Domestic Violence

Stephen Pound Excerpts

Tuesday 11th September 2012 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Pendle (Andrew Stephenson) on securing this timely and intensely important debate. It is very much to his credit that he has brought the attention of the House to the matter. I also congratulate the right hon. Gentleman the Minister—

[The Minister of State, Home Department (Mr Jeremy Browne)]

Just “hon.”

[Stephen Pound]

Forgive me. Many of us consider that the hon. Gentleman is always right and never less than honourable. I congratulate him on his translation into his present position.

To be completely up front, I come from a generation that had the worst possible attitude towards domestic violence. My generation condoned domestic violence. I remember as a boy the number of women who walked into doors every Saturday night, the number of women who appeared in church on Sunday with a chiffon scarf around their neck, hiding finger marks, and the number of children who blanched every time someone lifted a hand. Very little was done about it.

Fortunately, we have moved on from that. It is no longer acceptable to pretend that domestic violence is not a problem. I would like to give particular credit, from my part of the world—west London—to Southall Black Sisters, which has been in existence now for more than 30 years. Many people will have known Hannana Siddiqui for her work on the Kiranjit Ahluwalia case. In that case, not only was the issue of ultimate violence—murder in the family—addressed, but the whole problem within particular communities. It became intensely difficult, and a number of well-meaning liberals such as myself stood back, thinking that we had no right to intrude into such matters. Those days have gone.

[Rehman Chishti]

On the hon. Gentleman’s point that certain domestic violence offences take place in certain communities, does he agree that one particular aspect is honour-based violence? There are more than 2,800 incidents a year. We now need a multi-agency approach to ensure that we get rid of that horrific practice.

[Stephen Pound]

There are few expressions I loathe and despise more than the use of the word “honour” in that context. There is nothing honourable about slaughtering, attacking, murdering, torturing, brutalising and beating women. To somehow imply that there is a shroud of ethnicity that can be spread across the issue and it then becomes acceptable—I know that that is not the hon. Gentleman’s view, and I know that he is far, far better than that—and to use the word that he used in that context frankly sticks in my throat.

I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman that there is a huge problem in certain societies, and they are not all of one faith, colour, race or nationality. In my own ethnicity, believe you me, we would want to talk to some west London Irish families about their attitudes towards women. We do not have a great deal to be massively proud of. That issue has to be confronted, and it is being confronted. We need the resources to confront and intervene.

[Rehman Chishti]

Let me clarify for the hon. Gentleman. I agree that there is nothing honourable about the vile act. One uses the term “honour” because that is how it is used and labelled at the moment. If he wants to change the terminology and ask the Minister to ensure that we do so, I will push for that with him. I agree completely that there is no honour in that disgraceful act. It was used only because it is the term that is applied throughout the country.

[Stephen Pound]

May I say categorically, on the record, that I have immense respect for the hon. Gentleman? I have enjoyed many conversations with him, and I am grateful that he has joined us in the House. I certainly did not, at any stage, mean to imply any criticism; we are as one here. We look to the Minister’s febrile mind to come up with an alternative wording, in the sure and certain knowledge that he is the person who can achieve that.

[Julie Hilling]

My hon. Friend said that he thought that we were now in more enlightened times. I do not know whether he has seen the statistics from a Department of Health survey that say that 43% of teenage girls believe that it is acceptable for a boyfriend to be aggressive towards his partner, and that one in two boys and one in three girls believe that there are some circumstances in which it is okay to hit a woman or to force her to have sex. We have not moved greatly from those unenlightened times. Perhaps the only difference is that there were few resources to support women who were fleeing domestic violence. Sadly, we seem to be going back to the time when there were fewer resources to support women. Fundamentally, attitudes such as how men view women and how women view themselves regarding domestic violence have not changed.

[Stephen Pound]

Dr Pangloss has never been my role model on such occasions. I do not see that we inhabit the best of all possible worlds. Believe you me, I am more than well aware of the fact that we have not remotely resolved the problem, but there has been an attitudinal change in society to a slight degree; it is not sufficient, but it is there. It is simply not acceptable nowadays to perpetrate the sort of behaviour that was the norm when I was in my 20s in west London.

Some 30 years ago, Erin Pizzey started the Chiswick women’s refuge. I remember going there on Christmas eve year after year with toys that we had collected for the children. It was explained that Pizzey, who was sometimes robust in her attitudes and was impatient—for sound reasons—would always insist on having no man within less than 20 feet of the building. We would therefore leave our sacks of toys 20 feet from Kew bridge for people to come out to collect. That was an improvement.

For me, as someone who has represented my area for 30 years, the biggest issue that we need to address today is not the existence of the problem, which is undeniable, or the need for early, positive and preventive intervention—I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) and the Minister will accept that, and we will return to that issue in a minute—but one particular aspect of the horrific nightmare of domestic violence: housing.

At the moment, I posit that every one of us is regularly confronted in our surgeries by victims of the foulest domestic violence who look to be re-housed as a solution to their problem. It is somehow felt that if they could move to another place or property, the problem would be solved. In London, that simply is not possible for two reasons. First, in my borough, there are 23,000 people on the waiting list. Secondly, my constituency is minute geographically. Someone could move from one side to the other and still be within a half-hour walk. If someone moves to other accommodation, do the children get uprooted and sent to a new school? Do they go anonymously to that school? Do people change their general practitioner, their sons’ football classes and their daughters’ dance classes? Do all those things have to change overnight? It simply is not possible.

That is why when people say—I have heard some say this—that domestic violence is exaggerated as a mechanism for accelerated movement through the housing transfer list, I find it intensely and immensely offensive. I also find it utterly unrealistic. In all honesty, there is no surplus of housing in the urban environment waiting for people to move into. I speak as someone who has spent many years working for a housing association in west London. One of my jobs was to facilitate such overnight—sometimes middle-of-a-Sunday-afternoon—transfers. Until the day I die, I will never forget the piles of school paintings, drawings and textbooks that were left behind by children whose mother never thought that they would go to that school again, because they moved on to another school in another part of west London, thinking that that would solve the problem. Did it solve the problem? Sadly, it did not, because the abusive partner saw such a move as a challenge, lay in wait outside each primary school, eventually located the mother and the problem started all over again.

There is one ray of sunshine. There is an organisation called the Place to Be, which some hon. Members may be aware of, that operates principally in primary schools. In my part of the world—west London—it provides a quiet place for children to talk to a skilled, trained mentor, who can actually talk through the problems that they face. Children will put a little note in a box, just like the bullying boxes that many schools have nowadays. More than anything else, we have found that little notes appear that say, “Please ask my Mummy’s boyfriend to stop hitting her”, and those are the mild ones. We see that over and over again.

The solution is not the refuge or the move, or somehow to seek to resolve the issue geographically, by transferring across the city. It is not somehow to blame the victim and say that the victim has to move; we have to look for preventive interventions for perpetrators and for early signposting. Unfortunately, like many in this room, I have had to speak to abusers. We have to do so; we cannot refuse to see them, although we might find that difficult and have to hold our noses. I have often been struck by the frustration evidenced by them—the low self-value and self-worth, and the failure to achieve anything in life. Very often, such people are like the father in the famous story in James Joyce’s “Dubliners”, who comes home and beats up his children because he has failed at work, does not have enough money and has failed in everything he does, and there is the agony of that boy who says:

“Don’t beat me, pa!... I’ll say a Hail Mary for you.”

It is very often like that—the frustration boils out from the parent who comes home, where the nearest person to hand is the child, the wife, the partner or the spouse.

We have to identify such violence early on, because I think that we can save some of those people. Yes, it is paramount that we save the victims and it is crucial that we save the collateral victims—the children and the people around them—but, in some cases, we also have to consider intervening on the person causing the problem. That may sound heretical, and it is much easier for people to switch off their minds and read the Daily Mail, or to demonise this great tattooed chav underclass who come home and bat their wives around, but there is much more to the problem than that. They make up a range of victims in their own different ways. I carry no candle for the abuser, but I recognise that intervention has to be across the piece.

Inevitably, everything that we do in politics in this place today is about resources and priorities. Nye Bevan was so right so many years ago when he said that the language of socialism is a language of priorities: we are in that world now. However, this priority has to be given full support and strength, because if we cannot provide preventive intervention and early identification, the problems that come over the hill will frankly be so vast that they will dwarf any demand or draw-down on the public purse now. I appreciate that such an argument may be made about many issues, but in the case of domestic violence, the argument makes itself.

Not only is there the corrosive, damaging and very often lethal impact on the victims and their immediate family, but, as has already been mentioned—I think by the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard)—such violence becomes a learned practice. I have seen children in the playground of a primary school hit girls, emulating their father’s or their mother’s boyfriend’s behaviour, which is a learned behaviour. I have seen young boys, at the age of six or seven, hit young girls, because they have seen such behaviour and they think that it is acceptable. That is a cost on society that we cannot afford.

[Anas Sarwar (Glasgow Central) (Lab)]

I am sorry to cut off my hon. Friend in mid flow. There is clearly an issue of resources around local services, policing and such forms of intervention, but we should also ensure that the Government have a holistic approach to the economic impact on women of some of the changes to benefits, pensions and tax credits, which mean that women will not have as much financial freedom as they previously had; of the cuts to local councils, which have pressures on their budgets but will not, I hope, inevitably look at cutting services for domestic violence, although that is a risk; and of the legal aid changes that will impact on women’s ability to have the confidence to go forward and break out of the cycle of fear in which they live. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government should have an holistic approach to all those changes?

[Stephen Pound]

As ever, my hon. Friend makes not just a telling, but an extremely positive point. The draft universal credit regulations will be laid before the House in the next few weeks—I think that they are due when we return after the conference recess—so we are quickly approaching a crucial debate, in which we will have to discuss such matters for precisely the reason that he gave.

Many people do not seem to realise what will happen, say in the case of a woman who flees her violent male partner, if the male partner is named as the recipient of the benefit. What happens if the woman has to go to the abuser, who may still have her blood staining his knuckles, and ask him to sign the benefit over to her as a favour? Will he say that he is more than happy to co-operate and collaborate with her? No. One of the joys of child benefit—one of the most important things about it, and one of the greatest arguments for it—was that it was paid directly and solely to the woman, which is a principle that we seem to be losing.

What I have seen of the draft universal credit regulations fills me with dread, because I can see a fiscal servitude—the shackles of sterling—being locked on to women so that they cannot escape or break free, because of the complicated mechanisms that they are held in simply so that they can provide themselves with the basics, such as food and drink. Nowadays, we more and more see people turning to the charitable sector for the provision of the most basic of basics that, frankly, the state should provide.

[Seema Malhotra (Feltham and Heston) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful point about where power and resources lie in households, and about how a woman may be severely disadvantaged not only through the impact of domestic violence, but through what she then finds she has entitlements or access to. I have a case in my constituency in which the male in the household changed the tenancy agreement on the house, so that the woman did not realise, until she had to flee, that she had no access to that home under the arrangements he had set up. Does my hon. Friend agree that there must be a much more holistic approach to ensuring equal access to resources in the household, not just access to the important services that have to be available in a timely fashion when somebody becomes the victim of domestic violence?

[Stephen Pound]

In her short time in this House, my hon. Friend, whom I am proud to say is my respected neighbour, has earned an enviable reputation for coming up with exactly the right expression to illuminate a problem, and she has again done that extremely well. I entirely agree with her point, but I will go slightly further. I do not think that we can resolve the problem by identifying funding streams within the family; that could stop the problem getting worse, but would not actually stop it.

[Mr Edward Leigh in the Chair]

The hon. Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys said that he did not want the debate to become a list of statistics being trotted round the course and, as in all things, I respect him for that. When it comes to statistics, however, it is worth drawing the House’s attention to the fact that 31% of local authority funding for the domestic violence and sexual abuse sector was cut between 2010-11 and 2011-12, which is a reduction from £7.8 million to £5.4 million in—I assume—England and Wales. That figure is massive, and I would say that that huge amount is cost-ineffective.

We have heard the word “holistic” used two or three times. Let us take that approach not because it is somehow a fiscally mature and sensible way of operating but because it could save lives. We cannot tolerate a situation in which young lives can be blighted and the lives of adults destroyed. We cannot see the destruction of the future of our country because of a lack of funding, financial support and early intervention.

I again congratulate the hon. Member for Pendle on securing this debate. I look forward to the Minister’s response and to a slightly different way of addressing this issue for the sake of present and future generations.

Border Checks Summer 2011

Stephen Pound Excerpts

Wednesday 9th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)]

It is interesting to follow the right hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), because it was he who treated the House to his knowledge that the Liberal Democrats were going to win the Oldham by-election. That shows the quality of his judgment, and the hypocrisy of the Liberal Democrat party on immigration control fills us with disgust. My anti-Semitic Liberal Democrat opponent at the general election tried to turn body scans of women at airports into an election issue, in the hope of winning votes from Muslims. I can put up with the Conservatives because they are what they are, but the sheer hypocrisy of the Liberal Democrat party on issue after issue turns my stomach.

This debate is about the fact that there are now in this country a very large number of people whose numbers we do not know and whose whereabouts we do not know, and who may include terrorists, and this Government’s policy and this Home Secretary’s decisions have made that possible. Let us be clear, too, that this disaster could have been foreseen because from the moment when the Home Secretary came to office, she has refused to be involved in any way in the administration of immigration cases. There are a very large number of immigration cases in my constituency, yet she, unlike Douglas Hurd, a reputable person, and unlike Willie Whitelaw, also a reputable person, has refused to touch those cases. My constituency immigration cases and those of other Members have instead been siphoned down to the hapless Minister for Immigration, who sits in his office signing letters that have been put in front of him by the UK Border Agency, whose activities the Government now decry. This Government have made a mess of immigration policy because of the arrogance and indolence of the current Home Secretary.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

The Minister for Immigration does not need me to fight his corner for him, but may I tell my right hon. Friend that I have had seven individual meetings on seven individual immigration cases with the Minister?

[Sir Gerald Kaufman]

I am not knocking the Minister for Immigration—poor chap, he does what he is left to do—but the fact is that this arrogant and indolent Home Secretary will not touch immigration and because of that she does not know what goes on at the ports, she does not know what goes on in the immigration departments, and she does not know what goes on in Islamabad, Dubai or Abu Dhabi. That is because she does not care; she thinks she is too important to deal with the nuts and bolts of administration. My right hon. Friends the Members for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) and for Blackburn (Mr Straw), both former Home Secretaries who have spoken in this debate, did do that. They were ready to listen and to look at the nuts and bolts. That is what is wrong with her. I say again that it is her arrogance and her indolence that have made this possible.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

I regret the fact that the Home Secretary is no longer with us—

[Stephen Pound]

No longer in her place.

[Paul Goggins]

No longer in her place. She will know from the exchanges that she and I have had both inside and outside the Chamber in the 18 months that she has held office that my starting point, as a former Home Office Minister and Northern Ireland security Minister, has been to trust the Home Secretary, as, indeed, I trusted all her predecessors. We heard on Monday from my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett), who described the job as the “ministerial graveyard”. We heard my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) talk earlier this afternoon about the serious responsibilities that the job has for public safety and our borders. It is my strong belief that we should not seek to second-guess difficult decisions that Home Secretaries have to take, often with advice, of course, that the rest of us do not have.

Having said that, in the interests of protecting her own reputation and, crucially, that of her office, the Home Secretary needs urgently to clarify a number of issues. I have three specific questions. She and the Minister will remember from my question on her statement on Monday that Manchester airport is in my constituency. Indeed, when I asked her whether the pilot included that airport, she gave me three answers for the price of one: “No”, “Yes” and “Maybe”. Well, I need to know whether the pilot did in fact operate at Manchester airport, and if so how frequently checks were relaxed and how many people passed through the airport without biometric checks. I appreciate that the Minister replying today will have many other things to respond to, so a letter on those issues and questions would be very welcome.

My second question, which has not been discussed as extensively as it needs to be, is where did the pressure for this pilot come from? I find it difficult to believe that all the pressure came from within the UK Border Agency. After all, procedures were in place for health and safety and public order emergencies, and Brodie Clark himself has confirmed that, even this summer, when the pilot was operating and there were three-hour queues at Heathrow airport, checks were still not relaxed.

However, delays at airports damage the reputation of airports themselves and of airlines. I would therefore like the Minister to tell us whether any pressure has been applied, either on the Home Secretary or the Transport Secretary, by BAA or other airport operators—or indeed by any airline companies—to speed up passport control. Has there been any correspondence with the Home Secretary and the Transport Secretary on that, or any meetings or discussions with Ministers? If there has, we should have copies of those letters and minutes.

My third question goes to the very heart of how Ministers operate within this Government. How hands-on were the Home Secretary and her Ministers in establishing, monitoring and evaluating this pilot? The right hon. Lady must have been aware of the political risk she was taking in establishing the pilot. She must have been aware that the public would take some convincing that a more effective and targeted approach would include the relaxation of biometric checks. If she wants now to convince us that she is on top of the situation and has been throughout, she needs to publish all the submissions and all the other documents that relate to the pilot, including the information that was gathered during the pilot.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alun Michael]

Absolutely right. I am very disappointed that the Home Secretary is not still in the Chamber, because this debate is about her behaviour and performance. She was remarkably reluctant to take interventions from Labour Members during her speech. Normally on such a big issue—a big occasion in Parliament—the Minister concerned takes a lot of interventions. It was disappointing that she did not do so, and perhaps demonstrates her nervousness about the situation she is getting into, although she still does not seem to understand how serious her position has become.

I want to help the Home Secretary by giving her an opportunity to correct the record. On Monday, I put a question to her in these terms:

“we know who she is blaming in advance of her inquiries, but those who know the people at the top-end of the border force, and who know how that body works, say it is unthinkable that they would have taken these actions without the knowledge and approval of Ministers. That is right, isn’t it?”

She replied:

“my understanding is that the head of the UK Border Agency admitted he had taken action outside ministerial approval.”—[Official Report, 7 November 2011; Vol. 535, c. 52.]

Well, I think she meant the border force, but that is what she said. We now know that statement to be untrue. The head of the border force has made it clear that he does not accept her description of what has happened, so it would be nice if the Home Secretary could correct the record on that matter.

A further issue is the pilot. The idea that it was suspended one day early by the Home Secretary is not exactly a dramatic gesture in the direction of public concern. Apparently, the relaxation of controls was allowed everywhere under the pilot scheme—Scotland, Manchester, Northern Ireland and right across the country. That is some pilot scheme. Such an approach does not seem to indicate a calculated attempt to see exactly what is happening and evaluate it properly.

[Stephen Pound]

My right hon. Friend has just told the House that the pilot was extended to Northern Ireland. The Home Secretary did not know that—does he?

[Alun Michael]

I understand that it extended to Northern Ireland, but I also understand my hon. Friend’s point because, at the beginning of the week, the Home Secretary did not seem to know whether the pilot had been extended to anywhere other than Heathrow.

Another point is that there is one cast-iron rule at the Home Office: the need to understand that the devil is in the detail. In fact, I became quite bored by my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) reminding us of that on a daily basis. That was because he paid attention to the detail and expected his Ministers to do so as well. We cannot expect a Minister to know everything that officials do in their Department and its agencies, but we have the right to ask whether Ministers have asked the right questions and insisted on getting to the bottom of any important issues. During the questions and responses we have heard in the Chamber and in the Home Affairs Committee throughout this week and today, that has not been demonstrated by the Home Secretary.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

It is always far easier to find a scapegoat than it is to find a solution, and we have heard some scapegoating this afternoon. We have heard scapegoating of individuals in the Home Office and we have heard scapegoating of the past. Even the hon. Member for Stourbridge (Margot James), normally such a seraph of sweetness and light in the Chamber, tried to introduce the suggestion that the previous Administration had an amnesty for asylum seekers. Madam Deputy Speaker, you know that at the last election only one party stood in favour of a “keep your head down and everything will be all right” amnesty: the Liberal Democrats, with the mendacious mush of pusillanimity that ended with them swallowing their principles and their pride and selling their souls to the Conservatives.

It is no good scapegoating the Home Office as some evil organism that takes the good and the innocent, and corrupts, kills and throws them out again, like the reactor room of K-19—the infamous Russian nuclear submarine from which no one ever emerged alive. That is not the situation.

We have an intensely difficult problem, dealing with human beings prepared to risk their lives, and in many cases to lose their lives, to come to this country. Any amount of legislation or fine theory comes up against the fact that some young lad from Afghanistan will hang on under a lorry, even though he has a 60% chance of dying, to come to this country.

We are dealing with people for whom the situation is in that order of seriousness, so we should grow up and stop going for the stupid false nostrum that we can pull a wall around this country, even around the forgotten frontier that stretches from Foyle through Belfast lough to Strangford. We cannot build a wall around the United Kingdom—[Interruption.] I appreciate that some may wish to do so, but it is not physically possible.

This summer, Raed Salah, a man banned from this country by the Home Secretary, wandered in through customs with a cheery wave and a tip of his hat—I was going to say that he stopped off at the duty-free, but he probably did not. The current structure is indefensible. How on earth can we possibly justify it?

I end with one positive thought. I speak not for my party on this; in fact, I think I may have more in common with the Home Secretary. Is it not time for us to revisit one of the sanest, most sensible, positive and productive proposals ever heard on the Floor of the House? Identity cards. Is it not time that we looked again at those proposals? Otherwise, we shall never know how many people entered the country this summer until they either rock up in MPs’ surgeries, claiming that their overstay should be regularised, or appear in court. When they are asked how they came into the country, they will reply that it was during those sweet balmy days of summer when people could wander in and nobody said a word. The way to find out is to be like my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson), who carries his ID card in his wallet to this day. As does he, so should the nation.

UK Border Force

Stephen Pound Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I agree with my hon. Friend. Sadly, the immigration policy of the previous Government led to significant concerns among members of the public. This is an issue that matters to members of the public. It is this coalition Government who are taking action that I believe members of the public want us to take to reduce net migration into this country, to get rid of the abuse of student visas, and to deal with some of the other issues that led to the significant numbers of people coming into this country over the past 13 years under a Labour Government.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

The right hon. Lady knows more than almost anyone how uniquely serious the security situation is in Northern Ireland. Can she please confirm that Belfast International was not included in the wave-through amnesty?

Protection of Freedoms Bill

Stephen Pound Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Lynne Featherstone]

That has not been the experience in Scotland. I would say to motorists, first, that they should not enter unless the signage is clear and they know what they are doing, and, secondly, that if that were to happen, they should call the police. [Interruption.] I was about to say that I hope, in the light of the reassurance I have provided in respect of appeal rights and signage, that the hon. Lady will feel able to withdraw her new clause and support the Government’s amendments, but I am not sure that the timing is entirely appropriate.

The hon. Lady asked about the six-month limit for hired cars and she made a good point that we are happy to consider further. She also asked about the effect of consumer protection legislation on ticketing. Where the terms and conditions on which land may be used for parking are displayed on a prominent sign at the entrance to the land, existing consumer protection legislation applies. Such legislation protects consumers from misleading information and unfair contract terms. That deals with the point about the £500 ticket the hon. Lady mentioned, which would, under that protection, clearly be an unfair contract term. For example, where signs for motorists in a car park are misleading or where other misleading or deceptive information is given, such as the use of tickets that look like local authority tickets, there may be a breach of consumer protection regulations. If so, local authority trading standards services and the Office of Fair Trading can take enforcement action.

Where there is no prominent sign setting out the terms and conditions according to which the land may be used, there is no protection, as I have said, and the motorist should not park there as he or she is probably trespassing. However, that may not always be clear and it may be that a car park provider could be accused of making a misleading omission under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 if they fail to provide information that no parking is allowed. Maximum penalties under the regulations are a £5,000 fine on summary conviction—that is in a magistrates court—or a fine or imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years, or both, on conviction or indictment in a Crown court. Furthermore, companies can pursue motorists for a parking fee only when they have the motorist’s contact details, and the DVLA will provide those details only to companies that are registered with an accredited trade association. I have seen no evidence that contract law and consumer protection are defective in any way in that regard.

Let me return to the issue of extortionate fees and barriers, which the hon. Lady mentioned. If she was asking whether the exemption for barriers in clause 54(3) means that a landowner will still be able to charge extortionate fees to let motorists out of a car park where there is a barrier, the answer is no because, as I have said, subsection (3)(a) requires that

“there is express or implied consent by the driver of the vehicle to restricting its movement by a fixed barrier”.

Secondly, in order to establish a contract as a basis for payment, the terms for parking have to be clearly displayed. We consider that if a landowner demanded a fee for the vehicle’s release without that basis, he would be committing an offence under subsection (1).

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

I know that the hon. Lady’s heart is in the right place and that we are trying to achieve something good with this Bill, but it is riddled with holes and exemptions. I foresee a scenario in which a person gets a ticket from one of these companies and the DVLA then provides that person’s address to the ticketing company, which then applies for a bailiff’s warrant in a distant court, and a bailiff then turns up and takes the person’s car. With the best will in the world, ringing up trading standards or the police will not help. If these companies cannot get you one way they will get you another way, and bailiffs’ warrants on vehicles will be in use.

[Lynne Featherstone]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that, but he is wrong. A rogue ticketer who is not a member of an accredited trade association or the British Parking Association would not be able to access the information from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency.

[Stephen Pound]

It is not rogue; it is the norm.

[Lynne Featherstone]

It is not the norm. This is about making parking work for everyone. We are changing what was an appalling blot on the landscape. There is probably not an MP in the House who has not written to me or the Minister who previously held my position with terrible tales of rogue clamping. At the very worst, if the hon. Lady—sorry, the hon. Gentleman—[Interruption.] I have forgotten my point now; it is lost to posterity.

Anyway, I hope that I have answered the points raised by the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North. We are trying to do the right thing; we are removing a scourge. The measures have been welcomed by motoring organisations and people across the land. There is nothing as popular as the measures, as a result of people’s experiences of being clamped in unfair circumstances. I hope that the hon. Lady will feel able to withdraw her new clause and support the Government amendments. I fear that she may not, but I live in hope.

Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Bill

Stephen Pound Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Hazel Blears]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right about the case of CD. We had a long discussion in Committee about the need for a relocation clause and about the judge’s comments. Indeed, the judge in that case said that since CD’s return,

“he has endeavoured to obtain firearms on a number of occasions from a number of associates for the purposes of putting into effect a planned terrorist attack, has held covert meetings with associates in relation to plans to use the firearms as part of his planned attack and has displayed a very high level of security awareness.”

It was on those grounds that the judge decided that the relocation condition was absolutely appropriate in controlling CD’s activities. As for my right hon. Friend’s second question, about why the Government have been so reluctant to provide the Home Secretary with the power to relocate—not the duty to do so in every case, but the power where necessary—I believe that this is part of a political accommodation with the Liberal Democrats and that this will be revealed in all its rather distasteful details in due course.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

Everyone in this House knows the wealth, depth and breadth of my right hon. Friend’s experience: she has seen evil in close quarters. However, does she not agree that we would not even need to discuss this issue if many of the people involved were deported and sent back to their countries of origin, as they should be? Would it not be a little more helpful if this multicoloured Government assisted us in that endeavour, in particular with memorandums of understanding, which they oppose so strongly? Then we would not have to worry about how many miles someone was from London, because they would be in Jordan.

[Hazel Blears]

My hon. Friend also has considerable experience in relation to terrorism and the necessary laws. We did our utmost to try to negotiate memorandums of understanding with other countries so that deportation could take place. We were successful in a number of cases, albeit perhaps not with as many countries as we wanted. Equally, however, he must acknowledge that unfortunately we now have the issue of domestic, home-grown terrorists—people who cannot be deported and who were brought up in this country. Therefore, we need laws that provide sufficient security for those circumstances, as well as for where terrorists come from abroad.

I want to cite a bit of evidence, because evidence is important, and otherwise this debate is in danger of becoming a politician’s polemic. I want to quote again from the evidence that DAC Osborne gave us in Committee. I am beginning to feel slightly sorry for the poor man. I questioned him quite vigorously on relocation, and he said:

“The relocation issue has been very useful for us being able to monitor and enforce at the current time. Without that relocation, and depending on where people choose to live, that could be significantly more difficult. Where the choice of residence will be and how many people are within an area will affect the complexities, but there are different environments that make policing easier or more difficult. People could choose to live in an area that was difficult to police in normal circumstances, and that would be even more difficult to police in relation to monitoring control order subjects.”

He was then asked a very good question by my hon. Friend the Member for Newport East (Jessica Morden). She asked whether

“of all the measures available to you, is it fair to say that relocation is the most effective?”

DAC Stuart Osborne, the national co-ordinator for counter-terrorism, replied:

“Overall it probably is, yes.”

That response comes from someone who has been engaged in dealing with suspected terrorists on a day-to-day operational basis. He says that relocation is the most effective measure that he could have to help him to police in these circumstances and to protect the public. That is a very powerful submission indeed. He went on to say of the provisions in the Bill:

“The new freedoms that will be given to individuals will significantly increase the challenges that we have to face”.––[Official Report, Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Public Bill Committee, 22 June 2011; c. 5-6, Q10 and 14.]

DAC Osborne is a well respected police officer with considerable experience, and his views should be accorded some importance by the Government.

Immigration

Stephen Pound Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in this debate, and I congratulate the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) on introducing it. Like him, I welcome the change in tone that has occurred in raising and debating the subject of immigration. In 2005, I wrote a pamphlet on the subject entitled “Too much of a good thing? Towards a balanced approach to immigration”. I was immediately assailed by my political opponents in my constituency and accused in the local press of being racist. That was before they had read anything that I had said. In those days, simply raising the subject was deemed to be racist, but I am happy to say that when they read what I had said they withdrew their remarks, because I was manifestly not racist. I am glad that we have moved on, and that we can now discuss such matters.

For much of my adult life—this is probably not true of most hon. Members in the Chamber—I have lived in parts of London that have strong immigrant populations, and cheek by jowl with people who had emigrated to this country. As a result, I knew from working with people of immigrant origin, and from knowing them as friends and neighbours and worshipping in the same churches, that the caricature of immigrants often portrayed in the media is often the very reverse of the truth. Far from being scroungers, criminals and a threat to society, the majority of them are decent, hard-working, law-abiding people who want to make a positive contribution to the community.

So I began with a bias in favour of immigration. I became involved in the subject and was prompted to write the pamphlet only because I was investigating the housing issue in Hertfordshire. I was intrigued as to why housing targets were constantly raised. When I inquired why, I was told by the great and the good and by the officials in local authorities and planning authorities that there were two reasons that we needed constantly to build more houses. The first was declining household size, and that was true. On average, if there were an unchanged population in Hertfordshire, we would need 0.5% more houses every year because household sizes are declining by 0.5% each year.

The second reason I was given was that there was an inflow into the south-east from the rest of the country. I looked into that, and I found it to be untrue. It was what we would call, in places other than this, a lie. In fact, there was a net outflow of people from the south-east of England to the rest of the United Kingdom. There was, however, a net inflow into London, particularly, from abroad. In 17 statements to the House on housing made by the previous Government, the impact of international migration on demand for housing was never once mentioned. That was the nature of our debate. We were pretending that the phenomenon was not happening, even though everyone could observe that it was.

As far as my constituency was concerned, people were moving to London from abroad and occupying houses—because they were allocated them, because they had bought them or because they had rented them—that would otherwise have been occupied by the people already resident in London. Those people therefore moved out to Hertfordshire and the rest of the home counties, and we had to build houses for them.

When I looked into the matter further, I found that 80% of the expected population growth and more than 40% of new household formation in this country was the result of net immigration from abroad. That is why we have a housing crisis in this country. That is why housing waiting lists have increased so dramatically over the past 10 or 15 years. That is also why so many of our constituents link housing with immigration. They do not dislike immigrants. Like me, they probably know them and live with them—we are all human beings; we are all children of the same God and I hope that we all get on with each other—but they know that if there is a net inflow into the country and we are not building as many houses as there are people coming in, that will result in a housing crisis and the people who are already here will have to bear the brunt of it in due course. I therefore wrote about that and thought about it purely in those terms.

I went on to look at the economic benefits that were alleged to result from large-scale immigration into this country. I found that the debate on those supposed benefits was depressingly superficial. It consisted of slogans rather than analysis. When I looked at the analysis that had been seriously carried out into the economic benefits that flow from immigration, I could find no major study that believed there to be any substantial net gain to an economy from large-scale net immigration. The hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood), who is no longer in his place, mentioned certain publications by the Institute for Public Policy Research that were in favour of immigration, but I shall quote from a document that the institute published entitled “The Politics of Migration”. It contains an essay by Mark Kleinman, in which he states:

“There is not a compelling long-term case for increased immigration purely in terms of economic benefits.”

I could quote from many other studies that reached the same conclusion. According to some, there might be a mild economic benefit if we ignore all the housing and infrastructure problems, or according to others, there might be a small net loss. The idea that we can substantially improve the well-being of this country through large-scale immigration is simply unsubstantiated by any major study.

This does not mean that we should have no immigration. My analogy is that immigration is much more like a lubricant than a fuel. Without lubrication, a car would suffer severe damage, but once it has enough lubrication, adding more will not make it go better; it might even cause problems. Likewise, stopping all immigration would damage the economy, but encouraging more immigration beyond a certain point will not make those already here any better off. I challenge anyone to rebut that basic thesis. We need a modest amount of to-and-fro among people, with some moving here, others returning or moving elsewhere, but we do not need a substantial net increase in our population through immigration.

I shall deal with just one economic argument—the issue of skilled workers. The debate in this area is particularly superficial. It is widely assumed that allowing any skilled workers into the country must always be beneficial to the well-being of those already here, but that is not necessarily so. The only way to raise the living standards of our existing population over time is to increase the level of skills and the proportion of our population that has those skills, expertise and experience. Importing skills from abroad is often a substitute for doing that and discourages it. This is not the only reason, but it has contributed to the fact that this country has a less skilled population than many of our competitors, including Germany, France, Japan and America. A smaller proportion of our population has qualifications below degree level than almost any of our competitors.

We pretend that we can make do by importing skilled people instead, thereby simply leaving large swathes of our population unskilled, with reduced incentives to acquire skills, depression of the wages of people with skills and reduction of the differentials that can be gained from acquiring a skill. That cannot be right. Employers might say, “Ah, I would like to employ some skilled workers from abroad,” but we should be wary of saying that this is a good thing. Employers always like to employ cheap labour. They would like to get cheaper accountants from abroad, cheaper lawyers from abroad, cheaper journalists from abroad—

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

Cheaper MPs!

[Mr Lilley]

And cheaper MPs, says the man from the Pound store. These professions tend to be somewhat immune, in that if one wants to be a journalist or a lawyer, it helps to be English, to understand English law and so forth.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Lilley]

May I make a little more progress?

The hon. Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) mentioned the skill of cooking Bangladeshi meals. There are a large number of unemployed Bangladeshi people in this country, and there are a large number of Bangladeshi restaurants. Why, therefore, do the restaurateurs not train up their staff to acquire these skills? I am afraid that the reason is because they can get staff with such skills more cheaply from the subcontinent. We must say that we want to have well-paid chefs in this country, not depress the pay by importing from abroad.

I want to refer to an aspect of the debate that none of us has mentioned, and that I suspect nobody except me will mention. Indeed, I would not have done so had I not acquired my copy of Prospect magazine yesterday. It is a left-wing magazine, but I am very open-minded so I read even left-wing monthly journals.

[Stephen Pound]

That’s more than we do.

[Mr Lilley]

The hon. Gentleman is one of the few Members of this House who admits to general illiteracy.

The magazine contains a very interesting article by Professor Coleman, a professor of demographics at Oxford university and former consultant to the Government. I have always dealt with immigration in terms of net immigration. I have been concerned about numbers and housing, and so forth. If 200,000 people come here and 100,000 people leave, that is a net change of 100,000. The professor’s article, however, looks at the impact of gross flows on the composition of this country’s population. He observes that projections carried out by the Government Actuary’s Department suggest that if the levels of immigration we inherited from the last Government and factors such as the birth rates of those who come from abroad, as against those of the domestic population, persist into future decades, in 50 years less than 50% of the population of this country will be ethnically British—ethnically English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish. That may not matter. If we reduce the level of net immigration into this country to 80,000 from the many tens of thousands, as we promised to do, it will take 70 years before less than half the population of this country are the original, indigenous, ethnic British. If we move towards a position of balanced migration, on which I have supported the right hon. Member for Birkenhead, it will take to the end of the century— 90 years—before the existing British ethnic population is a minority. If there is no immigration and no emigration—that is a rather unlikely eventuality—by the end of the century we will still be 75% ethnic British. All I ask of Members of this House is to consider whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. Does it matter if the indigenous population becomes a minority, as has happened in Fiji, where the Fijians now constitute less than half of their population? I do not expect to receive a reply, because that is the sort of question that polite people do not ask. But it is what our constituents are asking and we should face up to it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Robert Halfon (Harlow) (Con)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field). It frightens me, given that he sits on the Labour Benches, how often I agree with his sentiments, not just about immigration but about welfare, education and many other issues.

I am not here just to talk about the immigration chaos of the past 15 years or so, because colleagues on both sides of the House have discussed the human and economic issues. Clearly, this debate is not just about process and numbers. We seem to face a much deeper problem than just the number of people coming to the United Kingdom. This debate is also about how we support, resource and recognise those in charge of protecting our borders. In many ways, the immigration service has become the forgotten service, and that will be the focus of my remarks.

During his Labour party leadership campaign, the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls), accepted that Labour’s arguments on immigration had not been good enough. Immigration officers have been telling us that for some time. In May 2009, Mr Mike Whiting wrote a letter to The Times saying that the Labour party’s reforms had

“devastated the visa officer network that successfully operated for many years.”

Then in April 2010, just days after the last Government publicly hardened their stance on immigration, it was revealed that they were also seeking to cut the number of immigration officers. That is despite a quadrupling of immigration on their watch. An e-mail that was leaked at the time stated:

“A Voluntary Early Release Scheme will be launched in selected parts of the UK Border Agency… There is an opportunity to make targeted reductions across the Border Force.”

The e-mail claimed that the policy would not “impact on front-line services”. However, clearly immigration officers are, quite literally, the front line, because they physically guard the borders of the British Isles.

From such evidence a picture slowly emerges. Under the last Government, the immigration service was at best neglected by Ministers, but at worst it was treated with contempt. It was only two years ago that a Labour Home Office Minister, the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), who was in the Chamber earlier, described immigration officers in somewhat unparliamentary language. This was reported online by the BBC on 29 November 2008:

“UK immigration officials have been on the receiving end of a four-letter outburst by former Home Office minister”,

the hon. Member for Slough, who

“told a conference of a Labour think tank that the job could corrupt ‘even quite good and moral’ people.”

She apparently then said:

“One of the reasons immigration officers are”

s***s

“is actually because some people cheat and they decide everyone is like that”.

That is wrong, wrong, wrong. It seems astonishing that senior Labour figures could trash immigration officers when it was their Government who caused the immigration chaos in the first place.

If those were stand-alone comments, that would be bad enough, but the hon. Lady was backed up by the Labour MEP Claude Moraes, who rounded on immigration officers, complaining about their professional standards. However, they are paid a modest income compared with other parts of the public sector. Their entry-level salary in London is less than £15,000 a year, and during the past 13 years they have suffered a loss not just in working conditions, but in prestige. The symbol of that is that they were not awarded the golden jubilee medal, unlike those in almost every other comparable area of the public sector. That is why I call the immigration service the forgotten service.

As the House will know, eligibility for the Queen’s golden jubilee medal was initially restricted to the armed forces and the Royal Fleet Auxiliary Service. It was then extended to include the police, fire and ambulance services, the coastguard, the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and the mountain rescue service. The right hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Tessa Jowell), the then Culture Secretary, explained that she had taken that decision because 11 September had highlighted the vital role of the emergency services and the risks that they face. The golden jubilee medal now recognises those who face a potential threat of injury or worse each time they are called out in response to 999 calls. In 2003, the golden jubilee medal was extended to living holders of the Victoria cross and the George cross. In 2005—an election year—Labour took the additional decision to award the golden jubilee medal to public sector prison officers. Speaking to prison officers, Baroness Scotland stated:

“The Prison Service is a key public service, whose greatest achievements often go unseen by the general public. In times of emergencies you rise to the challenge with great skill and professionalism, and these medals recognise that.”

The House will know that such medals have been given out at every coronation ceremony since Queen Victoria’s golden jubilee in 1887, and they have a rich civilian history. For example, the recipients of King George V’s silver jubilee medal in 1935 included members of the judiciary, members of the clergy and religious sisterhoods, teachers, physicians and, according to an ancient copy of Hansard, “mail couriers” and “lighthouse tenders”. In 1977, the Queen’s silver jubilee medal was awarded to many other civilian groups, including the police, firemen and women, social workers, health visitors and the civil service.

The key criterion for getting the golden jubilee medal seemed to be that one had risked one’s life for Britain, especially in the face of potential terrorist attacks. Immigration officers do not just protect our borders; they are also on the front line against terrorism. Whenever there has been a crisis, such as when there were hijackers at Stansted airport, it has been immigration officers who have been called on to deal with the resulting emergency. In the attack on Glasgow international airport in 2007, they were first on the scene. In 2001, for instance, two officers serving abroad in Nigeria were attacked with gunfire on their return from work one day. Sadly, that has become an all-too-frequent occurrence. Those are just a few examples of the daily risks and sacrifices that we ask of immigration officers.

To quote Baroness Scotland again, when she announced why the Prison Service was being awarded the golden jubilee medal, she said that it was

“a key public service, whose greatest achievements often go unseen by the general public. In times of emergencies you rise to the challenge with great skill and professionalism”.

Surely that is true of our immigration service too. That is why I have written to the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport asking him to consider awarding immigration officers the diamond jubilee medal in 2012. I have also asked him to consider retrospectively awarding them the golden jubilee medal. The first ever early-day motion that I tabled—early-day motion 114—was on that issue, which was also the subject of the first question that I asked in Parliament.

In conclusion—

[Stephen Pound]

I apologise for interrupting the hon. Gentleman, and I appreciate that he had come to his conclusion. With reference to his earlier comments about my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), may I confirm for the benefit of the House and the way in which things are done here, that he had the courtesy to inform her that he intended to name her in the Chamber this afternoon?

[Robert Halfon]

I did not inform the hon. Lady, because I did not know that I was supposed to do so. I apologise to the House, and I will write a letter of apology to her.

In conclusion, it is bad enough that Labour cut the number of immigration officers, and that at the same time they opened the floodgates and allowed the number of migrants to quadruple, it is bad enough that the previous Government did not always speak of the service with decency and respect, and it is bad enough that every day the immigration service must face the rising threat of terror from extremist bombers and separatists, but it is unacceptable that immigration officers have not been given the recognition they so richly deserve, and have not been awarded the golden jubilee medal. Their work of keeping our borders secure against great odds and on low pay deserves a public honour. Since I started this campaign in Parliament, more than 50 immigration officers have written to me independently, expressing their support. I am proud to say that many of them live in and around my constituency, as they work at Stansted airport.

I shall finish by quoting one of those letters from an official. He said:

“I have served as an Immigration Officer for over 25 years. We play an important role in the fight against terrorism, smuggling, people trafficking, crime and illegal entry.

During my own service I recall officers being called upon to assist with emergencies such as…The Herald of Free Enterprise disaster…The return of hostages from Kuwait…Hostage emergencies at Stansted...Deployments to Kosovo, the Czech Republic and Iraq.

Whilst Prison Officers won their battle to receive the Golden Jubilee medal, nobody considered immigration officers. Not surprisingly we feel we are the Forgotten Service, called upon when needed, cast aside when convenient.”

The immigration service has been forgotten for too long. For the sake of common decency, public sector morale and recognition of that service, I hope that the Government will right this wrong as soon as possible.

Anti-Slavery Day

Stephen Pound Excerpts

Thursday 14th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Neil Carmichael]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for—Enfield?

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

Ealing—always Ealing!

[Neil Carmichael]

Oh, yes, and I know where the hon. Gentleman comes from too.

I shall finish with this point. None of us in this House can be confident of our own dignity while others are entrapped or enslaved and therefore do not have theirs.

Identity Documents Bill

Stephen Pound Excerpts

Wednesday 15th September 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Order. That point is wide of Third Reading, but is a good try none the less.

[Stephen Pound (Ealing North) (Lab)]

It was a good point.

[Pete Wishart]

It was a good point, and you have rescued me, Mr Deputy Speaker, because I would have found it pretty hard to respond to it. I am grateful to the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) for intervening, because I want to pay tribute to him, too, in the course of all this. Of course, ID cards were his child. He argued them through Cabinet and, as he said in his speech, he had all sorts of opposition and he fought his corner. However, he has left the Labour party a dreadful legacy. I hope that it can join the rest of us—where it should be—in ensuring that we can continue to hold this Conservative Government to account.

It was great when the Conservatives were in opposition—of course they were against the anti-civil libertarian agenda—but we will have to watch them like hawks in government, and we need the Labour party on board for that task. We need the Labour party to help to hold the Conservatives to account, because I have a sneaking suspicion that once they have had a good start and once they have their feet under the table, they will start to consider several issues and the old Conservatives will start to come back. We will start to see that move towards the authoritarianism that was a trademark of so many previous Governments. I appeal to the Labour party to help us to hold the Government to account and to get rid of the opposition to this. They should say, “Good riddance” and be thankful that we have got rid of ID cards.

This runs through the whole history of Labour and ID cards. We never even knew what they were for—that was the great thing. We did not know what they were supposed to achieve. When the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough introduced them—he can correct me if I get this wrong—his intention was that there would be a fully compulsory scheme, so that everybody in the UK would have to hold an ID card. That, I believe, was his intention and that was what he wanted to try to deliver. As he tried to get the scheme through, the opposition started to kick in. Opposition to the idea seemed to be growing and growing, so we saw the reasons behind ID cards changing. The scheme changed into a voluntary scheme that not only would keep us safe but could be used to make sure that we could buy services. I believe that being able to play the lottery was one of the great reasons we were given to have an ID card. They became not so much ID cards as super cards that would solve all society’s ills.