Visas

Lord Dholakia Excerpts

Monday 17th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I certainly would be prepared to meet the noble Baroness and any people she wishes to bring along. As I have emphasised, we want to expedite visa processing. Ninety-four per cent of visas are processed within 15 days. That is a pretty good figure. It can be improved but 94% are processed within 15 days and, in the case of China, the figure is 99%.

[Lord Dholakia]

My Lords, what arrangements are in hand to review the decisions of entry clearance officers? My noble friend will be aware that in the past immigration adjudicators overturned the decisions of entry clearance officers in many cases. How do we ensure that there is no bias in the way decisions are taken, particularly as regards family visits and visits to attend marriages and funerals, when people wish to be in the country for a very short period?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I am grateful to the noble Lord. He has a strong focus on this issue. Indeed, the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, is presenting a report, which we will be debating shortly, on the whole question of family visas. We need to make sure that we have a proper balance between safeguarding our own position and our commitments within the wider communities here in the United Kingdom and, at the same time, facilitating visits to this country.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Dholakia Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dholakia]

My Lords, I am delighted that the gracious Speech contains measures to reduce crime and protect national security. As one who promoted the legislation on the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act in my Private Member’s Bill, I welcome the coalition Government’s intention further to legislate for reforms in the way in which offenders are rehabilitated in England and Wales. I congratulate the coalition Government on some of their major successes so far, and I do not mind if my noble friend Lord McNally takes credit for them.

The first three years of the coalition Government have seen some important steps towards achieving a fairer and more effective criminal justice system. The Government have abolished the discredited and unjust IPP sentence, legislated to reduce unnecessary remands in custody, reformed the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act and given legislative underpinning to restorative justice. Over the past four years, we have seen a dramatic and welcome reduction in the number of juvenile offenders in custody. Moreover, the rate of increase in the adult prison population has slowed down. In the past three years, between 2009 and 2012, the prison population has risen by an average of 1% a year compared with 2.5% to 4% a year during the period of the Labour Administration. I am particularly pleased to note that the Government are developing a determined strategy to divert mentally disordered offenders from the criminal justice system into medical and social care.

So far, so good, but we still face many serious challenges. Even after these welcome improvements, the size of our prison population remains a national disgrace. At the end of October 2012, 78 out of 131 prisons were holding more prisoners than they were built for, and over 20,000 prisoners were being held two to a cell in cells designed for one person. This country now has 153 prisoners for every 100,000 people in the general population compared with 102 in France and 83 in Germany. Far too many offenders are still sent into custody for short sentences and then released after no more than a few months. These sentences serve little purpose. They are far too short for sustained rehabilitation programmes, but long enough for offenders to lose their jobs and homes, which makes them more likely to reoffend.

On release, most of these prisoners do not receive supervision by the probation service, and the reconviction rates are much higher than those for other prisoners. I am pleased to see that the Government are now consulting on proposals to provide post-release supervision for short-term prisoners and I welcome the announcement made earlier by my noble friend Lord McNally. However, most of these offenders will be better dealt with by community orders. These orders can provide a longer period of supervision and of work to change offending behaviour than a short period of post-release supervision would provide. Our prison system still does far too little to prevent crime and rehabilitate offenders. We need to rethink an approach which spends such a high proportion of its resources on custodial measures which produce high reoffending rates.

The Government should legislate to make sentencing guidelines take into account the capacity of our prison system. This proposal was first made by the Carter report on the prison system in 2007, and it still makes sense. At a time when all other areas of public services have to work within the reality of limited resources, there is no reason why sentencing should be exempt. Requiring sentencing guidelines to take account of all available resources would concentrate sentencers’ minds on the evidence concerning the most cost-effective disposals available to the courts. Sentencing guidelines should scale down the number and length of prison sentences except for the most serious crimes. They should remove prison as an option for low-level non-violent crimes. Courts should be prohibited from using prisons, except for dangerous offenders, unless they have first tried an intensive community supervision programme.

We also need a strategy to reduce the use of imprisonment for women. Most of the women we send to prison are neither violent nor dangerous and most of them have few previous convictions. Imprisoned women have high rates of mental disorder, histories of abuse, addiction problems and personal distress arising from separation from their children. I was pleased to see the Government’s recent announcement that they are establishing an expert advisory board, to be chaired by my honourable friend Helen Grant, to develop policies for female offenders. I hope that with the assistance of the advisory board, the Government will set improved standards for women’s community sentences, resettlement and rehabilitation, mental health services, family contact and culturally appropriate support for foreign national women in our prisons.

We should also do more to keep restorative justice at the forefront of sentences, to help ensure that it becomes a central part of our criminal justice system. I greatly welcome the new provision in the Crime and Courts Act which provides for restorative justice in conjunction with deferment of sentence. The Government should build on this in future legislation by making restorative justice one of the statutory purposes of sentencing and by enabling courts to include specific restorative justice requirements in community orders and youth rehabilitation orders.

We should reduce the rate of imprisonment of people who have breached community supervision—for example, by missing appointments or being late back to their probation hostels. The number of people jailed for breach has escalated alarmingly in recent years as probation officers’ discretion over breaches has been restricted. The Government should consider introducing a graduated scale of punishment for breach of supervision, with prisons being used only for breach when less severe penalties have first been tried.

We should introduce tighter statutory restrictions on sentencing and sending young offenders into custody. This would involve reversing some of the measures taken by the last Labour Government, who legislated to enable courts to detain children at an increasingly younger age and for less serious offences. We should also raise the country’s unusually low age of criminal responsibility from 10 to at least 12. I hope to reintroduce my Private Member’s Bill on this subject next week. It would be more humane and more effective to deal with offenders under that age in family proceedings courts, as other European countries do.

A great deal remains to be done to eliminate racial discrimination from the criminal justice process. The disproportionate use of stop and search is even more extreme than it was when the Stephen Lawrence inquiry reported, and the proportion of the prison population from racial minorities is now higher than it was in the late 1990s. We should place a clear statutory duty on all criminal justice agencies to adopt numerical targets for reducing racial disproportionality in all their operations.

There is overwhelming evidence of the importance of providing practical help for offenders in order to reduce reoffending. I make no apologies for repeating the key statistics on this point to the House yet again. Getting offenders into jobs reduces their likelihood of further offending by between one-third and one-half. Providing accommodation for offenders reduces reconviction by at least one-fifth. Drug rehabilitation programmes cut the volume of reoffending by up to 70%.

Alongside the Government’s welcome proposals for post-release supervision for short-term prisoners, we should commission voluntary organisations to provide a national resettlement service for these prisoners to ensure that they receive support with their practical needs for accommodation, employment and drug rehabilitation on release. Such a strategy would help to move this country away from the unenviable position of having the highest prison population in western Europe. In doing so, it would help to concentrate resources on the measures that are most likely to protect the public by rehabilitating offenders and reducing reoffending.

Police: Racism

Lord Dholakia Excerpts

Thursday 25th April 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

Of course, that hazard would apply to any candidate. However, I am confident about that policy and I believe it will enhance the policing profession. I have some figures here. There are 6,604 BME officers in the 43 forces in England and Wales, representing 5% of total police officer strength. The proportion of those of chief inspector rank or above is only 3.7%. I think that bears out the point that the noble Lord is making, one with which I do not disagree. There are too few at that level.

[Lord Dholakia]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for a very helpful Answer. Does he not agree that, 20 years after Stephen Lawrence was stabbed to death and after the Macpherson report on institutional racism, it is time to look at this issue again? In particular, does he not agree that it would be right to ask HM Inspectorate of Constabulary to undertake a thematic review of race relations policies to see what progress has been made since then?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

Since the Macpherson report, which was the initial report, as noble Lords will know, there have been a number of allegations. Indeed, currently there is a review investigating allegations of a conspiracy to cover up this case. We will take that review seriously. It does not alter the fundamental strategy, which is to try to make sure that police numbers and the ethnic make-up of policing reflect the communities that they serve.

Police Integrity

Lord Dholakia Excerpts

Tuesday 12th February 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

It is intended that an enhanced vetting process will apply to all senior appointments within the police force. All police recruits should be vetted at the point of recruitment, but the vetting process for senior posts within the police will be enhanced.

[Lord Dholakia]

My Lords, as one who was a member of the former Police Complaints Authority who now serves on the small review group looking at serious cases for the IPCC, I welcome what the Minister has just announced. Perhaps I may ask him two questions. The first relates to the point raised by the noble Lord, Lord Condon, about the implications of a transfer of resources from local areas to the IPCC. Has the Minister worked out the figures that we are talking about, bearing in mind that the cuts that have been imposed on police forces are causing serious problems in local areas? Has he worked out what the implications of the transfer might be, because many lower level cases are best dealt with at the point at which they occur; that is, in the local area. Secondly, the Minister mentioned the powers that are required by the IPCC and said that we can expect legislation. Will he consult not only the IPCC but the many other relevant organisations which have repeatedly raised concerns about the existing powers of the IPCC? What will he do to ensure that their views are taken into account before the legislation is formed?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

On the noble Lord’s latter point, if there is to be legislation, there will have to be a period during which Parliament and the wider public will be engaged in considering what might be in it. On resources, the Home Secretary will write to the IPCC, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary, PCCs and the college itself to seek detailed proposals on how the transfer of resources might take place and over what period. I think that will help the noble Lord, Lord Condon, in his question to me. This is a matter of consensuality. I think that there is sufficient consensus within the police service to enable this to be done on a consensual basis, recognising that integrity in policing is holistic and not specific to one particular force.

Ibrahim Magag: Disappearance

Lord Dholakia Excerpts

Tuesday 8th January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I can confirm the latter point. The last time he was seen, he was reported as getting into a taxi.

The noble Baroness misconstrues the nature of the TPIM system, which succeeds the control order system but is designed to provide proportionate supervision for people where evidence does not exist to secure a conviction. The only true way of dealing with terrorists is to find the evidence to convict them and to put them into prison; that is the only secure place that we can put them. That is a process of law for which we require evidence. TPIM is a mechanism whereby we can at least prevent the movement and control the location of individuals in the way that we have done.

[Lord Dholakia]

My Lords, Parliament rightly put TPIMs at the heart of our intelligence, but in the case of Ibrahim Magag they obviously did not work. Is the Minister satisfied that the system, particularly the machinery and equipment available, is adequate for the operation? If not, what further improvements are necessary?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

We can, of course, always review the circumstances of this particular incident in the light of experience, but we know that the resources available to deal with people such as Magag are considerable, and that they have been designed to prevent things like this from happening. As I said, it is very difficult to prevent people from absconding. We know that it happened under the old regime; this is the first—unfortunate—case under a TPIM.

Immigration: Home Office Meetings

Lord Dholakia Excerpts

Monday 3rd December 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

That is exactly the message that the Government are sending. In fact, as has been shown in the most recent reports, university numbers are holding up very well. UCAS acceptances of international students are up by 4%, showing that our policies are having the right effect. There was a 1% increase in visa applications for students attending universities. The university sector now accounts for three-quarters of sponsored visa applications, up from about half in the equivalent period last year.

[Lord Dholakia]

My Lords, at my noble friend’s next meeting with the Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, will he insist on records being kept of cases of domestic violence where there is evidence that judicial decisions on permanent settlement have been overridden by the Executive?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I have recently written to the noble Lord because he asked a similar question last week on this issue. Obviously, it is important that we have a regime that is capable of ensuring that people who come to this country are fit and proper persons to be here.

UK Border Agency

Lord Dholakia Excerpts

Tuesday 27th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I am afraid that I have not been following what the Mayor of London has been saying.

[Lord Dholakia]

My Lords, does the UKBA await the outcome of court judgments on domestic violence cases before the right to settle in the UK is granted? Is the Home Secretary consulted before the UKBA exercises such authority over judicial decisions?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

The noble Lord has asked a specific question to which I cannot give a detailed answer, except to say that the rules governing entrance into and settlement in this country are extraordinarily complex. We had an opportunity to debate elements of them yesterday. I will investigate the matter and write to the noble Lord.

Public and Commercial Services Union: Strike Action

Lord Dholakia Excerpts

Tuesday 24th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

I am interested that one person is prepared to put his head above the parapet on this matter and I note that the noble Lord’s leader, Mr Ed Miliband, was in Durham at the Durham Miners’ Gala speaking on the same platform as the PCS, presumably in support of this strike. It would be very interesting to hear his views on this matter.

[Lord Dholakia]

My Lords, the action proposed by the PCS is a serious matter, particularly when the world’s attention is focused on the United Kingdom in matters relating to the entry, security and safety of travellers coming to this country. Although it is right not to interfere with any negotiations that may be going on, does my noble friend accept that, as tomorrow is the last day on which this House will be sitting, we are entitled to know what contingency plans exist if the situation were to deteriorate?

[Lord Henley]

As my noble friend will be well aware, we have full contingency plans in place, just as we did on the other four occasions on which the PCS has called one-day strikes. On all those occasions we managed not only to secure the border appropriately but to prevent excessive queues. We hope to do that again tomorrow, but we hope that the PCS will see reason. Our doors remain open to negotiations until the last minute but, as I said, we are also taking legal advice on this matter.

UK Border Agency

Lord Dholakia Excerpts

Thursday 19th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dholakia]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Avebury for securing this debate. He is probably the best qualified person to speak on border controls. His tireless campaigning on behalf of refugees and asylum seekers is legendary. A lot of people across the world are alive today because of his work on the rights and liberties of the individual.

Headlines in this week’s papers are unlikely to build confidence in the way UKBA conducts its business. Performance has slumped after it lost 1,000 more workers than planned. The report from the National Audit Office is devastating. It talks of loss of focus and poor performance, and of a tendency towards optimism bias in planning, delivery and reporting that has contributed to the current problems.

This is nothing new. Successive Governments must accept blame for this chaos. We have only to cast our minds back to 1997 when the incoming Labour Government found piles of unattended and lost files at Lunar House. The orderly queue of applicants awaiting immigration decisions grew to the extent that the process became unmanageable. All this happened because the number of immigration staff was reduced by 1,000 at that time. The impression given was that asylum seekers were flooding the country, and that tough new measures were required to control the flow of economic migrants, students and others who were seeking admission to the United Kingdom.

I have said before that all political parties subscribe to a fair immigration policy and fair procedures. This has never been in dispute. The policy is to admit those who are eligible and to exclude or—subject to the appropriate humanitarian principles—remove those who are not. But in any administrative system, questions arise about priorities. The administration of the immigration system is no exception.

The problem the UKBA faces is very simple. The need to exclude those who are ineligible means that checks have to be made to determine who is eligible and who is not. The greater the emphasis on excluding those who are ineligible, the more intensive the checks have to be. The more intensive the checks are, and the more complicated they are to administer, the more delay and expense accrue to those who are eligible.

Again, if the objective of excluding those who are ineligible is taken to extremes, in matters that are often not susceptible to documentary proof the risk of excluding those who are eligible to enter but lack the resources to prove it becomes serious. When we add to this the insatiable appetite by politicians to play the numbers game, is it any wonder that a culture develops over time where administrators are expected to deliver results which often lack fairness and justice in the process? The heavy emphasis on excluding those who are ineligible rather than giving prompt and sympathetic attention to the rights of the eligible has led to practices that have an adverse effect on people from the New Commonwealth, and also on refugees and asylum seekers. Often the numbers seeking admission are exaggerated to an extent that asylum seekers bear the brunt of public disgust.

We do not condone illegal immigration. Nor do we condone the entry of those who do not qualify to be here. I suspect that genuine refugees seeking admission under the UN convention are few, and the sooner reliable statistics are produced, the better it will be for building a cohesive society here. We need our Governments to proclaim at the highest level the contribution migrants make to the British economy. We need a shift in priorities towards greater emphasis on the rights of those eligible to enter the United Kingdom. This has been the principle on which Britain’s points-based migration system was introduced. The aim was to remove the subjective decision of immigration staff and to establish objective criteria so as to avoid any misunderstanding about how controls are applied. However, if the final objective is to cut down on numbers, we are back to the starting point of differential treatment offered to different countries, which is more likely to affect applicants from third-world countries.

The argument that often surfaces is about perceived economic and social costs and benefits. We tend to forget that, given that EU immigration is protected by the freedom of movement rules, successive Governments have focused efforts on more tightly controlling non-EU migration. The positive contribution that we forget is that those who benefit from education here also take back with them the soft diplomacy of democratic values which in our case is the envy of the world. No amount of overseas aid could compensate for this very important contribution towards democracy in many parts of the world.

Another matter that I need to stress relates to headlines in the press this week, such as, “Immigrants drive biggest population rise in 200 years”. The figures published by the Office for National Statistics indicated that the population of England and Wales had surged by 3.7 million in the past decade, and about 2.1 million of that was the result of the number of immigrants outweighing the number of those leaving the country. The growth in population obviously presents social challenges, but the calls for an arbitrary population limit such as 70 million are sinister and, frankly, more in keeping with a totalitarian dictatorship than Britain in the 21st century.

If the issue is immigration, the pace of change needs to be managed, but migrants bring major benefits to the country. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility last week, while zero net migration would keep population down below 70 million, it would also lead to the national debt rising to 120% of GDP by the middle of the century. This would mean that the scale of cuts and taxes increases to be borne by the UK population over the next 50 years would be tripled if we are to bring debt back under control at 40% of GDP. The economic impact of cutting migration in this way would turn the UK into a country such as Greece for most of the 21st century. We have to promote a simple message. Let us stop playing the numbers game. Let us think about what makes Britain great. It is our people, irrespective of their origin, who will produce the wealth that will sustain the country’s health, welfare, social services and pensions for years to come.

Some years ago, I was involved in looking at immigration control procedures. What became clear was that there is an appetite by the Home Office to ask questions about the purpose of a visit to the UK, but overall it puts very little faith in the answers provided by applicants. That culture seems to continue even now. I will give noble Lords an example. I was involved with the then chief constable of Sussex, Paul Whitehouse, in raising funds for the Starehe project in Kenya. We raised more than £1 million in this country. The girls’ centre opened in 2005 and provides the only free education in that country, drawing poor girls from the worst slums in and around Nairobi. The original pioneer class of 72 has swelled to 400 in just seven years. The success has been remarkable. The centre has a small farm that grows food and rears livestock. There are also beehives and a small fish farm.

Most importantly, the hub of the matter is that International Produce Limited, the UK’s largest importer of fresh produce, which is owned by ASDA-Wal-Mart, has generously offered an internship for two students from the girls’ centre to come to the UK. They applied, but their applications were rejected. They applied again to come for a shorter period, but again they were rejected. I ask a simple question: what does it say about us that when it comes to raising people out of the poverty syndrome and giving them experience with a company based in this country that is prepared to help them, we turn them down and simply do not believe them? The reasons provided for the rejection of the applications was that the entry-clearance immigration officer was not satisfied that the girls were genuinely seeking entry as business visitors for the limited period, as they had stated.

I come back to the point I made earlier. It is simply this: in order to improve in particular the quality of asylum decision-making, the Home Office should show leadership on the importance of breaking down the culture of disbelief that is particularly obvious the treatment of women. There are many who live among us in the UK who exist in a legal limbo and with the fear of forced removal. Many have fled persecution that we would struggle to imagine. Let us give a lead so that every woman who comes to this country fleeing persecution gets a fair hearing and a chance to build a new life.

I look forward to the day when I can travel through immigration controls here with the Home Office Minister, my noble friend Lord Henley, and not have to wait and provide an explanation of why I am entering the country while he walks on through.

Police: Working Conditions

Lord Dholakia Excerpts

Thursday 19th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, that is another question. I praise the police force for all that it does. The noble Lord is a fine exemplar of the police service and we are proud to see him serving in this House as well. However, there are some areas where it is often better to use the private sector, and that is why we make use of it for such things as the security around sporting events. I do not think that the noble Lord would think that that would be a good use of police time or manpower.

[Lord Dholakia]

My Lords, would my noble friend’s department be happy to give evidence to the Stevens commission on the recruitment and retention of women police officers?

[Lord Henley]

If I heard my noble friend correctly, he asked whether we would be happy to give evidence. Of course we would.