Home Affairs

Baroness Primarolo Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mark Pritchard]

The Leader of the Opposition has apologised to the British people, who want to see net migration come down. It is not just the policy of the coalition Government: it is the British people who want to see net migration come down. Non-EU migration has come down. EU migration is still a challenge, and it is one that the Government will face as the Prime Minister renegotiates power back from Europe—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. The hon. Gentleman has been a Member for a long time and he knows that interventions are not an opportunity to make a speech—he can always add his name to the list—but are supposed to be brief.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Field]

I will not change what I am saying, but I will say it more slowly and clearly so that the hon. Gentleman actually understands it. My right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) suggested that one way to modify the immigration figures is to take students out of them. One of the problems with doing that is that we have a large number of students coming here. They say they wish to study here, but continue to stay here and work. The change I would like to see is to challenge vice-chancellors to have as many students as they want, provided they undertake, on behalf of the Home Secretary, to ensure that those students fulfil their promise to come here, graduate and leave. The universities do—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. I am not having interventions that are speeches. Interventions are exactly that, and I think the right hon. Gentleman has got his point across.

[Jim Dowd (Lewisham West and Penge) (Lab)]

He did say he would speak slowly.

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

He spoke at a reasonable speed; there were just too many words.

[Dr Huppert]

I understand what the right hon. Gentleman is saying and I continue to disagree with what he suggests. One issue he raises, on whether students would have to leave before they graduate, concerns the process of graduation. There is also the question of post-study work visas, which are incredibly valuable. If he talks to the vice-chancellors of Cambridge university and Anglia Ruskin university—two universities in my constituency—he will hear that there is demand. We want people to come here; it makes sense. Once we have trained some of the brightest and best people here, we want them to contribute to the economy. We want them to set up companies that will employ people here locally. I have to say that what he suggests would be incredibly damaging to the economy in my constituency and in many other areas. I hope that is not somewhere we will go.

There are issues around immigration, and huge issues around the rhetoric used. There is far too much negative rhetoric that is, frankly, xenophobic. That is something we have to try to avoid. It has no place in the discussions we are having.

We benefit massively from immigration. We benefit financially—there is a lot of evidence of that—and culturally and socially. It is a good thing for us to do. There are, however, associated downsides and the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough was absolutely right to highlight them. The solution is to try to fix those problems. Where people coming in means that we run out of school places, the correct solution is not to throw people out of the country, but to create school places so they can be educated and to make sure there is housing. The correct solution is to deal with the problems. The right hon. Gentleman is right to say—many people have pointed it out—that there are problems with the violation of the national minimum wage. That is why we should ensure that people are paid the national minimum wage and why the Government have acted. We have just had the first naming and shaming of people who have been failing to pay it. Immigration is a good thing and we should tackle the problems associated with it.

It frustrates me that so many people are following the concerns raised by UKIP and trying to tack towards them. That is self-defeating. The more that Conservative and Labour politicians chase the UKIP line, the stronger UKIP becomes, because that tells people that it is even stronger.

[Mr Stewart Jackson]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree—he probably does not—or concede that he sounds terribly out of touch, given that 77% of the public say that immigration is a huge problem? His arguments would carry more conviction if he were prepared even to look at the free movement directive. I have some sympathy with him on non-EU migration, particularly in the higher education sector, but he cannot have it both ways. People want immigration to be reduced, so he must look at—

[Madam Deputy Speaker]

Order. We have got the point. I am going to keep on saying this: interventions are not speeches. The hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) is waiting patiently to make his speech.

[Dr Huppert]

I think it unlikely that the hon. Gentleman and I will ever reach agreement on this issue—we certainly have not yet. There are concerns but we have to fix the problems it causes, not attack the fundamental basis. The hon. Gentleman can have a look at studies—I do not have the reference immediately to hand—by University College London, for example, that show the fiscal benefits from EU migration. The trend is badly wrong and is being followed by far too many people.

--- Later in debate ---

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. It would be advisable for Members to aim to deliver their speeches in between 10 and a maximum of 15 minutes, including interventions; otherwise, all the Members who wish to speak will not be able to. If everyone speaks for 20 minutes or more, there will simply not be enough time. I am not going to impose a time limit, but I hope Members will be respectful of each other and ensure that we move on comfortably to the winding-up speeches.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Buckland]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. Before the hon. Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) resumes his speech, I gently point out that he has now been speaking for 33 minutes, it took the Home Secretary only 34 minutes to launch the debate, and other Members are waiting to speak. We are grateful for his tour de force across an area in which he has great expertise, but not necessarily over the entire Queen’s Speech.

[Mr Buckland]

I will bear your exhortation very much in mind, Madam Deputy Speaker. I am still a minute behind the Home Secretary so I will take that as a target and I will do my best.

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans). I just wanted to make the point that in Swindon we are doing exactly the same. The 100-plus people who came to St Joseph’s Catholic college to see the films about child slavery and trafficking shown by ECPAT UK, one of the leading charities, showed that there is a real interest, understanding and concern. It is through the work of local organisations, together with our police and crime commissioners, who are increasingly becoming involved in encouraging the training of police, that we will start to see a rolling back of the almost systematic blindness that we have had to the reality of trafficking in our midst.

Before I sit down, I pay a warm tribute to the Wiltshire police and crime commissioner, Angus Macpherson, who is recovering in hospital in Bath after a serious heart attack last week. He has been doing an outstanding job for the last several years as our PCC, and on behalf of everyone who cares about crime and policing in my neck of the woods and generally, I wish him the speediest of recoveries.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Evans (Islwyn) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is indeed a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Andy Sawford) who speaks with such great passion about his home area of Northamptonshire.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dawn Primarolo)]

Order. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. Gentleman, who can start again in a moment. Let me explain the practice relating to speakers. Where Members have notified the Chair in advance, they will obviously participate in the debate. If Members wish to contribute once a debate is a good way through, they may approach the Chair, but take a lower priority. The hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood) was unable to be present earlier and has indicated that she would like to speak. I intend to call her at the end. I hope that that is clear to Ministers. I am not being unfair to the hon. Lady; I am following normal practice.

[Chris Evans]

Thank you for your patience this afternoon, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have had to be in and out of the Chamber, trying to balance my attendance with my duties on the Finance Bill.

The Queen’s Speech contains three new Bills that relate to criminal justice. For a Government who argued while in opposition that the Labour party over-legislated in this area, these Bills join seven others on criminal justice since they came to power in 2010. The previous seven Bills have created in total 619 new criminal offences, many of which carry custodial sentences.

With our prison population stretched to maximum levels, now is the time to question the role that prison and criminal justice play in society. In the past year, the prison population in England and Wales has reached record levels and stands today at 85,228 prisoners—a 90% increase since 1993. In 2012-13, the overall resource expenditure on prisons in England and Wales was just under £3 billion. Each inmate costs the taxpayer an average of £36,808 per prison place a year—money that the general public would no doubt think better spent on health, education, improving the roads and many other projects that hon. Members have mentioned.

With the UK having the second highest incarceration rates in western Europe and the prison estate suffering from overcrowding since 1994, we are facing a crisis that needs to be addressed sooner rather than later. There is no doubt that prison works for some people. For the victim of crime and those who live in fear of it, prison gets criminals off the streets, reducing the risk they pose to the rest of society because they cannot commit an offence when they are locked up. Sadly, we all know that some individuals pose such a threat to other people that there is no option other than keeping them under lock and key for a very long time. However, prison is not the answer in all cases, and I want to concentrate on that in my speech.

According to the executive summary of the latest figures on releases, about 590,000 adult and juvenile offenders were cautioned, convicted or released from custody between July 2011 and June 2012, and 25% of them reoffended within a year. According to the “proven reoffending” tables, the reoffending rate among persons released from a custodial sentence was 45.5% for adults and 67.4% for juveniles. Those statistics should be balanced against the fact that between 1997 and 2010, under a Labour Government, crime fell by 43%, and violent crime fell by 42%.

Although I represent the Labour party, I will say that it seems that when in government we were very good at locking people up, but did not address the inherent problem of reoffending. Now, as more criminal justice Bills appear before Parliament, I see that we are still not tackling that problem. If Governments have a duty to society to protect their citizens from criminals, that means they also have a duty to ensure that those who are released from prison do not drift back into a life of crime.

The National Offender Management Service manages 17 public prisons in England and Wales and the contracts of 14 private sector prisons, and is responsible for a prisoner population of about 86,000. However, it must make cuts of £650 million in its £3.4 billion budget by 2015. Now, with the prison population reaching almost unmanageable levels and the Government intent on making cuts in the resources available to prison staff, it is of the utmost importance that rehabilitation be looked at seriously. That approach needs to begin in the prisons themselves. Just 36% of people leaving prison go into some type of education, training or employment.

People often leave prison ill equipped to deal with day-to-day life. Statistics show that 43% of offenders have numeracy skills below GCSE standard, while 37% have reading skills below the same measure. Moreover, no one can agree on the number of offenders who have learning disabilities such as dyslexia. For many prisoners who are released, unemployment is a familiar scenario: 67% of the prison population were unemployed before being locked up, and many will face the same situation when they are released.