Metal Theft

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Tuesday 7th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Heather Wheeler]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. There are voluntary agreements, but the difficulty is when cables have been stolen, or great big metal electricity boxes—substations. I do not know how on earth people manage to steal these things without anybody noticing.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

My hon. Friend the Member for Brigg and Goole (Andrew Percy) mentioned Lincolnshire, where I too have been a victim of metal theft. My whole home was trashed because thieves stole the boiler without turning off the water. Ordinary people are suffering and we demand that the Government take urgent action. People are fed up. There has been too much prevarication for too long.

[Heather Wheeler]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, but how do we have a robust licensing process that is not too onerous and expensive? Local authorities are the obvious people to do it, falling in line with alcohol licensing. That would fit really well. I do not want good professional firms to be penalised by more red tape and more cost, but they have to step up to the plate—no pun intended—and say that we need to clean up the whole process. It is not acceptable for everybody to turn a blind eye to the rogue dealers in all our areas.

My hon. Friend talked about boiler theft. It is a most amazing new theft and I keep hearing about it. People are encouraged to put in new eco-boilers that are very green and efficient. Three months’ later their houses are burgled and the boilers are taken. I suggested to the police that we ought to put identification numbers on boilers, but it would be a huge piece of new bureaucracy, so my good police came up with the suggestion of using SmartWater. It is a very good system, but will we really be putting SmartWater on every church roof? Will we put it on memorials? The situation is quite incredible. [Interruption.] We shall to buy need shares in SmartWater.

Protection of Freedoms Bill (Programme) (No. 3)

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I beg to move amendment (a), after “Proceedings” on the first day insert—

‘New Clauses relating to the Public Order Act 1986; and’.

I have tabled this amendment to the programme motion because I simply cannot believe that the Government are trying to stifle debate on new clause 1 —the only new clause in the Bill to attract support from dozens of Members from all parties in this House. One would have thought that the Government would welcome hon. Members trying to improve the Bill—is that such an outrageous thing? One would have thought that they would welcome the fact that 65 Members have put their names to new clause 1.

On Friday, the Joint Committee on Human Rights produced a voluminous report which says on page 61:

“We support the amendment of the Public Order Act 1986 to remove all references to offences based on insulting words or behaviour. We consider that this would be a human rights enhancing measure and would remove a risk that these provisions may be applied in a manner which is disproportionate and incompatible with the right to freedom of expression”.

One would have thought that surely a Government committed to free speech would realise that this was an important issue and allow some time for new clause 1 to be debated, especially as it is normal, if not a convention, for new clauses to be debated early on Report because they are debated last in our Committees. Because new clauses are often not reached in Committee, it is normal for a Government who want to have open debate to allow them to be debated at an early stage on Report.

This is one of the most extraordinary programme motions that I have seen, because it ensures that no new clauses are debated. Why have the Government done this? For the life of me, I do not know why we are being pushed to the back of the queue. There is no point in having emollient words. There is not some small chance that new clause 1 will be debated; as a result of this programme motion, there is no chance that it will be debated or voted on. We have had three hours of statements, and we now have two hours to debate many important issues. However, we are going to spend an hour and a half on car parking. I am sure that car parking is very important, but so is freedom of debate. How ironic that the Government are using their own powers under guillotine procedure to stifle a debate on freedom of speech. It is an extraordinary situation.

I know that we are discussing my amendment to the programme motion, not new clause 1 itself, but it is worth saying that it is a very modest proposal that seeks only to change one line of legislation, would not cost the Government one penny, and would not affect anything in the manifesto or the coalition agreement. There would have been no harm in our having a civilised debate. Perfectly valid arguments could have been made on both sides of the issue, and the Government would have got their way in the end, so why not have a debate?

I do not want to be unfair to the Government, who have written to me and said that they are now going to have a review. That is strange. We have been campaigning on this for a whole year. For several months, we got the same letters from the Minister that we used to get from the previous Labour Minister, no doubt written by the same civil servant sitting in front of the same potted plants and serving out the same cups of tea. We made no progress whatsoever. Yet suddenly, hey presto, because 65 people are prepared to put their name to new clause 1 and because my amendment is selected for debate, we get this promise of a review. Why is it starting tomorrow or next week? Why did it not start six months ago, when the amendment was put on the Order Paper? Is this a very complex issue? I have not yet been consulted about the issue, and neither have the National Secular Society, which supports the amendment, or the Christian Institute. We are going to have a review, and the only people who will not be consulted formally are those of us in the House of Commons. What a strange situation. Is this not the home of democracy? Is it not beyond the wit of the Government and the programme managers to allow just three quarters of an hour for an important debate about freedom of speech? But no, the one body that will not be allowed to debate the issue is the House of Commons. We are told by the Government, “Oh, don’t worry, we’ll have this review”—although there can be no debate in the House of Commons—“and then the House of Lords will debate it.” However, they could have had such a review months ago. It is hardly rocket science: we are not talking about a technically complicated issue such as trying to reform the entire national health service or anything like that

I say this to hon. Members on both sides of the House: why do Governments—I am not talking about this Government; I mean all Governments—accept amendments only in the House of Lords? Why not here? Why can we not accept the revolutionary proposal that, in a grown-up way, a Member of Parliament might produce a cross-party amendment on a serious issue, the Government could consider it on its merits and it might actually be agreed to? Why do all Governments take the view that they are prepared to accept amendments only in the other place? Frankly, I have never been an enthusiast for House of Lords reform, but I am beginning to think that until the other place is reformed, the Government will never take this place seriously.

We are talking about an important issue that is too serious to delay. There are so many cases, affecting people from all walks of life: demonstrators threatened with seizure of property and arrest under section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986 for protesting against seal culling by using toy seals coloured with red food dye; the young man prosecuted for growling at two Labrador dogs; the countless street preachers harassed by police for daring to mention Bible passages that some people do not like. Just last month, a café owner in Blackpool was told by the police that displaying verses from the New Testament on a video screen was a breach of section 5. What are the police suggesting? That we should cut and paste things from the Bible but leave out things that people do not like? Many people do not like many things from the Bible, but the Bible is the Bible and if people want to quote from it, they should be allowed to do so without PC Plod tapping them on the shoulder and telling them that it is against some piece of legislation.

All those things are happening under section 5 of the 1986 Act. There is something fundamentally wrong with the way it is being used. That needs to be properly debated in the House of Commons and nowhere else. The fact that the Government have agreed—only today, as a result of all the pressure from colleagues—to discuss such matters with outside groups shows that they acknowledge that there is a problem. All I am asking for is a debate. Why are the Government so concerned about our new clause? What we are proposing is hardly radical. It would not leave the police powerless to prevent public disorder. As the former Director of Public Prosecutions, Ken Macdonald, says in his legal opinion on new clause 1, there are plenty of other powers in existence to prevent or prosecute behaviour that is abusive or risks a breach of the peace; indeed, we have always had breach of the peace powers. There are numerous other powers that could be used, but section 5 is being used as a kind of catch-all and is chilling debate.

This is an important issue and the arguments are strong. The Government might even make a concession on it in the Lords—they have as good as admitted it today—in which case why could they not make the same concession here, in the home of democracy? Why do they make concessions only in the other Chamber? I feel passionately about new clause 1 because it is what the Bill is all about. This Bill is called the Protection of Freedoms Bill, but we are not being allowed to debate free speech. I thought that the aim of the Bill was to reverse the widespread erosion of civil liberties in recent years. Well, there is no greater civil liberty than freedom of speech. It is the foundation of our civil freedoms and new clause 1, which is supported by people from all parties, is all about freedom of speech.

Oral Answers to Questions

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call Rachel Reeves. Not here.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

6. What further steps she plans to take to control illegal immigration; and if she will make a statement.

[The Minister for Immigration (Damian Green)]

UK Border Agency enforcement officers are continuing to crack down on immigration crime and remove illegal migrants. Our proposals to tackle abuse by foreign nationals using student visas to gain work in the UK, alongside new plans to toughen up marriage and family routes, will further tackle illegal migration into the UK.

[Mr Leigh]

As Members of Parliament, we are approached all the time by constituents who want to marry somebody from abroad and it is only humane and right that we should try to help them, but our job is made doubly, even trebly, difficult by the existence of sham marriages. What is my hon. Friend doing to tackle the problem without making the system so bureaucratic for everyone else?

[Damian Green]

My hon. Friend identifies one of the key loopholes that did exist in the immigration system. Last summer, I asked our enforcement teams to focus on sham marriages, and 53 sham marriage operations were undertaken, resulting in 126 arrests. Between November and January, a further 86 operations followed that up, focusing on sham marriages, with an additional 29 arrests. This has been one of the big loopholes in our immigration system, but we are becoming ever more effective in closing it.

Protection of Freedoms Bill

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Tuesday 1st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

I welcome the Bill. How could one not support clamping down on the wheel clampers? Some of my constituents have had terrible experiences at their hands.

Although I listened carefully to the shadow Home Secretary’s arguments, and although she made some fair points about DNA, one cannot, on civil liberties grounds, oppose removing the DNA of innocent people from the DNA database. It is a fundamental principle of British law that when people are found innocent by the courts, they are innocent.

My speech will be rather like the speeches that we used to have at Conservative party conferences, which said that the motion was fine, but did not go nearly far enough. Much of the Bill is, frankly, pretty unexceptional. Compared with the Deputy Prime Minister’s rhetoric last year about bringing in a Bill to

“protect our hard won liberties”

much of it is a bit tame. What happened, I wonder, to the 14,000 ideas that were suggested by members of the public via the “Your Freedom” consultation? It is like a scene from “Yes Minister”. An enthusiastic new Minister says, “I want to have a Freedom Bill,” and 14,000 replies come in. One can imagine Sir Humphrey, in his most mellifluous tone, advising the Minister that freedom can be a very incendiary device when it comes to Government.

I suggest that the Bill should go further, and I hope that I will get support not only from those on the Government Benches, but from Opposition Members. The Leader of the Opposition has admitted that Labour was

“too draconian on aspects of our civil liberties”.

Where can we go further? I am particularly worried about freedom of speech. I believe that political speech and debate, even in this place, are becoming very bland. There is a chilling effect on free speech, because people are discouraged from expressing unpopular opinions that do not fit with the winds of political fashion. Did not George Orwell once say:

“Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear”?

I would add that the right to speak against received wisdom is the only way to make social progress, as I hope many Opposition Members would agree. We have to protect the ability to express widely differing opinions in strong terms in the public square.

One reason why I was worried about the Phil Woolas case, as I said at the time on the Floor of the House, is that if someone has a British National party candidate standing against them, for example, they have to be able to denounce them for what they are without fearing legal sanctions. We have a more and more active and activist judiciary, not just in the Supreme Court and the lower courts but in the European Court of Human Rights. Again, that has a somewhat chilling effect. We should examine some of the debates that there used to be during general elections, certainly 100 years ago but even 50 or 40 years ago. They were a lot more robust than they are now.

With that in mind, and in the spirit of warm and cosy friendship with my Liberal Democrat friends, I wish to try to persuade the Home Secretary to give some thought to adopting a Liberal Democrat proposal for inclusion in the Bill. It was made by Dr Evan Harris, who at the time was the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon. May I say how much we all miss him? Although I disagreed with him on virtually everything, he was a kind of foil to some of my arguments. In March 2009, he tabled an interesting proposal to amend the Public Order Act 1986. He wanted to delete the word “insulting” from section 5, because he was concerned that that section was being used to trample on free speech. As I have said, I did not agree with a lot of what he said, but I did agree with that.

[Mr Cash]

Is my hon. Friend aware that the said Evan Harris, on one occasion in the House, referred to those of my hon. Friends with my inclination in these matters as the “odious right”?

[Mr Leigh]

I am reminded of that Somerset Maugham story in which two old men hate each other and argue all the time, and then one dies and the other one fades away. I feel that a bit about Dr Evan Harris leaving the House.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend remember the Hayes dictum, named after my hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes)? It was that if a Member was in the same Lobby as Dr Evan Harris, they were in the wrong Lobby.

[Mr Leigh]

That is enough about our friend, I think.

Section 5 of the 1986 Act outlaws

“threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour”

if they are likely to cause “harassment, alarm or distress”. The proposal that I wish to make, which I and the Liberals supported before, is the deletion of the lowest threshold of that offence, which is the word “insulting”. That would still leave the two higher thresholds of “threatening” and “abusive”.

The 1986 Act was brought in to replace the Public Order Act 1936, which had worked very well in dealing with the blackshirts and all that. The 1986 Act does not define the terms “threats” and “abuse”, but we all know them when we see them. The courts have often said that. Threat is obvious, is it not? It is when someone is in your face and there is a fear of violence, and abuse is when someone uses obscene language. Insult, however, is clearly something less serious and more subjective, and that is the problem. I believe that removing the word “insulting” would be enough to stop section 5 being misused and generating a chilling effect on free speech.

[Tom Brake]

I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman will take any reassurance from the fact that as recently as Monday, Evan Harris was in the House campaigning to get rid of the word “insulting”.

[Mr Leigh]

Good, I am very glad. That just shows that there is support for that from all over the House, and indeed from outside.

Section 5 of the 1986 Act is a classic example of a law that was brought in for a fair reason, to deal with a particular state of affairs long ago, but has been used in practice for something quite different. It was brought in to tackle hooliganism, but it is increasingly used by police to silence peaceful protestors and street preachers.

I shall give a couple of examples of how section 5 has been used, to show what has been going on. It has been used to prosecute a couple of hotel owners, Ben and Sharon Vogelenzang, who had a breakfast-table dispute with a Muslim guest. I do not comment one way or the other on their views, but they said that Mohammed was a warlord and that Islamic dress oppressed women. For that breakfast-table dispute, they were prosecuted. True, the judge threw the case out and apparently hinted that the police should have handled it differently, but the point is that for some reason, Merseyside police thought that section 5 applied to theological debates over breakfast. Even though the couple were acquitted, their business went to the wall. It is not enough to say, “Well, we don’t need to worry, because they were not convicted.” We should worry, because people are increasingly worried about expressing strong opinions.

There are other examples. In 2008, a 16-year-old protestor was issued a summons by police under section 5 of the 1986 Act for holding a placard outside a scientology centre that read, “Scientology is not a religion, it is a dangerous cult”, which is something that many people agree with. City of London police referred the allegation that the sign was abusive or insulting to the Crown Prosecution Service. I am glad to say that Liberty, which is supporting the campaign for the change, intervened and the case was finally dropped. However, it shows the problem that exists.

Then there were the animal rights protestors in Worcester, who were threatened with arrest and seizure of property under section 5 for protesting against seal culling using toy seals coloured with red dye. Police told them that the toys were deemed distressing by two members of the public and ordered them to move on.

The last and most ridiculous case is that of Kyle Little. After being warned by the police for using bad language, he was arrested and prosecuted under section 5 for a daft little growl and woof aimed towards two Labrador dogs. I have a dog, my own dearly beloved William, and I am sure he has never felt insulted by anything that I have ever said to him. But this poor Kyle Little, for growling at a dog, was detained for five hours, despite the dog owners not wanting any prosecution, at a cost of £8,000 to the taxpayer. Unbelievably, Newcastle Crown court finally had to acquit Little of the charge. We can see what is going on. [Hon. Members: “It’s barking!”] The right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) and others are right. We need to bring it to an end.

We should all worry about this. There is something wrong with a law when the police think that it requires them to regulate debate. As I have said, the 1986 Act was introduced to replace the 1936 Act during a period of football hooliganism, as people might remember. At the time, a White Paper identified the mischief at which the Act was aimed—hooligans on housing estates throwing things down stairs and banging on doors, and groups of youths persistently shouting abuse and obscenities. Section 5 was a fairly reasonable response to that. The then Home Secretary, Douglas Hurd, told the House that it would not undermine civil liberties, but 25 years later, we see a major difference between what was intended and what has happened since. We therefore need to examine the wording. I cannot act very easily, as a Back Bencher, but Ministers can do so very easily.

Liberty has argued that we should use the Bill to repeal section 5 of the 1986 Act in its entirety. That may be going too far for Ministers, and I do not follow Liberty as far as that, but in a classic triangulation exercise, why cannot we just remove the word “insulting” and leave the higher grades? I have support from our own Joint Committee on Human Rights, which heard evidence that section 5 was being used to suppress free speech and made representations to the previous Government, which were resisted. That Government rejected the advice of our own Committee on human rights.

I say to the Under-Secretary of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire)—please will he listen for a moment, as the responsible Minister?—that it appears that civil servants at the Home Office are still using, almost verbatim in correspondence signed by him, the arguments used by the last Government against amending section 5. I wonder whether he knows that the letters that he is sending out use exactly the same language as was used by the Labour Government to resist what our own JCHR suggested.

In response to the JCHR recommendations, the previous Government said that they believed that problems with section 5 could be addressed by “guidance”, which is a classic cop-out for civil servants. It is true that the Association of Chief Police Officers recently produced new guidance on breach of the peace, which covers section 5. However, that still encourages police to pursue insulting words or behaviour, because of course, that is what the law tells them to do. If we tell the police that it is wrong for people to use insulting language, they will pursue them. It is up to us to make the law clear so that the police can operate in an entirely sensible fashion. Frankly, it is not good enough for Ministers to say, “We can solve this with guidance,” especially when there is a Protection of Freedoms Bill on the stocks. In any case, an issue as serious and significant as civil liberties should not be left to mere guidance. It is for MPs to make such decisions.

The previous Government used another argument that is still used by Ministers in correspondence. They say that if the word “insulting” is removed from section 5, the police will not have sufficient power to protect the public, but that is not the case. Neil Addison, a barrister who spent 10 years prosecuting cases in Newcastle, has suggested that the “threatening” and “abusive” limbs of section 5 will cover all genuine public order cases. He says:

“Looking back on the large number of s5 cases I have either prosecuted or defended over the years I cannot think of any ‘normal’ public order situation which could not be covered by the words ‘threatening and abusive’. Most cases under s5 involve people (often drunk) yelling aggressively and making frequent use of the ‘F’ word and that is the sort of situation that s5 and indeed the entire Public Order Act was supposed to deal with, it was never supposed to deal with the situation where individuals, whether street preachers or otherwise”,

including demonstrators or people we do not like,

“were expressing their personal opinions.”

We use other laws if we get complaints from distressed individuals. The Protection from Harassment Act 1997 criminalises any repeated harassment of an individual, which I support. Therefore, deleting the word “insulting” from the Public Order Act 1986 would not leave police and prosecutors without powers to deal with low-level public disorder.

One of the silliest arguments used to defend that part of section 5 is that removing the word “insulting” would mean that the courts would have to adjudicate on the difference between abuse, which is criminal, and insult, which is not—we see that argument in letters from Ministers both of the previous Government and of the current one. However, courts make such adjudications all the time. We could equally say that under section 5, the courts must adjudicate between insult, which is criminal, and incivility, which is not. Criminal courts decide whether an activity is criminal—it is their raison d’être. All the arguments put up by this and the previous Government on why “insulting” cannot be removed from section 5 fall to pieces.

I am sure we all agree that free speech is a bedrock of true democracy. It encompasses the freedom to disagree and to challenge received opinion. We might not like what someone says and we might take offence, but lively debate and a robust exchange of ideas are integral parts of a true democracy. Lord Justice Sedley, in his landmark ruling in the case of Richmond-Bate in 1999, put it better than anybody. He said:

“Free speech includes not only the inoffensive but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative provided it does not tend to provoke violence. Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having.”

In my view, the criminal law does not exist to protect people from feeling insulted. I urge Ministers to think about addressing section 5 of the 1986 Act in the Bill. They and no one else have the power to do so.

The JCHR, Liberty, Justice, the Christian Institute and Dr Evan Harris are calling on us to do something about section 5. I note the Liberal Democrats specifically referred to reforming the 1986 Act on page 93 of their manifesto last year. It is a Lib Dem idea that we would be wise to adopt. I urge such a measure on the House in the name of that most precious commodity—freedom of speech.

[Mr Jack Straw (Blackburn) (Lab)]

I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Mr Leigh). This is the first time that I have ever heard him endorse anything Liberal Democrat.

I share the hon. Gentleman’s opinion of the Bill, which he described as pretty unimpressive. The content of the Bill does not remotely justify its extraordinary and wholly inaccurate title. We would expect a debate on a Bill to protect our freedoms to include a far more wide-ranging discussion by the Home Secretary of the nature of freedoms in this country and how they should be properly balanced. We would also see a description of such essential freedoms in the Bill. However, the Bill, parts of which are worthy and others downright dangerous, is no more than a standard criminal justice amendment Bill.

[Mr Leigh]

indicated assent.

[Mr Straw]

I am glad that the hon. Gentleman endorses that view.

I am sorry that the Home Secretary has left the Chamber, although I understand the pressures on her. She made some extraordinarily hyperbolic remarks, and described the situation under the previous Government as the creeping intrusion of the state and a slow march to authoritarianism. As my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary has accepted, the previous Government got some things wrong, and, in the light of experience, some things turned out not as intended. I will deal with those later, but on our record of balancing necessary security with the expansion of freedoms, I and the Labour party defer to no one.

Labour was the party that introduced the Human Rights Act 1998. I remind the Conservatives that they voted against it on Second Reading. I am glad that, following amendments to the Bill, which I sought to make to build the kind of consensus of which my right hon. Friend the shadow Home Secretary spoke today, the then Conservative Opposition supported it on Third Reading. The then shadow Attorney-General, the late Nicholas Lyell, said from the Opposition Dispatch Box that he wished the Bill well.

I also remind the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) that the 1998 Act is about bringing British rights home, so that they can be adjudicated on by British courts. The Act does not create a sovereign Supreme Court. As my right hon. Friend pointed out, under section 4, even if the British Supreme Court declares that legislation made by this House is incompatible with the incorporated European convention on human rights articles—that happens rarely, and not in the cases of DNA or votes for prisoners—the legislation is not unenforceable: it stays in force unless and until this House decides otherwise.

The Labour Government introduced the Human Rights Act 1998, the title of which was never disputed, because it was indeed about human rights—we could have called it the “Human Rights and Freedom Act”. We also introduced the Freedom of Information Act. I am proud that I was the Home Secretary who produced those measures and a number of others. The previous Conservative Government opposed the freedom of information legislation at every stage for 18 years. They wanted only a non-statutory, unenforceable code. That is all they would have introduced.

Counter-terrorism

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Thursday 20th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

That is a new low. It will be seen in the country as a significant step forward to achieving a proper balance between security and civil liberties, which is the responsibility of any sensible Government.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

All the pressure on this comes from the civil liberties lobby. May I urge my hon. Friend to put the safety of the British people first? I suspect that most people in London, if it were a choice between their daughters being blown up on a London tube or a terrorist who hates everything we stand for spending 28 days in relative comfort before being charged, would choose the latter. So act on the evidence and put the safety of the people first.

Metal Theft

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Wednesday 1st December 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order. This is a short Adjournment debate. Does the Second Church Estates Commissioner, the hon. Member for Banbury (Tony Baldry), have the permission of the Minister and the hon. Gentleman to speak?

[Mr Watson]

Yes.

Immigration

Edward Leigh Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Field]

A number of hon. Members might wish to catch your eye, Mr Deputy Speaker, to dispute that fact. Just as some might wish to stretch your tolerance, Mr. Deputy Speaker, by going down the road of the devolution settlement, others might want to open up the issue of the European settlement. The numbers coming here to work from the European Union represent a minority. I do not dispute the fact that this is an important issue, but it is not one of the dimension my right hon. Friend describes. I see in his place the hon. Member for Canterbury (Mr Brazier), who might want to deal with the issue later.

[Mr Edward Leigh (Gainsborough) (Con)]

Before ending his speech, will the right hon. Gentleman deal with arranged marriages? Does he agree that people who want to marry and settle here must do so on the basis that they are of mature years, that they speak English and that they want to marry an English person because of a settled romantic attachment, not as a pawn in marriage negotiations?

[Mr Field]

I wish that the hon. Gentleman had put the full stop a little earlier in his intervention. I do not think it is for the Government to lay down the emotional or other circumstances in which people should marry. Given the success rate of marriages based on emotion, I do not think this country is in any position to lay down the rule that arranged marriages are a bad thing! I have not seen the figures, but I doubt whether we come off better in that respect. I will touch on the point later, as it is one area where I hope the Government will give us more idea about what they are thinking.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Field]

I have never underestimated the entrepreneurial skills on the subcontinent, and I am disappointed to hear my hon. Friend report back in those terms. When I crossed swords on this matter with the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East, I thought that in no time English language schools would be established to ensure that people could speak English before arriving. It is very important that that rule is maintained, and I hope the Government will look at the point I have raised.

[Mr Leigh]

People are terrified about speaking out on this very sensitive issue, but it is not widely appreciated that it is better for the bride or groom in an arranged marriage not to be brought from the Indian subcontinent but to come from the community in this country, as that makes learning the language and overcoming cultural differences much less difficult.

[Mr Field]

Yes, I made that point earlier.