Nick de Bois
Main Page: Nick de Bois (Conservative - Enfield North)Department Debates - View all Nick de Bois's debates with the Home Office
(11 years ago)
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Yvette Cooper
Nice try from the hon. Lady, but the facts show that there is a series of problems in this Government’s measures on immigration. I agree that we should have had transitional controls on migration from eastern Europe. There are things that the Labour Government should have done but which did not happen. They should have happened.
We should have people working together. There are many areas on which we agree with the Government and will support the measures that they are taking, but look at what has happened, particularly on illegal immigration. The number of people refused entry dropped by 50%. The number of people absconding through Heathrow passport control trebled. The number caught afterwards halved. The backlog in finding failed asylum seekers has gone up. The number of illegal immigrants deported has gone down. This is not a catalogue of success on immigration from the right hon. Lady’s Government.
Yvette Cooper
I will give way to the hon. Gentleman, then I want to make some progress.
Nick de Bois
The shadow Minister was bandying around figures about net migration and people leaving this country. She might do well to remember that in the 10 years of her Government, 2 million people aged 25 to 44—the most economically active—left this country, and she has the cheek to lecture us about people not wanting to come back.
Yvette Cooper
As the hon. Gentleman will recognise, people are travelling and trading more than ever. That is why immigration is an important issue for our future and why we must get the policies right. A policy that targets net migration means that the Government can claim to have made huge progress on the things that the British people care about when they are failing to tackle exploitation in the labour market and failing to tackle illegal immigration, which is not even measured in the net migration statistics. Illegal immigration can go on getting worse and worse, yet the Immigration Minister can make more and more claims about his target, and the result is that he is not listening to the real issues that people are concerned about, particularly on illegal immigration.
There are serious issues on immigration, crime and justice that should be addressed in this Queen’s Speech and we support action in all these areas. I shall cover each of them. We want to support many of the Government’s measures, although we will scrutinise the detail. We support action to stop the terrible crime of forced marriage and the right hon. Lady will agree that it is important to get the legislation right. We support action on dangerous dogs, though we will wait to see whether it goes far enough and to look at the detail of her proposals.
We welcome action on fire arms, but what is the Home Secretary doing to stop people with a history of domestic violence owning a gun? We need an answer for Bobby Turnbull, whose mother, aunt and sister were tragically killed by Michael Atherton, who was granted a gun licence despite his history of abuse. We agree, too, with more support and rehabilitation for offenders, but where is the evidence that these untested massive private contracts will work? When the Justice Secretary tried it for the Work programme, it proved worse than doing nothing at all, and when the Home Secretary tried it for the Olympics, she ended up calling in the troops.
Time and again the promises do not match the practice. The right hon. Lady promises action on antisocial behaviour, yet she is weakening powers, not strengthening them. There will be no criminal sanction if antisocial behaviour measures are repeatedly breached. She promises that the community trigger will make a difference in persistent cases, yet in the pilots it was hardly ever used. Out of 23,000 incidents of antisocial behaviour in Manchester, the trigger was implemented three times. In Richmond it was not used at all.
Yet still there is nothing to deal with the serious consequences for justice of the police cuts and the policies that the Government have pursued. For nearly 10 years, the proportion of crimes brought to justice went up. In 2002, 18% of crimes were solved, and that rose to more than 30% by the 2010 election. Crime fell, but a higher proportion of crimes were solved. Not any more. We all want crime to keep falling, but we need support and justice for victims too. The proportion of crimes brought to justice has fallen since the election. There are 15,000 fewer police officers, 200,000 fewer arrests and 30,000 fewer crimes solved, and some of the most serious crimes of all have not been followed up or offenders have been let off.
The Queen’s Speech proposes to expand community resolutions for things such as antisocial behaviour, and we support more action in the community to resolve low-level crimes or antisocial behaviour—people apologising to victims and making reparations. But it must not become a short cut for dealing with serious and violent crime because there are not enough police to do the job, and that is what is happening on the Home Secretary’s watch. The number of serious and violent offenders let off after they said sorry has gone up massively since the cuts started—up from 13,000 to 33,000 in just three years. Yet it goes against all the guidance from the Association of Chief Police Officers. ACPO says that it should not be used at all for domestic violence because it
“represents serious risk to the victims of such offences and is often subject to a complex and protracted investigation”.
That is too right. We know the pattern in many domestic violence cases: the offender apologises and says he will never do it again and that he really, really loves her, until the next time, when he hits her all over again. The criminal justice system must not sanction that. Yet that is exactly what happened 2,700 times last year—a fivefold increase since before the election and before the cuts started; a fivefold increase in the number of cases where a domestic violence offender was let off after they said sorry.
What was the response from Ministers? The Home Office has refused to issue new guidance, to set safeguards, to raise the matter with ACPO, and to rethink police cuts. Instead it says that it is a
“matter for Chief Constables. Through crime maps and police and crime commissioners, the public now have the means to hold them to account.”
That is reassuring. The police are overstretched, violent offenders are getting off, but at least we can Google it, and at least people get a vote in three years’ time. That is not an acceptable response to a serious problem.
On immigration, the grand claims do not match the reality either. We support action in many of the areas that the Government have talked about and we will scrutinise the legislation when it finally comes forward. Concerns about immigration are genuine and Parliament should respond. The pace of immigration has been too fast and we support measures to bring immigration down, particularly from low-skilled migration. But I hope that the Home Secretary will agree that Britain has benefited from people coming to our shores through the generations and contributing to this country. From our great scientists to the founders of our most successful businesses, from our great artists to our Olympic gold medallists, people who have worked hard for this country have boosted our society, our culture and our economy too.
As people travel and trade more than ever in future, in global markets, immigration will be important to Britain’s future as well. It is because immigration is important that it needs to be controlled and managed so that it is fair for all. We supported the proposals on article 8 when they were passed through Parliament last year. Article 8 is a qualified right and it is reasonable for Parliament to say how that should be balanced, especially when crimes have been committed, and we will work further with the Home Secretary in this area. But she should not pretend that the Government’s failure to deport foreign criminals is all because of the Human Rights Act. In fact, the number of foreign prisoners deported has fallen by 800 a year since the election, and she has herself admitted that only a minority of cases involve successful appeals under article 8. Far more often the problem is lost paperwork and administrative incompetence, problems that have been getting worse not better on her watch.
Nor has the Home Secretary set out proper plans to deal with exploitation in the labour market and illegal immigration. I hope that she will now introduce the powers that we put forward for borders enforcement staff in the Bill last year. I also hope that there will be action to close the loopholes on student visitor visas, and further action to deal with the fewer illegal migrants deported, more absconding at the border and fewer cases of illegal migrants reported to the Home Office simply not being followed up.
Mr Llwyd
If the hon. Lady had listened, she would have heard me say that I agree with the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire on this issue. I am not saying we should forget about it—[Interruption.] No, I am not. I understand that money is short, and I did not say that at all. The hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray) has completely misunderstood what I have said, but I do not think that anyone else has done so. I did not say that, but I am saying to her and to everyone outside the House that we need to detoxify the debate and sit down and discuss this issue in a clear-headed, proper manner. We must not dance to the UKIP tune at any time, now or in future.
A number of pieces of proposed legislation in the Queen’s Speech seem at first glance to be driven more by ideology than by common sense. I am particularly interested in the rehabilitation revolution, as it is known. We heard earlier that the probation service had recently acquired a gold medal for the excellence of its service. Now, however, we see evidence that those who have been in prison for 12 months or less are the cohort most likely to reoffend. That is something that we have all known for a long time, yet that cohort has never fallen within the ambit of the probation service’s work. It is little wonder, therefore, that those people reoffend, and something needs to be done. Not a great deal is being done to rehabilitate those people in prison, and once they are out, they are left without any assistance at all. On that, I agree with the Government.
My solution would be simpler, however. It would be to extend responsibility for those people to the probation service. They are the experts. They have been described today by the Secretary of State today as having “expertise and professionalism” and making “a vital contribution”. If that is so, why on earth do we have to bring in the privateers? Was G4S’s performance at the Olympics so brilliant that we now have to bring the company into the probation system?
Nick de Bois
I am grateful to a fellow member of the Justice Select Committee for giving way. He has just suggested that we try to have a sensible debate about this matter. Focusing on privateers is completely erroneous. For example, he knows well the St Giles Trust, a registered charity that does superb work on reforming and rehabilitating people. He must surely agree that this must not become a debate about privatisation.
Mr Llwyd
I often respect the views of the hon. Gentleman, and I hope that we debate issues in a constructive manner when we meet on the Justice Committee. Yes, of course there are people in the voluntary sector who can do this work, but I am concerned that many of those smaller entities will be unable to carry the capital risk, and that most of the work will go to G4S, to Serco and to all the rest of the robber barons who will be jumping in. They will be listening to this debate and eagerly awaiting their chance to enter the sector. I hope that they make a better job of it than they did of the Olympics; otherwise, we will have to get the Army in to do it.
I accept what the hon. Gentleman says; the third sector—the voluntary sector—does an excellent job. He and I recently visited a third sector institution up in Liverpool, Adelaide House, which is doing an excellent job. To the credit of the previous Government and this one, it is being funded directly, and that is absolutely right. Yes, there is a role for the voluntary sector, and if it is to expand into this area to do such work, I would have fewer objections. However, I question its capability and capacity to handle the capital risk involved.
I welcome the draft Wales Bill, as far as it goes. It will transfer powers over elections to the Welsh Government, introduce fixed five-year terms for the Assembly and overturn the ban on dual candidacy for Welsh elections. I must, however, express my profound disappointment that there was no slot in the Queen’s Speech for a full, proper government of Wales Bill. The pressing need for such legislation is quite obvious. As I am sure hon. Members will know, the Commission on Devolution in Wales, chaired by Paul Silk, recently published its first report, on the financial powers of the Welsh Assembly. It received broad cross-party support. It recommended that the Welsh Government should have control over minor taxes as well as job-creating levers and borrowing powers, so allowing the Welsh Government to raise and invest money in Wales’s public services and infrastructure, thereby improving the economy. The Silk report recommended that those levers be devolved as soon as was practical. Lest we forget, this Government have been effectively treading water for the past nine months or so, and have failed to bring forward any really important pieces of legislation. All things considered, there is surely a case for a legislative slot for such an important vehicle. We are already falling behind, and time is of the essence.
In the absence of a new government of Wales Bill, we as a party have drawn up our own list of Bills that we would like to see debated. That includes Bills devolving to the Welsh Government control over justice and policing, transport and energy powers and job-search functions. We also believe that we should introduce what we describe as an economic fairness Bill. Central to these proposals is our justice and policing (Wales) Bill, which would establish a separate legal jurisdiction for Wales, to correct the anomaly that Wales is at present probably the only country in the world that has a legislature, but no legal jurisdiction of its own to serve it. There is already a very substantial corpus juris establishing itself in Wales that does not have a jurisdiction to serve it, and the need for one is now urgent. It is becoming more pressing month by month.
Helen Jones (Warrington North) (Lab)
I shall direct my remarks to the Queen’s Speech as a whole. I have listened carefully both yesterday and today to the speeches from Members on the Government Benches and heard about the progress towards the sunlit uplands that they have described for us all, and nothing could better demonstrate the fact that they fail to grasp, let alone have any ability to deal with, the problems facing this country. In the face of a flatlining economy, rising unemployment and the loss of the triple A credit rating, all we have from them is more of the same.
Most of all, the Queen’s Speech was marked by a poverty of ambition for this country—by a failure to articulate any vision for the future and a lack of faith in the ability of the people in this country to work their way out of the problems. We hear in here that the economy is improving, but we know that outside it is flatlining and lending to business is falling. We hear that the Government are on the side of people who work, yet those people have lost £1,700 in income since the last election.
That gap between rhetoric and reality comes about because the Government have at their heart a club of old school and university chums who have no idea of the struggles many families in this country face. They know nothing about counting the pennies to get to the end of the week, and nothing about the desolation that unemployment brings. If they talked to people in constituencies such as mine, they would know what is happening. There are people in work who fear they are going to lose their job. There are parents who fear their children will never have a home of their own and never do as well as them. There are grandparents who worry about their grandchildren being out of work. Yet there is nothing in this Queen’s Speech for them.
Some 1 million young people in this country are unemployed, and in parts of my constituency youth unemployment is up by 43%. There is nothing for them in the Gracious Speech. There is nothing to match our job guarantee for young people. I know it is said that the Prime Minister got his first job when someone rang up from Buckingham palace on his behalf. I do not think he has ever grasped the fact that most people cannot do it like that.
Our public services are facing unprecedented problems. My local hospital is losing hundreds of posts, many in the front line. It has breached its accident and emergency waiting times on 14 occasions in the last 26 weeks. Yet the same Ministers who have wasted £3 billion on an unnecessary reorganisation and whose Department paid back £2.2 billion to the Treasury have no plans to tackle this. They would rather see skilled nurses and dedicated health assistants on the dole than admit they should change course.
This country—the seventh richest country in the world—is shamed by the fact that thousands of its people rely on food banks, yet we heard nothing in this speech about plans to tackle poverty, much of which, we should remember, is in-work poverty. We heard nothing about encouraging employers to pay a living wage, and nothing about developing the training and skills people need in order to improve their lives and get a better deal for their families.
Although this Government say they support strivers, they instead constantly target them. [Interruption.] For example, they say they have frozen council tax, yet 700,000 of the poorest families—working families—are paying more in council tax as a result of their changes. [Interruption.] Their welfare reform legislation will mean real-terms cuts in tax credits, sick pay and maternity pay for people who are working. [Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray) would stop chuntering from a sedentary position, perhaps she would realise that these sums of money, which are small to members of her Government, for many families in this country make the difference between getting to the end of the week and not getting to the end of the week.
Yet one thing the Government are very good at is transferring blame. We can see that in all their rhetoric about welfare reform, but they neglect to point out that many benefits go to families in work. They neglect to point out that the welfare bill mostly goes on pensions. They neglect to point out that, as a proportion of tax-take, the welfare bill has not, in fact, increased for the last 20 years.
Helen Jones
I will give way in a moment, after I have made a little more progress.
Why do they use that rhetoric? The answer is simple. They are saying to people in this country, “The flatlining economy and rising unemployment is not the Chancellor’s fault or the Prime Minister’s fault. It’s your sister’s fault for going on maternity leave. It’s your neighbour’s fault for being sick. It’s your cousin’s fault for having a spare bedroom.”
Helen Jones
Before the hon. Gentleman gets worked up, let me tell him that I would clamp down ruthlessly on fraud, because it is stealing from poorer people, but he knows as well as I do that fraud is less than 1% of the bill and is less than the amount the errors in the Department for Work and Pensions costs the system. To pretend all these things about the people who have lost their jobs in my constituency after years of work, and the people who are sick or disabled who would like nothing better than to get a job, is an insult to those decent people.
Nick de Bois
I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way, and that is the first time I have had an answer to an intervention that I never made. It is also an answer that addresses a subject I was not going to touch on. What I was hoping for was a little bit of guidance. The hon. Lady rattled off a list of welfare measures that she found utterly unacceptable, but we have been led by her party’s Front-Bench team to believe it supports many of our welfare reform measures. Can she therefore answer this question: would she repeal every single one of the measures she listed?
Helen Jones
The hon. Gentleman is trying to put words into my mouth that I did not say. What I did say to him is that we would crack down on fraud ruthlessly, but I will not subscribe to the rhetoric that tries to label decent men and women who simply want to get a job as somehow being scroungers, and nor will I subscribe to the rhetoric that says all people who are receiving benefits are out of work. He knows very well that that is not true. Many of them are low-paid working families. We should look to improving their living conditions to reduce the welfare bill.
Nick de Bois
I have not mentioned any of the terms the hon. Lady listed. She has tried to put those words in my mouth. I would be extremely grateful if she clarified the point.
Helen Jones
I have just clarified it for the hon. Gentleman, but let me say this to him. The results of that policy are very clear. Just when the country needs to be united, what this Government are about is promoting division. They are about making people suspicious of one another: those in work fearing those out of work; the rich behaving as if the poor are a problem; those who lose their jobs, even in areas of low immigration, being made to think immigration is the problem.
We have seen the results: a country fearful and disunited. That does not build a confident, prosperous Britain, because when people are fearful, they do not take risks and innovate—they cling to what they have. It does not build a Britain at ease with itself either, divided between rich and poor, north and south. We are a better country than that, and we can be a better country, but it requires leadership from a Government willing to change the priorities. The first priority is to build a prosperous economy throughout the regions and nations of this country.
This Government have systematically taken money out of many of our regions, which have already been hit by unemployment. They have transferred £1 billion out of the north of England in their local government settlement alone. They have hit those big cities suffering most from unemployment through their welfare reforms; for example, Birmingham will lose £10 million on council tax changes alone, and Liverpool is losing more than £7 million in bedroom tax. That is money that would otherwise be spent in local shops and businesses, promoting those local economies. That is why it is important to have a British investment bank, at arm’s length from government, that not only lends to small and medium-sized enterprises, but ensures that we invest in the different regions of our country, promoting their economic strengths and building up their capacity. It is also right that we should be on the side of people who work and who want to work, but that means actually getting people back into jobs.
Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) and although I do not necessarily draw the same conclusions, her argument about the effect of broadband on the economy is not in doubt.
I shall do two things which, I think, will please the House: I shall be extremely brief and therefore observe the courtesy of listening to the following speaker. I am pressed because of another meeting so I hope the House will forgive me for being brief, which it will no doubt welcome, and for not staying for subsequent speeches.
I shall speak specifically about antisocial behaviour. The term underplays the awful way in which the lives of those on the receiving end of antisocial behaviour are transformed and how they enter into periods of intense frustration, worry, concern and even fear if they are the victims of repetitive antisocial behaviour. I am sure that other Members regularly see constituents in that situation. Sadly, I see them all too regularly—I would go so far as to say that in almost every single surgery I encounter a case of antisocial behaviour. The term worries me for two reasons. If it is used to describe extremely serious instances, it can lead to action not being taken swiftly enough. Some police forces struggle to deal with what they regard as an antisocial behaviour complaint. As a consequence, many incidents are repeated and go on for a long time.
Working with one of my local papers, the Enfield Independent, we came across a case in my constituency where for three years utterly unacceptable bullying behaviour was taking place against two shopkeepers and residents in neighbouring houses. One resident was having her bin set on fire regularly and was having stones thrown down on to her roof, and people’s doors were being trashed—all serious criminal behaviour which went without a response for nearly three years.
Lyn Brown (West Ham) (Lab)
Has the hon. Gentleman, like me, experienced a lack of reporting by residents? They tell me that there is no point in reporting such incidents because they are simply not being dealt with by the police in a way that we would wish to see.
Nick de Bois
The hon. Lady makes a fair point, which will make my speech even shorter. There is a sense of frustration. The Government’s measure is vital and important, but it may not mitigate some of the reasons why people will still continue to be reluctant to report. That is due not just to a belief that something will not happen, but to fear. After coming across this incident, I found myself talking to six residents and two shopkeepers, and not one of them wanted to report the crime. They knew who was responsible and that it was consistently the same people, but they were fearful of repercussions if they took the matter further.
Nick de Bois
I will deal with that point now. I will not make the usual response that I will cover it later because I do not have clue how to answer it—I am sorry; I am probably being very unfair to other hon. Members. The point fits in with my theme.
The concept behind the community trigger is an excellent idea. It basically means that if five complaints are made, the police are obliged to investigate. That is a good and important concept. If there is a reluctance to complain because people doubt whether anything will happen—although I think the community trigger will encourage them because of the compulsion on the force to act—we need to be comfortable that the police can react and in a sufficiently timely manner. I live in a borough where the police have had to deal with extremely serious issues and I accept that there will be times when they may have to delay their investigation, but I hope they will investigate. I am afraid that there have been too many instances when as an MP I have had to prompt action when it should have been the citizen’s complaint that prompted the action. But the potential problem with the community trigger is that sometimes it is difficult to get one person to complain, so to get five may be quite a challenge.
I genuinely support the moves on antisocial behaviour and I am keen to see them go ahead, so I recommend to Ministers that in addition to the community trigger proposals where residents can complain, perhaps they should consider allowing locally elected councillors to be representatives of people, and where sufficient residents have expressed concern they could also trigger the process. I see those on the Front Bench nodding in agreement—they are not really, but I would welcome comments on that. My constituents ask me to do something about such matters, and if they feel more comfortable with their elected representative doing something, perhaps because of fear, that could be a positive role for a councillor who could use the community trigger to act on their residents behalf. If councillors are not elected to do that, what are they elected to do?
With antisocial behaviour being firmly placed on the Home Office’s agenda and in their sights for introduction into a Bill, I urge Ministers to ensure that enforcement can be met and that local police forces can be held accountable for that. We in this House can legislate, but we cannot implement measures on the ground. I hope that with the introduction of police and crime commissioners, local people will be able to hold their police force to account to meet the challenges that they have set them, but in London boroughs, which come under the Met police and the commissioner, it will be trickier.
I wholeheartedly support the measures in the Bill, but if there is frustration on the ground, I hope that Ministers will not regard their job as done once they have legislated. The job will be done when we have made a significant dent in this dreadfully unacceptable behaviour of those who want to terrorise their neighbours and vandalise their property.