Immigration Controls

Debate between Priti Patel and Julian Huppert

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Priti Patel (Witham) (Con)]

I am delighted that this debate was granted by Mr Speaker and delighted to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Crausby. I am also pleased that my hon. Friend the Minister for Immigration can respond to the debate, because this is quite a busy day for his Department as regards immigration. I commend him and my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary for the Immigration Bill, which will be debated this afternoon. There is no doubt that we are providing the warm-up act this morning—the opportunity for hon. Members to sharpen and master the arguments for this afternoon. On that note, I welcome the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) and congratulate him on his new role. I can assure him that I shall be supplying some facts and information that may equip him for the debate this afternoon.

Conservative Ministers in the Home Office have made great progress in the last three and a half years in tackling the problems with our immigration system and the atrocious legacy inherited from Labour. One of the biggest concerns for my constituents is immigration controls. In the run-up to and during the general election in 2010, it was the No. 1 issue raised with me in my constituency—the issue on which my constituents were pressing for action. That is not surprising, because it is a rural constituency in the east of England, so it has many issues with seasonal agricultural workers and migrants coming in. My constituents wanted, and are eager to see, a wide range of effective reforms and policies put in place to keep our borders secure and the public safe.

I want to draw attention to a number of issues, particularly the ongoing consequences of Labour’s failures; cases from my constituency in which the immigration system has not worked effectively; the need for further reforms to remove foreign criminals, prisoners and terrorists; reforms to human rights laws; EU immigration, the free movement directive and transitional controls on Bulgaria and Romania; and the need to ensure that we have an immigration system that, importantly, lets in wealth creators, entrepreneurs and people who will make a positive contribution to this country, while preventing from coming in, and removing, those who should not be here.

We can appreciate what the Government have already done to deal with many of the problems in our immigration system and understand what more needs to be done only by understanding what went wrong with the system under the Labour Government. The Minister is fully aware of the past and the appalling legacy left by the Labour Government, and no doubt continues to deal daily with many of the consequences, such as the backlog of cases and appeals. It is a fact that immigration controls were ineffective. Immigration numbers had spiralled out of all proportion. Transitional controls had not been placed on the A8 countries when they joined the EU. Labour passed the Human Rights Act 1998, which gave illegal immigrants, foreign criminals and many taxpayer-funded lawyers new excuses to block deportation. We are still living with many of the consequences of that on a daily basis.

Three quarters of the new jobs created in the UK economy after 1997 went to people born overseas, and a monumental backlog of asylum cases had built up. Almost 500,000 asylum cases, which the previous Government failed to process effectively, accumulated and, as we now know, the figures were massaged to reduce the backlog, rather than people being sent home. We now know that there were not effective systems of control over management or even the processing of data at that stage.

I have an example from Witham of a constituent who came to Britain as an asylum seeker from Albania in 2002, applied to extend his leave to remain in January 2006 and, almost eight years on, is still waiting for his case to be determined. Such delays are wrong. It should never be forgotten that under the previous Government so many cases—too many—were left unresolved. It has been estimated that more than 3 million immigrants came to live in Britain during Labour’s time in office, and illegal immigrants could add another million to that. In Labour’s 1997 manifesto, it pledged that a Labour Government would

“ensure swift and fair decisions on whether someone can stay or go”,

but, as we now know, there was an open-door policy inviting everyone to come to Britain, and our border control system was completely dysfunctional and broken.

The Office for National Statistics has estimated that the UK’s population, which is about 63 million, could reach as much as 75 million by 2035, with two thirds of that increase arising out of the consequences of immigration. In my county of Essex, between 2004 and 2012, the estimated number of non-UK-born residents increased from 69,000, which was 5% of the population, to 104,000, which is over 7.5%. Across the UK in the same period, the number of non-UK-born residents rose from 5.2 million, which is the equivalent of 9% of the population, in 2004 to nearly 7.7 million in 2012, which is equivalent to more than 12% of the UK population.

As we have seen in newspaper reports this morning, population increases and, obviously, increases in immigration have an impact on our public services and infrastructure, but the strains placed on the country’s infrastructure and public services by the numbers that I have referred to have been kept hidden. Only now is the full extent of the facts emerging. A report prepared by the Department for Communities and Local Government in August 2007, which was not cleared for circulation—it was published only earlier this year, in response to a written parliamentary question—highlighted the fact that new arrivals

“can affect resource planning and make school and classroom management difficult”,

that there is

“anecdotal evidence of recent migration placing pressure on the availability and affordability of rented accommodation”,

and that the

“number of A8 migrants claiming childcare benefits, tax credits and income support are all rising.”

Immigration is not the only cause of pressure on our public services, housing and infrastructure, but it is a factor that cannot be ignored. The previous Government tried to shut down debate on this issue, but it is valid for the Government today to have this discussion. That reflects the fact that they deserve credit for their commitment to addressing these problems. Conservative Ministers can be proud of the actions that they have already taken to regain control of the broken immigration system. Net migration is down by one third. It is heading closer to the Government’s target, which is to bring it below 100,000 by 2015. The number of immigrants coming to Britain is at its lowest since 2001. Interestingly, under the previous Conservative Government, between 1991 and 1997, the inflow of migrants to the UK ranged between 266,000 and 329,000—a modest level—with annual net migration not exceeding 77,000, but after that, under Labour, inward migration increased year on year, in five of the next six years, from 391,000 in 1998 to 589,000 in 2004. It stayed above half a million until last year.

The UK Border Agency, one of the most poorly performing and discredited Government agencies, is being abolished and replaced. Bogus colleges have been exposed and student visa abuses tackled. New controls on the family migration route to tackle sham marriages—quite rightly—and to protect vulnerable people have been introduced and are welcome. The new Immigration Bill goes further and does more to control our borders and immigration flows. I welcome the measures, as my constituents do, to make it more difficult for illegal immigrants to come to Britain and live in this country. There is also the contribution that temporary migrants will be required to make to the NHS; we are seeing that in the newspapers just this morning.

We also have to cut the appeal routes. We have to make removals of illegal immigrants and foreign criminals easier and clamp down on the abuses of article 8 of the European convention on human rights and judicial activism that we have seen across the country. I would like to come on to some constituency cases that I have experienced.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

The hon. Lady is listing a catalogue of problems with immigration, but does she agree that there are also huge benefits from migration, which companies highlight, and that legitimate, legal immigrants deserve fair and prompt access to this country, so that they can come in and contribute to it?

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As I touched on earlier, immigrants are entrepreneurs and business people, and immigration touches on the skills agenda—another issue we could debate for a long time. Where people make a positive contribution, we should find the best routes—the right routes—to make them welcome and support them in visa applications and so on. We must be proactive on that front, but we can only do that and change the system in their favour once we have tackled the catalogue of problems, some of which I have highlighted.

The devastation left by the Labour Government was so great that we cannot overestimate the challenges faced by the Government and the Minister. Repairing the damage will no doubt take a long time. Labour’s legacy can still be seen across the country. I am sure that many hon. and right hon. Members see cases in their constituencies involving immigrants who have been deemed to have no right to remain in the UK, but, quite wrongly, pursue every legal avenue to remain here. In my constituency, there have been cases of immigrants who have outstayed their welcome. Such cases demonstrate the systemic failures of the controls put in place under the previous Government. I could reel off many cases, but I have a couple that I would like to highlight.

One lady from the Philippines was granted permission to enter the country in 2006 on a 48-month work permit to work in a care home. Since then, her husband, family and children, who have gone to local schools, have all come over. Once the visa expired and she was asked to leave, little action was taken, so the family remain in the UK. Last summer, the case was brought to my attention and an appeal to remain in the UK was rejected. To avoid deportation, the family lodged a further application to remain in the UK on human rights grounds in January this year, which was refused in June. The case is now going on and on. In July, they lodged another appeal, which is still pending. If that appeal is rejected, the family may undertake another appeal and prolong the process even more. Surely that cannot be right.

Another case in my constituency that has been ongoing for years involves a family from Nigeria who are here without any right to remain. They were informed that they should leave the UK two years ago, but they, too, embarked on a series of applications and appeals. Such actions are all about delay and prolonging the process for people who have no right whatever to remain in the country. That undermines public confidence in the immigration system. A stop must be put to repeated applications and appeals.

I welcome the measures in the Immigration Bill to limit the number of appeals that immigrants make. I urge the Minister to look at ways of going further in speeding up cases—the issue is the efficiency and effectiveness with which cases are determined—so that those who are deemed to have no right to remain in the UK can be removed without delay. Once someone has lost their case or appeal, unless there are genuinely exceptional circumstances, there is no reason why they should not leave voluntarily or be deported, if that has to be done, within a couple of weeks. They should certainly not be here for a prolonged period. That would obviously restore public confidence in the system and send a powerful signal to those who have abused the system. It would send a message that Britain is not a soft touch and will take tough action.

I also welcome the approach that will be taken to deporting foreign criminals before their appeals are held. I ask the Minister to consider extending that approach to other persons staying in the UK illegally and involved in repeat applications and appeals. An aspect of immigration controls that greatly concerns my constituents and the wider public is the way foreign offenders, prisoners and terrorists are able to remain in the country, despite the overt threat they pose to public safety and national security. The Abu Qatada case is symbolic of the wider problem with immigration controls and human rights laws: judicial activism and judgments from Europe that, frankly, undermine this country. We should be able to remove the likes of Aso Mohammed Ibrahim, who killed a 12-year-old girl, and serial Somali criminals Abdisamad Adow Sufi and Abdiaziz Ibrahim Elmi, without the courts and human rights laws interfering and our courts being lectured on what we should be doing.

Killers, sex offenders, violent criminals, persistent offenders and supporters of terrorists should face the automatic expectation of deportation. They should not expect to be protected by the ridiculous interpretations of human rights laws that the European Court of Human Rights, and sometimes even our own courts, provides. We should have a prison-to-plane approach, whereby foreign national offenders who have served custodial sentences are removed. When they leave prison, they should be taken to an airport and deported at the earliest opportunity. My constituents and the British public would feel greatly reassured if they knew that such dangerous criminals were not able to set foot again in our country and their communities. I welcome the fact that the Government are taking the matter seriously; that is shown in the way that they are initiating deportation proceedings sooner. As a result, the average time taken to remove a foreign national offender following the completion of a custodial sentence was lowered to 77 days in 2011. We still have 11,000 foreign national offenders in our prisons and thousands more who avoid custodial sentences.

The Minister knows of my concern about the fact that more than 3,100 foreign nationals who are subject to deportation orders are still in the country. Shockingly, that includes 2,300 people who have been on the list for more than a year, 25 of whom have been here for more than 10 years. Every day, hard-working British taxpayers are left to pick up the hefty bill for legal costs and other expenses for those individuals. We must put an end to it, and if that means going further on the Human Rights Act, reforming the European convention on human rights and taking unilateral action to defend parliamentary sovereignty from European judicial activism, my constituents and the British public would expect nothing less from a Conservative Government acting in the national interest.

I urge the Minister and his colleagues in the Ministry of Justice to look at ways to deport European prisoners to their countries to serve their sentences. As he is aware, the Council of Europe convention on the transfer of sentenced persons enables European national prisoners to be deported to serve their sentences in the country of their nationality, but unfortunately, it is a voluntary agreement. There are 4,000 or so European national prisoners in our jails, but only 138 applications were received in 2011, with 127 being referred to other jurisdictions for consideration. The numbers being deported under the convention are too small. In 2007, 111 prisoners were deported, but that number is declining and has since dropped, meaning that not even 1% of European national prisoners serve their sentences in their own countries. Slightly more than 1,000 foreign national offenders from the European economic area were deported in 2011. I hope that the Minister will make that issue a priority in his discussions in Europe and seek to secure the deportation of more European national offenders.

The final aspect of immigration controls I shall raise relates to immigration from Europe. The free movement of goods and peoples is an important principle of the European Union, but the unrestricted access given to European nationals has added significantly to our population and the strain on public services. Of the 2.7 million residents in this country who were born in other EU countries, 1.1 million are estimated to have been born in those countries that joined the EU since 2004. In 2003, more than 500,000 nationals from other EU countries and 50,000 from countries about to join in 2004 were employed in the UK. By 2011, that number more than doubled to 1.29 million, which included more than 700,000 nationals from the 2004 intake of member states and more than 500,000 from the pre-2004 accession.

On top of that, there are an estimated 600,000 economically inactive EU nationals in the UK, many of whom will be accessing public services and benefits. This morning, I read that one person in 25 claiming jobseeker’s allowance is an EU immigrant, so the pressure on the public purse and public services is clearly enormous. Meanwhile, child benefit is being paid in respect of 40,000 children living in other European countries.

It cannot be right that our country faces an uphill battle, and legal action with Europe, to reduce some of the benefits being paid to EU nationals. I encourage the Minister and the Government to consider how we can renegotiate the position with Europe to bring common sense and sanity to our immigration controls, so that they do not prevent the working of the free market but enable us to limit immigration, prevent abuses of free movement rights and remove those who should not be here and are pushing the boundaries by accessing benefits and public services.

I also press the Government to make greater use of the powers already available through the free movement directive to restrict the right of entry and the right of residence on the grounds of public policy, public security or public health. It is almost inevitable that we would be challenged by the European Commission for doing so, but there are many cases, especially involving European national criminals, where we must take a firm approach and give the public confidence.

East of England Ambulance Service

Debate between Priti Patel and Julian Huppert

Tuesday 25th June 2013 Westminster Hall

[Priti Patel]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. Interestingly, funding was not an issue in this case; the trust is very well funded, and I will come to that. This is about professionalism and training. With the board and the trust, we have seen a complete failure of not only leadership, but skills; there is a question about the skills base of the board and the non-executive directors, and it is clear that they have failed in their duties and responsibilities.

My hon. Friend the Minister will know from the Mid Staffordshire inquiry and from events involving the CQC, Cumbria and other trusts the consequences of the rotten culture of management failures, cover-ups and inept strategic leadership in the NHS, which the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich, touched on. That culture is simply not acceptable, and it is about time we took the lid off many NHS trusts and started to ask questions about the failure we have seen across the country.

The East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust is another trust we can add to the list of those where scandal and incompetence have put lives at risk. As I said, this is not a resourcing issue, because the trust is funded above the national average. This is a problem with senior management, directors and non-executive directors. Since the publication of the CQC report, a new interim chair, Dr Geoff Harris, has been brought into the trust. A governance review and additional support are being provided by Dr Anthony Marsh, the chief executive of the country’s best-performing ambulance trust, in the west midlands. Those are welcome steps. Of course, it was Dr Marsh’s review of governance that highlighted the extent of the scandal and failure at the heart of the trust.

[Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on the debate, and on the work that she and colleagues have done over many months. She is right to say that the issue is not money. I have heard it suggested that the problem is to do with rural ambulance services, but I assure her that constituents of mine with awful problems have had to wait an hour and a half for ambulances that were simply not available. The problem is urban as well as rural, and I know that she realises that. The solution must affect all of us.

[Priti Patel]

Absolutely. My hon. Friend is right. The key is that there is a failed service, and it requires immediate turnaround, which must have one clear focus: putting patients first, rather than the interests of board and trust members. The issue is about patients.

I am encouraged by my initial contact with Dr Harris and Dr Marsh. It is incumbent on us all to support them, to ensure that they get the trust back on its feet.