Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Stuart C McDonald and Patrick Grady

Wednesday 3rd July 2019 Commons Chamber

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

9. What recent assessment she has made of the effect of the UK leaving the EU on the progress of talks on restoring devolution in Northern Ireland.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

10. What recent assessment she has made of the effect of the UK leaving the EU on the progress of talks on restoring devolution in Northern Ireland.

Refugee Family Reunion

Debate between Stuart C McDonald and Patrick Grady

Thursday 20th June 2019 Commons Chamber

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

I, too, start by paying a massive tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Angus Brendan MacNeil), first, for securing this debate, but secondly, for his relentless pursuit of reform of the family reunion rules in the face of what hon. Members have rightly described as pretty shabby Government behaviour in relation to his private Member’s Bill. I dare say there were other topics he could have picked for his Bill that would have made him even more popular among the citizens of the Outer Hebrides, if that was possible, but he chose this one because he believes passionately in it. He has thrown himself into this cause heart and soul, and I thank him for doing so. More generally, we have had some incredibly powerful and measured speeches from across the Chamber, so I thank all hon. Members for their contributions.

This debate and the motion tabled have been a very fitting way to mark both World Refugee Day and Refugee Week. It is a week during which we celebrate the rights enshrined in the refugee convention—as has been pointed out, we helped to draft it—and also commit to defending the principle that states should provide shelter for those fleeing persecution from other countries. As hon. Members have pointed out, it is also a week during which we celebrate the huge benefits that refugees can bring to their new homes if they are given the chance to flourish.

It is often said in this Chamber, and it has been said again today, that we have a strong track record of offering sanctuary to refugees, and I agree, although the hon. Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) was quite right to point out some of the challenges posed by certain political and tabloid voices, and the need for all of us to be leaders in defending the rights of refugees. However, we should not see this simply as an act of charity, because this country does benefit too. We must also say thank you to our refugee community for the massive contribution they make in all walks of life.

World Refugee Day is also a good time to thank all the organisations and individuals up and down the UK that work relentlessly to support refugees and campaign on their behalf. As we have heard, many of these organisations have been in Parliament this week, either hosting or attending Refugee Week events. We have had Play for Progress, which my hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar hosted. I was lucky enough to host René Cassin, and we have had the International Red Cross, the International Observatory of Human Rights and many more. I would like to take this chance to pay particular tribute to the Scottish Refugee Council, which does tremendous work day in, day out. It is a source of lots of information and ideas for me, and I wish it well as it launches its own refugee festival today.

Finally on the subject of Refugee Week, like the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), I am pleased to see the Minister for Immigration here today because—and this may cause shockwaves in the Chamber—I too want to commend her and the Home Office for what they have announced this week about refugee resettlement. As the hon. Gentleman has said, the Syrian vulnerable persons scheme has been a tremendous success, and it is excellent that the experience and expertise gained in operating that system, offering safety to 20,000 vulnerable Syrians by 2020, will not suddenly become redundant, but instead be put to greater use in a broader resettlement scheme thereafter. As an Opposition spokesperson, it would be remiss of me not to suggest that the Government might go further both on numbers and in giving a longer-term commitment, but it is a very welcome step in the right direction, and I thank the Minister and her Department for that.

The reason why resettlement is more important than ever is, as my hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar and the hon. Member for Strangford have said, that the global displacement of people has reached record levels. Just yesterday, the UNHCR reported that the population of displaced citizens has now reached 70.8 million people, and 25.9 million of them are refugees, which is almost double the number from a decade ago. The UNHCR estimates that 1.4 million refugees need to be resettled, but last year only 81,300 places were offered by 29 states—a gap of 90% that is getting bigger rather than smaller. Every place we can offer truly counts. Hon. Members have said that we can, and should, do more with the Dubs amendment, with relocations from Europe, and with the asylum system, and I agree.

The key part of my hon. Friend’s Bill—family reunion—can be part of solving the crisis that I have just spoken about. Many of those who apply to come to the UK under the refugee family reunion rules—and those who would apply under the expanded rules that we seek through the Bill—are themselves refugees, and it makes sense for them to be alongside their refugee families in the UK, rather than isolated in refugee camps. More fundamentally, however, family reunion is about the rights of those refugees who are already here. Refugee status will never be fully effective unless it comes with all those rights that are essential to allow a person to rebuild their life. The convention relating to the status of refugees ensures that refugees can work, study, and access housing and social security on the same basis as the host country’s citizens.

What could be more essential for someone trying to rebuild their life than the presence of their family? As the hon. Member for Strangford said, the Government do allow family reunion, and last year there were 5,806 cases of partners and children who were able to join refugees here. We welcome that, but our refugee family reunion rules remain more restrictive than international best practice, and more restrictive than leading refugee organisations would wish.

As the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) rightly said, the reforms in my hon. Friend’s Bill are modest, and they are also reasonable for all the reasons that have been set out today and in numerous debates beforehand. How can it ever be right that someone’s 18-year-old daughter cannot join her refugee parents here, but her 17 and 15-year-old siblings can? How can we say to refugee children living among us in the UK that even though they know where their parents are, we will not allow them to come here?

In response to such questions, the Government generally point to alternative routes in the immigration rules, but as everyone knows, those alternatives are more complicated, much more restrictive, and they come with far fewer rights than refugee family reunion. As the hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss) said, it is great that now and again there are exceptional cases and exceptional results are granted, but we want all refugees in the circumstances set out in the Bill to be able to access refugee family reunion rules in a straightforward manner.

In response to what the Home Affairs Committee called the “perverse” rule that stops children sponsoring their parents to come in under family reunion rules, the Home Office plays the “pull factor” card—an argument I hate. As the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst said, that argument is not founded on evidence, and it runs contrary to everything that leading international refugee organisations tell us. To my mind, it is also totally immoral because when looked at from a different angle, it essentially makes an example of refugee children who are already here. It says to refugee children, “We must ensure that you live separately from your parents so as to discourage others from coming here”, which is a brutal way for any Department to operate.

Such reasoning is also deeply flawed. If I had fled my country of origin and discovered that my child had ended up as a refugee in a third country, I would move heaven and earth to join them there. If I could not do it through family reunion rules, I would pay people smugglers or buy a dinghy to do it myself. Refusing to recognise the right of child refugees to sponsor their parents does not stop people using unsafe illegal routes—on the contrary, it forces more people to use them—and my hon. Friend’s Bill is about creating safe, legal alternatives.

The hon. Members for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous), and for Newport West (Ruth Jones) raised the issue of legal aid, which is also covered by my hon. Friend’s Bill. I know from my experience as an immigration solicitor how complicated those applications can sometimes be. The issue is set out in an excellent report entitled “Not so straightforward” by the British Red Cross, which notes

“the need for qualified legal support in refugee family reunion”.

People can still get that support in Scotland and Northern Ireland, and they should have it in England and Wales as well.

My hon. Friend has won this argument and he won the vote last year, and it is disgraceful that the Government are not honouring and implementing the will of the House. It is not clear whether the Bill is being blocked by the Home Office or the Treasury or—more likely—by the Whips and business managers.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

Is it particularly frustrating that the Government are not willing to provide time for our hon. Friend’s Bill to progress, given how much time is available? Nothing else of any substance is happening, and with the greatest of respect to the next Backbench Business debate, if Members keep that going until 5 o’clock we will be quite impressed. Time and capacity is available, and many other private Member’s Bills are also not getting the light of day that they deserve.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. There is enough time for a five-day debate on the Bill.

Access to Medical Cannabis

Debate between Stuart C McDonald and Patrick Grady

Monday 8th April 2019 Commons Chamber

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

rose—

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

rose—

Public Health Model to Reduce Youth Violence

Debate between Stuart C McDonald and Patrick Grady

Thursday 13th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I very much welcome that intervention. This is probably a good moment to pay tribute not just to the organisation my hon. Friend mentions, but to organisations across Scotland and the United Kingdom that do such good work on the ground to try to divert people away from violence.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

I agree entirely with what my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow East (David Linden) said. We can all think of similar initiatives in our own constituencies. The Children’s Wood in Glasgow North primarily supports teenagers who start to engage in antisocial behaviour. Instead of just calling the police to get them taken away, local volunteers went out and worked with them. Now those same teenagers, instead of being involved in antisocial behaviour, are active parts of that community. That preventive strategy is seen at all levels.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, which highlights another very useful and innovative community response.

Both the Minister and the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) mentioned the impact of adverse childhood experiences—ACEs. More recently, and significantly, this has been an increasing focus of Scottish Government policy. There is increasingly convincing evidence about how certain adverse childhood experiences can result in long-term effects on learning, health and behaviour. Remarkable research in Wales found that people who reported experiencing four or more ACEs are 15 times more likely to have committed violence, 14 times more likely to have been victim of violence in the past 12 months, and 20 times more likely to have been in prison at some point in their life. Many other studies show similar links, so working to prevent ACEs at all and to build resilience for those who have already experienced them now underpins policies in all areas. An ACEs hub, co-ordinated by NHS Health Scotland, is progressing national action, and the implications for justice policy are now reflected in the Government’s “Justice in Scotland: Vision and Priorities” for 2017 to 2020.

While detailed policies cannot simply be transplanted from one community to the next, and each has to be tailored to local need, there is no doubt that the principles behind a public health approach to violent crime, and particularly violent youth crime, are absolutely solid and evidence-based. I welcome, for example, what Mayor Sadiq Khan has done in establishing a violence reduction unit in London.

Similarly, the UK Government’s serious violence strategy includes some welcome steps, including the establishment of the new national county lines co-ordination centre, which the Minister mentioned, and a move towards a public health approach, but there are those who have expressed concern about it. Critics have expressed the belief that it is still overly dominated—certainly, as regards youth justice—by a criminal law enforcement response, with insufficient emphasis on some drivers of serious violence, such as poverty, and insufficient recognition of the impact of trauma on children caught up in serious violence. That is what some critics are concerned about. The Minister is a former colleague from the Home Affairs Committee, and I know that she is absolutely committed to this issue, so I hope that she can bring the Government with her in being able to respond to these questions and criticisms in the best way possible by investing in putting public health front and centre of their ambitions to tackle youth crime.

The Minister also mentioned the Offensive Weapons Bill, which was a welcome, if small step, as I said when we debated it. She mentioned a consultation on a statutory duty, which seems fine to me. We will monitor that with interest. However, I think we all absolutely agree that we cannot legislate our way out of these issues any more than we can arrest our way out of them. These challenges require evidence-based strategy and policies, and, as hon. Members have said repeatedly already, they require urgent and significant investment in them. Ultimately, everyone benefits if Government genuinely and urgently commit to that approach. We will support any and all initiatives that reflect that approach.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Stuart C McDonald and Patrick Grady

Committee: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 14th November 2017 Commons Chamber

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

I want to speak briefly in support of amendment 137, tabled by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Joanna Cherry), who spoke so persuasively about the need to strengthen and clarify clause 6, particularly subsection (2).

If, utterly regrettably from my point of view, the UK is to leave the EU, it is important not only that there is a functioning statute book on exit day, but that it is as accessible and comprehensible as possible. The ordinary citizen must be able to understand their rights and obligations; businesses need to have clarity about the rules under which they will be trading and competing; and our courts require clear guidance about Parliament’s intentions. The rule of law and our economic interest require that. As it stands, however, there is still much work to do to achieve those aims, and that includes rectifying the lack of clarity in clause 6.

My starting point is clause 6(3), about which I do not think there is any dispute. Clearly, unmodified retained EU law should be interpreted in accordance with retained case law and principles of EU law. That is necessary to ensure that the statute book applies in the same way after exit as it did before. Immediately after that, however, we get into sticky territory, namely the status of post-exit European case law.

In the first months and years after exit, few cases in the CJEU will concern new EU rules that have nothing to do with the UK. Most will continue to relate to rules that existed before exit and that will in fact have been incorporated into the UK statute book by this Bill. In essence, such decisions by the CJEU are about how the law always was and should have been applied, including immediately prior to exit.

With apologies for moving away from highbrow discussions about the rule of law and the sovereignty of Parliament, I want to talk about the hypothetical EU widget regulations. If the EU widget regulations come into effect prior to exit, and a decision of the CJEU shortly after exit clarifies that the regulations do indeed apply to a new and cutting-edge form of six-sided widget, that decision would actually tell us and clarify what retained EU law was on Brexit day—the point at which it was incorporated into our laws. Yet the Bill appears to fudge or dodge the issue of whether such a ruling should be followed or even whether it should be given any consideration at all. Parliament is in danger of passing the buck to judges on what is actually a political decision.

Unlike his German counterpart, the UK manufacturer of a six-sided widget is unclear about where he stands and, importantly, so are our judges. Given that the widget directive is part of retained law, there is a strong argument that this Parliament should say that if the CJEU confirms in its judgement—despite it being handed down after exit—that when we incorporated the regulations they did apply to a six-sided widget, that should also be part of retained law in the United Kingdom, unless there is good reason to the contrary. That would seem sensible and desirable from a legal theory point of view and, much more importantly, from a practical point of view. If we are to make trade and competition with the EU as simple as possible, surely it makes sense for exactly the same rule, one still found in an EU regulation and one incorporated by the Bill into domestic law, to be interpreted in the same way unless there are very good reasons to the contrary. However, all clause 6(1) says is that a court or a tribunal is not bound by post-Brexit CJEU decisions, and clause 6(2) merely says it can “have regard to” such case law

“if it considers it appropriate to do so.”

Lord Neuberger says that that is not very helpful guidance for judges. Neither is it helpful for the six-sided widget manufacturer, who needs to know whether he must comply with the widget regulations and is not sure if domestic courts will follow the CJEU in deciding whether it does. Indeed, we might even find that courts in different parts of the United Kingdom could come to different decisions about whether to follow the CJEU’s decision on the widget regulations. Parliament has to do much better.

Amendment 137 provides alternative options. If there are reasons why domestic courts should not want to follow a CJEU ruling, the court could quite simply have regard to and then decline to follow the Court’s judgment. There could be very good reasons for that to happen, for example if Parliament had already decided to put in place its own separate statutory regime for six-sided widgets. Ultimately, if Parliament decides after a particular judgment by the CJEU that it wants to change retained law to take a different course, it can of course do that. However, there are many more rules where it would surely be sensible for this Parliament to leave them in place as they are and to seek to ensure consistency of application between the United Kingdom and the European Union so far as that is possible.

[Patrick Grady (Glasgow North) (SNP)]

Perhaps one reason why the Government and the Brexiteers, who appear to be paying precious little attention to anything going on in the Chamber, are not really interested is because they want a bonfire of such regulations and a race to the bottom. That is the ultimate goal of the hard Brexiteers on the Conservative Benches.

[Stuart C. McDonald]

I suspect my hon. Friend is absolutely right. My point is that there are many more rules where it would surely be sensible for this Parliament to leave in place exactly as they are, and not only that but to seek to ensure consistency of application between the United Kingdom and the European Union so far as that is possible. Clause 6(6) allows for even modified retained law to be interpreted in accordance with retained case law and principles if that is what Parliament intends.

We need a clear expression of intention that by leaving the rules unmodified and retaining the same rules in place on exit day, we are seeking for them to be applied in the same way here as across the EU. That is a much more political decision than I think the Minister accepts, which is why it should not be left to judges; it should be expressed clearly by this Parliament that that is what we want, if that is indeed what we want to happen. That will help judges, it will be good for the six-sided widget manufacturers who will understand the rules under which they have to operate, and, most importantly, it will be good for all citizens who will benefit from clarity about their rights. It is therefore imperative that Parliament makes this happen, through amendment 137 or otherwise.