Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Bill

Matt Warman Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 12th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

This Bill tackles an issue that is vital to many of our constituents. We all know how important legal and illegal migration numbers are. I know from my own constituency, which is generous and kind, that there are real tensions when five hotels are used for illegal migrants in a town such as Skegness. There is no justification for that, and residents are rightly angry. When we get such issues wrong, we strain the social fabric of our country, and the Government have a duty not just to try to tackle illegal migration, but to strain every sinew to try to tackle it.

Perhaps surprisingly—even to me—I welcome how far this Bill goes. I welcome the fact that it is doing something novel, but I am uncomfortable in that position, because the Bill goes up to the line of international law. International law is important not because of some sentimental approach about what it means or even the fact that Britain was involved in writing some of it. It is important because it is the foundation on which we can do the deals with other countries—Albania, France and Italy, for instance—that allow us to tackle illegal migration. Rwanda cannot be the only thing that we do. If Rwanda is to happen, it must be a part of a meaningful package of measures, and if we go so far in one direction to try to ensure that flights to Rwanda take off, we will knock out other important parts of the deal that we need to do.

We need to be careful about walking a tightrope. While I am uncomfortable on that tightrope, others are uncomfortable for a very different reason, but that is what successful compromise on all sides looks like. If we try to go further, we risk undermining not just our ability to tackle the issue with a multipronged approach but Britain’s standing in the world. We will have a policy that will not work and a country that is less than where we started. No one in this House wants that. To use the phrase that has been around so much recently, there is the risk that we make the perfect the enemy of the good. People who convened a star chamber recently have declared the Bill a “partial solution”—perhaps we should not forget that the very first star chamber started the civil war in England, so maybe we have had enough of star chambers—but we should be alive to the danger in saying that something is a partial solution and is therefore no good. For me, a partial solution is better than no solution.

Tonight, we must grasp the nettle that says, “Yes, much of this is uncomfortable for many across the Conservative party, but we should be united in our desire to tackle an issue that matters to all our constituents.” We should have no shame in saying, “This is a plan that we can get behind, and it contrasts so sharply with the total lack of a plan from the other side of the House.”

If people want to criticise the Conservative approach—I gather that people do—it is incumbent on them to come up with their ideas. They cannot simply say, “We will employ more people to do it”, because the Government have already employed more people to do it. They cannot simply say, “We will try harder.” The BBC accused the Labour party of replacing a Bill simply with hope—I thought that was generous.

There has to be an alternative. A responsible Opposition —a responsible aspiring Government—surely have to come up with those plans, yet we hear nothing. The twofold reason to get behind the Bill is that it is an idea that will work in making a difference to this critical problem, and it is also the only idea in town. We have found ourselves in this excruciatingly difficult position because it is an intractable problem. In the absence of better ideas, people need to be careful what they wish for.

[Hannah Bardell (Livingston) (SNP)]

The hon. Member says that there are no credible options, but we have heard multiple speakers, organisations and lawyers say that there are. The Government should create safe routes and stop making people illegal, because no one is illegal. People are human beings, and they are coming here for very good reasons. They are coming from countries that we have happily bombed and interfered in, yet now we are not willing to take them in their hour of need.

[Matt Warman]

I do not understand the line that we are not willing to take people in their hour of need. When we look at the Ukraine and Hong Kong schemes, we see huge evidence of this country—dare I say it, England more than Scotland—housing those people in their hour of need. I agree with the hon. Member in so far as safe routes being a crucial part of the problem, but that should not be a stick to beat people with in pretending that we have not played a huge part. We should be immensely proud of the UK’s role.

I shall vote for Second Reading without huge enthusiasm except for the concept of our having a moral duty to address the problem. The view from a constituency such as mine, with a long and complex relationship with migration, is that when politicians make promises that they do not keep, it fractures not just the social fabric but that vital democratic thread that gives us legitimacy when we come here. We have a duty to tackle the issue in a way that makes a meaningful difference. We also have a duty to unite behind a plan that will make a real difference, even if we do not think it is perfect.

Illegal Migration

Matt Warman Excerpts

Tuesday 24th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I thank my hon. Friend for her good work representing her constituents on this issue in her characteristically sensible and calm manner. I am pleased that we have come to a good outcome in her case. The Home Office will write today or in the coming days to all the local authorities and MPs with hotels in the first 50. In the weeks ahead, we will consider further tranches as we make further progress on stopping the boats. We will put in place the processes and personnel required to support local authorities as we decant individuals from those locations.

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

Skegness is a tourist economy, and hoteliers have told me that the use of hotels in Skegness for illegal migrants has led to bookings being cancelled; it has been associated with serious crime. We have also seen marches hijacked by the far right, even though they know that that is not representative of local people’s legitimate fears. I therefore hugely welcome today’s announcement that two hotels in Skegness will no longer be required for Government use. That is immense progress, but does my right hon. Friend the Minister agree with me that the local council and Government as a whole should work as quickly as possible to get those hotels returned to their proper use, rather than left to rot by unscrupulous owners?

[Robert Jenrick]

I am pleased that some of the hotels in my hon. Friend’s constituency will now be closed. He has seen just how challenging illegal migration can be, not least in the protests in his town and the strain that it has put on community cohesion. That is why we must stop the boats and reduce the number of people coming over in that manner. We will work with hoteliers as far as we can to help them to reopen their hotels successfully. The hotels are on different notice periods and that is one reason the announcement that we are making today is staggered. The majority are on three-month notice periods, which gives those hoteliers and their communities the time to prepare, take bookings, hire staff and come back to life.

Migration and Economic Development Partnership

Matt Warman Excerpts

Thursday 29th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

The hon. Gentleman is right: this is not just a legal matter; it is a moral one and it is of a political salience that I have not seen for a long time in our country. The vast majority of the British people want us to stop the boats. They want us to fix this problem. That is why I am encouraged with every step that we take on this journey. The reality is that we believe in the lawfulness of our agreement with Rwanda, and, as the Court found, the conditions in which people will be accommodated in Rwanda per se are lawful and they will be treated lawfully and humanely. It is about whether there is a risk of refoulement—of them being relocated on to a third country that may not be safe. That is the point of dispute in the judgment. We are seeking permission to appeal. We believe in the lawfulness of this scheme and we have confidence in delivering it as soon as possible.

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

A 33-year-old man seeking asylum and housed in a hotel in Skegness has very recently been charged with the rape of a stranger in a public park. The Home Secretary knows how outraged people in Skegness are. She knows from our conversations how outraged I am. Does she agree that any setback to the Government’s policy to stop the boats will be greeted with horror by people in Skegness, that she should appeal the judgment as quickly as possible, that she should pursue the Illegal Migration Bill through Parliament as quickly as possible, and that anyone trying to stand in the way of that is fundamentally disagreeing with the rightly held legitimate views of constituents such as mine?

[Suella Braverman]

My hon. Friend puts it very well, and from our discussions I know how energetically he is advocating on behalf of his local community as they bear some of the burden of this national challenge. It is a fallacy—one that those on the Opposition Benches seem to indulge time and again—that everyone on these boats is coming for humanitarian purposes and fleeing some form of persecution. The reality is that a large proportion of them are coming for economic reasons. Many of them have chosen deliberately to leave a safe country such as France and to pay people-smuggling gangs large amounts of money in pursuit of a life in the United Kingdom—not as a refugee, not for humanitarian reasons. That poses public safety issues. The protection of our borders is about national security. That is why it is imperative and essential that we fix the problem and stop the boats.

Antisocial Behaviour Action Plan

Matt Warman Excerpts

Monday 27th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She has put in considerable effort to tackle this issue on the frontline, both in her role as a Member of Parliament and as a former leader of Westminster City Council. It requires a nuanced and thoughtful approach. We are repealing the Vagrancy Act, but we are also making it clear that we will prohibit organised and nuisance begging. We will introduce new tools to direct individuals to vital resources so that they can find accommodation and support. There should not be a reason for them to live in squalor and such hardship in this day and age.

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

I welcome the Home Secretary’s focus on antisocial behaviour today, which has long been a focus of Lincolnshire police. As she knows, Lincolnshire police find themselves in an anomalous funding position, as the lowest funded police force in the country. It is remarkable that Lincolnshire remains a low crime county, but the police need greater support. Will she reassure me that we will get to a funding position where Lincolnshire gets the uplift that we have seen in other parts of the country? That will allow the police to deliver on her antisocial policy.

[Suella Braverman]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise the financing of police forces. I am aware of the challenges that Lincolnshire police are facing in that regard. The Policing Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for Croydon South, and I are looking at the measures and proposals on the funding formula. There will be an announcement very soon.

Illegal Migration Bill

Matt Warman Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 13th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

Many in this House want to say that the Government are inciting people’s worst instincts on immigration. I want to say optimistically that, ultimately, it is not the Bill, the Home Secretary or the Government who are causing that feeling. In fact, they are in touch with the widespread symptoms of it from people—decent people—in constituencies like mine up and down the country, and we have to heed those views. In my judgment, enough of the fine people of Skegness say, accurately, that they are already doing a huge amount. They say that asking them to do even more has untold consequences. They say, in short, that endless numbers cannot be made to feel welcome if they worry that the town they are staying in will never be the same again, in part because of it.

When enough people feel that way, we mainstream moderates in this House have to act, because if we do not, we should know that it is the racists and the extremists of the far left and the far right who will take our place. We have already seen Patriotic Alternative march in Skegness. If, however, we act now, there is a chance to stop decent British people withdrawing their consent. That is why the aims of the Bill are not just compassionate; they are the only compassionate option. They are the most compassionate way: breaking the business model of both the people smugglers and those who buy hotels to sell back to the Home Office at profiteers’ rates. All that has to end.

I want to end by saying that we do need to have safe routes from dangerous countries and we do need to have provisions for men and women who are trafficked, and for children who are taken by irresponsible adults to these shores, but we must not use those hard cases to pretend that we cannot do better than where we are today. If we do not, compassion will cede the ground to ignorance and hatred. We have to act, or we will stretch the licence that voters give us to act on their behalf beyond breaking point. In Skegness, I am not exaggerating when I say that for some, this is an issue about democracy and the effectiveness of government itself. The Bill is not just about stopping the boats; it is about stopping that democratic tragedy. That is just one reason why I will be proud to support the Bill this evening.

Illegal Migration Bill

Matt Warman Excerpts

Tuesday 7th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

Tackling the criminal gangs at the root of this problem is absolutely essential. That is why we have increased our funding to the NCA to ensure that there is better operationalising, better intelligence sharing and better co-operation with European partners, and that is why I am very pleased that many criminal gangs have been shut down and 500 convictions have been secured.

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

The Ukraine and Afghanistan schemes clearly show the enormous compassion of the British people, but the reality is that the abuse of the system, particularly the use of hotels for people seeking asylum, saps that compassion. Does the Home Secretary agree with me that we have to end the use of hotels and that this Bill will be a crucial part of that? Can she say when she hopes to be able to lay out a plan to put a timetable on ending the use of hotels?

[Suella Braverman]

I know from my hon. Friend’s representations that in his community there are particular challenges with people in hotels. We are using hotels to accommodate asylum seekers because there are too many people coming here illegally. Once we stop the business model of people coming here illegally, we will be able to stop the use of hotels.

Knowsley Incident

Matt Warman Excerpts

Monday 20th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

It is not the backlog; that is a fantasy. The way to tackle this issue is not by making the UK a more attractive destination, but by tackling the illegal gangs and changing the incentives. We will only do that through having the most robust approach to illegal migration, including by ensuring those who come here in this manner are removed to a safe third country.

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

Like me, the Minister, the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister believe that hotels are the wrong place to put people seeking asylum, but on Saturday in Skegness another protest is planned against the use of these hotels and, while there are legitimate concerns, I hope the Minister will agree that the shameless use of people’s concerns by far-right groups is to be deplored and stands in the way of our having a sensible conversation that will in the long term allow us to move beyond the use of these hotels. Will he join me in appealing to the people of Skegness to focus, rightly, on those issues but not to join hands with far-right groups?

Hotel Asylum Accommodation: Local Authority Consultation

Matt Warman Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I will. The right hon. Gentleman raises an important point. In recent months or years, the outsourcing partners have seen their relationship almost exclusively as one with the Home Office and not with the relevant local authority. I have made it clear to them that they have a dual duty to work closely with the Home Office and the local authority. He raises an important point and I will pass it on.

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

There are now five hotels in Skegness occupied by asylum seekers and a further one in my constituency. I thank the Minister, and indeed the Home Secretary, for the engagement he has had with me ahead of what he knows will be a public meeting on Friday with a very concerned local community. I wonder if he could say what his message would be for that public meeting.

[Robert Jenrick]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and wish him well with that meeting. We want to ensure that we exit hotels as swiftly as possible, and I set out in answers to other hon. Members how we will do that. I appreciate the burden that this is placing on his constituency and I hope the increase in engagement from the Home Office and its partners will ensure a better and more fruitful relationship with his local authorities.

International Doctors: Visas

Matt Warman Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2022 Westminster Hall

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered visas for international doctors.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer.

This is a debate about doctors, but I want to begin with the story of a hypothetical patient. Let us call her Marjorie and say that she lives in Skegness. She is in her 80s or thereabouts. She is registered with a local GP practice, and she has a trainee doctor as her GP. They have a really good relationship and know each other well. They have the continuity of care that means that Marjorie’s needs are looked after. For a couple of years, Marjorie has gone back and forth to her doctor with little ailments, as people often do. In her final consultation, her doctor mentions that she will be moving on relatively soon.

Thereafter, Marjorie finds herself with another GP, and the continuity of care is broken. Marjorie struggles to get the type of relationship that she built up over the past few years, and she finds herself bouncing in and out of hospital. She is fine, but not as well as she would be if her care had been provided by a doctor who was able to make sure that they knew each other well. The reason for the break in continuity of care is that the doctor she had in training was an international medical graduate who was being trained at the surgery in Skegness. Unfortunately, for a whole host of reasons, the surgery was not registered to take international medical graduates once they had qualified, and it was not what is called a sponsoring practice—it was not able to say that it would sponsor the visa for that doctor.

The reason I make that point in such a way is because the people who are suffering as a result of the approach we currently take to visas—on one level, they are doctors who are dealing with the immensely stressful visa process—are ultimately patients, who should be our priority. The doctor I mentioned is one of 40% of trainee GPs who come from abroad. While they are training, their visas are sponsored by Health Education England.

[Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)]

A result of the difficulties around trainee GP visas is that many IMGs feel that they have no choice but to take on other roles within the NHS, or they leave the NHS altogether. Many may even return home. Does the hon. Member agree that this is yet another area where the Home Office must look at the bigger picture, rather than trying to plug gaps on an ad hoc basis?

[Matt Warman]

Ultimately, this is where we need joined-up government, whereby the Home Office and the Department of Health and Social Care deliver on the same priorities, and I really do think that they can.

As I say, 40% of trainee GPs come from abroad. In the final months before they qualify as GPs, the last thing they should be doing is dealing with the stress of a potential visa application and considering whether the practice where they might want to apply for a job is registered on the programme, and whether they can reasonably jump through the Home Office hoops at that precise moment. We are increasing stress for doctors, and we are increasing the risks for patients at the same time.

The hon. Lady alluded to figures from the Royal College of General Practitioners which show that some 30% of GP trainees are considering not working as GPs when they qualify for these visa-related reasons, and some 17% think they might have to leave the UK either temporarily or, at worst, permanently. That is some 1,200 doctors who are considering not working in the health service as a result of this system. In Lincolnshire alone, a third of practices have thought about registering as a visa-sponsoring practice, but just one in 10 have actually done it. We are really limiting the options for GP trainees and for the health service.

This is a political choice, and it reveals an inequality between different sorts of doctors. It will probably take a hospital doctor five years to qualify. After those five years, they will qualify for indefinite leave to remain in a much easier way. Because GP trainees take just three years to complete their programme, they need to go through this visa process, because three years is not five years, and the Home Office has decided that five years is what is required.

There are other associated problems. When it comes to applying for a visa, the GP practice that needs to register will consider whether that process is worth while. It may, in theory, be worth while in advance, and some practices do register in advance, but many do not. They then find themselves confronted with a brilliant candidate, and they try to register, but with the best will in the world, the timescales are very tight for doctors to apply for visas when they have a job offer from a practice that is already registered. There are lots of things to line up, and it is stressful for practices and for doctors. Even if there were no backlog in the Home Office, it would be a very tight timescale.

[Mrs Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and congratulate him on securing this important debate. I have recently returned from an International Development Committee visit to Jordan, where I spoke to a number of highly educated Jordanians, as well as Syrian refugees. Some of the Jordanians were already doctors and nurses, and the Syrian refugees in the camps in Jordan cannot get an education beyond the age of 18 but wish to become doctors, engineers and so on. They speak amazing English and would love to train here in the UK.

At the moment, Germany is hoovering up a huge number of these doctors and people who would like to study to become doctors, to satisfy the demands of its health service. Does my hon. Friend agree that it would be helpful for the Minister to consider opening up more visa routes for brilliant young medical students from countries such as Jordan that have long been strong international partners of the UK, in order to ease some of the workforce pressures on our NHS? It is important that we increase the numbers, and that would be one way of doing it.

[Matt Warman]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend that increasing all those routes is hugely important. Of course, we would all like to see more doctors trained in this country, and the Government have gone some way towards doing that, but where people want to work abroad, Britain should be as attractive a place as we can be. That is why, on the GP point specifically, the Government should be removing every single barrier in that visa process.

The most straightforward thing we could do, which would remove the need for a practice to register as a visa-sponsoring practice, is simply to say that when a GP qualifies in this country, they get the indefinite leave to remain that other doctors get. These are people in whom the UK has already invested. They are already here; they already have a visa. The extension of that visa into another form seems simply to be a bureaucratic hoop that we are putting in their way as doctors and in the way of GP practices. We are putting extra bureaucracy into a system, while on the other hand the Government say, “We desperately need people to come to this country to work in the NHS, and we will try to do everything we can.” The health service does hugely good work to try to recruit such people and specifically encourages them to train as GPs, but then we put an additional barrier in their way.

The response from the Government in the past has been, “Actually, the visa process registration is not terribly onerous and GP practices can do it.” They point to the numbers that have and do, which is fine as far as it goes, but it does not answer the question of why we put a barrier in the way in the first place. It should not be a cost of doing business when we say that we really want to make it as easy as possible.

Equally, it should not be a reasonable thing to put different sorts of doctors on different sorts of levels. It is not reasonable to say to people that, just as they have gone through the most stressful part of qualifying with exams, they should also be thinking about their immigration status. That calls into question their probity when we have things such as the General Medical Council making sure that they are upstanding members of our communities, and many of them have tens of thousands of patients to testify to that.

I do not think it really washes when the Government say that we need to put barriers in place, and I do not think that the Department of Health, where the Minister was previously a Minister of State, would agree, in an ideal world, with the Home Office stance. We could work together across Government to try to secure a sensible outcome.

I have talked about GPs, but there are broader issues around visas for doctors, many of which come back to the Home Office backlogs that I know my right hon. Friend the Minister is working really hard to address. There is a good argument for simply scrapping visa fees altogether for people coming to work in the health service. That is an argument for another day, but when it comes to GPs I think that lowering the five-year limit for indefinite leave to remain to three years is the neatest way to address the issue.

On the broader issues, ultimately this comes back to how many doctors we are training in the UK. We all want, as I said to my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham), to see more people trained in this country. That is what we are doing and that is what the Government continue to pursue, but until we reach that moment—the NHS has never reached entire self-sufficiency in the UK—we should make it as easy as possible for doctors, dentists, nurses, people working in social care, and all those who work in different parts of the health service, to come to the UK. It is not primarily a question about backlogs; it is a question about process. At the moment there is a degree of bureaucracy that simply does not need to exist.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

It is great to hear my hon. Friend making such an eloquent case, as always—more so than I can. The issue matters for all the reasons he has set out, but would he agree that because of the retention challenge in the health service, the more we pour in at the top is sometimes, in part at least, offset by those who go out at the bottom? There is a wider picture here to do with pension pots—the whole retention piece is part of the wider jigsaw, which I appreciate is not the remit of this Minister, but perhaps was in his previous job.

[Matt Warman]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. It is always tempting to ask the Minister to go and have a word with his former self, but we cannot do that. I think he has read the last couple of points that I want to make.

There are a number of relatively low-hanging pieces of fruit that the NHS has repeatedly asked for. I want to thank the RCGP, the British Medical Association, the radiologists, the British Dental Association, and also groups such as EveryDoctor, which have helped me with this debate and have identified the fact, as my hon. Friend implied, that there are a small number of things that could and should be sorted as quickly as possible. Busting the barriers around pensions and the bureaucracy around visas are things that would make a real difference to recruitment and retention across the health service. There are plenty of things that are difficult when it comes to addressing the NHS’s challenges, particularly as we approach winter. On the narrow point of GP provision, we have a visa process that puts pressure on, in particular, small GP practices, where the added burden of registering as a visa sponsoring practice is even greater now as they are under such huge pressure. It is also a burden on GPs at what is a particularly stressful point in their careers.

I know the Minister will make entirely legitimate points around putting a process in place, but the reality is that there is a political choice to be made to ease some of those burdens. There is a powerful, compelling case to be made for doing a small number of easy things that could address the GP crisis in particular, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) alluded to, is acute.

I appeal to the Minister and the Government to work as closely as they can with the Department of Health and Social Care to understand these challenges and see what can be done, and I urge my right hon. Friend to take seriously the suggestion that if someone qualifies as a medical doctor in this country, and in particular as a GP, they should have indefinite leave to remain. At the moment, it effectively comes with that if they qualify in a hospital but not in general practice. That is an inequality that the Minister can look to fix, and I hope he will do so as soon as is practicable.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Warman]

We are all hugely grateful for the fantastic work that doctors do for us all, as the Minister alluded to. I do not just say that because I am married to one, although it brings it home—literally. In the course of the debate, the Home Office has been accused of intransigence. Within days of his arrival, the Minister has demonstrated more progress on this important issue in the commitment that he has made to us today than we have seen in some years. He is the human embodiment of cross-Government working in the sense that he brings together the Department of Health and the Home Office remits. We could all learn from the value of cross-Government working. I am immensely grateful to all Members who have brought the issue to life, and I look forward to continuing to work with the Minister on the outcome of the review, which will make a real difference to our constituents, and to doctors up and down the country.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered visas for international doctors.

Computer Misuse Act 1990

Matt Warman Excerpts

Tuesday 19th April 2022 Westminster Hall

[Matt Warman (Boston and Skegness) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Dr Wallis) on securing this debate. I myself put in for a debate on this issue a while ago, but the gods obviously smile more on Bridgend than they do on Boston. Nevertheless, I welcome this opportunity to debate the issue.

I thank the Minister and his officials for several meetings that he and I have had about this issue relatively recently. All were prompted, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend said, by CyberUp and by Kat Sommer, who deserves to be cited in Hansard for her persistence, among many other things.

This is an important but technical issue. I will be honest and say that I am not completely certain that the Computer Misuse Act 1990 is broken, but I am certain that it can be improved, by one means or another. That is because, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend said, the structure of the cyber-security industry has changed since the Act came into force, and is different from almost any other part of the national security set-up. If we were to ask whether academics have a right to interrogate systems for the purposes of research, we would definitely say yes. If we were to ask whether businesses have the right to interrogate those same systems, we would assume that it was for commercial purposes and that it was important to have different rules.

It is also a sector where a lot of very small-scale research is done by individuals—some of them literally in their bedrooms. There is a very diverse set of people looking for loopholes and vulnerabilities. Uncovering those vulnerabilities—be they in banks, businesses or any other area where we all rely on the internet—is categorically in the public interest, even if it may also be in the interests of businesses, researchers or people looking for bounties given by large businesses to uncover those vulnerabilities. Those businesses realise that it is in their interests to provide the maximum security to their customers or users.

That gets to the heart of why the Computer Misuse Act matters. On the one hand, it seeks to prevent hacking and other things that we do not want to see done by people with malign intent; but on the other hand, it risks fettering the ability of people with the public interest at heart to solve issues that we would all like to see solved. Admiring the problem is the easy bit; the hard bit is trying to work out what we should do about it.

There are a couple of things that we should not do. We should not introduce a blanket public interest defence for anyone who goes looking for things that might subsequently be perceived as a loophole or bug in a system. To do that would potentially give carte blanche to anyone who got caught, allowing them to claim that they were going to fess up about it, rather than benefit from it themselves. A public interest defence that goes too far should be avoided. I find it hard to imagine how a public interest defence might be constructed that does not, inadvertently or otherwise, go too far.

The other thing that we should not do—notwithstanding the figures that my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend quoted—is assume that cyber firms of any sort should not be mindful of legislation such as the Computer Misuse Act. Of course, if someone is doing research they should consider what is legal. It is a good thing, not a bad thing, that it is a factor for consideration for those who are engaged in the cyber-security industry. We should be mindful of how we can fix the Act, rather than just sweep it away altogether. I come to a point that was made a moment ago; those issues can probably be addressed through enhanced guidance that provides a degree of legal comfort to the unsurprisingly risk-averse lawyers who work for cyber firms and others. Such guidance would not provide carte blanche to people who might have malevolent intent.

Criminals will not be looking at the CMA and wondering whether what they are doing is legal; by definition criminals are not bothered about whether they are breaking the law. However, there is an important grey area, and we should not create an unintended opportunity for people to defend themselves in court. I implore the Minister to continue his work on the review of the Act, which is really important, but with some minor legislative tweaking we could provide the comfort that the industry rightly asks for and could continue to secure the excellent reputation that Britain has and, as the hon. Member for Strangford said, that Belfast has, for being a world-leading cyber power. We can build on that success because the CMA is an example of a bit of legislation that, although very old, has largely stood the test of time for a lot longer than many might think.

I will close by simply saying that the principles embedded in the CMA are not bad ones. Whenever it comes to legislating for the internet, we should realise that the internet has not necessarily reinvented every single wheel, and principles that apply offline can be applied online. In this case, they need a little bit of updating, but I do not think we should throw the baby out with the bathwater, as the hon. Member for Strangford said.