(1 month, 1 week ago)
Commons ChamberI am sure the hon. Member will continue to raise issues in this Chamber until every Minister has met him on one issue or another, and I am sure all of our Home Office Ministers will be willing to do so.
Let me turn to the issues of asylum policy, many of which we discussed yesterday. I have highlighted them, and I will continue to do so because I am still, frankly, shocked about the amount of money that was spent.
We have heard lots about tough action on asylum seekers and tough action on immigration. What the Home Secretary has not talked about in her statement yesterday and her speech today is the value of immigration, how it assists our economy and how it enriches some of our communities. Can we hear some more about that from the Home Secretary, because surely we are not going to replace one Tory hostile environment with a new Labour hostile environment?
Let us be clear: immigration is important to our country and has been through the generations, with people coming to this country to start some of our biggest businesses or to work in a public services, but it also needs to be properly controlled and managed, so that the system is fair and so that rules are properly respected and enforced. The issue of illegal migration trebling over the last five years has, I think, reflected some fundamental failures around skills and fundamental failures around the way the economy works. It is important that those are addressed, and that we do not just shrug our shoulders and turn our backs. We believe in having a properly controlled and managed system, and that is the right way to deal with this.
Similarly, turning to asylum, it has always been the case that this country has done its bit to help those fleeing persecution and conflict, and we must continue to do so, but we must also have a properly managed and controlled system. We raised yesterday the shocking scale of the £700 million spent sending four volunteers—just four volunteers—to Rwanda. The decisions on the asylum hotel amnesty that the Conservatives have in effect been operating are actually even worse and have cost even more money. I know that the shadow Home Secretary has said that he does not recognise those figures, but I wonder if he actually ever asked for them. I would say to him that it was one of the first things I asked for, because I am sick and tired of seeing Governments just waste money with careless policies when they have never actually worked out how much they are going to cost.
The Conservatives’ policy under the Illegal Migration Act 2023—with the combination of sections 9 and 30 —was to have everybody enter the asylum hotel system or the asylum accommodation system, and never to take any decisions on those cases. There is a shocking cost to the taxpayer of up to £30 billion over the next few years on asylum accommodation and support. It also means that the rules just are not being respected and enforced. It is deeply damaging and undermines the credibility of the asylum system, but it also leaves the taxpayer paying the price.
Yes, the King’s Speech does bring forward new legislation on borders, asylum and immigration. That will include bringing forward new counter-terror powers, including enhanced search powers and aggressive financial orders for organised immigration crime, and we are recruiting new cross-border police officers, investigators and prosecutors, as well as a new border commander. This is part of a major upgrade in law enforcement, working with cross-border police stationed across Europe to be able to tackle, disrupt and dismantle the actions of criminal gangs before they reach the French coast.
Finally, let me turn to national security, because when it comes to defending our nation against extremists and terrorists, against state challenges and hostile threats, or against those who try to undermine our democracy and values, I hope this House will always be ready to come together. I pay tribute to the police and the intelligence and security services, which work unseen to keep us safe. In that spirit, I hope the whole House will be ready to support Martyn’s law, drawn up by the tireless Figen Murray in memory of her son Martyn Hett, so that we learn the lessons from the terrible Manchester attack, when children and their parents who went out for a special night never came home and lives could have been saved. That, I hope, is the moment to end on, because we will debate, argue and have differences of view, but in this House, at the very heart of our democracy, we can also come together to keep communities safe.
(1 month, 1 week ago)
Commons ChamberMy hon. Friend makes an important point, and I welcome him to his seat in Parliament. He is right that removals of failed asylum seekers have fallen by a third since 2010. Removals of foreign national offenders have fallen by a quarter. That is not good enough. It means that the rules are not being respected or enforced, and it is why we will set up a new returns and enforcement programme. We have committed to 1,000 additional staff to work on returns and enforcement, to ensure that the rules are respected, not only where we have returns agreements in place but looking at individual cases as well. We must ensure that we have a system that people have confidence in. There is a lot of chaos to tackle, but we are determined to do it.
The Home Secretary is absolutely right to lay into the Conservatives for their shambles of an immigration policy, which will define them for years to come, but all I am hearing is her being harder on asylum seekers. Enforcement seems to be her priority. When will we hear about the safe and legal routes that asylum seekers access to come to this country, and will she stop the dehumanising and scapegoating language, and pledge to take no quarter from the belligerents behind me?
As I said in response to the hon. Member for Honiton and Sidmouth (Richard Foord), ensuring that the UK always does its bit to help those who have fled persecution is really important. We have done so through different programmes in the past. We had the Syrian families programme back in 2015, which was important, but we also have to ensure that the system works and has credibility, and that the rules are enforced. Too often at the moment the rules are not enforced, but they need to be, so that everyone can respect the system. Also, too often we have criminal gangs causing havoc, able to undermine border security and making huge profits. It has become a criminal industry along our border, and that is deeply damaging. I agree that this cannot be about rhetoric; nobody should be ramping up the rhetoric, especially alongside gimmicks that do not work. We have to be serious about this issue and put in place sensible plans that work.
(9 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberIt is absolutely right to look at both violent and non-violent extremism. If the Home Secretary has listened to what my right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles has said on the issue over many years, she will know that the previous Government’s work was about looking at both violent and non-violent extremism and at the process of radicalisation from beginning to end. The whole point of providing counter-narratives is to tackle non-violent as well as violent extremism.
It is unfortunate that the Home Secretary chose to narrow the programme in the way she did and handed over community-led Prevent programmes to the Department for Communities and Local Government, which simply did not pursue them. The police have done very good work, but narrowing Prevent to just a police-led programme means that it has simply not been effective, and there have also been considerable gaps in the programme.
On the Secretary of State’s power of direction, there will be questions not only about how she intends to use it, but about what safeguards will ensure that she does use that power inappropriately.
The next challenge is how to deal with those who have become radicalised and pose a serious threat. Wherever possible, those people should clearly be prosecuted and passed through our courts. We know that there are difficult cases in which that is not possible, but people still pose a serious terror threat. It will come as no surprise to the Home Secretary or the House that we welcome the return of the relocation powers. She told the House in 2011 that the removal of the relocation power was a deliberate and desirable part of TPIMs. She said:
“Forcible relocation will be ended”,
and individuals
“will have greater freedom to associate.”—[Official Report, 26 January 2011; Vol. 522, c. 308.]
The Home Secretary defended her decision on relocation after Ibrahim Magag absconded in a black cab on Boxing day in 2012 once his relocation order had been revoked. She said at the time:
“I am confident in the TPIM package that was available”.—[Official Report, 8 January 2013; Vol. 566, c. 165.]
She also defended her decision in 2013, when Mohammed Ahmed Mohamed fled in a burqa after his relocation order was revoked.
No powers are perfect, but it is significant that no terror suspect has absconded under a relocation order. The Home Secretary has said in the House that she made those changes because control orders were under threat in the courts and TPIMs were not. In fact, both the former and current independent reviewer of terrorism legislation have made it clear that relocation orders were never under threat in the courts. It was a policy decision that was taken by the Home Secretary and the coalition.
The truth is that TPIMs have not worked. Despite the increased terror threat, only one is in place at the moment and it relates to someone who has left prison. TPIMs simply do not contain enough powers to be useful for the agencies or the police, or to be worth the extra effort involved. The independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, David Anderson, concluded in his review:
“A power to relocate subjects away from their home areas would be of real practical assistance…in distancing subjects from their associates and reducing the risk of abscond. It would also facilitate monitoring, save money and could help restore faith in a TPIM regime that has withered on the vine.”
It is not because of the increased terror threat that the regime has withered on the vine; it is because the TPIM regime simply was not effective without the relocation orders that it needed.
I have not heard from either Front Bencher the two words “civil liberties”. Is it the right hon. Lady’s view that the measures we are discussing today will tilt the balance between civil liberties and security too far towards security and compromise some very important civil liberties?
In fact, I talked about the importance of protecting both liberty and security when I opened my remarks. We need both in a democracy and it is the responsibility of Government to protect both. On TPIMs, I think that the Government were wrong to remove the relocation powers. They are important and effective, and it has been recommended that they should be restored by the independent reviewer of terrorism legislation, whose judgment has proved to be balanced and sensible on a series of issues. There are other areas where additional safeguards are needed, and I will come to them shortly.
(10 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberMy hon. Friend is right. She knows that many of the strongest advocates of fighting extremism or preventing extremism—for example, preventing Islamist extremism—are those in the Muslim communities themselves, such as Muslim community leaders who have done excellent work on preventing extremism. The Government should do more to support those communities in the work that such communities are often better at leading.
A lot is missing from this Queen’s Speech. There is no serious action to tackle domestic violence or rape, of which reported cases are going up, but prosecutions and convictions are going down on the Home Secretary’s watch. There are no national standards, and no commissioner on violence against women to make sure that such standards are enforced. I still fail to understand why the Government will not do more to prevent violent relationships among young people. Where is the proposal for the compulsory sex and relationship education that all our children should get to ensure that they are taught zero tolerance of violence in relationships from the start?
What about immigration? The Home Secretary’s approach is failing. She set a net migration target, and the Prime Minister promised—no ifs, no buts—that he would get immigration down to the tens of thousands. The Home Secretary said that she would meet the target by the end of the Parliament. Yet net migration is now at 212,000, which is hardly less than the 222,000 at the time of the last election. Despite all her rhetoric and four years’ worth of legislation, the public are more worried about immigration now than when she started as Home Secretary. However, universities and businesses are concerned that they cannot attract the best international talent, which they need. In the past year alone, the number of people saying that immigration is their biggest concern has doubled. It is the worst of all worlds, so why does she not stop pretending about meeting her failed target and act to address some of the practical concerns that people have about the impact of immigration on wages and jobs?
Will the right hon. Lady tell me what the Labour party is going to do? It seems to me that there are only two ways to deal with UKIP’s agenda: either to accommodate and pander to it, or to challenge the very assumptions on which it is based. Labour cannot look two ways on this matter—will it challenge or pander?
UKIP is exploiting people’s fears and concerns, and it needs to be challenged every step of the way. We need to set out the practical reforms that would address people’s concerns about the impact of immigration on their wages and jobs when employers exploit immigration to undercut local wages and jobs. I do not understand why the Home Secretary will not take such measures—we could support them—in a new immigration Bill.
(10 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberMy right hon. Friend makes an important point. We have said that we should argue within Europe for reforms to the way in which the European arrest warrant system works to make sure that it is properly proportionate. We must recognise that this is partly about the people we want to return to this country so that they can stand trial here. It is also about our not harbouring criminals from abroad who have come here and who should go back to their home country to stand trial. He is right that the system needs to work effectively, which means having that debate in Europe with other European countries about the reforms that we hope they will make. There has been considerable interest from many other countries in making such reforms. We need assurances from Ministers that we will have guarantees that we can immediately opt back into the European arrest warrant and important measures on 1 December, when the opt-out is given legal effect, and we want to know whether other member states have agreed to the plan.
The right hon. Lady gave a useful list of the fluff and nonsense that we are opting out of, but one thing that we are not opting back into is the European judicial network, which is an important body that helps to prosecute European arrest warrant cases. Does the Labour party have any view about what we should do about that to ensure that we can opt back in?
The hon. Gentleman points to a series of areas where the Government have proposed opting out or where it is not clear why they want to opt out and what the benefits are of doing so. We gather, too, that the Austrians, the Germans, the Spanish and the French have all called for the UK to opt into other measures as part of the negotiations. In addition to the list of 35 measures that the Home Secretary wants to opt back into, they list a further 13. The Home Secretary and the Justice Secretary should tell us whether they support those 13 measures or whether they will make them a red-line issue and call a halt to the negotiations if other countries insist on them so that a deal can be negotiated by 1 December.
The British head of Europol, Rob Wainwright, is worried about Britain opting out of some of the Europol regulations, because the new ones that the Home Secretary is prepared to support are not ready yet. He told the Select Committee on Home Affairs:
“I don’t think it is likely the new regulation will enter into force before December 2014 so there is likely to be a gap and, if there are not sufficient transitional measures in the meantime, then those accompanying eight measures would leave a gap, frankly, in terms of UK capability to carry out its work against international organised crime and terrorism.”
The Home Secretary should tell the House what she is doing about that, because it sounds serious and concerning. Has she put those measures back on her list to opt back into, and has she drawn up transitional measures?
We need to know, too, how much time and diplomatic resources the negotiation has taken up. For the remainder of the negotiating period, Italy will hold the presidency of the Council, and we understand that the Home Secretary is trying to persuade the Italian Government to make this a major priority and allow time for the European Council to negotiate. She should tell us if she really sees that as the top priority for the Council, and how many of her officials have to work on the issue, as opposed to the more substantial matters on which we should argue for reforms, such as changing the rules so that we do not have to pay child benefit and child tax credit for children abroad; or changing the rules on free movement for new accession states; or revisiting the posting of workers directive to strengthen protection for workers; or other things that would be worthwhile reforms in Europe. Instead, they are working on the power to opt out of a guidance document that we already follow. This is one of the most incredible examples of the gap between rhetoric and reality that the Government have come up with.
(10 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberI, 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.
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).
(10 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberThe 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.
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?
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.
(10 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberMy 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.
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?
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.
(11 years, 1 month ago)
Commons ChamberMy hon. Friend is right that that is what it looks like. Why else would there have been such late notice that we were going to have this debate at all today? We have had plenty of discussions over many months about the European arrest warrant and the opt-in, opt-out process. Everybody has known that this was coming, so why was this the subject for an emergency business statement? We have had very few emergency business statements in this Parliament, yet this somehow qualified for one. That raises questions as to whether this was about political party management rather than having proper respect for the House.
Can we clarify the Labour position? Would Labour opt out of the EU policing and human affairs chapters if these conditions were met? Would the Labour party opt out of these measures?
I am going to come on to the substance because our view is that we should not be opting out without proper guarantees and assurances in place about the key measures we think it is vital to be opted into.
Let me turn to the substance of the plan. Clearly, without time for scrutiny it is hard for the House to take a view on the mix of measures and the overall plan. I welcome the Home Secretary’s proposal to opt back into some of the measures, and I am glad she has ignored the Eurosceptic voices and has chosen to support the European arrest warrant. She is right about the seriousness of the cases in which it has been applied, and to support the arrest of Arunas Cervinskas, returned from Britain to Ireland after his attempted rape and serious assault of an 18-year-old girl, and the arrest only a few days ago of Mark Lilley, who was found hidden in a luxury Spanish villa after 13 years on the run for drug smuggling and dealing. He will soon be back in the UK to face his long prison sentence. Then there is the example that the Home Secretary used last week and again today of Hussain Osman, who was extradited back to the UK, after attempting to blow up a tube train, in less than two months. She is right to say that we cannot go back to the days when it took 10 years to extradite a terror suspect to France or when it took 11 years to get Ronnie Knight back from the costa del crime.
I am glad, too, that the Home Secretary has ignored the Eurosceptic voices and decided to support joint investigation teams; she has decided to support Operation Golf, in which 126 suspects from a Romanian crime gang were arrested for benefit fraud, money laundering and child neglect, and more than 270 trafficking victims were saved. We cannot go back to the days when foreign crime gangs were untouchable, allowed to damage our society or cause serious harm to victims. So I am glad that she has decided to ignore the Eurosceptic Back Benchers—to ignore the Fresh Start group—and instead to agree with the arguments made by Labour Members, by the police and by the Liberal Democrats.
I am glad, too, that the Home Secretary has accepted the exchange of criminal records, Eurojust, the co-operation to protect personal data, the co-operation to combat child pornography and measures on football hooliganism. She has come a long way since the Prime Minister described the European arrest warrant as “highly objectionable”. I am very pleased that the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister have done a U-turn on this; it is a shame that it has taken them so long.
Let me turn to some of the measures that the Home Secretary wants to opt out of—again, it is very hard to take a view without full scrutiny of the measures that the Government have set out.
(12 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberThe hon. Gentleman is right that we need a proper debate in Parliament and proper scrutiny. However, there are concerns about how the Home Secretary has set the matter out today. For example, the motion represents neither primary nor secondary legislation, so it is not clear whether the Home Secretary wants it to trump case law. She spent some time reading individual cases on to the record, so we can only assume that she wants the motion and today’s debate to trump case law and individual decisions. However, it is only a motion of the House. We have told her that we are happy to work with her on primary legislation to ensure that there is a proper legal framework.
Is it the right hon. Lady’s understanding that what the motion asks us to do—she is absolutely right that it is neither primary nor secondary legislation—is sign up to the Home Secretary’s immigration rules applying in their totality unless the shadow Home Secretary and her colleagues introduce another motion to challenge them?
That is not what the motion says. It deals simply with an issue of principle about whether Parliament should be able to set out how article 8 is interpreted. Various lawyers have said that the motion is little more than a statement of fact and is effectively the equivalent of the Home Secretary regarding the immigration rules as compliant with article 8.
That is what the motion does, but it is not clear whether the Home Secretary expects us to endorse the detailed content of individual immigration rules, only some of which she discussed in her speech—many were not discussed. She referred, for example, to foreign criminals. The Opposition believe that the Government’s broad approach to foreign criminals is the right one—we think it is right to take stronger action, including through the immigration rules and the Border Agency—but this process is not appropriate as a general rule for the scrutiny of the content of immigration rules. For Parliament to attempt such scrutiny just two sitting days after the rules were published would be inappropriate, and it would be unlikely to reassure the courts that the detail had been properly scrutinised and debated.
In particular, today’s debate cannot be about the detail of the wider family immigration rules, which were published only last week. Further scrutiny will be needed, because there are concerns about whether the rules are the most effective way of protecting the taxpayer, and whether they are fair and just. Those concerns should be debated properly, but that cannot happen in a debate on a general motion.
The motion refers simply to the broad immigration rules and cannot suffice as proper scrutiny or endorsement of the changes to individual rules. The Opposition are happy to support the Government’s approach to tackling foreign criminals, because we believe that more action needs to be taken, including through the immigration rules. We also believe the Government are right to consider how to ensure that article 8 is interpreted. In that way, they can provide a framework of guidance when it comes to dealing with foreign criminals through the immigration rules.
There is a wider challenge. The Home Secretary’s reason for introducing the motion was that she is concerned that more foreign criminals should be deported. She will know that the number of foreign criminals deported in 2011-12 fell by nearly 18%. If all those in the cases to which she referred—the 185 cases that the Home Office said were granted appeal on article 8 grounds—were instead deported, the number deported in the most recent financial year would still have fallen by around 15% on the previous year. Whatever the Home Secretary’s intention, the motion still deals with only a small minority of cases involving foreign criminals.
The border inspector has made it clear that one of the main reasons why people are not being deported is difficulty in obtaining travel documentation. Everyone recognises that that can be difficult and untimely in some cases, but those practical operations have clearly become significantly worse since the election, which is a deep concern. The Home Secretary has said nothing today to answer those concerns or to address the growing concern that the Border Agency’s performance is deteriorating substantially on the Government’s watch.
The Opposition want to be able to support the Government’s approach to tackling foreign criminals, but we need more answers from the Home Secretary about what she hopes the motion will do.
(13 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberIf 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.
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?
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.