UK Border Agency: Visa Applications

Lord Dholakia Excerpts

Tuesday 19th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, it is neither a lack of will nor of resources, and we are still trying to push these things on as fast as we can. The noble Baroness quite rightly refers to the Crime and Courts Bill; we are in the middle of its Committee stage and we will discuss those provisions when we get to them some time in July. However, it is right to make the point that we think we will be able to provide a better service to a number of people by withdrawing those appeal procedures as a result of them then being able to apply again.

I want to make clear, as I made clear in my original response to the noble Lord, Lord McConnell is that we take these findings very seriously indeed and we will continue to push them forward. However, the chief inspector produces four or five different reports a year and it takes time to push them forward. He is talking about issues that he looked at back in February, obviously changes have occurred since then and we hope things are better as a result of actions we took following his report. Obviously some things have moved on since then.

[Lord Dholakia]

My Lords, will the Minister take into account the fact that when a visa application has been refused, the individual’s reapplication should not be considered by the same entry clearance officer the second time around?

[Lord Henley]

I cannot give any guarantee that the application will be looked at by a different officer, but in most cases it obviously will be looked at by a different officer because the situation will have moved on.

Crime and Courts Bill [HL]

Lord Dholakia Excerpts

Monday 28th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dholakia]

My Lords, the best thing about the Crime and Courts Bill is that it is being introduced in your Lordships’ House. Between now and Third Reading, we will have the unique opportunity to scrutinise its contents. I have no doubt that it will be a better Bill than those which we normally receive from the other end. There are measures in this Bill which I welcome and there are issues on which we expect the Minister to provide further explanation during its passage.

I wish to concentrate on Part 2, which contains various provisions in respect of modernising courts and the tribunal system. Reading carefully between the lines, it seems that apart from the establishment of the National Crime Agency in Part 1, we are dealing with a number of matters that surfaced during the LASPO Bill in the last Session of Parliament. I received further proof of this when my noble friend Lady Linklater started where she left off last time, particularly on matters of sentencing and restorative justice.

Many of the issues were highlighted at the time, but we now have greater clarity about the Government’s intentions, and I thank them for that. The Constitutional Reform Act 2005 made substantial changes to the process of selecting and appointing various judicial officeholders. We had the Judicial Appointments Commission and a separate process for appointing the Justices of the Supreme Court. The Ministry of Justice’s consultation document entitled Appointments and Diversity, and its own response to it, now forms the basis of Part 2; it intends to achieve a proper balance between executive, judicial and independent responsibilities. I fully subscribe to the Minister’s view that this will bring clarity, transparency and openness to the judicial process.

Our system of justice is at the heart of the democratic process and I trust that these objectives will further cement the confidence of the community in our judicial system. I also welcome the emphasis on diversity. Britain’s minority ethnic population stands at between 8% and 10%, and while quotas are wrong in principle and in law, there is nothing wrong with setting targets that, over a period of time, could achieve a fair balance in our judiciary. My friend the noble Baroness, Lady Prashar, as the first chair of the Judicial Appointments Commission, has laid a sound foundation on which we need to build.

However, there is a distinct omission. Is there any reason why the appointment of magistrates should be excluded from this process? The Ministry of Justice has made great strides in ensuring that the magistracy is reflective of the society it serves, but it would be helpful if the Minister would revisit the clause to ensure that the measures to promote diversity in the appointments process apply to magistrates as well.

I recently chaired a public engagement programme run by the Magistrates’ Association in order to gain a greater understanding of people’s views on the future of summary justice and the role of magistrates. The evidence included contributions from the local police, local victims of crime, local magistrates, professionals from intervention agencies, ex-offenders, local legal practitioners and the audience, which included the general public.

During our evidence-gathering session, we expected criticism but instead found a good deal of understanding of the way magistrates perform their duties. Two common facts emerged from every consultation held in the country. The first was that local justice should remain local within a magistracy that is representative of our diverse society, and a lot needs to be done in this respect. The second was that the magistracy is not reflective of class in society, and one of the biggest barriers to overcoming this lies in the recruitment of people who hold down ordinary jobs. However, we need to exercise care, since appointment is only a small part of the process. It is not simply selection and recruitment that are important; retention is a vital element, and that comes about only when effective training is part of the retention programme.

I said earlier that there are some good measures in the Bill. An example is the single family court for England and Wales. Care needs to be exercised in how this is to be implemented, and I ask the Minister to ensure that family court magistrates continue to play a significant role in this respect.

An area of considerable interest in the Bill relates to community and other non-custodial sentences for adults. My noble friend Lord McNally can take great credit for rescuing the Youth Justice Board in the last Session of Parliament. The board has reduced youth crime and continues to do so, but now we need to push my noble friend even further. The Ministry of Justice consultation paper, entitled Punishment and Reform: Effective Community Sentences, is most welcome. We look forward to the Government’s response when the consultation concludes on 26 June 2012. I do not subscribe to the pessimistic view of the noble Baroness, Lady Smith of Basildon. The consultation is a serious exercise and the Government’s response may not be available until around the Summer Recess, but that is no reason not to set out some of the parameters of the policies that we would like to see introduced. All I ask of the Minister is that he will ensure that we have ample opportunity to question him, as we would normally do in Committee, if that stage is missed out.

I have repeatedly stressed the more effective use of community sentences instead of short-term prison sentences for low-level offences. The incidence and nature of crime varies from place to place and from generation to generation, and it is obvious that crime is something that all societies have to come to terms with in their own way. We can debate the underlying causes of crime, but most research and consultations have tended to refute rather than confirm the causes of crime and the effectiveness of punishment and treatment. Magistrates tread delicately but effectively, particularly when the public and political mood continues to be conditioned more by tabloid reporting than the considered way in which magistrates reach their decisions.

Prison is expensive, and reoffending rates are frightening. Roma Hooper, director of Make Justice Work, says that community sentences have lowered levels of reoffending and are better value for taxpayers, yet we are not advocating tending gardens, painting walls or putting up fences, as seems to be the perception in the minds of both sentencers and the general public. Community sentences need to be robust and demanding in order both to challenge offenders and to gain the confidence of the public. There are many good examples that we can look at, particularly when we consider the international dimension. The probation service should also be equipped with adequate resources to ensure that this happens. We also need to look at the role of the voluntary and private sectors in providing innovative approaches and building programmes tailored to the individual needs of each offender.

Punishment on its own has a very limited impact on offenders. In our nationwide consultation, it became clear that the public, including many victims, expect to see punishment as part of a sentence but that the priority is for the offender to stop offending. The public do not want what happened to them to happen to others, or to themselves again. I commend my noble friend Lady Linklater’s contribution on this subject. I trust that the end product of the Government’s consultation will clearly demonstrate that it is possible for restoration and rehabilitation to be a fundamental part of the process in our courts.

I will certainly have more to say when the Government’s response is available. I conclude by saying that it is for us to lead public opinion and not simply follow it. For too long, public policies have had the imprint of media pressure. It is time to change this political emphasis. With all the expertise available in your Lordships’ House, this will be a better Bill when it reaches the Commons.

Minority Ethnic and Religious Communities: Cultural and Economic Contribution

Lord Dholakia Excerpts

Thursday 24th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dholakia]

My Lords, I add my thanks to the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, for this debate. The Zoroastrian community is small, yet has made a significant contribution towards the economic development of the countries in which it has settled. Its members have also excelled in other diverse areas of our civic life. Their diversity, supplemented by their culture and faith, has added richness to our multi-racial, multi-ethnic and multicultural society.

History throws an interesting light on the Zoroastrian community, and I am glad that the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, has spelt this out. We now know that there are around 250,000 individual Parsees worldwide, and some 5,000 in the UK. Zoroastrians are a small but significant minority, setting an example of tolerance and diversity. We have long cherished and considered the development of a value-driven society as a core goal. Over the years, there has been a confused debate about multiculturalism in Britain. We often shelter under expressions like, “community cohesion”, a concept which, to my mind, lacks strategic thought. Some argue that it is important to articulate a shared sense of national identity in contemporary conditions of flux and change. If so, how can we reconcile this with diversity, openness and pluralism of belief and practice?

We should look no further. The Zoroastrian community is an example we could all follow. Fixed notions of shared identity, even if they could be agreed on, are less necessary than promoting individual identity, pluralism and genuine multiculturalism. We should be proud of Britain's record in race and community relations. It is now a few decades since the establishment of the Race Relations Act 1965. We have been at the forefront of legislative and other machinery to establish equality of opportunity for all our citizens with a strong emphasis on disability, gender, age, faith and sexual orientation.

We now need to move to the next stage. We need to examine changing patterns within all our communities. True multiculturalism is proactive and means that equality and diversity is at the core of everything we do, from government to individual responsibility. We need to take a much more pro-active stance towards combating racism and discrimination, really tackling inequality in all aspects of our society in social and economic matters and in civic participation, positively valuing—not merely tolerating—the contribution of different cultures and perspectives, and treating them with respect.

Increasingly, the globalisation of the economy relies on the skills of people wherever they are available, and international migration is a key feature of ensuring that Britain benefits from the phenomenon. We have seen a steady development of the concept of human rights and the very positive step of incorporating the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law through the Human Rights Act 1998. For too long we have simply assumed that our liberties are protected by a set of traditions and customary activities assisted by a general consensus within our society about the liberty of individuals. The Zoroastrian community demonstrated that common values cannot and should not be assumed in a multicultural society. The cosy assumptions of a homogeneous consensus in which we rooted our liberties simply will not do. Cultures do not remain static. Communities change. Conflict often occurs of matters of gender, generations, religion, language and the community's relationship with the wider society.

There is nothing to be frightened about. We are already witnessing fusion in music, arts and fashion. These new emerging cultures will be exciting. Equally, the emerging third, fourth and fifth generations are British to the core. Let us accept this. In years to come, we shall ask the question, “What was all that fuss about multiculturalism?”.

Immigration: Controls at Airports

Lord Dholakia Excerpts

Wednesday 16th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I totally reject what the noble Lord says about cutbacks in staff affecting what is happening. It is not a question of numbers. The important thing is to make sure that we get the right people in the right places at the right time. Rostering, therefore, is done in line with the schedules as they vary between summer and winter. We then adjust them accordingly in line with information we receive, say, from BAA or the airlines about flight delays, weather and so on. We have also brought in this mobile force which we can move around a certain amount to make sure that the right people are there at the right time to deal with the numbers. Obviously, it will always be difficult but we want to continue to improve things and I believe that we are making progress. Perhaps I may remind the noble Lord that at the Home Affairs Select Committee meeting only yesterday, Andrew Lord, director of operations at British Airways, made it clear that it had seen great improvements in recent weeks.

[Lord Dholakia]

Will my noble friend confirm that the denial of visas at British posts abroad is not used as a means of controlling the administrative chaos at some of our airports? This morning, in the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association Room, the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association had a meeting with the Tanzanian parliamentary committee on privilege and ethics. None of them could attend because they were all denied a visa to enter the country.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Dholakia Excerpts

Tuesday 15th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dholakia]

My Lords, the first two years of the coalition Government have seen some valuable steps towards a fairer criminal justice system. The new Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act abolishes the discredited and unjust IPP sentences, legislates to reduce unnecessary remands in custody and contains much needed reforms to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act. Over the past two to three years, we have seen a welcome reduction in the number of juvenile offenders in custody. Indeed, the number is currently the lowest since the Youth Justice Board started collecting figures. The Government are developing a determined strategy to divert mentally disordered offenders from the criminal justice system into medical and social care. They are consulting on proposals to make restorative justice a more central part of the criminal justice process.

However, many serious challenges remain. The prison system still faces serious overcrowding. Today, 82 out of 132 prisons hold more prisoners than they were built for, and 19,000 prisoners are held two to a cell designed for one person. This country has 156 prisoners for every 100,000 people in the general population, compared to 109 in France and 87 in Germany. Prison overcrowding produces inhumane conditions and increases the risk of self-harm and suicide. It also increases crime because it makes it harder for prisons to provide rehabilitation programmes for all their inmates, thereby increasing reoffending on release.

I do not wish to sound alarming but we should take note of the comments made by the chairman of the Parole Board only yesterday. Far too many offenders are still sent into custody for short sentences and are released after no more than a few months in custody. These sentences serve very little purpose. They are 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 their reconviction rates are much higher than those for other prisoners. Most of these offenders would be better dealt with by supervision programmes in the community. All in all, our system still does far too little to prevent crime and rehabilitate offenders. We need to rethink an approach that wastes such a high proportion of resources on punitive custodial measures that produce high reoffending rates.

A great deal remains to be done to eliminate racial discrimination from the criminal justice process. Indeed, in some respects the position of minority ethnic people in the criminal justice system is now worse than it was when the Stephen Lawrence inquiry reported. The disproportionate use of stop and search is even more extreme and the proportion of the prison population that is made up of racial minorities is now higher than it was in the late 1990s. Further research is required to see how the criminal justice system has produced this anomaly.

What should we do to improve the position? The Government could legislate to make sentencing guidelines take into account the capacity of the prison system. These guidelines should scale down the number and length of prison sentences except for the most serious crimes. Prison should be removed 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, which my noble friend Lady Linklater has repeatedly advocated in this House.

We should also legislate to keep restorative justice at the forefront of the minds of sentencers to help ensure that it becomes a central part of the criminal justice system. We should do that by making restorative justice one of the statutory purposes of sentencing and enabling courts to include specific restorative justice requirements in community orders. We also need to prevent the community sentences supervised by the probation service from being used for low-level offenders with little likelihood of reoffending.

When probation service resources are scarce, it is important to concentrate them on work with the more serious or persistent offenders, particularly those who would otherwise receive ineffective short prison sentences. One way to achieve that would be to increase the use of fines for lesser offences. The Government should introduce a “day fine” system, which would relate fines more precisely to the offenders’ means. That could help to make fines a more credible punishment for offenders of all income levels.

We should take steps to reduce the imprisonment of people who have breached community supervision—for example, by missing appointments or being late back to probation hostels. We should do that by introducing a graduated scale of punishment for breach of supervision, with prison being used only when less severe penalties have first been tried. We should introduce tighter statutory restrictions on sending young offenders into custody. For example, we could copy the example of Canada which, in 2002, introduced legislation restricting the use of custody for juveniles and produced a reduction of more than 30% in the number of young people sent to custody. We should place a clear statutory duty on all criminal justice agencies to adopt numerical targets for reducing racial disproportionality in their operations.

Most women we send to prison are neither violent nor dangerous and they have few previous convictions. But they have a high rate of mental disorder, a history of abuse, addiction problems and personal distress arising from separation from their children. As we have repeatedly advocated—and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for this—we should establish a women’s justice board to set standards for resettlement and rehabilitation, mental health services, family contact and culturally appropriate support for foreign national women in our prisons.

A women’s justice board should also set targets to reduce the use of custody for women. There is overwhelming evidence of the importance of providing practical help for offenders in order to reduce reoffending. 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%.

We should commission voluntary organisations to provide a national resettlement service for short-term prisoners who currently receive no supervision or support on release. A strategy on these lines would help to concentrate resources on the measures most likely to protect the public by rehabilitating offenders and reducing reoffending. They would build on the encouraging start made by the coalition towards the achievement of a fairer and more effective criminal justice system.

Recently, I chaired the inquiry by the Magistrates’ Association into summary justice, which should be bedtime reading for all those involved in the role and functions that magistrates should perform in a modern society. I have put in for a short debate and look forward to putting the inquiry’s proposals to the Minister before long.

Police: Race Relations Policies

Lord Dholakia Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Condon, with his great experience, is absolutely correct to express those points. I fully agree with him. I remind him and the House that an important part of the regular reviews by HMIC—the inspectorate of the constabulary—is that any force inspections should always include some detail of an assessment of equality, diversity and those matters.

[Lord Dholakia]

My Lords, at least 27 police officers are under investigation for racist behaviour. The noble Baroness, Lady Howells, is rightly concerned about that. She has done a tremendous amount of work following the death of Stephen Lawrence on the adversarial contact between the black community and the police. While we appreciate the action taken by the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, is it not right that we should have a thematic inspection of racial issue policies, particularly in relation to training, recruitment and retention, bearing in mind that the cuts to police expenditure are likely to impinge on these areas?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I am grateful for the question from my noble friend Lord Dholakia. I stress that I did not rule out a thematic review—I just said that I did not think it necessarily appropriate at this stage. I can assure my noble friend that there have been thematic reviews in the past. If necessary, that could be looked at again. I repeat the important point in the answer I gave to the noble Lord, Lord Condon, that this is already part of any inspection of the police force. Also, on the very unfortunate recent cases that have appeared in the Met, the great thing is that such cases are at least being reported by their fellow police officers. That is a sign that something is being done. It is progress.

International Women’s Day

Lord Dholakia Excerpts

Thursday 1st March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Dholakia]

My Lords—and the noble Baronesses I can take a hint—next week we will celebrate International Women’s Day. As I look around me I see more women represented in our political system. However, there is just one major omission. Is it not time that women are also represented on the Bishops’ Benches? Perhaps the right reverend Prelate could tell us what progress has been made on that front.

I welcome this debate because it gives us the opportunity to examine contributions that women make in the field of economic growth. We can no longer define economic growth in the narrow context of self- interest. To a great extent our economy is part of globalised structures and institutions which require transparency and ethical standards. Remove these elements and you remove the confidence of the community in such structures. But where do women fit into such structures? The evidence is for all to see; women are grossly underrepresented at every level, and that just cannot be right.

I suspect that for far too long decisions affecting women are often taken by men. This is not just peculiar to our country. It applies almost universally. Women are more vulnerable to poverty than men, and access to job opportunities and promotions in global markets is essential if they are to be empowered to work their way out of poverty, deprivation and disadvantage. We already have examples of good practices. The Commonwealth is paying special attention to the needs, constraints and interests of women in trade policies and liberalisation. I recently attended the Commonwealth Business Council conference in Perth in Australia. This was attended by more than 1,400 delegates. One of the striking features was the increase in attendance of women delegates and their participation in debates, which clearly identified the role they could play in promoting equality and elimination of poverty.

One element identified by delegates was about trade liberalisation. This is not to be confused with free trade and the complete absence of regulations. Trade liberalisation, together with proper international regulation to protect vulnerable communities—for example, women—who tend to work in the informal sector, and children, can lead to benefits especially in the present economic climate. If one pays decent wages to workers throughout the Commonwealth, even marginally, more money can be used by impoverished communities to enhance their own and their children’s education. This will increase people’s own buying power. Those communities should not be seen as pools of cheap labour and a threat to domestic labour; rather they are untouched markets, potential consumers and ultimately, valuable participants in the growth of the world economy. We ignore the role of women at our peril. Women are more vulnerable to poverty than men and access to global markets is essential if women are to be empowered to work their way out of this misery inflicted on them.

Poverty has arguably existed as long as man has. Most people have come to accept that with the rich there will be the comparative poor. However, today we are all being faced with a world where nearly one-fifth of the population is living in extreme poverty and the wealth and power rests with a few. On this International Women’s Day, each nation has to be reminded about Article 1 of the Declaration of Human Rights, which reads:

“All humans are born free and equal in dignity and rights”.

Article 3 reads:

“Everyone has a right to life, liberty and security of person”.

There is one another issue I wish to address. I thank in advance the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Scotland, for some very valuable work she has done on the matter of domestic violence. In 2008, the Government stated that in the UK the estimated cost of domestic violence to business alone through absences, loss of productivity and rapid turnover of employees is £2.7 billion—a figure mentioned by my noble friend Lady Verma in her opening address. Medical and social costs add a further £3.1 billion, bringing the total cost to £6 billion every year. Similar figures have been produced by the United Nations in its brief The Economic Costs of Violence Against Women, which concluded that,

“all measures of the costs of violence against women are extreme underestimates in any case because so many costs are not included … The costs of violence against women are enormous”.

We need to look very carefully at how we address this issue because it is right that if we want to live in peace and prosper, we cannot ignore the role of women in our society. At every stage we look at it, discrimination and disadvantage form part of their daily routine. This is the challenge we face. It is a time for action, a time for change and a time for building a safe and decent society.

Police: Officer Numbers

Lord Dholakia Excerpts

Tuesday 13th December 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I am facing a lot of difficult and technical questions, which I have to say I cannot answer in the manner in which I would want. I am grateful to my noble friend for putting that question, but I will have to write to him with an answer.

[Lord Dholakia]

My Lords, there has been considerable effort made to recruit police officers from the black and ethnic minority communities. Can my noble friend indicate whether there has been any problem in retaining such officers and any reasons for that?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, as my noble friend has made clear, considerable efforts have been made to increase the diversity of the police force. All police forces have made considerable gains there. I am not aware of any problems of retention, but if my noble friend has any evidence of that, I would be grateful to hear from him. That would then obviously be a matter that we would have to address.

UK Border Security: 30 November

Lord Dholakia Excerpts

Monday 28th November 2011 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Dholakia]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they propose to take to ensure that the security of the United Kingdom is not compromised on 30 November.

[Lord Dholakia]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask a Question of which I have given private notice.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Henley)]

My Lords, the security of the UK border remains our top priority. Contingency plans are in place and we are satisfied that security will be maintained. We started training additional staff for contingency arrangements in April and adequate resources are now available. Any staff deployed to the front line will have received the training required to operate effectively. Arriving passengers will remain subject to checks at the border by appropriately trained staff.

[Lord Dholakia]

My Lords, will the Minister confirm that none of the checks highlighted in the recent controversy surrounding the UK Border Agency will be relaxed for the purpose of reducing queues at the point of entry? Given that the UK Border Force has many powers, as defined under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, would a no-strike agreement with the force be appropriate on future occasions?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, as regards the second part of my noble friend’s question, that is obviously something we would have to consider after 30 November and after we have seen how we manage on that day. But I can give my noble friend an assurance that none of the checks he mentioned will be relaxed.

UK Border Agency

Lord Dholakia Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, obviously, lessons are always to be learnt from all around the world. No doubt, if the noble Lord wishes it, we will look at the experience of the Israelis as well as that from other parts.

[Lord Dholakia]

My Lords, one of the allegations made by the Home Affairs Select Committee was that at least 125,000 people have been lost in this country and can no longer be traced. There is no indication of what will happen to them. Would it not be wise to extend the scope of the inquiry to see why those illegal entrants are still in this country?

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I think that the noble Lord is trying to take the inquiry on to other, equally important matters which should be looked at. We want John Vine to be able to report by January of next year. Therefore, he should focus on the issues in front of us—that is, why officials were going beyond what was authorised by Ministers, and what Ministers authorised.