Deportation Flight to Jamaica

Steve Baker Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I should tell the House that I am aiming to run the urgent question for around 45 minutes.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

Surely voters throughout the country for all parties would expect serious and persistent offenders to be deported in accordance with the law. Will my hon. Friend tell the House the minimum threshold at which somebody becomes classified as a serious and persistent offender, so that we can understand the criteria being applied to put people on these flights?

[Kevin Foster]

Normally, the definition of a serious offence would be one that has attracted a sentence of 12 months in prison. On persistence, the nature of the offences would be considered. There is not a particular number that somebody would have to hit; it would be about the nature of their offending patterns. As my hon. Friend says, the public would expect serious or persistent offenders who are liable to be deported under the 2007 Act to be removed from this country unless the exceptions apply.

Windrush Compensation Scheme (Expenditure) Bill

Steve Baker Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Money resolution & Programme motion
Monday 10th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

This is an essential Bill, and I will be extremely surprised, and indeed ashamed, if anyone rises to speak against it. I am very glad that the Government have extended the deadline to 2 April 2023, for reasons that I will cover in my conclusion. I hope the Bill will go some way to addressing the point that the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) made that we need to recover our reputation for just administration at home and abroad.

I represent a large population of Caribbean descent—about 5,000 people. We are proud to have in Wycombe the largest Vincentian population away from the islands. I want to say that I am sorry. On these Benches, we are extremely sorry that this has happened. It is a matter of shame that it has occurred and that these events have taken place. It will be of no comfort to members of the public who have been affected, or their friends or family, that the explanatory notes go back to NHS treatment charges introduced in 1982 for overseas visitors, checks by employers on someone’s right to work first introduced in 1997, measures on access to benefits from 1999, civil penalties for employing illegal migrants from 2008, and so on. This is a long-standing problem, but it brings shame on us all and I am extremely sorry that it has happened.

[Meg Hillier]

The hon. Gentleman raised the issue of employer checks. One of the big concerns for many of my constituents is that they are required to have a biometric residence permit, because their little piece of paper from the Immigration and Nationality Directorate—or whichever form of the immigration system it was at the time—is no longer acceptable. The Home Office, crucially, does not write and tell them that, and it is only on a routine check by their employer that they find out. Many of them are then out of work for many months while they wait for their BRP to arrive. Does he agree that that is a scandal that the Home Office also needs to address?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Baker]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising that, because it gives me an opportunity to mention an important book that I hope Ministers and officials will look at. It is a study by King and Crewe that is rather unfortunately, but necessarily, entitled “The Blunders of our Governments”. The book sets out how, in various instances of what the authors call cultural dissonance—in other words, a failure to appreciate who one is dealing with and how those people approach the measures that the state puts in place—successive Governments, of alternating parties, have blundered. The hon. Lady raises something that the Front Benchers should look at extremely closely. We do not want any more blunders affecting real people.

I pay tribute to the community in Wycombe. My staff were instructed, and we agreed together, to bend over backwards to make sure we found everybody who might have been affected. I am extremely grateful that the community worked with us to find every possible opportunity to reach anyone affected. I cannot say anything about individual cases, because the number of affected people was so very low and I would not want to identify anyone. I will just say that I am thoroughly ashamed that someone was so badly affected in the way that he was.

As someone who for 10 years has represented the diverse community of Wycombe—a place where, as a school governor told me this morning, 48 languages are spoken in one primary school—I have seen how we desperately need greater humanity in our migration system. I suggest three principles, although there will be more: consent, justice and equality. It is not enough to say that we believe in the moral, legal and political equality of every person. The systems we establish and the manner in which we treat people must bear witness to the fact that, in the core of our being, we recognise the worth and the value of every person.

On justice, we have long believed that justice delayed is justice denied, and that is true in immigration, too. Time and again, I have seen people be denied leave to remain but not deported—not forced to leave when they should. However much one might wish to be idealistic, there is no justice in letting somebody stay for 10 years, because they will inevitably fall in love, set up a life, get married, have children and then, 10 years later, find that they have no status at a moment when they need public services. Thank you for letting me dilate on this, Mr Deputy Speaker. It does not relate to Windrush—I am talking about different circumstances—but the point about humanity is the same. We need to take just decisions, and to do so swiftly. That goes to the point that has been made about making payments quickly to people who have suffered injustice.

[Carol Monaghan]

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful speech and showing great humility. With respect, however, the Government have said sorry to these people many times. Some people, like my constituent, have had their mental health so affected by the trauma of all this that they will be unable to hold down a job again. Compensation is one thing, but does he agree that it must take into account not only the physical money that has been lost, but other issues and future earnings?

[Mr Baker]

Yes. The hon. Lady makes a very good point. I noticed the length of the compensation scheme documentation, which I was going through this morning. Since she has raised the matter, I want to draw the Government’s attention to the provisions on interim payments. I wonder whether more could be done to make such payments early to try to address some of the points that she has made.

[Mr Lammy]

The hon. Gentleman is eloquent in his case for speeding up the process. Does he appreciate that some of the people who are due to be deported this week finished their sentences in 2015 and have been waiting five years to be deported? Does he not consider that to be cruel and unusual punishment? If they were to be deported at all, the system should have been much swifter.

[Mr Baker]

I will make two points in response to the right hon. Gentleman. First, I stand by the comments I made earlier; justice delayed is justice denied, and if people are to be deported, it would be better to deport them swiftly. Secondly—we are ranging a little bit widely, but this point has already been made—the people being deported are persistent and serious criminals, whereas the people we are discussing in relation to the Windrush compensation scheme are people to whom we should all be paying tribute.

[Lucy Powell]

It’s not a moral judgment.

[Mr Baker]

If the hon. Lady wishes me to, I will give way to her.

[Lucy Powell]

The hon. Gentleman is making a very strong argument, and I think that Members on both sides of the House support much of what he is saying. But as I said to the Home Secretary earlier, the issue is about whether criminals are regarded as British citizens or not. We are making a retrospective judgment, instead of making the judgment that we should be making. That is the issue here. We cannot be making a moral judgment today about someone’s right to be here, when they arrived 40 or 50 years ago; they had that right then and it should be acted on now.

[Mr Baker]

The hon. Lady has been heard on the Government Front Bench, so I am grateful that I gave way, but I am not going to focus my remarks on this issue because we are talking about the Windrush compensation scheme.

I conclude by reminding everyone, including the Government, that the people who have been affected are not pushy and entitled people. Overwhelmingly, in my experience, they are some of the gentlest, kindest, and above all most humble people in our society, who in many cases have been mistreated over the course of decades, often casually and shamefully. In such circumstances, it is incumbent on everyone involved in the administration of this scheme to be scrupulously respectful, to make payments as swiftly as possible, and, frankly—within the bounds of the scheme—to ensure that the payments made are maximised, in compensation for the real injustice that has been suffered.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Steve Baker]

My hon. Friend reminds me that in exceptional circumstances such as this, Members of Parliament who might have access to the community and people who know the victims could have an additional role to play in helping to administer the scheme, or at least advising those administering the scheme. Will the Minister commit today to writing a “dear colleague” letter to all Members to set out how Members of Parliament can help the victims in a constructive way that is not too burdensome to officials operating the scheme?

[Rob Roberts]

My hon. Friend pre-empts me; I was about to refer to his speech. Unlike some comments we heard earlier to the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster), asking what the Home Office will do to help these people, my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) has taken this on, found the information himself and gone about the work directly to try to offer the help his constituents need. I completely agree with him.

Prevent Programme

Steve Baker Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Brandon Lewis]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very generous but very correct statement, and I absolutely echo that. I am very fortunate and often humbled in this job on a daily basis in seeing the work that our counter-terrorism police do, in partnership with local police and indeed our agencies. I would argue that we have got the best in the world, and day after day they keep us safe.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

I hope Ministers have had a look at Policy Exchange’s paper titled, for better or worse, “Extremism Rebellion”. Although we may defend people’s right to hold views about green anarchism, eco-socialism and radical anti-capitalist environmentalism, I want to make sure that there is no tacit approval from either Dispatch Box for what the right hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) called “disruption”—I would say it is a deliberate policy of disruption. Will the Minister reassure me that the Government know what they are dealing with?

[Brandon Lewis]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. I suspect he is also referring back to some of the difficult situations the police had to deal with not that long ago, but he is right that it is separate. As I have said, Extinction Rebellion is not considered an extremist group under the 2015 definition of extremism, and we are clear on that.

Offensive Weapons Bill

Steve Baker Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 28th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Djanogly]

I thank my hon. Friend for that important clarification.

The National Crime Agency position brief was received by the Library and heavily commented on by shooting experts across the board. The following points are based on their feedback. The NCA brief states that .50 calibre rifles

“are built around enormously powerful cartridges originally designed for military use on the battlefield and to have devastating effect”.

That is true, but it is also true of one of the most common target rifles ever used, the .303 Lee Enfield rifle and one of the most common hunting rifles, the .308, which is also based on a military round. The current full bore civilian target shooting round, at 7.62 mm, is a military round often used in machine guns. The NCA brief further states:

“The propellant mass in a standard M33 .50 calibre ‘ball’ round is nearly ten times as great as that in the standard ‘ball’ round used in the…Army’s primary battlefield rifle, the L85.”

However, that is simply disingenuous, as the 5.56 round used in the L85 is specifically designed to be light and to perform a totally different role from the .50 calibre rifle. In particular, that round is designed to enable large quantities to be carried by troops and is faster firing and easier to use at close quarters, but to say the L85 is any less dangerous as a result is bizarre.

The irony is that .50 calibre firearms could have their barrels shortened, thus taking them beneath the maximum velocity. The 13,600 J limit is entirely arbitrary, and many owners and manufacturers could simply adapt their guns down to the new limit. The NCA refers to recent seizures of guns, including fully automatic weapons, as showing that crime groups are seeking more powerful weapons, but the .50 calibre is not automatic and there is no evidence of crime gangs ever having wanted to use it.

There was also a failure to consider the historic arms position. People should have the right to engage in shooting sports, unless serious possible injury to the public can be proved. I am a Conservative, and Conservatives to my mind do not ban things for the sake of it.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

It is about 20 years since I fired a .50 calibre. My hon. Friend is entirely right to talk about how large and inappropriate they are for crimes. I very much support the case that he is making.

[Mr Djanogly]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention.

It is unfortunate that this debate is not about the criminals whom we should be targeting, namely the owners of illegal guns that are being used for crimes, but about the law-abiding sporting men and women who would lose out for no good reason.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

It is good to finally get down to further consideration of the Bill, at the third attempt. Let me say at the outset that my party welcomes the Bill. There has been close working between the UK and Scottish Governments in relation to it, and we are largely, but not completely, happy with where it has got to after a pretty thorough Committee stage.

The Bill covers a mixture of reserved and devolved matters, with legislative consent from the Scottish Parliament required for some parts of the Bill. How far the legislation should encroach on devolved issues such as Scots criminal law has been carefully worked through by the Governments to serve specific purposes, and we take the view that that is pretty much as far as the encroachment should go.

There are a number of amendments that I will speak supportively and sympathetically about and will not oppose, but in so far as they are drafted in a way that extends to Scotland, we ultimately take the view they would be better left to the Scottish Parliament to exercise its devolved competence. That includes the three new clauses relating to air weapons. I am sympathetic to what the hon. Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth) seeks to achieve with those new clauses and the work she is doing, but as she pointed out, the regulation of such weapons was devolved to the Scottish Parliament, which has established a new licensing regime under the Air Weapons and Licensing (Scotland) Act 2015. For those reasons, as far as Scotland is concerned, we wish to leave any further reform of air weapons licensing and regulation to the Scottish Parliament.

There are other amendments, however, that are clearly in reserved territory and that we will consider supporting, including new clauses 3 and 4. For the sake of time, I will not repeat all the arguments made by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh). I will simply say that we agree with her analysis.

On high-energy and .50 calibre rifles, having looked at all the evidence in the round, we would have supported the position set out by the Home Secretary and the Minister at every previous stage of the Bill’s passage. We echo much of what the shadow Minister has said today. In Committee, we heard persuasive evidence from the NCA, the National Police Chiefs Council, ballistics experts and counter-terrorism police about the power of these weapons. The evidence we heard was that these rifles are dangerous because of their range and because there is little—perhaps nothing—that the police have in the way of body armour or even protected vehicles that could go up against some of these weapons.

I emphasise that we are not in favour of prohibition for the sake of it. If those same expert witnesses think that an alternative solution to alleviate risk can be found, we will listen. We fully appreciate the impact that this would have on the recreation of a small number of citizens, but it is a small number; we are talking about 18 certificates in Scotland altogether.

The point is that the Home Secretary said he would further consider the proposed prohibition months ago on Second Reading, way back before the summer, yet no amendments were forthcoming before the previously scheduled final stages of the Bill. There has been no adequate explanation of what has changed in the past couple of weeks, and as matters stand, the Bill will leave this place with the prohibition removed but no alternative measures in its place.

The Home Secretary is now going against and ignoring the evidence we received from the NCA, the National Police Chiefs Council, ballistics experts and counter-terrorism police, as well as what I have been told by Police Scotland. I have tried, without success so far, to find out whether any of those witnesses has changed their view. In the absence of any adequate explanation, this reeks of internal party politics trumping important issues of public safety. It is not the right way to make legislation, and it is not the right way to treat the public.

[Mr Baker]

The purpose of my amendments 23 and 24 is to avoid banning lever-release rifles. They are probing amendments; I just wish to explore the Government’s position, and I do not intend to press them to a Division.

I would like to start by thanking Little Chalfont Rifle and Pistol Club and my constituents who are members of it for helping me better to understand lever-release rifles by allowing me to fire several of them. Lever-release rifles are built and designed in the UK. They have a mechanism by which the rifle unloads itself with propellant gas but stops short of reloading. In a sense, they are self-cocking, but not self-loading. A lever is pressed to release the working parts and load the next round. My amendments would allow lever-release rifles but ban so-called MARS—manually activated release system—rifles, which allow the working parts to come forward using a second trigger press.

The lever-release mechanism was produced within current firearms law to be suitably used and owned on a section 1 firearms licence. These rifles are a valuable resource for disabled and elderly shooters in particular, who can struggle with conventional operating actions, and are no more dangerous than any other legally owned firearm of a similar calibre. The mechanism is not a bump stock, which has no place in target shooting; there seems to be unity about that.

The National Rifle Association has provided evidence that lever-release systems do not significantly increase the rate of fire capability of rifles. Lever-release rifles have a comparable rate of fire to bolt-action rifles—that is, one to two rounds per second, against one or less with a bolt-action rifle. Those rates of fire are based on un-aimed shots. In reality, the rate of fire for aimed shots, including the time taken to come back to aim and replace magazines, will yield an aimed shot about every two to four seconds in the hands of an expert marksman, regardless of the system used. I can certainly testify to that, having tried them. They have considerable recoil, and the idea of having a high rate of fire with aimed shots is really for the birds.

The lever-release system can allow an able-bodied shooter to maintain their firing position, assisting accuracy in a sport that is defined by accurate shooting. According to British Shooting, disabled people currently make up 25% of recreational shooters—a number that it is committed to increasing further. The NRA has informed us that 42.5% of its members are aged 60 or older. Lever-release rifles can allow less able people to continue to participate in the sport.

It seems unnecessary to ban lever-release rifles. My amendments would ban so-called MARS firearms, where the trigger is pulled a second time. I would like the Minister to set out exactly why shooters with lever-release rifles should have those weapons taken from them. A cornerstone of democracy is minority rights. I do not think that these weapons represent a significant additional risk for having a lever-release mechanism, and though I am only probing the Government’s position, I would like the Minister to set out in detail why owners will be stripped of those firearms.

Finally, in the original impact assessment, published alongside the consultation document, the Government estimated the total cost of compensation for the owners of these firearms to be between £1 million and £1.1 million in the first year of the policy. Responses to the consultation suggest that this was a considerable underestimate, and I very much hope that the Minister will be able to give us a new and more accurate estimate of the cost of the compensation.

[David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

I wish to speak in support of new clause 2, in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South (Karin Smyth), and new clauses 18 and 19, which I tabled for the House to consider today.

I confess that I would not have tabled new clauses 18 and 19 had we had some clarity from the Government on the consultation on air weapons. Members will recall that the Government were asked to undertake a consultation on air weapons safety by the West Suffolk coroner on 10 October 2017 and that the Government announced a consultation on air rifle legislation on 12 December 2017. It closed on 6 February 2018, to which as I recall—on 20-something November 2018—we still have not had a response, despite some 50,000 consultation responses.

The reason why I want this to be looked at is quite clear and quite tragic. My constituent George Atkinson was killed by an air rifle in a tragic accident at a cousin’s house some years ago. The air rifle in the house was not locked in a cabinet, and George had access to it. Playing with air rifles, as I did myself in my own house as a child, resulted in George’s accidental death, and his family had the tragedy of losing their 13-year-old son.

John and Jane Atkinson, George’s parents, have campaigned very strongly to try to get some measure of safety added to air rifles. They are not against the use of air rifles as a whole, but they want some safety measures added. The figures back up their concerns. We have seen some 25 cases of serious injury from air rifles this year and 288 cases that resulted in slight injury, while air rifles have been used in some 2,203 incidents—not just accidents, but deliberate use—involving offences in 2016-17.

The legislation—this is where I hope my two new clauses will come in—is currently the Firearms Act 1968, which says that it is an offence for a person in possession of an air weapon to fail to take reasonable precautions to prevent someone under the age of 18 from gaining unauthorised access to it. However, it does not define what reasonable precautions are in relation to protection for individuals.

As I have said, my constituents, although they have lost their son, do not wish to see airguns banned; they wish to see them made safer. My new clauses would do two things. The first new clause would ensure that airguns had to be kept in a lockable cabinet at home, with the key kept separate from the cabinet. If that had been in place, it would accordingly be an offence if the cabinet was accessed. There has to be a lockable cabinet.

The second new clause shows that we want trigger guards to be added to air rifles that, again, are only accessible by the owner of the air rifles. That does not prevent anybody from owning an air rifle or using an air rifle, or impose legal requirements on using one for sport or any other purpose. However, the new clauses would put in place two significant measures that would strengthen the Firearms Act and make the reasonable precautions measurable. Without measurable reasonable precautions, nobody can say what a reasonable precaution is.

For the memory of children and young people such as George Atkinson, it is important that we seek to have reasonable precautions. I want to hear from the Minister whether she will look at and support new clauses 18 and 19, and when she expects to respond to the consultation. Will she take on board those two suggestions, and, ultimately, not ban such weapons, but—perhaps as part of the wider examination mooted in new clause 2, moved by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol South—look at what measures we can take to make them safer?

Immigration: DNA Tests

Steve Baker Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Thursday 25th October 2018 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

The hon. Gentleman states that we have an “arbitrary” approach to detention; I strongly rebut that—we do not have such an approach. He should know that when anyone is detained, there must be a reasonable prospect of removal within a reasonable time. In recognising that improvements could nevertheless be made to our detention system, we commissioned the Shaw review, and as the hon. Gentleman may recall, I came to the House not so long ago to respond to the review and accepted many of its recommendations.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

Having repeated his commitment to improving the fairness and humanity of the immigration system, will my right hon. Friend pay particular attention to the system of visit visas, which causes so much misery, so often, to thousands of British people just because their families happen to be outside the European Union?

[Sajid Javid]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. As we define and set up a new immigration system when we leave the EU, we shall have much broader scope and opportunities to improve that situation.

Unaccompanied Child Refugees

Steve Baker Excerpts

Thursday 9th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

I have listened carefully to the right hon. Lady’s questions and I will try to address them all.

I repeat that the Dubs amendment that is in place is not closed. We have done what we were obliged to do, and we have correctly put a number on it. The right hon. Lady implies that this is a business of accepting the children and that it is all about numbers; I respectfully say to her that these are children who need looking after over a period. When we accept them here, it is not job done; it is about making sure that we work with local authorities and that we have the right safeguarding in place. That is why we engage with local authorities—why we make sure they have sufficient funds, which we have increased, to look after those young people.

I completely reject the right hon. Lady’s attack. The UK has a strong reputation in Europe and internationally for looking after the most vulnerable. That will continue. We have a different approach to where the most vulnerable are. We believe that they are in the region, and that is why we have made a pledge to accept 3,000 children from the region. We are committed to delivering on that. They are the most vulnerable.

I am clear, through working with my French counterparts, that they do not want us to continue to accept children under the Dubs amendment indefinitely. They specify that that acts as a draw, and I agree with them—[Interruption.] It acts as a pull. It encourages the people traffickers. I know that the right hon. Lady does not want that, and I ask her to think very carefully about the approach that she prefers.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

I am very much aware of the great shortage of resources in Wycombe, so I commend the Home Secretary for the resilience she is showing under this strident attack. Will she reassure me that the Government will remain committed to bringing refugee children here where that is appropriate and that she will have due regard to the children we already have?

[Amber Rudd]

I thank my hon. Friend for his question. We are always grateful for the work that local authorities do. We must not underestimate the difficulties involved, particularly in taking children who have been through war zones. We work with them to ensure that they deliver the extra work and care that those children need. He is also right to suggest that we must ensure that the children in the UK are always looked after.

EU Migrants: National Insurance Numbers

Steve Baker Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

Although I entirely recognise the point that my hon. Friend makes about the particular pressures that certain areas in the UK have experienced as a consequence of migration, I also recognise the benefits that are attached in terms of the contribution to our economy. It is why we are seeking to introduce the controlling migration fund, which will assist areas that are experiencing that growth in population linked to migration.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

The Government’s case rests on ignoring the arguments set out by my right hon. Friend the former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions earlier this week, particularly in relation to people shuttling to and fro for a few months at a time. That is a problem that the Minister’s case would ignore by looking at the passenger service. If he will not listen to my right hon. Friend, will he at least listen to Lord Rose, the chairman of the pro-EU Britain Stronger in Europe campaign, who told the Treasury Committee that the wages of the lowest paid would rise if we left the EU and took control of migration?

[James Brokenshire]

I point my hon. Friend not only to the contribution that those who arrive here make to our economy—it is a net contribution of around £2.5 billion—and how important it is for our economy, but to the steps that we are taking to reduce those artificial pull factors. We need to focus not just on those pressures in our local areas, but on how we get the right skills for our economy to ensure that we are giving young people in this country the best opportunity, which is precisely what our apprenticeships programme is all about.

Dublin System: Asylum

Steve Baker Excerpts

Wednesday 4th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

The right hon. Gentleman raises an important point about issues such as trafficking and exploitation. Kevin Hyland, the independent anti-slavery commissioner, will be travelling out to Greece and Italy shortly. The experts we are sending out will include people with knowledge and understanding of those issues in relation to children, so as to seek to provide greater assurance on the very matter he raised.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

Through their recent renegotiation the Government have demonstrated that an axiom of our EU membership is our common European citizenship, which implies the common treatment of people right across the EU. Will the Minister not concede that if the public vote to remain in the EU, he will not long be able to resist pressure in the Council of Ministers to concede our opt-out and to join the arrangements, whatever those are, in a process of bargaining away to achieve whatever happen to be the objectives of the Government of the day?

[James Brokenshire]

I do not concede that. The UK has very clear legal protections; indeed the way in which we opted out of a number of pre-existing justice and home affairs measures shows the clear approach of this Government in upholding what is in the UK’s best interests. I have been very explicit this afternoon in highlighting that we judge that being part of the relocation mechanism is not in the interests of the UK.

Immigration Bill

Steve Baker Excerpts

Monday 25th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[James Brokenshire]

No, I do not. That is why it is right that we are providing financial aid and assistance in that area. I will come on to deal specifically with that support to underline the important commitment that this country is giving.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

A few minutes ago, my right hon. Friend mentioned the actions of our European partners. Can he give the House an indication of how this Government’s actions compare with those of our European neighbours?

[James Brokenshire]

When we look at all these different aspects of our involvement—our aid assistance, the work of our resettlement programmes, which I will come on to shortly, the support we are giving in Europe, and the steps we are taking against smugglers and people trafficking networks with the taskforces that we have set up—we see that we can take very great credit in terms of the work that this country has done and continues to do. It is that focus that we will continue to bring to this issue. We know that the vulnerable and those most in need and most at risk may be best helped here in the UK. We launched the Syrian vulnerable person resettlement scheme to resettle 20,000 people over the course of this Parliament. Well over 1,000 people have been resettled to date, around half of whom are children. That means that, in the next four years, several thousand more children will be resettled in the UK under the Syrian scheme, but as I said in my statement of 28 January, we want to do more, especially for children most in need of support. That is why, last week, I announced a new resettlement scheme for children at risk. That initiative will be the largest resettlement effort to focus on children at risk from the middle east and north Africa region—children who might otherwise attempt their own perilous journeys to Europe and the UK.

We have worked closely with the UNHCR to design a scheme that will protect the most vulnerable children, resettling up to 3,000 people over the lifetime of this Parliament, the majority of whom will be children if the UNHCR deems it to be in their best interests. Children who are identified as at risk will be resettled with their family members or carers where appropriate. The scheme will not be limited to any particular nationality or group, which will allow us to assist the most vulnerable children whoever they are.

The UNHCR is fully supportive of the launch of this new initiative and the UK’s commitment to assist vulnerable refugee children at risk through further resettlement efforts that uphold the principles of child protection.

Investigatory Powers Bill

Steve Baker Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to participate in this debate. I want to summarise the views of the Intelligence and Security Committee on the Bill. The Committee has published two reports on the matter. In addition, the Government and the agencies have provided us with further evidence since we published the second report, and I want to update the House on that.

The present Committee and its predecessor are satisfied that the Government are justified in coming to Parliament to seek in broad terms the powers that the Bill contains. None of the categories of powers in the Bill—including the principle of having powers of bulk collection of data, which has given rise to controversy in recent years—is unnecessary or disproportionate to what we need to protect ourselves. In that context, I go back to what I said in my intervention on the Home Secretary, which was that certain individuals in this debate are labouring under a false understanding of what the legislation is really about. We also welcome the fact that the Government have sought in the Bill to provide much greater transparency than previously existed. It has been frequently said, but it is worth repeating, that the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 was often incomprehensible, and that is precisely what we need to get away from.

The basic problem is that, by its very nature, the operational detail of the secret work done by the agencies cannot be revealed without damaging or endangering their capabilities. Assurances are therefore needed that the extensive powers and capabilities that they undoubtedly have are taken on trust in so far as any potential for misuse is concerned. That is why the Intelligence and Security Committee was set up and the various commissioners appointed. It is noteworthy that, apart from a few exceptions based on mistake rather than on malicious intent, all those bodies have consistently given the investigatory powers used by the agencies a clean bill of health. From my own experience not only as Chairman of the ISC but as Attorney General, I believe that the agencies operate to high ethical standards and are scrupulous in confining the use of their powers and capabilities to legitimate purposes. I think that that is in their DNA. A previous head of GCHQ, Sir Iain Lobban, has said that if he had asked his staff to do something unethical, they would simply have refused.

However, such an environment produces its own problem. For those of us within the bubble, our experience of the nature of the agencies’ role risks making us complacent about the legitimate concerns of those outside that bubble. The fact that a particular power might never, to our knowledge, have been misused does not mean that we should disregard the possibility of creating transparent safeguards for its use, if this can be done without interfering with operational capability. We also have to accept the possibility that times might change and standards slip. It is important that we should provide safeguards against such slippage.

It is with that in mind that I turn to our response to the Bill. The recommendations made in our report were intended to improve the legislation by trying to provide greater clarity and transparency and increased safeguards where we thought it would be possible to do so. We are pleased that the Government responded to nine of our 22 recommendations, including three key ones. We particularly welcome the revisions made to increase safeguards relating to legal professional privilege, although I have noted the comments that were made earlier today and I suspect that this matter can be looked at still further in Committee.

A number of our recommendations were not accepted. We were disappointed that the Bill does not include a clear statement on overarching privacy protections. We accept that the Bill has safeguards, but they come across as slightly piecemeal. This seems to be a missed opportunity to provide the necessary level of public reassurance, even if the practical consequence would not make a vast amount of difference. The same point arises in relation to putting all powers relating to investigatory powers operations in one place. The Government have chosen to leave some powers elsewhere, even though we thought it would have been helpful to put them all in the Bill.

I turn now to the three most significant issues. The first was our concern that the authorisation procedures for the examination of communications data were inconsistent in respect of safeguards for those in the United Kingdom. There are different routes for obtaining such material. Generally speaking, law enforcement agencies will access such material via a specific request to a communications service provider, which is subject to senior officer authorisation, but it could also be obtained via GCHQ bulk interception capabilities as a by-product. In those circumstances, although there are many safeguards relating to examining content, the same safeguards do not exist in respect of the data on their own. We thought that that was inconsistent and might be changed. The Government have helpfully responded by pointing out that this could make the burden too onerous for senior officers. We believe, however, that that matter could be addressed and we hope that it will be looked at again during the passage of the Bill.

[Mr Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)]

Does my right hon. and learned Friend think that this matter could be addressed by increasing the independence of judicial oversight, so that judges would be much more able to refuse a warrant? Might that not also increase public acceptance of these measures?

[Mr Grieve]

This is an area that does not currently have warrantry. It is an area in which there is specific authorisation, and that is what we have been looking for. However, we will listen carefully to what the Government have to say about the practical problems that that might pose.

The second issue concerns the agencies’ use of equipment interference. Our concerns focused on the way in which the use of this capability is authorised, rather than on the need for it, which is clear to us. In particular, we were not initially provided with evidence that explained the need for a bulk power, as opposed to a targeted thematic one. That is why we reported in the way we did. Following publication of our report, we received additional evidence from the agencies as to why they need bulk equipment interference warrants to remain in the Bill and they actually made a persuasive case. More importantly, the Committee was reassured that information obtained by such means will be treated in exactly the same way, with exactly the same controls, as data acquired under a bulk interception warrant. The Committee is therefore broadly content that there is a valid case for the power to remain in the Bill, but, just as with bulk interception warrants, we want to see the safeguards and controls in detail and hope to do so in the near future.

The third issue is that the Committee expressed concern about the process for authorising the obtaining of bulk personal datasets. It is undoubtedly necessary and proportionate that agencies should have the power to obtain them, because they can be vital to their work in helping to identify subjects of interest, but they largely contain private information on large numbers of people of no relevant or legitimate interest to the agencies at all.