Immigration Bill

Rebecca Harris Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Harris (Castle Point) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this important debate. Like many, if not most, Members, I was acutely aware long before the general election of just how important the issue of immigration had become to the people in this country. Of all the issues raised with me on the doorstep by my constituents, immigration was unquestionably the number one concern, and scenes throughout the summer, across Europe and in Calais, have done nothing but exacerbate that concern in recent months.

Like my right hon. and hon. Friends, I welcomed the reforms brought about by the Immigration Act 2014, but there is still work to be done. My constituents are absolutely clear about the fact that they want us to control our borders, and that includes dealing with those who have already managed to evade our border controls.

While there are, of course, many benefits to Britain from some controlled immigration, we must face the fact that the current levels are unsustainable. It is well documented that mass immigration forces down wages and makes it more difficult for residents like mine to find work. However, illegal immigration is the major source of frustration and grievance for my residents. I therefore welcome the Bill’s attempts to support working people by clamping down on illegal immigration. These measures will help to protect our public services, and will send a message to those who try to exploit our system for their own gain.

There are those who seek to take advantage of some of the most vulnerable people by promising them a better life in Britain, but the reality for those who arrive is often exactly the opposite, so I welcome the proposals to introduce new, tougher sanctions for rogue employers. It is right that we make it an offence for anyone to employ someone whom he or she knows, or has reason to suspect, is an illegal worker. We cannot allow ruthless criminal gangs to continue to exploit the vulnerable, or to bring undocumented, even potentially dangerous, individuals into the country. The Bill sends a clear message to those gangs: “You will not win.” It also sends a clear message to potential illegal migrants that it will not be as easy to establish themselves in the United Kingdom as they were promised it would be.

Since 2010 the Government have worked hard to support new businesses, many of which have been set up in my constituency. We should be ensuring that those hard-working, law-abiding entrepreneurs are rewarded. Equally, we must punish those who continue to flout the law by employing illegal labour and giving themselves an unfair and illegal competitive advantage. Illegal labour not only exploits the workers whom it employs, but denies work to UK citizens and drives down wages. Businesses that ignore the law should be closed, and those who run them should be prosecuted, and seen to be prosecuted, for their actions.

Legal immigrants can make, and often have made, an enormous and valuable contribution to our society, but there is no doubt that illegal migration, and even the current levels of legal migration, have an adverse effect on our most important public services. By 2024, if current levels are maintained, we shall have to find an extra 900,000 school places. There is already pressure on primary school places in my constituency, and there is even pressure for schools to be built to provide more places. We already have to build 210,000 new homes every year to keep up with population fluctuations. It is hard for anyone to argue that such numbers are sustainable. It is not bigoted to note those facts; we need a pragmatic solution to the problems.

In Castle Point we have a shortage of housing, a shortage of space for housing, and, most acutely, a serious shortage of affordable and private rental accommodation. Hard-working families must wait for accommodation, sometimes for months and months. They naturally feel that it is just plain wrong if even part of the reason for that is illegal workers taking up private rental properties.

[Lady Hermon]

I know that the hon. Lady takes a particular interest in Northern Ireland, and I hope that she will therefore be as alarmed as I am—along with, I am sure, others on these Benches—that part 7 of the Bill, which requires public sector workers to speak fluent English, does not extend to Northern Ireland. The last time I checked, Northern Ireland was guaranteed its place in the United Kingdom by the Belfast agreement. Why should not part 7, which the hon. Lady praises, apply to it?

[Rebecca Harris]

I apologise for not having picked up on that point, but I am sure we will be addressing it very vigorously through Northern Irish channels.

Creating a new offence for rogue landlords who fail to take steps to remove illegal migrants from their properties will be a strong reassurance to the public that we are doing all we can to deal with what they feel to be a genuine injustice. It will also be a good way to help better establish the true scale of illegal immigration. Estimates vary wildly, but it is clear that the public perception is that it is a much more widespread problem than reported. Therefore measures that make it harder to live under the radar will increase public confidence, which is currently very much lacking. This Government have already made it much more difficult for immigrants to come to this country and immediately have access to our public services and our welfare system. This legislation will build upon those reforms and will strengthen our commitment to ensuring that only those who come here and contribute to our society can benefit from it.

It is a duty of us all in this House to listen to our constituents and try to address their concerns. I have listened to my constituents in Castle Point and they tell me they want something done about illegal immigration in the UK. This legislation will protect our public services, will further crack down on illegal immigration and will limit the access of illegal migrants to essential services. I welcome these proposals and urge Members to support them.

Stalking

Rebecca Harris Excerpts

Thursday 21st November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Harris (Castle Point) (Con)]

In my experience—mercifully not my personal experience, but my experience as a Member of Parliament—the new laws whose anniversary we are celebrating today were spot on. They absolutely address the experience of many of my constituents, but it is also clear from my experience as a Member of Parliament and from what we have heard today that they have not yet had time to bed down and work their way through the police and criminal justice system.

If the legislation is to work, it is crucial for all those involved in the police and criminal justice system to understand exactly what this crime is. They need to know what to look for and listen for when victims have the courage to come forward and complain, not least because the perpetrators of this obsessive and controlling behaviour can often be very manipulative and very convincing individuals. It has also been pointed out that these stalkers can sometimes involve other individuals and agencies in their crimes. Those agencies can include social services, and I know of a case in which a benefits office was used, involving numerous false calls. MPs themselves can sometimes be drawn into this. Even the police can find themselves being used as unwitting proxies in a harassment campaign.

We need a much wider understanding of these crimes throughout all agencies, not just the police, and among the wider public. It is important that the public understand more about this, because we need to reach the victims and their families and supporters. They also need to recognise this behaviour for what it is—criminal behaviour. If they do not do so, they will not have the confidence to come forward. Confidence is often completely lacking as a direct consequence of the sustained, emotionally draining abuse that a victim is suffering.

Victims need greater knowledge. They also need the confidence that their complaint will be taken seriously and not dismissed, as they often fear it will be. I have often heard of such complaints being dismissed as what appear to be a succession of relatively trivial incidents. As we have heard, however, those apparently trivial incidents can have the cumulative effect of making people feel positively imprisoned in their own home and completely emotionally downtrodden.

Part of the answer is to incorporate this subject into relationship education in our schools. We need people to understand both the potential victim and the potential perpetrator and to recognise that we are not talking about a normal relationship, an argument or someone getting their own back. It is controlling, dominating and threatening behaviour. If we get that message across to young people and the rest of society, we might be able to ensure that such patterns of behaviour are not set in course in the first instance.

This new law—one year on—is fully capable of addressing the appalling and soul-destroying crime of stalking. For that to work in practice, we need a much wider understanding of the methods that stalkers use and the effects that the crime has. Many people do not realise quite how prevalent and damaging the crime is to the people who suffer from it, and from the sustained abuse, and how bad it is in society. By having this debate, I hope that we have contributed towards that understanding.

Crime and Courts Bill [Lords]

Rebecca Harris Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Harris (Castle Point) (Con)]

I want to support some of the many excellent provisions in the Bill, and in particular the inclusion of drug-driving as an offence on which the police can act at the roadside in a proportionate and simple manner. There have been many such cases of which I have been made aware and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell) on having campaigned on the issue with great success.

I am disappointed that the Government have not taken the opportunity to go slightly further and consider road traffic offences more generally, including the laws on those who drive while medically unfit. Of course, the problems caused by drug-drivers and those who drive while medically unfit are incredibly similar from a public safety point of view. In both cases it is an offence to drive, but the law is not effective in preventing the problem.

Arguing for the drug-driving offence in another place, Lord Henley recognised that although being unfit through drugs is an offence, it is not prosecuted often enough because of the difficulty the police have in trying to prove that the driver is sufficiently impaired. That has hampered the police in taking drug-impaired drivers off our roads and the new provision will give the police a proportionate power to do so and punish them appropriately for endangering the public.

I do not consider those who drive while unfit for medical reasons in the same category as drug-abusing drivers; nor do I believe that they should necessarily be punished as severely as they might be under the Bill. Drugged and drunk drivers have made a decision to incapacitate themselves, whereas those driving while unfit for medical reasons might not have done. The effect on our roads is the same, however, as that driver is incapacitated while driving a vehicle that can kill.

The police should have the power to take a licence away or prevent someone they believe to be unfit to drive from doing so until it can be established otherwise. We know that 1,100 casualties and 50 deaths are caused every year by drug-driving, but I cannot quote the number of casualties on our roads caused by people driving while they are medically unfit—for example, because their eyesight is impaired—because we do not record the figures. In my short time as a Member of this House, however, several tragic cases have been brought to my attention.

One such case was brought to me by one of my constituents, whose niece, Natalie Wade, died on the way to buy her wedding dress, mown down by a driver who categorically knew he was unable to see appropriately to drive but continued to do so. He refused to recognise his obligation to report that to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, which is what we require medically unfit drivers to do. Hon. Members might also be aware of the case of a lady called Cassie McCord, who was killed by a driver with impaired eyesight who had been stopped three days earlier by the police. The police were unable to prevent him from driving, he continued to do so and she died when he ran her over only three days later.

We do not stop such people driving but we need to avoid these preventable deaths. The very least we could do is allow the police to do their job, and when they recognise that individuals are clearly unfit to drive for whatever reason—drug-driving or medical impairment—we should allow them to act.

[Dr Huppert]

The hon. Lady is making an extremely good point and she is absolutely right to say that we must focus on the level of impairment, not the cause. If it is a question of road safety, we must focus on a solution whereby people who are unfit to drive for medical reasons or because of drugs or alcohol that they have recently consumed should be unfit because they have reached a threshold of impairment, not because of the cause of that impairment.

[Rebecca Harris]

Someone who is apprehended by the police because their driving is impaired by alcohol can have their vehicle taken from them at the roadside, and the new provisions will go a long way towards ensuring that that happens more often with drug-driving and that we can prosecute drug-drivers more readily and more easily. If a person fails a roadside sight test, however, such as that which one needs for a driving licence, it is impossible for the police to take their keys and require them to have an eye test. Perhaps we could extend the scope of the Bill—I hope in Committee that we can take the provision one step further and consider those who are medically unfit to drive, for whatever reason.

Scrap Metal Dealers Bill

Rebecca Harris Excerpts

Friday 13th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Richard Ottaway]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right, and I am sure we all share her concern about the events that took place in her constituency. She has illustrated the disparity between the scrap metal costs and the damage to society that results from such behaviour.

Metal theft has also had a serious impact in the transport sector. Last year, 36,000 rail services were delayed or cancelled in Great Britain as a result of cable theft. Two of Network Rail’s biggest delays ever were on key commuter routes from London, at Bermondsey and Woking, causing around 200 trains to be cancelled. Many thousands of passengers, including my constituents, were seriously delayed.

[Rebecca Harris (Castle Point) (Con)]

Cable theft is not only enormously disruptive to the travelling public, but incredibly dangerous to those trying to do it. Only on 27 June a man presumed to have been trying to steal electricity cables was electrocuted in my constituency. Does my hon. Friend agree that the ease with which people can sell the metal is encouraging quite a lot of people to put their lives at risk?

[Richard Ottaway]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. In fact, I am reliably informed that 12 people were killed last year in the process of stealing electrified cables.

We are talking not about petty theft but about an industry, with criminals holding our society to ransom. Why? It is because they see metal theft as a soft target. The police tell us that metal theft is emerging as a new acquisitive crime. It is a low-risk enterprise, with plenty of vulnerable targets to plunder. Around 80% of people linked to cable theft live within six miles of the crime location. Clearly, they have no fear of being caught. The surge is driven partly by the low risk of detection. The lack of an effective framework to combat metal theft has a lot to answer for. We need new legislation to disrupt and then shut down the trade in stolen metal.