Theresa May
Main Page: Theresa May (Conservative - Maidenhead)Department Debates - View all Theresa May's debates with the Home Office
(12 years, 5 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
May I first welcome the sudden interest of the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) in immigration and border security? It is a bit rich coming from the party that gave us 2.2 million total net migration, the foreign national prisoner scandal, Sangatte, a 450,000 asylum backlog, no transitional controls for eight eastern European countries, the Human Rights Act 1998, and a points-based system that failed to reduce immigration.
The Leader of the Opposition says that immigration was not too high under Labour; the shadow Home Secretary claims that the previous Government were reducing immigration; and now they have appointed a shadow Immigration Minister who says that public concern about immigration is “nonsense” and “huff and puff” generated by tabloid newspapers. None the less, I am willing to welcome any convert to the cause of controlling immigration.
Let me remind the House why we are here. As I said in my statement to Parliament on Monday, there are two separate issues. First, as I have explained, the Immigration Minister and I authorised a limited pilot this summer, which—in limited and specific circumstances—allowed the UK border force to use more intelligence-led checks against higher-risk passengers and journeys instead of always checking European economic area national children travelling with parents and in school groups against the warnings index, and always checking EEA nationals’ second photographs in the chip inside their passport. In normal circumstances, all standard checks would be carried out.
That was a perfectly reasonable thing to do—stronger checks on high-risk passengers aimed to achieve more arrests, more seizures of illegal goods and more stops of illegal immigrants. Far from weakening our border controls, those procedures were aimed at strengthening our border. The results of the pilot are not yet fully evaluated, but initial UKBA statistics show an almost 10% increase in the detection of illegal immigrants and a 48% increase in the identification of forged documents compared with the year before.
I therefore want to be absolutely clear to the House: my pilot did not in any way put border security at risk. That was my assessment, and it is the assessment of UKBA and security officials.
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)
Why was the Prime Minister not informed that those pilot schemes were being carried out?
Mrs May
The second and very separate issue is that senior UK border force officials, without my authorisation, ordered the regular relaxation of border checks, beyond what I had sanctioned, and not just in the limited circumstances that I had authorised. First, biometric checks on EEA nationals and warnings index checks on EEA national children were abandoned on a regular basis, without my approval. Secondly, adults were not checked against the warnings index at Calais, without my approval.
Mrs May
Thirdly, the verification of the fingerprints of non-EEA nationals from countries that require a visa was stopped on regular occasions, without my approval. Not only that, but checks on the second photograph in the biometric chip of passports of non-EEA nationals were also regularly stopped, again without my approval.
Let me say again: I did not give my consent or authorisation for any of those decisions. In fact, I stated explicitly in writing that officials were to go no further than what had been agreed in the pilot—[Interruption.]
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. We want to hear what the right hon. Lady has to say. We want a debate on Home Affairs, so let us listen to what is said. If she does not wish for hon. Members to intervene, she will not give way. If she gives way, that is fine, but at the moment, we must listen to her.
Mr Blunkett
I am very grateful to the Home Secretary. Did any other Minister give their consent or, by indicating that they needed to clear the backlog at Heathrow, indicate that any measures should be taken to free up resources to do that?
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
The Home Secretary says that she put something in writing. Is she prepared to put everything that she put in writing in the public domain in the Library of the House this afternoon, so that, instead of having to take just her word for what her pilot was, we can see the truth in black and white?
Mrs May
All relevant documents will be going to the relevant inquiries. That is entirely the right way to do it.
I remind hon. Members that last night, the chief executive of the UK Border Agency, Rob Whiteman, confirmed that Brodie Clark, the head of the UK border force, admitted to him that he went beyond ministerial instructions. That is why Mr Whiteman suspended Mr Clark immediately. He took that decision as chief executive of UKBA, and before he informed me of his meeting with Mr Clark. Subsequently, two other senior officials have been suspended and I have ordered three separate investigations, as I outlined to the House on Monday, and I have placed the terms of reference for those inquiries in the House of Commons Library.
Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)
Since 2008, warnings index checks have been suspended on 100 occasions. Has my right hon. Friend discovered whether those suspensions were authorised by previous Labour Home Secretaries?
Mrs May
That is a very interesting question. I note that the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford chose not to answer it when she was asked it during an intervention.
I am aware that Mr Clark has released a statement—it was referred to by the right hon. Lady—in which he made several allegations. Those allegations will of course be addressed by the inquiries, but as they relate to what I have already told the House, I would like to address them. First, he says that he did not introduce
“additional measures, improperly, to the trial of our risk-based controls.”
But let me read to the House the statement issued last night by Rob Whiteman, the chief executive of the UK Border Agency:
“Brodie Clark admitted to me on 2nd November that on a number of occasions this year he authorised his staff to go further than Ministerial instruction. I therefore suspended him from his duties. In my opinion it was right for officials to have recommended the pilot so that we focus attention on higher risks to our border, but it is unacceptable that one of my senior officials went further than was approved.”
Mr John Denham (Southampton, Itchen) (Lab)
The right hon. Lady’s case is that she agreed to weaken border controls in July—
Mr Denham
The right hon. Lady agreed to weaken border controls in July. She then tells the House that what actually happened went much further than she intended. Will she now tell us why she agreed to extend this policy of weaker border controls in September? Is it not the case that, had she asked the most basic questions of Mr Clark or anybody else about what was actually happening in ports and airports, she would have known that thousands of people were coming into this country unchecked?
Mrs May
I have already made it absolutely clear to the House that the premise of the right hon. Gentleman’s question is wrong. My pilot did not put border security at risk. That is not just my assessment; it is the assessment of UKBA and of security officials.
Mr Clark says that
“those measures have been in place since 2008/09.”
But if he is talking about the warnings index guidance, published in 2007, that guidance makes it clear that any relaxation of warnings index checks should be done in extreme circumstances for health and safety reasons. It does not permit the extent of the relaxations that were allowed. And if he thought that these measures were already allowed, why did he seek ministerial approval for new pilot measures this year? I gave no authorisation for the relaxation of checks beyond what we had allowed under the terms of the pilot. But, given that Mr Clark says that his relaxed measures were allowed since 2008-09, can Ministers from the last Government give the same assurance?
Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)
Could the Home Secretary tell us which ports or airports she has visited, from the instigation of the pilot in July up to now, and with whom she discussed the progress of the pilots on those visits?
Mrs May
I say to the right hon. Gentleman that I was willing to allow officials to make an evaluation—[Interruption.] I will come on later in my speech to the point about the information that was available to Ministers.
Mr Clark says that I implied that he
“relaxed the controls in favour of queue management”
and that he came under pressure from Ministers to reduce queues, but I have never speculated about his motives, and I have never told officials to reduce queues at the expense of border security. Finally, Mr Clark says that he had been pressing for the trials “since December 2010” and that he was pleased when I agreed to the pilot arrangements. He certainly was pressing for changes to border checks, including the suspension of automatic fingerprint checks of visa nationals, which I rejected. But now, of course, he says that such measures were already available to him, and have been since 2008-09. I stand by every word I told the House on Monday and yesterday and again today.
I now want to turn to the questions raised by the shadow Home Secretary. She said repeatedly that I had not yet answered them—
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
I thank the Home Secretary for giving evidence to the Select Committee yesterday. When she did so, she made a profound statement about the future of the UK Border Agency, saying that the UKBA of today would be very different from the UKBA of tomorrow. What will be the main differences, once she has completed what appears to be a reform programme?
Mrs May
I pay tribute to the Home Affairs Select Committee for the light that it has shone, for some considerable time, on the UK Border Agency under this Government and the previous one. The precise shape of UKBA in the future is under discussion at the moment. The new chief executive has been in post for six weeks, and he is looking at what he thinks needs to be done. As the right hon. Gentleman knows, one of the issues that we are looking at is the question of establishing the border police command under the National Crime Agency and the relationship that it will have with the UK Border Agency.
Mrs May
I will not give way.
I was about to deal with the questions raised by the shadow Home Secretary. She has repeatedly said that I have not answered her questions. If she reads Hansard, she will find that I have, but let me answer them again. She asked for the precise terms of the pilot scheme that I authorised. I have just set out those terms. I authorised the pilot, under limited circumstances, to allow UK border force officers to use more intelligence-led checks against higher-risk passengers and journeys, instead of always checking EEA national children travelling with parents and in school groups against the warnings index, and always checking European nationals’ second photographs in the chip inside their passport.
The shadow Home Secretary also asked whether I, Home Office Ministers or Home Office officials signed off the operational instruction distributed by UKBA. The answer in all three cases is no. This was a regular operational instruction, and she should know that Ministers—neither under this Government nor under the last—do not sign off such instructions. UKBA operational instructions are signed off by UKBA officials. She asked whether the operational instruction distributed reflected Government policy, and I can tell her that yes, it did, in that it allowed for a risk-based assessment—[Interruption.]
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. The right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) should know better than to keep standing.
Mrs May
The operational instruction did reflect Government policy because it allowed for a risk-based assessment when opening the biometric chip of EEA passports and checking EEA national children against the warnings index when they were travelling with parents or as part of a school party.
Yvette Cooper
The Home Secretary has just made an extremely important statement. She said that the UK Border Agency’s interim operational instruction did reflect Government policy. That operational instruction says
“We will cease:
Routinely opening the chip within EEA passports.
Routinely checking all EEA nationals under 18 years against the Warnings index” .
If that is Government policy, it is little wonder that, across the country, people have been routinely stopping doing the biometric checks in EU passports and stopping doing the watch index checks. The instruction does not say “Only in exceptional or limited circumstances”. It says “We will cease routinely” to do those checks.
Mrs May
The whole point is that they were allowed, in certain circumstances, not to open the chip—[Interruption.] The whole point is that they were allowed, in certain circumstances, not to check children against the warnings index. And the whole point is that officers were allowed to exercise their discretion.
Where the instruction says that officers should escalate further measures, it refers of course to the warnings index checking policy put in place in 2007 under the Government of which the right hon. Lady was a member. I have to tell the right hon. Lady that the quotes she has been eagerly e-mailing around the Lobby come from a policy put in place by her own Government.
The right hon. Lady referred to staff numbers. What she failed to tell the House was that in April 2010 the Labour Government had already announced that they would cut the budget and the staff of the UK Border Agency.
Yvette Cooper
The Home Secretary has not answered an extremely important question. She has accused officials of going much further, of using routinely the reduced checks that she wanted in only limited circumstances. That is one of her main allegations—officials going further than her decision and her advice. The interim operational instruction that the Home Secretary says reflects Government policy and was her intention is described as “Trial of risk-based processes at the border,” and states:
“We will... Cease routinely opening the chip within EEA passports.”
The document goes on to talk about discretion, but the discretion is to go further, not to cease the process only in limited circumstances. Will the right hon. Lady now recognise that the document shows that her intention and her policy were substantially to expand the reduction of checks for EEA citizens across the country and to reduce controls at our border?
Mrs May
I answered that point on Monday, on Tuesday and this afternoon. The right hon. Lady knows full well what was in the pilot I authorised.
The right hon. Lady asked what information was given to Ministers when we decided to extend the pilot programme. As I told the Select Committee yesterday, Ministers were provided with four updates on the progress of the pilot prior to the agreement to extend it. The updates provided information about seizures of drugs and detection of illegal immigrants. They did not refer to unauthorised actions; in fact, they explicitly said that officials were sticking to the terms of the pilot and not going beyond them.
The right hon. Lady asked about child trafficking. I answered that question on Monday in the House and before the Home Affairs Committee yesterday. For the information of the House, in 2010, 8 million EEA-national children were checked against the warnings index. An alert came up for one child, and after further questioning the child was allowed in.
David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)
Could the Home Secretary confirm to the people of Northern Ireland that the relaxations extended to Northern Ireland, especially at the ports of Larne and Stranraer?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. We do not need advice from the Back Benches, especially from the back row.
Mrs May
The right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford asked how many people Ministers expected would not be checked, and whether an impact assessment would quantify that figure. The answer is that under the terms of the pilot I authorised, all adults would be checked against the warnings index, as would all non-EEA nationals of any age, which, incidentally, was not always the case under the Labour Government of whom she was a member.
Let me reiterate: whatever the shadow Immigration Minister keeps saying, the only incident of which I am aware when passengers were waved through passport control without any checks at all did not occur during my pilot. It happened in 2004, at Heathrow, under the right hon. Lady’s Government.
Let me tell the House what this Government are doing to secure our border: a National Crime Agency with a border policing command and e-Borders to check passengers in and out of the country. We have tough enforcement: 400,000 visas were rejected last year and 68,000 people with the wrong documents were prevented from coming to Britain. We have policies to cut and control immigration: economic migration—capped; abuse of student visas—stopped; and automatic settlement—scrapped. There are compulsory English language tests, tough new rules for family visas and changes to the Human Rights Act. We have a clear plan to get net migration down to the tens of thousands.
What do we hear from the Opposition? Nothing. Nothing on the cap on economic migration. Nothing on the clampdown on student visas. Nothing on settlement. Nothing on sham marriages. No wonder, when the Leader of the Opposition’s policy adviser said that Labour lied to the public about immigration—[Interruption.]
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. Nobody will be able to hear anything either in the House or on the television broadcasts. I am sure everybody on both sides of the House wants to hear the Home Secretary.
Mr Deputy Speaker
I remind the House that there is a six-minute limit on Back-Bench speeches.