Child Sexual Exploitation
Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Kris Hopkins (Keighley) (Con)
May I offer my congratulations to hon. Friends and hon. Members who have secured this debate? Eighteen hon. Members spoke yesterday about 3p on a gallon of petrol. If this were an Opposition day debate, the Chamber would be packed, and if it were a statement on the armed forces, there would be 50 Government Members in the Chamber. I should tell hon. Members—not for a laugh—that if there were a debate with the word “Europe” in the title, there would be standing room only on the Government side, and yet there is a fairly token response from the House to today’s debate on child sexual exploitation and child abuse.
The first time I heard about and began to attempt to understand child sexual exploitation was when my predecessor, Ann Cryer, spoke out. I pay tribute to her work on the subject, although she did not always get it right and I did not always agree with her. She attempted to engage people in the Chamber and out in the community, but she was very much a lone voice at the time, especially in speaking to the Kashmiri Pakistani community about some of their behaviour.
The day Ann Cryer mentioned that behaviour in August a few years ago, a young British Pakistani lad from Keighley went on Channel 4 and said that her clumsy phrasing suggested that all the men in our town were paedophiles. That is not what Ann suggested, but people said, “How dare you make this accusation? You are accusing all of us in one go.” It is important to say that not all British Pakistani men are child abusers. Unfortunately, we must constantly qualify our statements so as not to give people excuses—I shall elaborate on that later.
The British National party will use grooming as a key element of its campaign in the Rotherham election campaign, which will start soon. Not all British Pakistani men are abusing white kids. There is a minority, though. The media coverage gives long lists of notorious abusers—including vicars, priests and celebrities—who are all white and non-Muslim. I need to put the problem in context before I say anything more. The vast majority of child abusers in this country are white. As my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) said, there are abusers in every village and every town. The demographics say that they will be white, but we should not get away from the fact that gangs of Muslim men are going round and raping white kids at this moment in time. That is an horrendous thing to say, but it is the fact of what is happening. I want to explore some of the state’s agencies’ behaviour towards that, and some of the community’s associated behaviour and culture. My speech will not fix the problem, but I hope we will make progress in the debate that Ann started. By securing the debate, my hon. Friend has also helped to move the conversation on.
The initial response to Ann’s comments in the community was, “Why is it us again? You must be racist because you are having a go at us again. Why do you keep talking about it?” Lots of the people in that community dismissed Ann’s comments and saw them as inflammatory rather than as challenging and helpful. Many people believed another injustice was being done to the community by the fact that Ann kept raising the issue. The victimhood that ran through the community gave an excuse for not facing up to the problem. I went to lots of public events to discuss the issue, but all I heard was that Ann’s constant comments undermined the community. The community failed to face up to the core issues that Ann was putting out there. The reality is that the problem has not gone away. Ann Cryer was right. Since that time, many more children have been abused because of the failures of the agencies and of the communities to address what was happening.
I have been in local government for a long time and have heard lots of comments from police officers. I had to say explicitly to senior police officers that it was okay for them to pursue individuals who were perpetrating such crimes—I needed almost to give them permission to pursue those people. Political correctness ran through the political class and some of our agencies.
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)
I hear what the hon. Gentleman is saying, but is he not making the same mistake? The Home Affairs Committee asked the deputy Children’s Commissioner about this particular issue—she is now carrying out an investigation throughout the whole country—and she said that it is not to do with race or religion, but is just one form of methodology of sexual abuse.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. Can I just say that we have to have short interventions? I know that the hon. Lady wants to speak, and I am sure that she does not want to use up her speech this early, but the problem is that if she continues to intervene, she will understand if she is moved down the list.
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) on securing this debate. I entirely agreed with what she and the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) said about practical steps that can be taken to ensure that children are safe.
I will start by talking a little about my experience of child abuse cases. I know that the topic of the debate is sexual exploitation, but sexual exploitation is effectively child abuse. I first came across a case of child abuse as a young prosecutor, when I dealt with the case of a six-month-old baby who had been raped, incredible as it may sound. The baby was incredibly injured. It was done by her father and it was done in the home.
That is a topic that we do not often want to talk about, perhaps because we are uncomfortable about it or do not want to acknowledge it. Although cases of sexual exploitation, such as the Rochdale case, the Jimmy Savile case and cases in care homes, make sensational headlines and are heard about, the statistics of sexual abuse show that they are much smaller in number than cases of child abuse within the home or the family. Often, the perpetrators are fathers, stepfathers, older brothers, uncles, members of the extended family or friends of the family. In those situations, the abuse often carries on for years. Such cases tend to come to light only when the victim comes across somebody whom they can trust and to whom they can speak. It may be a friendly teacher at school, a family friend or a family member. The whole thing then comes out.
Again, I speak from experience. During the 14 years that I worked as an in-house lawyer at the Crown Prosecution Service, I was designated as the lawyer who would deal with cases of sexual abuse involving not only young victims, but adult victims. I experienced cases of abuse within the home by the family.
We also do not talk about the abuse of young boys. My hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) referred to the abuse of young boys by a particular individual. Young boys, too, are sexually abused and the extent of that abuse is, once again, underestimated and unknown.
Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)
My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech and a powerful point. On the safeguarding of children, does she share my concern that agencies are still not sharing enough data to prevent the type of abuse that she is talking about from taking place?
Yasmin Qureshi
I agree with my hon. Friend. There needs to be more sharing of information.
Since I started my life as a prosecutor many years ago—now I am at the private Bar—the way in which we deal with victims of child abuse has changed. I am pleased to say that there have been massive improvements in how we deal with children, especially through changes to court procedures. Children can now give evidence by video link so that they do not have to face the perpetrators. Such changes have made it easier for victims to come forward and for cases to be prosecuted. There have been substantial improvements in the system, but—and this is a big but—there is still a lack of knowledge about the sheer amount of abuse against children and young people. Abuse within the home needs to be explored in much more detail. We can have as many inquiries as we like into a particular care home or into what happened at the BBC, but there has been no concentration on the greater problem of abuse within the home.
I was hoping not to have to go into the issue of sexual exploitation being somehow linked with religion or culture, but in light of the speech by the hon. Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins)—[Interruption]— that issue needs to be addressed. In the Home Affairs Committee, the deputy Children’s Commissioner was asked directly whether the issue was linked to race or religion, but she responded that it was not and said that it was about methodology and just one way that sexual abuse takes place. The assistant chief commissioner of Greater Manchester police said that race and religion had nothing to do with the cases in Rochdale and elsewhere. The judge in the Derby case also said that race, ethnicity and culture had nothing to do with the abuse. That is really important.
Yasmin Qureshi
May I just finish my remarks, and I will come back to the hon. Gentleman?
If we start bringing such things into this debate, we lose the bigger picture. In the case of Jimmy Savile, the whole BBC is under examination. That is fine, but all the headlines in the newspapers are now dogged by the BBC and what it knew, and we have forgotten the 200 or 300 victims of Sir Jimmy Savile. In the case of the care home in Wales, again, we have forgotten about the victims and everybody is talking about procedures and who knew what. Those things are important, and as the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) and my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) said, we need to look at prevention and at how we can make our children safer.
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. The hon. Member for Keighley is, indeed, Kris Hopkins. We must, however, have shorter interventions, important as they are.
Yasmin Qureshi
I was saying that it is important to recognise the methodology involved. In the cases mentioned by the hon. Member for Keighley, on the face of it the victims were white and the perpetrators were Muslims, but that is coincidental and not deliberate.
Gavin Shuker
My hon. Friend is being extremely generous as she receives no injury time for this intervention. Is the point she advocates so strongly that these samples become self-selecting after a period, and that the evidence base is not advanced enough for us to draw conclusions about race and ethnicity? Understandably, however, certain newspapers will go after certain cases.
Mr Deputy Speaker
Order. I think the hon. Lady has got the message and the hon. Gentleman will understand if he now gets moved down the list. He does want to speak but he has intervened a couple of times already.
Yasmin Qureshi
Let me explain why this issue is about methodology rather than race or religion. Sir Cyril Smith, for example, seems to have had a desire to abuse young boys, which seems to have been his pattern of behaviour. A system of trafficked victims—young girls who are forced into prostitution—is one method used by pimps and other criminal gangs so that they can take money from them. Jimmy Savile obviously had a penchant for young girls, and he used his position and power, and whatever presents he could give them, to influence them in order to do what he did. Sadly, most of those involved in such activities are men. Care homes contain people in a vulnerable position, and the adults who abused them were mostly men as well.
Hon. Members have also referred to grooming cases. Grooming is not new—there were such cases in many of our cities 20 years ago, but the newspapers never talked about it. I remember dealing with the type of cases that the hon. Member for Keighley spoke of, but the victim and the defendant were white. It is important to emphasise that, and not to fall into the British National party and English Defence League trap of saying that the problem is linked to race or religion—it is not.
A common factor and theme run through those different types of abuse. They virtually all involve men, and the victims are always young girls or boys or children, and always vulnerable. Leaving aside internal family cases, the external cases never involve the child who has a secure, happy family life or a home life where someone looks after or takes care of them. The cases involve children who are abused by priests when the church is looking after them, or children in a care home in a vulnerable position who do not have anyone to look after them, or young boys, such as in the Cyril Smith case, or the young girls in Keighley and other places. Many of these young people are vulnerable. Criminals virtually always commit crime on vulnerable people. People mug little old ladies. Why? It is because they are easy targets. Such people would not want to mess with 6-foot big, burley men, because it would be difficult to take anything from them. The key is vulnerability, and nothing else. If we get distracted by race or culture, we will lose sight of the bigger picture. It is the same with the inquiry into Savile. We talk about him, but what his victims went through is more important.
We need to do a number of things. The country at large needs to be educated and made aware of how prevalent sexual abuse is, particularly sexual abuse in the home. We must set up systems in schools, social services and the police, so that they are places where children can go when they are being abused. When they say what is happening to them, we need to take them seriously. I am not saying that they should be believed, but there should be an objective investigation—they should be heard and the matter should be thoroughly investigated, and their complaints should not just be put aside. At the end of the investigation, action should be taken if it is needed. Many years ago, that investigation process was not happening, as it did not more recently in the Rochdale case. We need to ensure that we have better systems and a better framework so that children can come forward and feel confident in talking to adults, including their teachers and others, about what they have been going through.
Hon. Members are shocked when they hear about sexual abuse, grooming and so on, but should we be so shocked? Historically, since time immemorial, sadly, a small percentage of men—irrespective of which part of the world they come from—have had desires towards children. We need to recognise that that small minority are interested only in abusing young children, whether boys or girls. Many child abusers do not abuse adults—their specific lust is for children. We need to recognise that that is the root of the problem.
How do we deal with that and recognise it? The best way is to use whatever mechanisms we have to prevent abuse, to detect abuse when it happens, and to deal with abusers as criminals, as they should be dealt with. Unless and until we recognise that and have systems to make it easier to protect our children, we will have those problems.
Margot James (Stourbridge) (Con)
I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi). I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) and the hon. Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) for co-sponsoring this important debate on child sexual exploitation, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing time for it. I also recognise the good work of the former Member for Rotherham, the right hon. Denis MacShane, and thank him for his role in securing the debate.
What we have heard reported in the press in recent weeks and months has been, as the deputy Children’s Commissioner Sue Berelowitz said, so terrible that it beggars belief. That has been part of the reason that the abuse has gone on for so many years. The vulnerable young people who have been abused were simply not believed by the people to whom they went for help. The impunity with which Savile went about his hypocritical reign of abuse over three decades was also aided by the silence in which most of his vulnerable victims endured their fate. I hope that those victims, who have been silent or not believed for so long, will be able to get justice at this late stage.
I will focus on the method of exploitation that differs from that of the lone perpetrator, but is systematically organised by gangs of men working together. I want to take issue with a few of the comments made by the hon. Member for Bolton South East on the issue of men of Pakistani origin abusing vulnerable white girls. I congratulate The Times and its journalist Andrew Norfolk on their campaign to expose this previously under-reported method of abuse. I agree that methodology is a key part of it, but even though most of the victims have been under the age of consent, too many professionals regarded them as prostitutes who were somehow complicit in their own rape and abuse. I support calls from Barnardo’s and The Children’s Society to end the use of the term “child prostitute”—it is a misnomer.
One mother in Rochdale, whose daughters were targeted by abusers, gave police and social workers the names and nicknames of more than a dozen men who had raped her daughter. She pleaded for her daughters to be put under child protection, but they were just regarded as bad kids. There seems to have been a complete failure by the adult professionals to understand the nature of the problem and the vulnerability of the victims.
We heard earlier from the hon. Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk), in a moving and shocking speech, about the director for children, schools and families in his borough who recognised, with the benefit of hindsight and recent local learning, that we missed some opportunities to offer more support and assistance to those children in 2008 and 2009. However, the problem did not emerge in 2008. It had been going on for much longer than that.
A woman I know, who I will call Samina—that is not her real name—was raised in Oldham. She described to me her experience at school 20 years ago. She told me that a lot of the men were, like her, ex-Pakistani: restaurant workers and market stall holders—men who had some money. They abused younger, white girls under the cover of the market stalls to conceal their behaviour from the police. She told me that her friends were well aware of what was going on, and that those girls were being used in the vans in which market stall keepers stored what they sold on the stalls, but everybody just kept quiet. It progressed then to brothels above kebab shops.
It is clear that the authorities were inhibited—this is why the ethnicity angle is important and we must not shy away from it—from acting for fear of being called racist.
We have heard mention of the former Member for Keighley, Mrs Ann Cryer, who was attacked continually in her constituency for raising this problem. Later, the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), a former Home Secretary, spoke the truth when he said that young men were targeting white girls because Pakistani heritage girls were off limits, but some of his parliamentary colleagues said that his comments perpetuated racist attitudes. I pay tribute to work done by parts of the Asian community to tackle this problem by being honest about its roots—groups such as the Ramadhan Foundation, led by Mohammed Shafiq.
My hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins) said that we need to tackle the underlying causes and attitudes that lead to so many forms of violence against women. The inability of Asian women to tackle the problem is compounded, however, by the isolation of too many of their number. When I meet community groups in my constituency, unless I organise a women-only event, I will meet only men. At the women’s events, I need an interpreter, because many of the group will speak little or no English, as a result of which their employment opportunities are severely limited. Being unable to participate fully in life outside the home or in public life means that such women are disempowered, forced to be dependants and end up living in a closed community—and, as we know from other communities, closed communities can sweep heinous crimes, such as child abuse, under the carpet, because they are perceived to threaten the community as a whole. That has been as true of parts of the Catholic priesthood as the community I am speaking about.
We must press for greater integration, better education and more opportunities for poorer Asian women to make a life outside the home, so that they can play a bigger part in challenging their communities and bringing pressure to bear on the small minority of rogue men who are bringing their communities into disrepute.
In its recent report on child protection, the Education Committee wrote:
“We are struck by the number of submissions which noted that some forms of abuse, including forced marriage, ritual abuse, female genital mutilation, honour-based violence”—
so-called—
“and trafficking, are often only secondarily cast as child abuse: they are primarily seen as problems of integration, community or immigration. Casting them as something other than child abuse can mean that child victims are stigmatised”.
Yasmin Qureshi
The hon. Lady refers to Asian males committing crimes against young white girls. How does she explain Jimmy Savile abusing white girls? In the Welsh care homes, it was white males committing crimes against little white boys. In other cases, ethnicity and religion do not come into it.
Margot James
I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, because it gives me the opportunity to make it absolutely clear that I am only talking about one group-related way of exploiting young children—predominantly girls. There are many other groups and individuals, about whom she spoke eloquently, who indulge in this practice as well, but I am afraid that in the instances I have raised the abuse has gone undetected and unacknowledged by children’s services, social workers and the police in our northern cities because they have been frightened of being called racists. We have to confront that issue head on.
There needs to be more support for the excellent women’s organisations that challenge the negative stereotyping of women and try to improve the situation. There are many, but I would like to mention just one, Jeena, representatives of which spoke at the Conservative Women’s Forum of MPs last week. It works on a shoestring, but is making good progress in challenging negative attitudes to Asian girls and women in schools. Clearly, it could do more with greater resources. I was shocked to hear from Jeena that a lot of schools will not accept its educational programmes, because they fear that parents will take their children out of those schools and place them in other schools that do not raise these difficult issues. That is shocking, so I hope the Minister will raise it with Education Ministers, because we have to change the mindset in some of our schools.
I want to end on prosecutions. Men who are tempted to exploit vulnerable young people need to know not only that their behaviour is unacceptable, but that there will be a far higher likelihood of a prison sentence than there has been to date. There have been far too few prosecutions. Home Office research published in the “Paying the Price” report set the number of victims of sexual exploitation at around 5,000 a year in England and Wales, yet there were only 55 prosecutions in 2009 and 57 in 2010. On the basis of those figures, there is currently a 1% chance of conviction. No wonder the crime is growing.
Mention has been made of the nine inquiries into wider sexual abuse issues, which obviously span a far greater diversity of things than I have been able to mention in my 10 minutes. I support calls for one overarching inquiry that investigates and identifies the lessons learned from young people, social services and the wider societal discrimination against young girls and women, which I have tried to highlight. An overarching inquiry would be able to make recommendations on how specialist police resources should be best deployed to maximise the number of prosecutions from yesteryear, as well as the present day. That will be the acid test of an effective inquiry in this area.
Child Abuse Allegations (North Wales)
Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Mrs May
My hon. Friend raises an interesting point. I am sure the House will want to return to this issue either in relation to the HMIC report or anything further that comes out of the investigations being set up today. One issue HMIC will be looking at in a number of forces is whether the police respond properly to these sorts of allegations. As a number of Members have said, one of the more general concerns is that victims often find it difficult to be heard, or do not come forward because they do not think they will be listened to.
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)
As a former prosecutor of historical sexual abuse cases in care homes and institutions, as well as within the family, I informed the House in a debate some months ago that sexual abuse of our young people is very common and much more prevalent than we appreciate. We need not only an inquiry into any abuse that has been taking place in care homes or other institutions but to take a proper look at what we should do to protect our young children in the future and what rules we should put in place to make it easier for young victims to come forward and tell us what has happened to them. I repeat that it is not only care homes that have sexual abuse problems; there are also sexual abuse problems in the home and the family.
Mrs May
I acknowledge the hon. Lady’s experience in this area, and she raises an important point about the extent of such abuse and the scenarios in which it takes place. She says we should look at the broad issue of child protection. She will have heard my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) informing the House that the Education Committee will publish its report on child protection tomorrow, and I am sure the whole House will want to look at that issue very seriously.
Extradition
Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)
I, too, welcome the Home Secretary’s decision regarding Gary McKinnon. When she reviews these particular provisions, I want to ask her to consider three things in relation to extradition: whether extradition to another country can be for actions that are not criminal offences in this country; whether a proper case has to be made in a British court before someone can be extradited; and, if a significant part of the alleged conduct has occurred in the United Kingdom, whether the trial must be heard in the United Kingdom.
Mrs May
The point of introducing the forum bar is that there will be a transparent process for considering, challenging and examining whether a prosecution should take place in the UK or in another country. The decision taken by the courts will be transparent and open, and that is what I believe will give people more confidence in our extradition arrangements.
Extradition
Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts(14 years, 2 months ago)
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Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) on securing the debate. I also congratulate the Backbench Business Committee on allowing it. I hope there will be a more detailed debate on the Floor of the House.
I want to talk about the UK-USA extradition treaty and the European arrest warrant not because I have constituents who have been affected by them, but because—I suppose I have to declare an interest here—I am a lawyer who has dealt with criminal cases and who has an interest in human rights generally.
Like other hon. Members, I accept that we need extradition proceedings and a European arrest warrant. What we are concerned about, however, is how those provisions are used in practice. I want to talk, first, about the UK-USA extradition treaty, which was signed under the previous Government. Secondly, I want to talk about the practical ways in which European arrest warrants can be improved to ensure that they are issued in proper circumstances, are based on evidence and include safeguards. Thirdly, I want to touch on the recommendations of the Joint Committee on Human Rights, which has looked at the issue in depth. I urge the Government to accept those recommendations.
I am surprised that action on these matters has been delayed. When Ministers and other Government Members were in opposition, and these issues were discussed, they objected vigorously to them. In fact, the Deputy Prime Minister described the USA-UK extradition treaty as “lop-sided”. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr Skinner) said, many eminent members of the Government were critical of the provisions and opposed them. I am surprised that changes have not been made, given that the Government have been in power for 18 months.
Sir Scott Baker is not correct when he states that the treaty has not operated unfairly. A key difficulty is that UK nationals cannot test the veracity of the evidence being used to seek their extradition. However, a US citizen facing extradition to the UK can challenge and test the evidence produced to extradite them. That is one reason why so few US citizens have been extradited to this country. They are therefore able effectively to challenge the evidence presented to them, when we are not.
Another argument, which Sir Scott Baker also uses, is that the treaty is not unfair to UK citizens, but why was there a need to negotiate a separate treaty with specific provisions with the USA? We have treaties with other countries that do not have such provisions, and those treaties require a greater burden of proof before people are extradited to those countries.
In my previous life as a prosecutor, I would toddle off to Bow Street magistrates court—it has now closed—to try to get extradition warrants. The documents I presented included information about the exact nature of the charges; the indictment had to state specifically what the offences were for which the person was being extradited. The documents also had to include the evidence being used to back the application. Furthermore, a senior member of the Crown Prosecution Service had to certify that that was proper evidence and that there was a proper case for extradition.
Finally, as soon as the person was extradited to the UK, committal proceedings had to commence immediately, and all the paperwork and evidence had to be served on the person. That ensured that somebody who was extradited to the UK was tried expeditiously. None of those guarantees is being given to UK citizens. Why are British nationals being given less favour than US citizens? It is completely wrong that the Government are still set on this course and have not changed the provisions.
On the European arrest warrant, I do not have an objection to the fact that it exists; my concern is how it is used in practice. When somebody has been extradited to another country, it often takes time to see whether the warrant has been applied wrongly, as in the case mentioned by the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith). In that case, the warrant was wrongly issued in France; the authorities had not realised that the person against whom it had been issued was unaware of the fact that there had been an appeal against their acquittal and that they had been convicted. Such negligence and such errors will occur, so I ask the Government to reconsider negotiating the basis on which European arrest warrants are issued.
The state should issue much stricter rules and guidelines to courts and judges on when to issue arrest warrants. For example, the evidence should be available, the person should be dealt with and looked after properly, and there should be procedural safeguards. Those are the things that are required—as well as that the offences on which people are extradited must be serious, not minor. Also, it should be possible to withdraw arrest warrants. I understand that in Poland once a warrant has been issued it is impossible to withdraw it.
Jeremy Corbyn
I understand the point that my hon. Friend makes, but is not the real problem the completely different standards of the legal systems across the European Union, and, indeed, the Council of Europe area, which, together with the virtual automaticity of the European arrest warrant, mean that we just mask the inadequacies of the current system and many people suffer miscarriages of justice?
Yasmin Qureshi
I agree, and that issue highlights the importance of how arrest warrants are implemented. Procedural safeguards must be put in place. There must be stringent requirements. Warrants must not be handed out as a matter of course, so that someone can come to court and say, “I want an arrest warrant,” without anyone looking properly into what has occurred. In our country, when police officers go to court to ask for arrest warrants, the magistrates, or the judge, look at what is presented to them and then they might agree to those things. In a nation state such as England, someone who is arrested in Watford, for example, knows that their case can be resolved quite quickly if there are procedural irregularities. Errors can be sorted out quickly. However, in a foreign country—with a foreign language, jurisdiction and everything else—it is not as easy to sort out mistakes. It may take months. That is why it is so important that warrants should be issued properly in the first place, using strict procedures.
The Joint Committee on Human Rights has presented some good, practical solutions that will help British nationals. It has suggested the forum provision, which would allow British judges to decide whether an individual case should be tried in this country, or whether there is a need for extradition. The cases of Babar Ahmad and Gary McKinnon and others have been mentioned, and one interesting thing about all those people is that their alleged offences are deemed to have occurred in this country. What is wrong, therefore, with our prosecuting them? Why cannot our prosecuting authorities do it? If there is evidence, they should be prosecuted. No one says that the people concerned should not be prosecuted. We all believe that if there is evidence against someone there should be a prosecution.
From what I have been reading about the case of Babar Ahmad—he is not my constituent, and I recognise the hard work done on his behalf by my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan)—what he did is supposed to have occurred in this country, and he has effectively spent nine years in prison. As my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) said, that is comparable to a 14-year prison sentence, whereas if what is alleged against him had been proved, it might have carried only five or six years maximum. He has thus effectively served a sentence.
The important thing in that case, and in those of Gary McKinnon and others, is that the evidence apparently being used against them was found by the British authorities. That is especially true in Babar Ahmad’s case: when he was arrested there were supposed to be allegations, information or evidence against him, which form the basis of the extradition case. If that evidence is so cogent and good, there is nothing to stop the British authorities prosecuting Babar Ahmad in England. If that is not happening, there is a reason for it, which is presumably the fact that there is insufficient evidence against him. I worked in a prosecuting authority for about 10 years, and if there was evidence we would prosecute. If there was not, we did not. In my opinion, that explains what is now happening.
I understand the sensitivities of the USA because of the problems that it has had, but those sensitivities should not mean that the liberties and rights of British nationals should be put aside for the interests of another foreign state that will not give reciprocal rights. The USA may have its own political agenda, and its own agenda as to why it wants Mr Ahmad. If the extradition goes through, Babar Ahmad will probably spend the rest of his life in solitary confinement or in high-security prisons in the USA, so his life will be destroyed. I therefore urge the Government to rethink the issue of the forum provision and allowing our judges to decide whether cases should be tried here. In cases where there is evidence against someone, our prosecuting authorities should be the ones to try them.
Border Checks Summer 2011
Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts(14 years, 3 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
May I first welcome the sudden interest of the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) in immigration and border security? It is a bit rich coming from the party that gave us 2.2 million total net migration, the foreign national prisoner scandal, Sangatte, a 450,000 asylum backlog, no transitional controls for eight eastern European countries, the Human Rights Act 1998, and a points-based system that failed to reduce immigration.
The Leader of the Opposition says that immigration was not too high under Labour; the shadow Home Secretary claims that the previous Government were reducing immigration; and now they have appointed a shadow Immigration Minister who says that public concern about immigration is “nonsense” and “huff and puff” generated by tabloid newspapers. None the less, I am willing to welcome any convert to the cause of controlling immigration.
Let me remind the House why we are here. As I said in my statement to Parliament on Monday, there are two separate issues. First, as I have explained, the Immigration Minister and I authorised a limited pilot this summer, which—in limited and specific circumstances—allowed the UK border force to use more intelligence-led checks against higher-risk passengers and journeys instead of always checking European economic area national children travelling with parents and in school groups against the warnings index, and always checking EEA nationals’ second photographs in the chip inside their passport. In normal circumstances, all standard checks would be carried out.
That was a perfectly reasonable thing to do—stronger checks on high-risk passengers aimed to achieve more arrests, more seizures of illegal goods and more stops of illegal immigrants. Far from weakening our border controls, those procedures were aimed at strengthening our border. The results of the pilot are not yet fully evaluated, but initial UKBA statistics show an almost 10% increase in the detection of illegal immigrants and a 48% increase in the identification of forged documents compared with the year before.
I therefore want to be absolutely clear to the House: my pilot did not in any way put border security at risk. That was my assessment, and it is the assessment of UKBA and security officials.
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)
Why was the Prime Minister not informed that those pilot schemes were being carried out?
Margot James
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I believe the Home Secretary did just as he suggests. It is my understanding, and I am sure that in the winding-up speech we will hear for sure, that the Home Secretary asked the Immigration Minister to keep a close eye on the operation. We should not forget that although it was put to the Home Secretary back in April, the operation did not even start till July this year. We are only in the second week of November, and it has already come to light that things have gone wrong. The media and the Opposition are a little too hasty in coming to such a swift judgment on a pilot that has barely been completed and that the Home Secretary has suspended.
The Home Secretary then decided to allow a limited pilot to be run. It is clear from the limited information we have so far that on several occasions the head of the UK border force authorised staff to go beyond the pilot approved by Ministers. The pilot had been running for only the best part of three months, during which time excesses were agreed by managers on the ground. It might have come to light before now, but as soon as it did come to light the Home Secretary took the right decision by suspending the pilot. The decision to suspend the head of the UK border force was taken by the chief executive of the UKBA, not the Home Secretary. I fail to see why there has been such criticism of her for a decision that was taken in a proper manner by someone else.
Yasmin Qureshi
The hon. Lady says the Home Secretary did not ask for Mr Clark’s resignation, but in her statement the right hon. Lady basically blamed him for everything that went wrong. By doing so, she has prejudiced any inquiry that could be carried out. Surely it would have been better, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) suggested, to keep to the tradition of Sir Patrick Mayhew and carry out an inquiry to find out what went wrong before blaming an individual with 44 years of service at the highest level. That is why the Home Secretary is wrong.
Margot James
No one fired the individual concerned. There was a resignation following a suspension, and my understanding is that the suspension was not ordered by the Home Secretary. It was immediately instituted because the individual admitted to varying the terms of the pilot.
Margot James
I will not give way again, as many other Members wish to speak.
I will conclude my remarks by expressing my astonishment, which I am sure many of my constituents share, that Labour Members have sought in such an opportunistic fashion to capitalise on this media storm. Have they no shame? They have proposed this motion in the aftermath of more than 10 years of open and porous borders and what was effectively an amnesty for illegal immigrants. This Government inherited a 450,000 backlog of asylum cases. The Labour party seemed to have a deliberate policy when in power to increase dramatically the number of eastern European workers coming into the country by making Britain one of only two EU member states that did not introduce transitional controls. It was an outrage when seven years ago the then Home Secretary said on television that he expected 70,000 to come from eastern Europe without introducing those transitional controls. There have been allegations that the Labour party deliberately encouraged the policy of mass immigration so as fundamentally to change British society and boost the economy in a completely unsustainable way.
Student Visas
Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts(14 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for what I think is the first time, Mr Benton. I congratulate the hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) on his cogent, intelligent and measured speech. If I might make one slightly negative observation, it was perhaps very narrow, and I understand that, given that he pursued his constituency interest, rather than looking at the overall picture on immigration. It is a mark of how important this issue is that the hon. Gentleman has the support of so many of his hon. Friends, who will no doubt make eloquent pleas on behalf of the higher education and other institutions in their areas.
The Government’s policy must be seen not simply in a vacuum or within the narrow parameters of student visas, but in the context of the Government’s commitment to reducing net immigration. That policy position is supported by a substantial majority of the British electorate; it was clearly enunciated in the Conservative election manifesto in May 2010 and it was recapitulated in the coalition agreement of that month, which is the basis on which this Administration put forward their policies.
I have to say that the position we have taken was also a constituent part of the policy pursued by the former Government. The right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Mr Byrne), and even the right hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls), have expressed concerns and linked the inability to deal with immigration to the fact that the Labour party achieved its second-worst electoral result last year.
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)
Does the hon. Gentleman not agree that these measures will only make the UK a less competitive and less attractive destination in the international student market, which is a significant growth area?
Mr Jackson
Time permitting, I hope to articulate the slightly wider view that universities have not only a narrow remit to deliver education to their paying customers as part of a contractual relationship, but a social responsibility to educate the people of this country appropriately.
Mr Jackson
My hon. Friend makes an astute point. Incidentally, there is no empirical, anecdotal or demonstrable academic evidence to show that there will be a significant impact on good-quality institutions and the courses they offer. That is simply because we are going forward incrementally, and we cannot yet assess the impact.
Yasmin Qureshi
I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. He says that there is no empirical evidence, but all of us have received letters from university chancellors in our constituencies and adjoining constituencies. They are specifically and clearly saying that the Government’s measures will radically affect their institutions financially and in terms of the facilities that they provide for other students. How can the hon. Gentleman say what he has said?
Mr Jackson
I am touched that the hon. Lady calls me her hon. Friend, and I am happy to accept that sobriquet. I would direct her to the recent comments by Nicola Dandridge of Universities UK, who said that the Government’s proposals
“take into account many of the concerns expressed by Universities UK and will allow British universities to remain at the forefront of international student recruitment.”
That was said after an exhaustive, detailed and comprehensive consultation with key stakeholders, including language schools, universities, colleges of further education and others intimately involved in the system.
Policing and Crime
Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts(14 years, 8 months ago)
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Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)
The debate is on policing, but I shall touch on the economics of the situation, which are raised so often by Government Members. The Opposition are not in denial about the deficit, but we do not accept that we caused it—[Interruption.] Members on the Government Benches can snigger and laugh, but they could say that we caused the deficit only if no other country with a similar economy had had the same problems. All those countries had the same problem with their economic and banking systems because of the recklessness of the bankers, the sub-prime mortgages and the fact that some banks had balances that were bigger than the GDPs of many countries. They were reckless. We saved our system and as a result we managed to save half a million people becoming unemployed.
Yasmin Qureshi
I will give away on another point, not on this one.
We recognise that there are financial difficulties, but we must ask what we will achieve when we save money. We must ask whether if we save £10 in one area, we will end up paying £20. That will happen with the police cuts and the changes to the police more than with the changes to any other service. Staff numbers might be cut in the Department for Work and Pensions without repercussions elsewhere, but when front-line police officer numbers are cut that is a false economy.
There has been discussion in the House about imprisonment and long-term sentences and, in some cases, long sentences deter people from committing offences. What really stops people committing offences, however, is the fear of being caught, being prosecuted, being convicted, going to prison and having their liberties taken away. When somebody sees a police officer on the street, they will not commit a crime. When they know that there are a number of police officers in a particular area, they will not commit a crime. We will save the money that is spent when someone is arrested on prosecuting them, on lawyers’ fees, on our prison services, on prison officers, on probation officers and on all the different agencies that work in the criminal justice system. Of course, let us not forget the poor victim who suffers as a result of the criminal offence. If we put together the cost of all that, we must ask whether it is worth making that £10 saving when we will end up spending £30 to deal with the problem that the saving causes.
I urge the Government seriously to consider how cuts should be made in a Department such as the Home Office, given that we will have more problems in the long term. I know that the hon. Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) said that we must not blind the House with statistics, but everybody always bandies statistics about and it is right to emphasise what my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham East and Saddleworth (Debbie Abrahams) said about the fact that crime, including violent crime and crimes against properties, fell considerably during the 13 years of Labour government. That did not happen miraculously—the Labour Government invested in the police, spent money on community support officers and gave more money for fingerprint analysis, DNA evidence and technical support. The combination of those things caused the crime rate to fall. Government Members can tell us not to quote statistics, but that is the truth: crime fell under Labour and it fell for the reasons I have given.
It is not just me who says that crime will rise. The chief constables of South Yorkshire and Lancashire have said that that will happen if the numbers of front-line police officers are cut. It is inevitable—it is common sense—that more crimes will occur if police numbers are cut, so I urge the Government to reconsider this false economic measure.
Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism
Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts(15 years, 7 months ago)
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Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)
Before I came to the House I practised as a criminal practitioner for about 20 years, both prosecuting and defending. I know that some Members, and some other people in the country, are perhaps not convinced by the civil liberties argument on 28-day detention. They ask why we should provide protection to people who want to commit criminal offences. Instead of the civil liberties perspective, I wish to give a practical one—do we, the police or the law enforcement agencies actually need a 28-day limit?
Members should be aware of the type of evidence that the police gather, especially when monitoring terrorists or people they believe are going to be terrorists. There is intrusive surveillance, with probes in people’s homes and cameras outside them. Every single text or e-mail they send is recorded by the intelligence services, who also keep every phone call they make. Are Members really telling me that with all that evidence before them, they still need 28 days to interrogate people in a police station?
As someone who has dealt with anti-terror cases and seen the evidence that comes in, and even taking away the civil liberties argument, I know as a practitioner that law enforcement agents do not need 28 days to interrogate people. They have all the information and evidence before them. As we know, guidance on the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 allows for various surveillance methods and intrusions to take place.
Counter-terrorism and Security Powers
Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts(15 years, 7 months ago)
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Mrs May
The hon. Gentleman is encouraging me to pre-empt the result of the review. I am absolutely clear, as I said, that the review will look at the pre-charge detention period with a view to reducing it from 28 days. However, I do not want to pre-empt the result of the review, so, tempting though it might be, I would simply refer him to the comments that I made earlier.
Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)
I welcome the Home Secretary’s review of the counter-terrorism legislation. Although I was not in Parliament when this matter was debated, I was certainly campaigning against that piece of legislation. May I ask the Home Secretary to be tempted, and to bring in tomorrow a reduction from 28 to perhaps seven or 14 days?
Mrs May
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her support for the review, but I am afraid that I am going to give her the same answer as I gave to two of my Liberal Democrat hon. Friends—that I do not want to pre-empt the result of the review. We will have our debate tomorrow, and then, when the review reports, we will be able to look at its proposals.