Immigration: DNA Tests

Matt Warman Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Thursday 25th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I agree, but a decision on whether an issue is politicised cannot be taken by just one side of the House. This is an important point, and it is worth reminding ourselves that after the wrongs done to the Windrush generation were first discovered, a review of historical cases over the summer showed that almost half those cases in which people suffered detriment took place under the previous Labour Government. Since then, there has been a much more co-operative approach across the House. I think that that is what the public want to see, and it is what they would want to see in this case as well.

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

A compassionate immigration system is, above all, an efficient immigration system, so I welcome the review my right hon. Friend is carrying out. Will he, however, commit that in the new immigration system, which will of course apply to far more people once we have left the European Union, he will make the case for using DNA to speed up applications, because that can be very much in the interests of applicants?

[Sajid Javid]

That is an important point. I think it is already the situation that where someone chooses to provide DNA evidence, it generally speeds up their case, because DNA is pretty straightforward to analyse and to make a determination about compared with cases involving paperwork that sometimes goes back and forth between the applicant and the Home Office. In cases where people choose to do this, the matter should be dealt with as quickly as possible.

Police: Financial Sustainability

Matt Warman Excerpts

Wednesday 12th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point. It is a prime responsibility of the Government to look at how these limited, stretched public resources, which come from the taxpayer, are raised and spent, and it is obviously one of our responsibilities to ensure that decisions are taken that fully reflect and understand the shifts and changes in society and in how this country works. That is our responsibility, and it is a serious bit of work, which is why I think that it is best done in the context of the CSR.

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

I am grateful to the Minister for the engagement that he has shown with Lincolnshire police and for the praise that he has given to the force for doing more with less, but does he agree that, however big the funding cake is for the police, Lincolnshire deserves a larger slice of it?

[Mr Hurd]

I have received assiduous representations on that point from Lincolnshire MPs, the chief constable and the police and crime commissioner. Some work has been done on fair funding and more work needs to be done. I recognise that the Lincolnshire police force is stretched and challenged. We have done what we can to help in the short term. I give my commitment that I will continue to do what I can there, if that is what the evidence shows, but in the context of the CSR, which is the most important event in terms of framing the future of police funding for the next five years, I undertake that we will look again at the fair funding.

Salisbury Incident

Matt Warman Excerpts

Wednesday 12th September 2018 Commons Chamber

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

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk), not least because of the brilliant work that is done at GCHQ in his constituency.

Like my hon. Friend, I pay tribute to the actions of the Prime Minister and, indeed, of the Security Minister. As he said, it was her sure-footedness that ensured the global response to the outrageous incident in Salisbury was so united. We should bear in mind that that global response was itself a tribute to the actions of our security services. The global response was also part of something that has perhaps surprised many constituents. The absolutely certain tone from across the world when it came to assessing the actions of Russia—or, rather, the Kremlin—speaks volumes, and we should all pay attention to that.

In this short speech, I do not want to dwell too much on the extraordinary use of hard power by Russia, which so many people have talked about. Whether in Crimea and the Donbass or in shooting planes out of the sky, we know that Russia has exceeded the standards of common decency by more than anyone had perhaps thought possible. Instead, I would like to talk a little bit about some of its soft power.

In my opinion, too many of my constituents have come back from visiting Russia for the World cup with a view of a country that they would say, and rightly so in some ways, feels very much like Britain. They have been to extraordinary football stadiums and seen some extraordinary things, but in that process they have also seen a Russia that wants to project an image of itself as a country that is not the kind of country we know Russia—the Kremlin—in fact is. Given that soft power, I think FIFA made a serious mistake in awarding the World cup to Russia. Such soft power has been allowed to continue, which is why I pay tribute to the work of the British Council and of the World Service in spreading British values around the world and trying to combat what Russia has, in some cases, allowed itself to stand for.

Similarly, we have talked about Magnitsky amendments or Magnitsky Acts, which are a serious attempt to challenge the soft power of oligarchs who have often come up through very cloudy methods or gained fortunes in very difficult legal circumstances in a way that certainly would not have happened in this country. There are too many people who act as Putin’s ambassadors around the world, which allows his views and attitudes to global security to become normalised.

That brings me to the main point I want to make, which builds on what others have said. The attitude of the Russian state has been to produce a fog of multiple versions of what happened in Salisbury. I think that we are now up to more than 30 individual, and largely mutually exclusive, versions of the truths that have been explicitly suggested from the Kremlin. That in itself is a shocking tactic, but it is one that the Russians have used for many years.

What is different today is that too many of our constituents who we would have thought were sensible and decent people have found themselves exposed to that propaganda and have become a little bit too convinced that some of it may even be true. Too many of my constituents have got in touch with me worrying that perhaps the British Government were not actually on the right track with this. They have seen some of the propaganda and become too convinced.

The same goes for people who have got in touch with many of us about the White Helmets, suggesting that it is not in fact the Nobel prize-winning organisation that it is, but that we should doubt whether it is on the right side of the argument. Many people who have been in touch with us to defend Tommy Robinson are probably in the same boat. We should bear in mind that it is not the spreading of propaganda by Russia that is new, but the relative credibility that people seem to give it, and that is largely thanks to the internet.

We talk about British soft power, but we should also be careful in considering future regulation—and there needs to be regulation—of what the social media giants and the internet can do. We should not allow the pretence that they are simply platforms for the spreading of whatever someone happens to want to put online, but say that the networks have to bear some responsibility for the impacts they have on society when that is palpably negative.

I say that as one who spent more than a decade writing about technology; I started this conversation thinking that the free speech enabled by the internet would allow our liberal values to win the argument. Now I cannot help but feel that we need to do something—I do not have an answer; none of us would wish to regulate free speech in an old-fashioned and limiting way. However, the Minister has rightly talked about some of the conversations involving the previous Home Secretary and the current one about what we can do to talk to social media companies in particular, so that they take the responsibility that we would all like them to take without limiting freedom of speech.

We can do a couple of things. We should stop saying that social media networks are mere conduits, but hold back from pretending that they are entirely publishers; the idea that Facebook is the same as my old employer, The Daily Telegraph, is clearly not right. They occupy a middle ground that we have to regulate in a sensible way.

We can do other things, which have to come back ultimately to making a greater effort at transparency online. That means indicating not just what is a political campaign but where it comes from and who has funded it. I commend the work of the Cabinet Office in trying to produce what a digital imprint might look like online. In my own paper for the Centre for Policy Studies, I proposed some specific wording for what that sort of imprint might look like: saying, for instance, who has funded something—specifically who they are. That is what we do in printed campaigning literature, and it is what we should be doing online. However, we cannot pretend that that would ever result in a situation where there was something at the bottom of an article of fake news saying, “This item has been funded by the Kremlin and here is who you can get in touch with.” We should not be quite so naive, and I am not suggesting for a moment that the Minister would be.

We also need to encourage social media networks to build on the work they have already done in identifying trusted sources and what sources being shared online have as a history. Many sources have very plausible names and kinds of history, for which a little debunking goes an awfully long way. We should work with social media companies to do more of that. We cannot pretend that every one of our constituents will consult a Channel 4 fact checker as soon as they see something a little suspicious online.

As input, this all sounds relatively small, but we should bear in mind that if we do not tackle the attitudes of our own citizens to what they read on the internet in respect of the approach that the Russians have taken, we risk more and more people not believing one particular version of the truth, but doubting the credibility of our own security services in general. Now more than ever, we must have faith in those security services. That may involve their being a little more open than they have in the past and building on the enormous openness that they have adopted in recent years, compared with what they were like decades ago. A little openness from the British will go a long way in tackling what, if we nip things in the bud, will be a serious victory in the long term.

I end by paying tribute, as I did at the beginning, to the work of the Prime Minister, the security services and the Security Minister. We have to be absolutely unashamed in saying that we should have confidence in our British values and our British security services. If we do not, we will allow an aggressive Russian state to punch through in a way that would do untold damage at a civilian level, as well as at a national level.

Amesbury Update

Matt Warman Excerpts

Monday 9th July 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her comments. She asks a very important question. She will know that the Home Office works closely with counter-terrorism policing generally in any case, so every week I meet the head of counter-terrorism policing to get an update on the most important cases. Of course, this is one of those that will be getting a lot of attention, as is the original incident on 4 March.

The right hon. Lady will also know that resources for counter-terrorism policing were increased, and increased substantially, following the five terrorist attacks of last year. We constantly keep that under review to make sure that the resources are there, given the priority for this type of policing. In response to this incident, counter-terrorism police are drawing a lot of support from Wiltshire police and the other constabularies, and from the presence of military police, because that allows them to focus on what they specialise in. They are all working very closely together. We will keep that under review and keep working with them, and if extra support is required, we will certainly be making that available.

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

One of the striking things about the Skripal attack was the concerted campaign of misinformation with which we were attacked in this country. Will the Home Secretary talk a little bit about what the Government will do to work with international partners to make sure that people in this country know as many of the facts as possible and are in the best possible position to judge correctly the misinformation campaign that will inevitably follow?

[Sajid Javid]

My hon. Friend rightly reminds this House about the Kremlin’s persistent and constant use of disinformation against those it perceives as its enemies. After the original attack, the Kremlin did that time and again. There were over 25 disinformation narratives in response to the March attack. Sadly, with regard to the Amesbury poisonings, the Kremlin has already established some 12 false narratives. It specialises in false information. This is an opportunity to remind Members that in initiating work with Russian television, radio and other outlets, the only job that they are doing is helping the Kremlin to feed poison to the rest of the world.

Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill (First sitting)

Matt Warman Excerpts

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 26th June 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Mr Wallace]

Q Would that breadth of suspicion being challenged as not narrow enough, also apply to a method? Let’s say that we had intelligence that a hostile state agent was moving a radioactive substance in a flask but we did not know which flight, so we decided to target all people carrying flasks. That would be too broad because that would potentially cover every flight coming into the country. So, we would not be able to do that if we had a suspicion test.

Assistant Commissioner Basu: Yes.

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

Q Earlier you mentioned the prospect of extraterritorial powers and that Australia has them and we do not. As you know, a lot of MPs brought that up on Second Reading. Could you say a little more about how helpful they would be and how they might be used in practice? Would you just like to cut and paste the rules that Australia has or would you like to do something slightly different, if you could start with a blank piece of paper?

Assistant Commissioner Basu: Do you mean the designated area offence that we discussed earlier?

[Matt Warman]

Yes.

Assistant Commissioner Basu: I think the Australian approach is the more sensible one from our point of view. If you start introducing any kind of rules and notification procedure, there is bureaucracy and difficulty that would go with that. We know how people react. If you put in any kind of way of stopping somebody travelling, if they succeed and travel that would be a huge propaganda coup. That is not something that we would like to see. There is obviously a huge reputational risk in that happening and then them going on to commit atrocities, because somehow they had passed a notification requirement and travelled under the guise of something else, which has happened in the past. They have arrived and then fought and committed an atrocity. It would look like we had effectively licensed them to do that. We would rather have very clear legislation in the first place that prohibits the travel, and that people were then responsible for doing whatever it is they do and they took that risk, and we were able to prosecute in the future.

[Matt Warman]

Q Do you have a sense of how many people have been inspired to travel and how many people, if you were implementing an Australian-type system, you might have had the opportunity to prosecute already?

Assistant Commissioner Basu: I do not have those figures off the top of my head, but I could get those for you and it is substantial. One figure I do have is that we prevented 100 minors from travelling to a theatre of war. The other fact I have is that despite the collapse of the caliphate, we still see people inspired to travel.

[Matt Warman]

Q Is there anything you would add, Mr McGill?

Gregor McGill: I adopt everything my colleague has said. I would say, in respect of the Australian experience, is that although it is on the statute book, it is not often used. It is something that, like most offences, has to be—in accordance with the law—it has to be necessary in democratic society but it also has to be proportionate. It is an offence that would be a useful addition to a prosecutor’s armoury, but we would have to be careful how we exercised it because there are ECHR implications, and prosecutors would be alert to that. The Australians are looking at their first case at the moment for dealing with such an individual.

[Afzal Khan (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

Q This question is to Mr McGill. We have heard a number of questions on the three viewings. With the viewing itself, does that mean whole or part? What proportion would have been viewed to be counted as one, two, three?

Gregor McGill: That would depend on the particular circumstances of the case and the particular evidence put before the prosecutor. If you went straight to a very criminal—if I can use that word—part of the streaming, that could constitute one. Just a very brief look could constitute one click.

Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill (Second sitting)

Matt Warman Excerpts

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 26th June 2018 Public Bill Committees

[Nick Thomas-Symonds]

Q Turning from that issue to the retention of biometric data, do you think there should be additional safeguards to protect those who are wrongly arrested as a result of mistaken identity or poor intelligence?

Corey Stoughton: Yes, I do. Viewed against the context we currently live in, where the Government have struggled to correct existing deficiencies in databases such as the police national database of custody images, it is deeply concerning that the Bill’s provision on biometric data retention extends the powers on retention of data, including fingerprint data and DNA data, of people who are arrested but not charged—that is to say, innocent people—and also removes the critical safeguard of requiring that retention to be proved by the Biometrics Commissioner.

Arguably, the current system has insufficient safeguards and, against the backdrop of the repeated pattern of an inability to correct databases that have already been ruled by courts not to be complying with human rights standards, there should be great caution and a pause before expanding the Government’s power to retain the data, particularly when that data belongs not to people convicted of any crime, but to people merely arrested, which would include those who have been falsely or wrongly arrested for terrorism-related crimes.

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

Q Again to Corey Stoughton, your briefing says that clause 3 risks criminalising academics or journalists. I used to be a journalist, and I cannot myself recall a case where a journalist has been prosecuted for the kind of things that you are worried about, and which we would all be worried about. Is there a case that I have not noticed, or is this a theoretical inquiry, in which case, are you simply arguing for responsible prosecutions?

Corey Stoughton: It is not theoretical. I have to say that, although concern about wrongful prosecution is a legitimate concern, the real concern here is with the chilling effect that this has on journalistic activity. The question is not, do we believe that prosecutors will prosecute a Guardian journalist who clicks three times on extremist content. The real question is what journalist—what independent journalist, what citizen journalist—would be deterred from engaging in valuable journalistic activity? They will now, given the sentencing enhancements in this Bill, face a potential 15-year penalty for clicking on extremist content, which they may have done over the course of any unlimited period of time.

So we are concerned with that chilling effect and the fear of what that does to a journalist. It is a very brave journalist who would risk a 15-year sentence for anything, but you should not even require that level of bravery to be a journalist. Many journalists who are out there pursuing important critical activity are not protected by the legal teams that people at established journalistic institutions are, but that journalism deserves protection and respect, no less than other journalism.

[Matt Warman]

Q Is it your argument that that chilling effect is immeasurable because we do not know what it is, or do you have any sense of what that chilling effect might be?

Corey Stoughton: We have heard Index on Censorship reporters and press freedom groups that represent journalists say that they have serious concerns about that. That establishes quite well that the journalist community itself is concerned about it.

[Matt Warman]

Q Are those concerns backed up with evidence, or are they concerns about what the future might look like?

Corey Stoughton: I think they are both. It is one thing when you can say, “As long as I don’t download, I can engage in my journalistic or academic activity”—whatever mode of investigation a person is deploying in their life—but under the Bill the offence is merely clicking on something. That, I think, raises the bar a substantial degree over the current offence, which requires downloading. In point of fact, to date there has not been a stand-alone prosecution of the existing offence. It tends to be brought as a corollary charge when people are engaged in other acts that indicate they are participating in planning acts of terrorism.

To lower the bar further and to risk bringing legitimate activity under the criminal law compounds an error that, frankly, already exists under the UK’s current criminal regime. That error would be massively compounded by the Bill, which would make an offence of acts that are not themselves crimes or terrorism—there is no sense in which viewing or even downloading something is actually terrorism, according to the definition in the Terrorism Act 2000. They are acts that, in certain circumstances, can be associated with terrorism. We have already taken quite a few baby steps along the road of turning acts that might legitimately lead law enforcement to suspect that a person is preparing terrorism into criminal acts themselves. This takes another dramatic step in the wrong direction and, along the way, creates the risks we have discussed.

[The Chair]

Order. This is very engaging, but I have loads of Members who are trying to get in, so I am going to have to ask that answers be quite concise. I am also conscious that there are two other members of our panel who have given of their time today. The Minister and the shadow Minister now also want to come in, and I do not want to miss them out either.

EU Settlement Scheme

Matt Warman Excerpts

Thursday 21st June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes]

The right hon. Lady raises some important points, in particular about children. She referenced children in the care system. As I set out in my statement, there will be no fee for them. Local authorities clearly have a significant responsibility to ensure that children in the care system are registered in a timely manner. We will have a proportionate response to those who have not registered before the end of June 2021. We will be working extremely hard to ensure that as many are registered as possible. For those who are here lawfully and have been resident for the required five-year period, we have to ensure that our response takes on board the comments of all people to make sure that no child is disadvantaged.

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

The Minister will know that proportionately my constituency has more eastern European immigrants than any other in the country, so I welcome the scheme and the phased roll-out, which I hope means we can get it right. As a result of that high level of immigration, I have had a number of visits from European ambassadors. Can she reassure me that she will work with ambassadors and embassies, so that we provide information to communities through as many avenues as possible and get this right?

[Caroline Nokes]

Since coming into this role, I have had the opportunity to engage with a range of ambassadors from across the EU. I will certainly continue to do so. I am very conscious that a significant part of this is about communications. We have already started our communications plan, but that will ramp up significantly over the course of the next few months. It is crucial that EU communities, wherever they live in the country, have the opportunity to know what the scheme is about and to understand it. Today, I have published an op-ed piece in a Polish newspaper. There will continue to be significant engagement with foreign newspapers.

Rural Crime and Public Services

Matt Warman Excerpts

Wednesday 6th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Louise Haigh]

The issue with the centralisation of services such as NPAS is that those decisions have been made for all the wrong reasons. They have been made to drive cuts, rather than being genuinely about where provision should be. We would certainly keep NPAS and other services like it under review, but those decisions need to be made on the basis of the efficiency and effectiveness of that service, not solely to drive cuts for ideology’s sake.

The police funding formula cannot be reformed from a position of ever decreasing budgets. We saw what happened when they tried to do that with schools; it just shifted the pain elsewhere. It has to depend on need and take into account all demands for policing services. Though crime levels are important, we know that some rural forces face other unique challenges, such as the cost of policing a huge area, modern slavery and seasonal influxes of tourists. That has to be reflected in the funding formula.

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

It felt like the hon. Lady was describing Lincolnshire—a huge, sparsely populated rural area with a huge coastal influx. Given what she says, why did Labour vote against a fairer funding formula that would have benefited Lincolnshire and against £450 million extra for the police? I am still waiting for the bit in her speech where she pays impassioned tribute to the hugely brave work that police officers in Lincolnshire do, in difficult circumstances, when they are battling all the issues that she has raised.

[Louise Haigh]

If the hon. Gentleman had not chosen to interrupt me at that stage of my speech, I would have got on to the bit where I praise police officers. I am a former police officer, as he may well know. We voted against the Government’s unfair funding formula because it did not deliver the funding that our police services so desperately need. As I have already explained, funding our police through the precept is unfair and distributes funding disproportionately away from the areas that need it most.

I would like to close by thanking the NFU for its support in preparing for today’s debate and, of course, the tens of thousands of police officers and staff across our country who work tirelessly to keep us all safe. Our conversations so often in this place cover the pressing challenges of our urban centres, but we can demonstrate how to deliver a consistent policing service for everyone, no matter who they are or where they live. The Government’s reckless and ideological approach to policing has not only left our inner cities rocked by serious violence but has left every single one of our communities exposed to crime. Only a Labour Government will keep the public safe and give the police the resources they need. I commend the motion to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

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

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker; I might even try to take less time, in the spirit of charity.

As attested to not least by the number of Lincolnshire MPs in the Chamber today, the Lincolnshire police force is a remarkable force. Lincolnshire is a vast rural county—the second biggest in the country, after Yorkshire—yet, although the average level of funding per head in the UK is £104.50, it gets by on £77.90 per head. That is a huge difference. I say gently to the Opposition that it is surprising that their contention is that it costs more to police a rural area than a metropolitan area in some ways. Lincolnshire does not want to take money away from metropolitan areas, but I think we all realise that a fairer share of the cake is important. In that context, though, I think we all also realise that the Metropolitan police’s work on counter-terrorism has a nationwide benefit and that rural police forces benefit from the integrated way in which modern police forces work.

[Mr John Hayes]

Let me say two things on that matter. First, Lincolnshire is not only rural but sparse, and the sparse nature of the population creates real problems in terms of the police responding to events of the kind that have been described. Secondly, the Metropolitan police’s reach, which my hon. Friend describes, does not mean that Lincolnshire police do not have to be alive to those kind of threats and trained to prepare for them, which is costly, too.

[Matt Warman]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for summarising the rest of my speech. He is absolutely right that, although we of course benefit from money that goes to the Metropolitan police and to other police forces, in a county that is a vast place in terms of travelling time as much as distance, the nature of policing is fundamentally different.

We have talked about hare coursing at some length and I do not wish to add much to the excellent contributions we have heard, but let me say two things. First, this is absolutely about the sense of safety that people feel in their own homes and properties. It is a profoundly serious crime that has never had the attention that it deserves in terms of sentencing in the courts. Its victims have struggled to articulate quite how damaging and limiting for their lives it has been not to feel safe in their own homes, knowing how distant they are from anyone else. If nothing else, this debate has been an important contribution on that issue.

Secondly, when I have raised hare coursing in this House and elsewhere, one of my frustrations has been that even people in urban areas in my constituency often accuse those who seek to better fund action on rural crime and hare coursing of not focusing on what they would say are more important urban crimes. We have a job of work to do to explain the damage done by rural crime and hare coursing in particular, not only to our colleagues in the House but even to those who live in market towns just a few miles from where it happens. I absolutely commend the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson) and the all-party group on rural crime, particularly on hare coursing, but there is plenty more to do on that front.

Next, I wish to talk about the roads, and particularly the cost to Lincolnshire police of the investigation of accidents and collisions. According to Lincolnshire police, on average, it costs £2 million overall to investigate a collision and £1.84 million per casualty. It is of course a tragedy when anyone dies on our roads, but it is also a huge amount of money for our public services, so we are right to consider what we can do to get the incidence of road fatalities down, not solely for the sake of the families of those in our constituencies but for all taxpayers.

Thankfully, Lincolnshire has seen a significant reduction in the number of road deaths and collisions compared with 10 or 15 years ago, but there is still a huge amount of work to do. We have to bear in mind that the work of special constables in particular has been a very practical way for Lincolnshire to deal with the number of crimes and the number of road safety partnership schemes has increased. That should be commended and it is just one example of Lincolnshire police being creative with that £77.90 per head of population, which, as I said earlier, is some £25 per head below the average for the country.

The police force has worked with the private sector. Lincolnshire colleagues will no doubt be familiar with the imperfection of G4S, shall we say, when it comes to its relationship with the police force, but I would argue that ultimately it has done far more good than harm in terms of value for the taxpayer. When it works, it works very well, so I commend it.

I also commend the use of WhatsApp groups to deal with hare coursing, the use of drones and a whole host of schemes. I commend the work of the police with North Sea Camp prison on fly-tipping, allowing inmates to return, to some extent, to the world of work through the genuine public service of helping to deal with fly-tipping, which in our vast rural county is a real struggle and hard to deal with. It is also the right thing to do for the future life chances of criminals in a category D, so-called open, prison, where it is important they adjust to the future world of work.

I will talk briefly about the issues that have come to the urban areas of my constituency, thanks to the many benefits of being a rural area. Large numbers of people have come to Boston in particular thanks to our agricultural economy and the availability of work. That has, however, caused some social tensions and a number of issues around translation for the police, which cost a great deal of money. Dealing with new communities within a rural constituency often falls to the police. Lincolnshire police do a remarkable job in very challenging circumstances. I commend the work of Marc Jones, the police and crime commissioner, and Bill Skelly.

More than anything, what we have seen from all my Lincolnshire colleagues—and from the Minister on the Front Bench—is an argument that a fairer share of the funding cake is only right for rural constituencies. I hope that the next time we debate the police funding formula, those on the Labour Benches will acknowledge that it would be in all our interests to slice that funding cake, however big it is, more fairly than it is at the moment.

Home Office Removal Targets

Matt Warman Excerpts

Thursday 26th April 2018 Commons Chamber

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

May I ask that the Home Secretary bears in mind the views of my constituents, who have praised the compassion that she has expressed on behalf of the Windrush generation but also said that they would like a continued focus on the removal of illegal migrants who take advantage, unfairly, of all law-abiding taxpayers?

[Amber Rudd]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. Although I do not in any way minimise the serious nature of what took place with the Windrush group, I agree with him that in the vast majority of cases and situations, my office and UK Visas and Immigration do an excellent job, and I am proud of the work that they do.

Windrush

Matt Warman Excerpts

Monday 23rd April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

I have spoken to my staff, and I am aware that they are going to assist the hon. Lady in Bristol West. As the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) mentioned, I hope that the hon. Lady will notice a difference in Home Office assistance going forward. Bristol West will have the benefit not only of the arrangement that she has put in place but of staff going to attend to provide support in that analysis. I hope that that will be appreciated by the people who need it in her constituency.

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

It is of course right that we listen to and compensate the people of the Windrush generation who made a peerless contribution, and who have clearly been put in a very difficult situation. Should we not also listen to people such as the Prime Minister of Jamaica who, after the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting last week, said that he was confident that justice would be done?

[Amber Rudd]

That is a fair point. I am aware that many of the people who are leading the countries concerned are relieved and content that the Government have put in place the right measures. I recognise that we need to do more to convince individuals in MPs’ constituencies that that is taking place. This morning, for instance, I met another high commissioner who went out of their way to say how pleased they were with the new arrangements that have been put in place.