Mango Import Ban

Debate between Michael Ellis and Keith Vaz

Thursday 8th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz]

There are many salad crop growers in urban Reading, and I know that the hon. Gentleman would be keen to protect them. I can assure him that, as I will say in my speech, this has already been done.

[Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)]

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. Does he think this is another example of European Union bureaucracy and regulation going too far?

[Keith Vaz]

Yes.

Leicester is the mango capital of Britain. Last year it hosted the first-ever mango festival in Cossington park in Belgrave in my constituency: four giant elephants dominated the scene and many hundreds of boxes of mangos were consumed. Retailers in Leicester have told me that they will face critical losses as a result of this decision and the situation will be repeated in other cities and towns in Britain, such as Manchester, Birmingham, and Southall, Tower Hamlets and Feltham in London.

Police Federation Reform (Normington Report)

Debate between Michael Ellis and Keith Vaz

Thursday 13th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Reigate (Mr Blunt) and the excellent speeches of hon. Members on both sides of the House. It is clear that something is very wrong in the national Police Federation, and has been for some time. The continual drip-drip effect is reaching its zenith—or, should I say, its nadir—and is causing considerable embarrassment and distress to the rank and file officers of a noble and honourable profession that has brought, and continues to bring, great honour to this country.

Our police service is genuinely the best in the world. It deals with extremely severe threats and incidents. It deals daily with historic episodes and threats to the state and security of this nation, and it does so without being armed and by consent. I am very proud of the profession, and we all can be very proud of it, which is why the Police Federation’s dysfunction is a humiliation to rank and file officers throughout the country. Many officers have told me that if they did not feel that they needed the protection of an organisation such as the federation in case they should get into trouble, they would not choose to be members of it and to pay the exorbitant dues that have caused it to become bloated.

The Police Federation may have started nobly in 1919, but owing to several recent scandals and cover-ups, it has lost that nobility. An opinion poll released only today, which has been the subject of media attention, indicates that a third of people have lost confidence in the police. The lowest level of trust in the police ever now subsists in this country. In large measure, that is due to the disgraceful misconduct of previous leaderships of the federation.

I have had dealings with police officers and my local Northamptonshire federation. They do a good job, but we have to address the egregious examples about which we have heard in the debate before they cause even greater damage to this country and its reputation.

As for the incident at the gates of Downing street, if my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), then a Cabinet Minister, can be traduced in such a way, in such a location and in such circumstances, what hope is there for any of our constituents, without that authority and without the resources to defend themselves?

The review, chaired by Sir David Normington, has done a good job. It was set up to examine signal failures within the federation. Its report, which was delivered a couple of months ago, found fault with almost every aspect of the federation’s operations. I cannot recall a report that was quite so damning. Federation tactics have been a particular source of shame, and I am appalled that, despite the publication of the report in January, they are still going on.

The report states that

“many from outside have criticised its tactics particularly in responding to the Winsor review.”

That was about police pay. The federation

“has too often fallen back on its traditional tendency to attack and try to undermine those who are proposing the changes, rather than take on the issues…This constitutes a strategic failure; the politics of personal attack and shouting has proved to be a wrong-headed response.”

It goes on to say:

“The Federation should be a powerful voice for standards in British policing but at present it is badly placed to be that voice. Throughout our inquiry we have heard allegations that some Federation representatives who have personally targeted successive Home Secretaries, Andrew Mitchell, Tom Winsor and others, bringing the Federation into disrepute and risking the police reputation for impartiality and integrity. We have also been given evidence of bad behaviour within, including poor treatment of staff at HQ and the targeting of representatives in social media, at Conference and elsewhere simply because they hold a different point of view. If the Federation wants to be respected and listened to in the future, this has to stop.”

These are nothing more than bully-boy tactics from those who are in a position to be bullies, and who are hiding behind their position to intimidate others, including democratically elected representatives. It is intolerable that successive Home Secretaries should be subject to this level of personal attack and abuse. The federation is incapable of making the arguments. That is the only explanation for such personal attacks.

I agree with the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee that my right hon. Friend the Member for Sutton Coldfield has been entirely vindicated. I was a barrister in criminal practice for more than 15 years, but the police case was so undermined that no case could rest on it. I understand that my right hon. Friend has already received an apology, and rightly so, from several chief constables, and several police officers now face internal misconduct or gross misconduct charges and one has gone to prison. However, I am appalled, as I know the House will be, that the federation is even now funding litigation that seeks to keep this matter alive.

[Keith Vaz]

The hon. Gentleman will remember the evidence given to the Committee by the officers from West Mercia, Warwickshire and West Midlands police, whom he cross-examined extremely effectively. He will recall that they had the opportunity to draw a line. Does he not agree that that could be done, even at this late stage, to bring the whole sorry episode to a conclusion?

[Michael Ellis]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, who leads the way in putting Select Committees at the forefront of getting to the issues in this Parliament. An apology is still due, and he is right that those officers’ conduct and appearance before the Committee, on which we both have the honour to sit, was an embarrassment to the Police Federation. I have asked for an inquiry in the Home Affairs Committee, to which the right hon. Gentleman has already alluded, partly because of that, and partly because of the repeated episodes that we still hear and read about in the media. For example, the chairman of the Police Federation told the Committee that he did not know the exact figure, but he agreed with my suggestion that there were tens of millions of pounds in the No. 2 accounts. We do not have the answers. These are enormous sums, some of which have been funded by a huge 20% uplift in constables’ dues to the Police Federation. It is a shocking indictment. Meanwhile, £26 million has been spent on a luxurious headquarters that looks like something out of science fiction. Apparently, senior federation officials travelled to Italy to source the right slate for part of the edifice of that structure. Expense accounts have not been published and salaries are not fully disclosed. According to media reports that appear almost daily, Police Federation officials are misconducting themselves, embarrassing themselves, and behaving extremely improperly in regard to their conduct and expenses.

But it is the bully-boy tactics that most concern me, as they will concern hon. Members on both sides of the House. Ninety-one per cent. of members of the Police Federation—an extremely high figure; it is almost unprecedented in opinion polls to get 91% of people to agree with anything—of tens of thousands who apparently answered the questions, want change in their own federation. This change is not being driven by the House or by one political party; this is a cross-party issue and it is being driven by the members of the Police Federation, who want and need change. I do not think that I have ever agreed with the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) quite as much as I did when he spoke today.

Policing is an honourable and great profession. We owe the police a great deal, and that is why we want to see their leadership within the Police Federation changed, changed soon, and changed for the better.

Succession to the Crown Bill

Debate between Michael Ellis and Keith Vaz

Monday 28th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Ellis]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), the Chairman of the Select Committee on Home Affairs. I am a member of that Committee and I venture to suggest that there is no more important person to the home affairs of this country than our sovereign lady the Queen.

The unwritten constitution of this great country is rather like the roof over the temple of Solomon, and the monarchy is the central pillar holding up that roof. Other pillars include this House, the other place, the judiciary and the law courts. Perhaps even the press are a pillar of the constitution—although rather a stunted pillar so perhaps more of a balustrade. Nevertheless, one might argue that a number of pillars hold up the roof of our constitution. It is a multi-pillared structure—one might almost say a Parthenon—and one must be cautious before one chips away at those pillars. The consequence of such actions can be a structural collapse, and we all know that those who are beneath the structure chipping away at it can be the victims of such a calamity. I would exercise all due diligence and all due caution before instituting any changes, such as those that are envisaged.

However, I support the Bill. On balance, 300 years is about the right period of time—it is not overly hurried—for the provisions being changed by the Bill to be looked at afresh. Some aspects of the Bill are appropriate because they renew the ageing—one might even say decrepit—parts of the constitution and the ancient structure that I mentioned. It is always right to consider that this country of ours and the monarchy that heads it has always changed with the times. The monarchy has always tended to adapt to changing times. Recently, Queen Victoria, by her character and temperament—[Interruption.] Recently, in constitutional terms. When Queen Victoria came to the throne she represented a considerable change from the Georgian sovereigns who went before her. Her conduct, her decorum and the manner in which she reigned were lessons to her descendants.

There is no doubt that there is unacceptable prejudice currently written into the constitution of this country by such Acts of Parliament as the Act of Settlement 1701.

[Keith Vaz]

I accept everything that the hon. Gentleman has said so far, but does he agree with me and other Members of the House that there is unfinished business in respect of modernisation—for example, the succession to baronetcies? These are issues that we should return to in the future.

[Michael Ellis]

For my part, I prefer to leave the structures alone if we can possibly do so. I think there is something to be said for the ancient customs, traditions and privileges of this country, and we should be very cautious about making changes willy-nilly because of their unintended consequences.

We have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg). He said, I believe, in a debate last Tuesday from which I was absent but which I have read in the Official Report, that he does not take offence at the terms of the Act of Settlement because it is the history of this country. I admire that and I wish more people would take such a mature view of such things. All too often people are quick to find offence where none should be taken. There is an inbuilt prejudice against other religions, my own included. Because those religions may not be in communion with the Church of England, their adherents cannot be eligible to be sovereign of this country, but I for one take no offence at that because it is part of the noble history of this country and it seems to me that there are reasons why we should retain that. Principal among them is the establishment of the Church of England.

The prejudices that exist are based not on current thinking but on historical reasons, and have been left unchanged only because Members of this House in recent generations have taken the view, presumably, that they have more important things to do than change them or because changing them involves great complexity. For that reason, as well as for many others, I admire my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister for being the one who brought these measures before the House. Whereas others have spoken of them and made supportive noises about them for many years, the Deputy Prime Minister has done it, and I congratulate him on that.

With reference to male primogeniture, one has only to look at the long and noble history of this country to see that we have been very fortunate with our female sovereigns. There should certainly be no reason why we should deny or make it more difficult for females to succeed to the Crown. We have the example of our current Queen and of Queen Victoria, and I dare say of those queens who were not queens regnant but queens consort. I am thinking of the late Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother and Her late Majesty Queen Mary, who also were exemplars of duty, service to their country, and spirit. I have no problem with removing the male primogeniture aspect, as the Bill does.

However, I would not go as far as others and seek to defenestrate completely those parts of the constitution which in some way can be said to be prejudicial to some group or other. For example, one could argue that the law that says that the oldest person, whether male or female, should take precedence over young siblings is also biased. It is also prejudicial because it is ageist in that it favours older over younger. One could go on ad absurdum. I suggest that we try not to get too concerned about removing all aspects of the legal fictions that the law has had to develop over the years.

For example, when, for the purpose of inheritance, both the father and the eldest son die in the same instance, such as in a road traffic accident, the law assumes that the older died before the younger, even if it is transparent that they both died instantly in an accident. That is because the law has to develop types of legal regulation—legal fiction, one might call it—in order to make sense. I use this as an example to indicate with caution that attractive though it is in principle to remove all types of bias, there will always be some type of bias within the system, but the Bill goes some way towards rectifying the most egregious examples.

The Bill also deals with the Royal Marriages Act 1772. The Act has become redundant in as much as it is difficult to operate effectively.

UK Border Agency

Debate between Michael Ellis and Keith Vaz

Wednesday 4th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that one of the most significant reasons for the difficulty in returning people to their countries of origin is the fact that those countries, including some with which this nation has very good relations, often do not want them back and therefore obfuscate and create delay, making it much harder for us to deport them efficiently?

[Keith Vaz]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that that is a problem, but that does not mean that we do not have to try to make sure that such deportations happen, because that would be a huge saving to the taxpayer and help us to meet the targets that the Government clearly want us to reach.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Debate between Michael Ellis and Keith Vaz

Wednesday 30th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire (Simon Hart), who rightly put the debate in the context of what is happening locally in his constituency. Every right hon. and hon. Member can talk about the local impact of the changes that the Government are making, but I will concentrate my remarks on new clause 4, and particularly on the desire of Opposition Front Benchers that there should be an impact study of the Government’s proposals before they are put in place.

The Government have embarked on a very ambitious and challenging policing agenda. I have just finished reading the speech that the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice made on Monday, and he used in it the memorable words:

“Reform cannot wait; we do not have the luxury of delay while a committee of wise men”—

slightly politically incorrect—

“deliberate and eventually agree to differ.”

I am not sure whether the Home Secretary would compose a committee of that type, but what the Minister was saying was that the Government want to get on with reform.

Those of us who serve on the Home Affairs Committee have been pretty exhausted by the amount of proposed legislation and the changes that the Government have brought into effect since last May. However, one would expect that from a Government who took office after 13 years in opposition. Of course Ministers, particularly the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice, who I know has a passion for the debate on policing, want the Government to get on with what they want to do.

[Michael Ellis]

Was the right hon. Gentleman not also exhausted by the 13 years of the previous Government and their 10 criminal justice Bills and 3,000 new criminal offences?

Police Grant Report

Debate between Michael Ellis and Keith Vaz

Wednesday 14th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

It is always a pleasure to follow the thoughtful speeches of the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson). We all thought that his ambition in life was to be the Member of Parliament for his city, but now we know that he really wants to be the sheriff of Peterborough. Whether he goes and hugs those trees is another matter, but the constituency angle that he has taken should be considered by the House when dealing with the police grant.

I welcome the Minister to the Dispatch Box for his first of what I hope will be many debates on the police grant. I hope that he will pass on our very best wishes to the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds (Mr Ruffley), who as shadow Police Minister was a frequent attendee at these events and whose comments from the Dispatch Box were very incisive.

These are difficult times and of course we understand that a new Government are always keen to blame the previous Government for the decisions that they will make. I, too, was present at the debate earlier this year when the police grant was, in effect, agreed by both sides of the House. I do not know what those on my Front Bench have decided to do, but I assume that they will vote against the reduction in the police grant. I am not sure—I am sure that somebody will remind me—but I think that in February the House was unanimous in approving the grant, and rightly so. This is one of the priorities of the people of this country.

I am glad to hear that in the Labour party manifesto the Home Office budget was ring-fenced. I cannot absolutely remember the section, although I imagine that my right hon. Friend the shadow Police Minister wrote it, so he would know. I am sorry that the Government did not do the same thing as part of the coalition agreement. I understand that we have to preserve the budgets of the national health service and education, but as far as law and order is concerned we—or the coalition Government—will regret the fact that they did not work harder to keep the Home Office budget intact. Why? This is a key priority, as the hon. Member for Peterborough has said, for every single Member of this House through the prism of their local constituency.

We know that the demand from local people is for more doctors and nurses, better schools and more police officers. Every single local campaign—not just campaigns launched by the Liberal Democrat party, as some would say—local petition and local survey shows that local people say that they want more police officers. The visibility of a police officer on the beat is the absolute sign that the public are being protected. Anything that cuts into that budget and prevents the reality of the local police officer on the beat will cause each and every Member of this House some pain.

Clearly, Opposition Members will feel some pain because Ministers and Government Members will always say, “Well, this is because of the shadow Chief Secretary’s letter, so we have to do all this.” Looking around the Chamber, I think that I might have been here longer than anyone else who is present—although not longer than every Member put together—and one thing that I remember and that Members should remember as elected representatives is that, ultimately, memories are quite short. Over a certain period, one can use the mantra, “They left us with no money”—eight weeks is not long enough not to use it—but by the end of the year local people will be very frustrated when they pick up their phones and the police officers they want are not there.

That was why I was so pleased to hear the commitment made from the Dispatch Box this afternoon by the Police Minister: he anticipates that, notwithstanding the reduction in the police grant, the number of police officers in front-line services will remain intact. Of course, the actual analysis is out of his hands. At the end of the day, it will be for local chief constables and police authorities to say whether that is what happens, but I know that that is his ambition and it is a very good ambition for a Police Minister to have. It is a very good ambition for a Conservative—even though it is a coalition Government—Police Minister to stand up at the Dispatch Box in the House of Commons and to say in his first speech, “We do not want to reduce the number of police officers. We want to keep it the same and perhaps, if we get those structural changes, to increase it.” As he knows, one of the great achievements of the previous Government was a record number of police officers—147,000 police officers, 16,000 police community support officers and 79,000 new civilians working in the police force. These are figures to die for, in my view. Every Police Minister would love to get to the Dispatch Box and say that those figures will remain intact.

We must work with the Government to try to ensure that that happens. I know that it sounds odd, but I have always seen policing issues as above party politics. There is agreement that local people want to see crime reduced, they want to see their police officers out on the beat and they want to be able to see quick responses to their problems, so let us see whether there is a way in which we can help the Government to do that. Tomorrow, the Home Secretary is coming to give evidence to the Select Committee—it will be her first appearance. I am very pleased that the Police Minister is coming in two weeks’ time, and I thank him for the speed with which he responded to my request. That is the appropriate mechanism to analyse the Government’s claims and the concerns of local police committees and chief constables. We want to get to a position where we use the pot of money properly and adequately, so that there is not the reduction in numbers that I think will happen but the Minister hopes will not.

Those changes that we have heard about today have been present in every debate that we have had on policing, certainly during the three years for which I have been the Chair of the Select Committee. The first is structural change, by consent and not for structural change’s sake. The second is collaboration. As we have seen throughout the country, forces are working together, whether that involves borrowing a helicopter, as they did in Cumbria during the Whitehaven tragedy, or the way in which the police force in Northumberland reacted so quickly to the problems of the past two weeks. Such collaboration is ongoing. The third is better procurement, so that we have one set of contracts rather than 43.

The fourth change is ensuring that we do not just have initiatives. I accept what the Minister says when he asks what the point is of a brand-new police station—people do not really want their police officers in a police station; they want them outside. But sometimes we need brand-new police stations. We cannot expect all our police officers to operate from a Doctor Who-type TARDIS. There have to be police stations to hold people in detention, so that officers can deal with those requirements that legislators place on our local police forces.

The fifth change is a reduction in bureaucracy. Of course, we all agree that that should happen. Let us implement the Berry report and the Flanagan report in full. The hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) was a member of the Select Committee in the last Parliament and he co-authored the report “Policing in the 21st century”, which talked about all those things but also about investment in technology. In the long term, we can cut bureaucracy by giving police officers hand-held computers. The Minister will not win his battle with the Treasury for more money, because he is trying to cope with less money. However, that is what we have to do in the future.

We have an investment in this matter on both sides of the House as constituency MPs as well as a duty to the public to ensure that we work together to try to cut away waste. I do not think that there is a huge amount of waste in the police force. I know that we have heard about potted plants and iPods in certain Government Departments, but there is always a story like that. I assure the Minister that in a couple of years’ time, the Opposition will be coming out with such stories. The fact is that we need to ensure that when we give money it is monitored much more closely. Perhaps there ought to be more strings. The last Government were probably too generous in providing so much funding and not very firm in monitoring it.

[Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that it is a question not just of pot plants and mood music, but of the fact that police forces in England and Wales have to deal with some 6,500 pages of nationally given guidelines from the Home Office and the Association of Chief Police Officers? Her Majesty’s chief inspector of constabulary said only a few days ago that putting those documents end to end would reach as high as the Eiffel tower. That is waste and bureaucracy, is it not?

[Keith Vaz]

Yes, it is. I do not say that everything the last Government did was absolutely perfect. I have related one example to the House on many occasions. I once went up to Staffordshire and looked at the work of Staffordshire police to reduce from 24 sheets to one sheet the documentation that is required when someone is charged. After that, every time the Home Secretary got up, I asked, “Have you rolled out this brilliant idea across the country?” but the answer was no, because the system worked so slowly. We will expect better from this Police Minister, because he is so keen to deal with waste. We want to make sure that good practice is adopted as quickly as possible and is rolled out. We do not want excuses such as that it takes a long time to write a letter to chief constables.

The points raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) are correct. I did not know that she actually invented the Serious Organised Crime Agency; had I done so, we would have called her to give evidence. There are examples of our providing huge amounts of money, such as half a billion pounds for SOCA, which seized only £23 million, and £400,000 for the National Policing Improvement Agency, and spending £79 million on consultants. Those are the kinds of issues that we should have dealt with in the past 13 years, but sometimes Ministers cannot, as the new Minister will find, know exactly what is going on.