Oral Answers to Questions

Henry Smith Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, which is why the inter-ministerial group on gangs is not only looking at the enforcement issue; we are looking at other matters, such as preventing young people from getting involved in gangs and diverting them from gangs when they become gang members. We are examining examples of good work from both outside the UK and within it—for example, in Strathclyde and Waltham Forest.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

16. What steps she is taking to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)]

The new Prevent strategy was published on 7 June 2011. It outlines three key objectives: responding to the ideological challenge of terrorism; supporting individuals at risk of radicalisation; and working with sectors and institutions where there are risks of radicalisation.

[Henry Smith]

Will my right hon. Friend assure the House, and indeed the country, that we will not see a repeat of the scandalous situation under the previous Labour Government where public money intended for counter-terrorism actually ended up funding some extremist activity?

[Mrs May]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that important point. As far as this Government are concerned, extremist organisations have no role in delivering the Prevent strategy, and if organisations do not support British values, we do not intend to fund them. Organisations funded by central Government must clearly demonstrate that they are working in the public interest. In this area, the transparency that has been adopted by this Government, both at central and local level, will be an important part of the process of enabling people to see where the money is being spent and to challenge that, if necessary.

Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Bill

Henry Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Phillips (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

It is an enormous pleasure, as always, to follow my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood). It has also been an enormous pleasure to listen to the contributions from other right hon. and hon. Members on both sides of the House.

At the outset, I want to make it clear that the issues with which the Bill grapples are not, as I suspect many Members have found, necessarily easy. I have not found them easy. For my part, during my consideration of the measures proposed by the Government I have from time to time changed my mind, or at least changed the direction in which I thought I was travelling, before finally alighting on the position that I intend to set forth this evening.

What, then, is the dilemma for all Members? On the one hand, it seems plain from the responses to the Government’s consultation that there is general agreement among the majority of those who offered their views that in the case of a very few individuals there is a continuing need for the Government to have access to the sort of powers proposed in this Bill to protect the public from potential harm. One simple reason for that, as the responses make clear and as I, at least, am persuaded, is that in the case of some of those very few individuals prosecutions are impossible for either security or legal reasons. By the same token, not every threat to national security is or has yet become a criminal offence. Are such threats to be ignored, as some would urge us to do? I venture to suggest not.

On the other hand, the suggestion that the sort of powers that we see in this Bill should exist at all—they effectively permit the Executive to detain individuals without trial—is naturally abhorrent to Members of this House and is regarded as such on both sides, as it is by all right-thinking people. It is said with force that we now have, and that within the memory of this House we have always had, a system of open justice and it is legitimate to ask, as many Members have done, why in those circumstances we should make even one exception, no matter how carefully hedged about with safeguards, to the principles that have long underpinned our democracy and the rule of law in this country.

The question, then, is how that dilemma is to be resolved. That is essentially the question faced by the House in deciding whether to give the Bill a Second Reading. Differing from hon. Members of all parties and some people outside the House who advocate the complete revocation of any system of civil measures that interferes with the rights of the individual, I have come to the view that what the Government propose, subject to the amendments that will no doubt be made in Committee, strikes the right balance for reasons that I shall come on to. That is, I accept, my judgment. It is my opinion, consistent with the position that my conscience dictates, but that is not to say—and I do not say—that it is the only view that it is possible to take. This is very much one of those issues where reasonable people may come to completely contrary conclusions and where Members have come to contrary conclusions. My task, if I have one at all, is to explain in the course of this debate how I have come to my conclusion and my reasons for having done so.

The starting point—I suspect that all Members would agree that this should always be the starting point for any Government, but it is one which might perhaps have been lost sight of from time to time during the course of the debate—is that the primary duty of the state to its citizens is to keep them safe. National security and public safety are and must always remain the first duty of the Government, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State made clear in her statement on 23 May 2011 and as the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), the shadow Home Secretary, acknowledged in her opening remarks in this debate. If one accepts, as I think one must, that that is the starting point, it must in my judgment follow that if there are circumstances in which those who threaten the United Kingdom from within her own borders cannot, for whatever reasons, adequately be dealt with by a system of open criminal justice, which I accept should remain the norm in the vast majority of cases, their rights cannot override those of the majority to the safety of their existence, which the Government are bound to protect.

In one sense, of course, this is a question of degree. Is the derogation from the ordinary principles of the rule of law and the rights of the subject that this Bill entails justified given the threat that we know we face at the beginning of the 21st century? In my opinion—I stress again that it is my opinion and that others are driven to a different view by their consciences—it is. We have merely to look at some of the events that we have witnessed during the past decade, such as the bombings of 7 July 2005 in London, to know what may happen when the balance is poorly or inappropriately struck. Of course I do not for a moment suggest that the mere existence of the measures in the Bill—of TPIMs—or even of the existing regime of control orders can ensure that such events will never happen. However, if one wonders, as I do, whether future atrocities might be prevented by proportionate derogations from generally accepted minimum standards regarding the rights of the subject—derogations that can and must be kept to a minimum, as I think all Members accept—it is my belief that they might. It follows that the existence of a regime that is necessary to protect the public, such as that contained in the Bill, cannot be avoided given the world in which we live.

The matter can be viewed in this way: many Members on both sides of the House will quite properly oppose the Bill’s Second Reading, or will at least have indicated that they will not give it a Third Reading in its current form. However, let me posit an eventuality that I hope will not occur—circumstances in which someone who might have been subject to a TPIM is instrumental in a future atrocity that results in our fellow citizens being maimed or killed. Would it, in those circumstances, be right that the Bill fell today or in future? I suggest not, for that would be to strike the wrong balance between the rule of law and the first duty of the Government, which I have already outlined.

I accept that none of this is easy. My view, I am perfectly prepared to accept, may be wrong. It may even, as the courts will be able to inquire given that there will now be no possibility of derogation from the law relating to the rights of the subject, be unlawful, although I think not as the Bill has been carefully drawn. However, it is the view to which I am driven by a consideration of the issues I have outlined and by the horrendous possibility of being wrong and, in being wrong, of failing to prevent a potential terrorist outrage.

The second argument that drives me to support the Government’s proposals and therefore to lend my support to the Bill’s Second Reading is the very fact that there are certain rights that I and the vast majority of people consider to be inalienable, the most important of which is the right to life. That this right is inalienable seems to me naturally to entail the proposition that it should, by the nature of the law as it should be framed, be protected—if necessary at the expense of other lesser rights, which are not necessarily inalienable. Schedule 1 identifies a series of measures that the Secretary of State may take, should the Bill become law, which would undoubtedly interfere with the second of those groups of rights. It enables the state to obstruct the liberty of the citizen, to oblige him or her to comply with the directions of those who exercise its authority and to disturb the free enjoyment of property rights. However, not one of those rights is, or at least should be, regarded as absolute and inalienable. The right to life and to security, in the sense of freedom from hurt or injury, is in a different category altogether. As the Bill makes clear throughout, particularly from the safeguards with which it is hedged, it is that right that is being protected and the other, lesser rights that are being obstructed. That cannot but indicate, as many Members on both sides have noted, that a balance is being struck. Whether it is the right balance will be a question that future historians will no doubt assess.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

My hon. and learned Friend is making a powerful argument about the balancing of rights. Does he feel that this consideration should be reviewed regularly to ensure that the balance remains correct in future?

[Stephen Phillips]

I can see that there is a powerful case for amending the Bill in Committee to introduce some annual review by Parliament, but there are countervailing arguments, some of which have been alluded to during the debate. The first of those arguments, which was made by my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker), is that with the whipping system being what it is, such an annual review may prove pointless. The second is that if the House forms a view in relation to TPIMs, which are not control orders, it will have reached a settled view, and that will not fade from parliamentary memory. I think that everyone on both sides of the House accepts that once the reasons why TPIMs or control orders need to exist have disappeared, this legislation should also disappear. In those circumstances, while I can see the case for an annual review, it is not something on which I have a conclusive view, and I look forward to debating it again in due course.

Returning to whether it is right in principle for the Bill to strike the balance that it seeks to strike, what finally has driven me to the view that the Bill must continue its passage through the House is the fact that the arguments against the balance being struck at all either misinterpret or only interpret semantically and without regard to its content what the rule of law actually means. We have created for ourselves, as have most other nations, a system of justice that involves the open trial of individuals for those things that we characterise as wrongs that deserve punishment. That system, however, is a fabrication of the society in which we live—no more, no less. It is not the only system that man could devise, but it has been found over the years to be the best system, even though we must occasionally alter or change it so that it meets the needs of the times in which we live. This is such a time, so the Bill seeks to fashion a different system from the ordinary criminal justice system, and it does so because, in my judgment, it must, for reasons that I have given.

Is the system contrary to the rule of law because it is different? No. It is contrary to the rule of law, if in any sense, because we say it is, yet the rule of law as created must be protected, as it answers so well to the circumstances of existence that we must not seek to undermine it any more than is necessary. Again, there is a balance to be struck—what is necessary is what is proportionate to the circumstances, and in my view that is the regime that the Bill seeks to create. The same cannot be said universally of the regime that will be repealed if and when clause 1 comes into force. While the Prevention of Terrorism Act 2005 sought to strike a necessary balance, in my judgment it struck the wrong balance, which is tacitly accepted by the Opposition Front-Bench team, given their acceptance that the control order regime was not necessarily the best way of dealing with the threat that the legislation that they introduced sought to deal.

I know, as I have said before in the House, new as I am, that it is the Opposition’s duty to oppose, but for those of us who have sat through this debate in its entirety it has been odd to note the opposition from their Front-Bench team, but the consensus among Back Benchers on both sides of the House that the Bill should at least complete its Second Reading.

The previous regime of control orders permitted the Government to derogate from the Human Rights Act 1998. The Bill does not do so, which is progress. While I am no fan of the Human Rights Act, I accept that it includes welcome protections that have existed in our law for generations, even if consistently misinterpreted or over-interpreted by the Court in Strasbourg. The previous regime of control orders likewise provided a non-exhaustive list of the way in which the rights of the subject could be hindered. The Bill, by contrast, tells the Home Secretary precisely what she may do, circumscribed by Parliament. I know which I prefer and which meets the need to tackle the mischief at which the Bill is directed.

The previous regime of control orders likewise allowed the Home Secretary powers overly and unnecessarily in effect to extinguish individual rights, the best example being the 16-hour curfew. The Bill, by contrast, limits the Home Secretary’s powers—again, always subject to review—to something which, to my mind, is more capable of justification, even though overnight detention orders require more definition. Most importantly, unlike the present regime, mere suspicion on the part of the state will no longer be enough to trigger the powers in the Bill—and rightly so. The Bill makes it clear that there must be reasonable belief that individuals can no longer be deprived of their rights merely on the basis of suspicion. Lawyers other than I have suggested this afternoon that there is little difference, but I disagree. Even if I am wrong, I am more content with a regime that requires some form of objective proof and justification than one that can be triggered merely on the basis of vague, subjective assertion on the part of the state.

For these reasons, and many others which there is now insufficient time to develop further but which will undoubtedly be explored in Committee if the Bill goes forward tonight, it is my belief that this is the right Bill to address the dilemma that I posed at the outset and which the Government face in striking a balance between the rights of the individual and the obligation to protect all the citizens of this country. If the House divides tonight, the Government will therefore receive my support to give the Bill a Second Reading, as I believe they should receive the support of the remainder of the House.

Criminal Records (Public Access) Bill

Henry Smith Excerpts

Friday 13th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

Yes, it would. Of course there are far fewer Crown court convictions and far fewer Crown courts, so it is much easier to get access to that information. As my hon. Friend will have noticed, the Bill states that

“‘a criminal records office’ means the Criminal Records Bureau or any successor body with similar statutory functions to the Criminal Records Bureau”.

It also states:

“A criminal records office must keep, in electronic form, copies of all Magistrates’ Courts Registers, and any other registers produced by a court listing convictions”.

Obviously, that could include Crown court registers.

In drafting this Bill, I have tried to make the regulation and the demands placed on the criminal records office as light as possible. I have done so by, among other things, saying that none of this would have to be retrospective, and so only after the Bill was enacted would the magistrates courts’ registers have to be communicated in electronic form to the criminal records office. There would be no burden on the criminal records office to collate the information on all those records. All that would happen would be that the records would be available in electronic form and could be investigated on the internet by members of the public.

I expect what would happen—this has already been happening in the US—is that people who were interested in providing a public service would start to collate the records themselves, thereby producing a combined database that would be accessible, perhaps for a fee, by members of the public. It would set up almost a private sector alternative to the Criminal Records Bureau.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

Many people will be quite astonished that records of convictions are not as publicly available as they should be, I would argue, in a free society such as ours. Does my hon. Friend think that this provision would make the Criminal Records Bureau a little more efficient? If people had direct information about those who have been convicted, it might free up some of the bureaucratic burden for which that organisation is, unfortunately, somewhat infamous.

[Mr Chope]

I hear what my hon. Friend says. I have not recently had any constituency cases relating to the Criminal Records Bureau, but there is a real problem with the time it takes to get information out of it, particularly if one wants to check records for potential volunteers or members of staff.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nuttall]

My right hon. Friend raises an interesting point, which fits neatly with my point about available technology and the sort of database that could be created. It is quite likely that a private sector organisation could put such information into a searchable database on the internet, which, as my right hon. Friend rightly says, could easily be accessed on a mobile phone. That is the way in which the internet is going. It is more and more likely that people will carry their own personal computers around with them—tablets are already available —and if a search can be made on a desktop computer in an office, it can be made as one walks down the street. I see no reason why that should not be the case. I cannot see the problems with that.

The main point is that the information must be accurate. We already have the technology to make that happen; of that there can be no doubt. We have already seen the excellent Home Office website that enables individual householders to search right down to street level to find the number and category of crimes committed in their area. Having seen how complicated that website is, covering every road and street in the entire country, I think that the proposed database would be much easier to construct. Provided that measures were in place to ensure that the information on the register was accurate, which could be done easily by ensuring that people could check their own record free of charge, I see no reason why—

[Henry Smith]

Does the Bill not merely extend information that is increasingly becoming publicly available, as my hon. Friend is setting out? In the Sussex police force area, the recently passed Sarah’s law allows people to check whether anyone in their neighbourhood has been convicted of a child sex offence. That has empowered people, and certainly has not led to any vigilantism.

[Mr Nuttall]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Generally speaking, people can be relied on to treat this information, which is publicly available, with common sense and reasonableness.

One area where problems are likely to occur is when people change their name. I know that what we can do to prevent people from giving false names is of particular concern to the Home Office, because there is no law that prevents someone from changing their name. A name can be changed simply by statutory declaration, rather than by going through the complexity of doing so by deed poll. No one has to give a reason for wanting to change their name. In fact, many people do so for the slightest of reasons, perhaps because they do not like their name. I am not normally the first to suggest further regulation, but I wonder whether the need to monitor sex offenders, in particular, might result in some further control, to ensure that those convicted of sex offences are not free simply to change their name and walk away from their past.

This short Bill would be warmly and widely welcomed outside this House. I wish it well on Second Reading and look forward to seeing it on the statute book before too long.

Counter-terrorism

Henry Smith Excerpts

Thursday 20th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

The Order Paper for Wednesday is yet to be produced, so I am not entirely sure about the force of my hon. Friend’s statement. As he says, those who are eager to question the Home Secretary will have the chance to do so on Monday anyway, so I am sure that we can return to the issue.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

Recently, the Leader of the Opposition defended many of the decisions made by the previous Government, of which he was a member, and now we hear from the shadow Home Secretary that he questions the decision about 28-day detention. Does the Minister agree that there are some worrying splits in Her Majesty’s official Opposition on the vital issues of civil liberties and national security?

[Damian Green]

That may well be true, but I genuinely hope that the Opposition can bring themselves to a position in which they can balance security and civil liberties appropriately. The Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Home Secretary have admitted that Labour got the balance between security and civil liberties wrong. I look forward to the day when they can turn those fine words into some sort of concrete action and support the Government when we take measured and sensible steps, such as those we are taking today.

Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill

Henry Smith Excerpts

Monday 13th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)]

I pay tribute to many who have spoken this evening, including my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), who made a number of rational and intelligent suggestions in respect of the Australian system that I have not heard before, which I commend.

I also pay tribute to the police force in my constituency. I work closely with it, and spoke with the operational commander on Sunday morning. The force is swift, efficient and effective, as it has been for quite a few years, and it is very targeted, so it is no surprise that crime rates have gone down.

I support a charity called Families Fighting for Justice, which came to my attention in a rather unusual way. A constituent of mine sadly suffered two tragedies in her family—her children were brutally murdered—and as she went through that process, she felt that the system supported the perpetrator far more than the victim. I need tell no one in the House how appallingly bleak it must be for any parent to lose a child, but to lose two is beyond compare. Through meeting her I did a lot of research and came across the charity Families Fighting for Justice. I do not agree with everything it wants, but a number of the issues it is interested in and has been pushing concern the flippant guilty pleas that change just as a person gets to court. This Bill could begin to address issues where perpetrators have been perceived as getting away with murder—to coin a phrase—and level the playing field more. Speaking on behalf of Families Fighting for Justice, I think that the Bill is taking a step in the right direction for people such as my constituent who have been through such tragic circumstances.

I fully support the Bill. The key thing is that it will improve police accountability, allow the Home Secretary to react quickly to the constantly evolving criminal narcotics industry and tackle some of the root causes of antisocial behaviour. It covers some broad strategic issues that hon. Members on both sides of the House have tackled, but I would like to concentrate on antisocial behaviour, which might be seen as a relatively minor issue. I come from a family of police officers—an uncle, grandfather and great grandfather were policemen. So there has been a considerable number of policemen in my family. If it is any consolation, they are mostly supporters of the party of my coalition colleagues—but bless them. They are relatives, and I love them dearly.

I have always supported and had a great interest in the police force. I suppose that I might be termed as being on the robust wing of the Liberals. I am aware, as all MPs are from their constituency experience, that antisocial behaviour is appalling, particularly in disadvantaged areas where it is possible for one close or cul-de-sac to contain just one or two families who make life a misery for everyone. I have always been very strong on that. In fact, I was supportive of the broken window policy started in New York by Mayor Giuliani a few years ago through an elected police commissioner. He started dealing with crime at its root causes—for instance, broken windows and graffiti—and coming down on them very hard. As a result, the bigger crimes also began to reduce.

Antisocial behaviour in all its forms, especially at night, can be devastating for those it affects, which is why I am glad that part 2 of the Bill will amend the Licensing Act 2003 to shift the balance of power from pubs and clubs to local authorities and, more importantly, local communities. As is well known, a significant proportion of antisocial behaviour has alcohol at its root. I was stopped yesterday by a constituent in Eastbourne, which I hasten to add is a paragon of peace—it is also the sunniest town in England, so hon. Members should visit it in their holidays and spend all their money there. Over the weekend, I was walking around my constituency, talking, meeting and listening to people—as we all do—when I was stopped by a chap who works as a street pastor. He goes out late at night working with others, helping people and being there for young people, old people and middle-aged people in case of trouble. He told me that he once came across a young woman of about 16 or 17—lord knows how she got hold of the alcohol—who was comatose. Fortuitously, the ambulance arrived within 20 minutes or so, but this man, who is an experienced older man and former pastor, said, “Stephen, frankly, if the ambulance had been another 30 minutes, if there had been a hold-up, she probably would have died.”

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point. Not so long ago, I went on patrol with my local police in Crawley on a Friday night and into the early hours of Saturday morning. I was astounded to discover that, I would say, nine out of 10 of the incidents that we responded to were alcohol related.

[Stephen Lloyd]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I thank him for his intervention. The overall statistics show that well over 50% of violent crimes involve alcohol. It is absolutely shocking. A number of colleagues talked about the cheap price of alcohol. The right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) declared that he did not drink cheap drinks or what-have-you—I am sure that he does not, and neither do I for that matter—but there is one cider in particular called White Lightning. I know of shops in Eastbourne where, sadly, it is used by young and old people specifically to get absolutely blitzed, and I am sure that there are similar shops in every town in the constituency. Given the damage that White Lightning causes, and especially because of its price, it is commendable that the Bill is beginning to look at such issues seriously.

A key part of this Bill comes back to antisocial behaviour. The more that we can give the power back to the people—back to the local authority—to challenge those establishments where alcohol is freely served and abused, the more that life will be made easier for many constituents around the country. I go back to the fact that it is often the smaller, perhaps less notorious aspects of crime that can cause so much damage. Antisocial behaviour is one of those, and it is clearly linked to alcohol. The changes in licensing will make things more efficient and, crucially, will give power back to the people. Those provisions are highly sensible, and I commend the Bill to the House.

[Michael Ellis (Northampton North) (Con)]

I am delighted to follow the speakers who have recently been addressing the House. I completely support and commend the Bill. I intend to refer in the few minutes available to a couple of its clauses, but it strikes me very much that the Bill as a whole tremendously empowers people in our country, drawing power away from the state. As such, it is to be highly commended, and I congratulate the Minister on that.

The handful of Opposition speakers—and it is a small number—who have spoken on the issue of universal jurisdiction and the safeguard in the Bill have confirmed why it is so necessary to improve the law on universal jurisdiction as it stands. This issue is not just about Israel: the Chinese Trade Minister has apparently been threatened with arrest because of the current provision, as has Henry Kissinger. There have been difficulties in Europe with Donald Rumsfeld’s freedom of movement, and I believe that White House staffers have been threatened with arrest in Spain because of the principle of universal jurisdiction. I am given to understand that even the former Prime Minister Tony Blair has had a large number of petitions levied against him in the International Criminal Court, so this issue is not unique to the United Kingdom or Israel. It is an area that has needed reform for some considerable time.

The principle of amending the law on universal jurisdiction is in no way about stifling meritorious complaints. However, where jurisdiction is very wide, as it currently is in this country, it will tend to act as a magnet for complaints that are rooted in political vendettas, regardless of their merit. Universal jurisdiction has tended to mean that high-level consultations and meetings have been disrupted, and at times even cancelled. London has a long-established and important reputation as an effective venue for warring parties around the world—indeed, it has a cherished ability to act as such, serving as a diplomatic hot spot.

[Henry Smith]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Ironically, universal jurisdiction is getting in the way of diplomatic efforts to engender peace and in the way of peace talks and discussions, particularly in this international venue that is London. The Bill’s provisions are thus absolutely correct.

[Michael Ellis]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. There have been literally dozens of examples in our recent history where London has been a centre for the negotiation and conclusion of important international agreements between warring factions, and we are in danger of losing that ability because universal jurisdiction has been misused, misapplied and inappropriately applied as a means of pursuing political vendettas. All that is required for the proposed changes is the consent of the Director of Public Prosecutions—it is, incidentally, already required in certain other routine prosecutions—which would enable the system to withstand attempts to exploit the law for settling political scores. I very much welcome that provision.

Other important provisions are designed to deal with the encampment on Parliament square. The Prime Minister has said that he would like to see that encampment done away with; the Bill will achieve that, although it will be some months before Royal Assent is granted. Having looked at the existing laws, I take the view that law is already available on the criminal statute book, which could be applied to remove the encampment in time for the royal wedding in April.

Members will be fascinated to know that I have in mind the Vagrancy Act 1824. As Members will obviously know, section 4(2) of the 1824 Act says:

“Every person wandering abroad and lodging in any barn or outhouse, or in any deserted or unoccupied building, or in the open air, or under a tent, or in any cart or wagon, and not giving a good account of himself or herself… commits an offence.”

Members might be interested to know that this Act is not as obsolete as its antiquity would tend to imply. It is, in fact, a piece of legislation that is used regularly around the country. I myself have prosecuted people for this offence in relatively recent times, in my former guise as a member of the Bar.

Controlling Migration

Henry Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. A great many Members are seeking to catch my eye, and I should like to accommodate as many as possible, so brevity from the Back Benches and the Front Benches alike is required.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. She correctly mentioned student visas, and then mentioned consultation. Given that we have had 10 years of almost mass immigration, will she assure the House that that consultation will be swift?

[Mrs May]

I am happy to assure my hon. Friend that we will issue that consultation very shortly, and that we want to be in a position to make changes to student visas next spring.

Immigration

Henry Smith Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Chris Skidmore]

I would never deny that fact. However, the simple fact remains that we are not accountable to the IPPR, but to our constituents. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman, and every Member here—not during the election but on every weekend when we are back in our constituencies knocking on doors—has found that this is the single biggest issue that is raised in the nation at large.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a very compelling argument. This goes back to a point that was made earlier. It does not matter what the ethnic background of people happens to be. I have found on the doorsteps of Crawley that, regardless of other people’s backgrounds, people are concerned about jobs, schools, and pressure on the health service. Those are universal concerns.

[Chris Skidmore]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, which returns to the question of population pressure and infrastructure. That must be the crucial message of this debate.

I want to end by raising what is, for me, another vital concern—that we cannot begin to tackle immigration effectively without looking clearly at the process of integration. For too long, Government and local authorities have acquiesced in allowing parallel communities to exist—communities and neighbourhoods speaking different languages, yet never really speaking to each other. In every council, thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money, in some cases nearly half a million pounds, are spent on translators and interpreters, and on leaflets produced in every language imaginable. If we want to create an integrated society, this must change. We cannot allow any policy on immigration to be implemented without addressing what I believe to be the paramount concern: that the English language must be upheld, and that any person who enters this country must expect—indeed, be expected—to learn and speak English if they are to co-exist and play a responsible role in British society.

As I have said, the British people are not bigots. Britain is a tolerant nation that looks outwards rather than inwards, a nation that is proud of our international heritage and responsibilities. That, in part, is what made us great in the first place. But the time has now come, in this debate and moving on, for us to take a firm stance on immigration. I know for my constituents in Kingswood that this cannot come soon enough.

Animal Experiments: Primates

Henry Smith Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2010 Ministerial Corrections

[Henry Smith]

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (a) how many and (b) what species of non-human primates imported for the purposes of scientific research were categorised as (i) captive-born (or F1 generation) and (ii) captive-bred (F2+ generation) in (A) 2009 and (B) 2010.

[Official Report, 4 November 2010, Vol. 517, c. 876-77W.]

Letter of correction from Lynne Featherstone:

Errors have been identified in the response given to the hon. Member for Crawley (Henry Smith) on 4 November 2010. In the table referring to figures from 2009, the number ‘100’ should read ‘85’, the number ‘1,257’ should read ‘1,139’ and the number ‘958’ should read ‘932’.

The answer was as follows:

[Lynne Featherstone]

Although the information currently submitted to the Home Office following the acquisition of each batch of non-human primates provides evidence that animals have been born in captivity, there is currently no requirement for the records to indicate whether animals are F1 or F2+. However, from the information available we estimate the respective totals to be as detailed in the following table.

European Investigation Order

Henry Smith Excerpts

Tuesday 27th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I can, I hope, reassure my hon. Friend on his second point. Under the data protection arrangements in the European Union, DNA samples could be held by another member state only for the same time as they can be held here in the UK. That opens up another argument about why the Government intend to change the arrangements for the DNA database and do not want to hold the DNA of innocent people for significant periods, as the Labour Government did.

[Henry Smith (Crawley) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend talks about the proportionality test that will be applied, but who will write the rules of that test? Will it be by negotiation among EU countries or will it be the UK Government? And who will adjudicate that?

[Mrs May]

The proportionality test is something that we intend to negotiate with other member states from the point of opt-in to the point at which the text of the final directive is determined.