Immigration Bill

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Tuesday 13th October 2015 Commons Chamber

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

I, too, congratulate the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) on his new role. I agree with much of what he said. We on the SNP Benches acknowledge, are proud of the fact and prefer to emphasise that people who choose this country as their new home make a tremendous contribution to our public services, our economy, our culture and, most importantly for many of our citizens, our family lives.

From our point of view, the Bill does not deserve a Second Reading because—it is important to put this on the record—we regard the Government’s net migration target of tens of thousands as entirely unhelpful, as well as utterly unrealistic, and the Bill will bring its realisation not a second closer. Indeed, I genuinely doubt whether any member of the Government thinks that that target is achievable. That is why it is fundamentally dishonest to continue to go through the motions of pursuing it. A target that is virtually impossible for the Government to deliver can only further undermine public confidence in government and in immigration control. A Bill designed to pursue a bad target is likely to lead to bad law, and so it is with this Immigration Bill. In a sense, this is immigration theatre: the Government want to be seen to be doing something, so they go through the motions of yet another Immigration Bill—and to hell with the consequences.

That is our starting point in considering the Bill, and although that is clearly one of the key issues we need to address, the other issue that all hon. Members must consider, regardless of whether they agree with us about the net migration target, is different. For even those in the Chamber who want immigration to be cut back need to ask themselves: what will the Bill achieve in reality, where is the evidence for that and what will the cost be in terms of civil liberties, human rights, the rule of law, community cohesion and the other aspects of life in this country that we hold dear? Regardless of one’s starting point in this debate, when those simple tests are applied, the Bill fails them utterly. It therefore does not deserve a Second Reading.

The Bill fails those simple tests because if it is to be effective and achieve anything, it requires effective Government agencies. Is there any area of policy where the Government have proven less effective, reliable and up to the job than immigration? John Reid described the immigration directorate as “not fit for purpose” in 2006. Just two years ago, the Home Secretary said that

“the performance of what remains of UKBA is still not good enough.”

She described it as a “troubled organisation” that

“struggles with the volume of its casework”.

She criticised its IT systems and its reliance on manual data entry and paper files. She said:

“The agency is often caught up in a vicious cycle of complex law and poor enforcement of its own policies”.—[Official Report, 26 March 2013; Vol. 560, c. 1500-1501.]

She abolished the UK Border Agency.

Are we really to believe that UK Visas and Immigration is now so well organised that we can feel comfortable providing it and its officers with swathes of new powers and responsibilities, while sweeping away its accountability to courts and tribunals? The Home Secretary may be formidable but, with respect, she is not a miracle worker. Another round of viciously complex legislation is the last thing we need, as anyone who deals with UK Visas and Immigration, including hon. Members, will surely understand.

The Bill also fails the tests because to be effective it will rely on civilians, including landlords and landladies. We are setting off down a road of amateur immigration control, as if we are to become a nation of immigration officers. Again, anyone who deals regularly with immigration work, including hon. Members, will be well aware of what a complex issue this is. It is not one in which it is appropriate for amateurs to be involved in enforcement. As with decisions of the Home Office, we search in vain in the Bill for proper rights of appeal and redress against amateur enforcement decisions. Indeed, judicial scrutiny of evictions is torn apart.

The Bill fails because it is not based on evidence of what is effective in ensuring that immigration rules are complied with, as the shadow Home Secretary said. The clearest example, which he set out, is the so-called right to rent provisions. The House was assured by Ministers that the right to rent legislation would remain light touch and be tested thoroughly, with the results of the tests being used to inform further development. Yet here we are, several months after the Prime Minister announced its roll-out, with proposals to move away from the soft-touch approach envisaged by hon. Members. The House is yet to see the results of the Government’s pilot scheme. I agree with the shadow Secretary of State that that is a most unacceptable way of treating the House.

What was the point of the Government consulting on asylum support, when the Bill was published just a week after the consultation closed, without any Government analysis of the responses, let alone a reaction? Much of the evidence that is available on employment, right to rent and asylum support suggests that the Bill will, in some respects, make immigration control more difficult by driving people and families away from regular contact with immigration authorities. This is a politically motivated, rather than evidence-led, piece of legislation.

The Bill not only fails the tests but becomes dangerous when we consider the costs that will come with it. Even if it might somehow shave a pitiful few thousand off the net migration figure, what price are we paying to do that? The effects of the Bill should appal traditional Conservatives. It will tie up landlords and landladies in immigration red tape and put them at risk of prison sentences. It will arm immigration officers with broad new powers. Most fundamentally, it will strike a significant blow against community cohesion.

The Home Secretary spoke about community cohesion last week, yet her Government’s explicit and almost dystopian goal is to create a “hostile climate”, as if we can hermetically seal off the bad migrants, while the rest of the multicultural UK goes about its business as usual. That approach reached its lowest ebb with the horrendous “go home” vans, which illustrated the key point that the hostile climate that the Government seek to create affects all of us who live in it.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

Will my hon. Friend join me in commending the work of the integration networks in cities and communities across Scotland? During the recess, I visited the Maryhill integration network, which does a huge job in helping people to adapt to Scottish society. The stories that I heard from immigrants and asylum seekers there would be enough to make anyone weep. Ministers ought to meet the integration networks to experience at first hand the issues that face asylum seekers in our country.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

That is precisely the sort of work that the Government should support, rather than going through the motions of pursuing their impossible net migration target.

[Andy Burnham]

I am grateful for the spirit in which the hon. Gentleman has introduced his remarks and for what he has said. He talked about right to rent. Does he agree that, in the absence of any evidence from the Government on the pilot, we have to accept what has been produced by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants? As I said in my speech, its findings are extremely troubling. If we accept those findings, it is impossible to support the Bill tonight because of its potential to cause widespread discrimination against British citizens too.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I agree with the right hon. Gentleman. I, too, have read the JCWI report and will refer to its findings shortly.

In summary, the Bill pursues the wrong goals by the wrong methods and at tremendous cost, so we should decline to give it a Second Reading.

I shall outline briefly our views on the key clauses and my hon. Friends will expand on those views in the course of the debate. Not wishing to be relentlessly negative, let me turn first to one part of the Bill that is positive. We welcome the provisions at the start of the Bill that will establish a director of labour market enforcement. We have questions about resourcing, powers and whether all the necessary agencies will be involved, but the principle has our support. We agree that the focus of our attention should be on employers who exploit undocumented labour to the detriment not just of undocumented workers, but resident workers who are competing for jobs and businesses that comply with the rules.

[Drew Hendry]

The Government say that they want to tackle slavery and exploitation. Does my hon. Friend agree that these measures will drive more people into vulnerable situations and put them at risk of being exploited in the labour market?

--- Later in debate ---

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I agree with my hon. Friend that the Bill holds that risk. I will turn in a moment to the criminalisation of working, which might cause that problem.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

The SNP spokesman is right that there should be a greater emphasis on employers who employ illegal immigrants, but does he accept that even the powers that the Government have at present are not being used against employers? Looking at civil penalty notices, less than half have been paid, a third have been written off and the rest remain unpaid. There does not seem to be enforcement against employers even under the legislation that is available.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Once again, I agree absolutely with the hon. Gentleman. It has been a habit in the field of immigration to take the approach that if at first you don’t succeed, legislate and legislate again. We need not constant legislation but to use the powers that the Government already have.

The Government must focus on enforcement. We agree that we should look again at further sanctions for those who exploit undocumented labour. We will therefore look sympathetically but carefully at the wording of the proposed amended criminal offence for employers.

We have significant concern about the proposals to criminalise undocumented workers contained in clause 8. The notion of criminalising a person for working is controversial, especially given that prosecutions are already possible for breaches of immigration law under section 24 of the Immigration Act 1971, as the hon. Member for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson) said. The problem is an absence not of criminal sanctions but of proper enforcement measures by Government agencies. We believe strongly that the speculative possibility of shaving a small amount off the net migration target will be outweighed by the significant danger highlighted by organisations that work with victims of trafficking, and that some of the most vulnerable workers will be put in an even more vulnerable position. The Home Secretary and the Government have done good work on trafficking, slavery and exploitation, and it would be sad if that were to be undone by pushing exploited workers even further underground because of the fear of criminalisation. If that is the effect, such measures will make immigration and labour market enforcement harder rather than easier.

Another area where dangers outweigh speculative benefits concerns the right to rent provisions. The shadow Secretary of State referred to the helpful study by the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants. Its findings are absolutely stark, and include poor compliance and widespread ignorance among the unfortunate landlords and landladies who are supposed to police the right to rent. More significantly, those findings suggest that landlords are—perhaps understandably—less likely to consider someone who does not have a British passport, which includes more than one in six of the UK population. There were also increased feelings of discrimination among people who have been refused a tenancy. We therefore object strongly to these proposals as they can only exacerbate such problems. We are equally opposed to the fact that the new more punitive measures—and indeed other measures on licensing—can be extended to Scotland by subordinate legislation without full parliamentary scrutiny in this Chamber, and without the consent of the Scottish Parliament, where decisions on housing should be made.

We have serious concerns about part 3 of the Bill which, in combination with other measures, would deliver a stunning extension of powers to immigration officers and others who are not part of the police force, and not trained or supervised accordingly. Although we intend to support the reasoned amendment, we have some difficulties with this area, and it would be useful if, when winding up the debate, the spokesperson for the official Opposition said a little more about what new enforcement powers they want.

The Bill provides immigration officers with significant new powers to enter premises, search, seize, retain and arrest, and all in the face of serious reported abuses and evidence of the inefficient exercise of existing powers. We agree with Amnesty International that

“the Home Office should be concentrating on improving its performance with the powers it already possesses rather than being handed still more powers”

and we would require the Government to make a strong case for each new power before we could support them.

Equally troubling new powers are provided to the Home Secretary on bail conditions, which we believe undermine the authority of the independent tribunal. We saw in September that there is widespread cross-party support in this Chamber for changes to immigration detention, but those are not the changes in the Bill. That cross-party support included demand for a 28-day time limit for immigration detention. If the Bill receives a Second Reading, we look forward to tabling an amendment that will include such a time limit, and we will happily work with others to secure that.

Continuing the trend towards a limitation of appeal rights, part 4 of the Bill provides for a sweeping extension of powers to require people to leave and appeal from abroad should an application for an extension of leave be rejected. Let us remember that huge numbers of these appeals are successful, yet they will become infinitely more difficult if appellants are moved hundreds, if not thousands of miles away from their lawyers and their appeal hearing—an unfair immigration trial in absentia. UK citizens will be affected, because if this issue principally concerns family life appeal rights, that disruption will be to family life with those British citizens—families will be split apart; valuable jobs and support will be lost.

Finally, we object to the fact that “destitution” is once more the immigration policy of choice in part 5 of the Bill. We share the concerns of British Red Cross that the provisions in this Bill, including an end to section 95 support for families with children who have exhausted their appeal rights, will force families with children into destitution and put them at risk of harm. Such a measure will also increase the risk of families absconding, and pass a significant increase in costs to local authorities who will still have a duty to prevent children from becoming destitute. The shadow Secretary of State rightly acknowledged a similar pilot project by a previous Labour Government, which found that 35 out of 116 families had disappeared, losing all contact with immigration services. Such measures make immigration control harder, not easier. Again, when the evidence is considered, it tends not to support the Bill.

These are not our only concerns with the Bill, and my hon. Friends will add to my criticisms. Declining the Bill a Second Reading is just a starting point, and the Scottish National party believes that we should be rolling back from the mistakes made by the coalition Government. We should go back to the drawing board to consider how we measure a successful immigration system. At the very least we should recognise that it is utterly inappropriate to include refugees, people’s husbands, wives and children, as well as bright young talent and the leaders of tomorrow who want to come here to study. We should get rid of the so-called right to rent provisions, not back them up with criminal sanctions. We should roll back the financial thresholds imposed on spouse and partner visas that are driving couples apart and creating what the Children’s Commissioner for England has called “Skype families”, and we should end the routine use of immigration detention.

We should address the concerns and challenges that can be caused by migration trends, and instead of scrapping schemes such as the migration impacts fund we should look at improved versions. We should consider schemes that encourage new arrivals to live in those parts of the UK that require them and will benefit from them most, including Scotland. Let devolved nations and regions have powers on immigration.

[Liz Saville Roberts (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

On that point, I note there is a skills shortage occupation list for Scotland. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there should be a skills shortage occupation list for Wales, too?

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I fully support such measures.

Finally, we must listen to the hugely influential legal figures who told us yesterday that the Government have got it wrong on the refugee crisis. We must introduce safe and legal routes to the UK, as well as to the EU, through broader and more humane family reunion rules, humanitarian visas and relocation schemes for those already in Europe, as well as resettlement schemes for those still in the crisis area. Those are the steps that we would want an honest, bold and forward-thinking Government to take. Instead, we have a regressive, illiberal, ill-considered and inhumane Immigration Bill that should be denied a Second Reading.

Migration

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Wednesday 16th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

UK Visas and Immigration has made a lot of effort to try to ensure that it operates within the six-month timescale for asylum-seeking claims. I suggest that the hon. Gentleman gives the Immigration Minister the details of the particular case, so that we can look at it and find out why it has taken longer. As for those who we will bring in from Syria as refugees, we will set aside specific resources to be able to ensure that the claims are dealt with properly.

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

Does the Secretary of State agree that our refugee family reunion rules are too restrictive to be appropriate for use in the current crisis, and that the procedures for applying are too bureaucratic? Will she work with expert organisations to extend their scope and simplify the procedures so that those for whom the UK is clearly the appropriate place of refuge are able to get here safely?

[Mrs May]

The hon. Gentleman has raised this issue with me before. The criteria set for vulnerability by the UNHCR include refugees with family links in resettlement or the humanitarian assistance programme. We also have the Mandate Scheme—I think that is the right title—that is specifically for the resettlement of people in countries where they have family links.

Immigration Detention

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2015 Commons Chamber

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

I, too, welcome and enthusiastically back the call for this House to support the recommendations in the report on the use of immigration detention in the UK. I congratulate the hon. Members who have secured the debate, as well as the hon. Members and support teams from the two all-party groups involved in the preparation of the report, and, indeed, all who provided the compelling evidence on which the report is based. It is a thorough and comprehensive report and we welcome, as the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) said, the holistic approach taken to the issue, looking at the detention system as a whole.

I pay tribute lastly, but very importantly, to the many individuals and organisations who have contacted MPs in advance of this debate. I have some not so fond recollections as an immigration solicitor of taking that long and winding road into the middle of nowhere to get to Dungavel immigration removal centre; as the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes) remarked, it would be very easy for the people detained there and in other removal centres to fall out of our minds. The fact that they do not do so and that there are still so many people fighting on their behalf and taking up their cause is a great source of optimism and one of the key reasons why we are here debating the issue today. That scale of interest almost certainly also reflects how badly the Government—indeed successive Governments—have got policy wrong in this area.

People see a straightforward injustice. They know that detention is a harmful and sometimes catastrophic experience for individuals; they see so many going through the awful experience of detention not for breaking the criminal law, but for the sake of the Home Office’s administrative convenience; and they know that is wrong. The existing legal framework requires serious reform, not simply some tinkering around the edges. It is vital that the Government not only acknowledge that fact, but implement the inquiry’s recommendations.

Why is the current system so completely unacceptable? In short, the evidence shows that it detains too many people; it detains them for too long; it detains people who should never be detained for any period of time and too often detains them in very poor and utterly inappropriate prison-like conditions; and it is a costly and inefficient system. It is worth expanding briefly on a couple of those points.

The UK’s immigration estate is one of the largest in Europe; it is hugely bloated, with places for up to almost 33,400 people. In 2013, the UK detained 30,418 different people, compared with 4,309 in Germany, which incidentally received over four times as many asylum applications as the UK. We detain significantly more people than any other EU country. Detention in the UK has become so regular that it can be fairly described as a matter of routine—far away from a policy that is used “sparingly” as Home Office guidance suggests, never mind a policy of last resort. People are too often detained for lengthy periods. The hon. Member for Sheffield Central recalled the evidence to the inquiry of a gentleman who had been in detention for three whole years.

The UK is also too often guilty of locking up vulnerable people. As the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate remarked, in four years the UK has been found to have breached the article 3 convention rights of mentally ill individuals. A detention centre is not the appropriate place for these vulnerable people. That was why the long overdue decision was made that children should not be locked up in such circumstances. Many more vulnerable people are still being detained and should not be.

If the dreadful human costs of such practices do not convince the Government, perhaps the financial costs will justify change, because the policy is expensive. In 2013-14 the cost of running the immigration detention estate was £164 million and the cost of detaining one person for one year was £36,000.

What is required? I fully support the ideas proposed in the report and I will briefly mention some of what I regard as the key proposals. One of the problems of the system that was highlighted in the inquiry by the all-party parliamentary group is the lack of a time limit on detention. The lack of a time limit and of certainty is a huge cause of distress, as people have no idea for how long they will be detained. As we have heard, it also leads to lazy and sloppy operations by the Home Office.

We need automatic and regular reviews of whether people should be detained, as well as an effective presumption in favour of community-based alternatives to detention. We want an end to detention in prison-like conditions. I pay tribute to everyone who has contributed to bringing this report before the House, and we in the Scottish National party will wholeheartedly continue to support its implementation.

Refugee Crisis in Europe

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Tuesday 8th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I absolutely agree with my hon. and learned Friend. If he has a little patience, I should like to say something later in my remarks about what we are doing in that respect.

I set out the four main areas of effort and should like to address each briefly. The first is aid spending. Since 2011, the UK has been at the forefront of the international response to the humanitarian crisis in Syria. Our financial contribution of more than £1 billion is the largest we have ever made to a humanitarian crisis and makes us the second-biggest bilateral donor in the world. To put it in context, the amount of money we are spending is almost as much as the rest of the European Union put together.

The United Kingdom can be proud that we are the only major country in the world that has kept our promise to spend 0.7% of our national wealth on aid, and prouder still of the difference that that money is making. Our support has reached hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people across Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Egypt and Iraq. It has paid for more than 18 million food rations; it means that 1.6 million people have access to clean water; and it is providing education to a quarter of a million children. Last week, the Government announced an additional £100 million of aid spending. As the Prime Minister told the House yesterday, £60 million of that will go to help people who are still in Syria. The rest will go to the refugees in neighbouring countries—Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. More than half of that new funding will support children, particularly those who have been orphaned or separated from their families.

UK aid from the British people is helping the victims of the Syrian conflict where and when they need it most. Without our aid to those camps, the numbers attempting the dangerous journey to Europe would be much higher. The Government have always been clear on this point: we must stop people putting their lives at risk by taking those perilous routes, as my hon. and learned Friend pointed out a few minutes ago.

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

Does the Secretary of State agree that one group of people who understandably will continue to want to travel to the UK is those from the region who have family members who are already settled here as refugees? Our tightly drawn family reunion rules limit the numbers who could benefit from them. Will she commit to a review, and an extension of, the family reunion rules so that more can benefit from them?

[Mrs May]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, but there are alternative routes for those who are looking for family reunion here in the UK. Under current family reunion provisions within the immigration rules, those who are granted asylum or humanitarian protection in the UK can sponsor immediate family members to join them here. We have arrangements in place that are helpful to those who wish to join family here in the UK.

I want to make another point about the perilous journey. An important point was made by my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox) yesterday. He said:

“If we are genuinely to help refugees, this cannot simply be about helping the fittest, the fastest and those most able to get to western Europe. We must help those who are left behind in the camps, who are sometimes the most vulnerable.”—[Official Report, 7 September 2015; Vol. 599, c. 34.]

Indeed, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) has made that point herself—she made it on one occasion when we discussed the issue last year. She said:

“There has always been cross-party agreement that the majority of refugees should be supported in the region”.—[Official Report, 29 January 2014; Vol. 574, c. 881.]

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Holloway]

Give me a couple of minutes. Just let me get into my stride.

Instead, those who are refugees should be offered a well-resourced place of safety—perhaps in Europe, but more probably in a safe place in the region where they live—and if it turns out that someone is an economic migrant, they should be taken home. This is not xenophobic: it is moral, practical, fair and sustainable over many years. As I see it, it is the only way to slow the number of bodies landing on the beaches and to allow Europe to re-establish control of its borders, which it has now lost. If we fail to achieve this, millions more people will make these journeys and we will be overwhelmed in the years ahead and less able to send resources to the region.

There are big disparities in security and economic opportunities between nations, and they will not be solved by short-term measures, such as giving hundreds of thousands of people asylum within Europe. It is not an idle exaggeration or scaremongering to say that over the coming years we are looking at potentially hundreds of millions of people seeking a better life in Europe. The numbers have grown and will grow as long as we continue to reward these journeys with the opportunity to settle in Europe.

Let us be hard-headed about this: not all migrants are refugees. By way of illustration, Al Jazeera reporting from the Greek side of the border with Macedonia showed that large numbers of Syrians were trying to dissociate themselves from people from other places. It said:

“They want to separate themselves from the other nationalities; the Pakistanis, the Afghans, the Iraqis...what they say is that all these other nationalities claim to be Syrians as well, because it is the Syrians who have the most valid claim to asylum.”

When populations flee war or famine, they generally flee together, as I saw as a television reporter and a soldier. They flee with the elderly, the infants and the women as well as the men. [Interruption.] Yes, I would. The current migrants are overwhelmingly working-age males who have paid a hefty price to make the trip. Most of the countries they came from are certainly poor, but they are not at war. It costs thousands to board a smuggler’s boat and a lot of money in the months before to travel to it.

As a TV reporter in the 1990s, I remember doing a piece about landlords in north London ripping off the housing benefit system. I was living in a house with a lot of people, including many from Congo, many of whom had been soldiers. I remember lying on my bed in this room that I was sharing with half a dozen of these guys, and I thought to myself, “Who is more likely to get to England and to north London: is it the soldier who had an AK47 and a fistful of dollars or the widow with seven children and not a cent to her name?”

Some years ago, I lived under cover for a couple of weeks in the Sangatte camp in Calais when I was working for ITV. I think there are some parallels with the situation today. Living side by side with people in the camp, it seemed to me that the overwhelming majority of the people who got as far as Calais were economic migrants. Every night, hundreds of us, all young men, would burst out of the camp as it started to get dark. We would spend the night cutting the wire, trying to get on to freight trains; we would be picked up the next morning by the French police and what we called the police taxi service to take us back to the camp.

If I had been one of those guys—then from Iran, Kosovo, the Kurdish areas of Iraq and Turkey—I would have done exactly the same as they did. How can we possibly criticise people for wanting a better life? Most were doing just that—looking for a better life. In many cases, their families had sold land to get the money to pay the people smugglers, and they had travelled to northern France unchecked. This still seems to be the case in Calais today. Not long ago, many people got out of an unsafe country to get there and they travelled through many safe countries subsequently. What they are doing now is trying to get into their country of choice.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware of the information sent by the Immigration Minister to the Home Affairs Select Committee, confirming that the most common nationalities among those at Calais included Syrians, Eritreans and Afghans? Refugees can be wealthy as well. The fact is that the United Nations has been absolutely clear that this is a refugee crisis and it is very likely the majority of people at Calais are refugees. Why does the hon. Gentleman persist in peddling myths?

[Mr Holloway]

The hon. Gentleman did not listen to what I said. I said that those people had been through dozens of safe countries by the time they get to Calais. It is quite possible to be a refugee and an economic migrant. [Interruption.] One of the appalling truths about the Syrian bodies washed up on the beaches is that they previously got to safe countries and are now choosing to come to Europe. Again, I would do the same. Likewise, people in this country have claimed asylum in this country and then they go back on holiday to the places from where they have claimed that asylum. I could not get my hair cut the other day for that reason.

Australia used to have a severe—[Interruption.] Labour Members should rise to intervene if they want to say something.

Calais

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Tuesday 14th July 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I assure my hon. Friend that we make those points clearly. He is absolutely right. That is why the juxtaposed controls are important to us. If a significant number of illegal migrants come through into the United Kingdom, an ever-increasing number of people would try to come through—it would act as a pull factor.

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

The Secretary of State rightly acknowledged that the situation in Calais is closely linked with the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean. We know that many of the people camped in Calais are from war-torn countries such as Syria. Do the Government not recognise therefore that, by participating in significant resettlement of refugees from Syria, cutting out the criminal gangs and providing the means for safe and legal transfer to the UK, they will be taking action that is helpful both for the situation in Calais and for the ongoing disaster in the Mediterranean?

[Mrs May]

I have a couple of responses to the hon. Gentleman. First, it is wrong to assume that all or the majority of people who are travelling across the Mediterranean are necessarily refugees from Syria. Significant numbers of people are coming from countries such as Senegal and Nigeria. People are paying organised criminal gangs—they are illegal migrants attempting to come into the United Kingdom and other European countries illegally. We must be clear about the need to deal with that.

Secondly, I have indicated that our Syrian vulnerable persons scheme will take several hundred people over a few years. A number of Syrian asylum seekers have been granted asylum in the United Kingdom. The Government and I remain of the view that the majority of our support is best given by supporting the refugees from Syria in the region, as we have done by providing £900 million in aid.

Reports into Investigatory Powers

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Thursday 25th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Joanna Cherry (Edinburgh South West) (SNP)]

The Scottish National party welcomes the publication of the Anderson report, which, as others have noted, is very thorough, and one can have only admiration for the job David Anderson QC has done. The SNP wants to work constructively with Members of Parliament across the Chamber to make sure that when the new Bill to which the Home Secretary has referred is introduced it takes adequate account of civil liberties and human rights issues.

The SNP recognises the need for law enforcement and security services to have access to the information they require in respect of the threat not just of terrorist offences, but of serious crime, such as the significant evil posed by child sexual exploitation. However, the SNP will always be vigilant to ensure that appropriate safeguards are put in place to balance the need to keep our communities safe with the need to protect civil liberties.

Although we have some concerns about the report’s recommendations, we welcome many of its aspects. We welcome in particular the call for a comprehensive and comprehensible new law to be drafted from scratch, to replace the multitude of current powers and to provide for clear limits and safeguards on any intrusive power that it may be necessary for public authorities to use.

We also very much welcome David Anderson’s recognition of the need for the new law to comply with international human rights standards and to be subject to the visible and demanding safeguards reflecting the central importance of both the European convention on human rights and the Human Rights Act.

We welcome the fact that the report urges much stronger oversight of the activities of the police and security services. We support the recommendation that interception warrants should be granted by judges rather than politicians. That properly reflects the separation of powers between Executive and judiciary, as applies in democratic countries across the world that pay more than lip service to the importance of the rule of law. In that respect, I wish to associate myself with the insightful comments of the shadow Home Secretary and the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve).

The SNP also welcomes David Anderson’s recommendation that the Investigatory Powers Tribunal should be able to make declarations of incompatibility under the Human Rights Act and that its rulings should be subject to appeals on points of law.

Finally and most importantly, we welcome David Anderson’s statement that no operational case has yet been made for the compulsory retention of third party data. He has also questioned the lawfulness, intrusiveness and cost of the proposals of the draft Communications Data Bill in 2012. His comments are a serious blow to previous Government attempts to introduce what was in effect a snoopers charter. David Anderson notes that no other European Union or Commonwealth country requires the blanket retention of weblogs and, as the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr Clegg) has noted, Australia recently prohibited that in law—and for very good reason.

When the report was introduced to the House two weeks ago, the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) noted that both the European Court of Justice and David Anderson have now made it clear that blanket retention of data is unlawful. The SNP hopes that the UK Government will take serious cognisance of that.

The director of Liberty, Shami Chakrabarti, has noted:

“It’s striking that—despite a five-year campaign by the Home Secretary to convince us of its absolute necessity—David Anderson concludes that no operational case for the snooper’s charter has yet been made.”

The SNP hopes that David Anderson’s report will be the death knell for the snoopers charter.

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

My hon. and learned Friend, who has enjoyed a distinguished career as a lawyer, has rightly welcomed large parts of Mr Anderson’s report. Does she, like me, but perhaps unlike the right hon. and learned Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), share the concerns of many lawyers across the UK that the rule of law and, indeed, the proper administration of justice may be undermined if the protection offered by legal professional privilege is not fully respected by investigatory powers legislation?

[Joanna Cherry]

I share that concern and note the comments of the English Bar Council and the English Law Society, and I know that the Scottish Bar, of which I am a member, and the Law Society of Scotland also share concerns that legal professional privilege ought not to be interfered with. It is important to note that insisting on proper protection for legal professional privilege is not special pleading on behalf of lawyers; the privilege is that of the client, rather than the lawyer, and the underlying rationale is the public interest in ensuring the proper administration of justice. I share the concerns of legal bodies in that respect.

I will now to turn to the Scottish angle on these matters. When I spoke in this House on the occasion of the publication of the Anderson report, I asked the Home Secretary to commit fully to engaging with her Scottish Government counterparts in so far as there will be measures in the new Bill that impinge on the devolved competences. Her response was that national security is a reserved matter.

That is simply not good enough. The Bill will touch on issues beyond national security, including particularly serious crime. Crime is a devolved matter and the new Bill will clearly include measures directed against the investigation of serious crime. I and others have already mentioned child sexual exploitation as an important example of that. Much of what is to be covered in the new Bill may impinge on areas of Scots law that are clearly devolved and under the jurisdiction of the Scottish Government or Scotland’s law enforcement agencies, including the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service.

I would like to give the Home Secretary at least two examples of proposals, which, if taken forward, would have implications for Scottish Ministers and Scottish legislation. The first is a return to judicial authorisation of interception warrants on serious crime grounds. At present, interception for the purpose of preventing or detecting serious crime in Scotland is authorised by Scottish Ministers. On the basis of David Anderson’s recommendations, that will, in future, be in the hands of members of the Scottish judiciary.

A second proposal that may have implications for Scotland is the recommendation that the three existing commissioners for interception, surveillance and intelligence services be replaced with a single independent surveillance and intelligence commission. A number of provisions in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers (Scotland) Act 2000 place duties on the Office of Surveillance Commissioners in respect of surveillance and the use of covert human intelligence sources. Any change in that area would almost certainly trigger the requirement for a legislative consent motion from the Scottish Parliament. Accordingly, I hope that the Home Secretary will stand respectfully corrected and now accept that there is a need for her to commit to engaging fully with the Scottish Government, insofar as any legislation introduced later this year and at the beginning of the next year will impinge on the devolved competences.

I mentioned that, although the Scottish National party welcomes the Anderson report, there are areas of concern about its contents. We are particularly disappointed at the suggestion that bulk collection of external communications should continue subject only to what are described as “additional safeguards” and at the recommendation that existing compulsory data retention capabilities under the Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Act 2014 be maintained. The Anderson report offers six agency case studies in an attempt at justifying mass interception. However, as others, including Liberty, have noted, the information in these case studies is vague and limited, so it is impossible to assess whether the security outcomes could have been achieved just as easily by using the wealth of targeted and operation-led intrusive surveillance powers at the agencies’ disposal.

The Scottish National party does not dispute the use and value of targeted and proportional intrusive surveillance. We believe, however, that the mass speculative interception of communications and data retention is unlawful, unnecessary and disproportionate. We are pleased to see that Liberty is currently challenging the lawfulness of mass interception in the European Court of Human Rights and representing Members of this House in their legal challenge to DRIPA.

Border Management (Calais)

Stuart C McDonald Excerpts

Wednesday 24th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend is right. He is well aware of these issues from when he was chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on human trafficking and of the terrible evil that, as he says, lies behind this crime. We do indeed look at the balance, and I have asked the National Crime Agency to provide a focus on human trafficking. We should not think that the gangs deal either in drugs or in people: sadly, these gangs will deal in anything that they think will make them money. Many of them are therefore dealing in people and drugs.

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

The Secretary of State claims over and again that the way to tackle the crisis in the Mediterranean is by breaking the link between travel and settlement. Is that the reason behind the Government’s unbelievable decision to scale down our capacity to undertake search and rescue operations in the Mediterranean? Does she not recognise that that decision will cost lives and should be reversed?

[Mrs May]

I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman has been misinformed about exactly what happened. I think that he is trying to refer to Mare Nostrum, which was not a European-wide engagement but one done by the Italian Government. Indeed, in the year Mare Nostrum was in place, more people died in the Mediterranean than in the previous year. There is now a Frontex operation, to which the UK Government give support. The Prime Minister referred earlier to HMS Bulwark, and it will be replaced by HMS Enterprise. There are also two Border Force cutters taking part in the enterprise of saving lives in the Mediterranean. The UK is certainly playing its part.