I am opposed to a wholly elected second Chamber, which would definitely be in competition with this place. I agree with the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch, who asked how it could be fair to have Members elected for 15 years. It certainly is not fair. I hope that we shall not waste hours and hours of precious time arguing about House of Lords reform. I know that the Liberals are keen on it—

[Martin Horwood]

rose—

[Mr Amess]

Here we go.

[Martin Horwood]

On the subject of consistency, House of Lords reform was in the Conservative manifesto. Surely, if we all agree on a predominantly elected second Chamber, it should not take that much time.

[Mr Amess]

I suppose the get-out clause is that we did not have a solely Conservative Government, but a coalition, so there was a compromise. I certainly was never in favour of reform. In the other place, there are women and men of wonderful experience, who bring great value in a revising Chamber. I am totally opposed to having the second Chamber in competition with this place.

Party Funding

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Monday 26th March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Maude]

I very much doubt it, but I suspect—[Interruption.] As I have said repeatedly, anyone who has been in government knows that in the run-up to a Budget, we get representations from all sorts of people, in favour of everything and against everything. I have no doubt that the Chancellor received lots of representations from all directions on this and other subjects.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

Given the acrimonious, childish and partisan shouting, jeering and accusations that have accompanied this statement—[Interruption.]—such as that! Does the Minister agree that we should set a short time scale—perhaps by the next Queen’s Speech—for when politicians can be expected to sort this out for themselves, and that if that has not worked by then, we should simply accept the recommendations of the independent Kelly inquiry, which has already met?

[Mr Maude]

The problem with what my hon. Friend suggests is that, as the Deputy Prime Minister has set out, it is simply not realistic at the moment to propose that we should significantly increase the amount of state funding for political parties. Having a set of reforms of the nature set out by Sir Christopher Kelly’s committee is absolutely dependent on increasing state funding, which I do not think anyone in this House will feel comfortable proposing to their constituents.

Informal European Council

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

The hon. Gentleman is in for a big surprise. When no treaty arrives in the House of Commons, he will have to do a bit of explaining.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

On Iran, did the European summit discuss the planned regional conference on non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and does the Prime Minister agree that it might offer a vital pathway out of an increasingly dangerous stand-off?

[The Prime Minister]

We did not discuss that specific matter. It is entirely right and worth while to try to bring regional neighbours into the debate, but I have to say that it is some of the regional powers that are the most concerned about Iranian activity, not only in their own countries but in stirring up trouble elsewhere, so it is probably only part of what needs to happen, which is to get the Iranian Government to change their strategic direction.

Oral Answers to Questions

Martin Horwood Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I made it clear to the House on a previous occasion that we accept the arguments against providing an opt-out, and we will reflect that in the final legislation. On the quite tangled issue of what is, and what is not, an offence, the right hon. Gentleman is quite right that at the moment the offence applies not to registration, but to the provision of information on behalf of a household—in other words, to the obligation to provide information about other people in the household. It is not an offence at the moment not to register. He makes a valid point that is a valid subject for debate, and it was raised by the Political and Constitutional Reform Committee: under individual electoral registration, the obligation clearly falls more squarely on the individual, rather than on the so-called head of the household. We think that we need to proceed very carefully when it comes to creating new offences in this area, but we are, of course, prepared to listen, and will continue to do so.

[Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)]

Will the Deputy Prime Minister welcome the remarks made by our fellow member of the European Liberal Democrats, Herr Westerwelle, who said that Britain would still be welcome at the very heart of European economic decision making, and that some of the concerns that we raised at the Brussels summit could still be addressed?

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I strongly agree that the decisions taken at last week’s summit were, at the end of the day, all about the fiscal and budgetary rules that accompany a country’s membership of a currency union, but that does not, and will not, exclude our country from having the ability to continue not only to participate in, but to play a leading role in shaping policy and debates on the wider economic reform of the European Union as a whole. That is what we intend to show in the weeks and months ahead.