Abu Qatada
Philip Davies Excerpts(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Mrs May
In all cases relating to terrorists, potential terrorists or those who are inciting others, our preference is always to be able to prosecute, and for those people to be behind bars. That is why all cases are looked at very carefully, and, obviously, the appropriate judgments are made.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
Does the Home Secretary not accept that the British Government are now in a rather pathetic, humiliating situation? A proud, sovereign country cannot deport foreign terrorists. It is no good the Home Secretary simply huffing and puffing about the decision. What the British public want to know is this: if we cannot secure the reforms that we need from the European Court of Human Rights, will we withdraw from the European convention? In the absence of that commitment, the Home Secretary will simply be spitting in the wind.
Oral Answers to Questions
Philip Davies Excerpts(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
Is the Home Secretary aware that organisations using SmartWater have seen a huge reduction in the amount of metal theft? Does she agree that that kind of British forensic technology is essential not only to reduce the amount of metal theft, but to provide the police with the evidence they need to bring criminals to justice?
Mrs May
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that contribution—he makes an extremely important and valid point. We are working with industry and others to see whether we can find other ways in which technology can help us to reduce metal theft by identifying metal and making it harder for the criminals.
Oral Answers to Questions
Philip Davies Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
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James Brokenshire
Yes. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that the Government have stated clearly their intention to ban below-cost sales, with the first measure being the banning of sales below duty plus VAT. I can confirm to him that those proposals will be implemented on 1 April next year.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
May I urge the Minister to concentrate on tough penalties for people who get involved in alcohol-induced antisocial behaviour instead of introducing this rather soppy, wishy-washy, nanny-state nonsense of minimum pricing of alcohol?
James Brokenshire
I thank my hon. Friend for his typical contribution to these debates. In dealing with issues of alcohol, we need to ensure that we have robust powers to deal with alcohol-related antisocial behaviour, as we are doing. We also need to deal with pricing, which is why we are banning below-cost sales, and with prevention, which is why we will be taking further action in relation to schools, parents and the health service.
Nick Herbert
I will continue to look at that factor, and am happy to agree to meet my hon. Friend—other hon. and right hon. Members have met me to discuss that issue. I should point out that forces can bid for funds through special grants for events or unforeseen circumstances. That is restricted to expenditure exceeding 1% of a force’s annual budget, but South Wales police has benefited from such awards in the past.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
T1. If she will make a statement on her departmental responsibilities.
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
A number of hon. and right hon. Members have referred to reports in the past few days on the UK border force. As the Home Office has already said, a senior official at the UK border force, Brodie Clark, has been suspended for acting without ministerial sanction, but I will make a statement to the House later today.
Philip Davies
Of all the people who were arrested and convicted as a result of the riots across the country in the summer, what estimate has the Home Secretary made of the number who were arrested and charged through the police use of CCTV and DNA?
Equality and Diversity (Reform) Bill
Philip Davies Excerpts(13 years, 2 months ago)
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Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
There are two things that my Bill seeks to do. First, it seeks to prohibit affirmative or positive action by public authorities, and secondly, it seeks to repeal the Sex Discrimination (Election Candidates) Act 2002, which removed the selection of candidates from the usual laws against discrimination, and legalised discrimination in the form of all-women shortlists.
I believe in equality of opportunity and fair chances for all, which is why I am very much opposed to the concept of equality of outcome, which means fixing a result before a process has begun. In the case of jobs, that can take the form of targets or quotas and, ironically, it means that there cannot be equality of opportunity. As a Conservative, and not a Marxist, that is something that I do not support. Without fair chances, there is no fair system, and someone will always be discriminated against. The Bill seeks to take away the obsession with equality of outcome, which has replaced equality of opportunity and meritocracy. Just like democracy, meritocracy has its imperfections, but it is by far the best option in the end. Social engineering and fixing processes are not right, as they have in-built, deliberate unfairnesses, and consequently, they are not only imperfect but unjust.
I should declare at the outset that I am the parliamentary spokesman for the Campaign Against Political Correctness, an organisation that I commend to everyone. I can only assume, Mr Speaker, it is only an oversight that so far you are not a member.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
Was the hon. Gentleman appointed or elected to that position?
Philip Davies
I think that I was given the position on merit, and I certainly was not given the job because I am a man. I do not think that I was given it because I am white. I would like to think that I was given the position on merit. Most Members know my views on political correctness.
Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)
As my hon. Friend will be aware, many new Members may not know those views, so perhaps he would like to enlighten them.
Philip Davies
It is unlike my hon. Friend to be so off the ball as not to know my views on political correctness, but for his benefit, I make it perfectly clear that I abhor all forms of political correctness, the restriction of free speech, and the way in which we try to rig jobs to get a particular outcome. I believe in merit, and that merit alone is the best form of action. Political correctness annoys the vast majority of the public, but it is not only the silly things. People concentrate on them, but it is the sinister side of political correctness that I do not like, including the erosion of free speech and people being made to feel that they are some kind of bigot or are xenophobic simply because they express opinions that other people do not hold. That is why it is time for the silent majority to stop being silent and stand up against the scourge of political correctness.
Damian Green
Does my hon. Friend not agree that the return of the racist joke as a comedy staple would be unacceptable? He says that all forms of political correctness are unacceptable, but does he not think that that is pushing it a bit too far?
Philip Davies
No, I do not. I do not accept that political correctness has helped with those things. I think that political correctness hinders the process of tolerance, as it builds up resentment that would not otherwise exist. I totally disagree with my hon. Friend, as I do not think that political correctness helps with tolerance: it breeds intolerance and resentment, which is why I oppose it in all its forms. I am not here to defend people who are intolerant of others, as that is unacceptable. Equally, I do not believe that people should be intolerant of people who happen to have a different opinion from them, which we often see in people who try to preach the language of tolerance.
It is not a question of my supporting intolerant or bigoted people, but I do believe in free speech. If we believe in free speech, we have to believe that people have a right to say things with which we disagree and which we may occasionally find offensive. That is the whole principle of free speech. Free speech does not mean that people are free to say only the things with which we agree—that is a nonsensical definition. The fact that I do not happen to agree with what somebody else says would not stop me defending their right to say it.
The Bill specifically tackles one of the worst forms of political correctness, which is institutionalised political correctness. The Bill prohibits the use of affirmative or positive action by local authorities. So-called equality and diversity measures have taken over where common sense used to prevail. The tick-box mentality has far-reaching tentacles in our schools, hospitals and emergency services. Everywhere we look there is evidence of this obsession.
My opposition to the whole equality and diversity agenda is, first, that it is total nonsense in its own right. The terms “equality” and “diversity” have no real meaning, and they do not necessarily sit comfortably together. Secondly, such measures are highly discriminatory and do not sit well with those being discriminated against or, perhaps less obviously, with those supposedly benefiting from the discrimination. Thirdly, they are responsible for increasing, not decreasing, racism and sexism, in my opinion. Fourthly, they are a total and utter waste of our money.
So-called equality and diversity is nonsense because we are told that it is all about being representative and that it is essential for organisations and businesses to reflect the community they serve. It is rather patronising to think that the rules have to be rigged to enable women or ethnic minorities to get a job. People from ethnic minorities and women are more than capable and are sufficiently talented to get a job in competition with people who are men and white, on a fair and transparent basis. They do not need to have the rules rigged in their favour in order to get jobs, and it is patronising to suggest that they do.
The people who are really racist and sexist in this country are the ones who see everything in terms of race and gender. I do not. The gender, religion and sexuality of the person applying for a job should be irrelevant.
Mr Wayne David (Caerphilly) (Lab)
Why does the hon. Gentleman think women are so under-represented in senior positions in industry?
Philip Davies
If the hon. Gentleman will allow me, I will come to that later. He raises an important issue and I will tackle it directly. If he feels that I have not done so, I invite him to come back to me later and I will have another stab at it for him.
The idea of businesses and organisations reflecting the community they serve is nonsense. A certain proportion of our local communities are criminals. A certain proportion of people are sent to prison. Are we really saying that, because it is so important that all organisations and all businesses reflect the community they serve, a certain proportion of every organisation should be made up of criminals because they make up a certain proportion of the population? That is nonsense. Nobody seriously believes that every organisation should reflect the community it serves. That is just trite.
Nobody—and I mean nobody—who I know is remotely concerned when white men are under-represented, so the issue is not really one of equality and diversity at all. The aim is to make some people more equal than others. To illustrate the point, I note that there seem to be very few male midwives about, yet nobody, to my knowledge, has seriously suggested in the House that there should be positive action to try and ensure that 50% of midwives are male. Similarly, the number of white men, or indeed women, who work in Indian restaurants up and down the country is not an issue, nor should it be. The first thing that crosses my mind when I go into a south Asian restaurant is how good the chicken madras is and how well it has been cooked, not what sex or ethnicity the waiters and chef are. That is the way it should be.
Tom Brake (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
Has the hon. Gentleman looked at what percentage of people who apply to be midwives are men, and what percentage of men subsequently get a post?
Philip Davies
The hon. Gentleman makes an extremely good point. I will deal with it later. One of the things that my Bill tries to repeal is the legislation providing for all-women shortlists. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman might like to ask himself the same question when it comes to the number of women MPs—how many of those people put themselves forward to become MPs, against the number who are selected. He may find the answer to his own question in that conundrum.
Apart from those whom one would expect to oppose equality and diversity measures, there are many others whom those who push political correctness would rather sweep under the carpet, as their views are inconvenient to the argument.
Mr Nuttall
On a couple of occasions my hon. Friend has referred to political correctness. Will he provide the House with a definition of the term?
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend makes a good point. Political correctness is one of those things that is very difficult to define, but people know it when they see it. I will have a go for my hon. Friend. I would say that political correctness is the promotion of positive discrimination and the restriction of free speech carried out in the name of minorities, but usually initiated by white male middle-class lentil-eating sandal-wearing Guardian-reading do-gooders with too much time on their hands and a misguided guilt complex. My hon. Friend may have a better definition and I am happy for him to offer one. That is my initial stab at a definition of political correctness.
Mr Nuttall
Is it true to say, then, that the political correctness agenda is not set by those whom the white middle-class males seek to “protect”?
Philip Davies
That is my experience. Most of these measures are not perpetrated by the people whom they are supposed to help. On many occasions the people in whose name it is supposedly done are the ones who feel most patronised by it and find it most unhelpful. I encourage my hon. Friend to go to the website www.capc.co.uk which gives some examples. There is a section there called “Not In My Name” where many people say how unhelpful such measures are for those in their situation, whether they are people who are gay, women, disabled or from an ethnic minority. There are countless such examples.
Philip Davies
My view about freedom of speech is that anything should be able to be said, except—the law is very good on this—for example, something encouraging someone to violence. That is unacceptable. It is clearly criminal. But people should be able to express an opinion, whether I happen to agree with it or not. If we go down the line of saying that there are certain things that people should not be allowed to say, we face the question who decides that. Who decides what people are allowed or not allowed to say? Whose values do we accept? The hon. Gentleman may be content that everything he says falls within the parameters of what is allowed, but what happens when he wants to say something that someone else has deemed not permissible?
When we have got to the stage, as we have in this country, where ordinary decent people are petrified about what they say in case some zealot somewhere down the line takes offence at it, which is the situation that many of our constituents find themselves in, we have a problem. For the country that is for ever going round the world trying to promote freedom, we should be well aware that some of our constituents feel that freedom of speech is being eroded under our noses.
It is telling that we are very precious in the House about the fact that we are allowed to say anything in the House and we cannot be taken to a court of law on the basis of what we have said. Our freedom of speech is totally and utterly protected. The hon. Gentleman can say something incredibly controversial and he cannot be taken to court on the basis of what he said. However, he seems to be suggesting that he should be able to say anything he wants in here but that everyone else, including his constituents, should be subject to some kind of state control over what they can and cannot say. That is not the kind of country I want to live in, even if it is the kind he wants to live in.
Chris Bryant
The hon. Gentleman slightly overestimates the value of freedom of speech in the House. It is true that a Member could, in theory, say absolutely anything, but you, Mr Speaker, would upbraid them if they misused or abused that freedom, as happened earlier this year with a Liberal Democrat Member. There are also things that we are simply not allowed to talk about in the House, most notably the royal family and their activities.
Philip Davies
That is a separate issue, but the hon. Gentleman has made his point.
The point my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) made about how the people political correctness is supposed to benefit do not actually feel the benefit has also been made by Anjana Ahuja. Writing in The Times, she explains how her opinion was once sought by the newspaper’s executives on how to attract non-white writers. The paper planned to offer internships to ethnic minority candidates who had graduated in media studies. She says:
“It was well intentioned but misguided, I ventured, because I knew of no colleague whose passport to these venerable corridors had been secured by such questionable means. There were historians, linguists, lawyers, classicists, philosophers, biologists, physicists, even an Egyptologist—but no media studies graduates. My view was this: if a brown writer sails in on an easier ticket than a white wordsmith, The Times would be construed as patronising rather than progressive and the intern would struggle against whispers of lowered standards…which is why, in the miserable tale of Ali Dizaei, the Scotland Yard commander convicted of corruption, the fact that sticks out most is the continued, seemingly pointless and possibly harmful existence of the National Black Police Association. Substitute ‘black’ with ‘white’ and an outdated collective becomes an illegal organisation that is morally impossible to defend. Why partition members of the same profession along the lines of skin colour? I would not join an organisation for black journalists (or female ones) because its identity lies wholly in the exclusion of white hacks (or male ones).”
Batook Pandya, director of Bristol-based charity Support Against Racist Incidents, has said of a positive action scheme that meant that fire service open days were limited to ethnic minority recruits only:
“None of these open days should have been closed to white communities. I couldn’t give two hoots if they are white, black, Asian, male or female—they should simply be the best person for the job.”
Roshan Doug, writing in the Birmingham Post, has stated:
“I don’t want people promoted purely on the basis of the colour of their skin—call it ‘positive discrimination’ or something else. To me that’s rather patronising—as if Asians and blacks are a little more than token staff to appease the CRE… I would like to see the best men and women for the job.”
I believe that people are appalled, and rightly so, when they hear that a white person has been turned down for a job because of the colour of their skin. The same people would be appalled if anyone, whatever their ethnicity, was turned down for a job simply because of the colour of their skin. When that happens, it inevitably leads some people wrongly to conclude that the benefiting group in question has asked for this special treatment. As I made clear earlier, that is not the case at all. Some politically correct do-gooder has tried to do the right thing or, as is increasingly the case and perhaps more worryingly, someone is trying to comply with equality law.
Speaking for the Liberal democrats on the Second Reading of the Equality Bill, the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Lynne Featherstone), now the Minister for Equalities, said:
“I turn to positive action. It seems completely illogical that we should be allowed to fast-track the training of ethnic minority and women police, but not be allowed to fast-track their employment. The rebalancing of the workplace is hugely important, and I do not disagree with the Leader of the House’s vision of the bank boardrooms of the future. When both the genders make a decision, it is likely to be more balanced.”—[Official Report, 11 May 2009; Vol. 492, c. 581.]
That is just the sort of thing that winds people up. If people want real equality, it must be just that, not some groups being more equal than others. What has a young, white male ever done to deserve being turned away from a dream career in the police force simply because he is the wrong colour and the wrong gender?
Mr Nuttall
That is a very important point, because it seems to me that, where positive discrimination is being exercised, young, white males are today paying a price for the fact that their forefathers were not subject to those measures in years gone by. Why should that be so?
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. Perhaps we also ought to reflect on the fact that in many parts of the country the people who are finding it most difficult to get a job are young, white males from very poor and deprived backgrounds. They are among those who are finding it hardest to find employment. It must be a double kick in the teeth for them to find that they are denied the opportunity to attend a fire service open day simply because they happen to be white. I really do not know why on earth should have a Government who are prepared to sit and tolerate that kind of thing.
Mr Nuttall
Does my hon. Friend think that those feelings may have played a part in the riots that took place this summer?
Philip Davies
I am not sure about that, to be honest, because it is very difficult to know. As far as I am concerned, the riots were largely born out of opportunism and criminality. I would not like to provide any kind of excuse for the behaviour we saw, but I do not doubt that many people feel a resentment and frustration that would otherwise not exist. I do not know whether the riots had anything to do with it, but I certainly think that the worrying increase in support for the British National party in recent years was born out of such frustration. It is no good Members complaining about the rise of such wholly unacceptable parties and then pursuing policies that are meat and drink to those parties. If we are to stop people voting for the BNP, we must remove the frustrations that led them to do so in the first place.
The cost of all these equality and diversity plans, action points, schemes and training courses is immeasurable, but one thing we can be sure about is that they cost an awful lot of money. I would always oppose such needless expenditure, but at a time when people are losing their jobs, having to tighten their belts massively and fearing what the future holds, it is even more inconceivable that so much money is thrown down the drain each year in the public sector on the equality and diversity agenda. The Government Equalities Office spent a whopping £62 million in the year to March 2011, and other Government Departments have their own equality budgets on top of that. That is before we get on to local police forces, hospitals, fire brigades and schools, which all have to spend their money on equality and diversity measures, taking it away from front-line services.
To give one example, the North East Ambulance Service NHS Trust is looking for an equality and diversity manager, with a salary of between £30,460 and £40,157 pro rata. The job description is “to act as a lead within the trust on the implementation of our equality strategy and action plan. The successful applicant will have a key role in developing the trust’s approach to the new NHS equality and delivery system.” Who in their right mind could think that an equality and diversity manager in an NHS ambulance service is a priority at this time, compared with a nurse or another ambulance driver? When someone dials 999, they want an ambulance, not an equality and diversity officer. What on earth is there to consider for the ambulance service? Surely if someone is injured they are looked after irrespective of their gender and race. It is all a load of nonsense.
There is another such vacancy, at the University of Greenwich, which is selecting someone to be its Equality and Diversity Champion, salary approximately £40,000—well, at least students now know where their tuition fees are going. The job description states:
“You will be responsible for promoting an integrated approach to equality and diversity issues across the university, and provide Schools and Offices with a point of expert reference and guidance on equality and diversity issues. You will work with other university offices to continue to improve our performance as an employer and further develop disability access for staff. You will be an experienced equality professional with an ability to develop and implement policy.”
Mr Nuttall
Would my hon. Friend like to venture how anybody could become qualified as an “experienced equality professional”? It rather suggests that there must be a whole career path for equality officers.
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is right, and that is part of the problem we now face, because the equality and diversity industry—that is what it now is: an industry—is incredibly powerful. There is now a huge lobby, and so many people’s jobs depend on the industry, that it is difficult to tackle, because as soon as anybody tries to argue against the point of such things, those people descend on them. My hon. Friend may well find that, and I am sure I will at some point.
Those people descend on others like a ton of bricks, because, although they believe in equality and diversity, they do not believe in the equality or diversity of other people’s opinions; everyone has to agree with them on being against such things; otherwise, they are not entitled to that opinion at all. It always amazes me how such people, who always preach tolerance and diversity, are so intolerant of other people when they have an opinion that differs from theirs.
I prefer the person who drafted the advert for the Royal Liverpool and Broadgreen University NHS Trust, who at the end of it wrote:
“Usual rubbish about equality, equal opportunities employer etc.”
That just about sums it up perfectly.
Mr Nuttall
I appreciate that my hon. Friend, for reasons that I know not, opposed last week’s motion to allow electronic hand-held devices in the Chamber, but one great advantage of now being allowed such devices is that I was able immediately to follow his advice, go to www.capc.co.uk and access the website of the Campaign Against Political Correctness. On it, there can be found the “Not in my name” section, where Bolaji Alajija, a 42-year-old student nurse from north London, says:
“I don’t see why there is all the fuss. What’s the harm in having a black doll? It’s exactly the same as a white doll. People shouldn’t be so sensitive.”
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I remind Members that, although they are allowed to use iPads, they have to make a speech without continuously reading from them. I am sure Mr Nuttall will take that on board.
Philip Davies
I am very grateful for your guidance, Mr Deputy Speaker, particularly as someone who voted against allowing these wretched things to be used in debates. If anyone was ever going to convince me that I made the wrong decision in that vote, however, it is my hon. Friend, who has gone to an excellent website, and I certainly commend him for doing so.
The second part of my Bill tackles the Sex Discrimination (Election Candidates) Act 2002. I was not a Member when the Sex Discrimination (Election Candidates) Bill was debated, but it will come as no surprise to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, to know that had I been I would have definitely opposed it. I have a great deal of time for many of my female Conservative colleagues, we have some extremely able MPs and, for the record, I have excellent female staff. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the greatest Prime Minister this country has ever had was, indeed, a woman, but I do not particularly care if the House is made up of 10% women or 90%. For me, that will never be an issue, so the fundamental premise of the 2002 Act will always be totally flawed.
The most important thing for me is not how many men or women are in Parliament, but how many Conservatives there are in Parliament, and I challenge anybody who is obsessed with the idea that the most important end in itself is that we have more women in Parliament. If, for example, a Conservative male fought a marginal seat against a Labour female, would any of my hon. Friends campaign for her on the basis that it was so important to get more women into Parliament, or would they campaign for him? I venture that they would campaign for him, because I am sure that for all Government Members, apart from of course the Liberal Democrats, it is far more important to have more Conservatives in Parliament than to be worried about how many MPs there are of a particular gender.
During the Bill’s Second Reading on 24 October 2001, almost 10 years ago to the day, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May), now the Home Secretary, said:
“I shall be honest with the House. There was a time when I never thought that I would stand up in the Chamber and support such a Bill.”—[Official Report, 24 October 2001; Vol. 373, c. 334.]
I wish she had stuck to her earlier opinion, as it would have been the more Conservative thing to do.
While my right hon. Friend supported the Bill, the former Member for Maidstone and the Weald, Ann Widdecombe, did not. In the debate, she said:
“The Bill is fundamentally wrong. I must ask this question; are all the men in this place sound asleep? Do they realise what the Bill means for them? Have they thought that positive discrimination for women can entail negative discrimination for men?”
The irony is that, as those in the House at the time were already Members, they did not need to worry about candidates, so the Bill was effectively about kicking away the ladder of opportunity from men who had not yet reached the House. I wonder how those Members would have felt if they had been told, “Sorry, I know you would make an excellent MP, but we’re going to stop you applying for the seat that you’ve lived in all your life, because you happen to be a man.” How would any men present today have felt if such a rule had applied to them?
Ann Widdecombe also hit the nail on the head, when during the debate she asked:
“What would that mean for a man in that constituency who had given to his local council the same lifelong service that the hon. Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough (Helen Jackson)—
at the time—
gave to hers”?
Mr Nuttall
I had the honour of standing against the then Member for Sheffield, Hillsborough in 1997. Does my hon. Friend agree that she was able to succeed in a northern, working-class city without any positive discrimination whatever?
Philip Davies
Absolutely. My hon. Friend is entirely right. People such as Helen Jackson made their way to Parliament on merit alone, and they should be commended for that. I am sure that they would not have wanted it any other way.
Ann Widdecombe went on to say:
“Let us say that the man had worked there and escaped from there, and that he wanted to apply for the seat when it fell vacant. He would not be able to represent the constituency if all-women shortlists were in operation.
“That would be the reality for men under this pernicious Bill, yet hon. Gentlemen welcome it as a great step forward. It is a massive step towards inequality for men, and the poor souls just let the women walk all over them. They do not appear to care what will happen to them.”
And Miss Widdecombe also said:
“I can tell the hon. Gentleman that when I entered a constituency selection committee and saw that most of the people there were women, my heart used to sink. We should not get the idea that discrimination against women is performed solely by men. It is not… If I had been in a selection committee anteroom with two men who had got there by beating off all the competition yet I was only there because a place had been reserved for a woman on the shortlist, I would not feel helped. I would feel humiliated, insulted and patronised. I am glad to say that my party never did that to me. —[Official Report, 24 October 2001; Vol. 373, c. 352-53.]
The fact of fewer women MPs is always blamed on discrimination, but in reality—certainly in the Conservative party—at the time of the Bill’s discussion roughly the same proportion of women who applied for seats were selected. The lack of women MPs is, therefore, much more to do with the fact that they do not put themselves forward.
As India Knight put it so well:
“I’ll tell you what the issue is with women in business or women and work”—
and this deals with the point that the hon. Member for Caerphilly (Mr David) made earlier—
“It is extremely simple. It is not to do with sexist dinosaur male bosses or with male-dominated industries crushing our genius. It is not to do with glass ceilings. It is to do, very straightforwardly, with the number of hours we are prepared to put in. If you’re happy to work a 16-hour day and never see your children, you too can become a master of the universe…. Few women are prepared to make that kind of sacrifice. This is entirely their right and good on them. However, it is surely both dishonest and intensely stupid to apportion blame—in the form of so-called corporate discrimination—to what is essentially a completely personal choice: power versus being there at bath time, conferences versus the park, business trips versus getting home in time for homework, giving ‘110%’ versus sleeping more than five hours a night.”
The words of India Knight address the point made by the shadow Minister.
The 2002 Act was supposed to be temporary, and apparently was supported on that basis. I do not know many “temporary” things that have run for more than a decade. As things stand, the Act has a further two decades to go, it having been granted a massive “temporary” extension in the recent Equality Act.
Some people will say that we need more women MPs so that we can be more representative and so that women’s issues can be addressed better. That is utter rubbish. It is ridiculous to suggest that women are more likely to be better represented by women and that men are better represented by men. I am very proud of the fact that I represent all my constituents—men or women—equally and to the best of my ability. I suspect—although I do not know for sure—that just as many women voted for me at the general election in Shipley as did men.
Mr Nuttall
Can my hon. Friend confirm that he also represents constituents of all races equally, despite being a white man himself?
Philip Davies
My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and that applies to all hon. Members. We treat all of our constituents equally and we represent all of them to the best of our ability, irrespective.
It is interesting that we keep hearing about “women’s issues” as this seems rather sexist and patronising. What are “women’s issues”? Many issues that are tagged as so-called women’s issues are also important to men. I have often heard that education is a women’s issue, but I would have thought that education was a family issue and was of just as much interest to men and fathers as to women and mothers.
I venture that the issues that a Conservative woman is concerned about are more closely aligned with the issues that a Conservative man is concerned about than they are with the issues that concern a Labour woman. The idea that certain issues are women’s issues is patronising and wrong.
Philip Davies
I have clearly been speaking in Swahili for the past half an hour. Yes, there is still sex discrimination, and it exists in the Act that my Bill is attempting to repeal. My Bill would make it illegal to have any form of sex discrimination. If that is the hon. Gentleman’s agenda, I presume that he will support my Bill in the Lobby, because it would prevent any positive action or discrimination. It would guarantee that there would be no sex discrimination at all. Jobs would be given on merit alone. I therefore look forward to his support in the Lobby later.
The argument that all of this is optional, and that no party is forced to discriminate, is also nonsense. All parties in favour of bringing the law in were obviously highly likely to use it once it was passed. I am sad to say that on some occasions even the Conservative party appears to have fallen into this socialist trap.
Some people will say that it is all very well my giving my views on this issue, because—as a white male—I have had it really easy. But I agree with Kenan Malik who says:
“I reject identity-based representation not only because the idea that one should be represented only by one’s own kind is, and always has been, at the heart of the racist agenda, but also because such representation acts as an obstacle to what you call ‘a genuinely participatory democracy’.”
I always find it strange that people can say that they are not sexist and racist, but happily support measures and notions that are just that.
The public’s view of all-women shortlists is also clear. At the 2005 general election Labour lost one of its safest seats, Blaenau Gwent, because of the party’s politically correct obsession with all-women shortlists. Those who voted in the election were not just men: it was clearly offensive to women too. Where does it all end—quotas and targets for people based on their sexuality, their eyesight, their hair colour or their star sign? If not, why not? Why limit it to just gender and race? Why not go the whole hog and have discrimination based on people’s background or hair colour or any of these other things?
I wish to play my trump card against opponents of this part of my Bill, and that is Baroness Thatcher. No whingeing, relaying of statistics, bleating on about unfair treatment or complaining about sexism can explain away Margaret Thatcher. Not only did she get selected as a candidate, which is apparently so difficult for women without this House rigging the rules in their favour, but she managed to become a Minister and, as we all know, a long-serving and excellent Conservative Prime Minister.
Philip Davies
The point is that women can—although not in his party or in the Labour party. In our party, almost 40 years ago, a woman was quite capable of getting to the top on merit alone. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman thinks that the women in his party have not been good enough to lead his party—
Philip Davies
If the hon. Gentleman thinks that the women in his party are more than capable of being leader, why have they not become leader? Is he saying that his party is sexist and does not allow women to become leader even though they are good enough to be leader? If he is saying that, he should not tarnish the Conservatives’ reputation by trying to impose ridiculous laws. He should tackle the sexism in his own party instead, if that is why he supports this nonsense.
Margaret Thatcher was leader of the Conservative party—the very party that is constantly accused of sexism and appears to want to beat itself up about it—more than a third of a century ago. It gets even better, because she was clear, years after leaving office, that all-women shortlists should be avoided. In her book on statecraft she says that
“the use of quotas applying to the appointment or promotion of individuals because of their collective identity or background is an unacceptable incursion on freedom, however well-intentioned the motives. Nor does it help those who are its intended beneficiaries. Individuals from these groups may well feel patronised; their professional reputations in posts which they would anyway have attained on merit are diminished, because they are thought to occupy them by special privilege; and they are likely to become targets of resentment and possibly even ill-treatment.”
If any male Members are still in favour of all-women shortlists I say what I have always said to them—“Come on. Do the honourable thing and, instead of shafting other men who are trying hard to get into this place, put your money where your mouth is. If it is so important to you that you want to support legalised discrimination, go ahead, resign your seat so a woman can be selected in your place.” That is the best thing that proponents of this approach could do, but it is amazing how few of them are prepared to do it. They are not so keen that there should be more women in Parliament that they are prepared to make space themselves to allow a woman in—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) says that I am talking drivel, but I look forward to him resigning his seat the moment the House rises so that a woman can take his place. Or is it that women should represent only other constituencies, not his? Until hon. Gentlemen are prepared to take that step, I am afraid that people will see through it as gesture politics of the worst possible kind.
People can say I am misguided, that I am missing something, that I need to be educated on the benefits of positive action and positive discrimination—but what would they say to all the people I quoted, who are from the very groups that equality and diversity moves are supposed to help? Would they say that those people were wrong and that they just do not get it, either, whatever “it” is?
This is a case of the emperor having no clothes. Most Members want to be seen to be in favour of nice-sounding ideals, and many confuse political correctness with doing the right thing. They do not want to be the ones to say that they do not get the whole equality and diversity agenda or, worse still, that it is having a negative effect on race relations and good community cohesion. I, however, am prepared to say that the emperor has no clothes. The whole concept of equality and diversity is, at best, a mistaken attempt to pursue a fantastical idea of equality, but, at worst, a dangerous piece of social engineering that encourages and praises discrimination against certain groups of people based on things they cannot change.
I do not believe that this is the right thing, and I certainly do not believe that it is a fair thing—and I am not alone. There are many, many people who agree with me. In an ICM poll, a massive 80% of people in Britain said that they were fed up with political correctness. Members will be delighted to hear that the poll was completely representative and covered a very diverse range of people. The vast majority of people in all categories said they were fed up with political correctness, including women and people from all ethnic origins.
Britain can truly hold its head up and say that it is not racist or sexist only when people are given jobs on merit, and merit alone. People should be given jobs regardless of their sex, age, race or sexual orientation, not because of any of these factors. This Bill gives the House a chance to vote for something that can undo one of the biggest inequalities around. It can vote to reintroduce fairness, to remove the clear injustice of equality of outcome in the name of equality and diversity, and to promote real equal opportunities for all. I commend the Bill to the House.
Mr MacShane
May I just make my points, and then I will give way? I do not mean to be discourteous, but I want to be brief because I am conscious that other people want to speak on other issues.
The very first political pamphlet I wrote in 1978 was an appeal to the BBC and other media organisations to hire journalists who were not white—at the time, we would say they were from the Asian or Afro-Caribbean community—because there was not a single byline reporter or presenter of that description on TV, despite the fact that by then we had hundreds of thousands, if not more, among our fellow British citizens and journalists I worked with, but in subordinate roles for which they had been able to offer themselves. I am glad, 30 years later, that that is not the case. We do not have a mono-coloured BBC or ITV or bylines in all our great newspapers evidently comprising only sturdy British citizens.
Mr MacShane
If it is on that point, of course I give way to the hon. Gentleman.
Philip Davies
It appears that the right hon. Gentleman has form in this regard. He was a white journalist who was insistent that somebody else should have to give up their job in order to make way for somebody from an ethnic minority, but apparently he was not volunteering to fall on his own sword. Now he is advocating that we should have more women in Parliament, and yet he still refuses to fall on his sword to help to make that happen. If he feels so strongly about it, why does he not have the courage of his convictions, put his money where his mouth is, and start doing the right thing?
Mr MacShane
The hon. Gentleman is quite wrong. I did fall on my sword, in the sense that the BBC made me do so by liberating me from its employment at the time. Whether I was replaced by a journalist from the black and minority ethnic community, I do not know. The point is that we expanded journalism, and yes, we went in for positive discrimination in the sphere of broadcasting, and I am very glad about that. Certainly, when the time comes for me to leave my position as MP for Rotherham, I will be delighted if there is an all-women shortlist. The real question that the hon. Gentleman’s party has to ask is why, even with the all the people put on to the A-list, there are still so few women sitting on the Conservative Benches.
Tom Brake
I am grateful for that intervention, because the hon. Gentleman has given me the opportunity to confirm that that support is available to the sort of person he describes. That is because we recognise that people from poorer socio-economic backgrounds struggle to get elected as Members of Parliament.
Philip Davies
The right hon. Gentleman is hitting the nub of the issue. Does he think that the Conservative party, for example, would be much more diverse if it replaced Rupert from Kensington and Chelsea with Jessica from Kensington and Chelsea, which is what the legislation he is defending seeks to do? Does he not think that it would make the party more diverse to replace Rupert from Kensington and Chelsea with George from Newcastle? That point is not addressed by the legislation that he is defending.
Tom Brake
If the hon. Gentleman will excuse me, I will allow him to push for the particular balance that he would like to see in the Conservative party.
The hon. Gentleman gave a description of people who worry about equality and diversity issues, which I thought was quite an accurate description in some respects of those who are obsessed with political correctness. He said that they tend to be white, male and have too much time on their hands. I would add that they mourn the loss of empire, are bitter at the loss of their undeserved supremacy and are stuck in the last century but one. That would be an accurate description of those who are obsessed with political correctness.
The Bill has one merit, in that it allows us to debate these issues. We should acknowledge that although merit is a fine thing, in practice there are many fields of life in which merit is not sufficient to ensure that people make the progress that they should be allowed to make. I therefore hope that the Bill will make no further progress.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
It is a great joy to be here at such an exciting moment in the parliamentary calendar. I sort of congratulate the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) on bringing forward the Bill, although it is a bit of a fib of a Bill because it is entitled the Equality and Diversity (Reform) Bill, whereas it should, of course, be called the Political Correctness Gone Mad (Abolition) Bill.
Chris Bryant
There is clearly significant prejudice against the hon. Gentleman in the Table Office. I should say that that prejudice is entirely shared by those on the Opposition Benches, and I suspect that it is shared a little by those on the Liberal Democrat Bench, which is a rather singular Bench today.
I start from the fundamental principle that we were all created equal. That comes from a religious position, although in my theology I am very heterodox—perhaps unusual for me. I believe that all human beings were created equal and that we, as politicians, should be seeking to ensure that that equality is reflected in the way that people are able to live their lives. I know humanists who come from a completely different perspective, but who end up at the same point of believing that we are all equal and that that equality should be matched in the way that we structure society.
The truth of the matter is that the world is not equal. There is inequality not only between rich people and poor people in a country, but between rich parts and poor parts of a country and between rich countries and poor countries. My fundamental assumption, therefore, is that it will always be a struggle to try to achieve equality, and not an easy one. One has always to try to match equality with fairness. Sometimes, when one is trying to achieve equality, which might be fairer in one regard, one ends up with another form of unfairness.
The hon. Gentleman, in the way that he styled his comments and in the way that he styles his politics, runs away too much from the desire for genuine equality in society. I will raise with him some work that was done a few years ago. It showed that if there are two five-year-olds with the same IQ, in so far as IQ can be measured at the age of five, and one is in a family where the household earns more than £50,000 and the other is in a household that earns less than £15,000, five years later—this is quite frightening—the two 10-year-olds will not have the same IQ; the child in the richer family will have a higher IQ. Labour Members are passionate about ensuring that the child in the household with an income of less than £15,000 has a chance of realising their genuine potential. They should be able to retain the IQ that they have at the age of five until they are 10, 15, 50, 65 or 75. That is one of the many problems that I have with the hon. Gentleman's Bill.
Philip Davies
I am sure we can all identify with the issue that the hon. Gentleman raises, and that we all feel equally exercised about it, but surely the way to tackle it is through the education system. We must ensure that it looks after people of all abilities. Surely the solution should not be to allow the education system to perpetuate the current situation, then rig the rules for selecting people for jobs at a later date.
Chris Bryant
Indeed, many of us who represent valley seats in south Wales, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Mr David), who is in his place, know the long history of people fighting for better education precisely as a means of trying to rebalance and recalibrate that inequality in society. People do not need to have seen the play or film “The Corn Is Green” to know the educational ambition that often exists in many valley constituencies or other areas in the country with very high levels of multiple deprivation. All too often, however, it does not seem that the same educational opportunity is afforded to somebody in the Rhondda as it is to somebody in Chelsea.
I see the hon. Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands) in his place—as a Whip, he is now unable to speak, so I can tease him remorselessly. Since he dispatched his close friend the former Defence Secretary from his post specifically so that he could become a Whip, I shall now enjoy teasing his silence. My point is simply that those in Chelsea, who have much greater financial resources, can ensure that they live in a good catchment area so that their child can go to a better school, or can afford to send their child to a private school. I was very fortunate that members of my family paid for me to go to a private school, but that is not available to the vast majority of my constituents or, I suspect, to any of them. That is why ensuring that the educational system genuinely provides equality of opportunity is vital.
The most distressing thing that I have come across in my time as an MP was early on. I bumped into a girl of 17 in Tonypandy and asked her what she wanted to do when she left school. She said she wanted to be a barrister, and I said, “Brilliant, how’s all that going? What are you going to study at university?” She said, “Well, I want to be a barrister, but I’ve been told by the careers service that girls from the Rhondda don’t get to be barristers.” All too often such depression of ambition can be self-perpetuating in communities, and that is why many of us believe in an aspirational form of socialism so that everybody has a chance to prosper.
Chris Bryant
Absolutely—I agree with the second part of that intervention, although not with the bit where the hon. Gentleman encouraged me to agree with the hon. Member for Shipley. Incidentally, I prefer the former Member for Shipley, my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Chris Leslie), and I very much hope that he will have an opportunity to present his rather ludicrous Bill later.
Philip Davies
I am sure the vast majority of my constituents also prefer the former Member for Shipley and regret the fact that they let him go when they had the opportunity to keep him.
I do not know whether the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) was watching “Daybreak” this morning, but if he was he will have seen my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey) promoting her initiative called “If Chloe Can”, which is designed to raise the aspiration of young girls in particular who have the poverty of aspiration that the hon. Gentleman talks about. Surely that type of initiative, which the Prime Minister supported yesterday with a reception at No. 10 Downing street, is a more important way of dealing with the problem than rigging the selection rules for jobs.
Chris Bryant
There seem to be an awful lot of Ruperts and Jessicas and Chloes in the hon. Gentleman’s life. I think that the only Rupert who has ever crossed the border into the Rhondda constituency was Rupert Bear.
One of my experiences was as a curate in High Wycombe, a community that has a strong ethnic mix. A large community from St Vincent has been there since just after the second world war, and a large community from Kashmir and a large Polish community arrived in the middle of the second world war. I found that, all too often, in an unequal society the people who know how to shout the loudest get the best resources from national and local government. One of my problems with the educational system in this country, and for that matter with the national health service, is that all too often money has not followed need but has followed the loudest speeches. That is why I believe that we need equality legislation, and why I supported the legislation that the deputy leader of the Labour party brought forward in government.
Chris Bryant
I think you are middle-aged, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I am pretty much there as well.
The problem that I have with the contention made by the hon. Member for Shipley is that I still think there is a great deal of prejudice in British society. It is complex and arises in all sorts of ways. I have seen in my constituency problems at school for young black kids in a community that is almost entirely white, and sometimes black teachers have had a really rough time because of the kind of language that people use. Language that would no longer be heard in most other parts of the country, where there is a racial mix, is sometimes still used.
I would also point out that the suicide statistics for gay young men in particular are still quite phenomenal. A young gay lad is six times more likely to commit suicide than his heterosexual counterpart, and I would love to see the end of homophobic bullying in schools. It will be very difficult to achieve, because people are not born with a pink triangle on their forehead or whatever—it is something complicated that they have to discover for themselves, and children can be very cruel. Tackling such prejudice will always be one of the important things for Governments.
Philip Davies
I absolutely accept that there is still discrimination in society, and I certainly did not say that there was not. The point of my Bill is to try to remove it. My question for the hon. Gentleman is this: how do we tackle that discrimination? Surely the solution cannot be reverse discrimination in favour of people who were discriminated against in the past. Surely it is to remove all forms of discrimination.
Chris Bryant
Well, no, not quite. Let us say, for the sake of argument, that the ambulance service, which the hon. Gentleman mentioned earlier, turned up at the household of a young Muslim woman who was in labour and having a difficult childbirth, and had absolutely no understanding of what was acceptable in a Muslim household. It would not be able to do its job properly. That is precisely why all public services need to be culturally sensitive not just to how Britain has always been but to how it is today.
When homosexuality was illegal—that era is fortunately long gone—and when David Maxwell Fyfe, as Home Secretary, ran a particularly nasty campaign of entrapment of gay men, some friends of mine, a couple who had lived together for many years, were burgled, but because they had only a one-bedroom flat, they were terrified of bringing the police round, because they knew that the police would investigate them for buggery rather than investigating the burglary.
I am afraid that there is a lack of understanding in far too many public services of how work could be improved by sensitivity to the ways other people live their lives—I would not say that there is deliberate prejudice, out-and-out racism, homophobia or sexism. In addition, many minority communities are simply forgotten by local authorities and the health service when they make their spending plans. That is one issue that needs to be addressed and one reason why the Bill is wrong.
Incidentally, there is significant cultural prejudice against the Catholic Church. I passionately disagree with the Pope on just about every issue, starting with transubstantiation. However, all too often prejudice against Catholics in society is quite marked and that is why it is not a good idea to ask people to give the name of their primary school when they are applying for public sector jobs. People will say, “Aha, this person went to the Cardinal Vaughan school! We’re not very keen on Catholics, so we won’t shortlist them.” It is illegal to do that, but it would be simpler and better if that element were taken out of the equation.
The hon. Member for Shipley said that he wanted a tolerant society. That phrase is very often used—I believe that an Archbishop of Canterbury started calls for a tolerant society in the 1960s. However, I dislike the concept of a tolerant society, because I think that a respectful society is far more important. “Tolerance” implies that although someone completely and utterly disapproves of someone who lives in a different style—
Chris Bryant
There is nothing in the Bill about tolerance. Indeed, one of the main problems with it is that it does not even aspire to tolerance, which is one of the many reasons why I oppose it.
The hon. Member for Shipley said—I am not paraphrasing, but accurately recording what he said—that women and ethnic minorities do not need the rules to be rigged in order to get jobs. He feels that the current legislation is patronising, because women and members of ethnic minorities are perfectly able to get jobs. I am not sure that that is true. In fact, the evidence shows that, all too often, the rules are effectively rigged so that women do not get jobs.
The hon. Gentleman asked whether Labour men who supported all-women shortlists were surrendering themselves and falling on their swords. I merely point out that we are all about to lay down on our swords, because we voted through the Parliamentary Voting System and Constituencies Bill. I have no idea whether there will be a Rhondda seat or a Greater Rhondda seat, incorporating most of Caerphilly—that was my suggestion. I made no objection to all-women shortlists in the Labour party in 1997. I stood in High Wycombe, which was almost impossible for the party to win, and my election was not anticipated, although the Conservative party so completely destroyed itself in the 1997 election that I very nearly was elected.
All-women shortlists were then rendered illegal by court action. Interestingly, 10 Welsh Labour MPs stood down or retired before the 2001 election, and every single one was replaced by a Welsh Labour male MP—not a single woman was selected in any of those 10 historically safe Labour seats. I rejoiced that I was selected for the Rhondda in 2001, to many people’s surprise, not least my own, but it is none the less important that political parties have the power to retain all-women shortlists.
Philip Davies
Perhaps the hon. Gentleman could explain why no women were selected. Is it the case that none of those women who applied for those seats was good enough to be selected, or is the Labour party in Wales riddled with sexism and so overlooked better-qualified women to select men? Perhaps he should sort out the problems in his own party and not impose those ridiculous laws on the rest of us.
Chris Bryant
No. Choosing all-women shortlists is entirely up to political parties. Labour chooses to use them.
The hon. Gentleman asked why men so often get selected for safe seats, which is a problem for the Conservatives, the Liberal Democrats and Labour. There are all sorts of complex reasons. Part of the problem is how we do business in Parliament, and part of it is how politics is presented in the wider public domain. There could be other prejudices out there. However, the Welsh Labour party has been immeasurably improved by the fact that we have a large number of women representing not only seats in the Welsh Assembly and the Welsh Assembly Government, but heartland seats in Parliament.
The hon. Gentleman says that he does not care whether 10% or 90% of MPs are women, but I care. I want to strive to make Parliament as representative of the wider population as possible. That cannot be too narrowly arithmetical, but I want to see the full diversity of Britain in the Chamber. Otherwise, the work that we do is undermined. If people do not hear their voice expressed, there will be a problem. Incidentally, by way of another criticism of myself, there are probably too many MPs of a particular social background and too few of a manual working class background, unlike the position in the ’20s, ’30s and ’40s.
Chris Bryant
I will move on a little if the hon. Gentleman does not mind.
We in the Labour party need to address those issues. Many Government Members criticise Labour’s relationship with the trade unions, but I make absolutely no apology for it. Many of the working class people who have come to the House have done so through the trade union route. They learned in the trade union movement how to do their politics and put their arguments, and they were financially supported so that they could put themselves forward for parliamentary nominations. They were selected on that basis, which is why I wholeheartedly support the relationship between the trade unions and the Labour party.
The hon. Member for Shipley seemed to suggest that there should be absolutely no limits to free speech. I mostly agree with him, and I believe in a free press. I worry sometimes about the direction of the Leveson inquiry. In my work in relation to the News of the World, my intention has never been to dismantle investigative journalism, which is an important part of how we do business and ensure our democratic rights. However, the hatred and the bigotry that some express sometimes goes beyond the pale. I want less hatred to be poured into the pool of hatred that is already out there. Some of the hon. Gentleman’s arguments are similar to those that Ann Widdecombe used when she was in the House. I found that they simply added to the sum total of bigotry rather than diminished it. We should all be striving to diminish it, and I am glad that we have laws that prevent the incitement of not only racial hatred but religious and homophobic hatred. As we have seen over recent years, that legislation has been all the more important in areas where there is a real social mix.
I also believe that Parliament has been immeasurably better for having had more women in it in recent years. I honestly think that were it not for the arrival of so many women some issues would not have been explored and addressed with anything like the seriousness with which they have been. One example is domestic violence. For centuries, a woman was regarded merely as a chattel or another household good for a man to do with as he pleased. Those laws were changed in the middle of the 20th century, but only in recent years did the police and the law start to take domestic violence seriously. I am certain that in my constituency and many others a large proportion of violent crime relates to what happens in people’s households or between domestic partners. I do not believe that the police would have the powers, will or resources to deal with that today had it not been for the arrival of significant numbers of women in Parliament.
I should note that today is the anniversary of the arrival of the first women peers in 1958. There were four of them, and they were a slightly strange lot. One was married to a viceroy, another was the daughter of a viceroy and another was a countess, so it was not exactly equality as we like to see it today. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg), also known as the hon. Member for the 15th century and for “Question Time”, obviously likes that, however.
I am glad that the Government are moving forward with the issue of succession so that the prejudice—stemming originally from common law, not statute—that the succession should be subject to male-preference primogeniture should be changed. I also hope that the Government are moving—
Chris Bryant
I do worry about the prejudice in favour of Protestants, although the issue is even more complicated. It is not quite in preference of Protestants, but in favour of somebody who is able to take communion in the Church of England and subscribe to its articles of religion, a difficult thing even for most Anglican clergy, as well as be a member of the Church of Scotland. That is quite a tall ask.
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to say that clause 2(1)(g) might be problematic for true equality. Incidentally, I would not often say this but I support the striving for equality in the House of Lords advanced at present by Baron Fellowes, who is worried that his wife will not be able to inherit her title, because women in this country are not allowed to inherit titles.
There is still a problem in this country. Only 22% of Members are women. In the Labour party, all-women shortlists have played a significant role in trying to bring about a more equal and representative House of Commons. When we move forward to an elected second Chamber, I hope that we will be able to use the same legislation.
Philip Davies
Does the hon. Gentleman not believe that in a democracy, whoever is in this House should be determined by the electorate—not by him, imposing quotas on who should be here and who should not and what the make-up of the House of Commons should be? Surely that should be decided by the electorate and the electorate alone.
Mr Nuttall
Earlier in the debate the question was asked: can we take equality too far? Does it mean changing the nature of our society? Can we take free speech too far? In the same way, when I was young—
Mr Nuttall
Thank you. We always used to talk of lollipop ladies. Nobody ever suggested that there ought to be a recruitment drive for lollipop men and nobody thought it was demeaning in any way that there were lollipop ladies and not—as far as I was aware at that time—any lollipop men.
The Bill has only two main parts. The first two clauses relate to the prohibition of positive action by public authorities and the third clause repeals the legislation allowing for all-women shortlists, which I shall come to later. Clause 1 sets out the details of the prohibition of positive action and clause 2 contains the definition of the action that would be outlawed. Positive action, as it is often called, differs from positive discrimination in that it is actively intended to increase the representation in a work force where monitoring has shown a particular group to be under-represented in proportion to the profile of either the total work force or the local or national population.
Positive action permitted by the present anti-discrimination legislation allows a person to provide facilities to meet the special needs of people from particular groups in society in relation to their training, education or welfare and to target job training at people from certain groups that are under-represented in a particular area of work or to encourage such groups to apply for such work. That raises some interesting and difficult questions. What is the area in question that should be considered? If a business or a public authority is situated in the south of England in a predominantly ethnically white area, should they be exempt from the legislation? Well, of course they are not exempt, and it must be difficult for some public authorities in certain areas to meet the quota because it is impossible for them to decide what area they cover. Does one look at the town in question, or the county, or the country, and if so, which country? Does one look at the United Kingdom as a whole or just the make-up of England? Of course, many areas covered by the present legislation are not easy to determine.
An example is sex or gender, to which the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant) referred. Very often, it might not be possible to know whether one has a certain number of gay or heterosexual people in one’s work force. Indeed, I would submit that the information is of absolutely no consequence or relevance whatever.
I should perhaps declare that before I entered this House, I was for many years an employer, so I know all about the rules and regulations that were imposed on my practice as a result of equality legislation. Before any of the legislation was in place, just off our own bat, I had a work force who were 95% female, so in fact, in my work force, men were not equally represented. No one suggested to me that when I came to employ another secretary, legal assistant or solicitor, I should start to select men; I always selected the best person for the job.
Mr Nuttall
I am most grateful to the Minister for that intervention. The Opposition say that they support all-women shortlists, but as Members on both sides of the House will be aware, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) was selected as a candidate despite his gender. It is perhaps one of the biggest ironies that he was selected even though his wife, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), seems so keen to have all-women shortlists in all constituencies.
Philip Davies
Is it not also ironic that the Labour party has brought in all these massively talented women, apparently, through the use of all-women shortlists, but when it wanted to select a new leader it seemed to bypass all that talent that had been brought into the House and plumped for a man?
Damian Green
I have to tell the hon. Gentleman that I really do not eat lentils—nor do I own a pair of sandals, nor do I for pleasure read most of The Guardian. I find The Guardian extremely useful for one thing. If I ever wake up and feel my political energy flagging, I read the letters page of The Guardian and that reminds me why I am a Conservative and why there needs to be a Conservative Government in this country—if only to keep people such as that out of power. So The Guardian serves a tremendously useful purpose in my life.
Positive action is about counteracting the effects of historical discrimination and disadvantage by providing opportunities for those who are disadvantaged or under-represented to gain skills that would enable them to compete fairly and openly for jobs and to reach their potential. There are practical benefits for businesses attached to the use of those measures and I shall return to them later. However, I very much take the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (Mr Nuttall); we need to consider the needs of businesses, particularly small and medium-sized ones, although as I say there are the practical benefits.
A common misconception confuses positive action and positive discrimination; some people talk about the two interchangeably. It is important to establish that there is a clear distinction between them. Positive discrimination is treatment that favours a person solely because they have a particular protected characteristic, irrespective of whether there are special circumstances. In other words, the treatment discriminates in their favour whether or not they experience a disadvantage connected to that protected characteristic or have particular needs that are different from those of people without that protected characteristic.
Positive discrimination is generally unlawful in this country and will remain unlawful in most cases, although we should note that it is not unlawful to give more favourable treatment to a disabled person than to a non-disabled person. The intention behind that is to provide a level playing field for disabled people, who have been widely recognised to be disadvantaged in the field of employment, in society and in accessing services, without being open to legal challenge by non-disabled people.
Positive action, as I outlined, is about ensuring that any action taken has to be a proportionate means of achieving the aim of tackling or addressing disadvantage, encouraging participation in activities and meeting the specific needs of people with protected characteristics. It is essential for any organisation using positive action to ensure that the measures being taken do not unlawfully discriminate against people outside the group that they are seeking to help. The provisions in the Equality Act 2010 that relate to positive action make that very clear.
I am sure that my hon. Friends who have spoken in favour of the Bill would agree that many in our society have experienced historical disadvantage and under-representation in numerous sectors and professions, including in economic and political life, and many still do. Of course, significant progress has been made in recent decades to improve things.
Philip Davies
No doubt what my hon. Friend said about historical disadvantage is true, but does he think that just because black people, for example, have been discriminated against in the past, white people should be discriminated against now as some kind of reparation? Channel 4 has training courses that are open only for people from ethnic minorities. Why should somebody who happens to be from a white working class background and wants to get into the industry be deprived of doing so just because of discrimination that took place in the past?
Damian Green
I return to the point I have been making for the past couple of minutes about the distinction between positive action and positive discrimination. Specifically on the training courses my hon. Friend mentions, if a job were open only to people with a particular characteristic, that would be discrimination and would be unlawful. However, saying that one is finding it very difficult to attract a particular group of people even to think about applying for a job, and perhaps having an open day or some training aimed specifically at those people is positive action. At the relevant point—at the point of offering a job—everyone should be treated equally and there should not be any discrimination. Positive action is about trying to ensure that nobody is excluded from operating on their own merits or from applying for a particular job or position.
There was a debate a few minutes ago about the different measures used by different political parties in attempting to encourage more women to come into the House of Commons. I think there was a very neat dichotomy in that the Conservative party adopted measures short of all-women shortlists such as encouraging, mentoring and training, which resulted in a large number of new women colleagues for my hon. Friend and I in this Parliament, which we both welcome. The Conservatives did not go down the very crude route of the all-women shortlist that the Labour party introduced in the late 1990s, so there are different ways of achieving what is a desirable thing—equality of opportunity. Some ways are discriminatory and some are not, and the Government’s policy seeks to ensure that we maintain that very important distinction and continue to have positive action so that everyone can be treated equally, but that we do not inadvertently fall into the trap that my hon. Friend rightly warns us about of discriminating against those who do not have the particular protected characteristics. In many ways, that is at the heart of the debate: we need to maintain that distinction.
One of the Government’s aims is to speed up the rate of progress in achieving gender equality in various sectors, particularly by promoting gender equality on the boards of listed companies and by increasing female representation in politics. Progress on those fronts can be attained using the wide range of measures that are available to companies and other institutions under positive action. My hon. Friend and others will have heard the Prime Minister recently acknowledge in the House that the use of positive action is necessary on occasions to redress gender disparities in boardrooms and in politics.
In any case, lest we forget and think that using positive action places huge regulatory or financial burdens on bodies—my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North made that point—the use of any positive action measure is entirely voluntary and there is no mandatory requirement for any organisation to use positive action. If an organisation thinks there will be no real benefits to it from taking positive action measures, it does not have to do so. The voluntary nature of positive action means there are no associated mandatory burdens on organisations if they do not take such measures. That point is significant but is often missed in these debates.
Before I address the use of positive action in matters of recruitment and promotion, I should like to draw the attention of my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley to clause 2 of his Bill, which would make it unlawful to use positive action for any of the listed protected characteristics as well as for socio-economic status. The current positive action provisions do not permit measures to be taken to address issues solely relating to socio-economic inequality. He might be aware that the Government were not persuaded by the arguments for a public sector duty relating to socio-economic inequalities in the 2010 Act and that they have already decided not to commence those provisions, which will be repealed at a future date. I hope that he and I can agree on that point if on no other.
I turn specifically to the effect of the Bill, the aim of which is to prohibit the use of positive action by public authorities in recruitment and appointment processes. The Bill would, as drafted, create a two-tier system under which it would be lawful for private organisations to continue to use positive action measures in recruitment and appointment processes, but not for public authorities. That would mean that public authorities would not have the same benefits of opportunity open to them in recruitment as private sector organisations. Not only does this disparity seem unfair, but it could be confusing for employers, especially private organisations that deliver services under contract to or on behalf of a public authority, but which may not normally be considered public authorities themselves.
I make it clear that the provisions in the Equality Act 2010 contain explicit built-in safeguards to ensure that they are not misused. The provisions allow the use of positive action specifically in the process of recruitment and promotion in limited circumstances. Positive action can therefore only be used in the process of recruitment and promotion for specific purposes: to overcome or minimise a disadvantage, or to increase participation in activities, or where the candidates are as qualified as each other to carry out the job under consideration, or where the action is a proportionate means of addressing the particular disadvantage or under-representation, and where the employer does not have an automatic policy of treating people who share a protected characteristic more favourably than those who do not have protected characteristics.
To help employers who want to use positive action to do so lawfully, a step-by-step practical guide to using positive action when making appointments is available on the Government Equalities Office website. It will help an employer to ask all the relevant questions and ensure transparency at every stage of the recruitment and appointment process.
Remedies are available to possible victims of positive action. Any participant who deems that the positive action measures used by an organisation in its recruitment and promotion process have not been fair to them, or a person who believes they have been deterred from taking part in such a process, could bring a claim against the organisation. It would ultimately be up to any employer using positive action in recruitment to ensure that the assessment process is proportionate to achieving the aim of addressing a disadvantage or under-representation, that it is transparent and that they can sufficiently justify how they make a choice between candidates.
It cannot be too strongly emphasised that the principle of merit should always apply in any recruitment or promotion process that uses positive action measures. As I have already said, under these measures, a person cannot be appointed solely because they possess a certain protected characteristic that is disadvantaged or under-represented in the workplace. That would constitute unlawful discrimination.
An employer faced with making a choice between two or more candidates who are as qualified as each other to undertake the post in question can take into consideration whether any of the candidates possesses a protected characteristic that is disadvantaged or disproportionately under-represented in the work force. However, this does not mean that the candidates under consideration have to be identical in every respect. Any consideration of merit should take into account the relevant facts of their competence, ability, experience and any formal qualifications that may be relevant to the particular job.
Among other things, the Bill would put a stop to the setting and pursuit of targets in relation to recruitment and promotion. Targets are not quotas, nor are they the same as positive action. Targets are the end that an organisation wishes to achieve, while positive action is, essentially, the measures that an organisation can take in order to achieve its aim. Targets allow organisations to direct a range of programmes, initiatives, products and services at particular groups of people who are under-represented in certain activities, or because of poor take-up of services or activities. Such action would enable these groups to acquire the necessary skills to compete for jobs or to access services tailored to their specific needs. It is perfectly permissible in the UK to set targets that are intended to provide an incentive for people to improve and achieve certain goals.
Of course, targets are not limitless; they either evolve as an organisation’s priorities change over the years, or they come to their natural end. I think there is a fear that this is an endless path going in one direction. Clearly, an organisation may decide that it has done what it needs to do to meet a target that it has set itself for representation within its work force, or its boardroom, or its parliamentary party or whatever, and at that point the existing legislative framework entirely permits the organisation to get off the track and continue its normal business as it would have done if it had never introduced those measures.
As I mentioned, an important priority for the Government is to increase the number of women in the boardroom and in civic and public life. The key to achieving that is not through the setting of strict employment quotas such as reserving a number of posts only for women, which would in any case be unlawful—I am happy to reassure my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley and the House that the Government have absolutely no intention of changing that position—but through the use of voluntary measures and initiatives.
The difference between the targets that I have been talking about and the quotas that my hon. Friend is rightly sceptical about is that the target can be worked towards naturally over a period spent developing people in order that the organisation can hit the target, whereas a quota must be filled whether or not there are suitable people available to fill it. That is the absolutely crucial practical distinction. If we tried to force organisations to fill quotas, less qualified people would be appointed to positions, which would be unfair on those who were better qualified, and in the long term damaging for the institution concerned. If the legislation currently in place had that effect, or indeed that intention, I would share all my hon. Friend’s worries about it, but it does not, and just as the distinction between positive discrimination and positive action is key, the difference between targets and quotas is absolutely key. We have a sensible, practical set of measures that can allows organisations to improve themselves, not something that is over-burdensome.
Philip Davies
I am interested in what the Minister has to say. Will he clarify this point? I understood from what I have read in the media—I concede that one should not always believe everything one reads in the papers—that the Government have let it be known that if boardrooms do not hit the target set by Lord Davies, if they do not go themselves voluntarily to hit that target, the Government will act. Can the Minister assure the House now that if they do not hit the artificial, arbitrary targets that Lord Davies set in his report, the Government will not act?
Damian Green
I do not accept that the targets are necessarily arbitrary or artificial. We are very keen that organisations should hit their targets for women in boardrooms; the Government strongly welcomed the Lord Davies report and we are now at the stage of working with business and others to ensure that the recommendations are implemented effectively without recourse to some of the measures that my hon. Friend would regard as draconian.
I am happy to report to the House that good progress has been made in implementing the recommendations. In May, the Financial Reporting Council launched its consultation on changes to the UK corporate governance code. The headhunting industry has agreed a voluntary code on diversity, which was launched in July 2011. The Association of Executive Search Consultants will champion the code to its members, and there is an increasing and strong sense of ownership and action in FTSE 100 businesses, including company secretaries, who will in many cases be the key figure in the organisation.
Philip Davies
I really must press the Minister on this, because some things are more voluntary than others. If the Government say to organisations, “This is what we expect of you; if you don’t do it, we will force you to do it,” and the Government then start reporting progress, that is not voluntary—at least not in my eyes. It is a very curious definition of “voluntary”. If businesses do not hit the artificial target in Lord Davies’s report, will the Government act? From what the Minister says, it sounds as if the Government will not act and force businesses to take action if they do not do so themselves.
Damian Green
What I am saying is that the bodies are already acting themselves, so the undesirable outcome of which my hon. Friend is fearful will not happen. I have talked about various organisations; let me mention specific companies. Centrica, BT and Barclays have all provided programmes or initiatives to assist in the recruitment, retention, development and advancement of women and persons from other protected groups in the workplace, and to broaden their career aspirations. That makes the point that I alluded to earlier: good and constructive use of positive action is not woolly-minded, or political correctness gone mad, or whatever the cliché du jour is; it has practical benefits for the organisations that voluntarily opt for it.
I refer my hon. Friend to a report published in 2008 by the CBI, the TUC and the Equality and Human Rights Commission entitled “Talent not Tokenism: the business benefits of workforce diversity”. It showed that diversity in an organisation promotes productivity and efficiency, and increases market opportunities. Several UK employers recognise the benefits of positive action; it fills skill gaps while generating a more diverse work force. That added diversity in turn gives employers a better understanding of customers’ needs, opening up new markets and attracting new business.
More businesses than ever, including FTSE companies at all levels—those in the FTSE 100, FTSE 250 and FTSE 350—are using voluntary positive action measures to improve the diversity of their top management and boards of executive and non-executive directors. Lord Davies’s report, to which my hon. Friend referred, acknowledged that corporate boards perform better when they comprise experienced people with a greater range of skills, perspectives and backgrounds. His report indicated that there is a business case for increasing the diversity of corporate boards, and especially for gender-diverse boards, so that businesses can draw on the full range of available talent and achieve effective governance and performance.
To address my hon. Friend’s point directly, Lord Davies’s report ruled out the setting of mandatory quotas to compel businesses to appoint female directors to their boards, so my hon. Friend is right not to believe everything that he reads in the media. The statistics are stark. The proportion of women on FTSE 100 company boards is 14.2%, and the figure is 8.9% for FTSE 250 companies. Previously, almost half the FTSE 250 companies had no women director on their board. A recently published report by the Cranfield School of Management on the progress made on some of the recommendations outlined in the Davies report shows that, for the first time, a minority of FTSE 250 companies have all-male boards. Moving down the size scale, FTSE 350 companies face an even greater challenge in increasing female representation on their boards.
My hon. Friend may have heard of the 30% Club, which comprises a group of UK company chairmen, if I am allowed to use that word, who are voluntarily committed to bringing more women on to UK corporate boards. The 30% Club supports a voluntary target to ensure that every UK corporate board has at least 30% female representation by 2015.
Philip Davies
With the leave of the House, may I thank everybody who has contributed to the debate, those who supported my Bill—I particularly thank my hon. Friends the Members for Bury North (Mr Nuttall) and for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) for their typically robust comments on my behalf—and those who contributed to the debate even though they did not agree with me?
It is sad that in this age it is so difficult to persuade Members of the merits of the principle that people should be given jobs on merit, and merit alone. It is like pushing water uphill to try and make the case for that basic and, I should have thought, obvious proposition. On that note I shall conclude the debate and press the motion to a Division.
Question put, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
The House proceeded to a Division.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I ask the Serjeant at Arms to investigate the delay in the No Lobby.
The House having divided: Ayes 3, Noes 39.
Oral Answers to Questions
Philip Davies Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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James Brokenshire
It is important that we do not lose confidence in CCTV as a beneficial influence, and thereby lose that valuable tool in the battle against crime and disorder. We must not undermine the real benefits of CCTV. That is why we want to have a measured and proportionate scheme to regulate CCTV better and ensure that appropriate standards are put in place, so that that confidence is maintained.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
Does the Minister accept that CCTV evidence was crucial in eventually bringing Levi Bellfield to justice for the murder of Milly Dowler, and is that not a timely reminder that we should be making it easier, not harder, for the police to use CCTV, and that we need more CCTV, not less?
James Brokenshire
I certainly recognise the value of CCTV, but we must be careful to ensure that there is no loss of trust and confidence in its use among communities throughout the country. We have learned what can happen in such circumstances from the experience in Birmingham, and in light of that, Sara Thornton, chief constable of Thames Valley Police, produced a report that underlined that accountability, consultation and transparency must be core considerations. That is precisely what we are reflecting in our approach.
Policing and Crime
Philip Davies Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Yvette Cooper
My hon. Friend is right. CCTV can make a difference for communities that are struggling, such as the community in Blackpool that I talked with a few weeks ago, who told me about the difference that having CCTV installed has made on their estate, where they had had persistent problems. CCTV was helping them to turn it around.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
The right hon. Lady may have heard the Justice Secretary say in the previous debate how important it was from the Government’s perspective to prevent people from having to be witnesses and give evidence in court and how distressing that was. Does she therefore agree with me, and I presume with the Justice Secretary, and recognise the role that DNA and CCTV play in preventing witnesses and victims having to go through the trauma of giving evidence?
Yvette Cooper
The hon. Gentleman is right, and I know that he has spent considerable time looking at the issue of DNA. When the police analysed the offences in 2008-09—just one year’s worth of offences—they found that there were 79 matches for very serious crimes, including murder, manslaughter and rape, which they would not have got had it not been for the DNA database. The concern is about not holding DNA for people who are not charged, even though they might have been suspected of a very serious offence and where the reason for not charging may not be that they are now thought to be innocent, but simply that there are difficulties, as, perhaps in a rape case—we know it is sometimes difficult to take such a case through the criminal justice system.
The Government are out of touch with their plans to end antisocial behaviour orders. The Home Secretary has said that she wants to end ASBOs because she is worried that they are being breached, but what is her answer? Her answer is to replace them with a much weaker injunction, with greater delays, which offenders can breach as many times as they like. She is removing the criminal enforcement for serious breaches of ASBOs and removing interim ASBOs altogether, making it much harder for communities, police and local authorities to get urgent action when serious cases arise. No matter how many times an offender breaches the new crime prevention injunctions or ignores the warnings of the police, they will still not get a criminal penalty. They are not so much a badge of honour as a novelty wrist band. How does that help communities that want to see antisocial behaviour brought down?
The area that I worry about most is child protection. The Home Secretary has now been advised that there are serious loopholes in her plans—by the Children’s Commissioner, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the Children’s Society, Action for Children, the Scout Association, the Football Association, the Lawn Tennis Association and countless other national sporting bodies. Her plans still mean that someone could be barred from working with children and yet still get part-time or voluntary work in a school or children’s sports club and the organisation would not even be told that they had been barred. She really must stop and think again on this or she will be putting children at risk.
Time and again the Home Secretary is undermining the powers of the police and the authorities to fight crime. Time and again she is telling them to fight with one hand behind their backs. Worrying signs are already emerging. In Yorkshire, the police are saying that their figures show that crime has gone up this year. In the west midlands it is the same. Over the 13 years of the Labour Government, crime fell by 40%. The risk of being a victim of crime is now at its lowest since the British crime survey began and there is rising confidence in the police, but people want crime to keep falling. She is putting that at risk.
Mrs May
My hon. Friend makes a valid and important point about the attitude of the previous Government.
Our reforms are based on the simple premise that the police must be accountable not to civil servants in Whitehall, but to the communities that they serve. That is exactly what directly elected police and crime commissioners will achieve. The legislation for police and crime commissioners has passed through this House and has entered Committee in the other place. We will seek to overturn the recent Lords amendment when the Bill returns to this House. Unlike the existing invisible and ineffective police authorities, the commissioner will be somebody people have heard of, somebody they have voted for, somebody they can hold to account, and somebody they can vote out if they do not help the police to cut crime.
We now come to the Opposition’s fourth error. It is complete and utter nonsense to suggest there will be no checks and balances on the powers of police and crime commissioners. We have specifically legislated for strong checks and balances. A police and crime panel will scrutinise the police and crime commissioner. The panel will have several key powers, including the power of veto over the police and crime commissioner’s proposed local precept and over the candidate they propose for chief constable. The panel will also make recommendations on local police and crime plans, and will scrutinise the commissioner’s annual report. It will have the power to ask the commissioner to provide information and to sit before it to answer questions. It will also be able to call on Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary for professional judgment over the police and crime commissioner’s proposed decision to dismiss a chief constable.
We have published a draft protocol setting out the relationship between police and crime commissioners and chief constables. The protocol was agreed with the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Association of Police Authorities, the Association of Police Authority Chief Executives, the Met and the Metropolitan Police Authority. A copy has been placed in both House Libraries and copies are available on the Home Office website. The protocol makes it clear that commissioners will not manage police forces, and that they will not be permitted to interfere in the day-to-day work of police officers. The duty and responsibility of managing a police force will fall squarely on the shoulders of the chief constable, as it always has.
We will publish a strategic policing requirement to ensure that commissioners deliver their national policing responsibilities, as well as their local responsibilities. A strengthened HMIC will monitor forces and escalate serious concerns about force performance to Ministers. Finally, the Home Secretary will retain powers to direct police and crime commissioners and chief constables to take action in extreme circumstances, if they are failing to carry out their functions.
The Opposition are simply wrong to say that there will be no checks and balances on police and crime commissioners. There will be extensive checks and balances—the Opposition just choose to ignore them. Of course, unlike the current invisible and unaccountable police authorities, police and crime commissioners will face the strongest and most powerful check and balance there is: the ballot box. This should be a concept with which the Labour party is familiar: if they fail, they get booted out of office.
I will turn to police powers. The police national DNA database, which was established in 1995, has clearly led to a great many criminals being convicted who otherwise would not have been caught. However, in a democracy, there must be limits to any such form of police power. Storing the DNA and fingerprints of more than a million innocent people indefinitely only undermines public trust in policing. We will take innocent people off the DNA database and put guilty people on. While the previous Government were busy stockpiling the DNA of the innocent, they did not bother to take the DNA of the guilty. In March, we gave the police new powers to take DNA from convicted criminals who are now in the community.
Rather than engaging in political posturing, we are making the right reforms for the right reasons. Our proposals will ensure that there is fairness for innocent people by removing the majority of them from the database. By increasing the number of convicted individuals on the database, we will ensure that those who have broken the law can be traced if they reoffend. In all cases, the DNA profile and fingerprints of any person arrested for a recordable offence will be subjected to a speculative search against the national databases. That means that those who have committed crimes in the past and have left their DNA or fingerprints at the scene will not escape justice. The rules will give the police the tools that they need, without putting the DNA of millions of innocent people on the database.
Like DNA, it is clear that CCTV can act as a deterrent to criminals, can help to convict the guilty, and is warmly welcomed by many communities. The Government wholeheartedly support the use of CCTV and DNA to fight crime. However, it is clearly not right that surveillance cameras are being used without proper safeguards. When or where to use CCTV are properly decisions for local areas. It is essential that such measures command public support and confidence. Our proposals for a code of practice will help to achieve just that. If the Opposition disagree, as was clear from the speech by the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford, perhaps they should cast their minds back to the controversy over the use of CCTV cameras in Birmingham in the last year. British policing relies on consent. If that is lost, we all suffer. Sadly, the Opposition do not seem to understand that.
Philip Davies
I hope I am right in sensing that my right hon. Friend is moving back from the left-wing, liberty agenda on DNA and CCTV. The police installed 14 cameras in what used to be a no-go area of east Leeds. Within 18 months, that led to crime falling by 48% and burglaries falling by 65%. Will she confirm that that did not restrict anybody’s freedoms, but enhanced them by allowing people to go out at night, which is a freedom that they had been deprived of for many years?
Mrs May
I thank my hon. Friend. As I said earlier, the Government wholeheartedly support the use of CCTV and DNA in the fight against crime. We are introducing not unnecessary bureaucracy but a sensible and measured approach, which will help to ensure that CCTV is used for the purpose for which it was designed—tackling crime.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
I want to talk predominantly about closed circuit television and DNA, because I still feel that, despite the Home Secretary’s best efforts, the Government are going in the wrong direction on these issues. I want to make it clear that I am not talking about what I believe to be the misuse of CCTV, such as for local authorities to snoop on what people put in their bins; I am talking about the use of CCTV for the detection of crime.
A Scotland Yard study of the effectiveness of surveillance cameras revealed that almost every Scotland Yard murder inquiry uses their footage as evidence. In 90 murder cases over a one-year period, CCTV was used in 86 investigations. Officers said it helped to solve 65 cases by capturing the murder itself on film, or tracking the movements of the suspects before or after an attack. The recent case in my constituency of the “crossbow cannibal”, who was convicted of murdering three prostitutes and dumping their bodies in the river, provides a good example, as he was caught only because there was CCTV in the block of flats where he was committing his crimes.
CCTV evidence is not only a valuable tool for the police. It is invaluable in courts on two levels: to convict the perpetrators of crimes, and to acquit those who have not committed a crime. CCTV footage provides conclusive and unbiased evidence, devoid of anyone’s spin or recollection bias, which not only saves courts’ time and money, but prevents witnesses from having to go through the often stressful and unpleasant ordeal of giving evidence in court. Equally, CCTV can prove that someone is being wrongly accused of committing a crime, as was the case with Edmond Taylor. His conviction for dangerous driving was quashed on appeal when CCTV footage showed that a white man had actually committed the offence—Mr Taylor is black.
Another useful tool that we should be promoting is automatic number plate recognition. It was through the use of ANPR, and that alone, that PC Sharon Beshenivsky’s killers were caught. On 18 November 2005, Sharon Beshenivsky was shot and killed during a robbery in Bradford. The CCTV network was linked into an ANPR system and was able to identify the getaway car and track its movements, leading to the arrest of six suspects. The chief superintendant of West Yorkshire police called the ANPR system a
“revolutionary tool in detecting crime.”
When a 2005 Home Office report on public attitudes towards CCTV asked what people thought of the statement “Overall the advantages of CCTV outweigh the disadvantages”, 82% of those surveyed either agreed or strongly agreed.
People use “civil liberties” as an argument to support the case for reducing such technology. What I fail to understand is how footage of someone taken by CCTV cameras on a public street in the public domain invades their privacy or civil liberties. If someone has chosen to walk down the street, people can see them doing it whether they are recording it on a phone, observing what they are doing or watching it through a CCTV camera. Those actions are clearly not private.
These civil liberties arguments seem to be used against the DNA database too. I believe in real freedoms, and the fact that someone’s DNA is on a database does not prevent that person from going about their daily lawful business and it does not impinge on their freedoms in any way whatsoever. During the application for judicial review of the retention of DNA in the divisional court, the now Lord Justice Leveson stated that
“the material stored says nothing about the physical makeup, characteristics or life of the person to whom they belong.”
These civil liberties arguments about DNA and CCTV are bogus.
As a result of the Government’s proposals, murderers such as Ronald Castree would be free to roam the streets and potentially kill again. Castree stabbed 11-year-old Lesley Molseed in 1975 when she was on the way to the shop to buy bread for her mother. Stefan Kiszko was wrongly convicted and was jailed for 16 years for the murder until 2005 when Castree’s DNA was taken after he was arrested but not charged over another sexual attack.
It is a fact that many violent criminals have been jailed only because their DNA was taken when they committed a minor offence. These criminals include Dennis Fitzgerald, who was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment for the rape of a woman in November 1987, and Nasser Mohammed who was jailed in 2008 for raping a woman in 2002 after his DNA was taken when he was picked up for a minor offence. Often, a DNA match is the only thing that finally brings people to justice.
Figures from the National Policing Improvement Agency state that in 2008-09, 32,209 crimes were detected in which a DNA match was available or played a part, and the latest annual report on the national DNA database concluded that six in 10 crime scene profiles loaded up to the database were matched to a subject profile. In addition, 147,852 crime scene sample profiles could be solved if we had a national DNA database—these are instances where a sample has been taken at the crime scene but there is, as yet, no match.
The DNA database can also be used to acquit the innocent. The very first murder conviction using DNA evidence, in 1988, proved the innocence of a suspect. Richard Buckland was suspected of separately assaulting and murdering two schoolgirls in 1983 and 1986, but when his DNA sample was compared with DNA found on the bodies of the two victims it proved that he was not the killer. Colin Pitchfork was later arrested, having been one of the villagers who had their DNA taken and a match was found.
Unless the Government change their stance on DNA and CCTV, they will be doing a huge disservice to people in this country. Their approach will lead to more unnecessary victims of crime and will further tarnish our reputation in the field of law and order.
Forensic Science Service
Philip Davies Excerpts(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Jonathan Reynolds (Stalybridge and Hyde) (Lab/Co-op)
I am pleased to serve under your chairmanship, Dr McCrea, and I am also pleased to secure this debate on the future of the Forensic Science Service.
My interest in this subject began with a visit from one of my constituents, who works as a senior forensic scientist at the northern firearms unit in Manchester. It was at his invitation that I was able to visit that facility, which is part of the wider FSS. I intend to say a little more about the unit later in my speech, but first I want to say that my constituency owes a wider debt to the work of the FSS.
I am sure that Members are familiar with the crimes of Dr Harold Shipman. He was a trusted family doctor in my constituency who murdered more than 200 of his patients in what remains this country’s worst case of a serial killer. Without the detailed toxicology evidence that the FSS offered to the courts, it is questionable whether the extent of his killings would ever have been proven. This single example is a powerful reminder of the capacity that the FSS gives to our law enforcement agencies.
The 1,100 highly trained staff in the FSS have the skills and expertise to identify an offender or unravel the chain of events that led to a crime, often from studying no more than a pattern of blood, a strand of hair or the tread-markings left by a shoe. Their unrivalled range of expertise includes the analysis of documents, mobile phones, toxicology, marks and traces, DNA, firearms, fibres and hair. Their analysis has helped to secure convictions in 220 so-called “cold cases”, and a further 600 cases are actively under review. Among their groundbreaking achievements was the establishment of the world’s first national DNA database. The FSS is now based in four laboratories across the country and it deals with up to 120,000 cases a year, regardless of their complexity. The quality of its meticulous work has earned the FSS the respect of experts from around the globe.
In December 2010, the Government announced that the FSS will close by the end of March 2012. As I understand it, the Government hope that the closure of the FSS will increase competition. They believe that the vacuum created by its absence will immediately be filled by private providers and in-house police force provision, and they hope that by creating a more commercial market prices will be driven down and turnaround times improved.
I have real fears, however, that the absence of the FSS will impact on the quality of justice in the courts. I know that no Member would want to back proposals that would directly result in our losing the ability to carry out this kind of work. I hope that raising these concerns today will lead the Government to take a second look at their plans.
Any changes to the FSS must have the integrity of our judicial system at their core. There are still too many questions about the scope and quality of the provision that will be available following the closure of the FSS. In my remarks today, I will consider whether the high standards, impartiality and scope of the current provision will survive under the Government’s proposals; I will question the financial argument being put by the Government; and I will ask whether the Minister is willing to risk serious damage to the quality of justice by implementing these reforms.
As I mentioned previously, my concern about this issue began when I recently visited the northern firearms unit, which is part of the FSS. My visit was at the invitation of a constituent who has worked in this sector for more than 24 years and is deeply concerned by the Government’s plans. He is one of several specialists at the unit who are called on to support the police at scenes of shootings around the clock, 365 days a year. Their laboratory analysis can shed important light on the circumstances surrounding a crime. By looking at wounds, blood patterns and bullet casings, they can determine how a person was shot, the number of weapons involved and even if the same gun has been involved in other shootings. The unit has played a major role in solving a number of high-profile gun crimes and in achieving the subsequent convictions.
The unit’s success relies, however, on the flexibility to devote the time necessary to each investigation. Staff at the unit fear that many of their successes might not have been possible within the financial constraints of a more commercial market. They also fear that private providers are unlikely to offer the guaranteed on-call service that is required. I am sure that private companies will bid for the work of the FSS, but the risk is that they will cherry-pick the quickest, least labour-intensive and most profitable parts, which could have a serious impact on the quality of justice delivered by our court system.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
I commend the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate, and I agree with the points that he is making. Does he agree that another factor to consider is that the FSS, which I have also visited, keeps an awful lot of DNA samples taken from crime scenes, and that it seems that the Government have not given much thought to what will happen to all those samples when the FSS closes? The work done by the FSS is far too important for us simply to hope that something will be put in its place. The Government need to ensure that something is in place before they go ahead with the closure of the FSS.
Jonathan Reynolds
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention and I absolutely agree with him. I will address the point he makes later in my speech.
I visited the firearms archive in Manchester, which is truly something to be seen. It is important not only for cross-referencing crimes with other crimes but for the expertise that goes with that work. Using the archive properly is absolutely crucial, but I understand that the Government have not yet decided what will happen to it. The future of the archive is very important.
Damian Green
It is certainly a priority, but the hon. Gentleman will know that the operational expenditure of individual police forces is a matter for chief constables. [Interruption.] He makes a gesture, but it would be wrong for Home Office Ministers to try to detail every piece of expenditure by every police force in the country. By going down that route, we have over-managed police forces and other public services, to their detriment. I am afraid he will have to bite the bullet: allowing the police operational independence is an important way to improve the service.
Philip Davies
On the operational independence of the police, the Minister will be aware that some of the fiercest criticism of the closure of the FSS has come from police chief constables, including the chief constable of South Yorkshire, who said that it would
“have a ‘disproportionate effect’ on forces in Yorkshire and the North East because they are more reliant on the service than constabularies elsewhere.”
If the views of the police are so important, will he bear in mind their views on the closure of the FSS?
Damian Green
Absolutely. My hon. Friend leads me neatly into what I was about to say. The Association of Chief Police Officers, in particular, is clear that the forensic markets can cope with the managed wind-down of the FSS, and ACPO has been closely involved in the process being carried out by the Government.
To address the fears about uncertainty, the managed wind-down of the FSS will allow time for the restructuring of the timetable for tendering new contracts, for the re-tendering of existing FSS contracts and for other forensic suppliers to develop their capacity to meet any additional requirements. That approach will also enable the FSS’s business and assets to be transferred in order to build a healthy market around other existing forensic suppliers, which already account for about 35% of the forensics market. That is clearly a significant point. Some may think that there is no one out there and this is a leap in the dark, but more than one third of the market is already in the hands of other operators.
Oral Answers to Questions
Philip Davies Excerpts(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Mrs May
I am happy to tell my hon. and learned Friend that we have reduced the cost of asylum support by more than £100 million from the 2009-10 total, delivering substantial savings to the taxpayer. That is the result of action that has been taken to ensure that we clear up the legacy of old asylum cases, speed up the processing of asylum claims and remove more quickly those not entitled to protection. Our asylum improvement project aims to go further.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
17. What assessment she has made of the potential effects on the number of crimes solved of proposed changes in the national DNA database.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (James Brokenshire)
The changes we propose to limit the retention of the DNA profiles of people not convicted of any offence are based on the coalition agreement commitment to introduce the protections of the Scottish system in order better to balance public protection and individuals’ rights. The statistics show that simply increasing the number of DNA profiles on the DNA database does not necessarily increase the number of detections made via that database.
Philip Davies
There are already 150,000 crimes in which a DNA sample has been taken at the crime scene and not been matched to anybody on the database. Surely the Minister accepts that having fewer people on the database will mean that fewer matches will be made and fewer criminals will be brought to justice. Will he explain how having more dangerous criminals on the streets enhances my freedoms?
James Brokenshire
I know that my hon. Friend looks at the facts and circumstances, so I ask him to look at what has happened in the past five years. Since 2004-05, an additional 2 million individuals were added to the national DNA database but there were 4,000 fewer detections as a consequence.
Oral Answers to Questions
Philip Davies Excerpts(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Nick Herbert
I note that on the right hon. Gentleman’s measure, crime started to fall two years before the advent of a Labour Government. He knows as well as I do that the British crime survey excludes important crimes—those against young people and property—and we therefore believe it is important that we have measures in which the public can have confidence. That is why we have asked the national statistician to conduct an independent review of those matters. I urge him and Opposition Members to join us in giving evidence to the national statistician. Let us reach a measure in which we can all trust and have confidence.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that a DNA database, CCTV cameras and having as many criminals in prison as possible all contribute to a reduced level of crime? Would he like to comment on what impact the Government’s plans will have on levels of crime in future?
Nick Herbert
As so often, I do not agree entirely with my hon. Friend. Of course, the national DNA database and CCTV are important, but it is equally important that there is proper governance of them and that we achieve a proper balance between civil liberties and crime-fighting measures.
Oral Answers to Questions
Philip Davies Excerpts(14 years, 3 months ago)
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Damian Green
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that question, not least because he and I debated the details of the system when the Bill in question was considered, when he was standing at this Dispatch Box. Although I accept the idea that we need a better system for allowing people to proceed to settlement or full citizenship, I was not convinced that the system that the previous Government proposed was anything other than a bureaucratic nightmare. I can assure him that I am still looking carefully at the details so that we can have an effective system that does not place too great a burden on the voluntary sector, which, as I said at the time, I thought his system did.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
How will the numbers of uncapped immigration from the European Union affect the level of the cap for numbers from outside the EU? Given that the Government support Turkey’s entry into the EU, can he tell us what estimate they have made of the number of immigrants we will get from that country?
Damian Green
I am happy to reassure my hon. Friend that this Government, unlike the previous one, would introduce transitional arrangements for any new country entering the EU, so we would have much greater control over the numbers than the previous Government did when the EU expanded with the accession of the A8 countries four or five years ago. In fact, over time migration within the EU evens out, and even now the vast majority of immigration to this country comes from outside the EU. That is the area on which the Government will concentrate to ensure that we have sustainable numbers coming to this country.