Oral Answers to Questions

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Monday 20th November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

We are running late, but the voice of Amber Valley must be heard.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

14. Whether she plans to introduce a new police funding formula in the next 12 months.

[The Minister for Policing and the Fire Service (Mr Nick Hurd)]

We have not yet made a decision about what was called the fair funding review, but I assure my hon. Friend that a new formula will not be introduced without a full public consultation. In the meantime, we are completing our review of demand and resilience in the police system ahead of the 2018-19 funding settlement.

[Nigel Mills]

The Minister will know that Derbyshire has been particularly badly affected by the current formula, so we would greatly appreciate some progress on the new formula. In the meantime, can he assure my local police force that there will be at least an inflationary rise in its funding for next year?

[Mr Hurd]

I assure my hon. Friend that I have spoken directly to the police and crime commissioner and the chief constable in Derbyshire to get an update on the performance of the service and the demand on it. That will feed into the review that I have signalled, which will, in turn, feed into the decisions about the 2018-19 funding settlement, for which he will not have to wait too long.

Criminal Finances Bill

Nigel Mills Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 21st February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Carolyn Harris (Swansea East) (Lab)]

The Opposition support the spirit of the Bill and broadly support this group of amendments. We welcome new provisions to prosecute those professionals who fail to prevent tax evasion, as well as welcoming unexplained wealth orders, under which assets can be seized if owners are unable to explain how they were funded. We, of course, support the Government’s effort to tighten up state powers against white-collar crime, but we have concerns that they are squandering the opportunity that the Bill provides to stamp out the everyday corruption of the super-rich who are getting a free ride at the expense of the wider society, thereby fuelling inequality.

Another problem is that, amid the Government’s cuts to public services, the Bill could be very difficult to enforce. Although I understand the giving of new powers to HMRC, are the Government not concerned about how HMRC will carry out its new duties? Given that the coalition Government decimated HMRC’s budgets by £100 million and that HMRC is set to lose 137 of its offices by 2027, there seems little point in creating laws that cannot be enforced—unless, of course, it is to give the impression that the Government are doing something. This, I fear, is a theme that has sadly run through our proceedings on the Bill so far.

We Opposition Members argue that it is crucial for the agencies involved in civil recovery powers to have sufficient resources to do their jobs properly. We therefore request a distinct and clear annual report that details the resources allocated to the agencies that are concerned solely with the task of carrying out these recovery powers.

In previous stages, the Government objected on the grounds that the asset recovery incentivisation scheme would allow frontline agencies to keep 100% of what they recover, but this argument is seriously flawed. In theory, yes, the agencies could retain the total value recovered, but as the Public Accounts Committee made clear in its progress review of confiscation orders and as the Home Affairs Select Committee made clear in its review of the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, these agencies’ recovery rates have been typically poor. Consequently, it remains to be seen how these agencies will improve their rate of recovery to benefit from the new incentivisation scheme.

Another reason that the Government gave is that anyone who wanted to find out this information could in theory obtain it by going to a number of different sources. Yet again, this is flawed. We previously argued for a detailed reporting of resources, specifically for these agencies, in the exercise of the powers laid down in the Bill and the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002.

The Government have already blocked a number of measures that Labour has proposed to make this a meaningful and effective Bill. We proposed a corporate probation order. If a company was found to have committed a failure to prevent offence, it would have been subject to an independent review of its compliance procedures and it would have had to pay the full costs of such a review. This was coupled with allowing for the removal of directors from companies who failed to ensure that proper procedures were in place to prevent UK and foreign tax evasion offences from taking place. The Government believed that this was unnecessary because UK law could already deal with such cases of negligence. Although there may be a case for some UK law to be used to a similar effect, it would not be an identical effect.

While there is an implied threat to the EU that the Government could change the UK’s economic model into one of a tax haven, there is a strong case for legislation to protect both UK citizens and citizens from around the world. With the potential for a race to the bottom and the destruction of workers’ rights and the slashing of corporation tax, it could be argued that a Brexiteer Government would foster an environment where tax evasion was implicitly encouraged.

As my colleagues have said, and will no doubt say again, the Bill must do more to tackle the deeply entrenched and extraordinarily costly phenomenon of tax avoidance. Tax avoidance is, in effect, living to the letter of the law, but not in the spirit of the law. Repeated investigations of companies that sail close to the wind but know that they have bought the lawyers and accountants to make their tax abuse legal is both very frustrating and extremely costly. As the UK general anti-abuse rules show, there are ways to minimise the risk of corporate abuse of the tax system, and these should be absorbed into the Bill.

Spain, Canada and Australia each have a single agency responsible for supervising and enforcing anti-money laundering regulations—Britain has 22. Worse still, according to Transparency International UK, 15 of these 22 supervisors also lobby on behalf of the interests of their sector, creating clear conflicts of interest and a system inefficient to its core. The Government raised this problem in their action plan that preceded the Bill, but they were not concerned enough to convert this into proposed legislation. The system needs reform and the Bill needs to reflect this. Unless the Government accept all these concerns and indeed all the changes suggested in the Opposition amendments, the Bill is likely to fail on the intention to clean up money laundering and tax evasion.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak to new clause 5, which, as the Minister said, stands in my name and those of colleagues in the all-party parliamentary anti-corruption group. The reason for tabling new clause 5 was to probe the Government on the issue and make sure that we make full use of the unexplained wealth orders and the interim freezing orders that we envisage in passing this Bill. I fear that if we are not careful, the various authorities that can use the orders may be a little concerned about the possibility that the people against whom they want to use them—who, in some cases, will no doubt be very rich and powerful and will not take the freezing or restriction of their wealth lightly—will seek to frustrate the process and oppose the orders with every means available to them. They might, for instance, incur huge costs—perhaps well above what could be considered reasonable in the circumstances—and try to force them on to the taxpayer at a later date if they succeeded in resisting the orders.

Although it is absolutely right for people to be able to recover reasonable costs if the state tries to impose orders and fails, it would be unreasonable for them to engage numerous very highly paid barristers and incur costs that were wholly disproportionate, which the taxpayer would end up having to pay. The real risk is that bodies trying to use these powers would be deterred from doing so, because they would fear that very rich people might take large chunks of their budgets for a long period while resisting the orders.

The aim of new clause 5 is to establish whether the existing powers for the courts to restrict the amount of costs recovered can be described as applying to efforts to obtain the orders that are specified in the Bill, so that it is plain to everyone that the various state authorities, acting competently and reasonably clearly in trying to use the orders, cannot be unreasonably opposed and end up with excessive costs. It would be helpful if the Minister explained how he thinks the orders would work and what he thinks about the interaction with the existing capping rules for the courts.

This is not an entirely theoretical issue. In the past, very significant costs have been awarded against the Serious Fraud Office. I am not pretending that the circumstances were similar to those that we are discussing in this instance—I think that that may not have been the finest hour of the Serious Fraud Office—but there is clearly evidence that the sort of people with whom we are dealing might try to obtain costs that would have a deterrent effect on the use of the orders. It would be useful to hear from the Minister whether he thinks that the courts can and should use various cost-capping measures to ensure that we are not unreasonably exposed to very high costs.

[Richard Arkless]

I want to talk briefly about what I must admit is probably my favourite section of the Bill—the part that deals with unexplained wealth orders. I think it is an excellent provision, which is likely to drive a Trojan horse right through the assets of criminals who choose to lodge them in the United Kingdom.

The hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) made some very valid points about new clause 5. Indemnity costs can be easily translated to mean, in layman’s terms, full costs. In other words, every single hour and every penny of the expense on the file can be charged to the losing party, with no assessment of whether those costs are reasonable. Given that we are talking about politically exposed people, potentially in other jurisdictions, we can imagine the number of officials travelling back and forth on flights. All that will find its way on to a costs sheet, and all of it will be recoverable to the payee in indemnity costs. We could end up with an inequality of arms, not in favour of the Government but in favour of the respondents, which I think would be very dangerous.

The threat of indemnity costs acts as a major litigation risk for the claimants or pursuers, or, in this case, the applicants. If they know that they are likely to be in for a bigger bill, they will think twice about making applications. These are our law enforcement agencies, and I believe that they should be able to pursue their applications with determination, without fear or favour, and without the risk of incurring indemnity costs which would be deeply disproportionate. That would be very bizarre and counterproductive.

I thank the hon. Member for Amber Valley for tabling his probing new clause, and I shall be pleased to hear what the Government have to say about it. As a boring, pedantic lawyer, I think it worth mentioning that indemnity costs are very rare, and arguably arise only in proportionate circumstances. However, we are talking about politically exposed people with potentially limitless funds. The better they can make their case in court, the more likely it is that they will be awarded indemnity costs if they are successful, and I think that we should take that risk out of the equation.

As I have said, the unexplained wealth orders provision is an excellent feature of the Bill. Let me explain exactly how the orders would work. The Bill will enable a court in Scotland—the Court of Session—on application by Scottish Ministers to make an unexplained wealth order. Such orders will require individuals or organisations to explain the origin of their assets if there are reasonable grounds for suspecting that they may have been involved in criminality, or intend to use that wealth for criminal purposes, and if the value of the assets exceeds £100,000. During earlier stages of the Bill, the Minister and I discussed that threshold, and I should be pleased if he could update me on his thoughts about it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Roger Mullin (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (SNP)]

I start by thanking the Security Minister and the Government for responding to the campaign on Scottish limited partnerships in which I have been involved for about a year. We are all grateful that the Government recently announced that they will conduct a review, which means that the amendment that I have regularly been tabling to Bills over the past year is no longer necessary. However, I have found myself having to table a different new clause; I will explain why and why it troubles me greatly that I am forced to do so.

For Members who are unfamiliar with why my colleagues and I have been so concerned about these things called Scottish limited partnerships, let me point out that they do remarkable reputational damage to Scotland and probably to the UK’s financial sector. They are a front for some of the worst international crime, money laundering and hiding of criminal assets to be found. Without going into great detail of how they manage to do that, it might interest the House to know just a few of the types of crime for which they have been used.

SLPs have been at the centre of Ukrainian arms deals, kick-backs and a major Moldovan banking fraud. They have been at the heart of a major corruption scandal in Latvia involving the nephew of Uzbekistan’s President Islam Karimov. They have been used to run international mail frauds, including that of a French psychic who has been targeting vulnerable elderly people with offers of spiritual insights for significant amounts of cash. They are involved in a $1 billion copyright infringement case that is taking place in the United States. They have been involved in criminal activity such as setting up paedophile websites and raising money through such horrible activities. The list goes on and on. SLPs, and other limited partnerships to some extent, have been utilised as a way of hiding billions of pounds of criminal money. Often that money does not necessarily come here, as we find it in tax havens. The legitimation of a UK or Scottish limited partnership is used as a means of hiding the beneficiaries of such criminal activity.

For those reasons, I am particularly grateful that the Minister has been willing to speak seriously about this. He has done more than any other Minister to move the Government to respond to some of our concerns, so why did I table new clause 10? I did so because SLPs and limited partnerships are based on a 1907 Act, of which probably few people are aware, that amended the Partnership Act 1890, of which even fewer people are aware. By some chance, I sit on the Regulatory Reform Committee, which is so popular that in December it held its second meeting since I joined it in January 2016. Why did we have our second meeting in December? Because we were told that the Treasury was introducing a legislative reform order. And what was that legislative reform order for? At the same time as the Government announced a much-welcomed review of limited partnerships, the Treasury sought to create a new form of limited partnership—private fund limited partnerships —not on the Floor of the House, but through a device that is supposed to be used only for non-controversial matters of legislative reform. I can hardly think of anything more controversial than a mechanism that has been used for international criminal assets and money laundering, but I have even greater concerns.

I will have to leave the debate in about an hour to attend a meeting of the Regulatory Reform Committee to take evidence on the Treasury’s proposals—[Interruption.] I hear Members suggesting they are jealous, but I am sure that they are not. Under the proposals, there are four areas with which even SLPs have to comply that these new private fund limited partnerships will not. For example, the jurisdiction in which the general partners are registered no longer needs to be divulged. The registration numbers of the general partners no longer need to be divulged. The jurisdiction in which the limited partners are registered no longer needs to be divulged, and the registration numbers of the limited partners, if they are corporations, no longer need to be divulged.

Not only are we creating a new form of limited partnership, but we are doing so with considerably less regulation than is in place for existing limited partnerships that have been a front for international criminality. As I have such great faith in the Minister for Security, our new clause would require the Home Office to conduct a review before the Treasury introduces any legislation to create a new form of limited partnership so that we can ensure that those limited partnerships will not be subject to the type of criminal abuse and illegality that we have found with Scottish limited partnerships.

There is also a broader question to be answered. Why are this Government using a device such as a legislative reform order to try to quickly establish something in such a controversial area? Surely this is something that should be fully and properly debated on the Floor of the House. That is why, when I go to the Committee shortly, I will certainly not be agreeing that the proposal makes progress. I will do my best to require that this matter is brought back to the Floor of the House so that it can receive proper and urgent scrutiny. In the light of my arguments, I commend new clause 10 to the House.

[Nigel Mills]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I rise to address the new clauses that my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough (Sir Edward Garnier) spoke about and new clause 6. I will begin by speaking to the new clauses tabled by my right hon. and learned Friend and the measures tabled by the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell), who co-chairs the all-party group on anti-corruption, on the failure to prevent economic crime.

The hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Roger Mullin) knows far more about such things than I do, and he made his argument well, but I reinforce the point that there is a strong feeling among the public, because if large companies are seen to be part of some very serious criminal activity, people are confused about why those companies and the senior people within them have not been prosecuted for those serious offences. If people look across the Atlantic, they see that America does manage to prosecute senior bankers for such offences, so they think, “We see all our banks being fined in America for being guilty of rigging various markets, yet why are no senior directors of those companies being prosecuted here? Why are those banks not being prosecuted?” That exposes the fact that our law, as the hon. Gentleman explained, has become out of date. It seems horribly unfair that the Serious Fraud Office finds it comparatively easy to prosecute very small companies and their directors, when it is clear who the controlling minds are, but that when we see far more serious offences being committed by, on behalf of, or for the benefit of much larger companies, we cannot quite find enough evidence to prosecute those companies or their very senior directors.

[Mark Field (Cities of London and Westminster) (Con)]

In the US context, does my hon. Friend accept that there is often a political element there, despite the division of power? The prosecutor is often looking to make a name for himself by taking on a big bank—often, it has to be said, a big non-US bank. It is a particular concern—not just in the banking world but beyond—that overseas companies tend to be fair game as far as prosecutions are concerned. There is actually a rather different regime there, and it might not necessarily point to a desire and a need for a change in UK law.

[Nigel Mills]

I agree with my right hon. Friend’s point. It is interesting that the United States seems to favour prosecuting large banks and large companies that are internationally owned rather than US-owned. I am sure that the Foreign Office is trying to work out whether that is an unfair, anti-competitive move by the US. He is right that we should not try to read too much across from the US system into ours, but I was trying to make the point that people are confused about why people are prosecuted in the US but not over here.

That takes me back to the point that it seems unfair that while we can prosecute directors of small businesses, we cannot prosecute when we see much more serious offences in large businesses. That is why I support extending the model of the failure to prevent that we already have in place for bribery and that we are adding for tax evasion. We are talking about other very serious economic crimes, and it is hard to make a distinction as to why we would rank some of these offences as less important or serious such that we do not take the power to prosecute so that we prevent serious fraud, for instance.

I welcome the Government’s consultation on those issues, and it is right that it would be somewhat premature to legislate before we get the outcome of the consultation, as that might make a mockery of the idea of consulting. It is a real pity that although this Bill is the ideal vehicle in which to act, we cannot, because of the timing, make the change that we want. We will be relying on another relevant Bill being introduced later in this Parliament so that we can finally make the change. As my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Harborough said, it would be helpful if the Minister would make some encouraging noises about how seriously the Government take such matters and when we might expect to see some progress following the consultation, if the Government were minded to proceed with legislation.

I will take a bit of a leap from that topic to the subject of new clause 6—our grouping is interesting. For quite a long while, I thought that I was supporting Government policy by encouraging our overseas territories and Crown dependencies to adopt the same transparency regarding beneficial ownership that we are putting in place for the UK through the Bill. The previous Prime Minister was absolutely right to make efforts to get those territories and dependencies to agree to having transparent registers. I think that we all welcome the fact that the territories have moved a fair way in agreeing to have registers and reliable information on the beneficial owners of companies operating there. We all congratulate them on that, and look forward to that being in place; we all recognise that it will be a great step forward for various law enforcement authorities to be able to get that information relatively speedily to help prosecutions here. However, that does not go far enough, and we recognise that by saying in new clause 6 that we want a transparent register.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Field]

My hon. Friend makes a strong and powerful case, but does he not recognise the distinction between privacy and secrecy? No one wants an entirely secret element, but most people who indulge in banking, whether in an overseas territory or anywhere else, expect a certain amount of privacy. There is no question but that we would expect law enforcement, the police and the tax authorities to have access to these registers. My hon. Friend has been fair in making the point that ultimately a lot of these issues should be constitutional questions for the territories; these measures should not be imposed on them by the UK. On the notion that anyone should have access to that information beyond the authorities I mentioned, as they would in his Tajikistan example, surely he can understand the reluctance for that to happen, particularly in the globalised financial world in which we live, and particularly if the same does not apply elsewhere.

[Nigel Mills]

I accept that we hear the privacy argument a lot—I am sure that it is made in the UK context as well—but we have taken the decision to have transparent registers so that we know who the ultimate beneficial owners of these entities are. If I think through the scenarios in which people would have a right to privacy, I can perhaps see that there might be a good reason not to publish if there is a real issue of individual safety, but I struggle to find many other situations for which there is a good argument for people being able to establish entities or other bodies in the overseas territories without being clear about who the ultimate owner is. If someone owns a company here or is a shareholder, that has to be public. That transparency exists for any kind of entity here, so I am not sure why a different argument ought to apply for our dependencies. In weighing the right to privacy against the right to ensure that we are not letting dirty, corrupt, criminal money into the system, we have to err on the latter side of the equation.

[Mr Wallace]

My hon. Friend gave the example of a toll road in Tajikistan. Because of where we are now, with a commitment to central registers and automatic access for our law enforcement agencies to those registers in countries such as the BVI, we could investigate his example and those responsible could be tracked down. Because it is an offence under the Bill to encourage tax evasion, even in another country—I guess the people who siphon off the toll money are not paying taxes in Tajikistan—we could take action if the BVI bank had a British nexus. We have now gone a long way towards tackling that type of crime because of this Bill and where we have got to since David Cameron’s summit.

[Nigel Mills]

I am grateful to the Minister for making those points, but we should be careful that we do not focus only on one example. There might be good commercial reasons in that case and it might just be a rumour from that country. I was highlighting the question of whether there are sufficient resources in the various law enforcement bodies, either here or elsewhere, to pursue inquiries through the labyrinth of corporate structures that tend to be involved when it comes to the most complex money-laundering or corruption situations.

The advantage of transparency, and one reason why we have chosen to have it here, is that it puts the information into the public domain so that various NGOs or other bodies can do some of the initial investigation, piece together the corporate chains and links, break the corporate veils, and thereby work out where this money is coming from and where it has got to. I am a little sceptical that our law enforcement bodies will ever have the resources to start that process in the vast majority of cases. If we can get the information into the public domain and give people the chance to trace it all the way through and find the answers, that new information can be used by the law enforcement bodies. That is what we are trying to achieve, because enabling transparency will make it much harder to hide the money through a complex structure going through multiple territories and however many different trusts and entities.

It is entirely right and welcome that law enforcement bodies will have timely access to information, but that will not be enough to enable the full tackling of this scourge that we would like to see. That is why I support the effort that has been made with new clause 6 to find a way to send a very strong signal to our territories that we want transparent registers. That is the right thing to do and it is the right direction of travel for the regimes in question. We want our territories to take the lead, rather than waiting for everybody else to do something first. Let us set an example and move first, and not wait for the herd.

[Caroline Flint (Don Valley) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills). I almost feel like not making a speech and sitting down now—but I will not—because he made such excellent points about why public registers of beneficial ownership in our overseas territories are so important. I look forward to working with him on this issue and on public country-by-country reporting, as well as with the many other colleagues from both sides of the House and from eight political parties who support new clause 6. Despite some Government pressure, several Conservative MPs support the new clause, including the former International Development Secretary, the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Mr Mitchell), who I understand hopes to catch your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker. I also pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Dame Margaret Hodge) for her hard work on this important amendment. I am really sorry—and she is too—that she cannot be here today to speak in this debate. I hope that, on this occasion, Members will not mind me dubbing new clause 6 “the Hodge amendment”.

I welcome the Government’s Criminal Finances Bill. Its aims of tackling corruption, tax evasion and terrorist financing are really important and should be commended. However, the absence of any mention of the overseas territories is remarkable. As Christian Aid has said, the No. 1 thing that the Government can do to tackle corruption, money laundering, and tax evasion is to ensure transparency in their overseas territories. Unfortunately, the secrecy that those territories trade in facilitates the corruption and the aggressive tax avoidance and tax evasion that we are all trying to stamp out.

The amendment is supported by the all-party groups on responsible tax and on anti-corruption, Christian Aid, Global Witness, Transparency International, Action Aid, Publish What You Pay, Save the Children, Oxfam and many others. We all know from numerous polls that this matter is something that the British public really care about. Two thirds of them want the Government to insist on public registers of beneficial ownership in the overseas territories.

As the hon. Member for Amber Valley mentioned, we have, with this amendment, responded to concerns raised earlier at different points of debate on this Bill. We are focusing purely on the overseas territories where the constitutional issues are more clear cut. We recognise that the overseas territories are taking steps towards private registers of beneficial ownership, so we have allowed a generous timeline for them to move from that to make these registers publicly accessible.

The overseas territories need to have these private registers in place by June of this year. This amendment would give them another two and a half years after that, which is within the lifetime of this Parliament, simply to make those private registers public. Such a move would be a major step forward.

New clause 6 is important not only for us in the UK, but for developing countries, which is why so many NGOs are supporting it. According to the UN Conference on Trade and Development, developing countries lose at least $100 billion every year as a result of tax havens. Around 8% to 15% of the world’s wealth is being held offshore in low tax jurisdictions, many of which come under our jurisdiction. A World Bank review of 213 big corruption cases found that more than 70% of them relied on secret company ownership. Company service providers registered in UK territories were second on the list in providing these companies. Oxfam has said recently that around one third of rich Africans’ wealth is currently sitting in offshore tax havens. If all that wealth was held in Africa and taxed properly, we would be able to pay for enough teachers to educate every child in Africa.

It damages our reputation, as the hon. Member for Amber Valley said, that the British Virgin Islands was the most mentioned tax haven in the Panama papers. We know that future leaks are coming, so why cannot we get ahead of the game and ensure transparency now?

In a recent debate on the Commonwealth Development Corporation Bill, the Minister of State, Department for International Development, the hon. Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), said that the CDC would never invest through Anguilla or the British Virgin Islands. If a DFID Minister and the CDC can say that, what does it say about our responsibility today to change that reputation—British Ministers are clearly considering this—and do something to help those territories become more transparent?

Oral Answers to Questions

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)]

2. What steps she is taking to ensure that police funding is fairly distributed.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

5. What steps she is taking to ensure that police funding is fairly distributed.

[The Minister for Policing and the Fire Service (Brandon Lewis)]

The Government remain committed to reforming the current police funding arrangements to ensure a fairer, more up-to-date and transparent formula.

We are currently undertaking a period of detailed engagement with the policing sector and relevant experts, including academics. Any new formula, of course, will be subject to public consultation.

[Brandon Lewis]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point, on which I know he has lobbied on behalf of his authority. I have spoken to the police and crime commissioner for Essex as well. It is true that the data are very much out of date. That is why it was in our manifesto to deliver a fairer funding formula review. That is what we are doing, and we will deliver on it.

[Nigel Mills]

The Minister will know that Derbyshire’s police force is also disadvantaged by the current formula. When can it expect to have the fair level of funding that it deserves?

[Brandon Lewis]

Derbyshire will get an increase in funding this year. I appreciate, having spoken to my hon. Friend and other colleagues who have spoken to me on behalf of Derbyshire, that there is a feeling that the formula is not currently fairly weighted with regard to a number of areas across the country. That is why it is important that we go through this process methodically. I am not going to give a timescale now. The sector and experts are working with us on this, and I am confident that we will get to the right position to have a clear, fair and transparent formula in good time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Brandon Lewis]

I recognise the challenges involved in dealing with those who use bridle paths and footpaths inappropriately and ruin them for the majority of other people. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and both he and the police deserve credit for wanting to crack down on such practices. The use of drones is another good example of modern technology. Police forces and fire brigades are sharing them, and I would encourage the hon. Gentleman’s local police force to consider doing the same. It might be possible to make a bid through the police transformation fund.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

T4. In the light of recent terrorist threats across the globe, will my hon. Friend the Minister update the House on what steps the Government are taking to ensure that we are not vulnerable to similar attacks?

[The Minister for Security (Mr Ben Wallace)]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight the fact that counter-terrorism is always ongoing. In 2015, under the strategic defence and security review we committed to updating the CONTEST review, the strategy to deal with counter-terrorism both here and abroad, and I can inform my hon. Friend that that update will be published soon. In addition, the Government have committed to increasing by 30% in real terms funding to counter-terrorism in the lifetime of this Parliament.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Monday 5th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

When one of those websites is reported through Action Fraud, our law and order agencies set about trying to make sure we either dismantle it or signpost people away from such areas. In Scotland that is devolved, and it is up to Police Scotland. The broader picture is to make sure that the public and the consumer are aware of what awaits them online, and that they take some very basic steps to protect themselves when they are, for example, Christmas shopping to ensure that fraudsters do not take their money away.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

17. What steps she is taking to ensure that illegal migrants cannot profit from working in the UK.

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Robert Goodwill)]

In July this year we implemented new powers in the Immigration Act 2016 to prevent migrants from profiting from working illegally, by making that a criminal offence. That ensures that the profits of working illegally can be seized as the proceeds of crime, and assets may be confiscated on conviction.

[Nigel Mills]

I thank the Minister for that answer and ask him to set out to the House what other measures the Government are taking to ensure that those who are here illegally cannot access UK benefits, such as housing or welfare payments.

[Mr Goodwill]

I reassure my hon. Friend that adults with no legal status here are not eligible to receive public funds in that way.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Monday 5th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

13. What steps she is taking to improve the approach of the police to working with people with mental health problems.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

17. What steps she is taking to improve the approach of the police to working with people with mental health problems.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)]

We have taken a number of significant steps in this area: we have launched schemes including street triage, and liaison and diversion; we have reviewed the Mental Health Act 1983; and we have introduced an agreement supported by more than 20 partners nationally to improve the way the police and their partners deal with people with mental health problems. Police cells are now being used less frequently as a place of safety, and I am pleased to say that our work is already having an impact.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs May]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for pointing out the success of the work already being done across the country, including in London, to reduce the number of people with mental health problems who are being held in a police cell as a place of safety. Police cells should only ever be used as a place of safety for somebody with mental health problems in exceptional circumstances. We are encouraging police forces across the country to look at the success of the triage schemes that have already been undertaken and take on board the very good practice which is having a beneficial effect for those with mental health problems and for police resources.

[Nigel Mills]

May I urge the Home Secretary to make it absolutely clear that there is no place at all for children with mental illnesses being in our police cells? I believe she has confirmed that that is the case, but I would be grateful if she would do so again.

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that a police cell should not be a place of safety for a child with mental health problems—we are very clear about that. That is one issue that has emerged from the review we have undertaken, with the Department of Health, of sections 135 and 136 of the Mental Health Act, and I am clear that in future we should not see children being held in a police cell as a place of safety when they have mental health problems.

Immigration (Bulgaria and Romania)

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2013 Westminster Hall

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to start this debate on an important topic of great national interest. I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for providing us with the time to debate this topic before the Christmas recess. I think that most of us here find it a pity that we cannot debate the matter on a substantive motion in the main Chamber, where we could have tested the will of the House with a vote.

[Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)]

Can my hon. Friend explain why that is? It was completely in the power of the Backbench Business Committee to put this debate in the Chamber, rather than the Rag, Tag and Bobtail Adjournment debate happening there at the moment.

[Nigel Mills]

I think I am grateful for that intervention. It is not for me to answer for the Backbench Business Committee; my hon. Friend has more experience of that Committee, so perhaps he can explain later.

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman tabled an amendment to the Immigration Bill, which was last debated on 19 November. Although the Bill has completed Committee stage, there is no date, even in today’s business statement, for when the Bill will be brought back to the House of Commons. Does he regret that his party’s business managers did not give him that opportunity?

[Nigel Mills]

That is the point that I was alluding to. It would have been better to have had this debate during consideration of the amendment to the Immigration Bill on Report, so that we could have dealt with the issue on the Floor of the House before the restrictions were lifted, which, sadly, is likely to happen in less than two weeks’ time. However, I am afraid that House business management is even further above my pay grade than the machinations of the Backbench Business Committee, so it is probably not wise for me to be drawn on that subject.

The right hon. Gentleman takes me to my first theme. The Minister and I—alone, sadly—have debated this topic before, at Committee stage. A month has passed, and a few things have changed. I was the lone signatory to the amendment at that point, but more than 74 MPs have now signed it for Report. A few of the facts have probably changed since then as well; obviously, there was already a petition with more than 150,000 signatories, but since that point, we have learned that despite the Government’s many welcome measures over the course of this Parliament, net migration rose in the last year, which causes concern to those of us who are committed to our manifesto promise to reduce immigration to the tens of thousands. Can that be achieved, especially if large numbers of Romanians and Bulgarians take advantage of the lack of restrictions? The Government have made a series of welcome announcements of policies to tackle immigration. Welfare measures were introduced to Parliament yesterday.

[Mr John Baron (Basildon and Billericay) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate, but I put it to him that perhaps those measures, particularly the changes in benefits, risk being too little too late. They also risk feeding a minority’s views and prejudices about immigrants. My experience is that the vast majority come here to work, and they work hard. They come not because of the benefits, but because the average salary here is so much higher than in their home country. Would it not be a better option to extend the transitional controls and stop people coming in, to give us time to assimilate those already here? Given that whichever route the Government take, they will be challenged, they might as well go for the better option.

[Nigel Mills]

I agree with everything that my hon. Friend says. If he has read the speech I made in Committee, he will have seen that I focused on the argument about the impact on our labour market, which is already and still disrupted by the recession. If he has not read that speech, luckily I can give most of it again, seeing that we are debating much the same topic. I fear that I may have to give the same speech in a few weeks’ time, when we debate the Immigration Bill.

My hon. Friend is right that it is important to get the tone of any debate about immigration right. We are not looking to insult people or make untrue claims; we are looking at what is in our national interest and the public interest. We are still experiencing higher unemployment than we would like; it is higher than before the recession, and even though it has decreased significantly in recent months, it is still the main problem.

That is not to say that the Government are wrong to try to ensure that our welfare system is no more generous than those of other western European nations, and to tackle some of the potential weaknesses, such as the fact that we still have a system based on entitlement, not contribution. A fundamental reform of the system may well be required. I wholeheartedly support the measures announced; perhaps we could have gone further.

I have an interesting question that I hope the Minister will answer later: how many people do the Government think their new measures will catch? How many fewer people do they estimate will come over the next five years than would have come without the measures? I suspect that the number is not very large, but the information would be welcome.

Why are we concerned about the potential level of immigration from Romania and Bulgaria once the restrictions are lifted? We have talked about people coming here to abuse our welfare system, to the extent that that is actually the case, but there are real concerns about the impact on our health service. The fact that we have free health care, which is, of course, very welcome, makes us a little more attractive a destination than many other western European nations where the situation is not quite as simple.

[Mr Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on raising this important issue. The United Kingdom is one of only five European Union member states with a system in which non-contributory unemployment benefits are paid to people looking for work. Surely we cannot have totally unrestricted movement of people within the EU and retain our system of non-contributory unemployment benefits. At the same time, the European Commission is pushing to ensure that all EU nationals have the same rights as British nationals to claim non-contributory payments in this country. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is what is at stake? We must make a choice between the welfare system that the Labour party put in place after the second world war, and the grand project of the European grandees. We cannot have both.

[Nigel Mills]

I agree with what my hon. Friend says. He leads us to a fundamental tension. Can we allow freedom of movement when there are such disparities of wealth between the new nations joining the EU and others, and when the attractiveness of our benefit system means that it is very different from what people experience in their country? There is a tension between the welfare system that we would like and the impact that it has when there is free movement of people, and we must resolve that, one way or another.

It would be far better for the European Court not to produce such ludicrous decisions. Those of us on the Eurosceptic side of the debate probably welcome perverse decisions that further lower the reputation of the EU and the UK, but if I were in the Court’s shoes, I am not sure that I would be quite so creative.

The NHS is attractive to people coming here, and there are also concerns about whether we have enough housing to accommodate large influxes of migrants over the next five years. Those of us who are experiencing great discomfort due to local plans to comply with existing housing targets probably do not fancy adding a few more hundred thousand people throughout the country, and seeing how many more houses we will have to find on our green belt. There are also impacts on other public services, notably schools, in areas where there is high pressure from immigration.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend not agree that 2 million new people in this country over the past 10 years is far too many? We must find out what the Government foresee in future.

[Nigel Mills]

I think there is general agreement that the level of migration over the past decade was clearly higher than the country could cope with. Members of the previous Government are now recognising that they made mistakes, especially relating to the accession of the A8 countries a decade ago. It is worth reminding ourselves that 5,000 to 13,000 people a year were predicted to come from those countries, and more than 1 million actually came. That was a spectacularly bad prediction.

[Andrew Bingham (High Peak) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate, which is hugely important to our constituents, on what is probably one of the prevailing issues that they face. On his point about previous accessions, does he agree that the last Government’s lamentable failure to control immigration has left a long and large shadow of memory across our constituents’ minds? They are fearful that it will all happen again. Some of those fears may be unjust, but the concerns are occupying our constituents’ minds greatly.

[Nigel Mills]

Yes, my hon. Friend is absolutely right. It can be no surprise that the public have great concern about what might happen when new nations have unfettered access to free movement, given that our experience with other eastern European nations gaining such freedom is that so many of their nationals chose to come to this country. I accept that most of them chose to come here to work, but that leaves us with the fundamental question of how to deal with that when unemployment in this country is still far higher than we would like.

[Mr Brooks Newmark (Braintree) (Con)]

I realise that my hon. Friend is trying to make progress, but he makes an important point about the contradiction between people coming from Europe, eastern Europe in particular, because they believe jobs are here, and the perception of people locally that they are taking jobs. The reality is that many local people simply will not take those jobs; that is why they are being filled by eastern Europeans. That is the skills gap at the low end. It is not that there are no jobs; many people locally will simply not take the jobs, because they do not want to work for such pay or in those particular roles. That is the issue.

[Nigel Mills]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. One of the drivers of the Government’s welfare reforms is to encourage people to take work if they are offered it; if they choose not to take work that is available, they do not get the benefits that they would presumably like to keep. For the welfare reforms to work, however, we need jobs to be available, so that people can be gently encouraged to take them, even if they are perhaps not their first choice. If the jobs that exist are taken by those who have just arrived in this country, those necessary and important welfare reforms become much harder to achieve. We must remember that a first job can be the start of the career ladder; it is not necessarily the end of it. Encouraging people to take jobs even if they do not think that they are suited to them, or if the jobs are not quite what they are after, is perfectly appropriate policy.

I shall try to get back to the thread of my argument. Let me set out why I tabled an amendment in Committee to keep in place transitional restrictions—and I am grateful that 73 other MPs have chosen to sign that amendment for Report. Looking at the criteria in the accession treaties that allowed us and other western European nations to keep restrictions until the last possible minute, we were allowed the restrictions, and chose to keep them, because there was still serious disruption in our employment market.

Two years ago, the Government commissioned an independent assessment from the Migration Advisory Committee of whether the test was still being met. The main criteria looked at were levels of employment and unemployment, the claimant count, and vacancies, both in 2011 and pre-recession. The pre-recession level of employment was 72.7%; two years ago, that was down at 70.6%. Unemployment before the recession was 5.1%; two years ago, it was 7.8%. The claimant count was 3% pre-recession and 4.6% two years ago; vacancies had been 621,000, but were down to 469,000. Those figures were the justification for saying, “We need to keep these restrictions for another two years. Our labour market can’t cope with the potential disruption of a large number of people arriving.”

[Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)]

I, too, congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. He has the problem in a nutshell. In my constituency, unemployment is down to 2.4%, but many of those who remain unemployed are harder to place, and we need to do more work with them. The last thing that they need is competition from another wave of immigrants. We also need to look at the argument about what the level of immigration could do to the Romanian and Bulgarian economies. What effect will the departure of their brightest, young and best—the keen people willing to travel across the continent to find work—have on the Romanian and Bulgarian economies? That needs to be taken into account.

[Nigel Mills]

My hon. Friend is right. The idea behind those nations wanting to join the European Union was to grow their economies and to provide better living standards for their people. That must be harder to do if what looks like the best option for their brightest people is to leave for a better wage elsewhere.

I return to the test that was run two years ago. If we were to apply it now, with the excellent unemployment data from the end of November announced this week—we all accept and welcome those figures, which are a great improvement on where we were at the start of this Parliament, or even on the position two years ago, or at the start of the year—employment would be at about 72%, which is still down on where it was before the recession. Unemployment is still 7.4%, which is well up on the 5.1% before the recession; the claimant count is still at 4%, compared with 3%; and vacancies are up to 545,000, which is still down on 621,000. My contention is that if the treaty had allowed us to extend the restrictions for a further period, I can see no reason why we would not have sought to retain them, in the light of that analysis.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend for letting me intervene, and I congratulate him on securing the debate. The real dilemma is that as our economy picks up, so will the attractiveness of coming to this country. That is almost a problem: as we get better, more people will want to come here. Does he agree?

[Nigel Mills]

That is one of those welcome problems, in that we all want our economy to be growing so strongly that we become a much more attractive place—but there are clearly downsides in dealing with the legacies of recession, with unemployment and especially youth unemployment still far higher than we might like. We need to get our own people who are struggling into the jobs that growth generates.

To return to my contention, if the treaty had allowed the restrictions to continue for a further period, I am in little doubt that we would have wanted to extend them, if we could, and that brings us to my next point. We signed that treaty a decade ago, but we had not at that point predicted a catastrophic recession, which would take many years to recover from—we are still trying to recover from it—and we had not appreciated just what the level of immigration from the previous accession wave would be, which was far in excess of our estimates. I suspect that had we known those two things when we were signing the treaty, we would never have agreed to restrictions on those two countries being lifted so soon or at this point in the economic cycle.

The question becomes, does Parliament say, “We have to accept that we approved the treaty”—it was passed by this House—or actually do we have the right to say, “With hindsight, that was a mistake and it is now not in our national interest to continue with what we agreed”? We need to change that. Let us simply keep the restrictions already in place for a further defined period—that is a proportionate response to a clear problem—at least until our economy is fully recovered from the shock experienced in the recession. That is not an unreasonable or disproportionate thing to do.

It is worth noting that I was only trying to keep the restrictions that have been in place since Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU. That would not stop completely people from those two countries finding work here. If able to find work in this country and get a work permit, they have been permitted to work here since they joined the EU—that would not change. So my suggestion of not lifting restrictions that are already in place is proportionate at this point. If the Government are not minded to accept that relatively gentle and proportionate measure, I sincerely hope that they think again in the two weeks left before the new year and try to find some other way of keeping the restrictions.

Some interesting policy ideas have been announced as different ways to tackle the problem. I was quite attracted by the idea that accession countries whose gross domestic product per capita is well below the EU average should not get full access to freedom of movement until their GDP was nearer the EU average—perhaps three quarters of the average. That would tackle the issue raised by my hon. Friend the Member for North West Leicestershire (Andrew Bridgen), because it would mean that the brightest people in those countries could not leave; they would have to stay there and find ways to grow their own economy.

The gross national income per capita in both Bulgaria and Romania is about $16,000, compared with our GNI of $37,000, so those two countries would fail the test, were we to apply it now. That test is attractive, but its prospective introduction would not fix the problem that might well hit us from 1 January. Surely it would therefore be better to keep the restrictions we have in place while we are trying to achieve those reforms.

The second idea, which was leaked this week, was to have a cap on EU migration. Again, that is an attractive idea and one that, I suspect, would contribute greatly to enabling us to meet our target of net migration in the tens of thousands, although there would be some practical issues with enforcing a cap, and I suspect that other EU member states might not be as keen on the idea. But I find it intriguing that although it is seemingly impossible to try, in response to a clear issue in our employment market, to keep in place for a bit longer restrictions that have been allowed until now by the accession treaty, it is thought that a complete and utter unravelling of freedom of movement—even between the main western European nations—might be possible. I am afraid that I am not so optimistic that we could achieve that aim in a renegotiation; but even if it could, it is a measure for a long time in the future, not one that can help us out in the coming years if large amounts of people decide to come here.

Finally, I have some questions for the Minister. I understand that Governments have had their fingers burnt making estimates in the past, but will he set out whether the Government believe that a large number of people from Romanian and Bulgaria will try to come to the UK when the restrictions are lifted? Independent estimates suggest figures of between 30,000 and 70,000 people a year for the next five years, which would put the total at something like 350,000. I do not expect an accurate assessment, but do the Government think that number is way over the top, is an underestimate or is about right? The people of this country want to know whether their fears are unrealistic or entirely realistic.

Given that nearly all western European nations have kept the restrictions in place until the last minute, I would presume that those countries fear that there might be an issue. It is also worth noting that Romania and Bulgaria will not be joining Schengen on 1 January, as they were meant to, again because of concerns across Europe about what that might entail.

[Mr Carswell]

My hon. Friend is looking at public policy responses to this problem and has outlined some important ideas, but surely there is one blindingly obvious policy solution that we need to consider seriously, which is to withdraw this country from the EU completely. Is it not absurd that people need a visa to come to this country from Singapore, a country with an incredibly high number of talented and able people—we would benefit from greater labour mobility for such people—but we have unrestricted movement of people from Bulgaria? If we were outside the EU, like Switzerland, where one in five members of the labour force is a non-Swiss national, we could benefit from all the advantages of labour mobility and have all the necessary requirements to control it.

[Nigel Mills]

My hon. Friend is clearly right. However, sadly, I do not think that we can convince the Government to pull us out of the EU in the next fortnight, and so we probably need to take some different measures in the meantime. He may have noticed that the five-year period I am proposing for keeping the restrictions will take us well past the referendum that we hope will take place on our EU membership. At that point, the people will have been able to choose whether they want to stay in and have unrestricted migration or to leave and reintroduce our border controls. I hope he would agree that a five-year time frame for keeping the restrictions would be one way of helping to meet his aspirations in that situation.

[Mr Andrew Turner]

My hon. Friend said that the Bulgarians and Romanians have not joined the Schengen agreement, although that had been expected. Is that an agreement that they made but have subsequently decided not to stick with, or an agreement that they made with the rest of Europe in which we were not involved?

[Nigel Mills]

As I understand it, Schengen is an agreement between nations rather than a treaty, and, fortunately, one that we are outside as we were thankfully not required to join. Having had a pleasant meeting with the Bulgarian ambassador in a TV studio not that long ago, I know that there is some annoyance among those nations because they feel that they have met the criteria for Schengen but are not being permitted to join it. There were some strong quotes from Mr Barroso on why that was not to be the case; he used language that I would not want to use in a debate in immigration, but there we go.

I am a little over the time that I promised I would take with my remarks, so I will conclude. I do not think that any other measure has been trailed or announced that can tackle this matter in the right time frame. There is widespread concern, as anyone who reads almost any of the newspapers can see. I have already mentioned the Daily Express petition with 150,000 signatures; yesterday we saw a campaign in The Sun and today there is an editorial on the issue in The Daily Telegraph. It is an issue of great concern. The Government need either to give us convincing reassurance that the problem will not arise or to take some action to protect our employment market and protect those people in our constituencies who are struggling to find work. The only realistic answer is to keep proportionate restrictions on Romanians and Bulgarians in place for a further period. I urge the Government to act before those restrictions are lifted on 1 January.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Hanson]

That is perfectly correct. The new clause is trying to unpick treaties that are the responsibility of Government to negotiate. Primary legislation would not impact on that. Even the hon. Member for Amber Valley said in Committee a little later that

“trying to get this country to breach various treaties it has signed is probably not a very sensible way of pursuing our diplomatic mission, so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the clause.”––[Official Report, Immigration Public Bill Committee, 19 November 2013; c. 401-02.]

I say that simply because the issue is important, and we need to address it, but I am not clear that the new clause or having the debate before or after Christmas would change the fundamental position.

[Nigel Mills]

For clarification, does the right hon. Gentleman accept that I was saying that trying to do that in a Committee of a dozen or so MPs was not the right way forward. It was better for the whole House to consider it.

[Mr Hanson]

My contention still stands. Having said that, we have had a calm and rational debate, which is the best way in which to approach the issue—in a calm and measured way. I agree with the approach taken by the hon. Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), at least in the first half of his speech, on some of the benefits that wider immigration can bring to the United Kingdom.

In response to the hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone)—I say this on the record for the House—my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition and my right hon. Friends the Members for Blackburn (Mr Straw) and for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) have said clearly that mistakes were made in 2004 when transitional requests and controls were not put in place. It is a reasonable presumption to say that now. It is something that I am aware of, although at the time I was dealing with other matters in Government, and we have to accept that difficult, challenging and mistaken decisions were made at that time.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Monday 2nd December 2013 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

I think the hon. Gentleman will be aware that ticketing fraud has been looked at by colleagues in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, and Operation Podium was a great success for the Metropolitan police. The economic crime unit in the National Crime Agency is very focused on combating all forms of fraud. Certainly, we will continue to reflect on the need to take firm action on all fraud, wherever it occurs.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

6. What assessment she has made of the expected level of immigration from Romania and Bulgaria between 2014 and 2018.

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

My hon. Friend will know that we consulted the Migration Advisory Committee on that question, and it advised us that making an estimate was not practical because of the number of variables, so we have not done so.

[Nigel Mills]

I am grateful for that answer. Having seen the numbers last week for the increase in migrants from the EU, does the Minister still believe that we can get total net migration down to the tens of thousands in this Parliament without having some restrictions on immigration by Romanians and Bulgarians next year?

[Mr Harper]

If my hon. Friend looked closely at the net migration statistics last week, he will have seen that what was interesting about them was not only the reduction in emigration by European Union nationals, but the fact that the increase in migration from the European Union involved people from not eastern Europe, or Romania and Bulgaria, but some of the southern European states, reflecting the weakness in their economy and the strength of ours.

Romanian and Bulgarian Accession

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Wednesday 27th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

First, I did not acknowledge that the majority of people would be recruited in that way. I accepted that there had been stories about recruitment agencies undertaking that sort of operation, and I indicated clearly that the relevant enforcement body was the EHRC. The Government are taking this issue up with the EHRC.

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

If the accession treaty had allowed the restrictions to continue beyond the end of this year, would it have been the Government’s policy to seek such an extension? If so, would the Home Secretary consider accepting the new clause that I have tabled to the Immigration Bill, which would achieve precisely that?

[Mrs May]

We believe that it is right to look at the way in which transitional controls operate because there should be more flexibility for member states in the exercise of those controls. At the moment, we have only the rather blunt instrument of an extension of a particular number of years. That is why it is important that free movement should form part of the renegotiation process. The Government should look at all options in seeking to deal with this issue.

Rachael and Auden Slack

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

I am grateful for the chance to raise this important, if tragic, issue. I remember it well because the murder of Rachael and Auden Slack took place shortly after the general election, and I mentioned it in my maiden speech nearly three and a half years ago. I am not sure that it is a great commendation for our system that it has taken three and a half years to get to the inquest, and to have the chance to try to learn some of the lessons from the tragic death of three people.

Rachael and Auden Slack were murdered on 2 June 2010 by Rachael’s ex-partner and the father of Auden. The gentleman concerned had been suffering from mental health issues for quite a long time, and there had been various reports about his behaviour to the police, local health services and mental health trust social services. Sadly, however, not enough action was taken, and on 2 June he stabbed his ex-partner and child and took his own life with the same knife. It was a truly awful incident, and probably one of the worst murder situations we can imagine, especially as Rachael was pregnant at the time. We lost three innocent lives because of what seemed to many people to be the failure of various parts of the system to provide the protection, prevention or indeed the health care needed, that could possibly have prevented it from happening.

The reason for the debate tonight is that the inquest finally reported last week. The verdicts for Rachael and Auden were that they were unlawfully killed, and that, in part, their deaths were more than minimally contributed to by a failure to impress upon Rachael that she was at high risk of serious injury or homicide from her ex-partner. A further verdict on Auden’s death was that the police had failed to discuss with Rachael what steps could have been taken to address the risks to him.

The case is one of far too many around the country in which domestic violence incidents are not taken as seriously as we might like, ending with tragic results. This tragedy resulted in the death of two people and an unborn baby. The purpose of the debate is to press the Government on what more we can do to change or improve the system to prevent anything like this from ever happening again.

It is worth recounting some of the facts. As I have said, the police, the mental health trust, the general practitioner and others had been involved in the case. The facts in the week before the tragic incident are as follows. On 26 May, Rachael took her ex-partner to a police station after he refused to get out of her car. He was assessed by the mental health team but released because they believed he was no threat. Questions have been asked about whether those who did that assessment were fully aware of his mental health history, which was known to the same trust.

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for the tone and the manner in which he is conducting the debate. As he knows, Andrew Cairns’s family live in my constituency. They are grieving for Rachael, for Auden, for Rachael’s unborn child and, of course, for Andrew. Mr Cairns’s family have told me of the lengthy battle fought by them and by Rachael to get him the help he needed as his mental health deteriorated over many years. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is essential that we learn the lessons from this tragic case? Four lives could have been saved had we done so earlier.

[Nigel Mills]

I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s kind words. I agree entirely that there seems to have been a long failure to provide Andrew with the care he needed. We cannot be wise after the event. None of us can say that people must have known the incident would happen. However, perhaps they ought to have seen a pattern of escalation of his condition—perhaps it gave off more warning signs than were seen.

On 28 May, in that tragic week, two days after Andrew was arrested and assessed, he phoned Rachael more than 20 times. He went round to see her and forced her to take him and the child out. While they were out at a park, he threatened to kill her and made various threats saying that she did not realise how dangerous he could be. That was reported to the police. Sadly, he was released on police bail with conditions not to approach Rachael, but no further action was taken.

A neighbour reported further threats Andrew had made to take away Auden. There was some concern that the police did not take action following that report. At that point, the police concluded that Rachael was at high risk. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that they told Rachael how high their assessment of the risk was. That is what led to the coroner’s findings.

On the day of the tragic incident, Mr Cairns visited his GP, who reported that Mr Cairns was anxious and agitated. Mr Cairns remarked to the GP that, “The next few days will be the most important of your career.” By the time Mr Cairns left the GP, he had apparently calmed down and was rational, but, clearly, even on the day, he had made a cry for help that sadly was not heeded. I am sure that, if any of the police, the mental health team, the GP or anybody else had thought that the tragedy would happen later that day, they would have taken action to prevent it. The question we need to ask is: what more could have been done to assess the risk properly and see whether there was a realistic risk of such a tragic event? No hon. Member wants anything like this tragedy to happen again.

[Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. Does he agree that it is important that our Derbyshire police, whom we love and trust, have a specialist domestic violence unit that can look into incidents and give professional advice to people who do not necessarily deal with domestic violence day-to-day?

[Nigel Mills]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her intervention and I entirely agree. One of the issues is ensuring that the police have the specialist knowledge and training to be able to handle domestic violence cases. The right answer has to be more specialist police officers, but because there are so many reports of domestic abuse, which police all over the county have to handle urgently, I am not sure that it is possible always to send out a specialist domestic violence officer to each of those incidents. It is perhaps a question of ensuring better training in general for police officers and then making sure that cases that look to be serious receive specialist follow-up as soon as possible to ensure that signs of escalating behaviour or real risk have not been missed by a perhaps less trained person. In general, I agree with my hon. Friend’s suggestion.

The coroner last week suggested that he would make some recommendations to the Home Office, and I am not sure whether the Minister has received those yet. One of those suggestions was for some kind of electronic document that would summarise the important details in the investigation that would be available to all the police officers involved in the case. Outside agencies might also have some input, such as the mental health teams, social services, the local health teams or anyone else deemed relevant. It is key to ensure the full and complete sharing of information between the various teams involved. If everyone who had ever dealt with this case had known the full history of the complaints by Rachael and Mr Cairns’s mental health issues, it might have shown the pattern of escalating behaviour. He might have been viewed as a much higher risk than was initially thought by most of the people involved.

Another suggestion is that perhaps we could strengthen police bail conditions or introduce greater sanctions if they are breached. There is a question about what can be done by court bail and what can be done by the police, but it cannot inspire public confidence if someone is released on police bail with a condition that he cannot approach someone, but very little action appears to be taken if he approaches her soon after being given that bail condition.

A public campaign, supported by 38 Degrees—not an organisation Conservative Members are always fans of—suggests a full public inquiry into how the whole system deals with domestic violence issues. The Independent Police Complaints Commission is carrying out a review, but as various police forces around the country have received strong criticism from the IPCC on how they have handled domestic violence cases in recent years, perhaps we need to go a step further than an IPCC review. A full public inquiry could look at all the agencies involved rather than just focusing on the police, which is not where all the issues lie. Perhaps the Minister could tell me whether the Government are inclined to have a public inquiry on an issue as important as this. The statistics suggest that two or three women a week are killed in domestic violence incidents, and that is an awful situation for a country such as ours still to be in.

It is not for us to reinvestigate this case. Reports are still required from the police and various other agencies, but my purpose today is to raise with the Home Office both the tragedy of this case and the points at which greater action could have been taken to protect Rachael—perhaps to give her greater security, or regrettably to advise her to flee her home to ensure that she was not at immediate risk—or to address Mr Cairns’s health needs, perhaps including sectioning him or giving him more intensive treatment than he was able to get. Is it fair that Rachael was never recorded as Mr Cairns’s carer so she never really got any information or support for the help that she was trying to give her ex-partner for his mental health condition?

Having discussed this with Derbyshire police over the past three years, I am aware that they have reviewed their processes and have tried to make improvements. There are outstanding reports that may require further consideration, but they now have initiatives to work more closely with social services from the same base and to try to improve links with the mental health team. Perhaps the Minister can talk about initiatives he may have seen elsewhere that could be rolled out as best practice around the country. The closer the working relationships, the more immediate the contact and the sharing of information, all of which might make a positive outcome more likely. We all talk about greater partnership working and sharing, but people work in silos and if there are not robust processes and good personal working relationships, trying to bridge three trusts or public bodies with different demands on their time is not always very effective. The question is: how can we improve and create best practice?

It is tempting to think that Parliament could wave a magic wand, pass a new Bill or give new powers to stop this type of incident happening. I am not convinced that we have missed anything. The police have never said to me, “If only we had had this power we could have stopped it.” However, if the Minister has any suggestions about extra powers that the police need or could have used in this case that they were not aware of—I am not saying that that is the case—that would be helpful to the family. There is a feeling among the family, friends and the community that something went horribly wrong—that this was preventable and that somehow the system failed. If there is anything that can come out of an incident as tragic as this, it is that it never happens again.

I again stress my condolences to the family and friends of Rachael and Auden for their tragic loss. I wish that the inquest had reported several months or years earlier. It is a pity that we have had to wait three and a half years before being able to have a public assessment to start to learn the lessons in the public domain. I urge the Minister to do whatever he can to make the inquest system much faster. I struggle to see why we have to put people through three and a half years of waiting before they can get the closure they need. I hope the Minister can provide some assurance that the Government take this issue very seriously—I know they do—and that we can expect further progress to ensure that this kind of thing can never happen again.

[The Minister for Crime Prevention (Norman Baker)]

It is the convention on these occasions to congratulate the hon. Member who secured the debate. I am not sure that “congratulate” is quite the right word in this case, but my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) has been absolutely right to raise this matter. I welcome his contribution and the contributions of other hon. Members.

I want to begin by offering my condolences to the family of Rachael Slack and her son Auden, and commend them for the courage and dignity they have shown at this difficult time. Domestic violence is an abhorrent crime, and one that the Government is committed to tackling with determination. This is a high priority for both me and the Home Secretary.

The circumstances of Rachael and Auden’s deaths are tragic, and were eloquently outlined by my hon. Friend. The sad loss of such individuals is doubly distressing, because it is now clear from the coroner’s findings that their deaths could have been prevented. Such a case deserves our attention and we must ensure that lessons are learned, but we must do more than that: we must ensure that those lessons are acted on. I have noted with concern the findings of the coroner in this case, Richard Hunter, which were released on 22 October. I understand that he will be writing to the Home Secretary in due course. I would like to thank him for his thoroughness and diligence in such a difficult case.

I was concerned to read that police failings “more than minimally” contributed to Rachael and Auden’s deaths. I have the utmost respect for the police and the vital work they do with professionalism and integrity day in, day out. However, it is alarming that in this case officers appear to have assessed Rachael as being in danger and yet failed to pass that message on to her—the one person who really needed to know. The Independent Police Complaints Commission is currently assessing all the evidence in this case following the inquest. It will then make a decision on the next steps. This case follows other reports from the IPCC that have flagged up police failings, such as the cases of Maria Stubbings, Clare Wood and Susan McGoldrick. I would like to reassure Parliament that I take such cases extremely seriously; such failings cannot be allowed to happen again.

Since Rachael and Auden’s deaths in 2010, the Government have supported a series of reforms to the handling of domestic violence by the police. All police forces have measures in place to ensure officers have the knowledge and skills to deal effectively with cases of domestic violence. Specific training on domestic violence and abuse is included in the national police training curriculum. This training was updated this year to take account of the Government’s introduction of a new definition of domestic abuse. The new definition helps to prevent the escalation of abuse, which can end in tragedy, by dispelling the belief that domestic abuse begins and ends with violence. It places coercive control at the centre of determining whether abuse is taking place.

Perhaps most significantly, since April 2011 the Government has placed homicide reviews on a statutory footing. Now every local report into a domestic homicide is reviewed and quality assured by a panel of independent and Home Office experts. A community safety partnership in Derbyshire is among those to have completed a domestic homicide review that has been quality assured by the independent panel. Each review has resulted in a tailored action plan that must be delivered by the area in question to make sure we learn from these individual tragedies. I am also happy to confirm that the Home Office will be issuing a document collating the lessons learned from these reviews into a national action plan.

My hon. Friend asked about specialist teams. Of course, that is a matter for each individual police force to decide, but it is important—indeed essential—that police who attend domestic violence cases have the right training. The Home Office is working closely with the College of Policing to ensure that this occurs. The Home Secretary has also announced a force-wide review by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary into how the police deal with domestic violence.

My hon. Friend also mentioned mental health, as did the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy). The Home Secretary chairs an inter-ministerial group on violence against women and girls, on which I also sit, and I will raise this matter with the Department of Health to ensure we address any gaps in the system, including information sharing and risk assessment. Members are absolutely right to expect this to be joined up across Departments, and joined up locally as well.

[Nigel Mills]

Does the Minister also agree that when assessing domestic violence cases, it is important to bear in mind the risk to the children as well? It is not always just a case of the woman or man; we need to look at the risk faced by the children, but in this case I am not sure that that was done as thoroughly as it ought to have been.

[Norman Baker]

We will see what the coroner writes to the Home Secretary, but my hon. Friend is absolutely right that in any situation of suspected domestic abuse, it is right that children’s services are engaged, if there are children present. Sometimes, if there is domestic abuse of a partner, there can also be domestic abuse against children. It does not always follow, but sometimes it does, and we ought to ensure that it is covered in any assessment.

This Government has ring-fenced nearly £40 million for specialist local domestic and sexual violence support services. Facilities funded with this money include 144 independent domestic violence advisers, who help victims of domestic violence get their voices heard, and 54 multi-agency risk assessment co-ordinators, who protect the interests of those such as Rachael who are most at risk. Up to 60% of abuse victims report no further violence following intervention by independent advisers.

This national funding operates in tandem with local initiatives, and I am sure my hon. Friend will join me in congratulating Derbyshire county council on the support it is now offering, which includes the Derbyshire domestic abuse helpline, to those at risk of domestic abuse. I encourage all local authorities to remember the importance of such initiatives when making difficult decisions about spending and delivering more for less.

But we can, should and will do more nationally to reach out to those caught in cycles of abuse. That is why the Home Office has piloted two new initiatives designed to empower victims and stop domestic abuse in its tracks. This comes to the point my hon. Friend made about what more can be done. The first of these pilots is named after another young victim, Clare Wood, who was tragically murdered by her former partner in Salford in 2009. Known as Clare’s law, the domestic violence disclosure scheme is a system where anyone can seek disclosure of a partner’s violent past. Those with the legal right to know are provided with information that could well save lives, empowering them to make an informed choice about their futures.

Our second pilot scheme creates a new process to protect victims in the immediate aftermath of domestic abuse. Domestic violence protection orders have the power to prevent a perpetrator of domestic abuse from having contact with the victim for up to 28 days. This offers both the victim and the perpetrator the chance to reflect on the incident. In the case of the victim, it provides an opportunity to determine the best course of action to end a cycle of abuse, as well as providing immediate relief and protection. We are currently carrying out an evaluation of both the pilots, and we expect to be able to announce plans for their future soon.

There is no room for complacency, however. It is because of cases such as Rachael’s that the Home Secretary has commissioned HMIC to review police handling of domestic violence and abuse. The inspection is under way and I look forward to receiving the findings, probably in April. We will review the recommendations with care, and ensure that they are acted on as we strive for further improvements in this area.

The crime figures for England and Wales show that the levels of domestic abuse experienced in the past year are lower than they were in 2004-05, and that the conviction rates for violence against women and girls are higher than before, but hon. Members have rightly expressed concern at the reduction in domestic violence referrals to the Crown Prosecution Service by the police at the end of last year. The Home Office has held a round-table with the Director of Public Prosecutions and national policing leads to understand the cause of this downward trend, and the Attorney-General has issued a six-point plan to address this. We will continue to work on delivering against that plan in the coming weeks.

Immigration Bill

Nigel Mills Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in the debate and to welcome the Bill.

Immigration remains among the issues that most concern my constituents; that was the case in the run-up to the last general election, and it is still the issue most raised on the doorstep. Not totally surprisingly, perhaps, my constituency does not experience huge immigration—according to the last statistics I saw, I had two of the five most ethnically English towns in the country—but there remains a fear of immigration. What people see, perhaps in neighbouring towns, causes them concern, perhaps over and above the real extent of the problem. Nevertheless, they are concerned—and they express their concerns regularly—that too many people are coming here illegally and not being sent back home. They are especially worried that serious criminals who complete their prison sentences are not being deported, and they are worried that our public services and housing cannot cope with the population increase.

It is right that the Government address those issues and try to restore confidence in the system; we all want an immigration system that people can have faith in. We want to get this right so that “asylum” can cease to be a dirty word and we can be proud to take people who are in desperate need. I am not sure that most of my constituents think that way now. Rather, they are concerned that the system is being abused and that everyone who arrives here has no reason to be here.

While welcoming most of the Bill, I want to focus on some of its key areas. From my relatively limited immigration casework, I know that this can be a byzantine system that sometimes produces bizarre results. Reading some of the verdicts, I find it hard to work out what the facts of the case are or how the verdict bears much relation to those facts.

[Dr Huppert]

The hon. Gentleman is right to highlight the byzantine complexity and the errors in decision making. Does he agree that the Government’s priority should be to ensure that decisions are made correctly?

[Nigel Mills]

That should be a priority for every Department. I serve on the Work and Pensions Committee. Sadly, the DWP’s administration processes too often come up with the wrong decisions, but the problem is often fixed by a mandatory reconsideration process within the Department.

It would be interesting to hear from the Minister how the review process would work. I think it is the right idea, however, because we do not want to be troubling the courts and tribunals with mistakes in the system. If they can be corrected within the Department, that must be a more cost-effective, fairer and quicker system for all involved. We need to know that the person doing the reconsideration is independent, and not just defaulting to the previous decision—because he knows the guy who took it and so it must have been right. We all want a system that gives clear, quick, fair and accurate decisions first time around, avoiding a labyrinthine process that subjects people to an awful wait while trying to establish their status, which makes them miserable and gets them stuck in the system for longer than necessary.

That is a genuine concern for my constituents: why is the system still so slow? Let us get it right first time. If the person has no right to be here, let them be told that so that we do not have to go through multiple different appeals down different routes. The proposal that those with no right to be here no longer need a separate removal notice has to be right.

I also agree about article 8. We need to get the balance right between the interests of the public in this country and the interests of the person making the claim. I am not sure our courts have been interpreting that correctly. We have a right to be protected from serious criminals. I speak as someone who generally favours deregulation and does not favour imposing new burdens on people, so it is with some caution that I welcome the proposals to ask landlords to start checking the immigration status of their prospective tenants. I have an interest, as I rent out a house in Nottingham where I used to live. I use an agent, so I am pretty certain I will be safe from these rules as long as the agent is competent.

There is a real public interest in trying to make sure that it is harder for illegal immigrants to avoid the system and stay here without a right to do so. One of the ways we can do that is to ask landlords to make sure that the person they are renting out to has a right to be here. In my constituency, most letting agents go through some hugely extensive and complicated processes, and take a lot of money off tenants, to check their credit history, references from previous landlords and all manner of things. I am not sure that it is that much of an extra burden to ask them to check a person’s status as well. Clearly there are some whose position is so complicated that it will not be easy for a landlord or agent to come to a clear understanding. That is why we need a service from the Home Office that gives a clear and quick answer and says, “Yes, you can rent to this person. No, you can’t rent to that person.”

Having worked with clearance mechanisms in my previous life, I know that getting that to be quick and accurate will not be straightforward, but it has to be the right thing to do. We need a system that is clear enough so that not every landlord seeks a clearance every time to be 100 per cent. safe. We need a clearance system that works and is used only where there is some doubt and not where there is clearly an easy situation to determine.

Most of us would think that it is ridiculous that someone who has no right to be here can get a UK driving licence or a UK bank account. That should never have been the case and it is right to stop that so that someone cannot build up a life here that they are not entitled to have, because that can make it harder for us to deport them.

I have no need to detain the House at great length. I welcome the Bill, which represents a real step forward. I am sure my constituents will welcome it, although there are things that sadly we cannot do which they would have liked to see in it. There is a great deal of concern about what will happen next year when restrictions on Romania and Bulgaria are lifted. We need to understand what can be done to make sure we do not repeat the mistakes of the past. But this is a welcome Bill, and I look forward to it having a speedy passage through Parliament.