Criminal Law
Baroness May of Maidenhead Excerpts(10 years, 1 month ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
I beg to move,
That the draft Criminal Justice and Data Protection (Protocol No. 36) Regulations 2014, which were laid before this House on 3 November, be approved.
Protocol 36 is the part of the Lisbon treaty that relates to the United Kingdom’s opt-out from the policing and criminal justice measures that were adopted before the treaty came into force. The opt-out provisions are unique to the United Kingdom, and were negotiated by the previous Administration. Under the terms of protocol 36, the UK had to decide before the end of May 2014 whether it wished to opt out of all the police and criminal justice measures—some 130 in all—that predate the Lisbon treaty. The opt-out had to be exercised en masse; we could not simply leave the measures that we did not like.
Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)
I want the Home Secretary to be very clear, and give a yes or no answer. Will the House get the chance in the next couple of weeks to vote on the European arrest warrant?
Mrs May
The House is getting a chance today to debate the European arrest warrant. The House has been clear that it wished to have such a debate. We were very clear during the debate on the business motion that regulations are before the House, and the House will vote on those regulations. I have also been very clear about the Government’s position. We have brought those particular regulations before the House because they are the only ones that we need to transpose into UK legislation. I will come on to comment on the European arrest warrant. As I said earlier, I am very clear that the vote today relates to whether or not the UK opts back in to the package of measures that we have negotiated. The package comes together; it is not an a la carte menu from which one can pick and choose.
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
Is the Home Secretary telling the House that she disagrees with the ruling made by the Speaker—yes or no?
Mrs May
No. I can tell the right hon. Lady that I would certainly not stand at the Dispatch Box and disagree with the Speaker’s ruling. The Speaker’s rulings are about what happens in this Chamber and what votes are on. In fact, the words I have just said agree with the Speaker’s ruling—that the vote will be on the regulations on the Order Paper. We have tabled the motion because we believe it right that the House, in debating and considering the package of measures that we want to opt back in to, sees very clearly what legislation is necessary to transpose certain measures.
Sir Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)
But the Speaker has said in terms that we are not voting on the European arrest warrant. Is the Home Secretary now arguing that by voting for the regulations tonight we are joining the European arrest warrant?
Mrs May
I have been very clear that the formal vote before the House is on the regulations. I have also been clear that the Government—I will come on to explain our timetable, which has some relevance to this matter—want to opt back in to measures that are in a package. If the House votes against transposing some of those measures into UK legislation, it is effectively voting against our package of measures. On that basis, we can speak about all the measures within the package of 35 measures.
Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)
Why did the Home Secretary not just include the European arrest warrant in tonight’s motion?
Mrs May
I have explained that the statutory instrument transposes those measures that require legislation. I repeat—I am happy to speak about this again later—that we are not required to transpose the European arrest warrant into UK legislation because it is already in UK legislation, in the Extradition Act 2003.
We had an opportunity to exercise the opt-out, and we did so. We have brought back more than 100 powers from Brussels.
Mrs May
I will make some progress, because the time for the debate is now more limited and I know that many hon. Members wish to speak.
As the Prime Minister says, we have overseen the biggest return of powers since this country joined the EU, but we have always been clear that we wanted to remain part of a smaller number of measures that give our police and law enforcement agencies vital and practical help in the fight against crime. This Government and this party will never put politics before the protection of the British public and that is why we are seeking to remain part of a package of 35 measures that help us to tackle serious crimes and keep this country safe.
Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
Will the Home Secretary confirm that in the event the House votes down these 11 measures, she will still be free to opt in to the European arrest warrant and, what is more, she will still be free to move forward with those 11 measures through other parliamentary means? That is the case, is it not?
Mrs May
We have been very clear that we have brought before the House tonight those measures that are required to be transposed into UK legislation. We have also been clear that in the Government’s view, a vote against those regulations is a vote against the package of 35 measures. I have been very clear that the 35 measures hang together. Even though only a small number require transposing into legislation, they are a package of measures and not a pick and mix.
Mrs May
I am going to make some progress.
The package is the product of careful deliberation in this House and beyond. It follows consultation with the police, the Crown Prosecution Service, our security and intelligence agencies, the devolved Administrations and the Lord Advocate in Scotland, the Government of Gibraltar, victims’ groups and many more. It has been scrutinised by Committees in both Houses of Parliament and the Justice Secretary, and I, along with other Ministers, have appeared before those Committees to give evidence on the Government’s approach. We have also published two Command Papers on the issue.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
I am pleased that we will, I hope, opt in to a range of these measures. As the Home Secretary says, this has taken a huge amount of time, effort and negotiations with Europe. How much benefit is there, given that most of the measures to which we are not opting in have expired?
Mrs May
There is considerable benefit, and I point my hon. Friend towards the measures on minimum standards for the justice system—there are about 20, I think. It is not the view of the Government, and it is certainly not the view of the Conservative party, that we should be part of the European justice system that some people think some of Europe wishes to introduce. Coming out of the minimum standards measures was an important part of ensuring that we did not go in that direction.
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
My right hon. Friend mentioned the scrutiny process, but, as she well knows, all three Select Committees—the European Scrutiny Committee, the Select Committee on Home Affairs and the Select Committee on Justice—have said that there has not been proper consultation with Parliament on these matters. What has happened today amply demonstrates our concerns and nothing has emerged to change our view. Will my right hon. Friend explain how on earth all this has happened?
Mrs May
I am aware of the views expressed to this House by my hon. Friend and by the Chairmen of the Justice and the Home Affairs Committees. I remind my hon. Friend that I, the Justice Secretary and other Ministers have appeared in front of the Select Committees of this House, of the European Scrutiny Committee and of Committees of the House of Lords on a number of occasions on the subject of these measures. We have also held a number of debates on the Floor of the House and varying views have been expressed from both sides of the House about the measures that have been proposed.
Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)
Given that the Home Secretary wrote yesterday in The Sunday Times that the European arrest warrant and 34 other measures were in the package proposed by the Government, and given that she knew that the European arrest warrant was one of the most controversial of those measures, will she explain why she has included those issues in the regulations that we are discussing today but left out the European arrest warrant?
Mrs May
It has been made clear that it is possible to discuss the other measures in our debate today, and I have explained why the regulations include only certain measures—those required to be transposed into UK legislation.
My hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) was right to refer to the package of 35 measures being the product of tough negotiations in Europe. In July, when we last gave Government time for a debate on the issue, I informed the House that good progress had been made in negotiations with the European Commission and other member states and that we were close to reaching an in-principle agreement. The matter had been discussed at the General Affairs Council in June, but some member states had expressed technical reservations. I published Command Paper 8897, which included the full list of measures discussed at the General Affairs Council and impact assessments of each of those measures. I had hoped to be able to return the matter to Parliament for consideration before the summer recess, but the reservations expressed by other member states meant it was not possible to do so. In September, two of those member states lifted their reserves and I am pleased to be able to inform the House that on Friday, Spain, the one remaining member state blocking the deal, formally lifted its reservation in Brussels.
I believe that the deal we have negotiated in Europe and that we are bringing before the House today is a good one for the United Kingdom. It includes important tools such as SIS II, the second-generation Schengen information system, which the United Kingdom is scheduled to join shortly. That will further strengthen our ability to detect foreign criminals at the border, including individuals wanted in their own countries for serious crimes such as rape and murder.
The package of measures we have negotiated includes Europol, which does excellent work under its British director, Rob Wainwright, to tackle cross-border crimes. Three weeks ago, for example, Europol played a key role in Operation Trivium, a UK-wide operation led by West Midlands police that saw police forces from 14 European countries jointly targeting foreign criminals in the UK. Senior officers from across Europe came together at the control centre in Edgbaston to witness the operation in action and Europol provided a mobile unit to co-ordinate activities on the ground. In the first 48 hours of the operation, more than 700 suspected criminals were arrested and a further 950 were handed on-the-spot fines for minor offences, cautioned or summonsed to court. They included a 51-year-old Polish man arrested on suspicion of involvement in a fraud of more than £11,000.
Europol also played a key part in tackling the horsemeat scandal that so appalled this House and the British public last year, as did Eurojust, another of the measures in our package.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
The Home Secretary keeps talking about a package of measures, but, of course, this is not a package of measures but things that she has bundled up into a package. As she appears to be making up parliamentary procedure as she goes along, will she explain how on earth those people who agree with some of the measures but not others should vote this evening?
Mrs May
I described them as a package because that was what was open to us under the terms of the Lisbon treaty negotiated by the previous Labour Government. We have to opt back in to a group of measures. There are measures in the package that interrelate. For example, the European supervision order relates to the European arrest warrant. We cannot simply pick and choose individual measures; many of them interrelate and should be considered together.
Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)
The Home Secretary made but a fleeting reference to consultation with the devolved institutions, but since Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom to share a land frontier with another EU member state, will she take the opportunity to put on the record that the Justice Minister in Northern Ireland, David Ford, and the Assembly support the measures before us this evening?
Mrs May
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising that point. The Justice Minister in Northern Ireland supports the measures, as does the Justice Minister in the Republic of Ireland, Frances Fitzgerald, who has made very clear the consequences if the House rejects the measures and if the Government do not opt in to them.
Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)
The Home Secretary may recall that she and I stood on the same Conservative manifesto, which said very clearly that a Conservative Government would reassert the “ultimate authority” of the House of Commons over important matters and repatriate powers in criminal justice. Does she not see the danger that if we opt back in to 35 measures, without having any legislation to assert our primacy, our criminal justice system can be entirely controlled from Brussels?
Mrs May
I will refer later to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice and what that means in relation to the measures before us. This is a simple decision about whether we want to be part of practical law and order measures that make a difference to the ability of our law enforcement agencies to catch criminals.
The support and co-ordination provided by Eurojust were invaluable to the UK’s law enforcement agencies and prosecutors during the fraud investigation that followed the revelation of the horsemeat scandal. Eurojust was extremely proactive and offered immediate assistance to the prosecutors in our Crown Prosecution Service, and provided vital information on investigations that were being carried out right across Europe.
Mrs May
I will make a little progress before I take more interventions.
The assistance of Eurojust has proved instrumental in the prosecution of animal rights extremists in the UK. Through its facilitation of meetings between the relevant European jurisdictions, evidence was obtained of the existence of an international conspiracy to blackmail the suppliers and customers of Huntingdon Life Sciences which was used in the UK trial.
Mr James Arbuthnot (North East Hampshire) (Con)
I ought to declare an interest because my wife is a judge who deals with European arrest warrants on a regular basis. The suggestion that there is no judicial oversight of European arrest warrants in this country is nonsense. Please will my right hon. Friend stick to her guns, because I do not want this country to become a haven for foreign criminals?
Mrs May
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for his comments. I assure him that I will refer to a number of measures that will ensure that there is judicial oversight of the European arrest warrant and proper consideration of such cases in the United Kingdom. He is absolutely right about another thing. The Government have negotiated this package and are bringing it to the House because we believe that these measures are necessary to ensure that we can continue the job of keeping people safe and bringing criminals to justice.
I will outline some of the other vital measures in the package of 35 measures. However, I said earlier that I would say a little about the timing of today’s debate, which I think is relevant to the consideration that Members have given to the motion. Now that the final reservation has been lifted on our deal, which, as I said, happened on Friday, we must allow for discussion at a Council in Brussels before the month is out. Very few appropriate options remain. We must add items to the agenda of a Council 16 days in advance to guarantee their inclusion. That means that we do not have long to complete our domestic processes. To avoid an operational gap for our police and law enforcement agencies, we must complete the entire process before 1 December. That involves formally notifying Brussels about the measures that we wish to remain part of.
Mrs May
I hope that my hon. Friend will forgive me for just one moment. He will know that I am usually very generous in giving way to him during debates on European matters, even though I sometimes disagree with the points that he makes. However, the point that I am about to make is important too.
If we do not complete the entire process before 1 December, including notifying Brussels of the measures that we wish to remain part of, we will have an operational gap, which I believe would be a real problem for our police and law enforcement agencies. We must be ready to transpose those measures fully into our domestic law. That is why it is important that we hold votes in this House and the other place, and complete the necessary legislative steps as soon as possible—hence the motion before us.
Sir William Cash
In the light of what has happened so far and the fact that we do not have the opportunity to vote on the European arrest warrant, as Mr Speaker has indicated, will the Home Secretary confirm that we will have an opportunity to do so, as was promised not only by her, but by the Prime Minister? We have not had such a vote. Will she guarantee that we will have one after a proper debate on the matter?
Mrs May
I have set out quite clearly the Government’s view on the motion before the House and the debate that we are having. I will attempt to make progress, because I want to get on to some of the other issues, including the European arrest warrant. I recognise the degree of interest in that and the concern that remains among some hon. Members. That is why I wish to have time to speak about that particular measure.
Steve Rotheram
Following on from what the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) said, when the Prime Minister was offered parliamentary time to debate the European arrest warrant by the Leader of the Opposition, he said:
“There is only one problem with the right hon. Gentleman’s …question: we are going to have a vote, we are going to have it before the Rochester by-election—his questions have just collapsed.”—[Official Report, 29 October 2014; Vol. 587, c. 301.]
What has changed, Home Secretary?
Mrs May
We are having a vote on the regulations tonight and it has been made very clear that people are able to discuss the European arrest warrant in the debate.
If we were to vote against the motion tonight and did not opt back in to the measures—because a vote against the motion tonight would be a vote against the package of 35 measures—we would find ourselves kicked out of Europol within weeks and our extradition arrangements would be thrown into legal uncertainty, potentially for years. That would risk harmful individuals walking free and escaping justice, and would seriously harm the capability of our law enforcement agencies to keep the public safe.
Mrs May
I will make a little more progress and will then give way to my hon. Friend.
For the reasons I have just given, the Government have always been clear that it is in our national interest to remain part of these vital measures and to do so without an operational gap.
Over the past four years, and particularly since we announced our intention to exercise the opt-out in July 2013, a number of hon. Members have proposed alternative courses of action to me and my right hon. Friend the Justice Secretary as we have undertaken our negotiations in Europe. A number of hon. Members are interested in the position of Denmark with regard to justice and home affairs matters. Some have said that it provides a potential model for the UK to follow. I believe that it is a false comparison. Denmark has a separate protocol to the Lisbon treaty that excludes it from participating in post-Lisbon justice and home affairs measures. It has concluded third-country agreements with the EU because it has no other way to participate in those measures.
By contrast, protocol 36 to the Lisbon treaty sets out the process by which the UK can opt out of and rejoin justice and home affairs measures. There is no precedent for an international agreement between the EU and a member state that already has the ability to participate in EU measures by specific means. The European Commission argues that protocol 36 provides adequate provision and renders a third-country agreement unnecessary. Riding roughshod over that would involve walking away from a very good deal for the UK and risk damaging our support for future negotiations in Europe. Even if we could persuade the European Union, it would take years to thrash out, guaranteeing a lengthy operational gap in the fight against crime and a risk to the British public that would be unacceptable.
Finally, I hope hon. Members will heed the Danish example in full. Every agreement that Denmark has made separately with the European Union has required Denmark to submit to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. In effect, the Danish agreements that have caught the attention of some hon. Members simply bind Denmark to EU law by another legal means. I suspect that is not what those hon. Members had in mind.
I have explained that only a certain number of the measures require transposition through the regulations before the House. The regulations make provision to give effect to the European supervision order in England and Wales, and in Northern Ireland. That allows British subjects to be bailed back to the UK, rather than spend months and months abroad awaiting trial. It will therefore stand alongside the reforms that we have made to the arrest warrant, making it easier for people like Andrew Symeou, whose case has been championed admirably by my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois), to be bailed back to the UK and preventing such injustices from occurring in future. The connection between the supervision order and the arrest warrant, one of which is being transposed in the regulations and one of which is not, is an example of the inter-connectedness of the package of measures.
Sir Edward Leigh
My right hon. Friend is being very generous in giving way.
I mean this question completely sincerely. One reason why I passionately support the British courts and jury system is that one never knows when one might get into trouble or be wrongly accused oneself. I realise that it is extremely unlikely, and it is a personal question, but if she were wrongly accused of something in, say, Croatia, would she rather rely on British justice and traditional extradition procedures or on the say-so of a prosecutor in Croatia?
Mrs May
If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I will come on to explain how we have changed the European arrest warrant so that British judges are now interposed in the system in a way that they were not always in the past. Those measures have been an important advantage, and some arrest warrant requests to the UK have already been rejected as a result.
I do not want to lose sight of some of the other measures in the package. For example, the regulations also cover the European criminal records information system. We are already taking steps to identify foreign nationals who are abusing our openness and hospitality by committing crimes in this country. Operation Nexus, a groundbreaking initiative taken by the Metropolitan police and immigration enforcement, helped us to remove more than 2,500 foreign nationals during its first two years, including 150 dangerous immigration offenders considered by the police to represent a particularly serious threat. As I said, it began with the Metropolitan police, but it has recently been extended to the West Midlands, Merseyside and Greater Manchester forces and six other forces including Police Scotland, and we wish to extend its work to every force in England and Wales. ECRIS is a key tool that supports that operation and thereby helps to keep our streets safe.
As people find it easier to move around the globe, we must ensure that our law enforcement agencies can exchange information more readily too. In 2006, the UK made and received no requests at all for criminal records from other EU member states. In 2012-13 we made over 25,000 requests, and last year that figure was 41,500. I recently announced that the Government would increase the number of criminal record checks on foreign nationals by introducing full checks on foreign nationals arrested in the Metropolitan police area. Given that 30% of those arrested in London are now foreign nationals, it is clear that that is an operational necessity. That is also why our package of 35 measures also includes the Swedish initiative, which simplifies the exchange of information and intelligence between law enforcement agencies, and the data protection measure, which protects personal data transferred in the fight against crime. Those measures both require transposition, and they are covered in the regulations.
Another of the measures in the regulations provides for joint investigation teams between our police and their European counterparts. It allows our police to participate in cross-border operations such as Operation Birkhill, which saw five criminals sentenced to a total of 36 years’ imprisonment this summer for their involvement in the degrading trafficking into the UK of over 120 women from Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland; and Operation Rico, which resulted in 110 arrests, mostly in the UK and Spain.
Dr Huppert
The Home Secretary is being generous in giving way. She has made a strong argument for cross-border co-operation with our European partners, but one measure that she is not opting into is the internal security fund, which involves about £3 billion for measures across Europe to tackle cross-border crime. We are one of only two countries that have not opted into that; will she consider doing so, so that we can continue to work across borders?
Mrs May
We were clear about the package of measures that we wished to opt into—the 35 that we identified. We looked at all the 130-odd measures that were subject to protocol 36, and we believe that the package that the Government have published for Members is the right one to give our law enforcement agencies the powers they need.
Another measure in the package is the prisoner transfer framework decision, which helps to remove foreign criminals from British jails—prisoners such as Ainars Zvirgzds, a Latvian national convicted of controlling prostitution, firearms and drug offences and assault. In April 2012, he was sentenced to thirteen and a half years’ imprisonment in the UK, and in June this year he was transferred out of this country to a prison in Latvia, where he will serve the remainder of his sentence. Had it not been for the prisoner transfer measure, he would have remained in a British prison at a cost to the British taxpayer of more than £100,000.
As I indicated earlier, I have taken part in a number of debates on these issues. From those debates, and from the debate that we had earlier and the comments that right hon. and hon. Members have made today, it is absolutely clear that the measure that attracts the most interest from Members is the European arrest warrant.
Extradition is always an emotive subject. It raises important questions about the civil liberties of British citizens, the quality of justice in other countries, the role of our own courts and how we bring criminals to justice, and I understand those concerns. I remind hon. Members that I am the Home Secretary who blocked the extradition of Gary McKinnon to the United States, and who reformed our extradition arrangements so that, when prosecution is possible in both this country and another, British courts can block extradition overseas if they believe it is in the interests of justice to do so. I therefore share many of the concerns that have been raised about the European arrest warrant in the past. Indeed, as a member of the shadow Cabinet I voted against its transposition into British law by the last Labour Government. That is why, as Home Secretary, I have legislated to reform the operation of the arrest warrant and increase the protections that we can offer to British people and others who are wanted for extradition.
The changes that we made through the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 mean that the arrest warrant that sits in our package of 35 measures is a better and safer arrest warrant than the one operated over the past decade. Under the last Government, British citizens could be extradited for disproportionately minor offences, so the law has been changed to ensure that arrest warrants are refused for those suspected of minor offences. A British judge must now consider whether the alleged offence and likely penalty is sufficient to make someone’s extradition proportionate, and a British judge must also consider whether measures less coercive than extradition are available to foreign authorities.
Lady Hermon
I am grateful to the Home Secretary for taking a second intervention from me.
The Home Secretary knows well that a Mr John Downey walked free from the Old Bailey earlier this year. He had been charged in connection with the Hyde park bombing, which killed four innocent British soldiers, and was also sought in connection with the Enniskillen bombing and the murder of two Ulster Defence Regiment men in Northern Ireland. He walked free because the Northern Ireland Office had signed off a letter in 2007—not during the current Administration—for a category of people known as the on-the-runs. Mr Downey is now enjoying the air of County Donegal. Would the UK opting into the European arrest warrant help the Public Prosecution Service in Northern Ireland retrieve Mr Downey to face serious criminal charges if the Police Service of Northern Ireland had sufficient evidence?
Mrs May
I recognise the case that the hon. Lady raises and her concern about it. I do not think it would be right for me to comment from the Dispatch Box on an individual case, particularly one that involves certain other matters that are not only relevant to the measures that we are discussing. As she says, they relate to decisions taken some time ago about the issue of on-the-runs.
Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)
May I commend my right hon. Friend and ask her to stick to her guns on this matter? She is delineating the changes that she has caused to be made to the European arrest warrant. It is different from how it was before, and we can and must support it in the interests of justice, because it will prevent this country from becoming a safe haven for terrorists and criminals. Furthermore, does she recall that Keith Bristow, the head of the National Crime Agency, told the Committee that I sit on, the Home Affairs Committee, that he supported the European arrest warrant? He said that it was the best tool to accomplish what my right hon. Friend and the rest of the House want to achieve.
Mrs May
My hon. Friend makes a good point, and as an assiduous member of the Home Affairs Committee he has looked at the matter in some detail. He is absolutely right that the Committee was clear about the benefits of the European arrest warrant. We have indeed made changes to it, thanks to which the National Crime Agency refuses requests before they even get to our courts in the case of the most trivial offences, freeing up police and court time for more serious matters.
Pete Wishart
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. In your ruling, you made it clear that reference to the European arrest warrant was to be made only in passing. The Home Secretary has been speaking about the European arrest warrant for the past 10 minutes. Is that not in total contravention of what you ruled earlier?
Mr Speaker
I said in my statement that I intended to offer latitude, so that the matters of which the House wishes to treat may be properly aired. I appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s intentions in seeking clarity from the Chair, but nothing I have heard so far has conflicted with that. I intended—and I intend—pragmatically to handle matters from where we are, which, as I think we all agree, is sub-optimal.
Mrs May
Our reforms have also clarified the rules on dual criminality to ensure that an arrest warrant must be refused if all or part of the conduct for which a person is wanted took place in the UK and is not a criminal offence in this country. The National Crime Agency is now refusing arrest warrants where it is obvious that the dual criminality test has not been met. It has done so nearly 40 times since our reforms came into force in July. Under the old arrest warrant, people were being detained for long periods overseas before being charged or standing trial. We have changed the law to require that a decision to charge, and a decision to try the person, has been made in the requesting country before they can be extradited.
Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)
I am grateful to the Home Secretary for her personal interest in the case of my constituent Andrew Symeou, and to the Minister. On this point, which is often known as the Symeou clause, does she have confidence—this is something that I and my constituent lack—that the decision to charge and try will necessarily follow with the same speed and alacrity as in this country and many other countries? We are totally reliant on those other countries to enforce such measures quickly, else people will languish in jail because there is a difference between the decision to charge and the different decision to try.
Mrs May
In our changes to the legislation we are clear that this is about the decision to charge and to try. As I mentioned earlier, my hon. Friend has been assiduous in championing the issue because of the case of his constituent Andrew Symeou and we all recognise that that sort of circumstance led many people to query the European arrest warrant and be concerned about its operation. The legislative changes we have made allow a British court to decide that unless there is a decision to charge and try an individual, it can reject the European arrest warrant. In addition, we have also made changes so that an individual can be transferred temporarily to give evidence and be returned to the United Kingdom, or to give evidence by video link, for example, so that they do not need physically to be taken to the other country concerned.
Nick de Bois
I am grateful for the Home Secretary’s attempt to explain that point, but perhaps I can ask her about another issue. The courts are not allowed to take into account the record of a country in its effectiveness at pursuing a case from charge to trial-ready. Would such a requirement on the courts provide more confidence that they can look beyond the initial application to extradite and hold to account countries that fail to deliver?
Mrs May
I note my hon. Friend’s point, but I believe that the changes we have made are sufficient to ensure that our courts are able to make judgments on charge and trial, and therefore a judgment on whether a European arrest warrant should be put into place. I will give way to the hon. Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant).
Chris Bryant
I did not have to ask this time, and I am grateful to the Home Secretary. I fully agree with what she is saying about the European arrest warrant and with many of the changes that she has managed to introduce and negotiate with other countries. I agree with all that, but not with the process she is adopting. On 29 October, when asked about the European arrest warrant, why did the Prime Minister say not just once but four times:
“I am not delaying having a vote on it. There will be a vote on it…we are going to have a vote, we are going to have it before the Rochester by-election”—[Official Report, 29 October 2014; Vol. 587, c. 301.]
The Speaker has already said that this is not a vote on the European arrest warrant. So that all Members of the House can at least reckon that they have had a fair deal, will the Home Secretary please give us a proper vote next week?
Mrs May
And the hon. Gentleman started off so nicely—such a disappointment. As I have said, the National Crime Agency is refusing arrest warrants in certain circumstances, and as I indicated in response to my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois), those require people to be able to be charged and stand trial. Some hon. Members were worried that arrest warrants were being used for investigatory purposes rather than prosecution, and, as I said, that is why we have allowed people to visit an issuing state temporarily to be questioned, or to do so via a video link without even leaving these shores.
Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
These post-July changes are extremely welcome, but one point that has not yet been made is that 95% of European arrest warrants that are applied for from this country are for foreign nationals. It is foreign countries wanting their nationals back to prosecute them—these are foreign nationals, foreign criminals, who have come to the United Kingdom because they think that it can be a safe haven. The European arrest warrant is enabling the countries where the offences were committed to get their nationals back—95% of those warrants do not apply to UK citizens but to foreign citizens.
Mrs May
My right hon. Friend makes an important point. He is prescient because it was a point to which I was coming soon in my speech, and it is an important statistic. Sometimes people think that the European arrest warrant is just used to extradite United Kingdom citizens from the United Kingdom, but that is not the case.
Hon. Members have expressed concerns about people being charged with offences over and above those specified in their arrest warrant if they consent to extradition, so we have lifted the requirement that individuals lose their right to “speciality protection” when they consent to extradition. Those changes have been made in UK law, and came into effect earlier this year. They are already making an important difference to the operation of the arrest warrant.
Zac Goldsmith (Richmond Park) (Con)
The concept of proportionality is hard to define and therefore hard to understand. The Home Secretary has already given examples of cases that have been refused on the basis that they are too trivial. Can she give an example of the least serious offence where extradition has been possible since July?
Mrs May
I do not have a list of all the European arrest warrants that have been refused, but there are two steps to the proportionality decision. The first is an administrative decision taken by the National Crime Agency as the body that initially receives the request. Then there is the possibility for the courts to make a determination about proportionality, and they will consider a variety of issues. It is not a tick-box approach; the courts will make judgments not just about the nature of the crime but about the nature of the disposal available in the other member state in relation to that crime, so that they can decide whether the arrest warrant is appropriate.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) indicated that the vast majority of people extradited from the UK—more than 95%—are foreign nationals. They include suspects wanted for 124 murders, more than 100 rapes, nearly 500 serious assaults and seven terrorism cases. In the same period, the arrest warrant has been used to return 647 people to this country to face justice. The list includes 51 suspected killers, 80 suspected paedophiles, 46 suspected violent thugs, and one suspected terrorist.
Sir Menzies Campbell (North East Fife) (LD)
I am glad that my right hon. Friend has come to the issue of the United Kingdom causing the extradition of others from abroad. Does she accept that the European arrest warrant brought an end to the rather hideous spectacle of well-known criminals living off their ill-gotten gains and sunning themselves on the Costa Brava?
Mrs May
I say to right hon. and hon. Members that I am conscious of the time I have been speaking for. I have taken a number of interventions, but I wish to make progress because others wish to speak in this debate.
Some opponents of the European arrest warrant say we should refuse to remain part of it and instead rely on the European Council convention on extradition of 1957. However, as my hon. Friend the Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) noted on the radio last week:
“If we have to fall back temporarily on the old Council of Europe conventions, extraditions will be slower.”
That view was echoed today by the House of Lords Extradition Law Committee, which stated that
“there is no convincing case for disagreeing with the conclusions previously reached by the European Union Committee that ‘If the United Kingdom were to leave the EAW and rely upon alternative extradition arrangements, it is highly unlikely that these alternative arrangements would address all the criticisms directed at the EAW. Furthermore, it is inevitable that the extradition process would become more protracted and cumbersome, potentially undermining public safety.’”
Mr Raab
I am very grateful for my right hon. Friend’s elucidations. What I am seeking to understand is why we cannot opt out of all the measures, including the EAW, and negotiate a bespoke arrangement without the erosion of democratic control through the European Court of Justice and other means. I listened very carefully to what she said earlier—the Commission’s view that this was unprecedented—and I appreciate it would take time and a lot of diplomatic elbow grease, but can she confirm that there is no legal bar to that course of action and that it is a question of political will?
Mrs May
I recognise my hon. Friend’s point. It is one he has made to me on a number of occasions. I have addressed the two areas where people have sometimes said that alternative arrangements could be made. The first is that we would fall back on the Council of Europe convention of 1957. I have been absolutely clear in the remarks I have just made that there is one crucial aspect that would cause us problems: the length of time that extradition procedures would take. As the House of Lords Extradition Law Committee has just said, that could undermine public safety.
There is another aspect in which that would be problematic were we to be negotiating with other member states. Without the arrest warrant there are 22 member states in the EU, including France, Germany and Spain, that could refuse to extradite their own nationals to the UK. In the past five years alone, more than 100 people from those countries have been returned to Britain to face justice, many for serious crimes including rape and murder. One of those was Andreas Ververopoulos, a Greek, who committed a violent and sickening sexual assault on a 16-year-old girl in Hampshire in 2007 and then fled home to Greece. In July 2013, Hampshire police linked him to the crime using DNA and an arrest warrant was used to return him to the UK. In April this year, he pleaded guilty to his crimes and was sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment. The judge in the case said it was
“an appalling attack on a young and vulnerable girl”.
After seven years of further suffering, the victim and the victim’s family finally saw justice done.
Yvette Cooper
I, too, have looked at that case. I agree with the Home Secretary that it is an appalling example of a terrible crime. The European arrest warrant was rightly used in that case. Will she say why the EAW is not on the Order Paper?
Mrs May
The right hon. Lady knows that I have answered that question previously.
The right hon. Lady is right that the case I cited was a particularly difficult and awful case in terms of the crime that was committed. Without the arrest warrant, the individual who committed that crime would still be in Greece today. Before it came into force, Greece did not surrender its own nationals. Indeed, it entered a reservation to the 1957 convention specifically barring the extradition of Greek nationals, so the victims of brutal crimes, such as in this case, would go on suffering. We owe it to them to heed the old warning that justice delayed is justice denied.
I want to come on to one final relevant point that was hinted at by my right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (Mr Redwood) earlier: the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. This pass was sold when the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) signed the Lisbon treaty. Our opt-out only applies to those policing and criminal justice measures that precede it. Since the Lisbon treaty came into effect, the UK has signed up to 90 new justice and home affairs measures, accepting the jurisdiction of the ECJ over them. We face the same choice today: whether to accept the jurisdiction of the ECJ over the small package of measures that we wish to remain part of from 1 December, so that our law enforcement agencies can continue to use those powers to fight crime and keep us safe; or reject those measures and accept the risk to public protection that that involves. That invidious choice is the result of a poor treaty, badly negotiated. In my mind, however, it is clear: this is a vote about law and order, not a vote about Europe.
I am certainly no enthusiast for the European Court of Justice. The ECJ should not have the final say over matters such as substantive criminal law or our international relations. That is why, as I indicated earlier, 100 or so measures the Government have opted out of, and will not rejoin, include more than 20 minimum standards measures on sensitive matters such as racism and xenophobia. It is why we have opted out of, and will not rejoin, the EU-US extradition agreement. It is this place that should have the final say over our laws on these matters, and Her Majesty’s Government should be able to renegotiate such arrangements as they see fit.
I understand the concerns raised about the European Court of Justice in the many debates we have had on protocol 36. I believe we must look again at this matter in our renegotiations with the European Union before the referendum that a Conservative Government will deliver by the end of 2017. In the meantime, however, we must act in the national interest to keep the British public safe. We have therefore exercised an opt-out, which it seems no one else would have exercised. We have brought back more than 100 justice and home affairs powers that had already been signed away. We have listened to those who work tirelessly to keep us safe on which of the tools at their disposal are vital to their important work. We have gone to Europe and negotiated a good deal for the United Kingdom. We have won support from the Commission and other member states to remain part of a smaller package of measures in the national interest. Now we must vote to transpose those measures that require transposing and, in doing so, vote to seal the deal.
Yvette Cooper
Nice try. I will come to the issues that the Home Secretary has opted out of in a second, but the idea that the Home Secretary’s utter shambles today is the fault of the previous Labour Government is pushing the hon. Gentleman’s political argument to a ludicrous extreme.
The statistics are clear: the EAW helps us to deport foreign criminals and terrorists, and of the 1,057 people removed under an EAW last year, only 43 were UK nationals, and eight of those were connected to child sex offences. It is because the EAW and the other measures are so important that we should be having a vote on them now.
The Home Secretary has form. We saw it when she was asked about the net migration promise. No ifs no buts, the Prime Minister made a promise—a contract with the British people, he said—but she said it was no longer a promise but a comment. We saw it again today when she dismissed the Prime Minister’s promise to the House that there would be a vote on the EAW.
Frankly, the whole opt in, opt out process has been a con. It is an in/out hokey cokey back to where we started. On the measures to be opted out of, the Prime Minister promised the biggest transfer of power from Brussels back to Britain by opting out of more than 100 measures, but what powers in practice have been brought back? Britain will no longer be expected to have a good practice guide on mutual legal assistance in criminal matters, but we will keep one anyway; Britain will not sign up to having a contact point for cross-border allegations of corruption, but the police and Border Force will still have one anyway; we will not sign up to receive a directory of specialist counter-terrorism officers, but we will get someone to send it to us on the side; we will not sign up to a whole series of accession measures that apply to other countries and did not cover us anyway; we were already opting out of the European judicial network, and we will carry on opting out of it; and we will not be involved in setting up contact points to deal with the other countries in pursuing those responsible for genocide, but we will—quietly—let Europol know whom they should ring.
Time and again, the Home Secretary claims to be repatriating huge numbers of powers, when in fact she is simply opting out of dozens of measures that either do not operate anymore or which cover areas where we plan to carry on regardless, whether we are in or out. So much for a repatriation of powers—it is a repatriation of other people’s phone numbers. She has taken back the Yellow Pages. Congratulations to her.
Yvette Cooper
Given the shambles the Home Secretary has presided over today, the idea that she wants to make this about the last Labour Government is frankly ludicrous, and it makes her look silly. She decided what she wanted to opt into and out of, and she then claimed to the House that she had repatriated powers and safeguarded the hugely important things she is still too scared to give the House a vote on.
Yvette Cooper
Now that the hon. Members for Ipswich (Ben Gummer) and for North East Somerset (Jacob Rees-Mogg) have referred to this document, it really must be put in the public domain. The hon. Member for North East Somerset has kindly put it in front of the House so that that we can all consider it.
That demonstrates the chaos we are in. You have ruled, Mr Speaker, that this is not a vote on the European arrest warrant, yet communications to Government Back Benchers were very clear that it was.
Let me now give the Home Secretary the opportunity to agree from the Dispatch Box that there will be a vote—an additional vote—on the European arrest warrant before the Rochester and Strood by-election. Let me give way to the Home Secretary so that she can do this. [Hon. Members: “Come on!”] She has not done so, and that is really disappointing. Let me give her one further opportunity to do so, because it is a huge concern for this House if we do not have the opportunity to put the European arrest warrant beyond legal doubt—we know the mischief lawyers will make through judicial reviews. Let us have a chance to give a strong signal that we support all 35 measures, not just the 11 that appear on the Order Paper. [Interruption.] It is no good the Home Secretary saying from a sedentary position that we will do that by voting for this motion, because Mr Speaker has said that it is not a vote on the European arrest warrant. We are therefore acting on advice from the House. I urge the Home Secretary again to stand up and say that she will withdraw this motion and give us the opportunity to vote on the full 35. I will let her do so.
Yvette Cooper
I have to tell the Home Secretary that this puts the House in an extremely difficult position. She has effectively said that Ministers are just going to make it up. The Speaker has been very clear that this motion does not include a vote on the European arrest warrant. The right hon. Lady has said that she is going to reinterpret this in any way she chooses. That is an irresponsible way in which to treat this House. If she brings this motion back tomorrow, with all 35 measures included, we will support it. We will work with the business managers, we will support it, we will vote for it. Then there would be no doubt that we had categorical support for all 35 measures. The Home Secretary should do that tomorrow. We will get it through—there is plenty of time. Will she do that tomorrow?
If the Home Secretary will not do that tomorrow, she is playing fast and loose with the criminal justice system and fast and loose with this Parliament. On that basis, Mr Speaker, I think we need further debate now, and to return to the issue tomorrow. We have loads of time tomorrow. There is plenty of time for the Home Secretary to do this tomorrow. We could get it all in place. On that basis, I move that the Question be not now put.
Mr Speaker
Order. Before I put the Question, I want to hear from the Home Secretary.
Mrs May
Thank you, Mr Speaker. I understand that your clarification meant that it was now possible for speeches to be made in relation to the question that has now been proposed, which is that the question should not now be put. In that case, I am very happy to speak, and other Members may wish to do so as well.
Mr Speaker
Order. Let me say, for the avoidance of doubt, that that is perfectly orderly. I did say that the question was debatable. No Member appeared to be standing, and Members seemed to be expressing a will to reach a decision by making their voices heard. However, the Home Secretary is perfectly entitled to speak on the matter, and she will now do so.
Mrs May
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
The right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) appears to have been getting herself into quite a state about this particular issue. I am very happy to explain the position to the House again, very clearly. It is very simple. There is a timetable that we must follow if we are to ensure that we can opt back in to measures by 1 December—
Jacob Rees-Mogg
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. The matter is, of course, debatable, but what is debatable is whether or not the Question be not now put, rather than the merits of what we have previously been debating.
Mr Speaker
I think that the context is germane to the question of whether the motion be approved, or not approved, as the case may be. I therefore think that an excessively narrow interpretation would be wrong. I think it only right for the Home Secretary, if she wants to speak to the Question that the Question be not now put, to have an opportunity, in an orderly way, to make her case. Let me now hear what I hope will be an orderly account.
Mrs May
Thank you, Mr Speaker. I am grateful for your ruling on what matters are relevant to the speech that can be made in relation to the question that has now been put.
The motion is about whether or not we should vote on the regulations that are before the House today. As I have made very clear, we put those regulations before the House today because of the timetable with which we are dealing in relation to ensuring that we are able to opt back in to the measures that we need to opt back in to by the requisite date—1 December—if we are to ensure that there is no operational gap.
Sir William Cash
As my right hon. Friend will know, the European Scrutiny Committee has considered all these matters carefully. If, as is the normal course of events, we were debating a Bill rather than what is provided for by the Lisbon treaty, all 35 of these measures would be before us in the form of separate clauses, and amendments would have been tabled. What we have been debating, however, is a non-amendable motion. Is my right hon. Friend aware that the Home Affairs Committee itself said that there must be a separate vote on the European arrest warrant? How does she reconcile what she said this afternoon—and, indeed, what she is saying now—with the fact that there will undoubtedly be no vote on the European arrest warrant, although several Select Committees have said that there should be?
Mr Speaker
I would have called the hon. Gentleman to speak on this proposition in due course, but I have a feeling that he has already done so. So be it. I call the Home Secretary.
Mrs May
Thank you, Mr Speaker.
As I made clear earlier, I am well aware that my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), as Chairman of the European Scrutiny Committee, and his colleagues who chair the Justice and Home Affairs Committees, have indicated their wish for separate motions and separate debates on particular parts of the measures, including the European arrest warrant. However, I have also made clear that the Government put the regulations before the House today so that the House could see the legislative process that would be put in place. There is no requirement in legislation for any measure to be put in place for us to remain party to the European arrest warrant.
Sir William Cash
I must point out, with great respect, that what my right hon. Friend is saying is, “We will go by prerogative.” That smacks of everything that is in direct contradiction to the evolving democracy of the House of Commons. The fact is that it was the prerogative that was displaced by parliamentary change and reform. What she is saying is that, on this particular matter, she will decide on behalf of the Government without regard to what Parliament has to say, and that is unacceptable.
Mrs May
I am not saying that. I suggest to my hon. Friend that I have been very clear about this matter. The Government have negotiated with the European Commission, and with other member states, a package of measures for us to opt back in to. We believe that those law and order measures are necessary for ensuring that our law enforcement agencies have the tools that they need to catch criminals and to deal with matters of justice, which is why we have put before the House legislative measures that will enable United Kingdom law to accord with that package of 35 measures.
Graham Stringer (Blackley and Broughton) (Lab)
The Home Secretary has dug herself into a hole. She will not allow the House to decide on the very important issue of the European arrest warrant. Why does she not simply support the procedural motion so that she can go away, have a think, and then come back and allow the House to vote on whether it wants to enter into the European arrest warrant or not?
Mrs May
The House said absolutely clearly that it wanted to debate the European arrest warrant, and we have been debating the European arrest warrant. I am very happy to speak about the issue, and I am sure that other Members wish to speak about it as well. I understand that, if the Question put by the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford is agreed to, the debate will be ended in relation to the European arrest warrant, and the debate will be ended in relation to the regulations.
Lady Hermon
May I take this opportunity to remind Members on both sides of the House that we in Northern Ireland face an unusual threat? [Interruption.] May I ask Opposition Front Benchers to keep quiet for a moment?
The situation in Northern Ireland is very serious. Dissident republicans—the Real IRA, or whatever they want to call themselves—hide beyond the border in the Republic of Ireland. They come into Northern Ireland, and they murder people. We had a prison officer murdered two years ago, on 1 November. If his widow and his family were aware that we are jeopardising the possibility of these measures coming into force, they would be deeply concerned, as I am. Let me say to Members on both sides of the House that we must make absolutely sure that there is no time gap between these measures, which we have all agreed that we support, and the debate in the House.
Mrs May
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for setting that out so clearly, and she is obviously deeply concerned about that point. She intervened on me earlier in relation to a particular case, and I would add to that that while, of course, in any individual case it is up to the independent police and prosecution services to choose what to do, if we were not in the European arrest warrant it would, as she has indicated, be harder for us to extradite people who had committed offences in Northern Ireland and who were now in the Republic of Ireland. The Minister for Justice in the Republic of Ireland has been very clear that if there is any operational gap at all between being in the European arrest warrant and opting back in to it, which there would be if we reject the package of measures, that would have serious consequences because it would be assumed that the arrangements currently in place would no longer be extant.
Yvette Cooper
Will the Home Secretary confirm that there is time tomorrow to debate this, and we would then be able to vote on the whole package of 35 measures, support all of them and have no operational gap by 1 December? Will she confirm there is time to do this tomorrow?
Mrs May
If the right hon. Lady is concerned about the operational gap, she is perfectly able to vote for the regulations we have put before the House tonight. She talks about wanting to have time for debate. I say to her that we had time for debate and what has happened is she has raised another motion that is interrupting that time for debate.
Michael Ellis
Does my right hon. Friend agree that this is an example of game-playing by the Labour party on a crucial matter of law and order and the national security of this country? Opposition Members stand up and say at length how they want to debate this matter, how they want to extend the debate and how they want to cover every angle of it, and then they use an arcane procedure, for which we have to look up the precedents in “Erskine May”, to curtail the debate, and they do so with a view only to obstruct the proper business of this House, against the interests of justice and law and order.
Mr Speaker
The hon. Gentleman can do so, but it is for the Chair—[Interruption.] No, no other debate is required, as has politely been suggested from a sedentary position. It is for the Chair to decide whether to accept what is effectively a closure motion, and the answer to the hon. Gentleman is that at this rather early stage in debating these particular matters—the previous question—I do not accept the closure motion. We are in the middle of a speech by the Home Secretary and there may be other contributions. A former senior Cabinet Minister wishes to contribute and possibly other Members, so I would take a view on that matter in due course, but not now.
Mr Redwood
As I understand it, if the Government defeat the Opposition motion there will be no further debate, which would frustrate debate on a very important matter on which the Government wish to have more time. In that event, will the Home Secretary make more time available if colleagues are going to help her vote down the Opposition motion?
Mrs May
I did not move this motion that the Question should not now be put. I was very happy for this debate to carry on this evening, because there are hon. and right hon. Members of this House who wish to contribute to it. The right hon. Lady the shadow Home Secretary has taken the decision that she wishes possibly to curtail the debate that takes place in this House today on this matter. We started this debate shortly after 4.30 pm—
Mrs May
I will in just one moment.
We started this debate shortly after 4.30 pm, after we had had the urgent question following questions. There was a good length of time available, in which hon. Members, with the degree of latitude you indicated you would give them, Mr Speaker, in relation to the motion on the regulations, would have been able to debate matters that were not just the measures in those regulations. We then went into a business motion debate, which took a considerable time. We have now got into the debate proper on the regulations, but what we have seen—
Mrs May
My hon. Friends are queuing up to intervene, so I ask my hon. Friend to wait.
What we have now seen is a deliberate attempt by the Opposition to change the terms of this debate and to stop the debate taking place, and I have to say to the right hon. Lady the shadow Home Secretary that she says she supports the regulations and she says she supports the Government on what we wish to do, and in that case she should allow the debate to take place and vote on the regulations.
Margot James
I am very concerned that these measures have a deadline, which is beyond this House’s control, of 3 December, by which time we have to opt in. We have a recess coming up on Wednesday, and I do not share the confidence of the shadow Home Secretary that the Government could find time for a debate tomorrow. The House starts sitting late tomorrow—at lunchtime—so we have minimal time then. We have almost three hours left to us to debate these important matters this evening, however. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we need to take all of that time to debate the substantial motion?
Sir Tony Baldry
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Is it in order for the House to ask you to say how many hon. and right hon. Members have written to you asking whether they might catch your eye in this debate, so that if this motion is agreed the House will know how many hon. and right hon. Members will have been prevented from contributing to the substantive debate we were having before the shadow Home Secretary moved her motion?
Mr Speaker
The answer is that a considerable number of Members have applied to speak in this debate. If memory serves, approximately 20, possibly slightly more, wished to speak in the debate as a whole, not in the debate on the previous question—obviously I have had no written applications on that, because it has only just been introduced. On the overall debate today, I had approximately 20 requests to speak. If those Members do not have the opportunity to do so, they will be denied the opportunity today, but they would not, of course, be denied the opportunity subsequently.
Sir Edward Leigh
On the point the Home Secretary has just made on the importance of debate and the point made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry), as I understand the procedure, now that we are debating this motion there will be no further debate regardless of the result of the vote we are about to have. Am I right in thinking that?
Mrs May
I hesitate to give an absolute ruling, because Mr Speaker has, of course, made it absolutely clear what would happen, but the Question is that the matter be not now put and, as I understand it, if that motion is passed, the draft regulations will not be put to this House. We have been very clear about the timetable we need in order to address this matter.
Sir Edward Leigh
We are in quite a serious position now. This is a very important matter and it looks as if, whatever happens in the vote in a few minutes’ time, there will be no further debate today. I beg the Government: this is an important issue and we can come back tomorrow. We can just set aside time, have a proper motion, and vote on the European arrest warrant. That is the clear, simple, honourable and direct way of proceeding.
Mrs May
I say to my hon. Friend, as I have been saying throughout the debates on the various motions tonight, that the Government have been very clear about why they have brought the regulations forward in the form they have done in relation to UK legislation, but we are also very clear that if this House votes in favour of the regulations, then it is endorsing the package of measures the Government have brought forward to ensure we can maintain the ability of our law enforcement agencies to deal with matters they need to deal with.
Yvette Cooper
So determined are we that the House should be able to debate and pass these regulations and the rest of the 35 measures that we will not jeopardise those regulations. We want to have a vote tomorrow. The business managers can agree, and will agree, to have a debate and vote on all the measures tomorrow. If not, the Home Secretary can have our Opposition day debate in order to do it then, so there is no gap and we can get all these measures voted on in this House.
Mrs May
The right hon. Lady doth protest too much. If she wishes to have a debate and to vote on the regulations, that option is open to her tonight. However, she has chosen to play politics with the matter and tried to curtail the debate. As we have heard from the Speaker’s answer to the point of order raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry), a significant number of Members have indicated that they wish to speak in the debate on the regulations. The Speaker has granted latitude regarding the subjects that Members may speak about, and we are able to debate the European arrest warrant and other matters that are not in the regulations.
It is open to the House to have that debate but, sadly, the right hon. Lady has chosen to take a step that could curtail the debate and ensure that the regulations are not put before the House, in which case it would not be possible for Members to have their say on these important matters. She and I agree on the importance of these matters. My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) and I might disagree on how some of them should be finalised and on whether we should be party to the measures, but I am clear that, at this point, the House of Commons has an opportunity to debate and vote on measures that relate to law and order in this country. These are important decisions for the House to make, and I have clarified for the House the exact form of the regulations.
Geraint Davies
Is the Home Secretary saying that, if the House votes to terminate this debate today, she will refuse to have a further debate on the European arrest warrant and the statutory instruments—[Interruption.] I know she is saying that we can debate the matters now, but is she saying that if we vote not to do so, she would refuse to have any further debate on them?
Mrs May
I have made it absolutely clear that we have had an opportunity to debate these matters today. Ample time has been set aside for the debate. The point of the business motion on which we voted earlier was to ensure that we could have a lengthier debate, rather than the hour and a half that would normally be set aside to debate such regulations. The Government have given time to Members to make their points and contribute to the debate before voting on the regulations. We have been clear about our position on the regulations, but the shadow Home Secretary is now suggesting that she wishes to curtail that debate. The opportunity was there for hon. Members.
This is an important matter, on which different views are held. I have made it clear why we have brought forward the regulations and why we should debate and vote on them now. We need to make these decisions in order to inform the European Commission and other member states and to enable the Council to take a decision, to ensure that there is no operational gap on 1 December.
Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)
I am mindful of the fact that my right hon. Friend has stressed the importance of the timetable—[Interruption.] I slipped out of the Chamber for one cup of tea; otherwise, I have been here for the duration of the debate. I hope that the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (John Robertson) will withdraw that remark. Will the Home Secretary explain what difference it would make if we postponed the debate from today to tomorrow or next week, given that we were promised a debate and a vote on these matters by 20 November?
Mrs May
My hon. Friend puts it very well. We said that we would bring this debate to the House and enable a vote to take place according to a particular timetable, and we have done so. We have introduced the measures in the form of regulations because these are the only ones that require transposing into UK legislation. It is absolutely clear what the legislative approach would be. I think that Members would be unwilling to accept any decision by the Government not to introduce the regulations or not to show Members before the 1 December cut-off date what those regulations would look like.
I have not been in this House for quite as long as some right hon. and hon. Members but it is clear to me that all hon. Members wanted an opportunity to stand up and put their arguments on a variety of matters, including the European arrest warrant. That option was open to Members tonight, but the shadow Home Secretary is saying that she wants to forget about the timetable and about our need to put the regulations before the House. Instead, she seems to be saying that the Government should not have brought the debate to the House, because she does not happen to think we have done it in the way she wanted. Well, that is not a position that I am willing to accept. I have made it clear why the regulations have been brought forward and why we feel it necessary to do so. We have debated the European arrest warrant and, had she not moved her motion, other Members would have been able to debate it as well. Her motion is not an attempt to ensure that the House has a proper debate. It is not an attempt to ensure that the House votes on these important measures. It is just an attempt to take away—
Michael Ellis
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the motion smacks of political opportunism on the part of the Opposition? Does she also agree that it is ironic, or perhaps just odd, for them to be talking about voting on this matter given that we are in this position as a result of the Lisbon treaty, which the Labour Government negotiated so ineptly and negligently? In the light of the incompetence of the previous Labour Government and of the current Labour Opposition, one might almost think that they were leaderless.
Mrs May
I thank my hon. Friend for reminding us of the difficulties that the Labour party is having with its leadership. I will make no further comment—[Interruption.] He tempts me to comment on why the shadow Home Secretary has been intervening in the debate in certain ways this evening, but I will not do so. He has made an important point.
Earlier, I asked the right hon. Lady who had negotiated the opt-out, opt-in arrangements in the Lisbon treaty. She was unwilling to answer the question, because it followed on from her complaining about the inadequacies of those arrangements. Those inadequate arrangements were negotiated and introduced by her own Government, of whom she was a Cabinet member. She refused to accept that point, however. She will not accept any suggestion that we are now having to deal with these opt-out, opt-in arrangements as a direct result of the Labour Government’s negotiations on the Lisbon treaty. This situation is not a result of the way in which this Government have been dealing with these matters. I have made it clear that we should have been able to continue the debate tonight. It is quite wrong for the right hon. Lady to have introduced the new motion and I hope that, on that basis, hon. Members will vote against it.
Business of the House (Today)
Baroness May of Maidenhead Excerpts(10 years, 1 month ago)
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Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
This is a disgraceful way of going about a very important matter. It is tainted with chicanery. It is not the way that Parliament should be treated. Right from the very beginning of this issue, the European Scrutiny Committee, the Home Affairs Committee and the Justice Committee have complained about the lack of transparency and consultation and the manner in which the Home Secretary has been treating the House. It is completely unbelievable that she should come to the House and, presumably, try to argue—as we shall discover in due course—that this is about the EAW when it clearly is not.
If the motion were a Bill, it would be dealt with in separate clauses and parts, all of which could be amended, but this motion is unamendable. That has not yet been properly considered. This is being done to avoid a real decision being taken today, as was promised to us by the Prime Minister only a few weeks ago, and by the Home Secretary in the article in The Sunday Telegraph and in the letter that the shadow Home Secretary referred to. This is a travesty of our parliamentary proceedings, and that is a reason in itself to vote against the business motion, as I shall be doing. I could give many other reasons for doing so, but it is fundamentally about a lack of transparency and honesty in going about issues we need to deal with.
Sir William Cash
I am sorry that the Home Secretary is shaking her head, because she knows perfectly well that this is a trick and an attempt to get round the reality of what is facing us: this is not just about law and order, but about the European Court of Justice and the opportunities being created to bypass this House and our own courts. It is a disgrace.
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
I thank you, Mr Speaker, for the opportunity to speak on the business motion.
The Lisbon treaty, which was negotiated by the previous Labour Government and which included within it the opportunity for the United Kingdom to opt out of around 130 justice and home affairs measures and then to decide whether to opt back in to a number of measures, did not require any vote to be brought before this House of Commons to undertake those decisions. This Government believe that that was wrong, which is why we have brought a number of debates before this House on these matters. There is also no legislative requirement for us to bring before the House this package of 35 justice and home affairs measures.
Mrs May
No, I will not give way. Members have been calling for me to stand up and speak, and that is exactly what I am doing.
There is no legislative requirement for us to bring this package of 35 measures to this House for Members to consider and vote on. There is a legislative requirement for us to transpose certain measures into UK legislation. The normal way of doing that is upstairs in a Standing Committee, on a one-and-a-half hour debate on a negative statutory instrument, after 1 December and after the decision by this Government to opt in to a certain number of measures had been taken.
Mr Speaker
No, no, no. The Home Secretary is entitled to say—and she will say—what she thinks, and the House must hear that.
Yvette Cooper
The Home Secretary seems to think that the House should be grateful for what we have got, but she and the Prime Minister promised that there would be a vote on the European arrest warrant. Will she now admit that, with the motion she has put before the House today, she has broken that promise?
Mrs May
If the right hon. Lady will just let me continue, I will explain further to the House. As I have said, there is no requirement to bring any vote to the House. There is a requirement to transpose into UK legislation certain of the 35 measures that we will opt back into. That would normally have been done through the negative statutory instrument procedure in an hour-and-a-half debate upstairs in a Committee, not on the Floor of the House. That would normally have been done after 1 December, so after the date on which the Government had chosen to opt back in, and indeed after we had exercised our opt-in. We did not think that that was right either, which is why we have brought before the House an affirmative measure on a statutory instrument that shows the House the legislative requirements that will need to be made.
However, I have been very clear, the Government have been very clear, and indeed you, Mr Speaker, have been very clear—I am grateful for the clarification in your statement—that the debate we will be having on the motion on the regulations will be wide-ranging and, indeed, will include a debate on the European arrest warrant. I say to Members of the House that it is my intention to speak about the European arrest warrant when that debate takes place. I also say to right hon. and hon. Members that if they vote against this—[Interruption.]
Jacob Rees-Mogg
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. I am not sure that the Home Secretary was listening earlier when you said that the European arrest warrant can only be mentioned peripherally in the main debate, because she has just said that she intends to speak about it. It might be helpful if you reiterated your earlier advice, in case she had not been listening.
Mrs May
Thank you, Mr Speaker. I am clear that it is possible in the debate on the regulations to discuss those measures that are not listed in the regulations, and that is certainly what I and other Members intend to do. The Government are very clear that what we are debating in the next debate is the regulations that transpose into legislation those measures that need to be transposed.
Mrs May
No.
The European arrest warrant is not on that list because it does not need to be transposed into legislation, because that has already been done. However, the Government are clear that the vote that will take place on the regulations will be the vote that determines whether or not we opt into these measures. [Interruption.]
Sir Edward Leigh
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. As we are talking about the liberties of the subject, this is a very important matter. You have absolutely said in terms that the vote tonight is not about the European arrest warrant. The Home Secretary seems to be intimating that we are indeed making an indicative vote tonight on the European arrest warrant. The House of Commons, in a matter concerning the liberty of the individual, needs to know what it is voting on, and we need advice from you and the Home Secretary.
Mr Speaker
Order. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his point or order. What Members think is indicative is a matter for them. Indeed, if a Minister in Her Majesty’s Government chooses to argue that something is indicative, that is a matter for that Minister. As a matter of fact, I was simply trying to be clear with the House, as I think was the Home Secretary in her previous paragraph, to be fair, that tonight’s vote—I have been asked regularly what the vote is about—is on the regulations. The vote is not—I repeat, not—on the European arrest warrant.
Mrs May
Thank you, Mr Speaker. In fact, I was attempting to be as clear as you have been that the vote on the next motion will be a vote on the regulations, which includes those measures in the package of 35 that we wish to opt back into which require to be transposed into UK legislation. But the Government are clear that we will be bound by that vote, and if this House chooses not to transpose those measures and votes against the regulations, it will be voting against the Government opting into all the measures, including the European arrest warrant.
My final point is this: we have the option now of a vote on the business motion. The decision for Members of the House is whether to vote against that business motion and have one and a half hours for debate on all these matters, or to vote in favour of the business motion and have four and a half hours for debate. I trust they will take the latter option.
Yvette Cooper
Mr Speaker, you pointed out how unusual it was for the Government also to reply to debates on a business motion, but is it not normal in a reply to respond to the points that have been made in the debate? In the debate it was clear that the Home Secretary promised a debate on the European arrest warrant and promised a vote on it, and she has not given it. Do you agree that that is not a reply to a business motion debate?
Mr Speaker
I think I have set out the position clearly and there is nothing at this stage for me to add, but Members will form their own view. That is the fairest thing I can say—Members will form their own view.
I think I am right in saying that the Home Secretary has concluded her speech.
Modern Slavery Bill
Baroness May of Maidenhead Excerpts(10 years, 1 month ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
The injustice and suffering experienced by victims of modern slavery is often difficult to comprehend: young girls raped, beaten and passed from abuser to abuser so that they can be sexually exploited for profit; vulnerable men tricked into long hours of hard labour before being locked away in cold sheds or run-down caravans; people made to work in fields, in factories and on fishing vessels; women forced into prostitution; children forced into a life of crime; and domestic workers imprisoned and made to work all hours of the day and night for little or no pay. Those are the harsh realities of modern day slavery, and those are the crimes taking place not in the distant past, but in towns, cities and villages in Britain today.
That is why this Modern Slavery Bill—the first of its kind in Europe—is so important. It sends out a powerful message about our intent to be at the forefront of this fight and to end this trade in human misery. It will ensure that we can effectively prosecute perpetrators, properly punish offenders and help prevent more crimes from taking place in the first place. But most importantly, it will enhance protection and support for the victims of these appalling crimes. Furthermore, in a measure that goes further than any other similar legislation in the world, it will encourage businesses to make sure that supply chains for goods and services sold in the UK are not tarnished by slavery.
Members on both sides of the House have contributed enormously to the Bill, and today we have heard further lively and constructive debate. I thank all those who have played a role in shaping the Bill. In particular, I thank all those who played a part in Committee for their valuable contributions. All those who contributed in Committee and at other stages in the Bill’s passage through the House have ensured that we will have effective legislation to deal with offenders and protect victims. I thank the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley), in particular, for not only her tireless work but for her passionate commitment to this issue.
I think that the Bill has been greatly improved by its passage through this House, demonstrating the value of parliamentary scrutiny. I pay tribute to the members of the pre-legislative scrutiny Committee, particularly the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), who chaired the Committee, and whose unstinting dedication to the issue has been truly admirable. The Committee held an intensive and thorough inquiry and produced a report that led to significant improvements in the Bill.
I have always been clear that victims must be at the heart of everything we do, and it is imperative that they get the help and support they need and deserve. I commissioned the detailed review of the national referral mechanism to ensure that we provide effective care and support and that all agencies work together in the best interests of victims. The review will be published shortly, and the Government are currently re-tendering the victims care contract. It is also why I put in place a trial scheme of child trafficking advocates so that child victims’ voices are heard and they receive the support and assistance they need in relation to the social care, immigration and criminal justice systems.
Sarah Champion (Rotherham) (Lab)
I am listening to the Secretary of State with interest. I am pleased to hear that she is putting victims at the very centre of the Bill. Why, then, did the Government turn down Labour’s amendment to make child exploitation part of the Bill?
Mrs May
I say to the hon. Lady, who was, I believe, a member of the Bill Committee and has obviously been working on this with others, that we looked at the issue of child exploitation and took a lot of advice on it. The worry was that if it were referenced in the Bill in the way suggested, that could lead to certain actions and activities falling within the description of child exploitation that were never intended to be part of the Bill. In short, I am afraid that the law of unintended consequences would have kicked in and a disbenefit would have resulted from having that aspect in the Bill.
However, as the hon. Lady knows, we have brought together various offences and made some changes to them in order to clarify some of the issues. There has been genuine debate, in Committee and throughout the stages in this Chamber, on the various issues in the Bill, and I think it is, in a number of aspects, a better Bill as a result. We have responded on the issue of supply chains. We have added the new provision on the statutory defence for victims of modern slavery who are compelled to commit crimes. That includes substantial safeguards against abuse but would not apply to a number of serious offences—mainly violent and sexual offences, as set out in the Bill.
The Bill extends to all modern slavery victims existing provisions that help victims of trafficking to gain access to special measures in court. I hope that that will give victims the confidence to come forward and give evidence.
Sir Edward Garnier
Will my right hon. Friend take time over the next few days to have a look at the record of this afternoon’s debates? I spoke about exploitation by brainwashing. Although that is not yet in the Bill, I hope that at some stage she and her team will consider the inclusion of some sort of offence along those lines. Will she also take this opportunity to mention Mr Anthony Steen, our former colleague, whose work outside Parliament has done a great deal to push this agenda forward?
Mrs May
I thank my hon. and learned Friend. I recognise that we were not able to respond to the specific points that he raised, and my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary or I will write to him about those.
I am indeed happy to pay tribute to the work that has been done by Anthony Steen, who, for a period of time, was my special envoy and produced a number of reports. He went to a number of countries to look at how they were dealing with this issue, and he was able to bring that experience back and help to inform us in dealing with the Bill.
This Bill will stand alongside our wider programme of work to tackle modern slavery nationally and internationally. It is an important step, but if it is to be implemented effectively we need concerted effort from all those involved. That is why we will publish a comprehensive strategy to tackle modern slavery that will complement the legislative framework that we are putting in place.
Mr Burrowes
May I put on record my thanks to the Under-Secretary, who withstood and responded to robust challenge and scrutiny in Committee? We have a Bill that is fit for purpose and will no doubt be strengthened further as it goes through the rest of its parliamentary stages. I commend her for her passion and dedication.
The amendment that provides that the anti-slavery commissioner is independent is a welcome addition to the Bill. Will the fact that they are now explicitly independent under the Bill affect the selection process, which I understand has already started with the advertising of the position?
Mrs May
It was always the intention that the anti-slavery commissioner would be independent and that does not affect the selection process. A number of posts within the purview of Government are made by appointment. In my own area, for example, they are appointed by the Home Secretary. I assure my hon. Friend that those individuals remain fiercely independent in the work that they do. For example, I do not think that anybody has ever suggested that the appointment by the Home Secretary of the chief inspector of borders and immigration leads to him being anything other than extremely independent in his reports.
I want to mention one other aspect. I am clear that we must strengthen our law enforcement response. I have made tackling modern slavery a priority for the National Crime Agency and we are working with international law enforcement agencies to target organised criminal gangs. The UK is leading a group of international law enforcement chiefs, the Santa Marta group, which will strengthen and co-ordinate our response to modern slavery internationally. The members of the Santa Marta group will meet again in London in December.
As I have said, modern slavery is an appalling crime that crushes lives and strips people of their dignity. More than 200 years ago, this House passed historic legislation to make the slave trade illegal. Sadly, the fight against slavery is not at an end. This Bill will ensure that we can continue that fight against the slave drivers and traffickers, and release innocent people from slavery and servitude so that they can be returned to freedom. I commend this Bill to the House.
Child Abuse Inquiry
Baroness May of Maidenhead Excerpts(10 years, 1 month ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
With permission, Mr Speaker, I would like to make a statement on the independent panel inquiry into child abuse, which has been established to consider whether institutions in England and Wales have taken seriously their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse.
The House will remember that in July, I made a statement in which I announced my intention to establish the panel inquiry. I did so because of the growing evidence of organised child sexual abuse, conducted over many years, and serious allegations about the failure of some of our most important institutions to protect children from this disgusting crime. I established a panel inquiry, because it is the best way of making sure that the inquiry is conducted by a team of experts with empathy and sensitivity to the feelings of the survivors of child abuse. The fact that it is a panel consisting of several people means that it has within it more expertise than any one person could offer. Importantly, the public can have extra confidence in the integrity of its work, because no one individual can take important decisions or come to judgments alone.
The members of the panel—Sharon Evans, Ivor Frank, Dame Moira Gibb, Barbara Hearn, Professor Jenny Pearce, Dru Sharpling, Professor Terence Stephenson and Graham Wilmer—are in place, and they are supported by Ben Emmerson QC, who is counsel to the inquiry, and Professor Alexis Jay, who is the panel’s expert adviser. The panel therefore consists of members with a broad range of experience and skills. They have backgrounds in social care, academia, law enforcement, health care, the media and voluntary sector, and some have experienced sexual abuse themselves as children. I believe that the panel can command the confidence of the public and—most importantly—of the survivors of child abuse.
The House will know, however, that on Friday, the panel’s chairman, Fiona Woolf, announced her intention to resign. She did so because, as she wrote in her letter to me,
“it has become clear that the inquir,”—
if she continued to chair it—
“would not have the widespread victim support it so desperately deserves and needs.”
Fiona Woolf’s resignation follows the resignation of the panel’s first chairman, the noble and learned Lady, Baroness Butler-Sloss. Both women, I believe, had strong credentials to chair the inquiry. Baroness Butler-Sloss was the first female Lord Justice of Appeal, president of the family division of the High Court, and she chaired the Cleveland child abuse inquiry. Fiona Woolf is a leading lawyer and a former president of the Law Society. However, for different—and in the end, understandable—reasons, both Baroness Butler-Sloss and Fiona Woolf concluded that they did not command the confidence of survivors.
Almost four months after I announced my intention to establish a panel inquiry, it is obviously very disappointing that we do not yet have a panel chairman, and for that I want to tell survivors that I am sorry. To put it bluntly, it will not be straightforward to find a chairman who has both the expertise to do this hugely important work, and has had no contact at all with an institution or an individual about whom people have concerns. I still believe, however, that it is possible to find somebody who is suitably qualified and can win the confidence of survivors, so I want to turn now to what I plan to do to recruit a new chairman.
I will hold meetings with representatives of the survivors of child abuse, starting next week. I have already had a number of discussions with Members of Parliament who have campaigned for an inquiry into child abuse—the hon. Members for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming), for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk), for Wells (Tessa Munt), for West Bromwich East (Mr Watson), and my hon. Friends the Members for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) and for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith)—and I will continue to have discussions with them. I will also discuss the appointment of the new panel chairman with the shadow Home Secretary and the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz). I have already agreed with the right hon. Gentleman that the nominated panel chairman will attend a pre-confirmation hearing before the Home Affairs Select Committee.
In the meantime, the panel will go about its important work, and I can tell the House that it will hold its first meeting on Wednesday 12 November, and meet every Wednesday thereafter until Christmas. The panel will organise other meetings that will discuss the different themes and issues covered by the inquiry, and attendance for those meetings—for both panel members and expert witnesses—will be set accordingly. In addition, the panel secretariat is planning two regional events that will be held before Christmas, and another four that will be held in the new year. Those regional events will provide an early opportunity for survivors to give their views about how the panel should go about its work.
One matter that I know has been raised by some campaigners is whether the inquiry should become a statutory inquiry. The inquiry, as constituted at present, like the inquiries into Hillsborough and the murder of Daniel Morgan, is a non-statutory inquiry. I have already said that the panel will have access to all Government papers, reviews and reports that it requests, and subject to the constraints imposed by any criminal investigations, it will be free to call witnesses from any organisation it deems appropriate. However, as I said to the House in July, I want to make it clear that, if the panel chairman deems it necessary, the Government are prepared to convert it into a full statutory inquiry, in line with the Inquiries Act 2005.
Another matter that has been raised is the terms of reference for the inquiry. Some say the terms are too broad, while others say the terms are too narrow. I do not propose to narrow the terms of reference, because to do that would risk missing out, in a fairly arbitrary manner, some important institutions. Likewise, I do not propose to extend the terms of reference to include Northern Ireland, Scotland or the Crown dependencies. I will, however, discuss with the new panel chairman how the Hart inquiry in Northern Ireland and the Oldham inquiry in Jersey can feed in to the panel to make sure that no information, and no institutions or individuals with a case to answer, can fall through the cracks.
I can also tell the House that the Government are considering ways of trying to make the experience of giving evidence less traumatic for survivors. The panel will therefore take evidence not just in public and private meetings, but remotely, with witnesses able to speak to panel members from their homes. The secretariat to the inquiry is also in discussions with officials in the Department of Health and other organisations to ensure that counselling and support is available to survivors before and after they provide evidence to the inquiry. To ensure that there is an open channel of communication between survivors, the panel and the Government, I will establish a survivor liaison group, which will meet on a regular basis as long as the inquiry continues.
Some Members of the House have suggested that the Government should publish today the Wanless report about the Home Office permanent secretary’s investigation into the so-called Dickens dossier. I can tell the House that the Wanless report will be published next week. That is because it is about a separate but related matter to the work of the panel inquiry, and I want members of the public and the media to have time to scrutinise both this statement and the Wanless review properly.
In the midst of debate about names, structures and legal powers, we must always keep in mind the survivors of child abuse themselves. Let us remember the events that prompted me to announce this historic inquiry into child abuse in the first place. There was the systematic abuse of vulnerable young girls in Derby, Rochdale, Oxford and other towns and cities across the country; examples of celebrities abusing minors and getting away with it, apparently because of their fame; and evidence that some of the most important institutions in the country, from the BBC to the NHS, failed in their duty of care towards children.
Since I made my statement in July, the evidence has only mounted. We have seen the Alexis Jay report into abuse in Rotherham, and the report by the hon. Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey), which was commissioned by Tony Lloyd, the police and crime commissioner for Greater Manchester. Both reports exposed serious failings among the police, social services, schools and other institutions, and the obvious conclusion is that, if only we had learned from those appalling cases earlier, there would be fewer victims of abuse today. I believe the whole House will agree with me that we owe it to the survivors in all those cases to work together, to let the panel inquiry do its job as quickly as possible, and to start to learn the lessons of the many cases where undoubtedly too many things went horribly wrong.
I want to end my statement by issuing a direct message to the many survivors of child abuse and their representatives:
I know you have experienced terrible things. I know we cannot imagine what that must be like. And I know that, perhaps because of the identity of your abusers or the way you were treated when you needed help, many of you have lost trust in the authorities. I know some of you have questioned the legitimacy of this process. I know you are disappointed that the panel has no chairman. I understand that. I am listening, and to you, I say this: I am as determined as you are to get to the truth. That is why I set up this inquiry.
We have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to do something that is hugely important. Together, we can expose what has gone wrong in the past. We can prevent it going wrong in the future. We can make sure that people who thought they were beyond the reach of the law face justice. We can do everything possible to save vulnerable young children from the appalling abuse that you suffered and endured. Let us come together to make this process work and finally deliver justice for what you and too many others have suffered.
I commend this statement to the House.
Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
I welcome the Home Secretary’s statement to the House today.
Two years ago this month, the Home Secretary came to the House to announce investigations into abuse in north Wales care homes. I asked her then if she would set up an overarching inquiry into child abuse. In July this year, she rightly agreed to do so and said that she wanted it to start as quickly as possible. Four months later, that inquiry has not started and has been mired by confusion. I therefore welcome the changes she has announced today and her apology to survivors of abuse for the things that have gone wrong.
This House will be united in our determination that this inquiry should get back on track. For too long, children have not been listened to when they called for help. From the BBC to the national health service, from care homes to the police, from local councils to national Governments of all political parties, no institution or organisation should be complacent about how they may have failed in the past, or might be failing even now, to make sure that children are heard and protected, that criminals are brought to justice, that problems are not covered up, and that survivors get the support they need. No one should be in any doubt about the deep damage that abuse causes to those survivors for the rest of their lives. To get the inquiry back on track, we also need to recognise the things that went wrong, because it is vital that it does not fail again.
First, much more work is needed to involve survivors. I welcome the further announcements the Home Secretary has made today. The Home Secretary was specifically asked in July by my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) how survivors would be involved. In July, she said that that was up to the chairman of the inquiry. However, I think that that approach from the Home Office has been what has caused some of the current problems. As she has recognised today, Ministers need to engage directly themselves with survivors on the impartiality of the chair and the work and purpose of the inquiry before it starts. I welcome her commitment now to meet survivors, in particular to develop additional support and counselling, and to establish a survivors’ forum or liaison group to ensure that their voices are heard. She will know how important it is that this liaison group or forum works effectively. Will she specifically consult survivors in those meetings on the terms of reference and on the issues the inquiry should focus on before it starts?
Secondly, on the choice of chair, I welcome the Home Secretary’s proposals to consult more widely. Will she ignore those siren voices who say it is not possible to find someone who is not a close contact of those whose decisions may be investigated by the inquiry? She will know that other sensitive inquiries have managed to do important work without going wrong and without being derailed, including the Hillsborough and Soham inquiries, and the current Northern Ireland inquiry into child abuse.
Thirdly, on transparency, the inquiry has to address concerns about whether there have been institutional cover-ups. Does the Home Secretary therefore agree that it was very unwise of Home Office officials to become involved in redrafting Fiona Woolf’s letters? Will she tell the House whether Ministers or special advisers saw those earlier letters, or were involved in redrafting? Will she make sure that no one in the Home Office is involved in drafting any disclosure letters for the next chair?
I welcome the Home Secretary’s announcement that the Wanless review report will be published next week. Will she make a statement to the House on it? She will know that there will be considerable interest from all parties in the House. This is not just about the past. We know that abuse is happening now on an unacceptable scale. Will she therefore ensure that there is much greater transparency on child protection work today, particularly the work of the National Crime Agency, to make sure that we are not making the same mistakes again and are not storing up more problems for children in future?
Fourthly, on the progress of the inquiry, I welcome the Home Secretary’s agreement to getting the panel moving before the chair is appointed and to keeping open the need for it to be a statutory inquiry, because it is vital that it can get access to all the information and testimony it needs.
This is an extremely important inquiry. The Home Secretary has done the right thing to recognise that things have gone wrong, and we will support her in the action needed and whatever it takes to get things back on track and ensure that the inquiry works. However, let me also urge her not to forget the scale of the problem of child abuse and exploitation happening right now and the weaknesses in the child protection system today. We need a fearless and robust examination of how children have been let down, and we will support her in making sure that happens; but we also need strong action to protect children and make sure they are heard in future. She is right that this is a once-in-a-generation opportunity; it is important, not just for survivors but for our children today, to make sure that this historic opportunity is not lost.
Mrs May
I thank the right hon. Lady for the tone and approach she has taken to this matter. As I said in my statement, across the House we all feel that we have an opportunity to do something that can deal with the terrible abuses and crimes that have taken place in the past and to learn the lessons that are necessary for the future. As we have seen with the recent reports into Rotherham and the report about Greater Manchester from the hon. Member for Stockport, these issues have not gone away. We continue to see abuse taking place and we continue to see failures, sadly, in our institutions—some of them the very institutions that children should expect to be able to trust to protect them from these sorts of crimes.
The right hon. Lady asked a number of questions. On engagement with survivors, as I indicated, I will be meeting with survivors groups. The secretariat to the panel inquiry has also started some separate meetings with survivors groups already. As I indicated, there will be further opportunities for such meetings and for some open forums in different parts of the country, where it will be possible for people to come forward. I recognise the importance of that process; it is an important part of the work that the panel inquiry will be undertaking.
I believe it will be possible to find an individual who is able to chair the inquiry. Of course, it is necessary that that individual has the confidence of the survivors and the skill set required to lead a team, which is what the panel inquiry is all about. This is not about one person as chairman making decisions; it is about a team of people with different expertise and experience—some on the panel are survivors of child abuse themselves, as I have said—coming together to ensure we can get to the truth.
The right hon. Lady asked a question about the drafting process for the letters and whether I was aware of it. I was not. I have checked with my special advisers; they were aware only that a letter was being written. They had no knowledge of its different iterations and had no part in drafting or redrafting the letter.
The right hon. Lady made reference to the need for transparency in a number of areas and in relation to the National Crime Agency as well. The work that the National Crime Agency has been doing—particularly the now over 700 arrests we have seen in Operation Notarise—is an important sign of the seriousness with which it takes these issues. As she will be aware, the director general of the National Crime Agency, Keith Bristow, has made a number of comments about the significance and the size of the potential problem we face in this country. It is shocking. I am sure every Member of this House is appalled by the scale and nature of these crimes. I believe the National Crime Agency is being open about the work it is undertaking on that.
We owe it to the survivors of historic child abuse, as well as to those who might be subject to child abuse today, to ensure not only that the panel inquiry is doing its work, but that those involved in criminal investigations today are bringing perpetrators to justice.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)
I commend the Home Secretary for the very measured way in which she has approached this issue, and I remind the House that it is only because of her that this inquiry is now taking place in response to Back Benchers’ requests. I remind my right hon. Friend that this is an overarching inquiry, encompassing everything from Savile to Rotherham, and not about individual children or individual people who may or may not have been implicated. This is not a one-woman show; it is a panel of experts open to scrutiny. Will she reiterate to me that to put survivors at the heart of this inquiry, it will be necessary to consult them about the possibilities for a future chairman and to have a sounding-board of survivors and victims, who have not been listened to for so many decades, so that they can continue to shape the inquiry as it goes forward and gain their confidence every step of the way? That is vital and I know she supports it.
Mrs May
My hon. Friend makes very important points, and I am grateful to him for the conversations we have had. As I indicated, I have spoken to a number of Members who have been campaigning on this issue over the years. He is absolutely right that the terms of reference mean that the panel inquiry will look at a period of 44 years—from 1970 to today—and that it is open to the panel to decide whether it wishes to go beyond that period. It is indeed overarching, looking at cases of historical abuse and more recent cases to find out what were the institutional failures when it came to protecting children, and what further lessons need to be learned. My hon. Friend is absolutely right that we must remember the survivors in this work; it is for them that we are trying to find the answers to what happened in the past and trying to ensure that in future people will not have to go through the terrible experiences that some did. I will set up a liaison group, whose aim will be exactly as my hon. Friend suggested—to ensure that the survivors are kept in touch and able to contribute as the inquiry goes along.
Mr David Blunkett (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)
I commend the Secretary of State and my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) for the tone of the statement and the response. The emphasis on survivors and victims raises the issue, as the Home Secretary mentioned, of the scale of the problem. What immediate steps could be put in place not just to help the historical victims but to prepare for further revelations? It is beyond belief that this is not a nationwide problem rather than one confined to the areas that have already been identified. Given the enormity of the task confronting the panel, would it be reasonable in practical terms at least to consider having a joint chair, so that two people could address not only the historical lessons but where we need to go in changing the culture and altering the nature of how this country’s institutions have worked?
Mrs May
The right hon. Gentleman makes an interesting suggestion, which was proposed to me by another Member this morning. The point of having a panel is that not just one individual or indeed potentially two co-chairs will be undertaking this work. The idea is to have a group of people coming together with different experience and different expertise. Unlike in simple judge-led inquiries where one person leads, it is very much the case that all the panel members will contribute. The chairman’s role is about the management of the inquiry, but the management in this case will be through a team of people brought together to ensure that the work is done properly.
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
The Home Secretary is to be commended for the tone in which she has delivered the statement. Is there not a problem, however? If the chairman asked for an Inquiries Act 2005 inquiry—I experienced this when I had to demand the public inquiry into the Mid Staffordshire hospital, which proved to be a significant success—does the Home Secretary realise that she would have to disband the whole thing and go back to square one? Would it not be far better to start off with an Inquiries Act 2005 inquiry, which would allow evidence on oath, compulsion of witnesses and other matters to help us get to the bottom of this as we did with the Mid Staffs inquiry?
Mrs May
I hesitate to question my hon. Friend’s comments on such matters, but my advice is that it would be possible to turn the inquiry into a statutory one—namely, an inquiry with the powers of a statutory inquiry to compel witnesses—but for that to happen it would be necessary to have a request from the chairman. At the moment, it is not possible because we do not have a chairman. Once the chairman is in place, they will be able to make that judgment and come forward if they wish to turn this into a statutory inquiry.
Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)
Will the Home Secretary follow up the—in my view—very sensible suggestion from her right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), the former Attorney-General, that the net should be cast more widely on this occasion, and that the search for a chair should extend to jurisdictions abroad that are similar to ours?
Mrs May
Our initial consideration of potential candidates did involve looking more widely than the United Kingdom, and I should be happy to repeat that process. It should be borne in mind that it is not only the United Kingdom that has seen examples of child abuse of this sort. If we do look more widely, we must be careful to ensure that individuals will again be able to have the confidence of survivors.
John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD)
Leah McGrath Goodman, an American journalist, was banned from entering the country by the UK Border Agency, as a result of which she was prevented from investigating child abuse in Jersey. The allegations involved a senior UK politician. I hear what the Home Secretary says about terms of reference, but the terms of reference would exclude investigation of an issue that falls into two jurisdictions. Why, for instance, was Leah McGrath Goodman arrested at Heathrow airport recently? Will the Home Secretary look carefully at such issues, which are evidence of the way in which things have been covered up during the present decade?
Mrs May
I know that my hon. Friend has long campaigned for events that took place in Jersey to be included in any inquiry that is held. As I explained earlier, I will take steps to ensure that no work that is done by the inquiry into matters in Jersey is lost to this inquiry, if it is relevant to this inquiry, and that no one falls through the cracks. As for the case of the journalist coming through the border, I was not aware of it, but if my hon. Friend writes to me about it, I will respond.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
I welcome the tone and content of the Home Secretary’s statement, which drew a line under the flawed process that we have seen so far, and which will give hope to the victims who have been waiting for this inquiry. The Select Committee accepts her proposal that we should conduct pre-appointment hearings, which may well set a precedent for parliamentary scrutiny of future public inquiries. In the meantime, she has set a very ambitious programme for the panel, and it is right that it should begin its work by meeting every Wednesday until Christmas. Who will chair those proceedings, or will the chair rotate between the panel members?
I am glad that the Home Secretary will be publishing the Wanless-Whittam report. The Committee hopes to examine both gentlemen next week. Will the Home Secretary assure us that there are no other documents that are relevant to the inquiry and have not been published, and that, if there are any such documents, she will make them available to the Committee and to the panel?
Mrs May
It would be possible for me to appoint an existing member of the panel to chair it on an interim basis, but I think that that should be discussed with the panel members to ensure that they are comfortable with any arrangements that are made. They will have their own proposals about how they wish to conduct their work. I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman and the Select Committee for their willingness to take the process on board, and to hold a pre-confirmation meeting. I asked for that to be done because I think it important for the appointment to have a public element that can further guarantee the confidence of survivors in the process.
I certainly intend all Government documents to be made available to the inquiry, but I caution the right hon. Gentleman that it will be for the panel to consider the appropriateness of publishing some of the material that is put before it. The same process applied to the members of the Hillsborough inquiry panel. There were some matters that they considered, for a range of reasons, in relation to individuals with whom they discussed those matters, and it is possible that there are matters of that sort that this panel would not wish to be aired in public.
Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
The whole House will welcome the Home Secretary’s determination to get to the truth. Can she reassure constituents who have been victims of child abuse and have contacted me that the inquiry will start its work as soon as possible, and that the appointment of the chair will not cause unnecessary delay? I think that the victims deserve answers, and they are concerned about the delay that they are seeing.
Mrs May
I can give my right hon. Friend that reassurance. We had previously been waiting for the chairman to be in place before the inquiry set forth on its work. I think it is important that it does start now. As I have said, it is possible for it to start without a chairman, because it is a panel of members. I think everybody in this House wants to see this work started, and to get it going so we can see results coming from the work of the inquiry, because that is what is due to survivors. I am sure that that sentiment will be supported across the whole House.
Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)
I also welcome the Home Secretary’s statement. One of the shocking facts in historical child abuse cases is that institutional and wider public attitudes at the time enabled abusers to prey on children at will because children were not listened to. Does the Home Secretary agree that part of this inquiry’s job in learning from the past must be to bring forward recommendations about how we tackle wider cultural attitudes that mean that vulnerable children are still too often blamed for their own abuse because of how they look or what they wear?
Mrs May
I absolutely agree. What has been shocking in the Rotherham case and in the hon. Lady’s report into Greater Manchester—and we have also seen this in the historical cases—is the fact that those who were being abused often raised their voices but were not heard because they were not believed, or because, and I think this is truly shocking, people felt that those young people were in a circumstance such that they should not be listened to. As the hon. Lady said, in some sense this was seen as just the sort of thing that happened to those sorts of young people. This is an appalling attitude. We have seen it, and, sadly, we see it still today, in the work that is being done out there, as the hon. Lady has revealed. We see police officers, people in social services and others almost casting to one side certain individuals and not being willing to take up their cases. It is time that people looked not at the credibility of the individual, but at the credibility of the allegation.
Mr Andrew Lansley (South Cambridgeshire) (Con)
I welcome what the Home Secretary said about the panel proceeding with its work, but it does depend in part on the results of other inquiries into institutions, including those by Kate Lampard on the NHS and Dame Janet Smith on the BBC. Can the Home Secretary tell the House any more about the progress being made in the production of those reports? Clearly the panel will be able to access disclosure of documents, but I think we should assume that it will wish to go beyond that to independent investigations. Will she tell the House what kind of investigative resources would be available to the panel, should it seek them?
Mrs May
My right hon. Friend is right. I am not able to give him an absolute timeline on the other reports he referred to, but I am very happy to write to him, or for the Secretaries of State responsible for the Departments affected by those inquiries to write to him, to indicate where they are at the moment. It is important that all the evidence that is brought before this panel inquiry is available to it and it will obviously be looking at both historical cases and, as the reviews become available, looking into those reviews.
As for investigations taking place, it is not the task of the inquiry to determine criminal or civil liability for any individual. Where it is the case that allegations are made against an individual as a perpetrator, those allegations will be passed to the police. There will be an ability, through setting up various processes, to ensure allegations go to the police and are properly dealt with. So the investigation into specific allegations will be a matter for the police.
Simon Danczuk (Rochdale) (Lab)
I also welcome the Home Secretary’s statement, but does she agree that the role of the Home Office in the redrafting of Fiona Woolf’s letter in many ways displays the kind of self-preservation instincts held by the Home Office that got us into this mess in the first place? Who instructed the civil servants to assist Fiona Woolf in redrafting that letter?
Mrs May
The process, as I understand it, was that Fiona Woolf wanted to ensure that she was as transparent as possible in the information she gave in the letter she sent to me, and therefore went through a number of drafts in order to ensure that all information was available. As I have indicated, I was not aware of those iterations of drafts of the letter. I think it is important that we have ensured that there was transparency from Fiona Woolf, but, of course, other members of the panel were also asked to write to me to indicate whether there were any matters they felt should be known and people should be aware of before the panel started its work.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
I welcome the tone adopted by the Home Secretary. It is absolutely right that survivors must have confidence in the work of the inquiry. May I press her on the matter of the Kincora boys home in Northern Ireland? In her statement, she has said that she will not expand the terms of reference to cover Kincora, but I understand that she wrote to the First Minister of Northern Ireland last week to say that if there was not enough co-operation from the security services, she would seek agreement to bring that matter inside the terms of reference. Will she make it clear what is likely to happen in that regard?
Mrs May
I am not able to look ahead and see how this is going to progress, but I am clear that we need to ensure that Sir Anthony Hart has all the information he needs to be able to undertake his investigation into Kincora. I have made it clear today that we need to ensure that nothing happens to allow any information or any individual to slip between the cracks in terms of the work of the two inquiries. We will be talking to the panel inquiry about what needs to be put in place to ensure that information can be exchanged where it is relevant to both inquiries, precisely so that people will not slip between the cracks as a result of there being two inquiries.
Mr Tom Watson (West Bromwich East) (Lab)
I thank the Home Secretary for putting survivors at the centre of this inquiry. She made a very personal statement today, which I am sure will be appreciated. In a previous statement, she said that a mechanism would be found to allow panel members to have access to intelligence service files, where relevant. Will she give us a little more detail on the progress on that front?
Mrs May
I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who has campaigned long and hard on this issue on behalf of survivors. This is an issue that we have looked at in relation to Kincora boys home, and we are also looking at it in relation to this inquiry. It is my expectation and intention that all Government agencies will make information available to the inquiry when they are requested to do so. We are in the process of working out the protocol to ensure that that is possible between all agencies and the inquiry, so that no stone is left unturned.
Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)
I join others in commending the Home Secretary for her tone. I also commend the tone of those on the Opposition Front Bench. I particularly commend the Home Secretary for setting up the inquiry in the first place. By doing so, she has transcended the issues of the past, and we now hope to arrive at some important truths. What is often not mentioned is the vast expertise of the members of the inquiry panel. They bring with them a vast amount of experience, and two of the panel’s members are themselves survivors. Will she confirm her confidence in the panel as it stands? I commend her for factoring in the crucial importance of survivors being at the forefront of this exercise.
Mrs May
I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. He is absolutely right: we brought the panel members together precisely because of the breadth of their experience and expertise. As he said, Graham Wilmer, who established the Lantern Project, is himself a survivor who has worked to help and support other survivors. Another member of the panel, Professor Pearce, has been working on these issues in an academic setting. There is representation from the health service, as well as from Dru Sharpling, an inspector of constabulary who brings the law enforcement angle to the panel. The members of the panel possess a significant amount of expertise and individual experience, and I believe that all of them coming together will lead to them being able to get to the truth.
Ian Paisley (North Antrim) (DUP)
I should like to add my voice to those who have expressed appreciation of the Home Secretary’s sincerity today. No one doubts her sincerity for a moment. However, most people do not get a second chance, never mind a third one, to get something right. Will she now listen carefully to the unanimous representations from the Home Affairs Select Committee and the Northern Ireland Assembly—it is a difficult enough task to get a unanimous view from the Assembly—that Kincora should be included in the inquiry? Will she now get this matter right as well?
Mrs May
I recognise the hon. Gentleman’s concern about the Kincora inquiry, and that there have been representations; indeed, the First Minister himself made representations to me about the inclusion of Kincora. As I have indicated, I want to ensure that the Hart inquiry can do its work and have access to all the information to which it needs to have access. I also want to ensure that there is no question of any problems, individuals or organisations in any sense escaping attention as a result of there being two inquiries. For a number of reasons, not least the fact that the panel inquiry currently covers England and Wales, any work undertaken here obviously could not require changes in Northern Ireland, because this is a devolved not a reserved matter. We are all at one in agreeing that we want to make sure that these inquiries get to the truth, and that nobody and no institution can slip through the net.
Sir Edward Garnier (Harborough) (Con)
May I urge my right hon. Friend to think about the suggestion made by our hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) about setting up a statutory inquiry as soon as possible? I appreciate what she has said about waiting for the appointment of the chairman, but as soon as the chairman is appointed, will she consult him or her on transferring the inquiry across to the statutory system? It is much better to do that now, rather than when we are halfway through the process.
Will my right hon. Friend consider appointing, or urging the appointment, of a serving or recently retired senior judge who has experience of family law, children’s law and historical sex abuse, so that we can have an inquiry chairman who brings with them their authority and who commands respect?
Mrs May
I thank my hon. and learned Friend for his proposal. The process for a statutory inquiry is that it is for the chairman, once they are in place, to determine whether the inquiry should become a statutory one. I have made it absolutely clear—I do not think that I can be any clearer—that if they feel that that is necessary in order to compel witnesses and have the other powers of a statutory inquiry, the Government will respond to that.
On the sort individual who should be appointed, the important aspect is to have somebody in whom everybody dealing with the inquiry can have confidence and, crucially, in whom survivors can have confidence. When she wrote to me, Fiona Woolf said that it was that issue that led to her resignation.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
In making the progress that we all want, will the Home Secretary consider the names I will send to her of two people who are sensitive and greatly experienced in this field, but who cannot in any way be classed with the metropolitan elite? We should not move away from this matter without considering the serious situation in which the first of the seven versions of the letter, which was not presented to the Home Affairs Committee, gave the impression of a close friendship between the Brittans and Fiona Woolf, while the final version suggested that they were almost strangers. Was that not an attempt by the civil service to mislead the Committee and, by doing so, to mislead the House? What is she going to do about that?
Mrs May
I do not believe that there was any attempt to mislead the House. The letter that I received was the letter that Fiona Woolf agreed. I believe that she intended in that letter to be as transparent as possible about the nature of her relationship with the noble Lord Brittan. I am sure that many Members of the House have proposals about individuals who would be appropriate for the chairmanship, and I will certainly look at the names that the hon. Gentleman wishes to send to me.
Steve Baker (Wycombe) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s desire for the committee’s work to start as soon as possible, but does she share my concern that the longer its work continues, the harder it will be for a chair to pick up that work and assert themselves? May I press her to explain a little further the extent to which she has considered asking a panel member to take the chair?
Mrs May
I understand my hon. Friend’s point. We will consider a variety of names for the chair. He and others have suggested that we should look at taking someone from within the panel itself, but as the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) has said, there may be other suggestions that Members wish to make. It is a fine judgment, and I want to ensure that the person who is appointed has our full confidence and can carry on the work of the inquiry. But, as my hon. Friend has also said, that process must not take so long that it becomes difficult for the individual to pick up the work of the inquiry. We will be operating in the knowledge of both those aspects.
Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)
Whatever the distinguished legal experience was of the two people originally chosen, why did the Home Secretary decide to restrict her choice to a very small part of Westminster? On reflection, would it not have been better for her to have consulted on this serious issue—as she intends to do now, which I very much welcome—from the very start?
Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)
In joining in the welcome for the Home Secretary’s approach and tone, may I also ask her this: in the preparatory work and the taking of evidence that she has announced that the panel will be doing, can it be borne in mind that there may come a time when the chairman, having been appointed, wants to make a decision under the Inquiries Act 2005? Would it therefore be possible to ensure that the work of the panel is constructed in such a way that it avoids possible later duplication? That is the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) was making when he said that it might be necessary to recall witnesses and so on. If the panel had that in mind, it would be very useful.
Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)
The Home Secretary will be aware that very many survivors of sex abuse were genuinely frightened and upset at the notion of Fiona Woolf chairing the panel. Mr Alex Wheatle, who experienced child abuse in the Shirley Oaks home in Croydon, wrote in The Independent to that effect, so it is for the best that she has now withdrawn. On the question of security services, if the security services refuse to supply information, or if they supply information that is so heavily redacted that it is worse than useless, what recourse will the chair of the inquiry have?
Mrs May
As I said when I made the statement in July and as I have repeated here today, I have been very clear to all the agencies involved that it is the expectation and the intention that they should make evidence available to the inquiry. Of course, as has been mentioned, the chair will have to consider whether this is a non-statutory or a statutory inquiry with the powers to compel witnesses that a statutory inquiry would have. I wish to reiterate that, across the whole of Government, we have an opportunity to address this issue, find out what happened in the past, find out the failings and ensure that we learn the lessons for the future, and that is what I expect every part of Government to do.
Duncan Hames (Chippenham) (LD)
I thank the Home Secretary for her statement and her support for this inquiry and look forward to the publication of the Wanless and Whittam report next week. Will she confirm that the reasons for the delay in the publication of that report are exclusively those that she gave in her statement and that officials in her Department are not engaged in redacting any material from that report that they do not consider suitable for placing in the public domain?
Mrs May
I can assure my hon. Friend that there are two reasons why the report has not yet been published. One is, as I said in my statement, that it is important that it is published separately and on its own, so that people can look at it and then look at this statement and what I have announced today and consider them both properly. Receiving a report of this sort is not just a formality. I have had to consider it and I have asked some questions to ensure that it has addressed the terms of reference that were given.
Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)
I particularly welcome the fact that the Home Secretary will be consulting the survivor groups before appointing a chair, but may I press her on the terms of reference a little further? Will she confirm that they can be amended and broadened as the inquiry progresses if new evidence comes to light suggesting new avenues to be covered, not just on Jersey, but in any other direction the evidence might suggest?
Mrs May
We were very clear in the terms of reference about one particular aspect: it would be open to the inquiry panel to come forward if it wished to extend the timeframe we have set. What I am keen to ensure, as I am sure are other Members, is that the terms of reference are such that the inquiry is able to do its work, and do it within a reasonable time scale, so that we can see some answers coming. We do not just owe that to survivors; if there are lessons to be learned and actions that need to be taken to protect children, currently and in the future, we need to see those lessons and be able to put those actions into place. If the chairman and the panel were to reach a point where they felt that their terms of reference were such that there was an important aspect they were not able to consider that was preventing them from getting to the truth, of course the Government would look at that.
Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)
My right hon. Friend has rightly set broad terms of reference and has rightly set a wide time scale so that nothing can be excluded. But the panel is going to be required to consider the behaviour over many years of broadcasters, children’s homes, churches, clubs, Government agencies and organisations, hospitals, schools, youth organisations and others, so does the House not have to recognise that that is a herculean task and that we have to be patient? If this work is going to be done properly, it cannot be done instantly; it will take a little time. There is a trade-off between having broad terms of reference and a wide period of examination, and the time it takes for the work to be done.
Mrs May
My right hon. Friend makes a very important point. It is essential that we are able to ensure that the inquiry can get on with its work and, as I have just indicated in response to the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), that we start to see results in terms of the analysis that will be undertaken of what has gone wrong in the past, what is continuing to go wrong and what further lessons we need to learn. We owe that not just to the survivors of past incidents of abuse, but to those who are vulnerable and could be potential victims in the future.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)
I welcome the new start to the inquiry, but may I say to the Home Secretary that anyone who watched the Baby Peter documentary last week will know what a difficult area this is in terms of simply getting to the truth of what really happened in the death of one child? What we need out of this committee is not only independence; we need it to be rigorous so that it finds out who the perpetrators are, because this is a national scandal. Will she also bear it in mind that during my time as Chair of the relevant Committee, I found some deeply damaged people who were the victims of false allegations of abuse? It destroyed them, their careers and their families, so getting the balance right in this and not having a hue and cry is essential.
Mrs May
The hon. Gentleman makes a very important point. What is essential is that the results of this inquiry are those in which everybody can have confidence, to ensure that it has got to the truth. As he says, it is very difficult in this area to identify what has happened, but I would say that we have seen, in the reports on child abuse in Rotherham and in the report from the hon. Member for Stockport, some good examples recently of people—Professor Alexis Jay and the hon. Lady—who have gone out and been able to identify real failings in institutions which, sadly, are still taking place today.
Charlotte Leslie (Bristol North West) (Con)
Further to the questions from my hon. Friend the Member for Stone (Sir William Cash) and others, I thank the Home Secretary for assurances that there is the potential for the inquiry to be statutory, but given that those potentially implicated may be embedded deep in the marrowbone of the establishment, does she agree that in order to gain the confidence of the survivors, imbue fear into perpetrators who may think they are untouchable and protect existing and future potential victims, the inquiry must have teeth right from the start, not be dependent on the chair’s discretion? Given that it is the establishment itself that is under investigation, those teeth may have to be very long and very sharp indeed.
Mrs May
I agree that we want to ensure that the panel is able to get to the truth. In this area and particularly looking at historical cases, this is not an easy task and members of the panel will have to be prepared to go wherever the evidence leads them. My hon. Friend referred to the discretion of the chair. The point of having the panel is that it is not the discretion of the chair that will determine where this inquiry goes, who is called to give evidence or what reviews are considered. That will be for the panel as a whole, which is why it is important to have the breadth of expertise that we have on the panel.
Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)
It is right that the emphasis should be on support for survivors, but can the Home Secretary give more detail about the survivors liaison group, how it will be set up and, more importantly for me, whether there will be representation from my constituency, Heywood and Middleton?
Mrs May
This is my first opportunity to welcome the hon. Lady to the House, and she is already standing up for her constituents, as she has just indicated. The precise model of the survivors liaison group is not yet available. I will discuss with survivors groups how that liaison group should be operated in order to ensure that it has the confidence of survivors and is able to input to the extent to which we wish it to. On that basis, I am not able to confirm who will be on it and therefore which part of the country they will be from.
David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement and her heartfelt commitment to seeing the inquiry process moved further forward. I also welcome the announcement that the inquiry panel will be able to take evidence remotely, which is vital, given the victims’ experiences. When will the panel be able to use this innovative and appropriate approach? All Members of the House, with her, are keen to move the inquiry forward as fast as possible.
Mrs May
We are keen to ensure that we get the technology in place as soon as possible so that the inquiry panel can take evidence remotely, for those who wish to do so. I am sure my hon. Friend will recognise, though, that we need to ensure the security of that process. When the matters being dealt with are as personal as they will be for survivors, it is right that we get the technology in place and ensure that it is secure.
Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)
The Home Secretary has stressed the importance of current protection for children. In the appalling case of the deputy head teacher from Cardiff in Wales who was jailed in May this year for having secretly filmed children in toilets, it turns out that the National Crime Agency did not pass on details about this man to the South Wales police for a whole 19 months. The NCA has information about 20,000 individuals who have accessed child abuse on the internet and only 700 of those have been prosecuted. What will she do to ensure that progress is made in dealing with the issue so that children can be better protected?
Mrs May
From the timeline that the hon. Lady set out, the information that she refers to would initially have been with the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre before the National Crime Agency was established. The National Crime Agency has been clear about the number of people it has identified who have been looking at child abuse images. Under the National Crime Agency more people who are looking at child abuse images are having action taken against them. In the past year more than 1,000 people have had action taken against them, and Operation Notarise has led to the investigation of over 700 individuals. So the National Crime Agency is working. It is ensuring that every case that comes to it is looked at and considered, and that appropriate action is taken. It prioritises those that are of the greatest potential harm to children.
Mr Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) (Con)
I thank the Home Secretary for the compassion and understanding she has displayed today towards the survivors, and for her drive in setting up the inquiry. The scope and nature of the inquiry are unprecedented and she has talked about a reasonable time scale, but it might take some time and, as she has recognised, child sex abuse is taking place today. Should not the panel therefore come forward with some recommendations early on to help stamp out this horrific child sex abuse? Will she give the panel an opportunity, perhaps via an interim report, to bring forward recommendations for her consideration?
Mrs May
My hon. Friend makes an important point. I indicated in my statement in July that I expected the panel to publish an interim report before the general election, but obviously the time scales have since shortened. One of the things that I think the inquiry panel will want to look at, and that I believe it should look at, is the question of how it can report throughout the process on the work it is doing. I think that would reinforce the confidence that survivors and others can have in the process and allow the panel, if it comes across issues on which it feels action should be taken sooner rather than later, to report on them so that action can follow.
Mr Michael Meacher (Oldham West and Royton) (Lab)
Is not an important dimension of this scandal—the Home Secretary signed off on all this—the fact that her Department made two utterly inappropriate, establishment-ridden appointments and then, to cap it all, drafted and redrafted a letter seven times in order to play down and disguise the relationship between Fiona Woolf and Lord Brittan, who was Home Secretary when all the Home Office files on this alleged Westminster and Whitehall child sex abuse mysteriously disappeared? Can she not understand that because of that background and despite her words today, which I welcome, she has already lost the confidence of much of the public about her capacity to conduct a highly sensitive inquiry of this kind in a properly objective and impartial manner?
Mrs May
I am afraid that I do not accept the premise of much of what the right hon. Gentleman said. For example, he said that all the Home Office files relating to these matters have gone missing, but that is not the case; and he made a number of other references. All I will say in answer to his question is that I am not conducting this inquiry; I have established the inquiry, and I have done so because of my concern both about the historical cases and about the continuing cases of child abuse and child sexual exploitation in this country. We should be ashamed of what has happened in the past and, sadly, what we see happening on our streets today. The panel will be conducting what I believe is a once-in-a-generation inquiry that will give us the opportunity to recognise the problems and failings of the past and ensure that we address them so that in future fewer children will become victims of this appalling crime.
Andrew Bridgen (North West Leicestershire) (Con)
I acknowledge and welcome the huge cross-party support for this most important inquiry, but does my right hon. Friend agree that the shadow Home Secretary’s complaint that the Government have not been listening to the voices of victims would have rather more resonance had the inquiry been instituted under the previous Labour Government, rather than it falling to this Government to institute an investigation into child abuse?
Mrs May
I note the point my hon. Friend makes. I shall simply make two points in reply. First, it is this Government who have set up the inquiry, but I have commended the tone with which the shadow Home Secretary responded to my statement. Secondly, I think that the overwhelming view across the House is that we want the inquiry to get on and do its work.
Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)
In the 893 pages of the Waterhouse report on child abuse in north Wales, there are only five references to the Welsh language. All of them refer to various management issues, all are negative in tone, to varying degrees, and none relates directly to survivors’ experiences. In the spirit of listening properly to survivors, will the Home Secretary ensure that this new inquiry, whoever chairs it, gives proper and active consideration to the languages used by survivors, whether Welsh, English or community languages?
Mrs May
The hon. Gentleman makes an interesting point that has not been raised with me before. I would expect the panel inquiry to ensure that it is able to take evidence from all survivors who wish to give evidence to it, and to recognise that some may wish to give it in a language that is not English.
Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)
I welcome the Home Secretary’s statement and thank her for taking the time and trouble to consult my colleagues and me, and for recognising the importance of trust in the process. Will she expand a little on her thoughts about the six regional events and their place in the process, protecting survivors against what can be a slightly intrusive press, and making sure that services such as counselling are available to support them?
Mrs May
My hon. Friend makes some important points. The intention of the secretariat and panel in having the regional events is to ensure that the panel is more accessible for people across England and Wales, and to make it easier for people to give evidence. As I have said, we will also ensure that evidence can be given remotely, in recognition of the fact that some will find it difficult to come to a hearing. I also expect that the inquiry panel will want to look at the balance between the occasions it takes evidence in public and in private. Many survivors may wish to give their evidence in private, and I would expect the inquiry panel to recognise that and deal with it. The secretariat is talking to Department of Health officials about the counselling and support that should be available to victims, not just after they have given evidence but possibly before they give it too.
Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)
Following on from the previous question and from the welcome that has been given for the survivors liaison group, I know the Home Secretary said that further details are not yet available, but has she thought about what practical support will be available for survivors who want to travel to London to give evidence or to be part of the survivors liaison group, as well as the psychological support and counselling they may need when they have to relive and recount what was obviously a very traumatic experience?
Mrs May
Yes, we are indeed considering those aspects. It is commendable that the secretariat has already indicated that it wants to have some regional events, so that people do not have to come to London to give their views. Although it has announced a number of events over the coming months, given the length of the time the inquiry will take, I would expect that that is a matter it will return to. Everybody wants to ensure that survivors can give their input into the panel inquiry’s work, while recognising that for many it will be traumatic and difficult, and it will be necessary to build trust so that survivors feel able to come forward.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
To what extent have other countries undertaken historical child sex abuse inquiries, what are the key lessons to be learned, and has any nation ever embarked on as ambitious an inquiry as the Home Secretary has set out?
Mrs May
I am aware that some abuse inquiries have taken place in other countries, Australia being one that comes to mind. I cannot say what work the panel inquiry will look at; it might well wish to see whether lessons can be learned from work done elsewhere, as well as looking at the reviews that have taken place. I am not aware of another inquiry with such a wide breadth, in terms of the type of matter being dealt with or the historical span.
John Mann (Bassetlaw) (Lab)
Next week is one of these new parliamentary half-holiday weeks. Will the Home Secretary confirm that she will make a statement on the Wanless report so that Members of the House can ask her questions about it?
Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)
I know that the sensitivity expressed towards survivors extends also to the victims who unfortunately have not survived up to this point. The Home Secretary knows that many of us in Northern Ireland have not been persuaded by the line call in respect of Kincora. Regardless of whether people are giving evidence to the Hart inquiry or to the panel inquiry, who will make the call in relation to the Official Secrets Act? She has referred to agencies that will co-operate. Will those agencies control the evidence that might be given by former officers or agents, or will those people be able to give evidence to these inquiries on an unfettered, unfiltered basis?
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
My constituents who were subject to abuse at Beechwood and other children’s homes in Nottinghamshire have already waited long enough for their voices to be heard. I welcome the Home Secretary’s assurance that she will listen to survivors, but will she also ensure that Nottinghamshire police have sufficient resources to conduct their ongoing criminal investigations in a timely manner so that the survivors secure justice?
Mrs May
I recognise that a number of forces around the country are conducting investigations both into current issues of child abuse and historical cases. I have been discussing matters relating to resources with the national policing lead on such matters, who is Chief Constable Simon Bailey from Norfolk.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
I am sure that most people now want to see the inquiry proceed without any further setbacks. However, given the unfortunate circumstances surrounding the choice of persons to chair it, is the Home Secretary absolutely certain that all other members of the panel have been thoroughly checked and that there is nothing in their backgrounds or contacts that could lead people subsequently to question whether they are the right people to serve on it?
Mrs May
Of course, due diligence was done on the members of the panel. In addition, as I said earlier, each member of the panel has written to me with an indication as to whether they believe that there are contacts or other matters that would affect the inquiry that they are taking part in, and those letters are available.
Mr Michael McCann (East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow) (Lab)
Nearly 900 men have made complaints to County Durham police force about the abuse they suffered as youngsters at Medomsley detention centre in the 1970s and 1980s. Will the Secretary of State confirm that the inquiry’s terms of reference will be wide enough to include an examination of Government-endorsed abuse such as the “short, sharp shock” treatment introduced by a previous Administration?
Mrs May
The inquiry panel will be looking at all the views and all the issues that have been raised in relation to historical child abuse. As I said, it is absolutely my intention to ensure that all Government Departments and agencies make sure that the inquiry panel has available any evidence that it wishes and needs to see in order to be able to undertake its duties properly and to look at the historical cases of child abuse but also the more recent cases of child abuse.
Angela Smith (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Lab)
Will the Home Secretary tell the House why the Home Office felt it necessary to remove a specific reference in the early drafts of Fiona Woolf’s letter to allegations of child sex abuse in Edinburgh?
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
The Home Secretary has indicated that Fiona Woolf made her letter of disclosure available to the Department for review in order to ensure that she fulfilled her obligation for transparency. The problem the Department has is that, in the seven successive reiterations of that letter, it became less rather than more transparent. Will the Home Secretary ask the permanent secretary to interview the senior official in the Department who effected and initiated those changes in consultation with Fiona Woolf, and ensure that that civil servant can explain why those changes were suggested at each stage to Fiona Woolf and whether they did in fact increase or reduce transparency?
Mrs May
The hon. Gentleman has made a number of assumptions about the process. I reiterate what I said earlier: Fiona Woolf wrote to me with the intention of being as transparent as possible about any issues and connections she felt it appropriate to refer to me. Obviously, it has been shown that the secretariat looked at a number of drafts. The letter that came to me was the letter that Fiona Woolf agreed.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
On preventing future child abuse, the two cases of grooming I have dealt with during my time as an MP have both involved 15-year-old girls in relationships with men where the police and other agencies simply described them as having bad taste in boyfriends. It was almost as though there was a countdown to their 16th birthdays, when they thought they could wash their hands of them. Does the Home Secretary agree that, even if people present as being in a relationship, that is still clearly a case of child abuse and something we ought to be seeking to prevent?
Mrs May
That is another example of the issue raised earlier by the hon. Member for Stockport—namely, an attitude to young people that has dismissed some instances. It could very well be the case that a girl of 15 is in an abusive relationship. If so, it needs to be considered as an abusive relationship and the allegations need to be considered properly, rather than simply dismissed because of the age of the individual. Everybody needs to recognise that there is an age of consent, below which people should look very seriously at the allegations made.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
One of the conclusions of the report by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) is that we need to address the cultural issues that underpin much of the abuse, including the sexualisation of children as young as primary school age. On that basis, will the Government reconsider their opposition to compulsory personal, social, health and economic education, including age-appropriate relationship and sex education?
Mrs May
I am having a number of discussions with the Department for Education and I understand that the Education Secretary is looking at the advice available in relation to PSHE. A number of issues that have been discussed in this House over time come under that particular heading. We all want to ensure that young people and children are being given appropriate advice and guidance.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
I commend the Home Secretary, particularly for her earlier remarks about assessing the credibility of the accusations rather than the credibility of either the accuser or the accused. That is a very important starting point. She also seemed to indicate that there would be a degree of interim reporting, which I welcome, because this is clearly going to be a massive undertaking. Does she envisage that the whole inquiry could turn into almost a standing commission? That might not be a bad thing, because it might be necessary in the longer term.
Finally, in my own borough there have been complaints about Islington children’s homes in the past and the council has investigated them. The council is in a very different place now, but nevertheless it welcomes the inquiry and will co-operate with it. As the Home Secretary is fully aware, many of the children who were abused in children’s homes also went to homes in other parts of the country—in some cases to the Channel Islands. It is therefore very important that the inquiry is able to investigate across local authority administrative areas and, indeed, across jurisdictions to ascertain what happened, tragically, to many very vulnerable young children who were taken to homes in the Channel Islands.
Mrs May
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments, especially his remarks on the willingness of Islington council to participate in the work of the inquiry. His idea of a standing commission has not been raised before. Although it will take time for the panel of inquiry to complete its work, I do not want there to be an expectation that it will just carry on because the impact of its report might be lost and, crucially, that would affect our ability to act on its findings. I expect the panel to make interim reports, as I said earlier, so that any necessary actions can be undertaken as soon as possible, and so that survivors and others can see the ongoing work and continue to have confidence in that work.
Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)
The Home Secretary has rightly asked the Home Affairs Committee to conduct pre-appointment scrutiny. She also mentioned the involvement of survivors. Will she reflect on how the involvement of survivors in the selection process could be brought closer to the public part of the confirmation through the Select Committee to increase their confidence and our confidence that there will not be a third stumble along the way?
Mrs May
I will certainly reflect on the process that we will put in place for survivors to have an input. Ultimately, it will be my decision, but I am putting the parts of the process in place to ensure that people can have confidence that we have explored all the avenues that it is necessary to explore before proceeding.
Recall of MPs Bill (Programme) (No. 2)
Ordered,
That the Order of 21 October 2014 (Recall of MPs Bill (Programme)) be varied as follows:
(1) In paragraph (2) of the Order (number of days for proceedings in Committee), for “three days” substitute “two days”.
(2) In the Table in paragraph (4) of the Order (order of proceedings etc. in Committee), for the entries for the Second and Third days substitute:
Second day | |
Clause 6, Schedule 1, Clauses 7 to 10, Schedule 2, Clauses 11 to 16, Schedules 3 to 5, Clauses 17 to 20, Schedule 6, Clauses 21 to 25, remaining new Clauses, remaining new Schedules, remaining proceedings on the Bill | The moment of interruption on the second day |
(3) In paragraph (5) of the Order (proceedings on Consideration), for “one hour before the moment of interruption on the day on which those proceedings are commenced” substitute “five hours after the commencement of the proceedings”.
(4) In paragraph (6) of the Order (proceedings on Third Reading), for “at the moment of interruption on that day” substitute “six hours after the commencement of proceedings on Consideration”.—(Mr Gyimah.)
Foreign National Offenders (Removal)
Baroness May of Maidenhead Excerpts(10 years, 2 months ago)
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Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)
(Urgent Question): To ask the Home Secretary about the removal of foreign national offenders.
The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
I am grateful to the National Audit Office for its report on managing and removing foreign national offenders. As the report makes clear, this problem has beset successive Governments. Let me begin by being clear that foreign nationals who abuse our hospitality by committing crime in this country should be in no doubt of our determination to remove them from it. We removed more than 5,000 foreign criminals from the UK last year, and have removed 22,000 since 2010. I also want to make it plain that, as in many other areas, it falls to this Government to tackle the problems of the past. Quite simply, the Home Office did not prioritise the removal of foreign national offenders before 2005.
It will take time to fix the problems that we inherited. Chief among them, as the NAO report makes clear, are the legal barriers that we face. The countless appeals and re-appeals that have been lodged by criminals attempting to cheat the system cost us all money and are an affront to British justice. That is why we passed the Immigration Act 2014 to clamp down on that abuse. New powers from the Act came into force this week to cut the number of grounds on which criminals can appeal their deportation, from 17 to four, and to end the appeals conveyor belt in the courts. From this week, criminals can no longer appeal against a decision that their deportation is conducive to the public good.
These reforms build on other measures that we introduced in the summer, which are already speeding up the deportation process. In July we introduced new powers to stop criminals using family life arguments to delay their deportation. We have also changed the law so that, where there is no risk of serious irreversible harm, foreign criminals will be deported first and have their appeal heard later. For those who do have an appeal right, they will be able to appeal only once. These new powers are radically reforming the deportation process, rebalancing human rights laws in favour of the British public rather than the criminal.
We are also pursuing joint working between the police and immigration enforcement. Operation Nexus has helped us to remove more than 2,500 foreign nationals during its first two years, including 150 dangerous immigration offenders considered by the police to represent a particularly serious threat. Alongside tougher crime-fighting measures, improved protection at the border and greater collaboration between police and immigration enforcement officers, the Immigration Act is helping us to deliver an immigration system that is fair to the people of this country and legitimate immigrants, and tough on those who flout the rules. The Home Office will look at the NAO’s recommendations carefully and work with the other agencies involved as we continue to build that system.
Yvette Cooper
When people come to Britain, they should abide by the law, and the whole House wants to see foreign criminals being deported. The Prime Minister told us that more of them would be, and promised that that was a major priority for his Government. Instead, fewer foreign criminals are being deported each year than was the case in 2010. There were 375 fewer deportations, a drop of 7%, and fewer deportation orders are being served; there has been a drop of 6% since 2010.
It is no good blaming appeals and human rights. The National Audit Office has found that more than a third of failed removals were the result of factors within the Home Office’s control. They include failures to fill in the forms, failures to get the necessary papers and even failures to book the plane tickets that were needed. It is no good blaming the last Government either, because the NAO audit of this Government’s action plan has found poor use of IT, a lack of communication, failure to use the powers available, cumbersome and slow referral processes, inefficiency in processing, over-complicated arrangements and an action plan that it says
“lacks a sufficiently joined-up and structured approach.”
Nearly 40% of cases had avoidable processing delays.
More foreign criminals have disappeared, too. About 190 absconded last year, and there has been a 6% increase since 2010, yet according to the NAO report, there are only 11 staff working on 700 cases, 10 of whom are very junior. Why does the Home Secretary have so few staff working on such important cases? Will she publish the details of the crimes that those 190 people committed?
The NAO also says that we have worse systems than other European countries for preventing foreign criminals from coming in in the first place. The warnings index has not been modernised, and we are one of only four countries in the European economic area that is still not part of the Schengen information system. Our joining it was delayed because of the Home Secretary’s decision to exercise the opt-out on co-operation with Europe and because she is faffing around with her Back Benchers over opting in and opting out. This is putting border security at risk.
The Government are simply not doing enough. Let us take the case of the convicted killer Rohan Murdock who was able to stay in this country in 2012 because, in the judge’s words, the Home Secretary did not “put up a fight”. So it is no good blaming the past or the others; she has been Home Secretary for four and a half years. The system is still failing on her watch and fewer foreign criminals are being deported than when she started. The tough talk is simply not enough. When will she start putting up the real fight we need to get more, not fewer, foreign criminals deported back home?
Mrs May
I have to say to the right hon. Lady that that is a staggering response from the representative of a political party that is still debating whether it even needs to respond to the public’s concerns about immigration. I am sorry that she adopted the tone she did. This is a serious subject and we need to recognise and accept the challenges and respond to them. But the NAO report makes it clear, as I said in my opening statement, that this is a long-standing problem—her party did not face up to it when it was in power.
The report also makes it clear that, unlike the Labour party, we have a plan to deal with the problem, and that plan is working. We have removed 22,000 foreign national offenders since 2010. The NAO report makes it clear that the time taken to deport FNOs is reducing. It notes that the number of removals increased by 12% over the past two years,
“largely because of a change in the Department’s approach to deportation”.
It praises Operation Nexus—the work between the police and the immigration enforcement command—which has helped us to remove more than 2,500 foreign nationals in its first two years. We are the first Government to adopt a cross-government strategy on dealing with foreign national offenders. We want to increase the number of removals, reduce the number of foreign offenders in the UK and tackle the barriers standing in our way. Again, the NAO recognises that removing foreign national offenders
“continues to be inherently difficult”.
The report makes it clear that our efforts have been “hampered” by a “range of barriers”, including the law.
The main problem we face is the rise of litigation; we have seen a 28% increase in the number of appeals. That is why we have made the changes that I have set out in the Immigration Act to cut the number of appeals and why we have made it possible for someone to be deported before they can appeal. Those are the most significant changes to deportation appeals since 1971 and far more than we ever saw from the Labour party when it was in power for 13 years. But those things can take us only so far and we are also faced with the impact of the human rights legislation passed by the right hon. Lady’s Government. Only the Conservatives want to scrap the Human Rights Act and fix our relationship with the European Court of Human Rights, which is why we need a majority Conservative Government.
I do recognise that we face challenges and that we have some issues relating to processes to address. That is why I scrapped the UK Border Agency—Labour’s creation—and since then we have seen a change in the attitude being taken by immigration enforcement. But we will not turn these things around overnight. We have expressed our desire to rejoin the Schengen information system, because it can be a tool we can use in dealing with these FNOs. But we have moved on from the days before 2009 when, under the previous Labour Government, there was no mechanism to trace absconders—there is now a team to do that.
I have to say to the right hon. Lady that if she is going to take on an immigration issue, she really needs to look at her party’s record before she does so. Her party opened the floodgates; her party sent out the search parties and said there was no obvious limit to immigration; and her party passed the human rights legislation that made it difficult to deport foreign criminals. The Opposition still will not say that the level of immigration is too high, they still will not say it has to come down and they still defend the Human Rights Act. Perhaps when she says sorry for those things, the public might start to listen to her.
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
Is it not common sense that a foreign national should not be released from prison until they can be taken straight to an airport and deported? If any law, such as the Human Rights Act, is preventing that from happening, may I suggest that the Home Secretary comes forward with the necessary legislation and dares the other parties to vote down something that is such common sense to the British people? Is it not also time we started fingerprinting and taking the DNA of foreign nationals who want to enter this great country? Surely that is a small price for them to pay in order to keep people in this country safe from criminals.
Mrs May
My hon. Friend is always willing to come forward with practical proposals on this matter. Steps have been taken to deal with those who would otherwise be released from prison, and to ensure that foreign national offenders who are subject to deportation orders are not being released into open conditions. On occasion, immigration judges do release foreign national offenders into the community, and release them on bail, so it is not simply a question of what is happening in relation to people who are in our prisons already. I recognise my hon. Friend’s concern and say that we will continue to look at the measures that we can take to improve our ability to deport these foreign criminals.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
The Home Secretary is right that successive Governments have failed to get a grip of this complex issue, but will she look at some of the Select Committee’s recommendations? For example, when a foreign national is arrested, their records should be checked by the Association of Chief Police Officers’ Criminal Records Office. Fewer than half are currently being checked. On sentence, an e-mail should be sent to the Home Office from the courts; it should not be a fax that is put on the records manually. Finally, the warnings index is just not fit for purpose. We need to sign up to one or two of the databases that will allow us to know who is entering our country, so that we can, if necessary, prevent them from coming here in the first place. Will she please consider those sensible recommendations, which we have made in the past?
Mrs May
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his points. The Home Affairs Committee has considered this issue on a number of occasions and has taken it very seriously, and we look at the proposals that it makes. Next month the Met will be introducing the full checks against the ACPO Criminal Records Office, so action is being taken in that area. Of course it is under this Government that the links between immigration enforcement and, initially, the Metropolitan police through Operation Nexus were put in place, and that has meant that we have seen more than 2,000 foreign criminals being removed from this country. Operation Nexus has expanded into other parts of the country, and I hope that we see it expanding throughout the United Kingdom. In relation to stopping people coming here in the first place, we have been working on agreements with other countries. Membership of the European Criminal Records Information System, which has been part of the 2014 debate and is one of those areas that we wish to opt back into, is an important part of the process.
Sir William Cash (Stone) (Con)
The Home Secretary is completely right in saying that there are inherent problems in the law, and also that the whole matter is very challenging. I am glad to note that the repeal of the Human Rights Act is now being reintroduced, having pushed it through when I was shadow Attorney-General in the years 2001-03. Will the Home Secretary please acknowledge that an even bigger problem is the Charter of Fundamental Rights, which is enforceable by the European Court of Justice? The other day, the European Scrutiny Committee said that the only way to deal with these problems in the European Communities Act 1972 is to amend it. If we do not do that, we will end up having continuing legal problems of the kind she has identified and no solution.
Mrs May
My hon. Friend makes a point that he has made on a number of occasions on the Charter of Fundamental Human Rights. I am afraid that he will not get a different response now from that which he has had either from me or other Ministers in the past. The Government believe that amending it will not change the position. He refers to the Human Rights Act and as shadow Attorney-General he did work on this matter. Repealing the charter was a Conservative party manifesto commitment before the last election, and that will be repeated as we move forward to the next election.
Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)
May I remind the Home Secretary that, although it is true for certain that we did introduce the Human Rights Act, the Conservative Opposition—she was in the House at the time I think—supported that Act on Third Reading and wished it well. The Conservatives may have had second thoughts since then. Secondly, notwithstanding the Human Rights Act, the numbers of people now being deported, as the National Audit Office report makes clear, have gone down, not up on her watch. How does she explain that, notwithstanding the fact that there has been a ninefold increase, from 100 to 900, in staff working on this issue?
Mrs May
I have acknowledged that we need to do more in this area, but one cannot look at what has happened over the past few years without considering the increasing number of appeals. A 28% increase in appeals means a significant delay in the ability of the authorities to deal with many of these cases and deport the individuals. Under this Government, we are changing that and, as I said earlier, this week the measure in the Immigration Act that reduces the grounds for appeals from 17 to four has kicked in. I am sure that will have a real impact on our ability to deport people and to deport them more quickly.
Angie Bray (Ealing Central and Acton) (Con)
I am sure that my right hon. Friend will not be surprised to discover that many of my constituents were deeply shocked when they learned that they had been living close to a convicted murderer, a Latvian builder who had come to live in this country. That all came to light during the tragic search for the murdered schoolgirl, Alice Gross, and Mr Arnis Zalkalns has now been found hanged. Nobody knew about his background, not even the police, which must surely be unacceptable. What will be done to improve information sharing so that people are aware of such backgrounds? Is it right that people with a murder conviction are free to come and live in our country in such a way?
Mrs May
My hon. Friend raises an important issue and I know that it affects not only her constituents but others who are concerned about such cases. Our thoughts continue to be with Alice Gross’s family after the appalling tragedy that occurred. We are making efforts to ensure that we can get better information about people who come to this country and that we can exchange information to enable us to take action before people come here. We have some arrangements already to identify people of interest entering the UK and, obviously, passengers are checked against certain watch lists. When the UK is made aware of foreign offending, Border Force officers can take action to use that information to exercise their powers to refuse entry. We have been one of the biggest users of the European criminal records information system and we are scheduled under the opt-in proposals to connect to the second-generation Schengen information system, SIS II, which will further strengthen our ability to detect foreign criminals at the border, especially those who are the subjects of European arrest warrants. We are also driving other efforts across Europe to ensure that other countries participate, that we can get those criminal records and that we can take appropriate action that protects the British public.
Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)
According to the report, the Government have spent £167,000 on each and every foreign criminal they have managed to deport. Why has it taken the National Audit Office to quantify that spending and what will the Home Secretary do to ensure that taxpayers’ money is spent more effectively?
Mrs May
Of course we need to ensure that taxpayers’ money is being spent effectively, but the taxpayers’ money that is being spent on these individuals is spent through police arresting them, through the criminal justice system taking them through the courts and through putting them in prison. I think that taxpayers would think that charging, prosecuting and imprisoning people was a good use of their money.
Mr Dominic Grieve (Beaconsfield) (Con)
Does my right hon. Friend agree that the National Audit Office report highlights a number of different causes for the failure to deport and that there is no doubt that the Immigration Act, which she passed through this House, ought to make a significant impact on many aspects of that, particularly in relation to challenges and appeals? Will she undertake to give the House some updates as we come into the spring on how well that is operating in changing things? May I recommend that in doing that she should reflect carefully on whether the manifesto pledge contained in the Conservative party document published at the last party conference is worth pursuing? I must say to her that I think that it will prove singularly ineffective in reaching the further objectives that some people have suggested it might achieve.
Mrs May
I thank my right hon. and learned Friend for his comments. He is absolutely right: I believe the Immigration Act will make a difference. The reduction in the number of appeals only kicked in this week, but since July there have been 100 cases of people being removed under the non-suspensive appeals ruling in the Immigration Act, which means that we have been able to deport them before they have a right of appeal in the UK. They have a right of appeal, but it will be from outside the United Kingdom.
On the other matter that my right hon. and learned Friend raises, we have obviously set out proposals to change our relationship with the European Court of Human Rights. I have been very clear all along that no option should have been off the table, including coming out of the European convention, if that is what it took to restore the situation. We have made proposals that we expect will deal with the relationship with the European Court, which is a crucial issue for not just the Home Office but the British public.
Dr William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)
Home Secretary, when I go into a restaurant for a steak, it is known where the animal was born, what field it grazed in, what other cattle it grazed with, every time it was moved and who killed it. If such traceability is possible for cattle, how is it that this country cannot trace hundreds of dangerous criminals who should have been deported years ago? Does the Home Secretary really feel and understand the frustration felt out there in the community?
Mrs May
Of course I understand people’s frustration on the issue. It is this Government who have put in place a specific team, for the first time, to trail and find those absconders and it has been successful in two thirds of the cases it has dealt with. Obviously, we want that to improve but at least we have taken that step.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
Paragraph 3.19 of the NAO report talks about the benefits of the EU prisoner transfer agreement. The Ministry of Justice estimates that there will be a further 4,500 removals and £110 million saved. Does the Home Secretary agree that such close working with the European Union is an essential part of what we have to do to deal with the problem and that people who would like to walk away from the European Union will make it much harder?
Mrs May
The prisoner transfer agreements are an important element of dealing with the issue. As my hon. Friend will know, there are still some countries in which we need to finalise the agreements and their approach. The prisoner transfer agreement is an important step and a useful tool and that is why it was one of the measures on the list of those to which we wanted to opt back in.
Tom Greatrex (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Lab/Co-op)
My constituent Elsie Giudici’s son was murdered in the most brutal way by a foreign national in his property in Scotland last summer. His mother has contacted me, concerned that it later transpired that the foreign national had a lengthy history of serious violent crime in his own country. The Home Secretary said that this is a serious issue and I believe that it is. The NAO report states:
“Current information held in the UK on foreign nationals who have committed…crimes in their own countries is less complete than most European countries.”
Will she therefore please explain why that is the case and why, four and a half years after she took office, the situation has not improved?
Mrs May
Absolutely. That was a serious and terrible case and our thoughts are with the hon. Gentleman’s constituent. We want to ensure that we have the maximum information available on which to act in relation to those with a violent history who try to come into this country and to ensure that we act properly to remove foreign national offenders. Our ability to do that will be improved by tools such as the Schengen information system, which is already being used by other European nations. We have said that we want to be able to opt back in to the system and to start to use it, which we have not been able to do up until this point.
Jackie Doyle-Price (Thurrock) (Con)
The report highlights the case of a sex offender convicted in 2000 as an overstayer who, far from being deported, was given indefinite leave to remain in the country in 2005. The offender is still in the country because of the appeals process that my right hon. Friend has documented. Can she give me an assurance that under this Government people who have been convicted will not then be given indefinite leave to remain?
Mrs May
We obviously want a process in which it is possible to deport such people quickly, and that is part of reducing the number of appeals and introducing what are called non-suspensive appeals, which mean that, except in certain circumstances, we can deport them first and they have to appeal from the country to which they have returned. If we can get the system as we intend it to be, people will be removed more quickly. One problem in the past was that people not only made many appeals but stayed in the country for so long that they built up other rights under the then immigration system. That is what we are trying to change.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
Will the Home Secretary amplify her response to my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper)? Given that the NAO report states that 36% of failed removals in 2013-14 were the result of factors considered by the Department to be within its control, I do not think that her previous answer will suffice.
Mrs May
The number of people whom it has not been possible to remove in any particular year is the result of a whole range of issues, and I have to say to the hon. Lady that I have recognised over the years that a change has been needed in the way we deal with those issues. That is precisely why I abolished the UK Border Agency and created the immigration enforcement command within the Home Office. I fully accept that there is more work to do, for example on the links between the Home Office, the courts and the prison system, to ensure that information flows are absolutely up to date so that action can be taken at the appropriate time.
Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)
Is it not right that on this, as on so many other matters, we are clearing up Labour’s mess? After all, we got rid of Abu Hamza and Abu Qatada where Labour failed to do so. Is it not also right—I know this as a lawyer—that we got rid of the 17 routes of appeal that Labour established, thereby feeding the legal process? We would also like to get rid of the Human Rights Act, another Labour creation that is causing much of the problem.
Mrs May
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We have had to deal with the system we inherited. We have made significant changes to it, which are already starting to show progress, and I am sure we will see considerable progress in future as a result of further changes we have made, particularly on the legal side, as he indicates, such as reducing the number of routes of appeal from 17 to four.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab)
Does the Home Secretary not realise that the report states that more than one in three of the failures to deport are the result of failures within her Department? The Government have been in control for four and a half years now. Can she tell us the precise date when they will stop blaming the previous Labour Government, or the next Labour Government, and take responsibility for this ineptocracy of their own creation?
Mrs May
The hon. Gentleman might like to note that the report states that over the past two years removals have increased
“largely because of a change in the Department’s approach to deportation…following concerted caseworking efforts and a change in the Department’s approach…to ensure that all FNOs are considered by a central team for removal, not just those who met the deportation criteria.”
We are taking action. As I have just said, we will continue to look at what more we can do to carry on making progress and ensure that we deal with the challenges we face.
David Rutley (Macclesfield) (Con)
It is interesting to note the lack of interest from Labour Members in their own urgent question. I welcome the increase in the number of foreign national offenders deported since 2011-12. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that under the new powers in the Immigration Act there will be a reduction in the number of appeals and that many more people will be removed in the months ahead?
Mrs May
My hon. Friend puts his finger on one of the key points: the number of appeals that have led to delays in deportation until now. We are reducing the number of routes of appeal significantly, from 17 to four. We have also introduced the ability to deport people before they appeal so that they are out of the country when they do. As I said in answer to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Mr Grieve), there have been 100 removals prior to appeal as a result of that change in the system.
Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)
When a foreign national approaches the immigration desk at a point of entry into our country, if a message flashes up on the immigration officer’s screen stating, “This person is of interest to us or is a foreign criminal”, does that officer have any more power to stop that person, or even to deport them, under the current law?
Mrs May
When certain information about an individual is available, the systems in place at the border enable UK Border Force officers to stop them entering the country. What is crucial, of course, is that we have a proper exchange of information with other countries on the criminal records of individuals so that we can act on it.
Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)
Can the Home Secretary confirm that approximately 400 of the missing foreign criminals arrived in the country under the previous Labour Government?
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
My constituents cannot understand why someone who comes to this country and commits an offence that requires imprisonment is not automatically deported. It is true that things were a mess under Labour, but it is not good enough to say that we are tweaking the system; we have to get to grips with the problem. Why not just deport these people and worry about what the European Court says afterwards?
Mrs May
One of the changes we have made in the Immigration Act is to give us the power to deport people before they appeal, except in certain circumstances where to do so would lead to serious and irreversible harm, and I think that goes straight to the heart of what my hon. Friend is saying. However, there are cases where it is genuinely difficult to deport somebody because of lack of documentation, difficulties in being absolutely clear about their nationality, or problems with the country to which we wish to deport them actually accepting them.
Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)
Some of the higher profile cases in my constituency, particularly in Goole, relate to people who came here under the previous Labour Government’s policy of unlimited immigration from EU accession states. What I and my constituents cannot understand is how any EU national who has a criminal record can get here in the first place, or how they can remain here once they commit an offence. Is it not time that these ridiculous rules on the free movement of labour were torn up so that the system works for British people and my constituents?
Mrs May
I will make two points in response to my hon. Friend. First, in relation to dealing with those from the EU who have committed criminal offences, being able to exchange information and know who they are is one of the first steps. That is why the Government have said that we want to rejoin the European criminal records information system and connect to SIS II so that we have that information at the border and can act on it. Secondly, he is absolutely right that the whole issue of free movement, as the Prime Minister said earlier, is one that we feel we need to address. It is something we have been dealing with over the past four and a half years in Europe. We have made some progress in relation to criminal activity, such as sham marriages and so forth, but abuse of free movement is something we need to deal with.
Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
The Home Secretary is being incredibly generous to the Opposition. May I ask her to take herself back to her first days in office and clarify for the House just what a mess she inherited and had to work to sort out?
Mrs May
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is exactly the point I was making earlier. Labour has so far refused to apologise for the mess they left on immigration: the fact that they sent out “search parties”; that they have never said that the number of people who came into this country over their period in government was too high; and that we inherited a system in the UK Border Agency that needed radical change. It is no good them just carping about one or two things now. Until they say sorry for what they did, nobody will listen to them.
Bill Presented
Electronic Cigarettes (Advertising and Legal Age of Purchase) Bill
Presentation and First Reading (Standing Order No. 57)
Geraint Davies, supported by Nia Griffith, Mrs Siân C. James, Sir Alan Meale, Jonathan Edwards, Chris Evans and Liz McInnes, presented a Bill to prohibit the advertising of electronic cigarettes; to prohibit the sale of electronic cigarettes to persons under the age of 18; and for connected purposes.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 16 January 2015, and to be printed (Bill 107).
Child Sexual Abuse
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
Further to my statement to the House on 7 July, Official Report, column 23, and my written ministerial statements of 9 July, Official Report, column 20WS, and 5 September 2014, Official Report, columns 28-29WS, I am pleased to announce that I have appointed the panel members to the independent inquiry panel of experts, which will consider whether public bodies—and other, non-state, institutions—have taken seriously their duty of care to protect children from sexual abuse.
Sharon Evans, Ivor Frank, Dame Moira Gibb, Professor Jenny Pearce OBE, Dru Sharpling CBE and Professor Terence Stephenson will join Graham Wilmer MBE and Barbara Hearn OBE as panel members for the independent panel inquiry into child sexual abuse. Ben Emmerson QC is counsel to the inquiry, and Professor Alexis Jay OBE will serve as an expert adviser.
I am confident that this panel, under the chairmanship of Fiona Woolf CBE, will carry out a robust and thorough inquiry, and will challenge individuals and institutions without fear or favour, in order to consider this important issue, to learn the relevant lessons, and to prevent it happening again. The panel represents a diverse range of experience which includes social care, academia, law enforcement, health, media, the voluntary sector and those with experience of child sexual abuse.
The terms of reference have been drafted to ensure that this strong and balanced panel of independent experts can have full access to all the material it seeks, unless there is a statutory impediment to it doing so. The panel will consider matters from 1970 to the present, although this can be extended if evidence is provided that supports this, and will decide how and where to focus its efforts, in order to complete its work and make recommendations within a reasonable time frame. The terms of reference have been finalised and a copy will be placed in the Library of the House. The panel will provide an update to Parliament before May next year.
Each of the panel members has written to me setting out in full any issues which might be seen to cast doubt on their impartiality. Those letters are published in full on the inquiry’s website. I am confident that they will carry out their duties to the highest standards of impartiality and integrity.
Fiona Woolf has a long and distinguished career throughout which she has demonstrated the highest standards of integrity. I am confident that she will lead the work of the panel with authority, and that under her leadership the panel will get to the truth of these issues. They will do so on behalf of victims past and present to ensure that the sexual abuse of children is never again a hidden crime, and that past failings are acknowledged, and recommendations made for further improvements to current arrangements in the light of the panel’s findings. I wish the panel every success in its important work.
The inquiry’s website can be found at:
https://childsexualabuseinquiry.independent.gov.uk/
Anti-slavery Day
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
Modern slavery is a brutal crime which knows no boundaries and does not discriminate on gender, age, creed, culture or race. Traffickers and slave masters exploit whatever means they have at their disposal to coerce, deceive and force individuals into a life of abuse, servitude and inhumane treatment. This is simply unacceptable in modern society. We will not, and cannot let this continue.
Anti-slavery Day is on 18 October and to mark this important date the inter- departmental ministerial group on modern slavery has today published a statement on UK activity.
The statement highlights the UK’s ongoing commitment, across all administrations, to tackling this horrendous crime. It sets out legislative and non-legislative activity underway to reduce the threat posed by slave drivers and traffickers, and to improve the identification and protection of victims. A copy of the statement will be placed in the Library of the House.
Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
Section 19(1) of the Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Act 2011 (the Act) requires the Secretary of State to report to Parliament as soon as reasonably practicable after the end of every relevant three-month period on the exercise of her TPIM powers under the Act during that period.
The level of information provided will always be subject to slight variations based on operational advice.
TPIM notices in force (as of 31 August 2014) | 1 |
TPIM notices in respect of British citizens (as of 31 August 2014) | 0 |
TPIM notices extended (during the reporting period) | 0 |
TPIM notices revoked (during the reporting period) | 0 |
TPIM notices revived (during the reporting period) | 1 |
Variations made to measures specified in TPIM notices (during the reporting period) | 0 |
Applications to vary measures specified in TPIM notices refused (during the reporting period) | 0 |
During the reporting period one TPIM notice that had been revoked in a previous quarter was revived upon the subject’s release from prison.
The TPIM review group (TRG) keeps every TPIM notice under regular and formal review. The TRG has convened once during this reporting period.
Justice and Home Affairs Council
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
The Justice and Home Affairs (JHA) Council was held on 9 and 10 October in Luxembourg. The Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Mr Vara) and I attended on behalf of the United Kingdom. The following items were discussed.
The interior session began with a presentation by the presidency on its paper on serious and organised international crime. The presidency invited Ministers to endorse the role of the Committee on operational co-operation on internal security (COSI). Rob Wainwright, the Director of Europol, briefed Ministers on the latest Europol operation highlighting the real world relevance of COSI: Operation Archimedes — a recent operation involving over 25,000 law enforcement officers from across the EU and beyond.
I endorsed the achievements of the policy cycle and thanked Europol for their impressive work on operation Archimedes. I stated that it is crucial to recognise modern slavery and the abuse of free movement as priority issues at European level. The EU must also focus on threats coming from outside its borders and tackle the issues at source — the European External Action Service would therefore have to play its part. I then thanked the Latvian Government for their co-operation in a recent high profile murder investigation in the UK. In order to tackle the issue I called on Ministers to make efforts to improve the proactive sharing of criminal records as a matter of urgency.
The presidency concluded that COSI’s policy cycle work on serious organised crime has indeed been successful. Operation Archimedes had shown that pan-European police co-operation is now not only possible, but that EU financial support and facilitation significantly enhances results.
Next, the Council discussed the issue of foreign fighters, based on a paper presented by the presidency. Discussion focused on how to achieve progress on the passenger name records directive before the end of the year; and possible amendments to the Schengen border code. I welcomed the paper and the continued focus on foreign fighters and stressed the importance of acting quickly to tackle the threat.
Over lunch, the Council discussed the presidency paper “Taking action to better manage migratory flows”. The Government support the approach set out in the paper, which calls for the prompt withdrawal of the Mare Nostrum operation in the Mediterranean and for all member states to comply fully with their obligations under the EU migration and asylum acquis. The paper was subsequently adopted as Council conclusions. The discussion on the Task Force Mediterranean was largely assimilated into the discussion on the presidency paper.
After lunch, the Commission provided a brief assessment of progress made under the Greek action plan on asylum and migration management. Significant improvements have been made to the Greek asylum and migration systems, including: the establishment of a first reception service, the asylum service and appeals authority; the closure of inadequate detention facilities and an increase in available places in open reception centres. However, several areas of concern remain including inconsistent detention conditions, the lack of a national strategy on minors and issues of financial sustainability. The presidency noted the update and this subject will possibly come back to Council in December for further consideration.
Under AOB the presidency provided a brief update on the progress of negotiations on the UK’s JHA opt-out. The presidency also provided an update of progress in the negotiations on the data protection directive and the visa code; provided feedback on the high-level conference on a renewed EU internal security strategy; and described upcoming presidency initiatives including a conference on the Rabat process on 27 November in Rome, a horn of Africa conference and a conference on integration and migration in Milan in December.
Finally, Hungary thanked successive presidencies and the Commission for their assistance in the successful relocation of CEPOL to Budapest and invited Ministers to the opening of the new building on 16 November.
On Justice Day, the presidency proposed a partial general approach on chapter IV of the Data Protection Regulation, which deals with the data protection obligations on organisations. This agreement was proposed on the understanding that it was without prejudice to any questions which cut across the whole of the proposal. While the Minister with responsibility for the courts and legal aid, the hon. Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Mr Vara), speaking for the UK, welcomed the risk-based approach which the Council was pushing for in this chapter, he expressed concerns about the inward investment implications of the requirement for controllers established outside the EU to designate a representative within the EU. The UK reiterated its objections to the concept of partial general approaches and reserved the right to return to chapter IV when considering the overall burden of the regulation on business and its impact on the EU growth agenda. Other member states expressed other areas of concern, and shared the UK’s view that nothing should be agreed on the proposal until everything was agreed, and that this should not form a mandate for trilogue negotiations with the European Parliament. The presidency none the less concluded that the partial general approach was agreed, subject to the caveats previously expressed.
The presidency then introduced its paper on the Court of Justice’s judgment of 14 May 2014 in relation to Google Spain and the “right to be forgotten”, which drew particular attention to the balance between the right to privacy and freedom of expression. The Commission noted that the implications of the Google judgment were still being worked through. The Commission believed the current text of the draft regulation struck the right balance by adopting a generic approach including protecting freedom of expression. Nearly all member states emphasised the need to balance the rights to privacy and freedom of expression and most argued that it should be left to member states to do so at national level on a case-by-case basis the UK insisted that the Council, as a legislator, was not bound to follow the conclusions of the judgment in preparing the new regulation. The presidency concluded that the regulation should only deal with the issue at a generic level, with member states and national courts having the latitude to find the appropriate balance on a case-by-case basis.
The second session to take place on Justice Day was on the concept of a “single legal area” in relation to the European Public Prosecutor’s Office (EPPO) proposal. While some member states welcomed the concept, there was no consensus and a number expressed concerns, indicating that more clarity was needed. The presidency concluded that further work was needed on the concept. The UK does not participate in the EPPO but does take an active interest in developments.
Next, the presidency stated its intention to seek a general approach on the directive on the presumption of innocence at the December JHA Council. The UK is not opted in to this proposal so its provisions will not apply to us. The presidency sought views from member states on how to approach some detailed issues in order to guide the next phase of work. It was agreed that the directive should allow trial judges to have the same investigatory powers as were provided for prosecutors in respect of finding incriminating or exonerating evidence. It was also agreed that presumptions which reversed the usual burden of proof could be made in some limited circumstances, while noting that if there were doubt that should profit the defence. It should also be clear that any such reversal made must be rebuttable. The presidency noted this agreement which would guide its work toward a general approach.
On the simplification of acceptance of public documents, there was a discussion on EU standard multilingual forms, the relationship with existing international agreements and the possibility of a feasibility study on developing an IT system for the purposes of exchanging public documents within the EU. A majority of member states, including the UK, proposed simple translations that do not have independent evidentiary value rather than the development of multilingual forms. These would need to be attached to the original national documents and should not replace or be used as an alternative to national forms. On the scope of the proposal, some member states, again including the UK, favoured reducing the scope to civil status documents only, i.e. certificates of birth, marriage and death. In conclusion, the presidency observed that member states had differing positions, and warned against a possible block in Council. Discussion at expert level would need to continue on these issues.
A discussion took place over lunch on the confiscation of criminal assets, particularly in the absence of a specific criminal conviction. Member states exchanged views on how to implement the new EU directive on confiscation. The UK has not opted in to this directive.
Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner (Triennial Review)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
I am today announcing the start of the Triennial Review of the Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner (OISC).
Triennial reviews are part of the Government's commitment to ensuring that non-departmental public bodies continue to have regular independent challenge. The review will examine whether there is a continuing need for the functions and form of the OISC and whether it should continue to exist at arm's length from government. Should the review conclude there is a continuing need for the OISC, it will go on to examine whether the OISC’'s control and governance arrangements continue to meet the recognised principles of good corporate governance.
I shall inform the House of the outcome of the review.