Justice and Security Bill [Lords]

Simon Hughes Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Dr Huppert]

It is fascinating to follow Members’ comments on the internal dynamics of all parties, but I will not comment on them. I am not a fan of closed material proceedings, for reasons that have been expressed. I will not go through all the discussions we have had during the Bill’s previous stages.

The point has been well made that the measure does not apply to criminal cases, but there is a view that it does in some cases. We are still waiting for absolute clarity on whether it applies to cases of liberty and habeas corpus. I am sure that the Minister without Portfolio will be able to give us the latest update on that. The Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), made it clear in Committee that the position has changed somewhat.

Even without that, there are lots of cases where this is already in our law and which I find even more alarming, because they affect people’s liberty much more. We heard on Monday from the hon. Member for Bedford (Richard Fuller) about a Special Immigration Appeals Commission case in his constituency. I remember talking to him about it two years ago, when his constituent was under detention during the period of the case, which was based on closed material proceedings, under legislation introduced by the previous Government. As I understand it, two years on the constituent is still being detained under the same legislation, because of evidence he has not had the chance to see. Whatever we think about a civil case, where money is involved, I hope that everyone here would say that a case involving two years of somebody’s life—curfews and the sort of internal exile that we saw with control orders and, to a lesser extent, terrorism prevention and investigation measures—is more serious. We should not allow ourselves to ignore that.

The Bill has been on a long journey and in that time it has got a lot better. Since the Green Paper, a huge number of changes have been made to what material would be excluded. There was the incredibly important switch from the language of public interest in keeping something quiet to the language of national security, which was definitely a step in the right direction. I do not think that anybody in the House wants to see silenced information that would just be embarrassing to the Government. I am sure that Governments would be quite capable of arguing that public interest includes their not being embarrassed too often.

It is also important that we have excluded inquests. It is right that we say to a family who want to know happened to a loved one that they will definitely know the truth and that they will not be told, “Something happened, but we can’t tell you.” It was a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Knowsley (Mr Howarth), but I was surprised that he, along with some of his Labour colleagues and some Conservative support, wished to bring inquests back within the scope of the Bill. I am very pleased that that amendment was not put. Had it been, I hope it would have been defeated thoroughly.

We saw further changes in the Lords. I pay great tribute to the Joint Committee on Human Rights for its sterling efforts. There are interesting questions about how the Government and the Joint Committee might work together more on some of these issues. We have had the slightly unusual case where the Joint Committee made some suggestions, the Government claimed to have satisfied them and the Joint Committee disagreed, but all this happened at a very slow pace. Perhaps there should be some way for the Committee, its Chair or the legal adviser to talk to the Government early on about draft amendments and to say, “Yes, this would achieve what we are trying to do, but with some wording differences”, as opposed to disagreeing fundamentally on whether it achieves the same thing.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

As a new member of the Joint Committee, and with the Chairman in his place, I would like to say that we would certainly like a routine system that gives us time to look at the Bill and to report, not just to the Government but to the House, so that we can have a proper debate that does not get curtailed or circumscribed because there is no time to do either those jobs properly.

[Dr Huppert]

I agree. That is now firmly on the record.

As a result of the Joint Committee’s work in the Lords, we saw the switch from “must” to “may”, which gave judicial discretion. That was one of the key changes made to the Bill. As a result of our efforts in the Commons, that led to full equality of arms and the reporting and review process, which the Minister agreed to take away and then came up with. It is definitely moving in the right direction, but there is further to go. I have mentioned the clarity on the subject of habeas corpus, but there is still the issue of a renewal process, be it annual renewal or five-yearly renewal, to give the House the chance to say, “Is it doing just what its proponents want it to do, or is it going further, as many of us feared it would?”

There have been several votes on the principle of the Bill, including one in the House of Lords, when my colleagues were joined by a total of two Labour peers and one teller and five others, and lost quite convincingly. It is a shame that amendment 1, tabled by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), was not taken on Monday, because it would have given the House the chance to have that vote. I pressed the same principle in Committee. I hope that the Lords will now step up and do more on this. Part 1 is a good step forward; part 2 is not. I hope that in the process of ping-pong we will be able to make further progress, because sadly it seems that it will pass through this House.

Oral Answers to Questions

Simon Hughes Excerpts

Monday 19th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

The change that we have made as a Government is that we say to local police forces, “With the police and crime commissioners in place, it will be up to you to decide how you wish to have the staffing, and the numbers that you want.” That decision will be taken at police force area level, not dictated by the Home Office. I believe that that is right.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

Will the Home Secretary join me in congratulating the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, not only on reducing crime figures in the London area, but on his ambition to have 2,000 extra police constables each year for the next three years so that, by March 2015, there will be a record number of 26,000 police constables in Greater London? Will she congratulate him—effusively, if she wants?

[Mrs May]

I am happy to commend the work that the Mayor of London as police commissioner and the deputy Mayor have done for several years, although the Mayor formally became a police and crime commissioner only in January this year. He has always emphasised recruiting and the number of constables who are out there and available. Obviously, the Met and the deputy Mayor, who has responsibility for crime and policing, are looking carefully at the Met’s budget to ensure that they can take out waste and that the money is spent cost effectively, as they said today, on recruiting more constables.

Oral Answers to Questions

Simon Hughes Excerpts

Monday 9th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

I agree completely with the final point that my hon. Friend made. He was right about the abuse. I am happy to report to him and the House that, as of today, we are introducing more widespread interviewing of students to check their ability to benefit from a course here. We ran a pilot between December and February, and discovered that 17% of those who had been accepted on a course in this country should be refused because they could not even speak basic conversational English. There is always more abuse to drive out and we will continue to do so.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

4. What progress she has made on the draft Communications Data Bill; and if she will make a statement.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (James Brokenshire)]

We published the draft Communications Data Bill on 14 June. The draft Bill will now be subject to pre-legislative scrutiny by a Joint Committee of both Houses and a parallel inquiry by the Intelligence and Security Committee. The Joint Committee has begun its work and is due to report in November.

[Simon Hughes]

I am grateful to the Minister for his answer. He will know that the draft Bill, particularly in clause 1, gives very wide powers to the Secretary of State by order. Will he tell us whether the Secretary of State has yet written those orders? In any event, will he give the undertaking that they will be published at the earliest available date?

[James Brokenshire]

It is worth underlining that communications data are an essential tool in solving and prosecuting crime. It is important that that is not eroded by changing technologies, which is why we need the flexibility to respond to change. We are working closely with the Joint Committee. We are absolutely committed to the pre-legislative scrutiny and to ensuring that the Committee can conduct robust scrutiny of the Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

T8. Will the Immigration Minister look at the current practice whereby applications are sometimes turned down for technical reasons and are then resubmitted but may be out of time? We could, thus, save the Government loads of money and effort, and help applicants, who are often disadvantaged through no fault of their own.

[Damian Green]

I am very happy to do that for my right hon. Friend. Indeed, in many parts of the immigration system we are now able to process applications faster than ever before. That is particularly the case in the asylum system, where the worst delays used to happen and where we are now taking more than 50% of decisions within 30 days.

UK Border Agency

Simon Hughes Excerpts

Wednesday 4th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Ward (Bradford East) (LD)]

I start by being somewhat self-indulgent and paying tribute to my office staff. As Members may imagine, they have an enormous burden of immigration work in a Bradford constituency. I also pay tribute to the Home Affairs Committee, which has raised many of the relevant issues so well that I can speak for a much shorter time than I normally would on such an important topic for my constituency.

I also pay tribute to the staff of the UKBA, because although at times there appear to be systemically dysfunctional areas in the service, that should not lead to criticism of the individual officers with whom we work. In particular, I pay tribute to the account managers. Our own, Chris Taylor, has been excellent. I believe that structural changes to the service are planned, and I urge the Minister to retain the local connection. If that were taken away, it would be greatly to the detriment of the service that is provided. Is it intended to keep that local connection, which is so important to us?

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is really important to get a good relationship between the person at the UKBA and the constituency office team? The UKBA does a far better job when it is willing to listen to MPs and their staff and respond positively. If it puts us at arm’s length and tries to run away from us, it delivers far less good a service.

[Mr Ward]

Absolutely. We often systematise things to try to improve them when they are really about personal relationships. We need to build close understandings and partnerships, which in our case have been to the benefit of clients with whom we have dealt.

We were told that the UKBA’s legacy of cases would be cleared, with the vast majority being fully concluded. As we now know, that meant the transferring of a big chunk of legacy cases into the controlled archive. Rightly or wrongly, the impression was given that the archive was a dumping ground and that the files were being transferred because the UKBA had given up on those cases. Dozens of people have walked into my constituency office and we have been able to find no trace of their case, because it has already been put in the controlled archive. It is then difficult to get it out again. I am sorry if this seems unfair, but it seems like our office is doing the work that the UKBA should have done, at the cost of the time that it takes away from other matters.

Will the Minister confirm or deny that cases are still being added to the controlled archive? My understanding is that if people do not turn up to report to the UKBA three times, their cases are transferred to the archive. If that is not true, a clear message needs to be put out to that effect, because that is what we are told.

Another issue that has cropped up regularly is cases being transferred into the controlled archive in error. That is not so bad if they are then retrieved and dealt with properly, but the evidence suggests that such cases go to the back of the queue when they are retrieved. That is patently unfair on people whose cases should never have been transferred in the first place. I understand that work is now taking place, with credit agencies and other means being utilised to deal with cases in the controlled archive. As I said, however, it is difficult to understand why those cases ever went there in the first place, given that other methods and techniques were available to deal with them first time around.

My final point concerns intelligence. I understand that my constituency office—one single office—accounts for 70% of the intelligence provided in the whole of the west-Yorkshire region, which indicates the number of cases we deal with and the confidence people have that they will be dealt with by my office. When I was a councillor, we were encouraged to dob in the dealers, and local residents would bring cases to us to take to the police. Those people did not hand in that information with disinterest, but wanted to know what would happen; they wanted feedback and to know whether the people dealing drugs in the phone box on the opposite side of the road had been dealt with.

We all think it important that residents support the police, but constituents want to know that something is actually happening. Yet that intelligence appears to disappear without them ever knowing what has happened, which is patently unfair, not only on my office, through which the information goes, but on the people who have provided it. Feedback is important because the people who provide the intelligence often do so at risk to themselves: they might be acting extremely bravely—they might be family members in marriages, some of them sham marriages—and under threat for having provided that evidence. Feedback, then, is not only good practice but humane. They need to know what happens to these people. Especially when there is a slow response in terms of removal, they have a right to know what is happening, because their personal safety might be at risk.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

The issue we are debating is very important, and I thank the Home Affairs Committee for its continuing work on it. I encourage it to continue monitoring the work of the UK Border Agency. I am also grateful to the Minister for his active engagement with this issue, and with me as a constituency MP when I have brought cases to his attention or to the attention of his staff.

My general analysis is somewhat different from that of the right hon. Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman), as I do not think that under the last Government we were anywhere near nirvana in respect of immigration and asylum cases. The situation is considerably better now than it was under the last Labour Government. This has been a huge and intractable issue for the Home Office over many years. I am grateful for the progress that has been made, but that does not mean that I in any way think the UKBA or the Government have fully addressed all the problems.

Although we are talking about the UKBA, what we are actually talking about is people. I shall therefore refer to some people. First, I shall mention the two people in my office who every day try to unravel the knots of other people’s family lives when dealing with asylum and immigration cases. Magali Tang and James Harper are wonderful public servants—working for me as an MP—and they are hugely valued by our constituents. When I last checked a year or two ago, I was either first or second in the league table of Members who brought Home Office-related immigration and asylum constituency issues to the authorities. I have no idea where I am in the league table now, and that does not matter, but I do know that a large volume of such work gets done. Some 40% of the work that comes before my constituency office is Home Office-related, and we try to give a good service.

Achieving that depends on the individuals at the other end of the process as well—on the personality of the account manager. I pay tribute to Claire Shacklock who previously did the job for us in Southwark, when Southwark was an area on its own, and I pay tribute to her successor, Helen O’Brien, who is the account manager in Lambeth, Bexley, Greenwich and Southwark. After the handover, it took a little while for us to get the communication established and working well. It is now working well, and her staff are beginning to understand what we expect and are beginning to deliver. That required us to be quite gruff with them, however. We had to tell them what they needed to do and make them understand the urgency of some of the cases.

I asked my constituency team to tell me the three key issues. The first of them was post-study work visas. This is what my team said:

“This route is being closed and so everyone has applied at once, and this has thrown the system into chaos. We have had between 15-20 cases in the last month of people who have been waiting around 3 months, when the published waiting time is 1 month. They are stuck as they can’t work and some people are losing accommodation/job offers because of the delay. Why did the UKBA not see this coming and what are they doing to make sure the backlog is cleared quickly?”

The second issue was reconsideration requests, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) mentioned. My team said:

“Currently, when people make ‘in country’ applications for leave to remain and these are refused without a right of appeal, applicants can ask the UKBA to ‘reconsider’ the decision. This was always an informal process but it was accepted that in general the UKBA would reconsider a case once. It seems that a backlog of reconsideration requests has built up and now the UKBA are saying they are reviewing how they deal with these requests. What does this mean? Are they going to stop reconsidering cases”—

or define what a “reconsideration” is?

“If so, they need to say so to people clearly. In one case we had recently, a woman who had been told her reconsideration request had been received later received a letter from Serco saying that according to the UKBA, she had no basis of stay and should leave immediately.”

The left hand and the right hand were clearly not co-ordinated, which was very “confusing” as the Serco letter

“didn’t refer to her reconsideration request, which she felt was still outstanding. If the UKBA are going to stop reconsidering, they must surely explain this clearly to people, not just get Serco to send them letters telling them to go home.”

I hope it does not stop reconsidering; I hope there is a reconsideration process, and we know what it is and how it works.

The third issue my team raised was the UKBA website, which

“despite recent re-modelling, is still not well organised or user friendly, and constituents regularly report this to us. It needs to use clearer, non-technical English wherever possible and be better laid out. The DirectGov website is a good example of how a website can be user friendly, as is NHS Direct (medical advice online). There are always links saying ‘do you need help with x....if so click here…’, ‘was this what you were looking for?’…that sort of thing, and the English is very good and accessible. The UKBA website lags a long way behind these websites.”

It surely cannot be beyond the wit of Government, with all their technical advisers and expertise, to get that sorted out. Please can it be sorted out soon?

I would now like to make a few points of my own. As has been said, there are still a huge number of really rubbish legal advisers and solicitors. I am weekly, if not daily, rescuing people from having to pay considerable sums that they do not have for so-called advice, often bad, telling them to take action they do not need to take and that will not produce any positive results. That gives them false hope. They are also often asked to pay for a service that is never given because the case in question is either not dealt with at all or not soon enough to be of any use. Please can the Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner get a grip and do its job properly? It is still not effective. It does not clamp down on bad advice; it tackles only crime and maladministration. That is not good enough. I should not have to be perpetually writing to these so-called solicitors or so-called advisers saying, “I want the money to be given back to my constituent because you haven’t done anything.” That is a scandal and it needs to be addressed.

The problem of so-called bogus colleges is not as bad as it was but I am not persuaded that there are not still some that do not produce the service they advertise. I encourage the Government to continue to be relentless in such cases. I want to encourage more students to come to this country and I think the Government understand the benefits of that—the universities and colleges certainly do—but that cause will not be helped if bogus colleges continue.

My penultimate point is to ask whether we can please not send people back to places such as Sri Lanka if they are Tamils whose life and liberty are likely to be at risk? I still think that the Home Office is not sensitive enough in such cases and I want a review of cases where there are historic and current conflicts.

Finally, I would like to help people to see the good side of some of the work done by those people with us. On Saturday, I went to the wedding of Sheku Jalloh and Raphaëlle de Joffrey. Sheku came to see me when he was in his teens as a Liberian asylum seeker and refugee. He has now married a Swiss graduate whom he met here, they have settled down and they are a good news story. There are lots of good news stories—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order.

Stephen Lawrence

Simon Hughes Excerpts

Tuesday 24th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Patience is rewarded for the representative of Bermondsey and Old Southwark.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. Will my hon. Friend confirm that he has got the message from London MPs and from others that although we absolutely applaud the new commissioner’s robust attitude, everybody now wants the new Mayor, whoever that will be, and the commissioner to refer independently for assessment the continuing racist allegations as regards the Lawrence case as well as other racist allegations? Does he agree that the best thing the Government can do is to ensure that every one of our 43 police forces in England and Wales better reflects the community it serves, particularly in the ethnic mix at the highest level?

[James Brokenshire]

My right hon. Friend has highlighted the point about the need for the police service to reflect the diversity in our communities. Although the proportion of black and minority ethnic officers has more than doubled since 2000, there is clearly more work to be done, particularly among the more senior ranks. We are examining whether direct entry or quicker progression might be able to assist in that regard. I can assure him that these matters are considered with the utmost seriousness by the Home Secretary and by me. Let me make it absolutely clear: racism and corruption have absolutely no part to play in our police service.

Oral Answers to Questions

Simon Hughes Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

The Government believe that alcohol pricing and taxation are matters best handled at a national level, but where there are suitable local solutions we will welcome them. A number of challenges are involved in delivering local pricing policies, and we will work with local authorities and the trade to consider the legal and practical implications of this issue.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

5. When she last reviewed the operation of the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)]

After a thorough review of drugs policy, the coalition Government launched their new drug strategy in December 2010. The Misuse of Drugs Act provides a strong legislative framework, but we have further strengthened it through the introduction of temporary orders to allow us quickly to ban so-called “legal highs” as soon as they are developed and become dangerous. We continually consider evidence and advice from the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs on the control of emerging drugs.

[Simon Hughes]

I am grateful for the Home Secretary’s personal interest in this issue. Many people outside Parliament, and from all parts of Parliament, still believe that our drugs laws are not working nearly as well as they should. Will she consider the view taken by my party’s conference last year, which was that an independent panel should be tasked with reviewing the Misuse of Drugs Act and reporting back to her, and there should be a subsequent debate in Parliament?

[Mrs May]

I thank my right hon. colleague for his interest in this issue. As he knows, we have already, as a coalition Government, put a considerable amount of work into our new drug strategy, and I suggest to him that we need to see how that strategy, once it is fully rolled out, is having an impact. Other measures that the Government are taking will also have an impact, such as the introduction of the National Crime Agency, which will strengthen our ability to deal with the organised criminal gangs that bring in the drugs that end up causing so much damage to people on our streets.

Parliamentary Representation

Simon Hughes Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to make what might be my shortest speech for a long time, which might be a consolation to many people.

A friend of mine called David Buxton, who stood to be a councillor, was the most profoundly deaf person ever to become a councillor in England. He taught me a long time ago how difficult it is for someone who comes from a disadvantaged position to be treated equally and given equal opportunities. The debate has shown phenomenal consensus in Parliament and between the political parties about where we go next. The messages are clear: a more diverse Parliament gives us better decisions, better debates, better information, better credibility and more interest in Parliament. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard), who made that point so effectively.

We need to send out an appeal: in this House we need more young people, more old people, more women, more people from the black and minority ethnic communities, more people with disabilities, more people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender and more people from the faith minority communities. We also need more people from working class backgrounds, council house backgrounds and lower income groups. We need to go on with that agenda until half the House is made up of women and until we reflect fully the ethnic minorities of our country.

I promised that I would sit down at 5.33 pm, so let me end with the following point. Above all, we must ensure that every one of our political parties has a membership base in its constituencies that reflects the constituency and a councillor base that reflects the constituency, too. If we have a proper base, we can have a Parliament, chosen from the people, of whom we can be proud in the years to come.

Public Disorder

Simon Hughes Excerpts

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I am conscious of the strictures that Mr Speaker put on the length of the debate. The right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) asked earlier to intervene, so I will give way to him.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

I am grateful. Does the Home Secretary accept that the evidence from the police and the community in urban communities such as mine is that there are 40 or 50 serial serious criminals who are regularly the causes of most of the trouble and most of the crime, and who were involved in the past week’s activities? Will chief police officers and local police commanders assure us that such criminals are a central target for activity, so that they cannot sweep in the youngsters referred to in the previous question and others, who become the followers, but are following only because there is someone seriously criminal who leads?

[Mrs May]

I assure my right hon. Friend that the police are very clear that they want to identify and arrest all those who have been involved over the past few days, and they are conscious that that means not just those who find themselves caught up in it but the core criminals, who are well known to them. As a number of chief constables have been saying to me, they know a number of the gang members who have been involved because they have had interaction with them before.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

The events in south London follow what the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) has so clearly described. In Walworth and Peckham, on the Old Kent road, in Rotherhithe and in many of our other communities, we saw on Tuesday night scenes that none of us can ever have expected to see. There was some absolutely despicable behaviour—people being pulled off their motorbikes and scooters, and women driving alone whose car windows were smashed and whose car, with them inside, was raided for its contents. In the evening, we saw parents with their children—women with their youngsters—going in with the younger people to take things out of shops on the Walworth road. People were crying on the street because they had just been promised a job in a shop that was being broken up and might not be able to carry on in business.

[Jake Berry (Rossendale and Darwen) (Con)]

Unlike so many other subjects that the House debates, the aberration of these events links north and south. In my constituency, in Bacup, there was a riot by disaffected young people. Does my right hon. Friend agree with me that it is time for the police to take off the kid gloves, to use the full force of the law and, where possible, to prosecute and imprison those who have engaged in such disgraceful behaviour in both the north and south of this country?

[Simon Hughes]

That is a clear view shared across the House. We have a common message that the law must be applied fully and without reservation, but I qualify that in one respect: it is even more important that those who are the role models—the adults, the parents and the serial criminals—are caught and dealt with without compromise. The 10-year-old, the nine-year-old, the eight-year-old, the follower, the person who got on their BlackBerry the message saying, “Come down here, it’s kicking off down here”—yes, of course, if they give in, they are to blame, as are their parents for not knowing where their children are going at 6, 7, 8, 9 or 10 o’clock at night. But the older youngsters, and the ones who are over 16, 17, 18 or 21, particularly need to be seen in our courts and dealt with.

Public opinion is clear that these disturbances were not caused by this Government or the previous Government, or by the capitalist system. Public opinion is clear that they were simply criminal activity. The borough commander in Southwark made it clear that when people who have been nicked and are now being questioned in Southwark were asked why they had committed the offences, they did not put up some political argument for their action. They were clear that it was for the trainers, the televisions, the kit in the windows. They were clear that this was criminality.

It is also clear that over the past few days there were very few house burglaries in Southwark. The people who were normally doing the burglaries were out on the street kicking in the windows. I am grateful that the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister have accepted that the serious serial criminals, often the gang members, had a truce—between the gangs—over the past few days. That was recorded and it can be seen. They decided not to fight each other, but to go in and take on the community. Some people joined them who should know better—some professionals, some people from outside; the teaching assistant, the graduate—but the serious contributors to trouble in our communities, who are no good at all, are the people on whom we need to focus. Every one of the 32 borough commanders in London will say that there are about 30, 40 or 50 people who lead the local gangs and whose pictures are in the back of the police stations, and we need to concentrate on them.

When MPs break the law and fiddle their expenses, or when police officers receive money from journalists, we have to understand that there are other questions out there and that greed applies across the board, but those were not the presenting issues last week. I want to set out where we need to go now. Above all, we need to support the businesses. Our high streets need to be back to work. We need to shop in our high streets, support the small traders and make sure they have the necessary national support.

People want to give, and there ought to be systems whereby they can contribute to the statutory funds. If we have Disasters Emergency Committee appeals for east Africa, we can have an appeal, if people want to give, for north London, south London, Liverpool, Birmingham or Manchester too. Additional help may be needed for local councils and the local police holding the additional people in custody. There must be a willingness to report the culprits and, as we heard earlier, the media must hand over the information that they have. It is no good standing there and recording it, and not offering the information that would allow people to be dealt with.

We need to make sure that we tackle the causes of continuing violence. As was rightly pointed out in an intervention, two thirds of those who offend come from families where there has been a history of offending. It is generational and we need to recognise those dysfunctional families where the activity is repeated. The right hon. Member for Tottenham has often made the case that we need to recognise families where youngsters are taken out of school and out of the family early, because they become the ones most at risk. We need to support the parents, because some of them find it very difficult indeed. We need to make sure that our housing strategies and our youth services are supported, and that the mobile phone industry helps. We can recover soon, but we have to stand together and support our communities in doing so.

Student Visas

Simon Hughes Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

Yes, I can confirm that. The message that the right hon. Gentleman can take back to his constituents is that the universities in Manchester are open for business to first-class international students, as they always have been.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

I thank the Home Secretary and her Cabinet colleagues for listening to the representations of the university communities. As the questions of exit visas and bogus colleges and the success of our students and universities are a continuing matter of concern for the growth of the British economy, will my right hon. Friend and the Business Secretary undertake to report back annually to Parliament on this matter, to ensure that the successful import of academics into this country can continue?

[Mrs May]

I can assure my right hon. Friend that we will be giving regular reports to Parliament on what we are doing on the immigration system. People will also be able to see what is happening with other aspects of the system, as I have said; I shall be coming back to Parliament to discuss those as well. I am absolutely clear that what the coalition Government have announced today will ensure that our universities can continue to attract students from across the world and to provide world-class education.

Oral Answers to Questions

Simon Hughes Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

The hon. Gentleman is right that the main abuse that we have found has been in private sector colleges at below-degree level, which is why one principal proposal on which we have consulted is that nobody will be able to offer a course at below-degree level unless they become a highly trusted sponsor. The hon. Gentleman will be aware that, on the whole, public sector bodies that apply for highly trusted sponsorship obtain it successfully, but many private sector bodies do not have such status, and that is one key distinction that we need to maintain—that only people whom we can trust to do the job properly should be enabled to bring foreign students to this country.

[Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)]

16. What assessment she has made of the trends in levels of complaints against police forces in England and Wales in the most recent period for which figures are available; and if she will make a statement.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)]

The police complaints statistics for 2009-10, published by the Independent Police Complaints Commission, show an 8% increase in recorded complaints against the police in England and Wales over the previous year. It is right that citizens should feel able to hold the police to account for the service they provide, and improving police accountability is a top priority of this Government.

[Simon Hughes]

I am grateful to the Home Secretary. May I raise a matter that I have raised with the authorities before, which is about the practice of kettling, first, at the G20 demonstrations, then at the student demonstrations last autumn and, even, on new year’s eve, when dealing with crowd control? Does she have any further thoughts that she can share with the House on how the increasing number of complaints about the practice can be dealt with in an effective and long-term manner?

[Mrs May]

Of course, within the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill, we are putting forward some proposals to enhance the complaints procedure against the police, and we have been doing that work in consultation and discussions with the IPCC. I am sure that my right hon. Friend will also be interested to know that the senior officer in the Metropolitan police with responsibility for public order has recently made several announcements about how containment will be dealt with in future, making it clear that, should containment take place, toilets and water will indeed be provided, and that an individual will be available on site to ensure that those who are vulnerable or wish to leave are able to leave such areas.