Immigration Bill
Pete Wishart Excerpts(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Mrs May
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving me the opportunity to clarify this issue. We will retain that ability, in certain emergency circumstances, to reduce that period for people with an urgent need to marry. It could be in the circumstances he highlights or, for example, where someone is on their deathbed. That is another emergency circumstance we want to cover.
It is important that we can deal fully and properly with sham marriages, and I believe that the Bill will enhance our ability to do that.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
The right hon. Lady will know that marriages and civil partnerships are covered by Scots law and are matters for the Scottish Government. Why, therefore, is there not a legislative consent motion for this or any other part of the Bill? Surely, there should be an LCM in the Scottish Parliament so that these things can be discussed and passed properly.
Mrs May
If the hon. Gentleman will have a little patience—I know he might find it difficult—I will explain how the Bill will enable us to discuss such matters with the Scottish Government.
The basic design of the scheme is straightforward, but the statutory framework into which it has to be introduced is complex—marriage law in England and Wales dates back to 1949—which is why we are bringing forward further technical changes. The changes need to be reflected in the law governing civil partnership, thereby doubling the number of amendments that are required. I have said before on a number of occasions that I think it is preferable for the Government not to table too many amendments at this stage, but these are minor and technical. I hope that people will appreciate the importance, when dealing with a part of the law that is so complex, of ensuring that we are able to make amendments to ensure we get it right and that the operation of the law is appropriate.
Pete Wishart
I am very grateful to the Home Secretary for giving way. Is it not the case that she has not got a clue? She has brought forward the measure to prevent proceedings on what Conservative Members want to discuss and vote on. To say that this was concocted on the back of a fag packet would do a massive disservice to fag-packet speeches.
Mrs May
It is a bit rich of the Scottish National party to talk about not having a clue. I must say to the hon. Gentleman—I have said it before and I will say it again as many times as necessary—that we are giving effect to our declaration under the United Nations convention. That position applied in the United Kingdom until the previous Government changed the law in 2006, and we will return to that position.
Michael Ellis
Despite the protestations and mock indignation of Labour Members—
Michael Ellis
And of course of the Scottish nationalists, who are adopting their usual posture. Is it not correct that this law was effectively on the statute book previously, so it cannot be all that exceptionable and that it was repealed by the Labour party because, in 1997, it wanted to sign us up to another European convention?
Pete Wishart
Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was not expecting that, but I am delighted to be called so early in the debate.
This is a rotten Bill made all the more rotten by some of these appalling amendments. We are in this position because the Government are in an appalling race to the bottom with the UK Independence party—this is all about seeing who can be toughest on immigration. I have to say to the Home Secretary, “You’re not gonnae win that one—forget about it. You cannot out-UKIP UKIP. They are the masters of nasty, pernicious populism, and you’ll never beat them.” It is a credit to the Government that they will not be able to beat UKIP on such issues but, by God, with this Bill and their amendments, they are having a good stab at it. I expect the right hon. Lady to lose that particular battle.
The Government’s stated aim through the Bill is to make the UK a more hostile environment for illegal immigrants. Well done Home Secretary; you have certainly achieved that with fantastic aplomb. The job of these right-wing immigration Bills is to do two simple, straightforward things: stop people coming in; and kick out as many people we do not like as we can at the same time. The Bill manages to achieve both those objectives, and the addition of the Government’s amendments and new clauses means that it will be done even more thoroughly.
Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)
Is the hon. Gentleman happy about how long it can take to remove someone who has broken the law and is not legally entitled to be here, despite the risk of their committing further crime in this country?
Pete Wishart
I will address that point directly because it is at the heart of what we are debating and something that my hon. Friend the Member for Banff and Buchan (Dr Whiteford) mentioned. I am happy to ensure that people who have been found guilty of crime after going through the core judicial process are deported, but I am very unhappy about suspects being deported and facing the full force of the law. This is part of a trend. It was a theme of new Labour that a person needed to be only a suspect for things to be flung at them. Labour created a fantastic anti-civil libertarian state that the Conservatives, to their credit, dismantled quite effectively, but we will now have an anti-civil libertarian state—created by new Labour and continued by the Conservatives—that has the basic premise that it is all right to throw suspects out of this country and to treat them appallingly.
Jeremy Corbyn
Is the hon. Gentleman aware that if someone is deported but allowed to conduct an appeal in this country, it is almost impossible for them to do that? A deportation therefore effectively involves no real right of appeal nor any real access to justice, so it is a pernicious decision.
Pete Wishart
The hon. Gentleman is spot on, and he gets to the heart of what we are debating. What is happening in this country—the fact that we are prepared to legislate in such a way—makes me feel ashamed. It is appalling that my country of Scotland is being dragged into this nasty, pernicious, appalling race to the bottom on immigration. It is such a shame that we are not independent yet to allow us to get out of this absolute nonsense.
Mr Brian H. Donohoe (Central Ayrshire) (Lab)
Surely it is within the scope of the hon. Gentleman’s Parliament and Executive in Scotland to change the law and make the situation in Scotland narrower.
Pete Wishart
I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s intervention because it takes me on to new clause 11, which the Home Secretary tabled at the last possible moment. The new clause deals with sham marriage and civil partnership, which is a responsibility of the Scottish Government and a competence of the devolved Parliament in Edinburgh. As you well know, Madam Deputy Speaker, marriage is subject to Scots law. The hon. Gentleman has been in the House longer than me, so we have both been here through the devolution experience, and I think this is the first time that we have seen a Bill that impacts on matters for which we have legislative responsibility without having a legislative consent motion to allow the House to legislate on behalf of the Scottish Parliament.
As far as I am aware, the Scottish Government have called again and again for an LCM so that the Scottish Parliament can decide whether to allow this Parliament to legislate on its behalf. No LCM has been forthcoming at all, even though we are responsible—
Pete Wishart
The Minister indicates that an LCM is not necessary, but does he agree that we are responsible for marriage and civil partnerships? We are responsible for the health service and housing in Scotland, but there has been no LCM to ask the Scottish Government if they agree to allow Westminster to legislate. We are totally unsatisfied with the Minister’s responses on this—
Pete Wishart
We should have an LCM, but the Minister can explain why we are not getting one.
Mr Harper
With the greatest respect, I have had conversations with the First Minister and engaged in correspondence with Scottish Ministers. Our clear view is that the Bill deals with reserved matters for a reserved purpose, so we do not believe that an LCM is needed. The tone of the responses that I have received from Scottish Ministers—Scottish National party members of the Scottish Government—does not accord with what the hon. Gentleman says.
Pete Wishart
That is not my view of the correspondence that I have seen. I am surprised that the Minister says such a thing because the Bill is foreign to how we want to run our NHS. It has nothing to do with how we want to deliver our devolved services. We are not privatising the NHS like they are down here; we want to invest in it and ensure that it sticks to the ’45 principles of “from cradle to grave”. We fundamentally disagree with the Government about the need for such measures, and we want an LCM so that we can say clearly to them, “Stay out of our devolved services. Keep your race with UKIP out of our delivery of the NHS and other devolved services.” I still hope, although it is probably too late, that we will have an LCM.
A number of the measures in the group are pretty chilling, one of which is new clause 18, on which the Home Secretary spent such a good part of her hour and a half speech. What an appalling measure. This is about removing citizenship from people. Watching the Home Secretary’s attempts to respond to the many searching “what happens if” questions would almost have been comical were it not so sad. She could not start to answer the simple question—some of my hon. colleagues on this side of the House might want to revisit this during the winding-up speeches—of what happens to someone who is stripped of their UK citizenship but is not taken by any other country. I think I heard something along the lines of, “We might give them their citizenship back,” but if that is the case, what is the point of doing it in the first place? Who is going to take these people? Are we going to launch them into orbit and leave them circling round the Earth as stateless people without any sort of citizenship? Is France going to take them, or Germany? [Interruption.] What about an independent Scotland, I am asked. Where will those people go? This is the big question that the Home Secretary has been unable to answer: what will happen to those people once they have been deprived of their citizenship? What will happen to their children, or the people who depend on them? We really need to hear from her on that.
The Home Secretary is effectively asking us to agree to allow her to rip up the passports of people who live in this country. As I have said, these measures have been introduced so late in order to prevent Back Benchers from having the opportunity to speak about the most important parts of the Bill and so that they cannot be voted on, which is absolutely appalling. In fact, to say that the Government’s amendments look like they had been written on the back of a fag packet is to do a disservice to some fantastic speeches that I have heard delivered from the back of a fag packet. Little thought seems to have gone into them.
The plans for the revocation of citizenship have been made by the Home Secretary behind closed doors and without any sort of due process or transparency. Hon. Members might have seen the reports in The Independent today about how some people have subsequently been killed in US drone strikes or rendered to secret locations to be interrogated by the FBI. Perhaps that is what will happen to all these people. They are being betrayed by their own Government, whose duty is to protect them, not throw them under a bus in order to help powerful allies, which looks like what we will be doing. She said that we are simply returning to the situation that existed before 2003, but the UK has signed and ratified the 1961 convention on the reduction of statelessness, to which more than 50 states are signatories. We will now be breaking that.
I will speak briefly about new clause 15, tabled by the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab). We know, as has been said again and again, that Conservative Members do not much care for article 8 of the European convention on human rights. They would have us believe that there are all sorts of foreign criminals marauding across our communities, living the life of Riley on benefits and then going home to phone their expensive lawyers, saying, “Get me off on article 8.” That is the type of image they present. They continue to attack some of the great protections that we have secured over many decades on the back of the European convention on human rights. We are now seeing yet another attack on our human rights. It is no surprise that it comes from the Conservative Back Benches. I very much hope that we will resist it.
Charlie Elphicke
On a point of clarification, and in relation to the new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab), if Scotland were to become independent, does the hon. Gentleman believe that it would not only petition to join the European Union as a new accession state, but seek to join the Council of Europe?
Pete Wishart
Yes, and I will tell the hon. Gentleman something else: an independent Scotland will sign up fully to the European convention on human rights and take our responsibility in that regard very seriously. We will not be cavalier, as this Government seem to be in their approach to some of these very important human rights. I look forward to the day when Scotland, as an independent nation, will take very seriously its responsibilities to protect our citizens and ensure that they are properly protected by international laws and regulations.
Jacob Rees-Mogg
I do not understand why the hon. Gentleman does not have the courage to claim that Scotland would be the successor state and would therefore inherit membership of all those bodies, leaving England, Wales and Northern Ireland free from the European Union?
Pete Wishart
I invite the hon. Gentleman, who I know takes a great interest in these matters—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)
Order. I am going to give the hon. Gentleman the protection of the Chair on that question, which he does not have to answer, because we are beginning to stray a little—not far—from the point in question.
Pete Wishart
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, although I do not need your protection when it comes to these issues. All I will say to the hon. Gentleman is that he should turn up to next week’s debate on Scotland’s place in the United Kingdom so that can discuss them further.
I will bring my remarks to a close. What we are seeing today is a dreadful Bill being made even worse. We will vote against it on Third Reading, although I do not think that we will get much of a debate on Third Reading. It is a terrible Bill, and this has been an awful process. It makes me ashamed that we are still part of all this. I just long for the day when we will have a Government in Scotland who do not spend all this time exercising themselves, as this Government do, over immigration, EU exit and all the nasty and pernicious things they are doing because of UKIP. It might as well be Nigel Farage standing at the Dispatch Box. Why do we not just get him in, because he has the whole House dancing to a UKIP jig? That is what we will see right up to the end of this Parliament: Nigel Farage pulling all the strings of Conservative Front Benchers. They might as well have him at the Dispatch Box, because this is nothing other than a UKIP Bill.
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
I, too, thank those who sat on the Committee and all those who have contributed throughout the Bill’s passage. I thank Opposition Members who have been involved, including my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) and especially my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), who has worked tirelessly in responding to the Government’s proposals at the various stages.
The Immigration Bill has been a complete car crash for the Home Secretary. She and the Prime Minister launched it as their flagship Bill. It was the pride and joy of their legislative programme, and yet they have been hiding it away for months. It has been nowhere to be seen. They would not bring it back because they were so scared of their own Back Benchers.
Yvette Cooper
I am going to make some progress, because time is very tight.
The Home Secretary has become terrified of her own legislation. Even though Parliament has had hardly any business, she has kept the Bill away from the House and has then tried to rush it through in four hours today. We have had just four hours to debate a series of important amendments. On our proposals to tackle the impact of immigration on jobs and growth, and to take stronger action on the minimum wage and agencies that exploit immigration, there has been no debate today. On the proposals of Tory Back Benchers on Bulgaria and Romania, there has been no debate today. On the workability of the housing proposals, there has been no debate today. On the fairness of the appeal proposals, there has been no debate today. A series of amendments has been tabled by Members from all parts of the House, but none of them has been debated today.
What have we had instead? The Home Secretary pulled out of her hat, at the last minute, a new power on citizenship, with no consultation and no scrutiny, in a desperate attempt to distract her own party, but it failed. She then stood up for an hour and a half—I have to admire her resilience—to kill time, without even knowing what her position was on the key new clause, which was tabled by the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab).
Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures
Pete Wishart Excerpts(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Yvette Cooper
The concern for us is that the weakening of the terror powers has led to additional costs. We simply do not know what additional costs there might be now as a result of ending control orders for up to six people this month.
The Prime Minister told the House earlier this month that TPIMs “are working”, but the verdict on TPIMs, two years on, is very different. According to the independent reviewer, there have been no successful prosecutions, despite all the Home Secretary’s promises. The removal of relocation powers has badly backfired. No one relocated as part of their control order ever absconded, yet the Home Secretary removed relocation powers and lost two out of 10 suspects in 12 months. Ibrahim Magag ran off in a black cab; Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed ran off in a burqa. They have not been seen since, and the Home Secretary and Prime Minister have no idea where they are. The Prime Minister calls this a successful policy, yet 20% of the terror suspects on TPIMs have disappeared within a year.
We want to concentrate on the six men expected to be released from TPIMs this month. The House warned the Home Secretary of the risks that she was taking by restricting TPIMs to two years regardless of the security assessment unless fresh terrorist activity had occurred. Here is what Mr Justice Collins said about her legislation:
“if a TPIM has achieved its purpose and the Home Secretary has no reason to believe that any terrorist related activity has occurred, there will be no power to impose a fresh TPIM whether or not…the Secretary of State has reason to believe the subject will involve himself in terrorist related activity.”
In other words, if the TPIM works to prevent terrorist activity, there is no possibility of the Home Secretary extending it, even if she has good reason to believe that that terror suspect remains a serious risk and will return to terrorist activity straight away.
If that is the case, Parliament needs to know the extent of the risk that these men pose now, and the Home Secretary needs to give us this simple piece of information: does she believe that these six men are still likely to pursue terror-related activity: yes or no? The courts said they were likely to do that 12 months ago. Does she believe they are now? Are these men still a risk: yes or no? She cannot claim that she does not comment on individual cases, because she has already done so. Public statements have been made about these men and the risks they pose.
Let us take the person known as CD—one of the men whose TPIM expires this month. The Security Service said he was trying to procure firearms for a terrorist attack in the UK. Just over a year ago, the judge agreed he was too dangerous to remove the TPIM controls. The judge said at that point that
“the evidence that CD has been involved in terrorist activity is overall stronger now than it was”.
He also said that the
“control order and now TPIM are having something of their intended effect, but that is very different from saying that the TPIM should be ended…there remains a network, his views and determination are unchanged, he has training”.
What has changed since then? Have CD’s views and determination changed? Has his network changed? Or is there still a significant risk that he will try to get firearms or other weapons again to pursue a UK attack? The Security Service and the judge told us a year ago that this man was a serious risk; now the Home Secretary is removing all his restrictions. We have a right to know whether she still thinks he is a risk or whether that risk has gone. I will give way to the Home Secretary if she will tell us now whether CD is still a risk. [Interruption.] The Home Secretary has chosen not to intervene to answer the specific question about whether CD remains a risk.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
Is the right hon. Lady really telling us that she is going to take us back to the bad old days of Labour’s anti-civil-libertarian state, with its control orders, ID cards, national database and 90-day detention? Is that where new Labour is going to take us once again?
Yvette Cooper
The hon. Gentleman, too, should want this information and these answers from the Home Secretary. Whatever his views about the legislation, he ought to want answers from the Home Secretary about whether CD still presents a risk. Our view is that it is right to have exceptional legislation, but that strong safeguards should also be in place. Sometimes there is a need for clear powers, but clear safeguards must also be in place. There should be provision to review TPIMs or control orders to make sure that they are used only where it is proportionate and justified. However, the Home Secretary should provide answers about whether she is needlessly putting people at risk as a result of the decisions she has taken.
Mrs May
As my hon. Friends are saying from a sedentary position, there is a basic difference between the individuals: one set of individuals has been prosecuted, convicted and put in prison. The suggestion that somebody who has at some stage been involved in terrorism activity is never allowed to be released on to the streets is not correct, yet that is the impression that the Opposition sometimes give. In their comments on control orders, they fail to concentrate on the fact that 43 people who were on control orders came off their restrictions. That may have been because the orders were allowed to expire or they were revoked or quashed by the courts, or people may have absconded. As I have said, even before TPIMs were introduced, the courts would simply not allow people to be parked permanently on control orders. When the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police was asked whether he had concerns about time limits, he said, “I do not think so.”
Pete Wishart
It has come to something when the Tories are having to lecture Labour on civil liberties. Why does the right hon. Lady not just test the evidence? Why does she not make sure that those who are on TPIM orders are taken to the courts so that the courts can decide? Surely that is what we do in a democratic society.
Mrs May
We take individuals to court where it is possible and where there is evidence on individuals to prosecute them for crimes under the Terrorism Acts. The court is then able to make those decisions. The issue is what does society do with the individuals we are not able to deport or to prosecute. The Government took the decision at an early stage that we introduce TPIMs and give them a two-year time limit. That matter was debated and discussed in this House.
UN Syrian Refugees Programme
Pete Wishart Excerpts(11 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Harper
I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for drawing attention to the work of that excellent organisation in her constituency. We are working with various organisations, including partner organisations, but the Secretary of State for International Development is present and will have heard the details about this charity. I am sure that she will discuss with my right hon. Friend whether we can do more to support its work in helping people in the region.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
Like most people in Scotland, I am appalled that this Government, unlike Governments in other small European nations, will not take refugee children. I know that they are terrified of UKIP, but even Nigel Farage recognises that there is a difference between a refugee and an immigrant. Why can the Minister not recognise that as well?
Mr Harper
The hon. Gentleman seems to be obsessed in a way that we are not. [Laughter.] I have made very clear what our policy is when it comes to assisting the largest possible number of people in the region, and I think that that is the right approach. It enables us to help hundreds of thousands of people by providing water, medical resources and food. We are supporting the neighbouring countries and helping them to do the right thing, and I think that we can be very proud of that support.
Oral Answers to Questions
Pete Wishart Excerpts(12 years ago)
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Mrs Grant
I am very fond of my own local pub, the Unicorn in Marden, and I do step in there now and again. I reassure my hon. Friend that we are doing a great deal to assist the business sector, and that includes helping pubs by reducing fuel and beer duties. We are also trying to simplify planning, and are continuing to cut red tape, regulation and bureaucracy.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
The Minister will, of course, have noticed that Scotland has been named the third best place to visit in 2014 by the “Lonely Planet” travel guide. The guide cites a
“jam-packed schedule of world class events”,
including the Ryder cup and the Commonwealth games, as well as our
“buzzing cities and stunning scenery”,
much of which is in my constituency. It also notes that the referendum gives Scotland an opportunity to
“shine on the world stage”.
Does the Minister agree that, without even a vote being cast, Scotland has already won?
Mrs Grant
Scotland is a wonderful place in which to live and work, and I am sure that it will put on an absolutely fantastic Commonwealth games event next year. I look forward to my next trip up there. I grew up in the borders and spent many a time in Dumfriesshire and Gretna Green, so I know what a beautiful place it is.
Eurojust and the European Public Prosecutor’s Office
Pete Wishart Excerpts(12 years ago)
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James Brokenshire
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for the support he offers for the Government position. We have clearly set out genuine and real issues in relation to both these measures challenging some of the fundamental principles and aspects of our criminal justice system.
We also have concerns about the risks of reducing member states’ influence under the proposal’s revised governance arrangements. For example, the Commission has proposed the creation of an executive board with a very narrow composition, including the Commission itself, that would, among other things,
“prepare the decisions to be adopted by the College”—
the college being the body on which all member state national members of Eurojust sit. Moreover, the Commission has not proposed the creation of a management board along the lines of that which oversees Europol, which we think is better suited to effective governance of such agencies. In short, the proposal’s governance arrangements are unsound.
Fundamentally, we do not consider that the new Eurojust proposal is even needed at this time. The current legislation is still undergoing a peer evaluation which will not complete until next year, and the Commission has not put forward a convincing case as to why the new proposal is needed. There is not even a specific impact assessment from the Commission for its Eurojust proposal.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
The Minister mentioned the Lord Advocate of Scotland. What discussions has the Minister had with the Scottish Government and other devolved Administrations? What did they say to him about the Eurojust proposals?
Oral Answers to Questions
Pete Wishart Excerpts(12 years ago)
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Mr Harper
We welcome international students as long as they study at a genuine university or other genuine institution. We have dealt with abuse, which we inherited from the Opposition, but we welcome students and the best of them are welcome to stay here to create businesses, wealth and jobs.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
The Minister knows that almost the entire Scottish higher education establishment despise the immigration reforms, which do nothing but make Scotland a less attractive place to come. This is not working for us and we do not have the issues of the rest of the United Kingdom. Can we now make our own course, so that we can make Scotland an attractive and welcoming place for international students?
Mr Harper
If the hon. Gentleman looks at the facts, he will see that there is an increase in the number of international students going to the excellent universities in Scotland. Scotland is attractive to international students, as is the rest of the United Kingdom. I see no evidence that our immigration reforms are turning students away.
Immigration Bill
Pete Wishart Excerpts(12 years ago)
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Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend makes an important point, and the Home Secretary should confirm that she will never pursue such divisive gimmicks again. That is beneath her and ought to be beneath the Government.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
The policy was disgusting and embarrassing. What a dreadful episode it was, and let us hope it never happens again. On apologies, however, will the right hon. Lady apologise for the intervention by the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) in the summer? He had a go at Tesco and Next, but he got the place of Tesco’s base wrong. Will the right hon. Lady apologise to Tesco and Next for that “British jobs for British workers” nonsense revived by the hon. Member for Rhondda?
Yvette Cooper
The labour market is an important issue, and it is particularly important to ensure that employers are not exploiting low-skilled migration. I will come to that issue in a moment, but let me finish the point about illegal immigration.
Instead of gimmicks, we need practical measures to help tackle illegal immigration. Why not improve enforcement? Why not reinstate fingerprinting for stowaways at Calais, as we have been urging the Home Secretary to do for two and a half years? Why not tighten up checks in the first place? Student visitor visas have now become too easy a route through which people come to Britain to work illegally. They do not even have to provide proper paperwork to show they have a place on a course. Numbers are up 70% since the election. Surely that should ring alarm bells for Ministers. The Labour party will table amendments to have proper checks on student visitor visas, stronger inspections and enforcement, and stronger action against employers who take on and exploit illegal migrants. If the Home Secretary is serious about tackling illegal immigration, I hope she will back our amendments and plans.
Mr Jackson
No, I am not saying that, but if the hon. Gentleman is attacking the Government side for being racist, as he did in his Westminster Hall debate, I say that chauvinism and nationalism are bad and that he should be mindful—
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
I wish I could say it is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson), but I cannot. The only thing I will say is that when it comes to a world view and political values, he and I are probably on the opposite sides of the spectrum. His intemperate remarks about Scottish independence do him no credit whatsoever. He wants to pull up the drawbridge and leave the European Union and other institutions, whereas we want to join the world and we welcome the fact that the world will welcome Scotland as an independent nation.
The Government’s stated aim with this Bill is to make the UK a more “hostile environment” for illegal immigrants. I give the Minister 10 out of 10 and say to him, “Well done and pat yourself on the back,” because the Government have most certainly achieved that with this Bill. They have just made the UK an even more intolerant place for the rest of us to live in.
This Government have also achieved something I never thought I would see in the 12 years I have been a Member of Parliament: an Immigration Bill that is even nastier and more pernicious than all those that have gone before. All these right-wing immigration Bills have to achieve is two simple things: kick as many people as possible out of the country and prevent as many people as possible from getting in in the first place. That is what every single immigration Bill we have had from right-wing Governments, whether they be Blairite or Conservative, has done: kick out as many people as possible and prevent as many people as possible from coming in.
Sometimes Governments have to be inventive. This Bill relies on some of the traditional routes, such as making appeals harder, enforcement more difficult and life more miserable for people living in this country who should not be here. However, it is also inventive, because it covers social services and health and tells landlords to become immigration officers. This Bill will turn race relations into a nightmare, bringing suspicion based on ethnicity into our social services and the housing market.
Like most right-wing parties, the Tories’ pre-conceived idea about immigration is that it is a bad thing that has to be dealt with and managed. To them it is a burden. Right-wing Conservatives such as those in this Government want to get the numbers down. That has been the case throughout history. Conservatives would probably have tried to stop the Normans and the Vikings coming here on their boats in the 9th and 10th centuries. Theirs is a world view of barriers and of preventing people from coming here.
We live in a globalised, interconnected world in which the transfer and movement of people have never been greater. We are standing in London, for goodness’ sake! This is one of the greatest cities, if not the greatest city, in the world. One third of the people who live and work in London come from outwith the United Kingdom. It is they who built this magnificent city.
We should listen to what the Mayor of London has to say about these issues. He wrote a fantastic article in The Daily Telegraph the other day—I wish the Conservatives would read it—under the headline, “It’s mad to blame our housing crisis on ‘blooming foreigners’”. I would not put it that way, but the Mayor of London is spot on. He recognises the value of and contribution made by high-end and low-end migrants to London. I recommend that my many Conservative friends in the House take a look at what the London Mayor has to say about this issue, because they will get some sense from him, unlike the hon. Member for Peterborough.
Yes, this country has changed. My country, Scotland, is changing, too. We do not vote Conservative. We approach these issues differently. Debates such as this show that we are pulling apart politically. We would not have such a debate in Scotland; we would not discuss such themes. We are drifting apart as a political culture.
This place is living in the early days of UKIP UK. That is where we are in this country. It started a little while ago, but it really came through with UKIP’s success in the local elections. That changed everything. We now live in UKIP UK. The party does not have one member in this House, but it is pulling all the Conservative party’s strings and dominating political debate. Everything is predicated on UKIP and Nigel Farage.
UKIP’s victory was closely followed by the hate vans and the ridiculous texts trying to get people to go home. I secured a debate on the hate vans last week. Perhaps I should get a bit of credit for getting rid of the appalling things. It took ages for the Minister to respond to me about them, but a week after the debate, we have got rid of the hate vans. That is a result.
Even this Conservative Government realise how ridiculous it was to drag a billboard around the streets of London, ranting at people to go home, with a telephone number and a text number. That is what they were reduced to. It could not get more ridiculous. What would have been next? The Minister was one of the few people in the Home Office who was prepared to defend the hate vans. He was in the studios all last week saying that, with a bit of refinement around the edges, they might be okay. He was prepared to put son-of-hate-vans on the streets. Thank goodness that has been ruled out by the Home Secretary. Let us be sure that it does not happen.
Are the Opposition opposing the Bill? I do not know. They do not like aspects of it, but they are compromised. If they are to win the next election, they have to win votes in the south. That brings us back to UKIP UK. They are aware that immigration is a hot issue in seats that they have to win, so they are having to be very careful about what they say. The Conservatives are right to point the finger at them because they are not doing a thing, but they should not let the Conservatives bully them. The Conservatives are saying that the seven to nine years of high immigration when Labour was in government were a waste. One of the best things that Labour did was to get people into this country. It built cities such as London and rejuvenated cities such as Manchester and Leeds. Labour Members should not let the Conservatives bully them into thinking that they did the wrong thing on immigration.
Pamela Nash (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)
I would appreciate some clarity on the SNP’s position. I presume that the UK Government will need help from the Scottish Government on the landlord checks and on the NHS proposals, as those areas are largely devolved. What is the SNP line on that?
Pete Wishart
I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for reminding me to talk about Scotland. There are proposals that relate to devolved services that we are in control of. We do not like them—we do not like them at all. We are in charge of the health service in Scotland. We would need to be convinced that these measures were in the best interests of Scotland before we would go through with them. Scotland is a different country. The hon. Lady knows that, and I think she would agree that we would not do these things.
Dr Huppert
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his debate last week. I agree with him on that issue. I also share his concerns about landlords. Is he as pleased as I am that there will be only one pilot in one location and that the policy will not be rolled out without a vote? Does he take some comfort from that, even though he might not be totally reassured?
Pete Wishart
I take a little comfort from that, but not a great deal. I do not know what the hon. Gentleman is thinking, but I am sure that he will not vote for this nonsense tonight. I know what he has said. I can see all the Liberals sitting there thinking, “Uh-uh! This is not a liberal Bill.” It is one of the most illiberal Bills that we have seen from this Government. It will be an absolute disgrace if even one Liberal goes through the Aye Lobby tonight. When I sat on the Opposition Benches with them, I heard them rant against new Labour immigration Bills. This Bill is 10 times worse than anything new Labour concocted.
Scotland has had the “go home” project. The UK Border Agency office in Glasgow was telling people to go home before they had even sat down. Now that we have got rid of the appalling hate vans, I want the Minister to guarantee that we will not have “go home” messages at UKBA offices. We do not want that in Scotland. We do not have UKIP in Scotland. Nigel Farage had to get a police escort out of Edinburgh. We hate UKIP to the bottom of our ballot boxes. It has not secured one deposit in Scotland. We do not want to take part in the appalling race to the bottom that the Conservatives are engaged in with UKIP—a race to the bottom that they can never win. They will never out-UKIP UKIP. It is the master of right-wing gimmickry. If the Conservatives enter a race with UKIP, they will only get beaten. I think that the Minister knows that.
This matter is important for Scotland. The hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Pamela Nash) is right about that. We have our own demographic issues and population requirements. I will tell Members the difference between Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom. When the Scottish Government received the latest population figures, they put out a press release welcoming the rise in the Scottish population. Could you ever, Madam Deputy Speaker, imagine a UK Government welcoming a rise in population? That is what distinguishes us as a Government from them—we welcome the contribution of immigration. We have our own population requirements, but we are stuck and burdened with a set of immigration policies that are almost the exact opposite of what we require. That is why we must wrest control of our own immigration requirements.
Our population has gone up and that is good, but there are concerns that it might still fall. Even 10 years ago, we were worried that our population might fall below the 5 million mark. Thankfully, that did not happen. The health provisions will cut across our responsibility for devolved services, and we will have to look at them carefully before we do anything.
There is one thing I want to say about immigration, because we do not like any of this stuff—it is just rubbish. The UK Government’s immigration policy is having an impact on Scotland’s great universities. We have three universities in the top 200 universities in the world. We have fantastic world-class universities and this Government are hurting them. Just stop it. We want to ensure that we get the best possible students to our universities. All this rubbish that the Government are proposing puts more and more people off. We have to compete with other English-speaking nations around the world to ensure that our universities stay world class. We just wish the UK Government would get out.
This issue is simple. Let us admit that Government Members seem to be going in one direction—the emerging UKIP UK has its own set of values, culture and political direction—and in Scotland we are going another way. We do not like this stuff. We do not vote Conservative and we hate UKIP, so we are not going to go in that direction. Here is a novel solution: why do they not do their own thing and we do our own thing? It is called independence and it works for most countries. Next year, thank goodness, we will achieve it.
Pamela Nash
I appreciate the Minister’s intervention, but the fact is that there is no clarity in the Bill—it leaves that fear for communities seeking primary care. If they believe they will be kicked out of the country for going to the doctor, they might not go and therefore might not be tested.
Public health experts agree that increasing the offer of HIV testing to a wide range of facilities is key to tackling the UK epidemic in all communities. In addition, the purpose of primary care is to assess the broadest range of health needs and identify how best to meet them. Anything that delays or prevents anyone with an infectious disease from seeking medical advice denies them the opportunity to be diagnosed and increases the chance of them passing on the infection to someone else. Someone on HIV treatment is 96% less likely to transmit it to others. Therefore, the Bill clearly risks unlimited and unintended consequences to UK public health.
The Bill may increase the risk that we will fail to tackle HIV in our communities, and it may also be costly. According to the Department of Health’s review of overseas visitors charging policy, referred to in the explanatory notes, a comparison of the administration costs of the current system with the amount actually recovered showed that it barely broke even. The Home Secretary failed to address that point, and I hope that the Minister will do so in his closing remarks. The new system may not be cheaper and we may fail to reclaim any money.
According to the review, in order to recoup the money and achieve the Government’s aims, the NHS structure would need to be radically changed. It said:
“Only a fundamentally different system and supporting processes would enable significant new revenue to be realised.”
I would be grateful if the Minister provided more clarity about the administration of the proposals and the collection of the money from those who have entered the country.
I am also concerned about the effect that the proposals will have on reciprocal arrangements with other countries, which has not really been mentioned today. The Bill refers to our EEA partners, but we have arrangements with 27 countries that are not in the EEA, including Australia and New Zealand. Many of our students go backpacking in those countries or to work on short-term visas, and they access health care free of charge, like the people who come here from those countries. Can the Minister clarify how the Bill will affect reciprocal arrangements? Has he had discussions with representatives of those countries? Will we have new reciprocal agreements, or will they not be affected?
The final area of concern is the devolved aspects of the Bill, which I mentioned in an intervention earlier. I am surprised by how vague this issue is in the Bill. There is no detail on how charges for devolved public services will be made, or on how landlord checks will work in the devolved nations.
Pete Wishart
The hon. Lady is probably aware—and if not, she is now—that there was no consultation whatever with the Scottish Government in the lead-up to the publication of this Bill.
The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)
In the limited time available—the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) could not help taking slightly more than half the time left—I will do my best to deal with as many of the points raised as I can. I welcome the contributions from Members on both sides of the House in what has been a good debate. I listened carefully and shall try to deal with the main issues.
Listening to the right hon. Gentleman, one would never know that Labour left behind a legacy of 450,000 asylum cases, border checks that were frequently relaxed to deal with queues and out-of-control net migration—and the latter was not just from eastern European countries; under Labour, twice as many people arrived from outside the EU as from within it—and of course it was that record which made our constituents rightly concerned about the issue, as many of my hon. Friends said.
The Government are firmly on the side of the vast majority of law-abiding migrants who play by the rules and contribute much to our society. We have a proud history of lawful migration, and this Government will continue to welcome the best and brightest to the country—
Mr Harper
No, I want to deal with some of the points. I listened to the debate, and if the hon. Gentleman will give me the opportunity, I will deal with the points raised.
The Government will continue to welcome the best and the brightest, be they skilled workers, the number of which is increasing, or students going to our universities, whose number is also increasing. For those who have overstayed their visa or were never here lawfully in the first place, however, there must be consequences for unlawful behaviour.
Mr Harper
No, let me make some progress.
We always prefer migrants who have had an application refused or who have overstayed to do the right thing and leave the UK under their own steam, and we will promote that compliant behaviour, but the Government want to put the law squarely on the side of people who respect the law, not those who break it. The Bill will deliver several important reforms to do that, cutting the number of immigration appeal rights, enabling us to require foreign criminals—not migrants in general—to leave the UK before appealing, ending the abuse of article 8 and introducing important measures to prevent illegal migrants from accessing services or the labour market.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) has made his point—he wants to get in—but it is up to the Minister to give way, and quite obviously he wants to make some progress.
Mr Harper
I am trying to do justice to the many Members who spoke in the debate, including the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart).
I particularly enjoyed the remarks from my hon. Friends the Members for Peterborough (Mr Jackson), for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price) and for Crawley (Henry Smith), all of whose constituencies I have had the opportunity to visit in my current role, and the contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills), from whom I am sure I will receive an invitation in due course.
The right hon. Member for Delyn is right about the issues that we will not have a chance to debate in the remaining seven minutes; I want us to have a good debate in Committee and to go through the issues in detail, and I am confident that when we lay out our aims, we will take Members with us, having first tested their concerns. We want the Bill to leave Committee and this House in good shape. As Members will know from my previous roles and challenges, I do not think we should leave it to the other place to put Bills in good shape. I want to ensure it leaves this House in good shape, and I look forward to the debate in Committee to do so.
In the time remaining, I shall try to deal with some of the issues raised. A number of Members raised important points about the proposals on health. To be clear, we are not talking about denying access to health care. We are talking about making sure that those who have no right to free health care have to make a contribution towards it. One of the points raised by the hon. Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Pamela Nash) was about public health and access to health for HIV treatment. I intervened on her to say that public health access will still be available for free. What I did not remember at the time was that this Government abolished treatment charges for HIV for overseas visitors exactly to protect the sorts of public health concerns she raised.
We are talking about making sure people pay a fair share. For those temporary migrants coming to Britain either to work or to study, we will collect the money before they come into the UK. It will go into the Consolidated Fund, and it is well above my pay grade, Mr Deputy Speaker, to tell colleagues in the Treasury how to do public spending. But if money is then distributed, any funds that go to the NHS in England will of course be distributed to the devolved Administrations in the usual way according to the Barnett consequentials. I hope that that is clear. We are not proposing to change the way in which the devolved Administrations can charge under the overseas visitors arrangements. Those aspects of charging are of course devolved. We will talk to the devolved administrations to make sure that there are no unforeseen consequences from different parts of the UK having different regimes for visitor charging.
As I said earlier in response to the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott), these are significant sums of money. She asked my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary how much we thought was not collected from health tourists. In the report that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health published today, we say that we think that between £20 million and £100 million is the cost of deliberate health tourism for urgent treatment and between £50 million and £200 million for regular visitors taking advantage. Clearly there is a range, but this is an independent report that has been peer-reviewed and it is the best information we have. The hon. Lady is right; it is not a massive proportion of the overall NHS budget but £500 million that we are not collecting is a significant sum and it would make a real difference if we were able to collect it.
The Chair of the Select Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), made some points about landlords, and we will test those issues in Committee. He also referred to e-Borders. He deserves a reasonable reply since he shared the blame around with the previous Government. We do already collect a significant amount of information on those coming into Britain and those leaving and we are working on improving that. I know that he will continue to question my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary and myself when we appear in front of his Committee.
The hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather) and I do not always agree, but she made an important point about refugees. The reason I think it is important to deal with people who have no right to be in Britain is that I want Britain to continue to be a welcoming place for those genuinely fleeing persecution. I fundamentally believe that we will only carry the public with us and have the public support a system where we protect genuine refugees—those fleeing persecution—if where we decide someone does not need our protection, and an independent judge does not think they need protection, those people leave the UK. By the way, we are not removing appeal rights for those where there is a fundamental right involved. If they abuse our hospitality by trying every trick in the book to stay here, they are damaging the interests of genuine migrants. It is our duty to make sure we do that.
Mr Harper
I do not have time to deal with the hon. Gentleman’s points.
There were many issues around appeal. Administrative review is a better way to deal with caseworking errors than forcing someone through the appeals system. I also listened very carefully to the genuine concerns raised about landlords. There will be a chance in Committee to deal with the practical implications of that. We have thought through the issues that colleagues have raised and we will be able to deal adequately with them in Committee and take colleagues with us. If there are things that we have not thought about, we can deal with those. I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (John Howell) dealt with that issue very well.
I am looking forward to debating the issues in Committee. The Bill continues our reforms of the immigration system, and it will ensure that the public’s expectations of a fair system are delivered. I commend the Bill to the House.
Question put, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
“Go Home or Face Arrest” Campaign
Pete Wishart Excerpts(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon for this short debate, Mr Pritchard.
I want people to imagine a situation and just think about it for a minute—a van pulls a billboard through the streets, telling illegal immigrants to “Go home or face arrest”. Just imagine it, and picture it. This is not 1940s occupied Europe; it is not even one of those National Front campaigns from the 1970s. This is the United Kingdom in 2013, where a van pulls a billboard through the streets of London telling people to “Go home or face arrest”. Just in case people did not quite get it, what else was on that poster? It was a huge set of handcuffs. And just to make it even more provocative, this van was trailed through some of the most racially diverse and multicultural parts of London. That was almost as stupid as it was grotesque.
What sort of response did that action get? Well, I do not think that I have seen a Government campaign that has been so roundly condemned. I could not even start to read out the lists of organisations, individuals and groups that were overwhelmingly opposed to it. Suffice to say that it managed to create a coalition of everybody from the Deputy Prime Minister to Nigel Farage, with the Business Secretary flung in for good measure, with his acerbic comment that it was “stupid and offensive”. As I say, this particular campaign united everybody from the Deputy Prime Minister to Nigel Farage, such was the opposition to it.
Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this very important debate. Does he agree that this campaign has caused division, and also fear in the minds of the citizens who freely walk on the streets that they will be stopped and perhaps harassed by the police and other agencies?
Pete Wishart
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention because he reminds me of something else that went on that week, and he is right to mention it. Not only did we have the grotesque sight of a van pulling a billboard in London telling people to “Go home”, but it was part of a joint operation whereby, for the first time in years if not decades, we had racial profiling at London underground stations as part of UK Border Agency operations. What on earth was going to happen next? Where was this going to go after that?
Of course, today we had the landmark ruling from the Advertising Standards Authority, which has effectively banned this stupid and grotesque campaign. I have seen the Minister who is here today go round—
Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)
Did it ban the whole thing or did it just point out one element that was wrong?
Pete Wishart
I am glad that the hon. Gentleman mentioned that, because I saw the Minister this morning, going from studio to studio, defending this decision. I think that he took some comfort from the fact that the ASA only banned it because it was misleading, not because it was offensive or racist. However, that is cold comfort to the Minister, because the ASA said that this campaign was reminiscent of the anti-immigrant campaigns of the ’70s and that people would find it offensive.
Pete Wishart
The Minister is scowling. The saddest thing about these TV appearances this morning is that he is still prepared to defend this absurd campaign and to revise it and bring it back to us, once again, aping his boss, the Home Secretary, who made the same remarks in an interview with Andrew Marr on Sunday. We might see the son of hate vans in the streets soon.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
I apologise for missing the start of the debate. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman not just on securing this debate, but securing the decision from the ASA to coincide with it. Has he seen the reply to my parliamentary question about the cost of the pilot project, which was put at £10,000? Given the pressure on the public purse, does he not think that that £10,000 could have been used better in some other area of the immigration field, which we know the Minister is keen to repair?
Pete Wishart
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. I must have missed his parliamentary question, which is remiss of me, because I usually look out for every one of his parliamentary utterances and questions. Of course, he is right. The £10,000 could have been better spent than on that absurd campaign with a hate van, trailing through the streets of London with a message saying, “Go home”.
Mr Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Does he agree that the Minister can hardly take any comfort from the ASA’s statement that the Government were using misleading statements? They were basically saying things that were not true on a van being trailed through areas of mixed ethnicity, which was bound to cause trouble.
Pete Wishart
My hon. Friend is right. I cannot remember any campaign that has effectively been banned by the ASA. It is the first time in my 12 years in the House that I have seen anything like this misleading information. The Minister should be thoroughly embarrassed about what happened this morning, but instead we have seen the parody of him going through the news studios, defending these awful, appalling vans.
Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)
Does the hon. Gentleman feel that all vans advertising the breaking of the law may put fear into the hearts of those who may be breaking it? For example, people could go to prison if they did not pay their television licence.
Pete Wishart
That is a good point. I want to come on to such points, which are important, about how the message was communicated and observed by the target groups. If I miss that point, I will give way to the hon. Gentleman once again.
These vans have been correctly labelled, in common parlance, as hate vans or racist vans, and that is how we have started to refer to them. We could not find a terminology to express our horror and disgust at the sight of these things and we were right to label them as such.
I agree with the Minister that illegal immigration must be tackled. I think that all hon. Members here agree with that. It is wrong and the Government must do something to deal with it. However, they have to deal with such issues reasonably, in a measured and mannered way. Probably every hon. Member in this Chamber agrees that there should be voluntary return. If people want to go home, let us assist them.
Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)
Can we also send out the message of the importance of immigration and how people benefit, both in host countries and countries of origin? The Philippines, for example, with about 9 million of its citizens migrating abroad for work, has a national migrants day. I encourage hon. Members to read Philippe Legrain’s book, “Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them”, and to see the benefits that immigration generally brings to all societies, where it happens.
Pete Wishart
My hon. Friend gets to the heart of so many of our debates on immigration, including the philosophical debate about the value and worth of immigration. We never hear about that from this Government. They do not accept for a minute that immigration is valuable. It is a problem that has to be managed, and this Government in particular say that it has to be managed in a more hostile, aggressive, robust way. As we head towards the new immigration Bill, which contains some thoroughly nasty horrors, we will see much more of this from this Government and it will get ever worse.
Pete Wishart
I have given way already and shall try to make some progress. I may come back to the hon. Gentleman later.
The hate vans, or racist vans, were ranting at people through a billboard with a telephone number on it, instead of communicating with them reasonably, trying to get a measured response and trying to ensure that people can return voluntarily. We should be helping them—assisting them—not shouting at them and giving a telephone number on a billboard. That is not the way to deal with some of the keen and sensitive issues to do with immigration. However, there is no way that we will get through to this Government on such points.
The Minister knows how hard life is for illegal immigrants. Life is desperate for illegal immigrants in this country. They cannot work—certainly, not legally—and they do not have access to benefits. They live a life of destitution, in fear of being detected. That is the reality of life for illegal immigrants in the United Kingdom, not the Daily Mail version, in which they are living the life of Riley, at our expense, laughing behind our backs, which sometimes I think that the Minister believes. It is a life of desperate destitution and fear.
It is about fear and that is what is being communicated. We have to look underneath the stupid message—the silly “Go home or face arrest”—and find out what it is intended to do and to achieve. Stupid poster though it is, there is something fundamental underneath this. The campaign is trying to engender a sense of fear and exaggerate the problem, to politicise it and appeal to the basest political instincts. That is a dangerous game to play. That is where it leads to real issues, tensions and anxieties in our communities. This Government should stop that and ensure that it is never done again. These hate vans and racist vans are touring our country.
Let us gloss over the obvious point that those who are notionally targeted by the campaign probably cannot read English and probably have no idea what the vans are trying to say. If they do read English, the first thing they will do is go right underground and try to hide away, having been made aware, thanks to the Government, of a more aggressive campaign that is out to get them.
Let us be generous and say that this campaign gets through to its target audience. Mr Pritchard, imagine that you are an illegal immigrant, walking down your street in your multiracial, multi-diverse community. There is something in the back of your mind and you are thinking, “There’s something I’ve got to do. What is it? I can’t figure out what it is.” Then, all of a sudden, one of these vans comes along, telling you to go home and you say, “That’s it! That’s what I forgot to do! All this time I’ve been in this country, I’ve forgotten to go home whence I came.” What nonsense. [Interruption.] No wonder you are laughing, Mr Pritchard, as is every other hon. Member. That is how nonsensical a concept this is. Imagine that.
Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)
Order. For the record, unless I misheard the hon. Gentleman, I do not think that I show any emotion when chairing debates. I am completely impartial.
Pete Wishart
I am sorry to have misinterpreted your wry smile as any sign of jocularity, Mr Pritchard.
Pete Wishart
I am glad that that is resolved. Thank you, Mr Pritchard.
Come on, let us figure out what it is really all about. I think that all hon. Members in this Chamber can be candid. This has little, if anything, to do with illegal immigration, but everything to do with the rise of the UK Independence party in the opinion polls. It is about this Conservative Government’s fear of the electoral challenge from UKIP and the fact that it has made immigration a key plank of its appeal. The Government are now engaged in a desperate race to the bottom with Nigel Farage, to see who can be the hardest on immigration. I gently say to the Minister that he will never out-UKIP UKIP. UKIP is the master of nasty, pernicious, right-wing populism, and it is to the Conservative party’s credit that it will never beat UKIP in a race to the bottom on such issues, regardless of how hard the Conservative party might try.
What did Nigel Farage do when he saw the campaign? He laughed in the Home Secretary’s face and mumbled something about the Big Brother state—imagine the campaign’s target laughing in the Home Secretary’s face. I bet Nigel Farage went home that evening and, like a badge of honour, knew that he had managed to move the Government significantly on to his territory, where he will decisively beat them on such issues. This is UKIP UK. UKIP does not have even one Member of Parliament, but the whole political world down here is now spinning around the world of the fruitcakes and loonies, as the Prime Minister so cleverly, clearly and accurately described them. That is where we are now: the reality of UKIP UK. UKIP is pulling the strings and the Conservative party is dancing to it.
People might wonder why I, as a Scots Nat, am concerned about these vans in London. First, they appal me as a citizen of this country, and they should appal every decent, reasonable person. They are appalling and should not be here. But the Government brought the campaign to Scotland. When I first saw the vans, I immediately wrote to the Home Secretary asking whether there were any plans to bring them to Scotland. I said, “We do not want the vans in Scotland. We have fantastic relations throughout every single community, and we value those relations. The vans would be most unwelcome.” I did not get the courtesy of a reply. I therefore wrote again to the Home Secretary asking why I did not get a reply to my letter. Coincidentally, I got a reply from the Minister yesterday—it might be that there just happens to be a debate. I say this not to the Minister but to his officials: get your act together, for goodness’ sake.
Mark Pritchard (in the Chair)
Order. Remarks should be made to the Chair, not directly to officials. I am sure the hon. Gentleman recalls that, as he has been here for many years.
Pete Wishart
I am grateful, Mr Pritchard. It must have just slipped my mind.
I ask the Minister to ask his officials to ensure that they reply, for goodness’ sake, to Members of Parliament on sensitive issues such as this. Will the Minister pass on to his officials that it is not good enough that Members of Parliament are not responded to until they decide to hold a debate on an issue to ensure that they get that reply? That certainly seems to be consistent with what is happening in the Home Office.
In the meantime, between my writing to the Home Secretary and where we are today, the full suite of “Go home” materials arrived in Glasgow. The UK Border Agency office in Brand street, Glasgow now plays host to those appalling materials. We do not have UKIP in Scotland. In Scotland, we loathe UKIP to the bottom of our ballot boxes. UKIP does not even retain its deposits. Nigel Farage had to get a police escort the last time he visited Edinburgh. UKIP is alien to our cultural and political values. The campaign jars with our sense of community, and it is something that we just do not want in Scotland.
The Minister should take his battle with UKIP elsewhere and leave Scotland out of it, because I do not want people in Scotland who go to the Glasgow Brand street office to be met with those materials. What do those materials say? Before people are even sitting down, they are asked to think about going home, with the inquiry “Is life hard here?” They are then told “Going home is simple,” before being told by another poster with a photograph of a plane:
“This plane can take you home. We can book the tickets.”
On the way out there is a dangling plane, which suggests “This is the plane that can take you home.” That is absolutely disgusting and contrary to how we would like to address such issues sensitively, and it makes me more determined than ever that, with independence, Scotland will always get the Government whom we vote for. We will not have a Conservative Government with their one lone panda of a Member of Parliament ruling the roost over our country and imposing such nonsense on my nation, and thank goodness we will secure that next year and end such Tory rubbish in our Glasgow offices. Minister, please keep Scotland well out of this.
What happens now? We have had the ASA ruling today, and we are all very pleased. It looks like the end of these appalling hate vans—these racist vans. The son of hate vans might be coming, I do not know, but perhaps the Minister will tell us whether he is encouraged by what he has seen over the past few months. When the Government were first challenged, they seemed to be able to pull out some sort of statistic showing that the vans were actually working. I do not know what on earth that statistic was based on, but perhaps the Minister could tell us about how the vans were supposed to be working.
Pete Wishart
My time is up, sorry.
Hopefully we will see the end of the vans, which I think were a testing exercise in advance of the next immigration Bill. The Government floated the policy just to see how much they would get away with, how nasty and pernicious they could be, in trying to get their immigration Bill through. That is exactly what they were doing. Everyone in this room has a concern on immigration, and we will be questioning the Minister when the immigration Bill is introduced, because it will contain some horrible stuff that we must confront. We are still part of the UK, and we will be subject to the Bill. We do not want it, but unfortunately we will be subject to it. The Bill is contrary to everything that we are trying to achieve for positive, good relations in Scotland, but we will be subject to a Conservative Government’s immigration Bill.
How did the Conservatives get this past the Liberals? I want to hear the Minister’s take on this. How on earth did they get the Liberals to sign up to something like this? I heard that the former Home Office Minister, the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Mr Browne), was not available, so the Conservatives decided to proceed any way. After what we have heard from the Deputy Prime Minister, with whom I know he worked closely, the Conservatives managed somehow to get the policy through the Liberals and into the campaign. Hopefully the Liberals will veto anything like this in future so we have no repeats.
The one thing I want from the Minister, and I know I will not get it, is an apology for exposing this nation to a nasty, pernicious and grotesque campaign. I know I will not get that apology, but perhaps I will get a small acknowledgement that there was something wrong with the campaign, that it was not right and that it was inconsistent with the good community relations that we are trying to achieve. I just want an acknowledgement, but somehow I do not think I will get that, either. Let us hope that we never see the likes of this again, but I have a feeling that it is just the beginning.
Border Force
Pete Wishart Excerpts(12 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Harper
My right hon. Friend is right; that is certainly the view that I get, too. There is one thing that Labour never acknowledge when criticised on this. They happily acknowledge that they made mistakes on immigration from eastern Europe, but they forget to tell the public that, under their watch, immigration from outside the EU went up by far more. They have never apologised for that.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
Will the Minister assure me he will not bring these xenophobic “go home” hate vans to Scotland, and will he remove the unwanted, disgraceful “go home” materials from the UKBA office in Glasgow?
Mr Harper
I do not think the hon. Gentleman reflects the views of the public in the way that he characterises those vans. The majority of people in this country want a very robust stance. Asking people who have no right to be in the UK—who are here unlawfully, taking the mickey out of everyone else—to go home, as they should do, rather than forcing the taxpayer to spend up to £15,000 on arresting, detaining and enforcing their removal, is a very sensible thing to do, and I am not going to apologise for it.
Alcohol Strategy Consultation
Pete Wishart Excerpts(12 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Browne
I do not have NICE’s specific representation to hand but, as I have said, the majority of respondents did not believe that we should go ahead with the 45p minimum unit price. As for the ban on multi-buy promotions, which we have rejected, the opinion was split about 50:50, but again the common concern—it was raised not just by institutions, but by ordinary people who want to live their lives without being micro-managed by the Government—was that moderate and sensible drinkers should not be unreasonably penalised, and I think they have a point.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
If Carlsberg did statements, we just heard it from the Minister. It is unfortunate that this Government are not following the fine example of the Scottish Government in pursuing minimum unit pricing for alcohol and plain packaging for cigarettes. We will go ahead with that, because we have no Lynton Crosby and no right-wing Tories in Scotland. Will the Minister assure me that he will do all he can to ensure that the Scottish Government can get down to the business of tackling our health problems?