Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard) & Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 9th September 2020 Lords Chamber

Relevant document: 11th Report from the Constitution Committee

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

My Lords, hybrid proceedings will now resume. Some Members are here in the Chamber, respecting social distancing, and others are participating remotely, but all Members will be treated equally. If the capacity of the Chamber is exceeded, I will immediately adjourn the House.

This is day two in Committee on the Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill. I will call Members to speak in the order listed in the annexe to today’s list. Members are not permitted to intervene spontaneously; the Chair calls each speaker. Interventions during speeches or “before the noble Lord sits down” are not permitted.

During the debate on each group I invite Members, including Members in the Chamber, to email the clerk if they wish to speak after the Minister. I will call Members to speak in order of request and will call the Minister to reply each time.

The groupings are binding and it will not be possible to degroup an amendment for separate debate. A Member intending to press an amendment already debated to a Division should have given notice in the debate. Leave should be given to withdraw amendments. When putting the question, I will collect voices in the Chamber only. If a Member taking part remotely intends to trigger a Division, they should make this clear when speaking on the group. We will now begin.

Clause 4: Consequential etc. provision

Amendment 14

Moved by

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

I have not received any requests to speak after the Minister, so I call—oh, it looks as though the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy, thinks he has given notice.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

I did email; I do not know where it has gone. Oh sorry, I did not email Question Diary.

I thank the Minister for explaining how certain words have been used in previous legislation, but it would be helpful if she could write to me and place a copy in the Library of the House with some examples, just so that we are absolutely clear. I know she was able to give an example now, but that would be very helpful.

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Amendments 15 to 19 not moved.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

We now come to the group beginning with Amendment 20. I remind noble Lords that anyone wishing to speak after the Minister should email the clerk during the debate. I think there is a technical problem with that which I hope we can resolve in the next few minutes.

Anyone wishing to press this or anything else in this group to a Division should make that clear in debate. I should inform the Committee that if Amendment 20 is agreed to, I cannot call Amendment 21.

Amendment 20

Moved by

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[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) (V)]

My Lords, I was pleased to attach my name to Amendment 20 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, which was also signed by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark. I also agree with virtually everything that the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, has just said. Essentially, as it appears in the Bill, this looks like a power-grab by the Government in a situation that is already iniquitous and utterly unreasonable. The cost of that to the UK —the denial of the skills, knowledge and ability of people who might go somewhere else because our fees are just too high—was set out by the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, very clearly. I somewhat disagreed with her, however, when she suggested that it might be reasonable for the Government to cover the actual real cost through fees, and I will particularly focus on children.

In December 2019, the High Court ruled that the Home Office had acted unlawfully in charging £1,012 for children to register their right to British citizenship. This was a judicial claim brought by the Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens on behalf of two children known as O, age 3 and A, age 12. They were British but could not access their citizenship because they had been priced out. The court found that the Home Office had taken no account of the best interests of the children in setting the fee. It highlighted a mass of evidence showing that the fee prevented many children from registering for British citizenship, thus leaving them,

“alienated, excluded, second best, insecure and not fully assimilated into the culture and social fabric of the UK.”

We are already in an iniquitous situation. The Government have chosen to appeal that ruling, so it is still before the courts. However, we certainly do not want a situation where the Government are not subject to full parliamentary scrutiny. I hope that such scrutiny will be applied, otherwise an utterly unreasonable situation that is bound to affect many more people will become even worse.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

I now call the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge. Lord Randall, we can see you, but we cannot hear you.

[Lord Randall of Uxbridge (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I apologise—I was waiting for someone to unmute me.

I wanted to speak in this short debate, and I shall not speak for very long, because I want the clarification that noble Lords have already asked for. Presumably, this applies just to the European Union, or EEA and Swiss citizens. I have just discovered that the withdrawal agreement says that no charges will be made. Is it likely that if other countries impose charges on us, we might do it reciprocally? That is all I want to ask, and I await the response with interest.

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

My Lords, we have a technical problem with emailing the Table. I propose that the Committee adjourns for 15 minutes, in the hope that we can sort out the problem. If it is necessary to adjourn again, we will do that. The Committee will resume just after 3.15 pm.

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[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

My Lords, the email problem has not been resolved entirely, but we do have a short- term solution. Members, whether in the Chamber or participating remotely, who wish to speak after the Minister on this amendment or indeed subsequent ones, can use the alternative email address, relating to the Grand Committee, that is in the guidance notes that govern today’s session. If they send their request to the Grand Committee email address, that will find its way to the Table here and they should be included in the requests to speak after the Minister. Let us hope that works. We were about to hear from the Minister, so I call the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Trafford.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken on these amendments. If the new email system does not work—although I am not presuming that it will not work— I am very happy, retrospectively, to write to noble Lords who were going to speak, did not manage to, and therefore did not have their supplementary questions or requests for clarification answered.

These amendments obviously concern the use of Clause 4 powers to make changes in relation to fees and charges. Regulations made under this power may modify legislation relating to the imposition of immigration fees and charges only where they relate to a person’s immigration status and where that is as a consequence of, or connected with, the provision in Part 1 of the Bill. That confirms the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee. It enables the application of fees and charges to EEA citizens, who are currently exempt from them by virtue of free movement law, such as the immigration skills charge paid by employers.

The effect of Amendments 20 and 21 would be to prevent the Government aligning the treatment of EEA citizens with non-EEA citizens from January of next year. It is not our intention to use the power to increase fees. Fee levels will continue to be subject to parliamentary scrutiny via the existing fees orders and regulations.

To briefly touch on the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, we do not make an overall profit on fees. While they may be different in different countries, they go towards the operation of the border.

It is the will of the British people that we bring free movement to an end. This means ending the bias in our immigration system that favours EEA citizens over the citizens of any other country, which is the primary purpose of this Bill. Limiting the Government’s ability to apply a skills charge to EEA citizens as they apply to non-EEA citizens will mean that certain elements of free movement will not have been fully repealed by this Bill and that EEA citizens will still have an advantage in our immigration system. This is not an outcome that the Government can accept. I hope that the noble Lord will withdraw the amendment.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

My Lords, we have not received any requests to speak after the Minister. Therefore, I call the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, to reply.

[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, I am happy to withdraw my amendment. I am sure it has not escaped the Minister’s attention that there is some concern in the House about Clause 4, not only from the Delegated Powers Committee but from every speech we have heard so far, I think, apart from the Minister’s. It will carry on in further criticism that Members will have later. I am sure the Minister understands that and will take it back. I hope that there will be some progress when we get back to these issues contained in Clause 4 on Report. With that, I am happy to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 21 not moved.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

We now come to the group beginning with Amendment 22. I remind noble Lords that anyone wishing to speak after the Minister should email the Grand Committee address on the guidance notes during the debate. Anyone wishing to press this or anything else in this group to a Division should make that clear in the debate.

Amendment 22

Moved by

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[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, I declare my interests as laid out in the register, in receiving support from the RAMP project on immigration policy, and as a trustee of Reset.

I shall speak to Amendment 29 and Amendment 31. They are different in substance: Amendment 29 and others in this group relate to asylum seekers, while Amendment 31 relates to refugees currently living elsewhere. However, they both address the question of work.

In the Hebrew Bible, there is a story about a widow named Ruth, who travels with her mother-in-law to a foreign land, the family having been displaced by famine. On arrival, she gets to work, picking grain with the landowners’ permission, and she enjoys his protection and generosity. She receives not a handout but the freedom to work in the fields—her dignity is upheld.

The freedom to work, for those able to do so, is an important part of our humanity. It is how we support ourselves and our families, how we contribute to the common good and how we share, through taxation, the financial burdens of our common life. Yet for those who have come to this country fleeing persecution or conflict and are stuck too long in the administrative purgatory of the Home Office’s processes, the Government deny this freedom.

Many people seeking asylum want to work. They have skills that the UK needs, and are highly motivated to provide for themselves and their families. Instead of allowing them to do so, currently the Government force their reliance on minimal taxpayer-funded benefits.

Employment helps with smooth integration into the UK, allowing people to improve their English, acquire new skills and build relationships in the community. Work restores dignity while reducing reliance on public funds. I endorse all that the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, has just said in speaking to Amendment 29.

Amendment 29 does not argue for an immediate right to work, as Canada, for example, allows. Lifting the ban on working after six months—the point at which the Home Office should have determined their case, but too often has not—is a reasonable compromise. I might prefer three months, as proposed in Amendment 22, but I see six months as a reasonable compromise. I am not alone in thinking this: British Future found that 71% of the public support the right to work after six months.

I note that both Amendment 29 and Amendment 31 focus on the rights of EEA and Swiss nationals, because those rights are before us in the Bill. While the Spanish protocol might appear to obviate the need for Amendment 29, we have learned this year that the future is hardly secure and predictable. Moreover, in both cases, the underlying principle demands that we take these steps for the benefit of some now, and to move towards restoring the dignity of all those seeking the UK’s protection by allowing them to contribute through work.

I thank my noble friends Lady Lister and Lord Alton for supporting me on Amendment 31. The UN estimates that there are 79.5 million forcibly displaced people globally, who are desperate to rebuild their lives. Refugee resettlement schemes are vital, and ours must restart urgently. However, we must think creatively about ways to help the many forcibly displaced people, in need of international protection, to rebuild their lives somewhere safe.

In places like Lebanon, people fleeing the Syrian conflict are not permitted to work legally. They are dependent on handouts; their lives are on hold. Many of these people have God-given talents which are going to waste. Meanwhile, employers in the UK face critical skills shortages. Ending free movement for EEA and Swiss nationals will only make it more challenging for them to recruit people with the skills they require. Is it beyond our imagination to connect the two, for the benefit of all?

The Home Secretary introduced this Bill to the other place, saying that she wanted a system

“allowing us to attract the very best talent from right around the globe.”—[Official Report, Commons, 18/5/20; col. 398.]

Displaced people, including refugees, have skills, talents and motivations, and dream of building a new life in a new land. What if we saw such people as a gift as well as a responsibility? To do that, I urge the Government to look at what this amendment seeks to achieve for skilled forcibly displaced people. I acknowledge and thank the Minister for her help so far, pursuing conversations with her colleagues to that end.

Amendment 31, conforming to the Bill’s scope, addresses the potential situation of displaced people who are EEA or Swiss nationals. Yet, even in doing so, it addresses the need for a displaced talent visa in the new Immigration Rules, to level up access globally to labour market mobility for all those who should be able to apply for skilled jobs at UK companies. It would remove barriers, such as the need for specific documentation or proof of their English language ability which cannot be accessed because of their situation in being displaced from home.

To be clear, this is not a new humanitarian route; instead, it is about enabling fair access to work visas for skilled forcibly displaced people. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said, this is not an alternative to the asylum amendments. This is a completely different point. This approach has been successfully piloted in Australia and Canada, and would complement, not compete with, the vital routes of humanitarian resettlement and community sponsorship.

In his letter to them, St Paul reminded the church in Thessaloniki of a common saying: “The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat.” Far from undercutting support for providing for the vulnerable and unemployed —as has occasionally been suggested—St Paul was urging that those in the community free and able to work should do so, for the good of all.

I find myself reflecting on this saying as I think about how we might help those fleeing persecution and conflict to access employment, that they might use their God-given talents and skills to support their families and rebuild their lives with dignity for the benefit of all, and that they might be seen as a gift to us. I would like to move Amendment 31.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

It may be helpful to the Committee if I remind noble Lords that we are debating a group of amendments in which Amendment 22 is the lead. It is of course possible to speak to the other amendments in the group, but at this stage it is not possible to move them individually.

[Baroness Ludford (LD)]

My Lords, the ban on working before a whole year has passed, and then only in professions such as classical ballet dancer and geophysicist, is bad on all counts. I am aware that we have a trained classical ballet dancer in the Chamber and she is a very valued Member, but she would probably agree that it takes rather a long time to train as such. We are not asking for a radical policy like Sweden’s, which the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, reminded us allows asylum seekers to work after one day, or like Portugal’s, where the period is seven days, but, if you like, a middle way of three months or even six months. Six months is, if I recall correctly, the threshold in EU asylum law—I think it is the reception conditions directive—but the UK Government declined to opt into that provision.

It is detrimental to the well-being, dignity and self-respect of those seeking asylum to be refused the opportunity to work and to be kept in poverty on £5.66 a day. The longer that they are out of work, the more that their skills and motivation deteriorate. When I was a Member of the European Parliament, I dealt with various individuals whose physical and mental health, sometimes after years of waiting, not just for 12 months but for three, four or five years for determination of their asylum claim—maybe the Government will tell me that the situation is much better now, but I am not sure that it is—had of course deteriorated; they had shrivelled as people and were unable to provide for their families. Their status, whether in their family or in their community, was completely undermined as their skills and motivation deteriorated.

Working boosts the chances of social and economic integration. Being banned from working also feeds into the prejudice that asylum seekers are “scroungers”, which not only is not true but is galling and aggravating when in fact they are prevented from working by government fiat, policy or law, which a lot of the public do not understand. As the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, has quoted, they would contribute to the Exchequer. Rather than taking from the taxpayer, they would be able to contribute if they were allowed to.

So, frankly, it is win-win. No wonder two-thirds of businesses support people seeking asylum having permission to work and 71% of the public, in the study by British Future, support the right to work. One would have thought that this was a bit of a no-brainer, and I look forward to the Minister explaining to us why it is impossible for the Government to change their policy.

I believe that there was an announcement in December 2018 by the Home Office that it would be launching a review into the merits of restoring the right to work to people seeking asylum. I do not know whether there is any news on how that review is getting on and when it might come to a conclusion.

Lastly, I speak in support of the amendment in the name of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham about a work visa for displaced people. Refugees, displaced people and people who for humanitarian reasons are unable to stay in their home country have many skills that are going unused. Banning people seeking asylum from working is a moral question as well as an economic and social one. Again, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher: the idea that this would operate as a pole of attraction for people is unsubstantiated, and in any case that is hugely outweighed by the benefits of allowing asylum seekers to keep going and keep up their physical and mental health. If they do not succeed in their asylum claim then they have to leave, but in the meantime they will have been able to support themselves, keep up their skills and maybe, wherever they have to go or return to, have a better view of this country than they might otherwise have.

[The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

My Lords, I am pleased to be able to advise the Committee that we seem to be back to normal with the emailing of the clerk, so Members who wish to speak after the Minister should use what they thought was the correct route at the beginning.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I strongly support this group of amendments. I have added my name to Amendments 24 and 31. I see these amendments as being not just in the interests of asylum seekers and refugees, although we have already heard strong arguments for why they are so, but also in the country’s economic and social interests and in the interests of overall social integration, which is supposedly a government policy goal.

A recent paper from the Institute of Labor Economics throws some light on the issues raised by Amendment 24 and others, using cross-European data for a period of nearly 30 years. It concluded that

“imposing temporary employment bans on asylum seekers has large negative consequences for their subsequent labour market integration − an effect that may remain sizable for up to 10 years”.

The authors recommend that

“host country governments should carefully weigh the (alleged) benefits of such bans against their longer term costs for both refugees and the host country economy.”

They found the sooner the access to the labour market, the better, and that when access is allowed it is not helpful to restrict it according to job type or employment sector in the way that our ludicrous shortage occupation list, mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Ludford, does.

The paper also found that the existence of a ban has no impact on the numbers seeking asylum, which is one of the arguments that Ministers have used to justify it. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson, will not come out with that argument, because there is no evidence for it. If he is going to do so, could he please tell us what the evidence is?

Nearly a year ago, I had an exchange with the noble Baroness, Lady Williams, about the economic benefits of lifting the ban. As well as the survey of business leaders mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, a group of business leaders wrote to the Financial Times to make the case, and the FT quoted the CBI chief economist, who said that

“despite being keen to earn a living and participate in the society where they live, many of those displaced are prevented from using their skills to contribute to the economy.”

In a letter to me, the Minister questioned how many asylum seekers would in fact be skilled, and suggested that the priority should be speeding up decision-making and then supporting granted refugees into employment more quickly. No one would dispute the need to speed up decision-making and support refugees into employment but, nearly a year on from that exchange, the Immigration Minister acknowledged to the House of Commons committee that the asylum decision-making timeframe remains a concern. This is not an either/or situation. Worse, at present it seems to be neither: we have neither speeded up decision-making nor do we have the right to work. I accept that the assumptions about the proportion of asylum seekers who are skilled may be optimistic, as the Minister said, but that does not invalidate the case, not least because many of those deemed to be unskilled may in fact have very real skills to contribute, including to the care sector, which we heard about on Monday.

This May, the Lift the Ban campaign carried out a skills audit of people seeking asylum. Nearly half of those audited reported previous occupations that would fall into the Government’s definition of “critical workers”, with one in seven having worked in health or social care. Have the Government carried out such a skills audit on which to base their position?

In Amendment 31, which I was very pleased to be able to support, we are talking about a group of displaced refugees who would be recognised as skilled under any definition. The right reverend Prelate has already made a strong case for what I believe is a very helpful and, as he put it, creative idea that is well worth exploring. I hope the Government will explore it. I understand that there have been pilots to see how it might work. It worked rather well in other countries but unfortunately has floundered in this country because the Immigration Rules have meant that it is not practical or scalable. If nothing else, I hope there might be a way of seeing whether we can have a proper pilot in this country.

All I will add to the case already made so well by the right reverend Prelate is to emphasise a point that has already been made in a sense: we do not see this as a substitute for fulfilling our obligation to provide a safe haven to asylum seekers and refugees or for positive reforms to the asylum system, including the more general right to work after at most six months that we have been talking about.

The Government have dragged their heels over the right to work issue, as we have already heard, for nearly two years, yet suddenly it is all speed ahead with what we are told will be the new asylum Bill, designed not to help asylum seekers, as it would seem from what the media has said about it, but to make it harder for them to come here. Suddenly it has become an urgent matter, whereas there has been no urgency at all to do something for asylum seekers here.

If the Government want to dispel the fears about this forthcoming Bill—that it is all about how we keep asylum seekers out and nothing to do with how we make life better for them when they are here—I hope at the very least they will commit today to finish their review of the right to work and include it in this forthcoming Bill.

Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 22nd July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Patel (CB) [V]]

Before I start, I wish to say that I support the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord McConnell.

I shall focus my remarks on how immigration reform will affect science and innovation and the health and care sector. The Government have often said that they want the UK to be a science superpower. Apart from funding and international collaboration, which are crucial, this sector relies heavily on our ability to attract, recruit and retain global scientific talent. Thirty-one per cent of UK Nobel prize winners in science where born outside the UK, and 50% of CRUK-supported PhD students are from outside the UK, rising to 70% of post- doctoral researchers. In part, the Government have recognised this by introducing the global talent visa, but serious concerns remain about the rest of the system.

I will focus on two issues. First, I want to talk about the significant cost of the system for employers and researchers, early-stage researchers and technicians, who will be punished by the new rules. Even researchers gaining a Global Talent visa will face costs of over £2,500. This is 10 times the comparable cost in Germany, the US and Australia, and seven times that in France. The UK will be the most expensive scientific destination in the world. Much of this cost is also associated with health costs. The impact is even greater for those not included in the Global Talent visa due to heavy visa costs, which can be as much as £8,500, and that does not include the costs related to family, which will be above that. The points-based system further disadvantages those whose salary level does not reach £25,000, such as lab technicians—a workforce crucial to science and innovation.

Secondly, I want to refer briefly to the effect that the Bill will have on health and social care workers. The mutual recognition of professional qualifications has played a vital role in enabling EU doctors to work in the UK. The legislation would remove that recognition, which applies also to other countries, and would have a significant effect on recruitment, and not just of EU doctors.

My final comment relates to the lack of any migratory route for unregistered care staff—a point already mentioned by the noble Baronesses, Lady Greengross, Lady Kennedy and Lady Altmann. The sector is already in crisis, with an estimated 110,000 nursing vacancies in social care alone. As has already been said, the classification of social care workers as low skilled devalues their contribution and their skills.

I look forward to the Minister’s comments and the opportunity to explore these matters further in Committee.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

The noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, has withdrawn from the speakers’ list. The next speaker is the noble Lord, Lord Roberts of Llandudno.

[Lord Roberts of Llandudno (LD) [V]]

When this Bill emerges, it will define our place and reputation. Will we be proud to have been here? As the verse at the bottom of the Statue of Liberty says:

“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore.”


Is that what we want to be remembered for? Or will it be: bring me those who earn between £25,000 and £30,000 per year? Or, bring me those we think of as being best for us? Is it not better to welcome those who are most in need in the world? About 200 or 300 members of staff at the House of Lords earn less than that minimum income that is required to come to the UK—those wonderful people. Need, not greed, should define us, so that people come to us because we want to welcome them. We are trying to build a world which is fit for children to live in, yet we are far, far away from that.

I suggest we look at what will happen with income in Committee, and say that we have to mend this. We have to make this an Immigration Bill with a human face. Thinking of those detained in our immigration centres, we know we are the only country in Europe that has indefinite detention. When the Chief Inspector of Prisons visited some of those detention centres in May this year, it was found that one person had been detained for three years, while another 12 had been detained for 12 months. There is something so wrong with what we are doing with our immigrants. This Bill gives us a chance, so that history will say we took a step that was humane, kindly and concerned. Let us take it.

Covid-19: Human Trafficking

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Thursday 16th July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I fully support what the noble Baroness has said. I will certainly go back to the department in terms of the permanency of this, but she is right to point out that it is another indicator of what might be going on.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Faulkner of Worcester) (Lab)]

My Lords, the time allowed for this Question has now elapsed.

County Lines Drug Trafficking

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Thursday 19th March 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I most certainly agree with the noble Lord about this whole thing being driven by the drugs markets. The types of people who are most predominantly targeted and engaged in this are indeed vulnerable teenagers, and in fact younger. I totally agree that a multiagency approach is entirely needed, which is what the National County Lines Coordination Centre aims to do. It is a multiagency team of experts from the NCA, the police and regional crime units. I also take his point about the stopping of black people. People should be stopped on an intelligence- led basis, not because of the colour of their skin.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

Does the Minister agree that the work of the West Midlands Police and West Mercia Police in Operation Ballet, led by Detective Inspector Julie Woods, has been exemplary? It led to convictions at the Worcester Crown Court last Friday of 13 individuals who had operated a county lines scam starting in London, going to Birmingham New Street station, and then spreading out, with couriers and local people in the towns of Herefordshire and Worcestershire; these towns are not normally associated with drug trafficking, but, in the present circumstances, seem to be hotbeds of this terrible anti-social activity.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

The noble Lord makes exactly the right point: towns and counties that one would usually not expect to be associated with such criminal activity in fact are. I pay tribute to Julie Woods for the convictions secured at Worcester Crown Court. For every one person convicted, an awful lot of young people are safeguarded from this terrible scourge.

Serious Fraud Office

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Wednesday 13th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

I hope that I can satisfy the noble Lord when I say that the National Economic Crime Centre will be hosted by the NCA but will be staffed by partners from across the law enforcement community: for example, the NCA, the FCA, HMRC and the City of London Police, as well as the Serious Fraud Office and the private sector. So a multifaceted approach will be taken to this, rather than the fragmented one that he suggests.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

Further to the question from my noble friend Lord Foulkes, is the Minister aware that the Scottish Conservative Party in its manifesto expressed its opposition to the devolution of the British Transport Police to Scottish police, and will her colleagues in Scotland therefore do their best to reverse this ill-judged and very dangerous move?

Scrap Metal Dealers Act 2013

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the effectiveness and enforcement of the Scrap Metal Dealers Act 2013.

[The Minister of State, Home Office (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

The Government have conducted a review of the Scrap Metal Dealers Act 2013 to assess whether it has met its intended objectives and whether it should be retained or repealed. A report of the findings of this review will be published later this year.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. Only organised criminal gangs would like to see the Act repealed. It was immensely successful initially thanks to rigorous enforcement, led by the British Transport Police, and the work of the scrap metal task force. Is she aware that in the past two years, from the second half of 2016 and through this year, the incidence of theft has been growing again, particularly of high-value items, through the work of organised gangs? The increase is due also to the rise in the value of scrap metal—for example, copper is now worth more than £5,000 per tonne. Should not the Act be strengthened and the task force reconstituted?

[Baroness Williams of Trafford]

My Lords, in terms of thefts going up, as the noble Lord has said, between 2012-13 and 2015-16 we saw a decrease of something like 74%, which is very pleasing. We will not know the latest figures for a while, but the Government will certainly be looking at them. He is absolutely right about high-value incidents. We recognise the impact that they have, particularly on heritage assets. On enforcement, obviously the police and local authorities deploy their resources as they see fit, but certainly this type of theft has a broader impact on society, not only on those from whom the material has been stolen.

Committee on the Equality Act 2010 and Disability Report

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

My Lords, it has been almost as great a privilege to listen to this debate as it was to serve on the Select Committee. The debate has demonstrated the extraordinary range of experience that Members of your Lordships’ House bring to the subject of disability. I thank all noble Lords who have spoken and particularly those who have spoken from their own life experiences and brought that to bear on this subject.

Almost every speaker has congratulated the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, on the way in which she chaired the committee and introduced this debate today. I join them in that respect as well. It was a remarkable committee, which she chaired brilliantly. She should also be congratulated on persuading the usual channels to hold this debate in prime time, so early in the Autumn Session. I did not expect to see that happen, but that is a great achievement as well.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Winchester, said, we produced a good read, which is a good epitaph for the committee’s report. It was unanimous, hard-hitting and full of recommendations which, if they were all acted upon, would make a huge difference to the well-being and life experiences of disabled people across a wide range of activities. It was therefore a pity that the Government’s response was so feeble and unambitious. When it came out on 7 July—one month and 13 days later than the Cabinet Office’s guideline of two months for responses to Select Committee reports—the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, was quoted as saying that she was “dismayed, to put it mildly”, and that it was “a really unfeeling bureaucratic response, totally at odds with a real will to empathise and make life more productive for disabled people”. I concur totally with that view, and I support the calls made in this debate for that response to be withdrawn and rewritten by the Government—I am not sure they are a new Government but they are a new sort of Administration compared with the previous one.

Other Members have spoken about parts of the report and the Government’s response where they have their own areas of expertise and knowledge. I shall concentrate briefly—because time is getting on in this debate—on recommendations 21 and 22 relating to disabled access to sports grounds, which are covered in paragraphs 245 to 249 of the report. I remind the House of my interest as a vice-president of the charity Level Playing Field.

The noble Baroness, Lady Deech, the noble Lord, Lord Northbrook, my noble friend Lord Harrison and the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, all referred to the Accessible Sports Grounds Bill, which I took through this House in 2015. With the exception of the then Minister—not the Minister who will be replying tonight—whose approach in that debate can perhaps best be described as lukewarm, every Member who spoke in the Second Reading debate on 17 July was strongly supportive, particularly in respect of the principle that each stadium should follow accessible stadia guidelines and improve the experience for disabled people attending their matches.

While it was evident that the Bill would not make progress in the other place without government support, it produced one very positive consequence, and that was the response from the English Premier League on 10 September 2015, which stated:

“All Premier League Clubs have agreed to make their stadiums compliant with the Accessible Stadia Guide by August 2017. Clubs also agreed to ensure the appropriate number of wheelchair bays are located in their away sections (10% of their home provision)”.

If that commitment were fulfilled to the letter, it would represent a huge step forward by the best supported and most affluent clubs in British football, particularly if the lead given by the Premier League were followed by the other football leagues in England, Wales and Scotland, and sports with significant numbers of fans attending their matches.

In the report, our Select Committee quoted approvingly the comments of Justin Tomlinson MP, who was then the Minister for Disabled People. Sadly, he is no longer in that post. He told BBC Sport:

“Most football clubs in this country are behind when it comes to disability access to their grounds. It is my belief that football should be a game enjoyed by everyone, and someone with a disability should have as much of an opportunity to watch the game as someone without a disability”.

The following paragraph of our report said:

“On provision for disabled people, he”—

Justin Tomlinson—

“similarly confirmed his view that: ‘Frankly, some of it is disgraceful. There is not provision in some grounds. Supporters are split up or are put in with the away fans. I find that totally unacceptable. We are in the last chance saloon with those football bodies, saying, “You need to get your house in order”’”.

Had my Private Member’s Bill become law, clubs which failed to comply with the accessible stadia guidelines could have lost their safety certificates and their stadia would have been prevented from operating. However, without that sanction, disabled people will have to rely on the good will of the clubs to deliver what they have promised by the summer of next year. I am afraid that I am not holding my breath. I am advised that the long-awaited report from the Premier League regarding the progress of its clubs with one year to go was sent to the Minister, Penny Mordaunt MP, in early August and copied to the Sports Minister, Tracey Crouch. I am told it says very little and contains no detail about the real progress at each club.

It appears that at least seven Premier League clubs will not meet the pledge by August 2017, as had been promised. The excuses being put forward by clubs as to why they will not meet this are, frankly, unacceptable. Liverpool Football Club, for example, seems far more interested in providing general hospitality places than in installing sufficient disabled fans’ seats to comply with football’s own minimum standards. Those seats for disabled people would ensure that the club meets its pledge, but instead, its disabled fans are expected to wait for phase 2 of the stadium expansion—whenever that might be. Watford Football Club seems to be removing disabled fans’ seats at a time when we should be seeing an increase, and Crystal Palace believes that it needs only to come up with a plan by August 2017, rather than comply with a commitment.

It further transpires that newly promoted clubs will be given a one-year extension to meet the Premiership pledge, as they had not been part of the original decision and it is felt that they should be afforded the same two-year cycle. This misses the point completely. As other noble Lords have said in this debate, it is more than 20 years since the introduction of Part 3 of the DDA: it is law that they are required to provide that accommodation, and it is disgraceful that they have not done so.

It is clear that the Premier League appears to have no intention to penalise or sanction clubs that do not meet the pledge. So what happens next? Quite recently, the noble Lord, Lord Ashton, replied to a Written Question from me in these words:

“Ministers expect all sports, and all clubs, whose grounds do not make the reasonable adjustments to accommodate disabled spectators as set out in the Equality Act 2010 to take action to fulfil this legal obligation”.

Given the vast financial resources at the disposal of Premiership clubs, which noble Lords have referred to, the time has surely come for this action to be taken and in a much more drastic way.

It is so disappointing that, in response to the Select Committee’s recommendation 21 that the Government should include provisions similar to those of the Accessible Sports Grounds Bill in a government Bill, the Government have said that there are no plans to introduce one as existing legislation in the form of the Equality Act remains untested on access to sports stadia for disabled people. That is a truly bizarre excuse that completely ignores paragraph 247 of the Select Committee report, which states:

“The Equality Act 2010 has not succeeded in giving disabled sports fans the access to stadia to which they are entitled, and new measures are needed. A particular problem … is the law’s requirement that only individuals may bring actions against institutions which are failing in their duty to comply with the Act. The nature of the relationship between a football fan and his or her own club is often deep-rooted and passionate, and makes it hard”—

I would say impossible—

“for the fan to initiate proceedings”.

This is the reason for our recommendation 42:

“The Government should consider changing the law to allow charities and other bodies which do not themselves have a legal interest to bring proceedings in the interests of classes of disabled people who are not themselves claimants”

I hope that when the Minister replies she can give a convincing reason for not allowing charities to bring class actions. I also ask her to give the Government’s response to the Premier League’s report on progress towards meeting its August 2017 accessibility commitment and an indication of what they plan to do if the clubs let them, and their disabled supporters, down.

Euro 2016: Fan Violence

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Keen of Elie]

The policing and security arrangements at Lens are a matter for the French authorities, not for this Government. Of course we have stepped forward to assist them when requested to do so, but we cannot guarantee anything in that regard.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister is of course right to say that the decision as to whether the 2018 World Cup should be staged in Russia is a matter for FIFA. However, do the Government have a view on the desirability of that, should the suspended disqualification of Russia from this tournament turn into an actual disqualification because there is further trouble in France?

[Lord Keen of Elie]

That involves a series of hypotheses. It appears to me that we should await the outcome of the events, and indeed of the inquiry into the events, in Marseilles.

Hillsborough

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

The noble Lord raises an important point, particularly regarding the responsibility of the Police and Crime Commissioner. They will have an important role to play, but we will certainly be reviewing the situation. As further details emerge, I will write to the noble Lord about the steps we are taking. The important point is that there is a responsibility in the higher echelons of that police force. The noble Lord mentioned the statement put on the website which, as I said earlier, was both concerning and regrettable. There is a history of their making a statement and then retracting it. One would have hoped that, on this occasion, they would not have done so, but that is exactly what has happened.

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

My Lords, I may be the only member of your Lordships’ House who was present at Hillsborough 27 years ago. I subsequently gave evidence to Lord Justice Taylor’s inquiry and to the Hillsborough Independent Panel. I join all other Members in commending both the Statement and the contributions from all sides of the Chamber today. This House has matched the mood perfectly. I think that the victims’ families will feel that they have been vindicated, certainly as far as this House is concerned. I have just one question. Does the Minister agree that what has made the victims’ families’ agony so much more unbearable has been the refusal by the South Yorkshire police force, consistently over the last 27 years, up to and including the period of the inquest itself, to put up their hands up and admit that they were at fault?

[Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon]

I totally agree with all that the noble Lord has said. As for what he said about South Yorkshire Police, I think that that sentiment is reflected across the House.

High Speed Rail (London-West Midlands) Bill

Lord Faulkner of Worcester Excerpts

Thursday 14th April 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Faulkner of Worcester (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a real pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Fowler. His modesty prevented him from describing perhaps his greatest moment as Minister for Transport, which was to resist, quite early on in his term in office, a very crazy plan from the British Railways Board and his Department for Transport officials to embark on a programme of closures of rural railway lines. I think about 40 lines were involved. He made quite clear that he would not stand for that, and more or less from that point the option of closures has gone off the political agenda. The noble Lord, Lord Fowler, deserves a great deal of credit for the fact that we have a railway network of the size it is, which we are now going to build on.

I should start by declaring my various railway interests, which are on the register, particularly my chairmanship of the Great Western Railway advisory board. Other noble Lords spoke about the phenomenal increase in demand for rail travel. I will not go over those figures again but those of us who worked in the industry in the 1970s and 1980s, when cost-cutting, contraction and decay were all too frequent a feature of life on Britain’s railways, rub our eyes in disbelief at how great the transformation in the past 20 years has been. That growth has been achieved even when, for some of that time, the economy as a whole was in recession, or, as more recently, fuel prices at the pump made car travel cheaper.

Your Lordships will have seen the consequences of this doubling in the number of passenger journeys from 750 million a year to 1.5 billion in terms of overcrowding on the existing services. Each working day, 3,000 people must stand in the trains arriving at Euston, and a similar number in Birmingham. The west coast main line does not have enough train paths to accommodate the numbers wishing to use it. The railway tried to respond to the continuing increase in demand by fitting more trains on to the network, lengthening trains and reclassifying some coaches from first to second class to increase seat numbers, and so on. On the east coast, the new Azuma train fleet will add 28% more seating capacity at peak times for long-distance trains from King’s Cross. That may accommodate some years of demand growth, but on the even busier west coast main line the Pendolino fleet has already been lengthened, the busiest commuter trains operated by London Midland have had a 50% seating capacity increase, and extra commuter trains have been squeezed into peak periods by increasing the top speed of commuter trains to closer to 125 miles an hour.

That a limit would be reached by these kinds of measures has been evident to the Department for Transport for some time. In the competition for a long-term franchise for the east coast intercity service run in 2000, a bidder had suggested building a new high-speed line to accommodate an expansion of services. While the idea of a long-term franchise was abandoned on that occasion and it was let for just two years instead, the experience prompted the first serious examination of the case for high-speed rail in Britain. The study, which was carried out by Atkins, Ernst & Young and others for the Strategic Rail Authority and subsequently published by the Department for Transport, found that there was a business case for a north-south high-speed rail because the existing trunk lines—the west coast, the midland and the east coast—would all be approaching capacity limits, starting with the west coast by the mid-2020s. It took the imagination and foresight of the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, as the then Transport Secretary, to get hold of a high-speed rail project idea and make a reality of it, and then, crucially, win cross- party support, so that when the Government changed the policy did not change with them.

I have to tell your Lordships that the problem of overcrowding on the west coast main line is not a new phenomenon. I came across this letter published in the Times, which said:

“Sir, I left Rugby yesterday by the 12.45 pm train which is due at Euston-square at 4 o’clock pm. We arrived at Euston-square at 5.50 … The cause of our delay was the breaking down of a luggage-train ahead of us. There is such an enormous traffic carried on what used to be called the London and Birmingham Railway that such delays (to say nothing of the danger to passengers) are constantly occurring. Would it not be a great improvement if the company were to lay down two additional lines for the sole use of luggage-trains?”.

The date of that letter, my Lords, which was signed:

“Your Obedient Servant, A Cockney”,

was 30 December 1846.

I come back to today’s situation. A number of noble Lords have talked about the impracticality of adding to capacity by further upgrades of the main line. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, referred to that, as did my noble friend Lord Rosser. There are other more radical solutions, two of which would be familiar to the noble Lord, Lord Fowler. One is to discourage the number of people travelling by train by pricing services up so that only the wealthy could travel and by making them less attractive. You would have to accompany that with a huge new programme of motorway construction, the environmental consequences of which would be horrendous.

We have heard a bit about the Chilterns today. One has only to look at the website of the M40 Chiltern Environmental Group, which represents 25,000 people who live along the M40 corridor from junction 3 to junction 8, to understand how appalling life is for people living close to motorways. I quote:

“Day and night we all suffer from intolerable noise pollution”.

Years on after the M40 opened, they are still campaigning for noise barriers.

The third option—and the sensible option, of course —is to build a new network of high-speed railways, as has been done in many other countries in the world. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, made the point that I was going to make—namely, that no national system which has embarked on a programme of high-speed rail has regretted it or said that it would take those services out of use. Instead, they are constantly adding to the networks that they have. Compared with Japan, which opened its first Shinkansen line in 1964, we in Britain have been rather slower in realising the potential of high-speed rail travel. We have tended to assume that because the Victorians left us such a fine network of main line and secondary railways, we could somehow get by without building new ones. Perhaps that made sense when the demand for rail travel was static or even falling, as it was in the 1970s, but that is not, of course, the case now.

In November 2007, the nation’s first high-speed line was fully opened with a launch at a transformed St Pancras station, which was attended by Her Majesty the Queen, and High Speed 1 was born. After all the tribulation and all the objections to that programme, it was delivered on time and to budget. Once the Eurostar trains had to operate over the old Southern Region tracks into Waterloo, but once the new line was opened, they could run at much higher speed over the new Channel Tunnel rail link. One consequence of that was that complaints from residents about train noise ceased altogether. People in that part of the world now protest about noise from the M20 motorway.

The environmental standards to which High Speed 1 was constructed were stringent and of high quality, and the extensive consideration that has been given to these matters in the design of High Speed 2 will, I am sure, ultimately have a similarly good outcome. When the construction of High Speed 1 was planned, it was thought that only the Eurostar services would use it. However, Eurostar demand has grown to more than 10 million passengers a year, and rail now dominates the London to Paris and Brussels travel markets, where once air traffic was dominant. However, other domestic high-speed services have materialised and Kent’s Javelin services now carry a further 10 million passengers a year. Taking the two service types together, the 20 million-plus annual passenger levels are similar to those originally forecast for the Channel Tunnel rail link. Forecasting has inevitable uncertainty, but, as the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, said, to assume that the growth in demand will miraculously stop two years after the line is opened, is, of course, nonsense. That demand will continue and we have to plan for it well into the future. High Speed 2 has had the support of successive Governments. The Bill before us is the first part of what should be regarded as a national high-speed rail network.

Before I finish, I would like to stress a little-understood but important aspect of High Speed 2. Once it is built, the need to try to fit together “paths” for non-stopping express passenger services alongside those for freight and local and regional passenger services over the same railway is removed. Part of the capacity gain that High Speed 2 delivers arises from the new tracks it provides and from the services with longer trains they can accommodate. Another part comes from the narrowing of the speed range of services operating on the parallel routes—initially with High Speed 2, that will mean the west coast main line. This is the “capacity release” effect and it means that intermediate places on this line such as Coventry, Northampton and Milton Keynes and smaller places, too, will be able to get better services in the future. And it should be possible to accommodate more freight off our congested motorways and on to rail, especially container traffic to and from the major ports and major distribution centres. So High Speed 2 is not just a foundation stone for the national high-speed network, and for improving the links between our major cities, but it is also an essential device to overcome constraints on today’s network and allow the expansion of services at smaller towns and cities and create better pathways for freight.

I believe that High Speed 2 is very much a project for our times. I congratulate the Minister on the way that he introduced the Bill, my noble friend Lord Rosser on the way that he responded, and all the other speakers in this debate. The fact that there is so much support in this House for this Bill is remarkable and perhaps mirrors the experience in the other place, where the Third Reading of the Bill received 90% of the vote with a huge majority. I am sure that the Bill will have the same support in this House.