Data Retention and Investigatory Powers Bill
Baroness Primarolo Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
Order. This is an intervention. A large number of people want to speak. Interventions are getting a little too long and I would be grateful if they could be shortened.
Yvette Cooper
The hon. Gentleman will be aware that it is always possible for there to be court challenges and legal challenges to our legislation and to individual decisions. The Government have gone to some lengths to ensure that the legislation before us is compliant with the European Court judgment, with European law and with our own legal framework.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
Order. There is a six-minute time limit on all Back-Bench contributions. I remind Members of the timetable. This debate must end by 5 pm. On that basis, we have more speakers than time, unless we can make rapid progress.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
Order. I am setting the time limit at five minutes in the hope that everyone in the Chamber will get their five minutes before the winding-up speeches start.
The UK’s Justice and Home Affairs Opt-outs
Baroness Primarolo Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Bearing in mind the speech that we have just heard, I think I need to clarify that, although praying in aid supporting arguments is acceptable, the main purpose of today’s debate is to discuss opting back in. The hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin) should perhaps have added at the end of his speech, “For all those reasons, I do not support opting back in.” This is not a general debate on the European Union, and I hope that the remaining Members will bear that in mind. Given that the hon. Gentleman looked so closely at the title of the debate, to which he referred at the beginning of his speech, I hope that he will in future pay a little more attention to a debate’s title when preparing the content of his speeches.
Passport Applications
Baroness Primarolo Excerpts(9 years, 11 months ago)
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Huw Irranca-Davies
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I seek your guidance. The Home Secretary has made it clear to Opposition Members who have intervened—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
Order. This sounds very much like a continuation of the debate. I hope that it is not.
Huw Irranca-Davies
No, it is not, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am seeking clarification from you. Opposition Members have been told that if they have a problem with an individual case, they should pursue it through the MPs helpline or the usual channels, but it was made clear in a response to a similar intervention by a Government Member that the Immigration Minister had been contacted directly. I ask for your support, Madam Deputy Speaker. As someone who speaks up for all the representatives in the House, do you agree that the same facility should be afforded to all Members, regardless of political party?
Madam Deputy Speaker
The Home Secretary has heard that point very clearly, and I am sure that, given the chance, she will deal with it directly so that the position is clear to Members.
Mrs May
Opposition Members have indeed been getting in touch with the Immigration Minister. The Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), texted me on Saturday, and I was able to ensure that someone from the Passport Office—[Interruption.] I hear some complaints from behind me from colleagues who are not able to text because they do not have my number.
Sir Gerald Kaufman (Manchester, Gorton) (Lab)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. This is a strictly time-limited debate. The speeches of the two Front-Bench spokesmen have taken between them an hour and 26 minutes, and one reason for that is the acceptance of intervention after intervention after intervention from Members, many of whom have left the Chamber without bothering to listen to the rest of the debate. The consequence of that is that the rest of us have only six minutes, in which it is impossible to develop any kind of coherent or articulate argument. When will this be put right?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
Sir Gerald, that point of order has just taken more time from the debate. As you will know, how long Front-Bench spokesmen take to open the debate is not a matter for the Chair. This is a time-limited debate, and we now do not have enough time for every speaker who wishes to contribute.
I agree, Sir Gerald, with your point with regard to interventions being made by Members who then leave the Chamber. The convention is quite clear. Those Members should have stayed, at least until the Home Secretary sat down. I have drawn this to the attention of the Whips, and I hope that those Members will be told that interventions take other speakers’ time.
We have a six-minute time limit. We will start with six minutes. Not every Member will get in if it remains at six minutes, so I will have to review it. Some Members may decide to withdraw their names; let us wait and see.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Dawn Primarolo)
Order. The hon. Gentleman has sat down. He has run out of time. I am reducing the time limit to five minutes in order to ensure that all Members can speak in the debate. I hope that it will not be necessary to reduce it further, but this is a time-limited debate. I call Mr Geoffrey Robinson.
Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I congratulate you on your honour.
The Government are evading two fundamental questions, and if we do not get answers to them today, we shall go on pressing for them, because we are rightly being relentlessly pursued for answers by our constituents. The first question is: why are we in this crisis, and why is there such a shambles in the Department? We have not had an answer from the Government that makes any sense. They have tried to blame the massive increase on new people applying for passports, but their figures do not show that to be the case.
I have written a letter to the Minister for Security and Immigration, the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), but he has not yet replied to it. I have not even had an acknowledgement, let alone an invitation to meet him. I have been received by many of his predecessors, as has my right hon. Friend the Member for Manchester, Gorton (Sir Gerald Kaufman), who has referred to Mr Waddington in particular. Those Ministers met constituents when there was a problem. That course of action worked well, and I would recommend it to the Minister who is now in charge, even though he does not seem to be terribly interested in what I am saying.
The Government have increased the manpower. The crisis blew up during the January to May period and the Home Secretary has stood at the Dispatch Box and announced crisis measures to deal with it. What remains unclear is whether holidays for which flights and hotels have been booked will qualify as urgent business. I have not heard a clear answer from the Government on that yet.
This takes me to the main question. The Government have said that they are sorry, but if they say sorry, they have to mean it. Saying sorry means making amends; otherwise, it does not mean anything. It is just a word without a meaning. The Home Secretary has evaded the question three times when we have put it to her, but the Government must tell us what they are going to do in the cases where our constituents had done everything correctly and HMPO was at fault, resulting in them not getting their passports in time. Many of those people have lost money just trying to get their passports, never mind losing money on holiday bookings. The Government have to give us an answer to that question.
We need to know who took the decision to bring all the overseas passport work into the Department at the very time we were having a seasonal surge. I think it must have been the Home Secretary because she went out of her way to defend it today. However, she could not give us the basic statistics. If the relevant figure is 6% of 3.3 million, that equates to about 175,000, which is a good half of the 350,000 extra cases that came in this year. So it was clearly a bad—indeed, almost idiotic—management decision to take in the overseas passport work at that time.
I want to mention the case of Mrs Joanna Hughes. She applied online on 23 April to renew her daughter Ella’s passport, which she would need for a trip to Belgium for the world war one centenary celebrations on 19 June. The Passport Office advised her that the application would take up to three weeks to complete. About three weeks later, on 10 May, she received a letter from HMPO to tell her that the passport and photos had been lost within the passport department. It advised her to forward a new application form and photographs, which she did on 12 May. There was no delay there; she got on to it straight away. She sent the documents to the Glasgow priority handling office via Royal Mail special delivery. She told me:
“I finally received a call back on 29 May to be told that my application was with an examiner in Belfast, not Glasgow as previously advised.”
We can already see that there was a muddle in the department. There were a lot of people working on the application, but if there is criticism to be made, it is not of the people working on the process but of the organisation, of the ministerial decisions and of Mr Pugh himself. The problem lies with the organisation of the department itself.
Mrs Hughes continued:
“I was advised to send a Lost and Stolen form with a covering letter to Priority Handling Belfast which I had to download online to advise the very department who had lost the passport! Another special delivery was posted that day.”
I agree with her conclusion:
“I would like to receive a full apology and investigation into why my daughter’s old passport and photos were lost in a Government office and I want to receive full compensation for all the further expenditure I have had to make”.
She gives details of the expenditure, which comes to the best part of £153. The Government are responsible for that. What are they going to do—
Home Affairs
Baroness Primarolo Excerpts(9 years, 11 months ago)
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Mark Pritchard
The Leader of the Opposition has apologised to the British people, who want to see net migration come down. It is not just the policy of the coalition Government: it is the British people who want to see net migration come down. Non-EU migration has come down. EU migration is still a challenge, and it is one that the Government will face as the Prime Minister renegotiates power back from Europe—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. The hon. Gentleman has been a Member for a long time and he knows that interventions are not an opportunity to make a speech—he can always add his name to the list—but are supposed to be brief.
Mr Field
I will not change what I am saying, but I will say it more slowly and clearly so that the hon. Gentleman actually understands it. My right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) suggested that one way to modify the immigration figures is to take students out of them. One of the problems with doing that is that we have a large number of students coming here. They say they wish to study here, but continue to stay here and work. The change I would like to see is to challenge vice-chancellors to have as many students as they want, provided they undertake, on behalf of the Home Secretary, to ensure that those students fulfil their promise to come here, graduate and leave. The universities do—
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. I am not having interventions that are speeches. Interventions are exactly that, and I think the right hon. Gentleman has got his point across.
Dr Huppert
I understand what the right hon. Gentleman is saying and I continue to disagree with what he suggests. One issue he raises, on whether students would have to leave before they graduate, concerns the process of graduation. There is also the question of post-study work visas, which are incredibly valuable. If he talks to the vice-chancellors of Cambridge university and Anglia Ruskin university—two universities in my constituency—he will hear that there is demand. We want people to come here; it makes sense. Once we have trained some of the brightest and best people here, we want them to contribute to the economy. We want them to set up companies that will employ people here locally. I have to say that what he suggests would be incredibly damaging to the economy in my constituency and in many other areas. I hope that is not somewhere we will go.
There are issues around immigration, and huge issues around the rhetoric used. There is far too much negative rhetoric that is, frankly, xenophobic. That is something we have to try to avoid. It has no place in the discussions we are having.
We benefit massively from immigration. We benefit financially—there is a lot of evidence of that—and culturally and socially. It is a good thing for us to do. There are, however, associated downsides and the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough was absolutely right to highlight them. The solution is to try to fix those problems. Where people coming in means that we run out of school places, the correct solution is not to throw people out of the country, but to create school places so they can be educated and to make sure there is housing. The correct solution is to deal with the problems. The right hon. Gentleman is right to say—many people have pointed it out—that there are problems with the violation of the national minimum wage. That is why we should ensure that people are paid the national minimum wage and why the Government have acted. We have just had the first naming and shaming of people who have been failing to pay it. Immigration is a good thing and we should tackle the problems associated with it.
It frustrates me that so many people are following the concerns raised by UKIP and trying to tack towards them. That is self-defeating. The more that Conservative and Labour politicians chase the UKIP line, the stronger UKIP becomes, because that tells people that it is even stronger.
Mr Stewart Jackson
Does the hon. Gentleman agree—he probably does not—or concede that he sounds terribly out of touch, given that 77% of the public say that immigration is a huge problem? His arguments would carry more conviction if he were prepared even to look at the free movement directive. I have some sympathy with him on non-EU migration, particularly in the higher education sector, but he cannot have it both ways. People want immigration to be reduced, so he must look at—
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. We have got the point. I am going to keep on saying this: interventions are not speeches. The hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) is waiting patiently to make his speech.
Dr Huppert
I think it unlikely that the hon. Gentleman and I will ever reach agreement on this issue—we certainly have not yet. There are concerns but we have to fix the problems it causes, not attack the fundamental basis. The hon. Gentleman can have a look at studies—I do not have the reference immediately to hand—by University College London, for example, that show the fiscal benefits from EU migration. The trend is badly wrong and is being followed by far too many people.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. It would be advisable for Members to aim to deliver their speeches in between 10 and a maximum of 15 minutes, including interventions; otherwise, all the Members who wish to speak will not be able to. If everyone speaks for 20 minutes or more, there will simply not be enough time. I am not going to impose a time limit, but I hope Members will be respectful of each other and ensure that we move on comfortably to the winding-up speeches.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Before the hon. Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) resumes his speech, I gently point out that he has now been speaking for 33 minutes, it took the Home Secretary only 34 minutes to launch the debate, and other Members are waiting to speak. We are grateful for his tour de force across an area in which he has great expertise, but not necessarily over the entire Queen’s Speech.
Mr Buckland
I will bear your exhortation very much in mind, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am still a minute behind the Home Secretary so I will take that as a target and I will do my best.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans). I just wanted to make the point that in Swindon we are doing exactly the same. The 100-plus people who came to St Joseph’s Catholic college to see the films about child slavery and trafficking shown by ECPAT UK, one of the leading charities, showed that there is a real interest, understanding and concern. It is through the work of local organisations, together with our police and crime commissioners, who are increasingly becoming involved in encouraging the training of police, that we will start to see a rolling back of the almost systematic blindness that we have had to the reality of trafficking in our midst.
Before I sit down, I pay a warm tribute to the Wiltshire police and crime commissioner, Angus Macpherson, who is recovering in hospital in Bath after a serious heart attack last week. He has been doing an outstanding job for the last several years as our PCC, and on behalf of everyone who cares about crime and policing in my neck of the woods and generally, I wish him the speediest of recoveries.
Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)
It is indeed a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Andy Sawford) who speaks with such great passion about his home area of Northamptonshire.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, who can start again in a moment. Let me explain the practice relating to speakers. Where Members have notified the Chair in advance, they will obviously participate in the debate. If Members wish to contribute once a debate is a good way through, they may approach the Chair, but take a lower priority. The hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) was unable to be present earlier and has indicated that she would like to speak. I intend to call her at the end. I hope that that is clear to Ministers. I am not being unfair to the hon. Lady; I am following normal practice.
Chris Evans
Thank you for your patience this afternoon, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have had to be in and out of the Chamber, trying to balance my attendance with my duties on the Finance Bill.
The Queen’s Speech contains three new Bills that relate to criminal justice. For a Government who argued while in opposition that the Labour party over-legislated in this area, these Bills join seven others on criminal justice since they came to power in 2010. The previous seven Bills have created in total 619 new criminal offences, many of which carry custodial sentences.
With our prison population stretched to maximum levels, now is the time to question the role that prison and criminal justice play in society. In the past year, the prison population in England and Wales has reached record levels and stands today at 85,228 prisoners—a 90% increase since 1993. In 2012-13, the overall resource expenditure on prisons in England and Wales was just under £3 billion. Each inmate costs the taxpayer an average of £36,808 per prison place a year—money that the general public would no doubt think better spent on health, education, improving the roads and many other projects that hon. Members have mentioned.
With the UK having the second highest incarceration rates in western Europe and the prison estate suffering from overcrowding since 1994, we are facing a crisis that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later. There is no doubt that prison works for some people. For the victim of crime and those who live in fear of it, prison gets criminals off the streets, reducing the risk they pose to the rest of society because they cannot commit an offence when they are locked up. Sadly, we all know that some individuals pose such a threat to other people that there is no option other than keeping them under lock and key for a very long time. However, prison is not the answer in all cases, and I want to concentrate on that in my speech.
According to the executive summary of the latest figures on releases, about 590,000 adult and juvenile offenders were cautioned, convicted or released from custody between July 2011 and June 2012, and 25% of them reoffended within a year. According to the “proven reoffending” tables, the reoffending rate among persons released from a custodial sentence was 45.5% for adults and 67.4% for juveniles. Those statistics should be balanced against the fact that between 1997 and 2010, under a Labour Government, crime fell by 43%, and violent crime fell by 42%.
Although I represent the Labour party, I will say that it seems that when in government we were very good at locking people up, but did not address the inherent problem of reoffending. Now, as more criminal justice Bills appear before Parliament, I see that we are still not tackling that problem. If Governments have a duty to society to protect their citizens from criminals, that means they also have a duty to ensure that those who are released from prison do not drift back into a life of crime.
The National Offender Management Service manages 17 public prisons in England and Wales and the contracts of 14 private sector prisons, and is responsible for a prisoner population of about 86,000. However, it must make cuts of £650 million in its £3.4 billion budget by 2015. Now, with the prison population reaching almost unmanageable levels and the Government intent on making cuts in the resources available to prison staff, it is of the utmost importance that rehabilitation be looked at seriously. That approach needs to begin in the prisons themselves. Just 36% of people leaving prison go into some type of education, training or employment.
People often leave prison ill equipped to deal with day-to-day life. Statistics show that 43% of offenders have numeracy skills below GCSE standard, while 37% have reading skills below the same measure. Moreover, no one can agree on the number of offenders who have learning disabilities such as dyslexia. For many prisoners who are released, unemployment is a familiar scenario: 67% of the prison population were unemployed before being locked up, and many will face the same situation when they are released.
Immigration Bill
Baroness Primarolo Excerpts(10 years ago)
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
I must draw the House’s attention to the fact that financial privilege is involved in Lords amendments 7, 16 and 24. If the House agrees to any of these amendments, I shall ensure that the appropriate entry is made in the Journal. I should also tell the House that Mr Speaker has selected the five manuscript amendments tabled today by the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather). Copies are available in the Vote Office.
Clause 60
Deprivation if conduct seriously prejudicial to vital interests of the uk
The Minister for Security and Immigration (James Brokenshire)
I beg to move, That this House disagrees with Lords amendment 18.
Madam Deputy Speaker
With this it will be convenient to take Government amendments (a) and (b) in lieu of Lords amendment 18.
James Brokenshire
The fundamental duty of any Government is to protect the British public and maintain the security of the UK against a range of threats. There is a small but very dangerous number of individuals who, despite having taken an oath of loyalty to become a British citizen, seek to threaten the security of this country. Those same dangerous individuals seek to exploit a loophole in our legislation preventing us from removing their citizenship if it would render them stateless, even temporarily, while they reacquire their former nationality. This Government have sought to address that issue, in line with our international obligations to protect the security of the UK.
Our proposals, previously debated in this House on 30 January, sought to extend the existing deprivation powers of the Home Secretary so that a naturalised British citizen who has conducted themselves in a manner seriously prejudicial to the vital interests of the UK—I underline the high bar that has been set—can be deprived of their citizenship, regardless of whether it would render them stateless. We believe that is vital for the security of the UK and an important point of principle. It is not right that people who subvert our values and fight against our armed forces should invoke our protection and enjoy the privileges of British citizenship.
Many of the debates on this issue have focused on the use of the existing powers in the UK and overseas. I remind right hon. and hon. Members that the Home Secretary has long-standing existing powers to deprive a British national of their citizenship where that individual acquired it using fraud or where she is satisfied that doing so is conducive to the public good. Where fraud has been used, a decision can be made to deprive, which leaves a person stateless. Our proposals have built on the non-conducive powers to target a narrow cohort of naturalised Britons who are a real threat to our national security.
Mr Harper
I listened carefully to the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) because I respect her opinions on home affairs matters. It would not be appropriate to narrow the scope of amendment (a) in the way that she suggested. She missed the point that the individuals concerned are not always compliant and helpful in seeking a second nationality. Indeed, they often try not to do so. That is why the Home Secretary has to take a reasonable decision, taking account of the laws of the countries involved and the behaviour of the individual. If the amendment were narrowed in the way the hon. Lady suggested, I do not think that we would succeed in closing the loophole.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. I remind the hon. Gentleman that the point of an intervention is not to comment on a previous intervention, but to comment on what the Minister is saying. If he wants to challenge what the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) said, perhaps he will try to catch my eye.
James Brokenshire
I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who has made his point. I am sure that he will make it again in the debate. He is right to underline the careful way in which we have framed the amendments.
Justice and Home Affairs Opt-out
Baroness Primarolo Excerpts(10 years, 1 month ago)
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Michael Connarty
I am sure that we will debate the charter of fundamental rights report, which divided the European Scrutiny Committee when it was finally read. To return to a question I asked earlier: why are the Government still in the situation where a UK court can decide that a European arrest warrant is not valid and that the person does not have to return to the country demanding their return—in the case I am interested in, that country is Poland—but when they leave the UK to go on holiday elsewhere in Europe, it appears that the Government have not put in place the ability to have that judgment recognised in other countries. I have a constituent whose father is very ill, and who is now in Poland, having been arrested in the Netherlands—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. We have got the point. Let us not make these interventions too long.
Chris Grayling
I say to the hon. Gentleman that it would not be right for me to deal with a constituency case at the Dispatch Box. I suggest he write to the Home Secretary about that. I am still confused as to what he wants, however. He appears to be expressing scepticism about the European arrest warrant, but his party’s policy is to rejoin it. I am confused about what the Opposition really want. We have set out a clear view for Parliament, but we still do not know where the Labour party stands on all this.
I am grateful, too, for the excellent work done by the European Scrutiny Committee, the Justice Committee and the Home Affairs Committee, not only through their extremely thorough and thought-provoking reports, but through the contributions their members have made on the Floor of this House. Their work has been and will continue to be important in informing the Government’s view as this process proceeds. May I express my particular thanks to the Chair of the Justice Committee for his analysis of the decisions we took earlier? Extremely important issues are involved and we gave them careful thought, and I am glad that his report recognised the process we have gone through and that he felt we had reached the right decisions in that area.
Let me touch briefly on the issue of the amount of time provided to this House, which a lot of right hon. and hon. Members have raised today. Last summer, we gave this House a clear opportunity, which it took, to support the Government’s decision in principle to exercise the opt-out, and I am grateful to the House for giving us that support. We will come back to the House at the conclusion of the negotiations with the Commission and the Council to offer the House the further opportunity to endorse or reject what we are doing. If this House rejects what we are doing, clearly it will not be possible for us to return to the Commission and simply override the view of this House. We will of course give this House an opportunity to vote and decide what should happen, but I do think the House needs to give the Government the opportunity to negotiate unfettered by a fixed mandate, because these are complex issues and we need to reach the right decisions in the interests of this country. That is what we are seeking to do.
Prevention and Suppression of Terrorism
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Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Before I ask the Minister to move the motion, I should point out to the House that there is a note on the Order Paper saying that the draft order under the Terrorism Act 2000, item 4 on the Order Paper, has not yet been considered by the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments. I can now inform the House that the Joint Committee considered the order at its meeting earlier this afternoon and decided that it does not need to draw the House’s special attention to it.
Immigration Bill
Baroness Primarolo Excerpts(10 years, 3 months ago)
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Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)
I apologise for not being here for the start of the debate. The Home Secretary referred to her powers where someone has obtained citizenship by fraudulent means. There may have been strong mitigating circumstances when someone made such an application. For example, we know that some years ago many people came to the country on false documents because they had been persecuted. They may have applied on a false basis, but there were strong mitigating circumstances—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. I know that this is complicated and many Members want to speak. May I clearly ask for your assistance. Will any Member making an intervention try to make it brief?
Mrs May
If citizenship was granted purely because someone used fraud or deception, did not disclose a material fact or used incorrect facts, and if we would not have granted citizenship had we known the full facts, the decision would be to deprive that individual of citizenship. I will not comment on the type of case that the hon. Lady has set out, but the initial question would be whether citizenship would have been granted if the full circumstances had been known at the time of the application. If the full facts had been known, would the decision have been not to grant citizenship? If so, the decision would be to remove citizenship.
Chris Bryant
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. As far as I can see, there are no copies of the manuscript amendments on the Table. It seems bizarre, on the matter of whether people should be deprived of their citizenship—[Interruption.] The Minister for Immigration can keep quiet for a moment. The reason we need manuscript amendments is that the Government tabled their new clause only at the very last minute to try to shove other measures off the agenda. Can we ensure that the manuscript amendments are available to everyone so that we know what we are debating?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
I understand that copies of the manuscript amendments are available in the Vote Office—
Madam Deputy Speaker
Order. I have not finished my sentence yet. It would be helpful if that could be checked, although I am assured that they are available, and if copies could be made available in the Chamber for Members who feel unable to get to the Vote Office because they wish to hear the debate.
Mrs May
I hope that the manuscript amendments, which were tabled by Opposition Front Benchers, are indeed available in the Vote Office.
As I said, in December 2007, one of my predecessors deprived the individual of his British citizenship. That gave rise to lengthy litigation, which culminated in a Supreme Court hearing in June 2013, with the verdict promulgated in October 2013. The Court—disappointingly to my mind—rejected my assertion that the individual could reassert his Iraqi nationality and that his failure to do so was the cause of his statelessness. Its conclusion was that the question was simply whether the person held another nationality at the date of the order depriving them of British citizenship.
Having studied the Supreme Court determination carefully and considered my options, I asked my officials to explore the possibility of legislating to address the key point identified in the al-Jedda case, namely that our domestic legislation, and the changes brought about in the 2002 and 2006 Acts, go further than is necessary to honour our international obligations in terms of limiting our ability to render people stateless.
That may have been well intended. It was done, as I believe, in anticipation of signing the 1997 European convention on nationality. We have never signed that convention and this Government have no plans to do so.
It is also important to stress—it is a point that has been made by a couple of Members already in interventions—that I have discussed this at length with colleagues across Government; it is not something I have just decided on. Given the importance of the subject matter, we wanted the time to ensure that we got it right. Indeed, I had a meeting with my hon. Friends in the Liberal Democrat parliamentary party on 4 December last year to discuss the proposal and listen to their concerns and the issues they wished to raise.
The United Kingdom has signed the 1961 UN convention on the reduction of statelessness. We made a declaration on ratifying that convention to allow for the prospect of leaving a person stateless in certain circumstances. Those circumstances include the ability to deprive a naturalised person of their citizenship, regardless of whether or not it might leave them stateless, where that person has conducted themselves in a manner seriously prejudicial to the vital interests of Her Britannic Majesty.
Rehman Chishti
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Yes, the shadow Minister is absolutely right that in 2005 I was a member of the Labour party. Soon after that I left the Labour party because, like everyone else, I was fed up with it.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
That is so clearly not a point of order. In three years in Parliament the hon. Gentleman clearly has not got the hang of it yet, but he has got his point on the record. May we please now return to the very important issues in the Bill?
Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. I note the custom in the House to give notice before making personal remarks involving another Member. Does that include this case?
Madam Deputy Speaker
With respect, the hon. Member for Gillingham and Rainham (Rehman Chishti) has, having heard the remark, replied to it. I think we have a score draw there, so shall we continue? And that’s not a point of order, either.
UNHCR Syrian Refugees Programme
Baroness Primarolo Excerpts(10 years, 3 months ago)
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Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Earlier today, during Prime Minister’s Question Time, I said that child poverty was on the increase in Britain. That was disputed by the Prime Minister, who claimed that it was, in fact, going down.
As you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, I am a diligent fellow, and I was once called “a perspicacious terrier” by Mr Speaker himself, so I double-checked with Save the Children this afternoon. I can now confirm that absolute child poverty is rising in this country, and that, just this month, the Institute for Fiscal Studies released projections showing that, whichever way the Government measure child poverty, it is set to increase massively over the next decade. Madam Deputy Speaker, could you—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. Whatever Mr Speaker may have said about him in the past, the hon. Gentleman has not made a point of order so far. What he is making is a point of debate in disagreeing with something that was said earlier. Unless he wishes to raise a matter, further to his point of order, that can be dealt with by the Chair, I must congratulate him on getting his point on the record, but say to him that it is not a point of order for me, as the occupant of the Chair.
Madam Deputy Speaker
It had better be. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman does not need any help.
Steve Rotheram
Because you were not in the Chamber at the time, Madam Deputy Speaker, I was trying to explain to you exactly what had happened earlier. Can you now advise me on whether it would be appropriate for the Prime Minister to come back to the House and apologise for misleading—or inadvertently misleading—the House?
Madam Deputy Speaker
I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for reminding me of the proceedings in the House earlier. However, I must say to him “Nice try, but it is still not a point of order.”
What is said in the House is relevant and a matter for each Member, and I am sure that, given that the hon. Gentleman has been described as someone who is persistent, he will find another way—although not this afternoon—in which to pursue his point with regard to the information given by the Prime Minister.
Psychoactive Substances
Baroness Primarolo Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
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John Mann
I would have hoped that the hon. Gentleman was listening.
For two days, I got together young people, the police and the health service in my area, along with my expert panel which 10 years ago looked at the problem of heroin and this time looked at legal highs, among other problems. We analysed more than 400 submissions to find out exactly what was happening. We went out and asked the users of the illegal drugs what was happening with the legal highs. I would have thought that the hon. Gentleman would like to be informed about this, because his close coalition ally the Minister, and the Minister’s predecessor, have not got a clue what is going on with legal highs in this country. Some of the chief constables are increasingly saying, “Let’s legalise drugs; let’s not go any further with legal highs, so that we can get crime down.”
The European Union is heading in exactly the same direction. That is why the Czech Republic has just backed the same approach as Portugal has taken. The European monitoring body’s research is nonsense, but it is quoted by the Minister and others in the Government all the time as the factual basis for what is happening around Europe. But the statistics on this—as on so many other things—that are compiled around Europe simply do not compare with what is going on here. They do not compare at all.
In this country, we have a growing problem with legal highs. The problem is that people are taking cheap pills instead of spending money on alcohol, and the real problem with that is that they do not know what the pills are. People are taking things that give them a stimulus when they go out, but the compounds could contain anything, and on rare occasions there are tragic consequences. The bigger problem is that this is building up an atmosphere of semi-legality. People are taking things that ought to be illegal because they are dangerous, and they have no idea what they contain. They take them presuming and hoping that they are fine, and the Government are not prepared to put a system in place to deal with—
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)
Order. I am struggling to understand how the hon. Gentleman is going to relate all this to subsidiarity. [Interruption.] Thank you; I do not need prompting. We are not having a general debate here. He has referred to Europe, and I hope that he is going to refer to the question of subsidiarity mentioned in the reasoned opinion.
John Mann
Thank you for your guidance, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am constructing an argument to demonstrate precisely how the European Union has got itself into this absurd situation of what might be called a caterpillar race between the European Commission and the British Government over who can be the slowest to deal with the problem of legal highs. Frankly, my constituents’ problem is that this Government are doing nothing—