Refugee Crisis in Europe

Richard Burden Excerpts

Tuesday 8th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, but there are alternative routes for those who are looking for family reunion here in the UK. Under current family reunion provisions within the immigration rules, those who are granted asylum or humanitarian protection in the UK can sponsor immediate family members to join them here. We have arrangements in place that are helpful to those who wish to join family here in the UK.

I want to make another point about the perilous journey. An important point was made by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) yesterday. He said:

“If we are genuinely to help refugees, this cannot simply be about helping the fittest, the fastest and those most able to get to western Europe. We must help those who are left behind in the camps, who are sometimes the most vulnerable.”—[Official Report, 7 September 2015; Vol. 599, c. 34.]

Indeed, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) has made that point herself—she made it on one occasion when we discussed the issue last year. She said:

“There has always been cross-party agreement that the majority of refugees should be supported in the region”.—[Official Report, 29 January 2014; Vol. 574, c. 881.]

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

The Home Secretary is clearly right about Britain’s record, both on reaching 0.7% and on the camps in Syria and surrounding areas. However, she will know that there is still a crisis of funding in those areas. The World Food Programme, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency and others are talking about the strains on their resources to deal not only with the Syrian crisis, but with other crises. The Government have decided that the refugee resettlement programme on which they are embarking will come from the overseas aid budget. I understand the reasons for that, but has there been an assessment of the impact that funding it in that way will have on other programmes elsewhere?

[Mrs May]

The hon. Gentleman is correct that the United Nations is looking at how to reach the funding it requires to provide support. As he says, there has been an impact on the World Food Programme. Yesterday, I was able to speak to Stephen O’Brien, who a few months ago took up his new role in the UN. He has been spending some considerable time on the issue and talking to potential donor countries. He is looking actively at how it is possible to increase that funding. The Under-Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood), has alerted me to the fact that the UN General Assembly will focus on the issue in the not-too-distant future. The UK has a commitment to 0.7%. Because of our growing economy, that aid budget is increasing—it is not the case that there is simply one pot of money that is being distributed. We are seeing an increase because of that growth in the economy, because the target that we have set and reached is based on a percentage of national wealth rather than on a specific figure.

I said in response to my hon. and learned Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Sir Oliver Heald) a couple of minutes ago that I would comment on the issue of criminality. Our work pits us against the callous criminal gangs that exploit the suffering of vulnerable people by selling them false hope. They are taking their life savings in exchange for a place in a rickety vessel, or cramped in the back of an ill-ventilated lorry. The tragic death toll in the Mediterranean—not just in recent weeks, but over the past two years—illustrates the great risks people are running and the vile disregard for human life of the gangs who encourage them, and so do appalling cases such as the 71 bodies found abandoned and decomposing last month in the back of a lorry on an Austrian motorway.

We have seen people taking dangerous risks in their attempts to cross not only the Mediterranean but the English channel. That is why we are working—not just alone but with our international partners—to smash these criminal gangs and break their disgusting trade. In Calais, the joint declaration I signed on 20 August with Bernard Cazeneuve, the French Interior Minister, cements and builds on the close working relationship of our two Governments. It builds on the important collaboration between our law enforcement agencies and establishes a joint gold command structure ensuring that UK and French officers work hand in hand, sharing intelligence and reporting jointly on a monthly basis to both me and Mr Cazeneuve.

Devolution and Growth across Britain

Richard Burden Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

I congratulate new hon. Members to this House from both sides of the Chamber on making such distinguished maiden speeches today, particularly my hon. Friend the new Member for Redcar (Anna Turley), who made a passionate speech about her constituency and the relevance of steel, where there is a bond between us: steel from Redcar was used to build the Bullring in my city of Birmingham. While talking about Birmingham, I thank the people of Birmingham, Northfield for electing me for a sixth successive time, despite quite unprecedented financial amounts being spent by the Conservative party in trying to secure a different result. Not only did Labour win the parliamentary seat, but we won a council seat in that constituency off the Conservatives at the same time, so things did not go quite according to their plan.

It is good to see the new Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government in his place. He will know that those of us who have argued for devolution to the regions and sub-regions of England for many years will be pleased that this is now becoming mainstream thinking across the Chamber. It is good to see that the Chancellor was in the west midlands just this week, and I certainly welcome the progress that is being made towards a combined authority in that area, but I want to make three points to Ministers in the time that I have available today.

First, if devolution is to work in England, it must involve a shift of power, not simply a shift of responsibility. I ask the Secretary of State and his colleagues to take seriously what my right hon. Friend the acting Leader of the Opposition said in her initial response to the Gracious Speech, when she said that no one empowers local authorities by impoverishing them. That is an important point, but we need to identify new local funding streams. Again, I ask the Government to pay serious regard to the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts) about identifying those new funding streams and, in particular, looking at revenue raising as well as revenue devolution.

Secondly, if devolution is to stimulate growth in the way we want and make a real difference to people’s lives, a one-size-fits-all approach is not good enough. A good argument is being made for elected mayors in many areas, but what is right for one metropolitan area is not necessarily right for another, let alone for non-metropolitan areas. Often travel-to-work areas and economic activity clusters and so on do not fit neatly into political boundaries. That is why, if devolution is to work, the Government need to listen to ideas coming up from below as well as putting their preferred solutions down from on high.

Thirdly, the challenge of devolution within regions, sub-regions or cities is as important as devolution to those regions, sub-regions or cities. We all know that the politics of identity is important in all our areas. It is an issue in my part of Birmingham. I represent a constituency on the edge of Birmingham, where people often feel on the edge of decision making in their city as well as on the edge of decision making nationally.

My constituency is the worst low-pay blackspot in the country. We have the highest number of people paid less than the living wage of £7.85 an hour: more than 50% of working people, reaching up to 63.1% of women in the area. Long-term unemployment remains a real issue in my constituency. People sometimes say that that is the kind of environment that drains aspiration, but as a local teacher told me recently, it is not that people do not aspire to have the best for their children; the point is often that people do not have the expectation that things will change for them and their families. If devolution is to work, it must offer the prospect of that real change. It does mean that, in education, listening to what is needed in local areas will be important; we should not simply get one-size-fits-all academisation or free schools. We need to look at school funding streams for areas, particularly white working class areas, where extreme deprivation exists alongside relative affluence. The pupil premium, even though it does good things in some areas, does not necessarily meet the needs in those areas.

We also need to look at what the barriers to skills development are that lie behind some of the low-pay statistics in Northfield that I quoted earlier. Simply quoting statistics about how many apprenticeships have been created does not address those problems. It is about adult skills, too. Just before the election, the Government announced a massive cut in the adult skills budget. Turning that around will also be important if we are to turn around the life chances of people in my area.

What I am saying is that the test for the Government is to listen. The test for any new combined authority in my area will be to listen. Unless devolution reaches out to people who feel on the edge of our country, our regions or cities, we will not transform the life chances that they deserve to have transformed and devolution will not achieve what it says in theory.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Burden Excerpts

Monday 23rd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mike Penning]

I assure my right hon. Friend that each time I go into any force I say to anybody who listens to me not only that it is their duty to address rural crime—my constituency has large rural areas—but that all crime, no matter where it is, needs to be detected and prosecuted.

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

12. What her policy is on the minimum income threshold requirement for people wishing to sponsor their partner’s visa to settle in the UK.

[The Minister for Security and Immigration (James Brokenshire)]

The minimum income threshold of £18,600 for sponsoring a partner under the family immigration rules ensures that couples who wish to establish their family life in the UK can stand on their own feet financially. The requirement prevents burdens on the taxpayer and promotes integration. It has been upheld by the Court of Appeal and is helping to restore public confidence in the immigration system.

[Richard Burden]

The Minister has just asserted that the purpose of the minimum income threshold is to ensure that a spouse from overseas who comes to live here is not a burden on the taxpayer. However, at £18,600, the threshold is more than £3,000 higher than the living wage. Does he not think that it should be reviewed to ensure that the original purpose of the minimum income threshold is what counts and that it does not discriminate against those on the living wage or below, or against people who happen to live in the wrong part of the country?

[James Brokenshire]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, the income threshold was set on the basis of advice given to the Government by the Migration Advisory Committee, which considered this issue in great detail to assess the appropriate level. Perhaps he will find interesting the fact that the 2014 annual survey of hours and earnings for the Office for National Statistics showed that median earnings of those in full-time employment were appreciably higher than £18,600 in all parts of the UK.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Burden Excerpts

Monday 10th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

There has been considerable contact on this matter. My right hon. Friend the policing Minister met representatives of the Police Federation of England and Wales to discuss any issues that they wished to raise about the secondment of officers to work alongside the PSNI to police the G8 conference. I am pleased to say that I have met a small number of police officers who will be giving mutual aid to Northern Ireland and who were very complimentary about the training course they have undergone to do that work.

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

9. What assessment she has made of increases in waiting times for visa decisions.

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

The Home Office’s performance in granting visa applications overseas has been excellent and remains so, with average waiting times decreasing rather than increasing. As I have acknowledged myself at the Dispatch Box, there have been problems with our in-country performance in the past financial year, but since the abolition of the UK Border Agency and the creation of UK Visa and Immigration we have got that on the right path, with waiting times decreasing too.

[Richard Burden]

We are probably all aware from our own casework of the real problems that visa delays cause for our constituents. Given that the average waiting time for a skilled worker—somebody whom the British economy needs—has gone up from 36 days in 2010 to 56 days in 2012, does the Minister really think that measures of the kind he mentions are going to crack the problem, and if so, when are we going to see the results?

[Mr Harper]

I acknowledged openly and honestly that there had been a problem in the past financial year, and that is what the figures quoted by the hon. Gentleman reflect. However, as I said, in the past quarter the figures have improved, so when they are published in the instalment of that information that we give to the Home Affairs Committee, he will see that we are getting things back on track. There is an open session with Members of Parliament this Wednesday, and I hope he will attend to listen to the steps we are taking to improve performance.

Abu Qatada

Richard Burden Excerpts

Tuesday 17th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I am not in a position to predict what will emerge from the deliberations that will take place during the three days in Brighton, but I can assure my hon. Friend that—as I said earlier—the Prime Minister in a speech earlier this year clearly defined the areas in which we felt that it was necessary to work with other countries on reform of the European Court, and I have every expectation that they will be addressed at the conference this week.

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

May I again draw hon. Members’ attention to the forthcoming entry in the register? The Home Secretary may be aware that the all-party group on Jordan was also in Amman last week. I believe that it was on the same day as the Home Secretary spoke to the Jordanian Prime Minister that we were able briefly to raise the Abu Qatada issue with him, explaining the great public concern in the UK about it. I must agree that he emphasised at that time that Jordan wished to do what it could to facilitate the deportation and to make progress on human rights. It is also important to put on the record today that when we spoke to the Jordanians—I am sure that the Home Secretary will do this as well—we said that we in no way wish them to lighten up on human rights standards in their country; we want them to continue the progress they are making towards political reform, constitutional reform and human rights.

[Mrs May]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. As I have said, the Jordanian Government have been very helpful in our discussions about Abu Qatada. What is significant is that the way in which the Jordanian system operates today is different from the portrayal given by the European Court; a significant number of changes have taken place. Indeed, when I was in Jordan, everything that people were saying to me, both at Government level and through officials and others, was that they see Jordan continuing to move forward on this issue of human rights.

Gangs and Youth Violence

Richard Burden Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

Voluntary mentoring of individuals can have an incredibly important role to play in tackling both gang membership and youth violence. There are many projects out there in which voluntary and charitable groups provide necessary support to families that helps them to bring up their children in a way that prevents them from going down the route of gang violence. I commend the project that my hon. Friend mentions. I am sure that it is doing excellent work in his constituency, as it does elsewhere in the country.

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

The Home Secretary has on several occasions emphasised the importance of partnership working between the statutory agencies and the voluntary sector, not only to divert young people from joining gangs—I hope that we do not see all young people as a potential problem—but to bring out the talents that they have inside them. Even if the right hon. Lady does not like what Opposition Members are saying about resources, does she accept that youth workers and voluntary groups are also saying that the resources are not enough? What assurances can she give them, if not us, that she is listening to them?

[Mrs May]

Of course the vast majority of young people are not involved in gang membership and violence. We should recognise that all too often the only stories that people read about young people are bad stories, not good ones. The House should perhaps do more to recognise that the vast majority of young people do not get involved in this sort of activity.

I have seen across the country that what makes a difference is how you spend the money that is available, targeting those who are most in need, and targeting money effectively. Sadly, over the years money has been spent that has not led to a change. We want to change young people’s lives.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Richard Burden Excerpts

Monday 13th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Ann Clwyd (Cynon Valley) (Lab)]

rose—

[Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

rose—