Political Violence and Disruption: Walney Report

Miriam Cates Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd May 2024 Commons Chamber

[Tom Tugendhat]

I am rather enjoying the idea that the former Deputy Chief Whip is now telling me that we need to build consensus; that was certainly not the impression I got when he held that office. [Interruption.] The recovery is going extremely well, if that is the case. In reality, of course we try to work across all parts of the House and try to build consensus, but I am here to serve the British people not the whims of other hon. Members.

[Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)]

I welcome the report and thank Lord Walney for his excellent work. It contains 78 references to social media, which of course has been instrumental in allowing extremists not only to organise but to spread their message. The social media algorithms reward radicalism, fake news and division. Lord Walney makes some excellent recommendations, but does the Minister agree that it is the anonymity of online accounts that is particularly pernicious? When we speak in real life, our free speech comes with accountability, but that is not the case online because there are so many anonymous accounts. Should the Government look at whether anonymous accounts are appropriate in a democracy, as supported by my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie)? Cracking down on such accounts would go a long way towards sorting out the problem.

[Tom Tugendhat]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s approach to this, and to many other aspects of social media and online harms. She has been an example to many of us in how campaigns can be led to include, not exclude, and she has made her voice heard extremely clearly. All of us in this House will have had that Jekyll and Hyde experience of meeting someone in person who has previously been utterly vitriolic online—like seeing a country parson walking down the lane, and then discovering from their social media that Satan himself could not have come up with more bile. It is quite remarkable.

My hon. Friend makes a very good point that we need a little bit of recognition about who we all are—not just elected Members but others who are campaigning in favour or against a political issue. By and large, people approach issues in our democracy from a position of interest in the common good and support for each other, their families, communities and neighbours, but the treatment that somehow comes out of people when they are anonymous can be simply vile.

Oral Answers to Questions

Miriam Cates Excerpts

Monday 15th April 2024 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)]

1. What recent progress his Department has made on reducing net migration.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (James Cleverly)]

I put on record my condolences for your loss, Mr Speaker.

The Government have implemented a number of measures to reduce net migration. Those include restricting overseas students from bringing family dependants to the UK while they study, stopping overseas care workers from bringing family dependants, increasing the salary threshold for skilled worker visas—ultimately to £38,700—and increasing the minimum income requirements for family visas. We recognise that levels of migration have been too high and, upon my appointment, I immediately took action to bring those figures down.

[Miriam Cates]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his answer, but one of the main drivers of immigration over the past 20 years or so has been labour shortages caused by falling birth rates. According to projections by Philip Pilkington and Paul Morland, if birth rates do not increase, immigration will have to rise to over a third of the population over the next 50 years if we are going to maintain a sufficient working-age population. Immigration on this scale has no democratic consent and obviously my right hon. Friend has promised repeatedly to reduce net migration, so what discussions has he had with colleagues in the Treasury about this issue? Does he agree that the Government must have a strategy to address falling birth rates, to ensure that we do not always have to rely on ever-increasing rates of immigration?

Draft South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (Election of Mayor and Transfer of Police and Crime Commissioner Functions) Order 2024

Miriam Cates Excerpts

Wednesday 6th March 2024 General Committees

[Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I want to speak briefly in opposition to this order. Although it is tempting to speak about individual Mayors and PCCs involved—all of us will have different opinions on their effectiveness or otherwise—I want to stick to the roles that are involved and whether it is appropriate to extend the role of Mayor to include that of police and crime commissioner.

I support devolution in principle, but I feel strongly that the current model of combined mayoral authorities does not really work, because I believe that the Mayors have insufficient accountability, in the sense that they have significant spending powers but, without having tax-raising responsibilities, they do not have to account for their spending to the electorate. Mayors can go to Whitehall—as we have all experienced—and demand more money and complain to their electorate if they do not have enough money, without facing the consequences of having to raise taxes if they want to spend more money and facing the electorate. Of course, that is what we have to do in central Government. It is what local authorities have to do in our regions. If we want to spend more money, we will have to raise taxes and we will have to be accountable to our electorate for that.

Unfortunately, the Mayors just do not have that level of accountability. They have become, sometimes, just middlemen. They are able to blame Whitehall when they do not get enough money and blame Whitehall when they do not spend the money effectively; and there is a disincentive to be wise with the money they do have. Unfortunately, there is a temptation, which is a natural part of human nature, to use the role to build a personal profile and accumulate power, without the cost of that accountability with the finances.

[Alexander Stafford]

My hon. Friend is making a very apposite point about the waste of money. For instance, in my constituency in South Yorkshire, the Mayor wants to put a bike lane between Maltby and Rotherham town centre, at a cost of £12.2 million. The people of Maltby do not want that. It is going to cause absolute chaos and it is a waste of money. Does my hon. Friend agree with me that it is one of many examples in South Yorkshire of how money is being wasted against the will of the people?

[Miriam Cates]

I do, and as fellow South Yorkshire MPs, we see the current obsession with the franchising model for buses, which at the end of the day will not actually deliver more money for buses—it is just a different model of delivering—yet huge amounts of money are being wasted on consultants pursuing the idea, with no accountability to the public for the money that is spent.

Then to add to the powers of a position—I am not commenting on a particular individual here—that I believe already has insufficient accountability, by increasing those powers and adding on the role of police and crime commissioner, is unwise, for all the reasons I have given. We all know that, in reality, all that will happen is that the Mayor will have to delegate the powers of police and crime commissioner to an unelected official, who may be very competent and very experienced but has even less accountability to the public than the directly elected Mayor or even the police and crime commissioner, who at least is directly elected.

My hon. Friends the Members for Rother Valley (Alexander Stafford) and for Don Valley (Nick Fletcher) have referred to the consultation. I completely agree with the Minister. It was a very tiny number of people who responded, but I am afraid that that is indicative of how highly people value these roles. I believe that the turnout for the last mayoral election in South Yorkshire, in 2022, was just 24% and the turnout for the police and crime commissioner was just 19%. These roles do not have high accountability with the public. People just do not see the point of these roles. That is why I oppose giving the current Mayor more powers to become the police and crime commissioner as well.

I will end by saying that this is a very important moment, politically, to have impartial policing. We are seeing on the streets of many of our cities how important it is for the police to be impartial. There is greater reason than ever to maintain some sort of separation of powers within and between political leaders, so I have to oppose this order today. I do not think it will work out well for South Yorkshire and I do think it throws light on the issues that we have with our devolution model in general.

Legal Migration

Miriam Cates Excerpts

Monday 4th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[James Cleverly]

I take the hon. Gentleman’s point. We will work with the MAC to ensure that, as we get rid of the shortage occupation list, we do not undermine key industries. I want to ensure that the fishing industry, whether in Northern Ireland or on the east coast of Scotland, can remain viable and profitable. That will always be part of our thinking.

[Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)]

I warmly welcome this statement and these measures. I thank my right hon. Friends, the Home Secretary and the Minister for Immigration, for listening to colleagues on both sides of the House, and especially those in our New Conservatives group. Extraordinary growth in immigration levels over recent years has been masking some long-term structural weaknesses in our economy, such as low productivity, high debt, falling birth rates and a negative balance of trade, by propping up the OBR’s superficial GDP growth figures. Does my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary agree that, in order to bring down immigration numbers permanently, the OBR must instead turn its attention to the kinds of growth that really matter to our constituents: skills growth, wage growth, housing growth and industry growth? In other words, real growth.

[James Cleverly]

I assure my hon. Friend that the Government remain relentlessly focused on those very issues. Increasing skills, increasing productivity and increasing investment in plant, machinery and technology to unlock the full economic potential of this country is at its heart. We will always make our case to the OBR. We will do what we know to be in the best interests of this country and of the people who work in this country.

Net Migration Figures

Miriam Cates Excerpts

Tuesday 28th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

I have made an open offer to local authorities that want to provide asylum accommodation. None have come forward so far, but if the hon. Lady’s local authority wants to provide such accommodation, I would be more than willing to consider that. The sustainable answer to reducing the reliance on hotels and other forms of accommodation is to stop the boats, but the hon. Lady has voted consistently against every measure that the Government have taken to do so. I would strongly encourage her, for example, when we introduce the emergency legislation on Rwanda, to support it with vim and vigour.

[Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)]

One of the principal arguments against reducing the number of care worker visas is the shortage of workers in the care sector, and of course there is a shortage. However, in the 12 months to July, 70,000 people were recruited from abroad for care roles, while the number of vacancies in the sector dropped by just 11,000. Is it not the case that the principal impact of the care worker visa scheme is the displacing of British workers from the system? It is not having an overall impact on the size of the workforce. Is it not also the case that until we turn off the taps to stem the arrival of cheap labour from abroad, employers will not improve pay and conditions here?

[Robert Jenrick]

As ever, my hon. Friend makes a number of important points. The health and social care visa has not worked as well as even its proponents would have wished. Not only have far more individuals come to the UK, including a significantly higher number of dependants than was envisaged, but, as she says, there has been a displacement effect whereby British workers have left the care sector to be replaced by foreign workers. The key necessity in care, as in other sectors, is to encourage the sector to pay better, improve conditions and improve productivity and skills, so that British workers can put themselves on a sustainable footing.

Oral Answers to Questions

Miriam Cates Excerpts

Monday 27th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

When moving asylum seekers from one form of accommodation to another, we make provision to ensure that there is support for those with the most serious medical conditions, but it is important that we are able to move individuals around the estate, and we are currently in the process of closing hotels. That is our No. 1 priority, because the public want us to close them as quickly as possible.

[Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)]

6. What steps he is taking to tackle illegal migration.

[Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)]

9. What steps he is taking to tackle illegal migration.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (James Cleverly)]

The Government have a plan to tackle illegal migration by means of a number of methods, and that plan is working. Small-boat crossings are down compared with those in other countries across Europe, where they are up. We are working closely with our international partners, including our nearest geographical neighbour France, we are dismantling the organised criminal gangs who are smuggling people, and we are taking action to reform the asylum system.

[Miriam Cates]

Following the Supreme Court ruling, the Government announced emergency legislation to address the issues mentioned in the judgment. I welcome the proposed new treaty with Rwanda, but does my right hon. Friend agree that the new legislation promised by the Prime Minister must be clear and unambiguous in establishing that the sovereign will of this Parliament, as expressed in primary legislation, takes legal precedence over the interpretation of international treaties and principles?

[James Cleverly]

I can assure my hon. Friend that the excellent working relationship we have with Rwanda—on which I worked in my former role—will give us the opportunity to have a treaty that addresses the issues in the Supreme Court judgment. However, she is right to say that the legislation that will accompany that treaty must make it absolutely clear that the will of the British people, as exemplified by the actions of this Government, means we will work to get flights to Rwanda to make it plain that if people come here illegally they will not stay here. I can give her my commitment that we will do everything we can to make that happen.

Antisocial Behaviour Action Plan

Miriam Cates Excerpts

Monday 27th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[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.

[Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)]

I warmly welcome the antisocial behaviour action plan and am delighted that South Yorkshire has been chosen as one of the pilot trailblazer areas for hotspot policing. In my constituency, we are fortunate that serious crime rates are low, but antisocial behaviour still blights the lives of many constituents in Stocksbridge, Deepcar, High Green, Penistone and Dodworth.

There is a clear link between antisocial behaviour and school absence. Sheffield and Barnsley have some of the highest rates of severe school absence of any local authority, with more than 2,500 children mostly missing from school across the two local authorities. Will my right hon. and learned Friend speak to and urge her colleagues in the Department for Education to set out a plan to reverse the rising tide of school absence and all the negative impacts it has not only on children but on communities?

[Suella Braverman]

My hon. Friend speaks with a huge amount of experience from her days as a teacher. She knows more than many how, with vital resources in schooling, effective teaching and proper support in schools and from parents, we can divert children from a life of crime, antisocial behaviour and devastation to themselves and their communities. There is a strong theme in this plan of diversion, investment in youth activities, but also in the Turnaround scheme. We are expanding the eligibility criteria and are working with professionals to ensure that children will be taken away from a life of crime.

Illegal Migration Bill

Miriam Cates Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 27th March 2023 Commons Chamber

People who come here seeking asylum are fleeing wars in which this country has supplied, manufactured or sold the weapons; natural disasters when this Government refuse to take climate change seriously; and hunger and disease when this Government are slashing the aid budget that could fight those challenges. If the Bill is not amended beyond recognition, it will undermine any claims by this Government to uphold the global treaties and conventions that have maintained stability and respected human rights around the world since the second world war. The vast majority of people on these islands—certainly the residents of Glasgow North—want to live in an inclusive, diverse and welcoming society. If this Government undermine that, they will build that society themselves in an independent Scotland.

[Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)]

I rise to speak to amendments 131 to 134, which seek to strengthen the Illegal Migration Bill by preventing spurious claims—whatever they may be—being used to resist the removal of those arriving in Britain illegally. The amendments aim to close any potential loopholes that would limit the Bill’s effectiveness.

I have listened carefully to many thoughtful and technically excellent speeches from hon. Friends and hon. Members across the Committee for whom I have the greatest respect. I cannot match their legal expertise and detailed understanding of the legal complexities of the Bill, but I want to argue for the principle of strengthening the Bill, which I think the Government have accepted, to ensure that it is effective. It is essential that it be effective, because more than 40,000 people arriving illegally on small boats in a year is a serious safety issue, national security issue and economic issue, with £6 million a day being spent on hotels to house migrants. It is a crime issue, with many illegal immigrants engaging in illegal activity or being drawn into slavery and exploitation. It is also a sovereignty issue. Many ask: who is really in control of British borders—our elected Parliaments or foreign courts?

If the Bill does not work and does not result in the swift deportation of those who arrive here illegally, it will not have a deterrent effect and we will not stop the boats. The objective of the amendments is therefore to strengthen the legislation to significantly reduce the likelihood of unjustified legal challenges that use human rights legislation that was never meant to provide cover to international gangs.

I thank Ministers for their consideration of the intention of the amendments. Some of those who oppose them and the Bill will cite compassion. I wholeheartedly agree that those who are genuinely fleeing war and persecution deserve our compassion. Many should be—and are—offered a home here in the UK. Our compassion should be directed at those who are genuinely helpless and without agency—such as children—but not those who have a choice about whether they leave their home country, or those who choose to exploit others through international human trafficking.

In many ways, this debate epitomises the great argument of our times between those whose understanding of human rights is that anyone should, more or less, do whatever and go wherever they want, and those who believe that strong boundaries, firm rules and proportionate restrictions are essential for strong families, communities and nations. It is an argument between those who think that, as a wealthy country, we somehow have unlimited resources and who do not acknowledge that population growth over recent years has seriously limited and stretched our capacity, for example on housing, and those who realise that even though we are in a wealthy and fortunate position, there are serious limits on our resources.

Many of those who argue against strong borders and strong action against illegal immigration are not personally affected by illegal immigration. Their wages are not threatened by the black market economy, they do not rely on essential local resources that are taken up with housing migrants, their children are not sent to school with young men who are clearly not children, and their sense of agency and national identity does not rest on the integrity of our borders or the sovereignty of our Parliament.

For those whose lives and culture are not negatively impacted by thousands of people arriving here on small boats, it makes sense to argue for open borders in the name of compassion, but for many people, including many of my constituents, those are luxury beliefs. The reality is that high and clearly visible levels of illegal immigration are a threat to ordinary people’s safety, security, identity and sense of fair play. Believing in and upholding strong borders and firm boundaries is not uncompassionate or bigoted; it is a prerequisite for a fair, safe and cohesive nation.

Ultimately, when boundaries are not upheld or laws not enforced, it is always the vulnerable that suffer, as criminals exploit loopholes and drain much needed finite resources away from those in genuine need. [Interruption.] I will not give way because I have been given a five-minute limit by the Chair.

We all want genuine asylum seekers to be able to find safety here in the UK. As the Minister said, this country is surpassed by only three other nations in our acceptance of refugees from UNHCR schemes. But the exploitation of our borders and laws by those who are not in genuine need and, worse, by abhorrent international people-smuggling gangs is neither fair nor compassionate and it must end. A strengthened Illegal Migration Bill will deter people from making the treacherous journey in small boats, and give us the resources and focus to go after those safe and legal routes that everyone in the House agrees should be there.

[Apsana Begum (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

I rise to speak against the Government clauses before the Committee today and in favour of several amendments that seek to limit their horror and inhumanity.

The changes made by clauses 37 to 48 to the legal and human rights of asylum seekers breach the UK’s human rights obligations. The proposed timescales and tests, combined with the lack of judicial oversight, build in unfairness and undermine access to justice. It is difficult to see how a vulnerable and traumatised person will be able to engage with the process, especially as the provisions do not set out any right to legal advice and representation.

That is one of the many reasons that I support new clause 26 in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Streatham (Bell Ribeiro-Addy), which would require an equality impact assessment about how people with protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010 will be impacted by the Bill. Indeed, protections for vulnerable people, pregnant women and children are being tossed aside in favour of new powers to indefinitely detain people at greater risk of harm, including survivors of torture, trafficking and modern slavery.

The new and sweeping powers of arbitrary detention are nothing short of spine chilling. The Bill will increase the number of people detained, while removing the bulk of the essential safeguards that were put in place to protect people, adding to the inherent harm caused by indefinite detention. That is despite the UK’s immigration detention system being plagued by mismanagement, profiteering by private companies and incidents of systemic and direct abuse and neglect, including the scandals reported at Brook House immigration removal centre, the Manston short-term holding facility, Harmondsworth IRC and many others.

What is the purpose of this sweeping and illegitimate restriction of people’s liberties? What is the crime that such individuals have committed to be treated worse than serious criminals and to have fewer rights? Today, this Government propose to punish people for seeking asylum. Not satisfied with that, they seek to ensure that those people cannot challenge this injustice—all essentially to deter anyone else from coming to the UK to seek sanctuary. They are literally planning to persecute the already persecuted.

Denying access to asylum on such a basis undermines the very purpose for which the refugee convention was established. The convention explicitly recognises that refugees may be compelled to enter a country of asylum irregularly. The United Nations Refugee Agency has said:

“Most people fleeing war and persecution are simply unable to access the required passports and visas. There are no safe and ‘legal’ routes available to them.”

The reality is that the UK offers safety to far fewer refugees per capita than the average European country, such as France or Germany, and to far fewer than the countries neighbouring those from which 70% of the refugees from the global south flee. That is why I support new clause 10 tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake), which sets out a requirement to introduce a safe passage visa scheme. She has spoken eloquently about the stories behind the numbers and statistics—the people with real lives, hopes and dreams.

If the Government seriously wanted to protect the lives at risk from small boat crossings, they would back more generous family reunification rights and support safe, functioning routes. Instead, the Bill is the latest in a long line of measures that form their hostile environment and the toxic, racist and xenophobic narrative that is taking hold in many parts of the world, based on fear and the manipulation of that fear. It is immoral, deeply cruel and divisive. It breaks international law, it crushes human rights and it is shameful.

Asylum Seekers Accommodation and Safeguarding

Miriam Cates Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

As I said in answer to an earlier question, we are working hard now to accelerate decision making so that individuals can either be granted asylum or be removed from the country. I would say, however, that there is a marked trend in the data showing that some Scottish local authorities are taking a disproportionately low number of asylum seekers in every respect, so the first useful thing that the hon. Gentleman could do would be to go back to the local authorities that are controlled by the Scottish National party in Scotland and ask them to step up.

[Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)]

The town of Stocksbridge in my constituency is awaiting final confirmation of £24 million of Government funding through our town deal. That £24 million will be a transformational sum for Stocksbridge, but it equates to just four days of taxpayer expenditure on hotel accommodation for people who have arrived illegally in the UK. Does my right hon. Friend agree that as well as being a complex security and humanitarian issue both for the public and for genuine asylum seekers, the small boats crisis also represents a serious financial issue in these difficult economic times? Can he expand on his previous answer about how the Government will move away from the expensive hotel model?

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend and I have spent many happy hours in Stocksbridge and I want to see the Government investing even more in her community. She is right to say that it is an unconscionable waste of taxpayers’ money to be spending over £2 billion per year on hotel accommodation. That money could be put to better use, whether helping her constituents or fulfilling our broader mission as a country to support those in distress who truly need it at home or abroad. The approach that the Home Secretary and I are going to take is to speed up decision making so that we can get people out of hotels because their application has been decided, to disperse people more fairly and evenly across the country, to see whether better value sites are available to us, and of course to do everything we can to dissuade people from making the journey in the first place.

Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse: Final Report

Miriam Cates Excerpts

Monday 24th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Grant Shapps]

The hon. Lady is right, and this plays into the wider issues of gang traffickers as well, because they know that they can be in an exploitative situation and do exploit, in particular, girls but also all children. She refers to the victims Bill, which was published in May in draft format. The whole point of that is for it to have pre-legislative scrutiny. I know that many organisations and many colleagues across the House have been involved in that, which will mean, I think, that we come forward with legislation that is in a better place to tackle many of the issues that she and others in this House have raised.

[Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)]

I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement and the commitments that he has made to looking at the recommendations of the review. The problem is that child sexual exploitation and abuse are getting worse in this country. In 2020, the Internet Watch Foundation found 153,000 images of child sexual abuse online and reported a 77% increase in self-generated images of sexual abuse. I welcome his commitment to the Online Safety Bill, but the truth is that it is the proliferation of online pornography, which is increasingly extreme in nature, that is driving up demand for child sexual exploitation. In fact, the word “teen” is one of the most commonly searched terms on PornHub. When will the Government acknowledge that online pornography is an enormous public health issue, child protection issue and criminal justice issue that is driving much of the child sexual exploitation that we see today?

[Grant Shapps]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend. She mentioned some figures. The ones that really stuck out for me were that, in 2021 alone, global technology companies reported more than 29 million suspected instances of child sexual abuse material on their platforms. To be clear, that is just social media platforms; that is not the whole of the internet. There are 85 million files, including images of videos of child sexual abuse. She is absolutely right about the scale of the problem. As she will know, the Online Safety Bill contains clauses to deal with some of this. I think she is referencing two parts of this: the strictly illegal aspects—the Home Office clauses; and the wider issues that the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport is taking forward in the Bill. That Bill is active and in front of the House, and she is right to highlight the necessity of its completing its passage.