National Crime Agency
Pete Wishart Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Mrs May
Yes, indeed. We will be looking to create a situation with the border police command in which it will be possible to use greater intelligence in relation to the issue that my hon. Friend raises—in due course, of course. Through our borders work, we are in the process of further developing our understanding of individuals who are in the United Kingdom, but of course those who come to the UK to work do have to have a biometric residence permit.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
What discussions did the Home Secretary have with the devolved Administrations when she was setting up the agency, and what relationship will it have with devolved police services?
Mrs May
We have had a number of discussions on the matter with the devolved Administrations, and the National Crime Agency will deal with some aspects of crime which are reserved matters, but we are very conscious of working with the devolved agencies. In relation to Scotland, we expect the NCA to work with, for example, the Scottish Crime and Drug Enforcement Agency and the Scottish police forces—or force, should there be a single police force in future. In working with the devolved Administrations, we will respect the primacy of law enforcement agencies in the devolved nations.
Prevent Strategy
Pete Wishart Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Mrs May
I welcome my hon. Friend to the House following her recent illness. It is good to see her back in her seat. It is certainly our intention to monitor how money is spent on Prevent to ensure that it is spent effectively. In looking at the programmes that work, we will ensure that the decisions that are made are fully evidence-based.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
In what new ways will the right hon. Lady promote integration? What core values and whose history will now be taught in schools?
Mrs May
The last time I looked, there was a different education system in Scotland, and I reassure the hon. Gentleman that I am not suggesting that I will touch it. However, I think that people across the United Kingdom share a belief in the values of democracy, human rights, equality and the rule of law, and those are the values that we are talking about.
Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Bill
Pete Wishart Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Mrs May
I will not comment on a particular case, which the right hon. Lady appears to be trying to get me to do. What I will say is that under the current control order regime it is possible to specify the length of a curfew. As she will know, the length of curfew has been challenged—and challenged successfully—in the courts. What we are doing with TPIMs is taking a different approach to the issue. The TPIMs in the Bill are intended to ensure that we allow prevention of terrorism activity for national security requirements, while also ensuring that individuals can take part in what is regarded as normal activity, such as work or study.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
Will not the Home Secretary simply accept that these TPIMs are nothing other than a repackaging and rebranding of the old, discredited control orders regime? Has she had a chance to look at the sheet produced by Liberty, which goes through measure by measure, showing how similar they are? Is it not the case that she is no better than Lord Reid when it comes to control orders?
Mrs May
We are introducing a new regime. We did what we undertook to do as a coalition Government when we came to power. Both parties were committed to reviewing the control order regime. We did that, and what we have decided is that the right balance between civil liberties and national security is reflected in the Bill. It will enable us to take action to prevent terrorist activity by that small number of people who, as I have said, we are unable to prosecute or deport, while at the same time re-striking the balance between national security and civil liberties. The financial services measures would allow individuals to be limited to one bank account, for which they would have to provide statements. Transfer of money and goods overseas without prior permission could also be prohibited. Under the association measure, a list of prohibited associates would be supplied to the individual in advance, with the possibility that notice would be required of meetings with other individuals. The reporting measure would require individuals to report to a particular police station at a particular time, and the monitoring measure would require them to co-operate with arrangements to monitor their movements, communications and other activities. That might include a requirement to wear an electronic tag.
The Bill places clear limits on each of the restrictions that can be imposed. For example, it clearly provides no power for individuals to be relocated to another part of the country without their consent. The exclusion measure will allow only tightly defined exclusion from particular places such as named buildings and streets or defined locations. It will not allow exclusion from wide geographical areas. Exclusion will also be allowed from certain types of locations such as airports, ports or international railway stations. The need for such an exclusion should be obvious. As for restrictions involving electronic communication devices, the Bill makes it clear that the individual concerned must be allowed to own and use at least one fixed-line telephone, a computer and fixed-line internet connection and a mobile telephone. All that must of course be subject to specific conditions, such as the provision of passwords and phone numbers.
The Bill also sets out the conditions that must be satisfied before the Secretary of State may impose a TPIMs notice. A key change from the control order regime is that the Secretary of State must now reasonably believe, rather than reasonably suspect, that an individual is or has been involved in terrorism-related activity. The Secretary of State must also reasonably consider that it is necessary to impose particular measures on an individual to protect the public and to restrict the individual’s involvement in terrorism-related activity. That means that the package of measures will vary from case to case, which is only right given that all cases will be different.
We are aware that TPIMs are a short-term tool to protect the public rather than a long-term solution. A person will be subject to a TPIMs notice for no more than two years in response to specific terrorist-related activity. The initial notice will be imposed for one year, and can be extended once if that is necessary to protect the public. If an individual engages in new terrorism-related activity, of course a new notice and new measures can be imposed with a further two-year time limit. A new notice could be imposed immediately if terrorism-related activity had occurred during the life of the TPIM, and a new TPIMs notice could be imposed after the original one had expired. That is an essential safeguard for our national security, ensuring that appropriate disruptive action can be taken if an individual re-engages in terrorism-related activity.
As with the current regime, the courts will have to give permission for a TPIMs notice to be imposed. Only in the most exceptional and urgent cases will court permission not have been obtained before the imposition of a notice. If the court gives permission, a full review of the decision must begin automatically. There will be no requirement for the lodging of an appeal. The full review will be heard by a High Court judge. If the judge does not consider that the relevant conditions have been met, in relation to the notice as a whole or in relation to specific measures within it, the judge may quash the whole notice or specific measures as appropriate. Individuals will know enough of the case against them to enable them to instruct their own lawyer and the special advocate who will have access to all material, including sensitive material.
Yvette Cooper
If the hon. Gentleman persists with such simplistic soundbites, he will misunderstand the nature of the terrorist threat to Britain, and also the nature of the Bill that he is supporting, because this Bill represents a complete reversal of the promises he and his party made during the election, and does not abolish the control orders regime but simply renames it with a few minor amendments.
We on the Opposition Benches do not have access to the latest security assessments from the experts. We believe it is important to support the Government on counter-terrorism issues where we can, but in order to do so we will need more reassurances from the Home Secretary, and also some changes. The first duty of any Government is the protection of the people and the safeguarding of national security, yet the Home Secretary’s changes currently make it harder for the police and security services to limit the actions of a small number of dangerous people. We therefore need more reassurances on that.
Ideally, we would not have control orders because, ideally, we would not need them, but the Labour Government introduced them because we recognised that we needed to deal with a very small number of difficult cases, where prosecution was not possible for a range of reasons and where the public still needed to be protected from terrorist activity. In opposition, the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives condemned control orders, but now they are in government they have changed their minds. Indeed, the Home Secretary has introduced six new control orders since she came to office, and renewed eight more, but rather than admit that, she is desperate to maintain the fiction that control orders need to be replaced by something fundamentally different and that this Bill does the trick.
Most of the Bill is a fudge, drawn up to meet promises made to the Deputy Prime Minister that control orders would be abolished. Clause 1 does exactly that, but clauses 2 to 27 just reinstate most of the elements of control orders. The Bill does not therefore meet the Liberal Democrats’ manifesto promise to scrap orders that use evidence in closed sessions of court, nor does it meet the Conservative pledge of
“eliminating the control order regime.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 3 March 2010; Vol. 717, c. 1530.]
It certainly does not meet the grand claims of the Deputy Prime Minister in January, when The Sunday Times was briefed that he had
“won his Cabinet fight to scrap control orders”,
that suspects will no longer have to wear electronic tags or have a home curfew, and that they
“will also be allowed to travel wherever they want in Britain”.
As all Members now know, the Bill allows for tags, home curfews and restrictions on travel around Britain. Where control orders use closed proceedings and special advocates, so too do TPIMs. Where control orders are instigated by the Home Secretary with the permission of the High Court, so too are TPIMs. Where control orders are used when prosecution is not possible, so too are TPIMs. Where control orders can restrict people’s movements, communication, association, travel and bank accounts, so too can TPIMs.
Let me read out some extracts from the Government’s own explanatory notes to the Bill. Clause 1 abolishes control orders, and clauses 2 to 4 introduce TPIMs. On clauses 6 to 9 and schedule 2, the notes say:
“This replicates the position in relation to control orders”.
On clause 10, they say:
“The clause maintains all the existing requirements contained in the 2005 Act.”
On clauses 12 to 15 and schedule 3, they say:
“The clauses make provision—equivalent to that in the 2005 Act in relation to control orders”.
On clauses 16 to 18 and schedule 4, they say:
“This provides similar rights of appeal to those that exist in relation to control orders.”
They say that clauses 19 to 20
“place requirements—equivalent to those contained in the 2005 Act in relation to control orders”.
On clause 21, they say that
“this effectively recreates the main offence of the 2005 Act of contravening an obligation imposed under a control order”—
and they then add, in brackets—
“(including the same maximum penalty)”.
This Bill is one big set of square brackets which reads: insert control orders here.
Pete Wishart
The right hon. Lady is absolutely right: there is almost no difference between TPIMs and the former control order regime. What is the Labour party’s position on this? Would she amend control orders to make them more in line with her party’s new view on civil liberties? Indeed, what is the Labour party’s view on civil liberties? Were control orders a step too far? Will she now come on our side and start to take on the anti-civil libertarian state that Labour created?
Yvette Cooper
As I said earlier, control orders are not ideal, and ideally we would not need them, but we do. We need to continue with control orders and this kind of protection.
I will set out my view of the Bill’s measures and where we think greater scrutiny is needed, and highlight the reduction in safeguards and checks and balances that the Home Secretary is introducing, because the point is not simply that she is weakening the powers of the police and security forces in certain areas, but that she is weakening the checks and balances, and in particular the parliamentary checks and balances, on the system that is in place. Those parliamentary checks and balances are extremely important for safeguarding our civil liberties, as well as for protecting national security.
Tom Brake
The hon. Gentleman might not be surprised to know that I agree with much of what he says. If my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) has an opportunity to speak, he might echo that very same point. That is why the Bill is clearly an improvement on what is in place now, but has scope for further improvement. I am sure that we will return to that in this place and perhaps in the other place.
Pete Wishart
Does not the hon. Gentleman understand and appreciate that those of us who cannot stand these things think that the Liberals have compromised too cheaply on these issues? I remind him that his leader said:
“A battery of curfews and tags, imposed in a legal limbo at the behest of politicians, is no surrogate for the aggressive use of the full force of the law.”
Why have the Liberals caved in so cheaply on these issues?
Tom Brake
I hope to explain why I do not think we have caved in cheaply, as the hon. Gentleman stated. First, relocation has gone. I accept that on overnight curfews I would be much more comfortable with what Liberal Democrats have referred to previously as residency requirements. An address would be identified at which the person would be expected to reside. I hope that the fact that there is no specific definition of overnight curfews will lead to a more flexible approach; that there might be a spectrum according to which overnight curfews may be imposed, going from what most would regard as overnight—eight or 10 hours—through to something much closer to a residency requirement. If overnight curfew was specified precisely, the risk is simply that that is what would be adopted in all cases, so there would not be the ability to consider each individual case in detail. In addition, the exclusions are specific, not geographic as previously, and there is access to telephones, computers and the internet, a matter that was raised by families in relation to their children and their ability to use computers for schoolwork, and so on. Those are real changes that are included in the Bill.
Another area of concern that has been flagged up and to which the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) referred is the extent to which the person subject to TPIMs will know what they have been accused of. The Home Secretary said that the individual will know enough about the key elements of their case to enable them to act. That is worthy of further discussion and elucidation. I see the Minister nods and perhaps when he responds he will be able to say more about what this will mean in practice. Clearly, it is an ongoing issue for Liberal Democrats, the hon. Gentleman and others to ensure that people who are subject to control orders or will be subject to TPIMs know as much as possible about the allegations against them without revealing the confidential sources that could put at risk people in the field.
Hazel Blears
These are matters for careful and balanced judgment, which is why we have constant judicial oversight, why we have to return to the courts to renew our orders and why we have a legal system in this country which is capable of making such judgments. If we are in the hands of a respected, experienced and knowledgeable High Court judge, who has heard submissions on the issues, I should feel slightly more content than if an order simply came to an arbitrary end as a result of legislation passed in this House.
Pete Wishart
If that individual is so dangerous, why do we not just arrest him, charge him and throw the full force of the judicial system at him?
Hazel Blears
I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman has asked me that question, because this is where we end up in a sort of tortuous circle. That individual has not been charged because the intelligence against him does not comprise evidence, has been gained by covert surveillance and cannot be revealed in court, as it will put at risk either the lives of the agents or their techniques. We know that this person, as Mr Justice Wilkie said, remains a trained and committed martyr to the cause and is prepared to carry out further attacks, but, because the individual cannot be prosecuted through the conventional criminal justice system, the hon. Gentleman’s decision would be to let him walk free.
That is the judgment that has to be made, and that is why these issues weigh so heavily on the people who have to make the decisions, people such as the Home Secretary, who has to make those decisions in individual cases. They weigh incredibly heavily on all of us and are not lightly taken, and that is why we need a system of checks and balances. An arbitrary limit of a two-year TPIM in every single case would cause me concern if the original threat still existed.
My final concern, on which I have not received reassurance, is the extra costs of surveillance, because there will need to be greater surveillance if TPIMs conditions are substantially lighter and less invasive than those of control orders. Next year we have the Olympics, which will be a massive drain on the resources of the security services. That is acknowledged throughout the system, so I want significant reassurance from the Minister about the ability of the security services to maintain the same assurance to the citizens of our country through TPIMs as they have through the control orders system. I am not satisfied that that is the case.
The control order system had more measures to disrupt people’s ability to organise their networks. Surveillance does not take the place of disruption, because it is a different technique of a different order, and, as Lord Carlile says, unless there is a system of disruption as well as surveillance, he has concerns about the effectiveness of the regime, as do I. The security services say that the extra resources would mitigate the risk, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins) has said, and it is incumbent on the Government to give us such reassurance.
We must remind ourselves that the people who have been the subject of control orders are not law-abiding, innocent citizens going freely about their business. By their very nature, they are dangerous people who pose a real threat to our safety, and the measures must be sufficient to reassure people properly that the system is sufficient to control the movements of such individuals. Surveillance is not as effective as disruption, so we need to do more to ensure that disruption takes place.
In all my years as a Home Office Minister, and through my work in the Communities and Local Government Department, control orders have represented some of the most difficult decisions I have had to make, because they go to the heart of our democracy. Our freedoms are incredibly hard won, and none of us wants to give them up lightly at all. I talked to a senior member of the judiciary a few weeks ago, who said passionately and in a very committed way, “Hazel, whenever there’s a decision to be made between liberty and security, I will always, always err on the side of liberty,” but it is more complicated than that.
We cannot simply say that we would always make the decisions in that way. We might do in theory, in academic practice and, certainly, in terms of our values, but we are faced with making a decision that must balance security and liberty, the security of ordinary people seeking to go about their daily lives, as against the liberty of people for whom there is a great deal of intelligence to say that they are dangerous and dedicated, because of their political ideology, to causing mass harm and death among the community at large. That is an incredibly difficult decision, but sometimes it is portrayed as an easy one.
Of course, we do not want to restrict people’s civil liberties or to introduce a punitive, repressive or oppressive regime, but the alternative is to allow people who pose a severe and dangerous threat to our country to walk our streets. Those decisions are hard to make, and I just ask the Home Secretary and the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), who is on the Treasury Bench tonight, to think really hard, as I know they will, about whether their proposed regime is sufficient to give the people of this country the reassurance that they deserve, and to ensure that that tiny minority of people who are subject to a regime are not able to continue to pose the threat of damage, death and destruction to the people of this country. I look forward in Committee to the Minister giving us a great deal more reassurance than I have had this evening.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
I know that in this House we often say that it is a pleasure to follow the hon. Gentleman, but in this case I really mean it. That was a thoughtful speech that got to the heart of the matter. It showed the impact that control orders and TPIMs have on the wider community, and the way in which they are seen by the communities that are subjected to them.
When we make legislation that does not allow the defendant to see any of the evidence that is presented against them, we are getting into difficult and dangerous territory. I agree with the hon. Member for Newark (Patrick Mercer) that we have to tread carefully. There have been thoughtful speeches tonight and Members have made their points well, but I think that we are being a little too cavalier when it comes to the civil liberties of so many people in our nation. I know that these measures apply to only a few people, but the problem is how they are perceived. That is what we should consider before going any further down the line of introducing a new regime to replace control orders.
Control orders have failed more than any other measure. They have not worked. They have led to no convictions whatsoever. We must consider the fact that 15% of those who have been subject to a control order are now at liberty and we do not know where they are. Control orders have failed, they do not work, and they have a disastrous impact on communities and individuals throughout this country.
I say to the Minister that I have been quite impressed by the performance of the Conservative-led Government over the past few months. They have been as good as their word. They have helped to dismantle the rotten, anti-civil libertarian state bequeathed by the last Labour Government. I cheered them to the rafters when they introduced the Bill to get rid of the hated Labour ID cards scheme. I wish I could have been there at the bonfire of the equally detested national database, which Labour introduced. I welcome the progress that has been made on pre-charge detention. It is not perfect, but there has been massive progress, particularly when one considers that in the days of the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears), we were approaching 90 days’ pre-charge detention. Thank goodness those days are gone. I also applaud the Conservative-led Government on their progress on all the other surveillance apparatus so cherished by the last Labour Government.
Why stop at control orders? We could have got rid of those too. This is the last remaining rotten piece of legislation from Labour’s anti-civil libertarian state. Of course, we saw this coming. We all heard the rumours of disagreements in the Cabinet and between the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister. We did not see the Bill for months, until a face-saving exercise was concocted to allow the Deputy Prime Minister a bit of dignity on the issue. However, it is a rotten compromise. It has done nothing. The only thing the Liberals have got out of it is a renaming of control orders. It is just not good enough. They could have got the whole thing, made progress and got shot of these odious practices, such as people being subject to curfews without any exposure to the evidence that is presented against them.
I am disappointed in the behaviour of this Government on control orders, and I expected better of the Home Secretary and her ministerial team. However, they are subject to pressures too. I can just imagine all the fine representatives of the security and intelligence industry wandering into No. 10 and telling them, “These measures are absolutely essential and have to be done. Civil liberties are all right, but this is about national security.” I can just imagine the files being presented and the Home Secretary being convinced that these measures are absolutely necessary.
I say to the Minister that when it comes to control orders, this Conservative Government are little better than Lord Reid and the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett). It was new Labour that introduced these measures, and we have to consider the journey that we have taken on this issue. They were introduced in an absolute panic with emergency legislation, which was supposed to be temporary. They were supposed to apply only to foreign nationals. There are now no foreign national controlees—they are all UK residents. All the reasons why we had these things in the first place have gone. Nobody who has been subject to a control order has been prosecuted. Control orders have failed in bringing people to justice, because nobody has been brought to justice and there has been no attempt to bring anybody to justice under control orders.
Now we have TPIMs. What is the difference? There is not really any difference. I accept what Liberty says, although I know the Liberals do not. I believe that in some respects, TPIMs are worse than control orders, because they are permanent and will not be subject to yearly reviews. That is the great anti-civil libertarian flaw at the heart of the TPIMs regime. In other respects, there is no difference. Control orders are instigated by the Home Secretary with the permission of the High Court, except in urgent cases. TPIMs will be instigated by the Home Secretary with the permission of the High Court, except in urgent cases. There are closed proceedings under control orders and special advocates examine secret evidence forming the basis of the order. Under TPIMs, there will be closed proceedings and special advocates will examine secret evidence forming the basis of the order. There is no difference whatsoever. If there is a breach, there is five years’ imprisonment under control orders. Under TPIMs—surprise, surprise—it is also five years. There is very little difference.
Under the Bill, individuals who are branded as terror suspects will still be left at large in the community, unable to challenge the suspicion against them or prove it to be wrong. They will be subject to electronic tagging and curfews. Actually, they are not curfews, but overnight residence requirements. Who on earth made up that term? It sounds like a sleepover that kids would be involved in, only it is a sleepover with police surveillance and an electronic tag. It is no different from a curfew and it is a massive restriction on people’s liberty. There will be restrictions on communication, movement and the ability to work or study. As before, individuals who are subject to TPIMs will be prevented from leading any kind of normal life.
The TPIMs regime will prove to be as ineffective as its predecessor in fighting terrorism. It will continue to tip off suspects and prevent evidence from being gathered, while leaving potentially dangerous people at large in the community for extended periods. I have mentioned the fact that 15% of controlees have disappeared. That demonstrates that administrative community punishments that are used in the place of criminal prosecutions are as dangerous to security as they are to liberty.
Control orders were rushed through Parliament. After 10 years, I thought that we would come to this House, consider the issue and see whether they were still required. I have listened very carefully to all the speeches that have been made tonight, and I have heard no evidence to suggest that these things are still required.
In many ways the new orders are worse, because there is permanence to them. The powers will no longer be reviewed every year, and the labelling of people as terrorists without any sight of the evidence against them will now be made permanent. There is more, because the Secretary of State could unleash all sorts of concessionary measures that could make the orders even more unpleasant. There could be further restrictions, curfews and bans on communications and associations—it is all very subjective. I am implacably opposed to control orders, and I have seen no evidence that they are required.
Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
I am very much inclined to agree with all the hon. Gentleman’s remarks, but what would he say about the argument from those who promote these measures that the people who will be subject to them are terrorist suspects against whom prosecutions cannot be brought?
Pete Wishart
That is exactly what is said, and we have heard from a number of contributors this evening that these are people against whom there is not sufficient evidence or evidence of good enough quality for a successful prosecution. We heard the example of an individual who has had a control order against him for two years. His liberty has been compromised for two years because he has not been able to prove his innocence in a court and the state has not been able to prove his guilt. That is at the heart of the matter, which was why the hon. Member for Newark was spot on in his observations about how control orders are operating.
Naomi Long
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the debate has been framed in the context of whether we put security before liberty or liberty before security, but that in fact there is a fine balance between the two? By denying liberty we not only radicalise young people into terrorism—we have seen that in Northern Ireland, although I accept that the parallels are not perfect—but provide a concession to terrorists, who are out to remove our liberty.
Pete Wishart
The hon. Lady is spot on. I know that every Government do their best to balance the security requirements of the nation and civil liberties. I think that most of what the Labour Government did on civil liberties was totally wrong, and I opposed most of the measures that they took, but I believe that they acted in the best interests of security. However, with the invasion of Iraq they radicalised a generation of international Islamists and Muslims, and they took measures that seemed to be targeted against one specific community in the UK. They fostered resentment and created massive community divisions. They got that utterly and totally wrong.
I thought that the new Government would come in with a new broom. They have done a lot of good things in dismantling the apparatus that Labour put in place, but I wish that they had spent a bit more time on this subject. They still have the opportunity to improve the Bill, and I hope that they will do so in Committee.
Student Visas
Pete Wishart Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Mrs May
I thank my hon. Friend for his welcome for the statement. We are asking the Migration Advisory Committee generally to look annually at the immigration arrangements that we are putting in place, but it will be consulted, as I made clear in my statement, if we find that the number of students staying on for post-study work rises unexpectedly and significantly. We would ask the MAC to look into such a situation and to determine whether any abuse was taking place, and that could include the possibility of a limit.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
Will the Home Secretary tell us what the tone has been of the representations that she has received on this issue from the Scottish universities and the Scottish Government? What have they said about the funding issues and about the competitive situation? The Home Secretary knows that we do not have a fixation with immigration in Scotland; in fact, we are experiencing a structural fall in population numbers. We also have no evidence of bogus colleges. Will she consider an exemption for Scotland, so that any unforeseen consequences of her announcement today do not impact on our universities north of the border?
Mrs May
During the consultation, we had discussions with the Scottish Government and the Secretary of State for Scotland. He and I spoke about the concerns that Scottish universities had raised with him, one of which related to students who had an entrepreneurial idea and wished to stay on to launch a business. That is why we are ensuring that, within the post-study work rules, there will be a possibility to protect student entrepreneurs.
Counter-terrorism Review
Pete Wishart Excerpts(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Mrs May
We have proposed that the emergency legislation on 28 days’ pre-charge detention should be subject to pre-legislative scrutiny so that there is an opportunity for it to be considered, as I have made clear. If the hon. Gentleman is so concerned about the process that we propose, why did he support it when his Government introduced it for the 42 days’ pre-charge detention?
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
It was all going so well. There we were, happily dismantling Labour’s anti-civil libertarian agenda, when along came this review. With respect to the right hon. Lady, she has simply done “a Labour” on control orders. Her proposals seem and feel just like the Labour control orders. At what point did she abandon her plans to get rid of control orders entirely and come up with control orders No. 2?
Oral Answers to Questions
Pete Wishart Excerpts(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Damian Green
My hon. Friend makes exactly the right point. It was the previous Prime Minister who made the unfortunate point about British jobs for British workers at a time when British workers were not taking the majority of the jobs available in this country. This Government are determined to balance the economy better in many ways, in particular by ensuring that as many of the available jobs as possible are available to workers in Britain and, indeed, Scotland.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
I think that everybody in Scotland is getting tired of the complacent response on these issues. The Minister has managed to unite all businesses, all universities, the health sector and all employers in Scotland in opposition to the immigration cap, because of the damage it will do to the Scottish economy. When will he acknowledge that Scotland’s population issues are entirely different from England’s? Will he accept that one cap does not fit all when it comes to immigration?
Damian Green
There are indeed differences in Scotland, and one is that unemployment in Scotland is higher than in England, and higher than the average for the rest of the UK. I dare say that those who are complaining about this matter do not include workers in Scotland, and do not include the unemployed in Scotland.
Counter-terrorism
Pete Wishart Excerpts(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Damian Green
As my hon. Friend knows, there are reviews on a number of matters. She tempts me down the path of pre-empting what the Home Secretary will say on Wednesday, but it would be sensible for me to continue to resist that temptation.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
Will the Minister promise me that he will take absolutely no lessons from 90-day Labour when it comes to detention; a Labour Government who perhaps had the worst possible record of any modern European Government when it comes to civil liberties? I, too, welcome what he says about 28 days, but will he say a little more today about what he means by these reserve powers?
Damian Green
The hon. Gentleman is entirely right. Not only is it surprising that Labour Members are so worried about leaks; it is equally surprising that they can bring themselves to talk about civil liberties given their shambolic and dreadful record on that issue. That is precisely why the reserve powers that we propose will be in the form of a draft Bill, so that nothing can be done without the full consent of Parliament—even in the most dire emergency, which we can all imagine happening—if it is thought that we need to revert to a longer period of pre-charge detention. It will be for Parliament to decide, and that is absolutely the right way to proceed.
Points of Order
Pete Wishart Excerpts(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
If the hon. Gentleman has a totally unrelated point of order, I am happy to hear it.
Pete Wishart
The BBC may or may not have got the Home Secretary’s statement, but the smaller parties most certainly did not get a copy of it in advance. The Government have been pretty good at getting statements to us recently. Will you ensure that the smaller parties, such as the Labour party, get a copy of the statement in advance of its being given?
Mr Speaker
In so far as I could fully hear the hon. Gentleman—I apologise if I failed to hear him, but there was quite a lot of noise in the Chamber—I would simply reiterate that there are certain requirements of courtesy on Ministers. Generally speaking, the requirements are complied with and I know that it is always the intention of Ministers to do so. Generally speaking, that happens and if it did not in this case, that was a mistake.
Controlling Migration
Pete Wishart Excerpts(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
The immigration cap may be designed for the south of England, but it definitely does not fit Scotland. Does the right hon. Lady not even start to understand and appreciate that Scotland has a different range of population and demographic issues? How can immigration caps possibly help Scotland, which is suffering from structural depopulation?
Mrs May
This proposal will help all parts of the United Kingdom, because it does two crucial things. It meets the British people’s need to see us controlling our immigration system, but it does so in a way that will enable business to bring in skilled workers. Many businesses in Scotland have spoken to us about the need to bring in skilled workers—in the energy sector, for example—and I believe that they will welcome our decision today.
Immigration
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Mr Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House calls on Her Majesty’s Government to act on the overwhelming public concern about the present scale of immigration by taking firm measures to reduce immigration without excluding those individuals who are genuinely essential to economic recovery, on which so much else depends.
It is with pleasure that I move the motion tabled in my name and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Nicholas Soames)—[Interruption.] I will move so that my hon. Friends can continue their conversation by themselves, Mr Speaker. I apologise for the absence of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex, but I think that he informed Front Benchers that he is attending a family funeral in Scotland today. The good news is that I am able to thank my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel)—who is in her place as usual, gracing this place as she does the Backbench Business Committee—and her colleagues for choosing this debate today.
I shall briefly say something about the cross-party group on balanced migration before I outline some of the themes I would like to touch on in the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex established the group in September 2008, with the clear intent of bringing into the House the debate on immigration that was going on in the country at large, but to which the House wished to appear deaf, to a large extent. We already have a number of distinguished supporters across Parliament, including a former Speaker, Lady Boothroyd, a former Archbishop of Canterbury, a former Leader of the Opposition, a former field marshal and several former Cabinet members. Perhaps more importantly, there is growing support in this House and the other Chamber for a clear and dispassionate discussion of this issue. Above all, we have the support of the electorate, who have been unfailing in their wish that immigration be debated carefully and without rancour in this Chamber.
When we first established the cross-party group, I was, needless to say, accused of being racist in wanting to raise the topic. It is therefore with pleasure that I put on record the fact that two previous Home Secretaries—my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) and my noble Friend Lord Reid—stamped on that absurd suggestion and welcomed a more rational debate in this place and beyond the walls of this Chamber.
I shall briefly summarise the group’s aims. They are to stop the population of this country being grown by immigration, and, secondly, to support the forces within the House and, now, the Government to move towards a balance between the number of people coming into the country and the number of people leaving it. Thirdly, given the concern about people coming here to work and about population growth, we would like the Government seriously to consider breaking the link between people coming here to work and almost automatically getting the right to citizenship. That is largely the route by which the population is being grown at present. If the Government were to take that action, they would certainly convince the electorate that they were delivering the coalition’s pledge. They might also get a bit more breathing space in which to find effective ways of reducing the numbers wishing to come here to work.
The themes that I want to touch on include the progress that has been made in recent years on this topic. I also want to look at some of the special pleading that has been going on, and I shall cite the position of the Mayor of London in that regard. I want to look at the immediate steps that the Government could further take to reduce the numbers coming here to work, at a time when we have not a rising but a very significant number of constituents who are unemployed.
I also want to broaden the debate by saying that, in the longer run, we cannot make sense of addressing the question of reducing the numbers coming here to work unless we are prepared to link that debate with the debates on welfare reform and education.
Finally, I want to touch on the electorate’s anxiety about this whole area and to voice their views about the nature of place and national identity, which they might well want to change but until recently they have had no ability to influence the debate.
Let me provide a progress report on how the debate is changing. Indeed, the Backbench Business Committee granting this day’s debate is itself a sign of that change. No Member will have memories of this issue being debated on the Floor of the House. We would have to go back to past Members, long since dead, to find people who participated in such a debate. Of course, we have had debates in Westminster Hall, but not in the main Chamber, where the principal debates take place. Today’s debate provides a really good sign of how the political climate is changing. We are grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire, who chairs the Backbench Business Committee, for this opportunity.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on securing this debate and on raising the issue sensitively and responsibly. I would like to challenge one of the assertions in his opening comments—the idea that this nation’s population is rising. Scotland is experiencing structural depopulation, and I would like him to acknowledge that. If he does, does he not think the best way to address it would be to give some of the UK nations the devolution of these powers, as in Australia, so that we can address the demographic issues of our population?
Mr Field
I was too good-mannered to touch on that topic. We have open borders in this country, so it is interesting to note that those coming here largely to work do not wish to go to Scotland. We may grieve that fact, but it is an open market and people seem to be expressing a preference. We may deplore it, and if one were a resident in London, one might wish that many coming here to work took a different view. The plain fact is that they do not, and I cannot believe that changing the devolution settlement would affect the balance of immigration between the constituent countries of the UK.
Pete Wishart
It happens in Australia—a nation where immigration powers have been devolved to the individual states to address the very issues that we have in Scotland. Surely if it works in Australia, it could work in the UK. The right hon. Gentleman is quite right that people do not choose to go to Scotland, so let us give them extra points in the points-based system to encourage them to think about coming to Scotland. There are solutions, so surely we should acknowledge them and try to implement them. [Interruption.]
Mr Field
My right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who chairs the Home Affairs Select Committee, laughed, as I did, at that suggestion, but I think it is a rather good one. I shall touch on the Migration Advisory Committee report later. The Government might wish to refer to it; it would solve some of our difficulties. It is an intriguing idea and I hope that it will be developed in the debate.
We were talking about how the debate has changed. Perhaps the best way of showing that is to look at the stance of the Institute for Public Policy Research. In the past, no organisation was more adamant that we should have open borders and less prepared to consider the downside of such a policy. It is very significant that, this week, the IPPR has moved into the mainstream of the debate by saying that this country benefits from immigration—I doubt whether anyone would wish to express a contrary view in this House, which is important on account of our teaching role in the country at large—but that the debate is about the numbers, not about the principle.
Mr Brazier
Indeed I shall, Mr Deputy Speaker. Let me make a general point, if I may. When we discuss immigration and the pressures that it creates on housing, nobody is suggesting that any immigrant should be denied the right to buy or rent a house. When we discuss the pressure on jobs, we do not mean that anybody legitimately coming into this country should be refused such opportunities. The point we are trying to make is that large movements of people create pressures on all those areas. I am simply making the point that the green footprint is one factor that we must take into account in deciding what level of immigration we allow into this country.
Let me move to a second such factor, which is housing. The right hon. Member for Birkenhead observed that it is estimated that approximately 40% of housing need in this country is accounted for by net immigration. In fact, eight years ago the Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimated that Britain would need 4 million new houses by 2022. If we rework the calculations based on how the numbers have moved on since then, we can see that that was almost certainly a substantial underestimate. In an area such as mine, where there are extreme housing shortages, that should give us all pause for thought.
Forty per cent. of housing need is accounted for by net immigration, but we easily forget that one of the most common reasons given by people for leaving this country—it is second or third in most of the recent surveys—is that they feel that it is overcrowded. In many cases, they want to move to places that are less congested. Ironically, even by balancing the numbers we are keeping up levels of pressure that are already felt.
The problem in a county such as Kent is not just that we have a large number of people on housing waiting lists. The need for more housing has a range of pernicious side effects. Almost 90% of all the land in Kent that is either not grade 1 agricultural land or protected as an area of outstanding natural beauty now lies on floodplains, and we are also short of water. In fact, as one engineer pointed out to me the other day, the new building work in east Kent, particularly around Ashford—much of which has been built on floodplains—has managed simultaneously to add substantially to the flooding risks in winter, and many hundreds of my constituents have had their housing wrecked by flooding, and to contribute to shortages of water in summer in a county that has had repeated hosepipe bans over the past 10 years.
Pete Wishart
In Scotland we are facing for the first time in 100 years the prospect of our population falling below the iconic 5 million mark. Surely we require international solutions throughout the UK as well as regional solutions, or we will all experience difficult problems.
Mr Brazier
I heard the hon. Gentleman’s intervention on the right hon. Member for Birkenhead and I do not want to go too far down that route, but I do not believe that it is practical. I know that the Australians have done it, and the hon. Gentleman made that point vigorously. I am familiar with the Australian system, but there are two big differences between the six states that make up Australia and the four nations that make up Britain. The first difference is that the entities in Australia are very large and the population centres—most of the population of each of the six states lives in one part of that state, except in Queensland—are a very long way apart, so it is easier to see that people are fulfilling their obligations. The second key difference between Australia and Britain is that Australia has a legal system that works, so if people break the rules, they get deported, but we do not. Trying to provide people with permission to come as long as they settle in Scotland is not practical. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I do not go further down that route.
Although the cost of housing has come back a little from its recent gross peak, it is still very expensive compared with housing in the majority of other countries, especially for first-time buyers. The primary effect of unaffordable housing is that vast numbers of young families either cannot get housing or work very long hours to pay their mortgages. Even nine years ago—the situation has worsened since then—a huge one-off survey by the OECD discovered some very sad facts about Britain. Some 63% of UK families thought that they only just managed on their household incomes and a higher proportion of Britons than inhabitants of any other major EU nation felt that they had to work more hours than was good for their family life.
Apart from a couple of small countries, we have almost the highest proportion of working mothers in the world. Of course mothers should be able to work—my wife worked when she was a mother—but mothers, including some who work as staff in the House of Commons, are being driven into working much longer hours than they necessarily want to when their children are small because they are paying mortgages for overpriced houses in an overcrowded country.
Along with housing, other relevant issues include health care, social housing and the cost of providing infrastructure. I have mentioned water shortages in Kent; huge costs are associated with the next dam that we are going to need. Those things all cost money and all have to be brought into the balance when we decide whether we want a population of 70 million in a generation’s time.
The third area that I want to discuss is employment. Let me reassure hon. Members that I do not suggest that anyone who is here legitimately, whether as a successful asylum seeker or through a legitimate marriage, should ever be disadvantaged in the job market. I do not suggest there should be discrimination, but we must do what the right hon. Gentleman did in his speech and examine the impact of allowing heavy net immigration, as has happened in the past few years, on the employment of our population. That immigration has not been overwhelmingly from Europe: in the past decade, about two thirds has been from outside Europe.
Interestingly, the employment of UK-born people averaged about 64% in the latest figures available, having fallen by half a per cent. The corresponding employment rate is slightly higher for non-UK-born people at 66.5%, so the right hon. Gentleman’s point about many of the incoming groups teaching us a lesson about the work ethic is true. However, that is not the whole story: we have one of the highest rates of workless households in the developed world. Nearly 4.8 million people of working age are not working and 1.9 million children are living in households in which no one works, many of them households in which no one has ever worked.
Government figures show that 1.4 million people in the UK have been on out-of-work benefits for nine or more of the past 10 years. As John Hutton said in 2006, when he was the Work and Pensions Secretary,
“if people have been on incapacity benefit for more than two years, they are more likely to retire or to die than ever to get another job.”—[Official Report, 24 January 2006; Vol. 441, c. 1305.]
It has already been observed but is worth repeating that, although the previous Government can take credit for creating more than 2 million jobs, almost three quarters of those were accounted for by people coming from outside the country. The previous Government effectively had a policy of replacement migration. I am a huge admirer and supporter of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pension’s shake-up of the welfare system, but, as he has hinted in his speeches, it can work only with diligent application of the Government’s plans on immigration, because if large numbers of people are encouraged to get back into the work force—there are some expensive carrots as well as sticks in that regard—they will not have a great deal of luck, as we pull very slowly out of a very difficult recession, if there is a steady stream of young economic migrants to take their place. We cannot do anything about people coming from eastern Europe, but we can do something about those coming from other parts of the world.
The fourth issue I want to address is the student system. I am very proud to represent the largest number of students in any constituency. I have two excellent universities in my patch and a number of highly valued English language schools that act as feeders to those universities and others. However, we must recognise that the problems in the student system that the right hon. Gentleman hinted at are very real. Unlike him, I do not believe that they are confined to a number of bogus colleges, but it is good that the Government are clamping down on them.
I know two people who regularly go to other parts of the world to market their organisations, both of which are legitimate—a Russell group university and an English language school with a very good record in the field—and they both say that the first thing they are asked in many countries is, “Once you get a foot in the door, can you stay?” All too often, people from even the most respectable institutions are tempted to say, “Well, yes, in practice, that almost always follows if that is what you want.” As the universities come under pressure, with the new funding regime starting in 2012, the temptation for those organisations, particularly those that are struggling economically and cannot fill their books, to take people who can pay the money but do not necessarily have the right academic qualifications will be huge. As the right hon. Gentleman pointed out, the largest single route for entry into this country is the student system.
We have to strike a balance, but that will be difficult. It is essential that the best lecturers have the opportunity to come if they want to spend part of their career here and we must have a system in which the brightest and best students see Britain as a place to come. That will be good not only for the countries they come from and the universities that receive them: a key third benefit is that, a generation on, Britain will have friends, potentially in high places. In striking the balance, we have to make sure that perfectly legitimate organisations at the lower end of the economic scale do not pad their numbers out with people who are willing to pay a year’s fees up front and then disappear into the system.
I conclude by drawing attention to an absolutely extraordinary hole in the immigration system that came to my attention at my constituency surgery on Saturday. My constituent, Mr Spence, is happy for me to share his experience with the House. He had a suitcase containing all his personal documents stolen. He has never had a passport, but it included his birth certificate. He was born in Rutland and he was told that to get another birth certificate from Rutland county council, he needed to fill in a form online and send a cheque for £9. He asked what verification was needed and was assured that there was none. Let me inform the House that Government guidelines to anyone applying for a job—I have seen a string of these from various organisations—say that someone who has either a passport or a birth certificate and a letter from a Department, which could be anything and does not require any identity checks, can come into this country.