Immigration Bill

Debate between Simon Hughes and Yvette Cooper

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

And I suggest that the Home Secretary checks her facts, because in April 2011 we raised with Home Office Ministers the importance of restoring fingerprinting to Calais, which border officials had chosen to do. Two-and-a-half years ago, she refused to do that and she has continued to refuse to do that, and her Home Office Ministers said that was the right thing to do. I will let her intervene again if she will tell me that she will now, two-and-a-half years later, restore the fingerprinting of stowaways to Calais. Will she restore the decision to do fingerprinting at Calais? The Home Secretary is refusing, repeatedly, to restore the fingerprinting of stowaways at Calais, despite the fact that we have raised this with her and other Home Office Ministers repeatedly. Her Home Office Ministers have endorsed the decision not to have fingerprinting at Calais, not to be able to check illegal immigration and not to be able to follow up when people attempt to return to this country.

We support measures to restrict access to British driving licences for those who are here illegally. In fact, we introduced those measures. As the Government have admitted, the changes were mostly brought in before the general election, but we are happy to support them all over again. It is also sensible to have stronger checks on bank accounts.

There has been a principle stretching back over 30 years that overseas visitors should contribute for using the NHS. We will therefore support sensible contributions to the NHS from visa payments, and it would be helpful for Ministers to confirm that such payments will go to the NHS. It would also be helpful if Ministers confirmed whether they have dropped proposals for GPs to have to implement the same kinds of checks as private landlords before letting pregnant women see a midwife, or giving children the measles, mumps and rubella vaccination—both issues that doctors have raised as public health concerns.

[Simon Hughes]

If the right hon. Lady is honest, she will realise that Labour’s record on illegal immigration is far from glorious. I have indicated that I am willing to give the Government the benefit of the doubt on Second Reading, although I have criticisms of some aspects of the Bill. It would be helpful to know whether the official Opposition will support or oppose the Bill on Second Reading.

[Yvette Cooper]

I will set out the Opposition’s response on exactly that point in due course.

Capital Gains Tax (Rates)

Debate between Simon Hughes and Yvette Cooper

Monday 28th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend makes an important point, and I am happy to accept an intervention from the Secretary of State if he wants to clarify the position, because he did indeed discuss pensioners who under-occupy homes across the country. It is right that we help and support people who want to move to smaller homes as they grow older, but he needs to give us an answer. If he is telling elderly people and pensioners that they are going to have to move out of the home where they have lived all their lives, and where they have brought up their children, that has severe consequences. He must clarify his position, because my hon. Friend is right.

[Simon Hughes]

The right hon. Lady’s attack appears to be that the measures introduced by the Government are ideologically driven—something that is difficult to justify with regard to my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury; the Minister of State, Department for Work and Pensions, my hon. Friend the Member for Thornbury and Yate (Steve Webb); and others, who have a record of campaigning for the poor and disadvantaged. Might not the same fallacious argument explain why, for 13 years, the Labour Government never linked pensions to earnings? Was that an ideological option? I hope it was not but if it was, the right hon. Lady cannot make the argument, because it is fallacious.

[Yvette Cooper]

The hon. Gentleman is right that there are many members of the Government who have indeed campaigned against poverty for many years, which is why their betrayal of the people whom they have stood up for is shocking. He will recall, too, that it was the Labour party that legislated and changed the law to restore the link with earnings. He should look rather carefully at the increase that, in practice, pensioners will receive over the next few years compared with the old standards. He will find that the new proposals are rather less generous than they appear at first sight.