Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Tom Tugendhat

Thursday 6th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

May I first pay huge tribute to my hon. Friend, who has done such an extraordinary job? The amount of joy it has given me to welcome friends into this country has been frankly overwhelming, but there are many who are still stuck in third countries. Please can she address with the Foreign Office the support of those who are waiting for exit visas or support? Secondly, those who have written to me for support, and to many other Members across the House and the country, have often applied for schemes that have now been replaced. Will those applications be rolled into this scheme, or will they require resubmission?

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank my hon. Friend and I pay tribute to the very moving speech he gave in this Chamber over the summer. On the schemes being superseded by the ACRS and ARAP, if I may, I will discuss that with him outside the Chamber, because I just want to be clear about what schemes he is responding to. Our aim throughout is to get eligible people to the United Kingdom as quickly and as safely as possible, and then to settle them well within our country.

Afghanistan Policy

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Tom Tugendhat

Monday 13th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

First, I thank the Scottish Government and, indeed, all the devolved Administrations for their constructive work with us so far. It genuinely is a great example of the United Kingdom really pulling together.

I very much hear some of the hon. Gentleman’s criticisms in respect of numbers. I suspect that he and I will not be able to find accommodation on that. We have been careful to ensure that those people whom we can welcome, we can welcome and integrate well, which is why, working with local authorities, we have settled on the 5,000 figure. I remind the hon. Gentleman that the ACRS, which is for members of civil society, vulnerable people and so on, is in addition to those who are welcomed under ARAP. Unless things have suddenly changed over the past 24 hours or so, it is truly one of the most ambitious schemes in the world, so we should be really proud of it.

On looking after people who have been evacuated here, the hon. Gentleman will be pleased to hear that the tariff applies throughout the devolved nations as well. There are additional funds for education and so on.

On the Nationality and Borders Bill, I would argue that the very generosity of our country, though the resettlement scheme, shows our commitment as a Government to ensuring that there are safe and legal rights, which act as a balance against those people traffickers who exploit people at great personal risk—we saw only this weekend terrible news from the channel—for their own criminal ends. We want to encourage people to use safe and legal routes and we want to go after those people traffickers.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

First, I pay enormous tribute not only to my hon. Friend the Minister but to the Home Secretary, whom I was texting barely half an hour before I came into the Chamber about an Afghan who is currently near a border, and she was personally sorting out the transit documents that I hope will enable him to come through. I also pay enormous tributes to the councils throughout the entire United Kingdom that have done enormous amounts to help us all to find accommodation for those in desperate need.

Does the Minister recognise that in many ways Afghanistan is many different communities, so people need to be looked at and addressed in different ways? What outreach has she done to the different community groups inside the United Kingdom? How is she looking to help those people who have links to various different elements in Afghan society to find their own home within that society here in the UK?

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank my hon. Friend for his absolute commitment to this issue. He has knowledge and expertise in respect of the region that I think it is fair to say few in the House possess: we are genuinely better informed when my hon. Friend stands to speak on Afghanistan and the implications in the region.

On my hon. Friend’s thanks to the Home Secretary, I join him in making that point about both the Home Secretary and, if I may say so, the Immigration Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster), who has done extraordinary amounts of work behind the scenes. He never asks for credit or kudos but I am determined to give him credit in Hansard for everything he has done.

This weekend, I had the pleasure of trying to help some Opposition colleagues with their queries. This is a genuine team effort and we desperately want to help the people we can help. As part of that, we of course must include—and I am determined to do so—Afghan civil society in this country. I have already met many groups that have had helpful and constructive ideas about how we can all reach out and help people to integrate, and I am extremely grateful to them. This is an ongoing process and I very much look forward to working with such groups to ensure that we offer the warm welcome that the Prime Minister has promised.

School Funding

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Tom Tugendhat

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I will not, thank you.

Louth and Horncastle is an extremely rural constituency, with less than one person per hectare. Some of the wards on the coast are among the 3% most deprived communities in the country. They deserve a better funding deal and that is what the Government are trying to achieve. This is not about the Tory shires as some, although not all, Opposition Members like to paint it. It is about making funding fairer than it has been historically.

I echo the concerns of colleagues that the laudable principle of including sparsity must work on the ground. The Minister for School Standards has agreed to meet me to discuss individual schools, for which I am grateful, to ensure that the principle applies in practice. I recognise that the 12 schools in my constituency with decreases face a challenge. I do not underestimate that and look forward to discussing it with the Minister.

There has been much talk among Opposition Members regarding cuts. When I hear that the education of children in the Leader of the Opposition’s constituency is funded to the tune of more than £6,000 per student, whereas in Lincolnshire the figure is £4,379 per student, I simply do not understand how Opposition Members can claim that that is fair and not deserving of review. I say that understanding only too well the challenges in education.

[Tom Tugendhat (Tonbridge and Malling) (Con)]

I am delighted to hear my hon. Friend making such an important speech. She is highlighting the fact that schools such as the Judd and Tonbridge Grammar in Kent, which have such great reputations, are massively underfunded. This settlement will go some way towards making the situation fairer.

[Victoria Atkins]

I am extremely grateful. This is about making sure that the cake is cut just a little more fairly than it is at the moment.

I will make one final point because I am conscious of time. I also apologise to colleagues from whom I have not accepted interventions. May I thank the teachers, the governors and the staff of my 54 local schools? I look forward to meeting all of them before the general election. That is my promise and I will try to keep it. I love it when they come to the House of Commons because, if nothing else, bringing our schools into this place to show them how democracy works is how we get young people interested in our democracy.

Investigatory Powers Bill

Debate between Victoria Atkins and Tom Tugendhat

Report: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Monday 6th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Tom Tugendhat]

It is a great pleasure to speak on Report, particularly as the heirs of Walsingham and Egerton are on the Treasury Bench sitting in judgment over a Bill that will shape our civil liberties. In their day, Walsingham broke the code, and Egerton tried Mary, Queen of Scots. The techniques that they used are still in active use today, but they have been updated. It is a question no longer of codes on paper, smuggled out in brandy bottles, but of codes hidden in computer messages, apps and other forms of communication. That is why I welcome the Bill, which updates historical practice for the present day. It is essential that we put this into statute, because for the first time we are putting into a Bill what we actually mean. For years, the state has used interpretations of legal practice rather than setting out, and debating properly, what it should do. That is why I particularly welcome the joint approach to the Bill. The hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) has been instrumental in bringing a co-operative mood to the House, and I am grateful to him for doing so.

The Bill balances privacy against other considerations. As my hon. and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer) pointed out, privacy is a fundamental right of all British citizens, and one that we have enjoyed for many years. But that privacy is only worth anything if we can live in safety, not just from the obvious risk of terrorism but from the risks of child abuse, drug smuggling and other forms of violence against the people of this country. I am grateful for the fact that the Government have balanced that privacy against those threats.

I will leave it there, because there are many more amendments to come. I could address some of them in detail, and perhaps I will be called to speak again.

[Victoria Atkins]

I had the privilege of being a member of the Joint Committee and of the Bill Committee, so I feel as though I have lived with this Bill for many months. I will be happy to see it become law when that happens. This Bill is vital in the modern age, and it is above party politics. It is about doing the right thing for our country and for our constituents.

The Joint Committee and the Bill Committee scrutinised the Bill intensively, and I think we considered something like 1,000 amendments in the Bill Committee. I am happy to say that we managed, nevertheless, to find some areas of agreement, namely that it was necessary to introduce a Bill to set out the investigatory powers of the security services and law enforcement agencies, and to update the scrutiny and transparency of those powers and the people who use them. It is a credit to everyone, on both sides of the House, who supports the principle of the Bill.

I welcome, as others have done, new clause 5 and Government amendment 30, which will put all related criminal offences in the Bill. That will create transparency by making the misuse of these powers absolutely obvious. I want to look at two proposed new clauses that have not received the same level of scrutiny as the Bill has enjoyed; I shall endeavour to change that in the next couple of minutes. New clause 1— the notifying criminals clause, as someone remarked to me—raises grave concerns about our impact on fighting crime and terror. I am conscious that the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael), who tabled the new clause, is not his place. For anyone who has not read it, it would require the police and security services to notify, within 30 days of a warrant ending, anyone who has been investigated. There is no requirement for an error to have occurred, or anything of that nature. The only requirement is that someone’s data have been investigated.

[Victoria Atkins]

Very much so. That shows the time sensitivity of many investigations, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing it up. We know from evidence sessions in both Committees that 100% of counter-terrorism cases and 90% of serious organised crime cases involve communications data evidence. We are talking about very serious cases indeed. My concern about new clause 1 is that it in no way removes the risk that high-level criminals and terror suspects will be told that they have been investigated by law enforcement and the security services. Such people are more likely to be the subject of warrants because of their criminality, so we would be handing the investigations to those criminals on a plate.

[Tom Tugendhat]

The level of encryption available in public today is such that new clause 1 would allow criminals to hide the deeds that they had formerly left unhidden, and therefore it would expose the country to even greater threat.

[Victoria Atkins]

That is exactly right. My hon. Friend makes the point that I was about to make, in fact.

[Tom Tugendhat]

Oh, sorry.

[Victoria Atkins]

Not at all. [Interruption.] It has never stopped me before. The new clause will help criminals to evade investigation, arrest and prosecution. Serious organised crime gangs and terrorists talk to each other. They compare notes on investigative activities, whether ongoing or not. It will not necessarily be the first, second or third notification that starts to hint at the methodology of the police; it may be the 20th, but none the less those hints about patterns of behaviour will begin to emerge in the criminal world. Why on earth would this House pass legislation that would give serious organised crime gangs and terrorist gangs such an advantage?