Debate on the Address

Keith Vaz Excerpts

Wednesday 4th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Members for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) and for Portsmouth North (Penny Mordaunt) on their excellent speeches. This is the 27th Gracious Speech debate that I have spoken in and those were two of the best proposer and seconder speeches that I have heard.

The Prime Minister has kept his promise on Afghanistan. He said that he expected the troops to withdraw by 2014 and he has told the House that that expectation will be realised. I hope very much that Britain can also keep its promise in respect of Afghani interpreters: to treat them in exactly the same way as we treated the Iraqi interpreters. Many young men have laid down their lives. Their families have been affected by them being interpreters and are still in Afghanistan. I hope that the Government will remember the pledge and promise that we made to them: that they will be able to come to this country if there are no means by which they can remain in Afghanistan.

I know that the Prime Minister’s favourite video game is “Angry Birds”. I am not sure whether he was playing that as the results of the European elections were coming in, or what his score was, but all of us—the whole country—were surprised at the results. I am glad that the Gracious Speech includes a commitment to promote reform in the EU. As someone who supports not only the EU, but the reform agenda, I believe that this is one of the ways in which we can convince the British public that the House is serious about dealing with reform. I think there is a lot of common ground between the three party leaders on reform. All three have said that they want to remain within the EU but all three also support reform. I hope that in dealing with the rise of the UK Independence party and the remarkable results of last week’s elections the party leaders will be able to reach common ground on what we can do to reform the EU.

The Prime Minister is right to veto Jean-Claude Juncker as the proposed next President of the EU. He is the wrong choice and it is extremely important that following these elections we have somebody leading the EU who is capable of ensuring a strong and effective reform agenda.

It is also important to consider the fundamental way in which we should change the institutions. Let me give an example. Last Wednesday I was in Brussels to seek meetings with European Commissioners about the ban on Indian Alphonso mangoes. I felt it was odd that the EU could make such a decision so I went to Brussels during the recess to meet as many commissioners as I could. One informed me that he had to return to his country of origin to vote—they have obviously not heard of postal voting in Brussels—so he was not available. I met the Agriculture Commissioner in a very good meeting in which progress was made, and I know that the Prime Minister supports the need to overturn the ban, but I was also told that for the next two days Brussels would close for a religious holiday and that that happens regularly. If we look at how the institutions operate, we see that we can fundamentally reform them. The idea of Europe is of course good and our participation in Europe is important, but we need that fundamental reform.

[Richard Benyon (Newbury) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that one possible reform would be for the European Parliament to meet in just one place, bringing to an end something that our constituents find entirely incredible?

[Keith Vaz]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman—who, I am sure, probably went to every single city in the European Union during his time as Agriculture Minister—that the practice of moving the European Parliament is outdated and should end.

We should also confront what UKIP is saying on EU migration. I do not believe that the British people are against people who come from the EU to work in this country and to contribute to it. The Leader of the Opposition’s points about exploitation and low wages are important, but I have not come across people in Leicester who say that they do not want people to come from Poland or Romania because they do not make a contribution when they work. The issue for the British people concerns our benefits system—when it pays child benefit, for example, to people who do not have their children in this country, which costs a total of £30 million a year. There is no resentment towards those who have their children in the UK and contribute to our taxes. As we consider reform in the context of the Gracious Speech, as well as how we can improve the EU and how it operates, that is certainly one thing we should take into account.

We need to confront UKIP on its immigration agenda. All three party leaders were right to condemn the statement of Nigel Farage that he would feel uncomfortable if Romanians were going to live next door to him. The agenda takes the Christian principle of love thy neighbour and turns it into choose thy neighbour and, finally, into hate thy neighbour. It is important that we should confront that, because it is what was said about my parents and other members of the Asian and black communities when they came to Britain—people said that they did not want to live near Asians and black people.

[Mrs Anne Main (St Albans) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman is making a very fair point. I draw the attention of those Members who have not read it to the report of the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government on community cohesion and integration, produced during the last Government, which showed that it was the pace of change that was objected to, even by second and third generation immigrants, not necessarily the colour or ethnicity of the people who were coming in. That was what was so unplanned under the last Government.

[Keith Vaz]

The fact is that we are a very diverse nation. Whenever the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition speak about Britain, they speak about the importance of our diversity. It is diversity that won us the Olympics. It is important in dealing with UKIP that we can see the changes that have occurred. The Prime Minister has just appointed the first Asian member of a Conservative Cabinet, but we need to go further in showing how we have changed. When we come to the appointment of the chairman or chairwoman of the BBC, we need to ensure that someone from the ethnic minority community is on the shortlist. That is important in dealing with those who try to undermine the basic nature of our society. When we appointed the Governor of the Bank of England, we still selected from an all-white shortlist. The hon. Lady has many Bangladeshis living in her constituency. We have so much to offer as a nation, and the people do not want abuse. They do not mind legitimate people coming here to work.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

Only the right hon. Gentleman could make a political issue of exotic fruits. Is he not in danger of conflating racism, which we all abhor, with a legitimate debate based on facts, which should have happened in 2004 when a moratorium should have been put on the free movement of labour? What we are really talking about is the pressure on public services, such as schools and health services.

[Keith Vaz]

There are those pressures for the hon. Gentleman because of east European migration. All parties now seem to be saying they want the maximum level of transitional controls on free movement. That means that the mistake that was made in 2007, whereby the transitional arrangements did not last the seven years, which was not the case with Romania and Bulgaria, will never be repeated. But that is a different form of migration. Those who came from south Asia and the Caribbean came to stay. If the hon. Gentleman looks at his constituency, he will find that a lot of the migration is easyJet migration. The communities will come from eastern Europe, they will work and they will go back. There are some who have stayed, but the vast majority have gone back to their countries. UKIP said that it would be the end of the world on 1 January—that thousands of Romanians and Bulgarians would come into this country. As the House knows, the Home Affairs Committee went to Luton airport and the plane was half empty, and 4,000 Romanians have left the country since 1 January, so the worst predictions were not realised.

When we look at east European migration, we should also consider migration from outside the EU. It is time the Government abandoned their target of bringing net migration below 100,000. I know that the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary have tried very hard to reach that target, but unfortunately it will not happen. The Prime Minister gave evidence before the Liaison Committee, and better to abandon the target and admit that it will not be met than continue to say that we still want to ensure that it will get below 100,000, because that will not happen.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that in advocating this policy there is a real danger that the message is going out around the world and to entrepreneurs who want to come to places such as Shoreditch that Britain is closed for business?

[Keith Vaz]

I agree with my hon. Friend. I wish she had seen the Prime Minister’s appearance before the Liaison Committee, because he is a class act in respect of his evidence. He told the Committee that he is responsible for the immigration total not going below 100,000 because he has been going around the world drumming up support for students to come and study in this country. He looked no further. It is a great achievement. When he went to China, he told all the Chinese to come and study in the UK. When he went to India, as he has done four times—full credit to him for being the first Prime Minister to visit India four times—he told all the Indians to come to study in Britain. No wonder the target has not been met. He is responsible.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend and parliamentary neighbour for giving way. In the city that we represent we have two superb universities, both of which want to attract students from India. Yet the Home Office insists that students applying for visas have to go through credibility interviews. How on earth can the Government on the one hand say they want to increase our links and trade with India, and on the other hand make it more difficult for students from India to come to the UK?

[Keith Vaz]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Both vice-chancellors were dying to get on the Prime Minister’s plane when he went to India, to get more students to come over. All that will do is increase the total.

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that the real damage to public trust on immigration was done under the last Government? After years of this country happily accepting roughly 40,000 people a year, the last Government deliberately did not take out the exclusion when the new nations joined the European Union. Levels of net immigration rose dramatically to more than 250,000 a year in an illegitimate cheap-labour policy. We are now reaping the whirlwind that that caused.

[Keith Vaz]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman heard what I said to the hon. Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson), but we have already had the mea culpa. There is a limit to how many times even a Catholic can say “mea culpa” to the House of Commons. We get what we did wrong and it will not happen again; I do not think any more countries will be joining the EU at this rate.

Let me tell the Prime Minister about the importance of what he does with his European partners as he pushes forward the reform agenda. I am thinking about the issue of illegal migration from outside the EU. The Home Affairs Committee has been to the border of Greece and Turkey; 100,000 people cross illegally to Greece from Turkey every year. They want to live in the UK or western Europe. Some 40,000 migrants are camped in Morocco waiting to come to Spain. Only last week, the French authorities, under a socialist Government, disbanded the camp at Calais. Eight hundred people were trying to come from Calais to the United Kingdom. As we hear on the news so frequently, people are literally dying as they seek to come from Libya and north Africa to enter the EU through Italy.

This is a big issue for the EU. It cannot be confronted by the United Kingdom on its own and there must be support for our EU partners on the southern rim of the EU. Greece, Italy and Spain need the support of the British Government and Brussels to ensure that they can deal with illegal migration. It cannot be fair that people are risking their lives to come here. We need a new partnership with EuroMed to ensure that there is that support.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware of stories in the press about the French? When people get on lorries going from France to the British mainland, they are caught and given to the French police. But the French police do not take any direct action; they put them back into the system and the people try again a week later. Something stronger needs to be done in relation to the French.

[Keith Vaz]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. If he has not been to Calais, I suggest that he goes there. The problem is that the French clock off at 5 pm, so it is easy for people to know when the French authorities are not doing their job. He makes the case for better co-operation with the French authorities and for ensuring that our Home Secretary and the French Interior Minister can work together to deal with the problem.

The Gracious Speech always talks about other measures and I hope that those will include a toughening up of our policy on foreign national offenders. Currently, there are 10,695 foreign national offenders in our prisons costing us £300 million a year. The top three countries are Poland, Ireland and Jamaica. Two of those are EU countries; I cannot understand why an EU country cannot deal with these issues in a more productive way. I know that the issue is a concern to the Prime Minister because he said so when he gave evidence recently. It is vital that these countries take back their own citizens as quickly as possible. We must initiate legislation to make it a requirement that, at sentence, people produce their passports and declare their nationalities. What the Home Office says—there is a slight problem between the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice—is that it does not know about nationality until much later. If we know about nationality at the beginning, we can start the process not of removal, but of looking at removal, much earlier.

I am sorry that no legislation is proposed on extradition. The hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) has led a brilliant campaign to protect two of her constituents, Mr and Mrs Dunham—British citizens who should not be in the United States of America and are there only because of a flawed extradition treaty. They are currently in detention and they are in great difficulties. There was an attempted suicide before they left the country. Despite the fact that America is our closest ally, I really think we should be talking to the Americans about ensuring that we can change this treaty, because what is going on is just not fair.

As for policing, I welcome the Bill on serious crime. Some £500 million of confiscation orders imposed on criminals in the past five years remains unpaid. The Mr Bigs—or Mr and Mrs Bigs—are getting away with not paying fines imposed by the courts. The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police has put forward some very reasonable suggestions, and I hope they will be included in the Bill. We should not allow criminals who benefit from the proceeds of crime to leave prison, and certainly not allow them to leave the country. We need to make sure that our system is joined up to prevent them from going before they pay out what the court has imposed on them.

The Government have radically changed the landscape of policing. I am not sure whether, at the end of the process, it will be as uncluttered as it was when they started. I know it is the Home Secretary’s wish that she declutter the landscape. I welcome the National Crime Agency and the College of Policing, which are incredibly important changes. I was present at the Police Federation conference when the Home Secretary made her speech which means that there is no need for legislation on the federation. After that speech, I decided that I would not want to meet her on a dark, wet night in Leicester, because it was certainly extremely brave. I was sitting next to Sir David Normington, and we thought it was too brave a speech to make, but in fact the Police Federation has shown that it can change. I hope that it will continue with the reform agenda and ensure that it becomes much more democratic. As the House knows, the Select Committee suggested that every police officer should get back £130 because there is £70 million in the bank accounts of the Police Federation and the local federations.

I am sorry there is not a health Bill to deal with sugar. Sugar, as we know, is a killer. I am glad to see that in the Tea Room we have now replaced some of the sugary biscuits with fruit at the point where we go to pay for our food. As a diabetic, I think it is extremely important that we save the Government some of the £10 million that we spend every year on dealing with this.

I welcome what is being done on violence against women. The Home Secretary has done a great job in trying to ensure that this work takes place. However, I feel that we missed an opportunity on female genital mutilation. The Prime Minister’s summit is on 22 July, and the Select Committee will probably report at the end of June. There are 24,000 women and girls at risk of FGM, and 66,000 have been subjected to it. I would have liked to see a Bill toughening up the responsibility on doctors to report this. I hope that the Select Committee’s report will be useful for the summit. The Government should look at their guidelines. Only yesterday, a woman was on the tarmac ready to be deported to Nigeria even though she said that if her children returned there they would be subject to FGM. In these cases, we should be very careful to make sure that people are not returned to a position that we would not like in which they are subjected to violence of this kind.

As the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition said, the whole House will welcome the modern slavery Bill. This practice is a curse that blights our society. As a modern state and the fourth richest country in the world, we should take a lead in dealing with it. When we did our inquiry into human trafficking, it was difficult to find victims who were prepared to come out and say they were victims. We must make sure that they are immune from prosecution under the Bill, because if they report what is happening we do not want them to then be prosecuted for being in that position. I am sure—because the shadow Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), has spoken often about this—that the Opposition will support what the Government are doing so that we can have a benchmark Bill that will truly be something of which the whole House can be proud.

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. This morning, the Downing street press office made available to the British and, indeed, international press a 100-plus page document that sets out in great detail every item in the Queen’s Speech, but Downing street is not making it available to Members of Parliament and it is not in the Vote Office. Is there anything you could do, Mr Speaker, to bring to the urgent attention of Downing street office holders the need to share the information with Parliament?