Oral Answers to Questions

Robert Jenrick Excerpts

Monday 20th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster]

We have already made clear the actions we are taking. Since April last year we have been advising people to allow up to 10 weeks for an application, although 91% of people get their passport back within six weeks of applying. The hon. Member will also be aware that in some instances, such as school trips, collective passports can be used, subject to those being accepted by the country they are travelling to.

[Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)]

Earlier in the year, Parliament repealed the antiquated Vagrancy Act 1824. It was an important step in our journey to ending homelessness for good. Imagine my surprise when I reviewed the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill to see that that repeal was repealed and that the Secretary of State will be given unlimited and unspecified powers to recriminalise homelessness. I know my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary cares about this, and she has been superb in supporting me and other Ministers in this mission. May I ask her to deal with this and ensure that we can get on with the job of ending homelessness?

[Priti Patel]

Absolutely. I pay tribute to and thank my right hon. Friend for all his support and work in this particular area. I will reach out and speak to him and we will join up on this.

Ukraine Refugee Visas

Robert Jenrick Excerpts

Thursday 31st March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster]

First, it is too early to say how many people have arrived under the Homes for Ukraine scheme, but we are now publishing details of visa grants. By 9am today 3,705 visas had been granted, and the trajectory for visa grants is increasing every day. I remind hon. Members that at one point last week we issued nearly 6,000 family scheme visas in two days. Again, that shows the type of capacity available once we get decisions ready to be made, and we would expect to see a similar increase in trajectory on the Homes for Ukraine scheme.

On the accusation that applications are being deleted, what has actually happened is, first, a removal of duplicates, for example where someone applied initially with biometrics and then did so without biometrics. Where someone did not qualify for the family scheme but they have someone in the UK who would be prepared to sponsor them—such as godparents, for the sake of argument—we transfer this over to the Homes for Ukraine scheme. Members will realise why that is a sensible and proportionate approach to take.

On the accusation about “reams of info”, we have cut back on what people are asked to supply. We do not need authorised translations and people can submit in Ukrainian, with the most basic of documentation: any evidence that shows residence in Ukraine. Again, we are not asking people to give us travel history or previous addresses; we are asking purely for something that shows they were resident in Ukraine in December and that there is a basic family link, if relevant, for the family scheme. We are cutting down the information purely to that which is necessary for vital safeguarding checks.

This is the latest in a number of humanitarian interventions and routes we have created over the past year. We saw the determination to help people in Afghanistan, from which we saw the biggest evacuation since Dunkirk; we saw the British national overseas route delivered, with more than 100,000 applications over the past year; and now we see these two routes for Ukrainians set up in record time, with tens of thousands of people already having visas under them. I just compare that with how the shadow Home Secretary got on with her own pledge to rehome one Syrian refugee.

[Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)]

This is going to be a wonderful scheme and we are all looking forward to welcoming tens of thousands of Ukrainians to this country, but something is going wrong with the scheme right now. Tomorrow, the vast majority of sponsors will have waited two weeks and will not have heard anything at all. We are testing the patience of people in this country who have put themselves forward as sponsors and, much more importantly, we are letting down vulnerable individuals and families in Ukraine. We need to process only about 8,000 households, and we are talking about 20,000 or 30,000 applications in total. That is not a huge or insurmountable task, but it does require the Home Office to make sure that the resources and the leadership are in place to get this sorted. I hope that we have heard today from the Minister that that will now happen in the next few days.

[Kevin Foster]

My right hon. Friend is right to say that people want to get on and help. Tens of thousands of people throughout the country have made a very generous offer and they want to be able to extend that and for it to be taken up. We are rightly doing vital safeguarding checks. Sadly, we have had some pings on the police national computer in respect of some of the sponsors who have come forward, and we will need to consider them, but the vast and overwhelming majority of people want to do the right thing.

I appreciate my right hon. Friend’s wish that we go faster. As I have touched on, the rate at which visas are being granted is increasing. As we have seen with the Ukraine family scheme, once people have passed through a number of checks, we can quickly start to issue a large number of visas, which is what we plan to do.

English Channel Small Boats Incident

Robert Jenrick Excerpts

Thursday 25th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

That is exactly what the Nationality and Borders Bill does.

[Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)]

I support my right hon. Friend’s pursuit of all long-term options—including offshore processing, which I think will play an important part—but does she accept that in the short term we will see more such tragedies unless we can agree a strategy with the French? It is in the gift of the President of France to bring this to an end now. That will require more action by the French, but it must be in our mutual interests, because the more people cross the channel, the more people will come to France.

[Priti Patel]

My hon. right Friend is absolutely right, hence the discussions that took place between the Prime Minister and President Macron last night. We have been assiduous and forthright in making these points to our counterparts in France over the past two years. Members have heard about the offers that we presented to President Macron, the Interior Minister and the whole machinery of the French Government. We urge them to take up those offers. They may not be perfect, but that is not the point. We need to deploy every single tool that we have to save lives and to prevent the loss of life, and that is effectively what this is now about.

Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism

Robert Jenrick Excerpts

Wednesday 24th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)]

I take this opportunity—my first—to congratulate my right hon. Friend the Minister on his appointment to the role, which I can see that he is already performing exceptionally well, as I would expect. I thank him and my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary for their decision to proscribe Hamas in its entirety, which I strongly support. I also thank the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds); the shadow Foreign Secretary, the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy); and the Leader of the Opposition for their important decision to support the Home Secretary’s decision, which is to be welcomed wholeheartedly.

Last week, a young man, as we heard earlier—Eli Kay, a 26-year-old tour guide—was murdered as he was doing his business, walking around the old city in Jerusalem. His grandparents are well-respected members of the West Hampstead Jewish community, and he had deep links here in the United Kingdom. I think all of us would send our best wishes and our deepest condolences to his grandparents and all those who knew him here in the UK. He was murdered by a Hamas terrorist—a Hamas terrorist who purported to be from the political wing of that organisation. That one young man’s brutal, unexpected and unexplainable death goes some way to explain why we as a country need to be proscribing the whole of the organisation that that murderer, that terrorist belonged to.

I cannot reach into the heart of that individual and explain what motivated him to take the life of Eli Kay. I do not think any of us here can. That is terrorism—that is the unexplainable impact of terrorism. It is pure evil. We cannot accommodate terrorism. When someone uses the slaughter of innocent people to advance a political cause or a supposed political cause, at that point that cause becomes immoral and unjust, and they and the organisation that they stand for have to be eliminated from serious debate and serious discussion.

We have to take this issue seriously, and I am afraid at times in this country we do not. We have seen, just in the last few weeks, two very serious terrorist incidents. Most deeply we felt, of course, the loss of our friend and former colleague Sir David Amess, and of course we have seen a very serious incident—albeit one that could have been all the more serious—in Liverpool. We do not know, and it is not our role right now to speculate on, the true causes and motivations of either of those incidents, but we know enough to say that they were motivated by extremist individuals. That, again, should give us cause to redouble our efforts here to tackle extremism in all its forms, and that is why I think this effort, this move is so important.

As my right hon. Friend the Minister has said, the distinction between the political and the military wing of this organisation has for a very long time been entirely artificial, just as it was with Hezbollah, which we took similar action to proscribe in its entirety just a couple of years ago. It was an absurdity that, during the al-Quds Day rally, an individual could march through the streets of London shouting antisemitic remarks and waving the flag of Hezbollah, but get away with it because it was the flag of the political wing of Hezbollah, not the military wing. For exactly the same reasons as the former Home Secretary took action against Hezbollah, it is absolutely right that the current one does the same with respect to Hamas.

This action will be welcomed in the United Kingdom and by our friends and allies around the world, not just in the west—where the European Union, the United States, Australia and other countries have already done this—but in a number of Gulf states. I was in Bahrain at the weekend, and I can assure my right hon. Friend and Members of this House that the Government there support this action. It is entirely in line with what is happening in the middle east today. When I was in Bahrain on Saturday, I visited a synagogue with the former Bahraini ambassador to the United States who is both a woman and a Jew, and is now a senior member of the Government in Bahrain. Thanks to the Abraham accords, the whole atmosphere in much of the middle east is beginning to change.

This hatred between Muslims and Jews is a product of history, which we must consign to history. Organisations such as Hamas that stand for that hatred must be treated as the terrorist organisations they are. We only need to look at its charter to see that. Its preamble has a promise that Islam will “obliterate” Israel. Article 32 reads:

“Leaving the circle of struggle against Zionism is high treason”.

Article 15 reads:

“In the face of the Jews’ usurpation, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised.”

Article 7 reads:

“The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight Jews and kill them.”

This is an organisation that in its entirety deserves to be proscribed in the United Kingdom. By doing so, we will help to further isolate Hamas, we will hinder its ability to raise funds and spread its extremist ideologies, and we will bolster more moderate forces in Palestine and elsewhere in the middle east. I strongly support the Government’s action today, and it is extremely heartening that it is being conducted in a broadly cross-party approach.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Crispin Blunt]

Let us be careful what we are addressing on that narrow point. Under international law, you have a legal right to resist. Not only is the use of those weapons unlawful because they are untargeted and indiscriminate; it is also fantastically stupid because it gives the Israelis’ argument about the threat they face from the Palestinian people its raison d’être. I deplore violence of any kind from the Palestinians because they are going to get smashed if they try to resist under international law. It is completely the wrong thing to do. That is why I want to work to give Palestinians assistance in finding a route to justice through using the law and the moral and legal authority that the Palestinian position has. Violence is a road to nowhere. That is why it ought to be condemned in terms of practicality as well as under the law where use of it is indiscriminate. But there is a position where resistance is allowed. For me, that “but” is wholly qualified by its stupidity, its inappropriateness and its uselessness in furthering the Palestinian cause. However, let us get back to the balance between the two sides.

The Israelis have been in gross breach of the fourth Geneva convention ever since the occupation of the territories in 1967, and the ensuing settlements are a grievous breach of international law. What has the United Kingdom done about it? What is the United Kingdom going to do about it? This is building the two-state solution out of existence; it is also taking territory that does not belong to Israel in a way that is proscribed by the Geneva conventions that came into force after the second world war.

Let us look at the contemporary position. Six non-governmental organisations have been proscribed by Israel. As I understand it, no evidence has yet been given to the British Government as to why that has happened. Why not? United Nations Relief and Works Agency funding from the United Kingdom is going from £70 million to £20 million, which puts a huge responsibility on civil society to try to make up the difference because of the desperate, desperate situation in Gaza. What will the motion do? It will have a terrible, chilling effect on putting anything into Gaza, because Gaza is administered by the organisation that we are about to proscribe.

[Robert Jenrick]

As I understand it, my hon. Friend’s central argument is that by enacting this measure we will make it more difficult for the United Kingdom to interact with Hamas or other organisations to pursue the peace process, or for NGOs from the United Kingdom to provide humanitarian support within Gaza. Is that argument not undermined by the fact that this measure has already been in place in the whole European Union, in the United States and among a number of other significant players in the middle east conflict for several years?

[Crispin Blunt]

No, because the motion goes further: it leaves “support” undefined, so it will be up to the courts to define what support means. The European Union’s measures are very specific about finance and the movement of money, which can be traced and followed. This measure is much more far-reaching. We do not know exactly how far-reaching it will be or what its effect will be.

In the forthcoming vote of the UN General Assembly on the status of Jerusalem—a resolution sponsored by the Palestinians and the Jordanians—we appear to be about to change the long-standing British position of supporting the status quo in Jerusalem. The United Kingdom is apparently going to abstain; according to reports made to me, it is also actively working to get other countries to abstain and change their position. Why is all that happening? Let us look at the statement that the Israeli Minister of Foreign Affairs put out on 19 November:

“The announcement anticipated today is the conclusion of an intimate and successful dialogue between Israel and the United Kingdom led by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs”

and

“the security services”.

This will have a chilling effect on effective assistance to Gaza. The double standards of the west’s position will be even more visible around the world. I say to my right hon. Friend the Member for Forest of Dean (Mr Harper), who spoke about supporting the moderates: given who had the majority on the Palestinian Legislative Council when it was last elected in 2006, how many of the Palestinians does he want to identify as extremist? If the purpose of our policy should be to undermine and remove the reasons for turning to violence, give Palestinians a route to justice that is legal and moral, and lead towards a negotiated settlement, what will be the effect of applying today’s measure to the organisation that received most support the last time there was an election in Palestine?

Do I support Hamas? That is a little unlikely, speaking as the gay chair of the all-party parliamentary humanist group. But have I taken the trouble to try to understand political Islam? Yes, I have. When I was Chair of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, we completed an inquiry on it; our report is called “‘Political Islam’, and the Muslim Brotherhood Review”. I spent 20 years getting to know and trying to understand these people. My right hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick) said:

“I cannot reach into the heart of that individual”.

I say to him: no, but you deserve to make every effort to understand the movement around that individual and whether it relates to why he came to that perspective.

We owe it to ourselves to understand the perspective of political Islamists in order that we can try to draw them in and draw them away from violence. I fear that the motion will do precisely the opposite.

Terror Attacks

Robert Jenrick Excerpts

Thursday 22nd June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. May I say how much I enjoyed my recent visit to Borough Market? It was a pleasure to see it so vibrant and active, and I hope that people will show their support by continuing to visit or by shopping there for the first time.

We have put additional resources into the security services and will continue to do that, and additional money is going into the armed police uplifts. It is essential that we wait for the review to happen, rather than rush in now, so that we can find out where we have holes and where we should be putting in additional support.

After the memorial ceremony at Southwark cathedral, I met some of those who had been at the hospital in Southwark, and it was a great honour and privilege to speak to them and to hear about the fantastic work that they have done.

[Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)]

At the weekend, I drove my family back to London from my constituency. My wife and daughters are Jewish. We were met by a protest where there were anti-Semitic banners and chants and where people were waving Hezbollah flags—for those unfamiliar with the flag, I should add that it has a big machine gun on it. To make a mockery of the law, somebody had put a post-it note on one of the flags saying, “You cannot arrest me because I support the political wing of Hezbollah, not the military wing—this time.” If enough really is enough, will the Home Secretary take action against such rallies, ban them, so that they can never happen on the streets of London again, and ensure that the whole of Hezbollah is a proscribed organisation?

[Amber Rudd]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. It is always distressing to see that sort of march going on, and the provocation that he describes must have been very upsetting for him and his family. I will certainly consider what he has suggested and come back to discuss it with him and, if needed, the House.

Rural Policing and Hare Coursing

Robert Jenrick Excerpts

Tuesday 7th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[John Glen]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, who once again comes up with a sensible analysis and a sense of how we need better to join up the different attempts to tackle this very difficult problem.

[Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)]

Is not one of the issues the lack of neighbourhood policing in some rural areas? In the northern part of my constituency, in Bassetlaw, we have a long-standing police officer, Bill Bailey. He knows the lanes; he knows many of the criminals; and he knows how to respond to and sort out such crimes. He is also fluent in the law in this area. All too often, when officers such as Bill retire, as he will do in October, they are replaced by police officers drawn from a much wider area. His replacement is likely to be drawn from urban areas such as Worksop and Retford, where crimes are very different. Response times will diminish, and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) has said, it is difficult for people to be certain that police officers who understand the rurality of the area will be able to get out and sort out the problems.

[John Glen]

My hon. Friend makes a reasonable point. Like many Conservative Members, I gained some familiarity with my hon. Friend’s constituency in the weeks running up to his election. I would not want to comment on the specific example that he gave, but it is absolutely key that we have the right resources in the right places.

I return to the specific issue of hare coursing. I believe that it is both a policing and a judicial issue, and I want to raise three policy concerns that I hope the Minister will reflect on to ensure that constituencies such as Salisbury and south Wiltshire can effectively deal with hare coursers and the many disruptions and problems that I have just described. First, I ask the Minister to consider creating a more widespread infrastructure for seizing and rehousing the dogs used in such criminal activities. Will he look—perhaps not personally—into how the police organise themselves in that regard? Hare coursing dogs are high-value assets worth tens of thousands of pounds. I think that the threat of dogs being taken or rehomed, and therefore losing their value, will deter hare coursers. To be able to seize dogs, the police must have the appropriate kennels and facilities to look after them. In Wiltshire, despite a large number of hare coursing incidents, we do not have that vital infrastructure in place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

I echo the thanks and congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (John Glen) on raising this important issue. Although some people might view the debate and the problem as merely an issue of animal welfare and wildlife crime, which of course it is, as others have suggested, it goes much wider than that. We are talking about vandalism of property; loss of income for farmer and landowner; theft, atrocity and intimidation of farmers, their families and in some instances gamekeepers and others employed on estates; and a lot of road traffic issues, including the driving of unlicensed and uninsured vehicles, driving while disqualified and so forth. This all adds up to the picture of criminality that my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison) alluded to in his intervention.

My constituency is easily split between east and west. The western part of North Dorset is the Blackmore Vale, which has heavy clay, and nobody would try to course on that. The hares do not like it, and it is too heavy to make a form; sometimes even a 4x4 will get stuck in the clay of Blackmore Vale. Cranborne Chase on the eastern side of my constituency, however, is beautiful, undulating chalk downland, very similar to the area at the border with Wiltshire. It is, of course, an ideal and fertile ground for illegal hare coursing, and it happens on all too regular a basis.

My hon. Friend the Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman) talked about the chief constable of Essex blaming the robustness of his colleague in Lincolnshire for transporting a problem across a county border. In Dorset, we have also seen an element of that, given the significant success that the chief constable and officers of Wiltshire have had in clamping down in that county. The problem has merely translocated over the border to us.

I agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury said with regard to value of the sighthound used for this purpose. I was told by one of my local police officers that, having confiscated a telephone from a hare courser, he looked—I could not tell the House why—at the gentleman’s photo album on his phone. He had 184 photographs: 20 of his family and 164 of his dog. That, I think, demonstrates the importance and value that these people place on their livestock. The problem is exactly as my hon. Friend suggested. Local authorities have pulled away from taking stray dogs off the street and have contracted it out, often on narrowly defined contracts. The police do not have kennels to house these dogs. I would prefer a far more robust approach, not just in the provision of kennels but in the removal and permanent confiscation of dogs and their rehousing.

[Robert Jenrick]

Last year in Scotland was, I think, the first time that a hare courser or a group of hare coursers were prosecuted successfully and imprisoned using DNA evidence taken from a confiscated dog. We have heard in the debate about the scale and importance of these crimes, so perhaps the police elsewhere in the country should look to take that forward.

[Simon Hoare]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend. The deployment of technologies that may have been advanced for other purposes can easily be used for exactly the sort of incident my hon. Friend suggests.

I want to draw the attention of the House, if I may, to the excellent work undertaken by the Dorset constabulary in this area under the leadership of Martyn Underhill, our police and crime commissioner, and the chief constable. After discussions with me as a Member of Parliament, we now have a dedicated rural team—and not in name only. The team has the right vehicles—4x4s and Polarises—telephones, equipment and so on. It is doing a fantastic job. It was my pleasure, if that is the word, to join them on a night operation ranging from 8 o’clock in the evening to two o’clock in the morning, where a collaboration of three police forces—officers from Dorset, Wiltshire and Hampshire—came together with local farmers and gamekeepers. I was obviously the “heavy” man brought in for intimidation. We drove around the countryside using intelligence and telephones to identify where people might be and disrupting activity as it was about to unfold: the interception and interruption of illegal activity taking place in our countryside.

A number of hon. Friends mentioned intimidation. My hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury provided statistics on the number of people brought to court and the rather lenient slap-on-the-wrist fines. If someone is prepared to wager £10,000 on one greyhound getting a hare, a fine of £276 is but a drop in the ocean. I wonder, as I often do in these circumstances, whether our local magistrates feel intimidated, given the reputation of a lot of people involved in hare coursing knowing no bounds to the retribution they wish to see. I hope our magistrates are made of strong and robust stuff, but that might not necessarily always be the case.

I again congratulate Dorset constabulary on its work. I echo entirely the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury that the funding requirement is, as so often in our rural areas, very bespoke. If one talked to councillors in Manchester, Bristol or Birmingham about rural crime on farms as a result of hare coursing, they would probably scratch their heads and look very bemused, but it causes a great loss of income, great degradation of the countryside, a vast amount of cruelty and a huge amount of illegality. These niche issues that need to be policed with robustness, intelligence and co-ordination do need to find, in our rural policing and its funding formula, an identification of how best to marry funds with the very clear demands elucidated by my hon. Friend in what has been an excellent debate.

Oral Answers to Questions

Robert Jenrick Excerpts

Monday 6th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

The hon. Lady raises counter-radicalism, which is a very important element of our counter-terrorism and counter-extremism strategy. I can reassure her that a lot of additional work is going on in prisons to ensure that counter-radicalism takes place. My right hon. Friend the Justice Secretary has taken additional steps to work with people who are being radicalised or are the sources of radicalisation. I hope that that will yield positive results.

[Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)]

Will the Home Secretary join me in praising the work of the east midlands operational support service, which places armed officers in the smaller cities and towns of the east midlands, and will she ensure that smaller cities have the resources they need? A terrorist attack is just as likely to happen in a city like Nottingham or Derby as in London.

[Amber Rudd]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I will join him in commending the work of the east midlands service. We are mindful of the fact that, although London can be the central target, other cities could also be a target. We are mindful that our counter-terrorism efforts go way beyond London to other cities, but they are always intelligence-led.

Orgreave

Robert Jenrick Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Brandon Lewis]

If there are allegations and new evidence, the IPCC chair repeated to me yesterday what it has said publicly: it will look at any new evidence and take it into account in any decisions it makes moving forward. In particular, there are still ongoing investigations and potential criminal proceedings linked to Hillsborough. This is also why it is important that we not only continue to deliver the reforms outlined over the last 30 years, and in particular the last five or six years, but we continue the reform of the police service, especially working with South Yorkshire police on its relationships with its local community.

[Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)]

I was very young during the miners strike but I do know Nottinghamshire’s former coalfield communities today; I represent some of them. Those communities are still suffering in many respects from the miners strike. They are suffering from ill health, low levels of employment, addiction and many other problems. As so little is to be gained from having this inquiry, would it not be better if we all now concentrate on the present and the future?

[Brandon Lewis]

There is an important point here as this highlights why the Prime Minister is right to state that we as a Government need to work to ensure we deliver a country that works for everybody, so everyone in those communities— communities I worked in myself a decade or more ago—has the chance to succeed in life. We must always learn the lessons of the past. That is why the reforms over the last three decades and the reforms going forward are so important in making sure we continue to have a first-class police force in this country.

Criminal Finances Bill

Robert Jenrick Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons
Tuesday 25th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Wallace]

My hon. Friend is right that, in the past, it has been a challenge. Crafty hoods have been very good at taking their money out of cash and putting it into a range of moveable valuables, such as fast cars, paintings, jewels, or even betting slips, which I know the Scottish Government are quite keen for us to consider. We need to broaden it out and ensure that when they are crafty, we are crafty as well.

This Government have already done more than any other to tackle money laundering and terrorist financing. More assets have been recovered from criminals than ever before, with a record £255 million recovered in 2015-16, and hundreds of millions of pounds more frozen and put beyond the reach of criminals. We set up the Panama papers taskforce to ensure an effective, joined-up approach to those revelations. The London anti-corruption summit in May built capacity with overseas partners.

It is important to note that we are already doing this. In November 2015, the UK returned £28 million to Macau, which were the proceeds of corruption laundered in the UK. That is a concrete example of our giving back money to those countries that have been robbed by crooks who have used Britain to launder the money or to make the money in its jurisdiction. I want to see more of that and to see it go further.

There was a need for legislation and a need to build on the process of the anti-corruption summit and to find out where we were still vulnerable. In October 2015, the Government published the “National risk assessment for money laundering and terrorist financing”, identifying a number of areas where these regimes could be strengthened. Our response to that assessment was the action plan for anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist finance, which was published in April 2016. It represents one of the most significant changes to our anti-money laundering and terrorist finance regime in more than a decade.

The Bill will give effect to key elements of that action plan. It will significantly enhance the capability of UK law enforcement to tackle money laundering and to recover the proceeds of crime. It will strengthen the relationship between public and private sectors and combat the financing of terrorism.

Part 1 contains a number of measures that will amend the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, including the creation of unexplained wealth orders. There are criminals who declare themselves almost penniless, yet control millions of pounds. Law enforcement agencies may suspect that assets are the proceeds of international corruption, but they are unable to freeze or recover them, often because they cannot rely on full co-operation with other jurisdictions to obtain evidence. A court will be able to make an unexplained wealth order to require an individual or organisation suspected of association with serious criminality to explain the origin of assets, where they appear to be disproportionate to their known income. If that person does not respond, this may enable the property to be recovered under existing civil recovery powers.

Part 1 chapter 1 will extend the use of disclosure orders, which allow a law enforcement officer to require someone who has relevant information to answer questions as part of an investigation. Those orders are already in use for civil recovery and confiscation investigations. They will now be available for money laundering cases.

Chapter 2 will enhance the process by which private sector companies report suspected money laundering—the suspicious activity reports, or SARs, regime. Where a company in the regulated sector, such as a bank, accountancy or legal firm, suspects that it may commit a money laundering offence, it is obliged to submit a SAR to the National Crime Agency, seeking consent to proceed. At present, there are occasions where these SARs are incomplete and where further information is needed to inform the NCA’s decision. The Bill will give law enforcement agencies more time to investigate those suspicious transactions that require consent and the NCA extra powers to request further information from companies to help to pursue those investigations and conduct wider analysis.

The Bill will provide a gateway for the sharing of information between regulated companies—subject to appropriate oversight—to help to build a broader intelligence picture of suspected money laundering. This has been piloted through a programme known as the joint money laundering intelligence taskforce. In the 12 months from February 2015, the taskforce led directly to 11 arrests, the restraint of more than £500,000 and the identification of 1,700 bank accounts linked to suspected criminal activity. We want to build on the success of that work, by providing the clearest possible legal certainty that companies can share information for the purposes of preventing and detecting serious crime.

Part 1 chapter 3 will improve the ability of law enforcement agencies to recover the proceeds of crime. Existing legislation contains civil powers to confiscate cash, but criminals hold proceeds in other forms, as I said earlier, and we must adapt. The types of asset covered by the power are listed in the Bill, so that Parliament can properly scrutinise its potential use. We continue to consult operational partners on their requirements, and I expect that we will introduce a Government amendment to extend the list to include gambling slips and tokens, which are often used by organised criminals to launder their ill-gotten cash. I hope that such an amendment will attract cross-party support.

The rest of part 1 will extend existing POCA powers to a number of other organisations, including the Serious Fraud Office, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the Financial Conduct Authority. It will make a range of minor and technical amendments to POCA.

The first duty of any Government is to keep their citizens safe. The terrorist threat is real and is growing. If we are to combat that threat, we must cut off the funding streams that enable terrorist-related activity. The 2015 national risk assessment identified two key weaknesses in this area: the raising and moving of terrorist funds through vulnerabilities in the financial sector, including money service businesses and cash couriering; and the abuse of the charitable sector for terrorist purposes. To combat these issues, part 2 will make complementary changes to powers for terrorist finance cases, by mirroring many of the provisions in the Bill, such as those on SARs, disclosure orders and seizure and confiscation powers, so that they are also available for investigations into offences under the Terrorism Act 2000.

Part 3 will deliver on the Conservative manifesto commitment to make

“it a crime if companies fail to put in place measures to stop economic crime, such as tax evasion”.

At present, if an individual evades tax and that is criminally facilitated by those working for a company, the individual taxpayer will have committed a crime and those individuals facilitating it could also be prosecuted, but it is very difficult and often impossible to hold the corporate entity to account. That needs to change. That is why we are creating two new offences of corporate failure to prevent the criminal facilitation of tax evasion—one in relation to UK taxes; another in relation to taxes owed to other countries.

Tax evasion is wrong. It is a crime. It cannot be right that a business operating in the UK can escape criminal liability simply because a tax loss is suffered by another country rather than the UK. The new offence in relation to foreign taxes will be of particular benefit in tackling corporate facilitation of corruption in developing countries. HMRC has conducted two public consultations on these offences, including engagement with the private sector—banks, accountants and legal practices—and everyone is clear of the need to take responsibility for ensuring the highest possible standards of compliance in this area.

As I have said, tax evasion and corruption in the developing world are key contributors to global poverty. Those crimes are frequently facilitated by companies in other jurisdictions. We cannot abdicate our responsibility and leave solving this problem to other countries. The UK’s financial sector should lead on the disruption of tax evasion, money laundering and corruption. This measure will help to do just that.

The Government are committed to reducing the regulatory burden on business, which can make it harder for companies to focus on real risks. The measures in the Bill were developed in close partnership with law enforcement agencies and the regulated sector, including major financial institutions, as well as other key representatives.

[Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)]

Although I support the Bill, does the Minister agree that there is no point in legislating if the agencies tasked with enforcing the legislation simply do not have the resources to do so? For example, since the creation of the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation, as far as I am aware from talking to lawyers who work on white-collar crime practices, there has been no enforcement whatever. All of us who want to support the Bill would like to hear reassurance that there will be the resources to match the good intent.

[Mr Wallace]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. In the past few months, I have visited regional organised crime units up and down the country, including in his region, and the NCA, and they all say that their barrier to getting further with some of these problems is not the resource issue; they all say that their barrier has been the ability to find the cash, see the cash and seize it. Those three things are incredibly important. We can put all the resources in the world into our law enforcement agencies, but if they do not have the powers to take back some of the stolen assets, it will not make a difference.

The thing that struck me coming into this job only a few months ago, although I thought I knew a bit about terrorism from my previous life, and what has absolutely shocked me is the weight and strength of organised crime across the United Kingdom. To see its depth, how it affects my community in the north-west and how close it comes to us all really takes my breath away. I am absolutely determined not only that the guys and girls at the top, the Mr Bigs, get sent to jail for as long as possible, but that those people who consider themselves a little removed from it—the facilitators, the white-collar smoothies who launder the money into property and so on—also face their time in court, because they are the people who contribute to the message that there is a permissive society and that it is okay to be associated with crime. They are the people who help the nasties to put a gloss on themselves.

That is what I am determined to do with the Bill. All Members should rest assured that I will use the Bill to try to build momentum in non-legislative areas—in the non-regulated sector. I want to ask the regulators of estate agents and accountants what they are doing to play their part. If we can change the powers here, if their members get into trouble, what are they going to do to hold their members to account? Legislation is only one part of this. I hope that everyone supports the Bill and that the message goes out that there is more to do and that we will make sure that those people who facilitate and think that they live on the edge of the crime know that we are coming after them.

Rights of EU Nationals

Robert Jenrick Excerpts

Wednesday 19th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Huw Merriman (Bexhill and Battle) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the powerful speech of my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double). I, too, agree with the first part of the motion, because I certainly recognise and appreciate the contributions that workers from the EU have made in this country. Some key businesses and public sector services—many hon. Members on both sides of the House have identified them in their own constituencies—are vitally served by EU workers. In my own constituency of Bexhill and Battle, where the proportion of older people is particularly high, none is more key than our care home sector, and we would be in a very difficult position without those EU workers. Of 35 care homes inspected, only nine were rated good, and the rest required improvement or were inadequate, so where would such homes be without key workers from the EU?

I maintain that during the past six years the Government have provided the economic base for many workers to come to Britain and make a great success of themselves. More jobs have been created in the UK during that period than in the rest of the EU put together. Those individuals have come here with great aspiration and a desire to work, as well as endeavour and enterprise. It is in their DNA, and it is certainly in the DNA of my party and my hon. Friends on the Government Benches. In that sense, we certainly do not need any lectures on our support for EU citizens.

I have concerns about the second part of the motion in reference to the future, and I therefore certainly cannot support it. As colleagues on the Government Benches have pointed out, there is a typo in the motion: it says “should” the UK exit the EU, rather than “when” it does so. I did not vote to leave the EU, but in my view, now that the decision has been made, we need to embrace the opportunity and get on with it.

I made this point earlier, but I find it frustrating that there are so many debates in this House about the pitfalls, that we are holding up Ministers and preventing them from getting on with the job and getting it done. There is a certain irony in my position. [Interruption.] The right hon. Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond) is chuckling. He, like me, was in Strasbourg last week, where we were working with our European partners, only for us to come back to the House for a debate about Europe. We could have been in Europe, making friends and building relationships, which would be a better use of our time.

During the last week of the referendum campaign, I visited 25 schools, and I visited another 10 during my own party conference. Teachers and, indeed, pupils consistently asked me questions about the right to remain, to which I made the point that in time, once this is settled, should we leave the EU, I would imagine that the right to remain will absolutely be honoured. I certainly hope that it will be.

I should point out that people who have been here for five years already have the right to remain. Indeed, by the time we exit the EU, those who have come here relatively recently will have reached that five-year point. I therefore find much of this debate slightly false.

[Robert Jenrick (Newark) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that point. When constituents who are concerned and need reassuring come to my surgeries—3,000 eastern Europeans live in my constituency —I make the point he has just made. Five out of every six EU nationals living in this country either already have the right to remain or will have it by the time we leave the EU. The 2.9 million EU nationals living in the UK today have nothing to worry about.

[Huw Merriman]

My hon. Friend makes a fine point. Like me, he is a lawyer. I am not sure how many of the 1.2 million UK citizens resident in the EU have the same right. To support those 1.2 million people, it is even more imperative to ensure that they have the same right to remain as the five out of six EU citizens working here to whom he refers.

My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (Mr Clarke) pointed out that no Government Members—indeed, this does not seem to be debated at all, except on Opposition motions—are calling for any rights to remain in the UK to be rescinded. Nobody on our Benches is using the words “bargaining chips”. I point that out because the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire North (Gavin Newlands), whose speech I listened to carefully, used those words about five times. Such rhetoric is coming from SNP Members, not those on this side of the House. I ask Opposition Members to be a little more responsible with their language, because that sort of language is not being used by those of us on the Government Benches. We absolutely must ensure that we serve the rights of those from EU member states working in the UK, but we must give equal priority to serving those people from the UK living in the EU. I hope that the official Opposition and the SNP will start to talk in the same language and even things up.

In the minute remaining to me, I want to caution against using the EU referendum result in the separate debate on immigration. I recognise that 52% of the country voted to leave the EU, but nowhere within that was there a definitive mandate for curbing or controlling immigration. I know that many people—including colleagues on the Government Benches—will say that the immigration debate was implicit in the referendum, but from my perspective, all we know is that 52% of the UK voted to leave, so 48% voted to remain, and nothing more. Similarly, we do not know that a large chunk of the 52% were duped into voting to leave the EU; we know only that we are leaving, and that is that.

In a recent YouGov poll, two thirds of people stated that they wanted to see immigration reduced, somewhat busting my argument. However, when asked how much they would pay personally for it to be reduced, about the same amount said zero, and therefore that they would be willing to have the same number of immigrants in this country. I add that purely as a note of caution. I recognise that we are leaving the EU, but I return to my real passion for making sure that we protect the EU workers who have come this country and that we do not use the referendum as anything other than a decision to leave the EU.