Police Reform and Social Responsibility Bill
Keith Vaz Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)
I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
From the very start of British policing, Sir Robert Peel’s key principle that the
“police are the public and the public are the police”
has set the standard across the world.
I am sure the whole House will join me in praising the bravery, courage and professionalism of our police officers and staff, who do their dangerous job usually unarmed. As we saw again last week, police officers up and down the country put their lives on the line every day. Neighbourhood police officers and police community support officers deal with antisocial behaviour, catch and deter criminals and reassure the public. The Government appreciate and value all their efforts.
But it is a sad fact that despite these efforts, crime is still too high, too many communities still live in fear, and too many people still do not believe, rightly or wrongly, that the criminal justice system is on their side. Our reforms to policing will make the service even better at fighting crime, more responsive to the needs of their local communities and much more efficient.
We will not just talk about being tough on crime and its causes. Instead, we will free police officers up to be tough on crime by slashing the bureaucracy and targets that have kept them from the streets, and by giving them back the discretion to do what they believe is right. We will shift power directly into the hands of the public as they elect police and crime commissioners to lead the fight against crime and disorder in their areas.
At national and international level, we will support the police in dealing with crime that crosses police force and international borders, so we will use subsequent legislation to introduce a powerful new operational body, the national crime agency, to take the fight against serious and organised crime to the next level and to enhance the security of our borders.
Britain remains a high crime country. In England and Wales alone, the police are recording more than 1,000 incidents of grievous bodily harm or actual bodily harm every day and more than 4 million total crimes a year. That is unacceptable. We have one of the most expensive criminal justice systems in the world, but only half the public trust that it will protect them from criminals. We are now faced with the added challenge of cutting crime at the same time as we deal with the record budget deficit.
To those who say that we should slow the pace of reform because of the need to make budget cuts, I say that the economic situation makes reform more important, not less. We need to do more to cut crime, reduce bureaucracy, increase accountability and drive value for money precisely because we are reducing budgets.
The current policing governance arrangements are simply not working. Police authorities have become remote from the public—only 7% of people have even heard of them, and only 8% of local authority wards in England and Wales are represented on their police authority. They are not effective at doing what they are supposed to do. Fewer than one in three police authorities inspected last year were found to be performing well overall, and fewer than one in five performed well in setting strategic direction and value for money, despite the fact that these are their two main functions. They have neither the democratic mandate to set police priorities, nor the capability to scrutinise police performance.
We need a new approach, one that takes power from the bureaucrats and puts it back in the hands of the people and the professionals. So the deal for the police is greater public accountability through police and crime commissioners and, in exchange, more freedom to do their jobs, less Government interference and much less bureaucracy. We have already begun slashing Labour’s bureaucracy. By scrapping the stop-and-account form and cutting the items recorded during a stop and search, we will save 800,000 hours of police time every year, and that is just the start.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
Will the right hon. Lady join me in commending the work of Jan Berry, who was appointed by the previous Government but completed her report under the present Government, and her recommendations to reduce police bureaucracy? Will the right hon. Lady give the House an undertaking that that work will continue, and that Jan Berry or someone like her will continue to monitor the reduction in the bureaucracy that is hampering the police in doing their job?
Mrs May
I am happy to take up the point made by the right hon. Gentleman. Jan Berry did a very good job in looking at police bureaucracy. Obviously, she had considerable experience which enabled her to do that. I can reassure the right hon. Gentleman that the work will continue. We are already taking forward further work in a number of ways to examine the bureaucracy surrounding policing so that we can take further steps to reduce the amount of bureaucracy that the police have to deal with.
With a strong democratic mandate from the ballot box, police and crime commissioners will hold their chief constable to account for cutting crime. They will have the power to appoint and dismiss chief constables if they do not believe they are performing effectively. If the public do not believe that their police and crime commissioner is performing effectively, the commissioner will face the ultimate sanction of rejection at that same ballot box. Importantly, police and crime commissioners will set the annual budget for their force and will determine the local precept—the local contribution to policing costs.
Police authorities are not properly accountable for how public money is used, so they do not drive value for money in their forces. The democratic mandate of police and crime commissioners will put them in a much stronger position to drive the efficiencies and value for money needed to ensure that resources are focused on the front line.
Mrs May
No, I shall make some progress. Let me make this point clear: the money will not come from funds that would otherwise have gone to policing. In the spending review, the Treasury provided funds specifically for these elections because it knows, as I do, that this money will help to cut crime. In contrast, I ask hon. Members to remember that we currently spend £120 million of public money every day on paying the interest alone on the debt that the previous Labour Government racked up.
Our proposals to introduce police and crime commissioners will reconnect the police with the public they serve, and will ensure that the police focus on what local people want, not on what national politicians think they want. Our proposals will help to cut crime and will deliver the efficient, effective and responsive police service that we all want.
As well as giving power back to communities in terms of policing, the Bill will give power over licensing decisions back to local communities. Five years ago, when Labour introduced 24-hour drinking, they promised us a European-style café culture. I was the shadow Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport at the time, and I told the House that Labour was being reckless in pressing ahead with longer licensing hours without first dealing with the problems of binge drinking. Sadly, Labour’s Licensing Act 2003 has proved to be the disaster that many predicted. The police continue to fight a battle against alcohol-fuelled crime and disorder, and the taxpayer continues to pick up the bill of more than £8 billion per year. Last year, there were more than 1 million alcohol-related hospital admissions. That cannot go on.
Over the summer, we consulted on plans to overhaul the Licensing Act to give local communities greater power to tackle the problems associated with alcohol. We received more than 1,000 responses, which we have taken into account. The Bill will give all those affected by licensed premises the chance to have a say in the licensing process. It will allow early morning restriction orders to be extended to between midnight and 6 am and it will give licensing authorities the power to take swift action to tackle problem premises by refusing licence applications or applying for a licence review, without having to wait for a relevant representation from a responsible authority. The Bill will also lower the evidential hurdle for licensing authorities, so that it is easier for them to refuse or revoke licences from irresponsible retailers. In addition, the Bill will double the maximum fine for under-age sales to £20,000.
Mrs May
May I pay tribute to the Home Affairs Committee’s work on the issue? I shall finish talking about what is in the Bill and will then comment on the issue raised by the right hon. Gentleman, which is not covered in the Bill.
We shall allow local councils to charge a late-night levy on licensed premises that open after midnight to help to pay for late-night policing and other services, such as taxi marshals or street wardens. On the issue raised by the right hon. Gentleman, which is not included in the Bill, the Government remain committed to banning the below-cost sale of alcohol and we will bring forward proposals on that shortly.
Right hon. and hon. Members will not need me to tell them of the growing concern about the availability, use and potential harm of so-called legal highs. We supported the previous Government in the action they took to ban mephedrone, and we have taken legislative action against a similar but even more potent drug: naphyrone. The existing arrangements for bringing a drug under control using the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 remains our preferred approach. However, it simply takes too long to respond effectively to these new and fast-evolving substances. In the meantime, their availability in the UK goes unchecked and we run the risk that they will gain a foothold—as mephedrone did—and that they will cause damage on our streets and harm to our young people. The power in the Bill to make year-long temporary class drug orders—temporary banning orders—will strike the right balance between swift action and expert advice. The offences in the Bill are rightly targeted at suppliers and traffickers, and carry significant penalties.
On a different issue, I am sure that right hon. and hon. Members from all parties would agree that for too long the historic Parliament square has been subjected to unacceptable levels of disruption and abuse caused by long-term encampments occupying the site. The actions of a small minority have also prevented others from enjoying an important public space. The Serious Organised Crime and Police Act 2005 tried to deal with the disruption on the square by targeting protest as a whole, but it went too far and missed the point. The continuing occupation of the square and last week’s violence, on which I updated the House earlier, have shown that those measures have not worked. The Bill will restore the right to peaceful protest around Parliament by repealing the relevant sections of the 2005 Act.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
The hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) was absolutely right in saying that the hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) was making an excellent speech. He did make an excellent speech—not just in his comments on alcohol-related crime, but in what he said about procurement—and it is a pleasure to follow him. If ever there is a vacancy on the Select Committee on Home Affairs, I hope that he will apply to join us because his speech was really excellent. I will speak very briefly, as all hon. Members must, and will make just four points. I agree with much of the Bill, as many of its provisions reflect the Home Affairs Committee’s recommendations in the previous Parliament.
As the House knows, 50% of crime in this country is alcohol related. All hon. Members who have spoken on that subject have talked about the effect that alcohol-related crime has on local communities in their town centres, and the enormous amount of police resources that have to deal with it. The Government have taken a very important step in terms of licensing. I was reassured during my intervention on the Home Secretary when she said that the Government would continue to consider the issue of minimum pricing. Tonight’s speeches reflect the fact that there is concern not necessarily about the pubs and clubs in our town centres, but about the supermarkets.
If one goes to Asda or Morrisons—I am not suggesting that hon. Members on either side of the House may choose to do this; the Chamber may be about to empty—one can get 36 cans of lager for £18, or about 50p a can. [Hon. Members: “How do you know?”] I do not drink alcohol, but one of my researchers looked into this over the weekend. There is no doubt that it is cheaper to buy alcohol in supermarkets. As we heard earlier, people get tanked up before they go out because of the very cheap cost of alcohol there. I am glad that the Government are doing something about minimum pricing, and we look forward to seeing what they do.
Andrew Griffiths
Does the right hon. Gentleman agree that when one can go to a supermarket and buy a can of strong lager more cheaply than a can of Coca-Cola, that sends out an extremely damaging message to young people? That is why so many young people are pre-loading. Before they go out for an evening, they drink far too much, and we see the effects on our high streets, in our police cells and in our emergency units.
Keith Vaz
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, although some may say that drinking Coca-Cola is almost as bad for young people as drinking alcohol.
My second point is about drugs. The Government are taking absolutely the right powers in the Bill to be able to ban legal highs. Mephedrone—commonly known as meow meow—has been a big problem. The Select Committee heard very eloquent evidence from the mother of a young girl who had died as a result of a legal high. It was clearly taking too long to ban such substances, so we warmly welcome putting into the hands of the Home Secretary the power to be able to bring a statutory instrument before the House to deal with these matters.
I also warmly welcome what has been proposed about Parliament square, especially after what happened last Thursday.
Dr Julian Huppert (Cambridge) (LD)
On the subject of drugs, does the right hon. Gentleman share my concern that the Bill has some suggestion of weakening the role of scientific input? I am sure that that is not the Government’s intention, but does he agree that it might be helpful to secure that aspect and to ensure that in the case of any temporary bans, there are at least some scientific suggestions before the decision is made?
Keith Vaz
The hon. Gentleman, who is the resident scientist on the Home Affairs Committee, is right to point to the need for evidence-based decisions and the role of science.
My final point concerns police commissioners. Two members of the Select Committee are here—my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) and the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert)—and other Members have spoken about this. There was no agreement in the Committee on whether elected police commissioners were a good idea, and we therefore put it to one side. We were more concerned with producing a report that would be helpful to the House before this debate and would enable Members to look at the implications and practicalities of elected commissioners.
The Committee asked the Government and the House to note three points, the first of which—it was mentioned by the hon. Member for Stroud—was whether it was desirable for a chief constable who was serving in a certain area subsequently to stand for the post of an elected commissioner. We thought that there should be a cooling-off period so that if the chief constable for Leicestershire, for example, wanted to be a commissioner he—it is a man at the moment—could not do so until his whole term of four years had expired. There was unanimity on these points. We hope that the Government will consider this and that others will do so if they are lucky enough to serve on the Bill Committee.
The Select Committee’s second point concerned the cost of commissioners. I noted the exchange between those on the Front Benches about special advisers. Of course, I accept what the Policing Minister has said. We need to be very careful about costs, especially those associated with the crime panels. I do not agree that those bodies should be elected, but they should be representative. As the Select Committee said, they should comprise those who have already been elected to represent district areas. It is important that they are as representative of the local community as possible, with the right to appoint independent members to deal with the issue of gender and ethnicity balance, which may be lacking in relation to elected representatives.
The final point relates to operational independence. The hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless) is not here, but he is the Committee’s leading expert on operational independence. The Committee felt that the time had come for a clear definition of where the responsibilities of the commissioner begin, where those of the chief constable end, and where those of the Home Office impact on the new responsibilities. We suggested not a Magna Carta, but a charter or a memorandum to set out those powers and responsibilities. We think that this is an appropriate time for that so that there is clarity. I hope that when hon. Members discuss this matter in Committee, they will find a way forward on such a memorandum of understanding.
Every local authority is different: Leicestershire is different from Bedfordshire, Bedfordshire is different from Cambridgeshire, and Greater Manchester is different from Birmingham. This is not Gotham city—I am sure that you were a fan of Batman and Robin, Mr Deputy Speaker. Commissioner Gordon will not put the light up in the air so that Batman—the equivalent, I suppose, of the chief constable—comes rushing forward to solve the crime. If only it were as easy as that. I am sure that there would be mobile phones in any new series of Batman. The fact is that these are complicated issues.
If we take the party politics out of this matter and analyse the discussions that we have had today, including the contributions of my right hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears) and other hon. Members from both sides of the House, I am sure that we can make some progress. I hope that progress can be made in Committee on accountability and on the other important issues that have been mentioned today.
Controlling Migration
Keith Vaz Excerpts(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Mrs May
I thank my hon. Friend for that question, and echo his thanks to my hon. Friend the Minister for Immigration for his sterling work. We are keen to look at these other routes, particularly the settlement route, as well as at the other aspects, and over the coming months, as I indicated in response to the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), we will be asking the Migration Advisory Committee to consider the matter so that we can introduce the changes. I hesitate to put an absolute date on that, but I hope that we will be able to announce something next year.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
The Home Secretary is more famous for her footwear than her headgear, but may I welcome the exemptions to the cap that she has announced today? The Home Affairs Committee made recommendations on intra-company transfers and elite scientists, and this is the right approach for the immigration policy that the Government have decided to pursue. On students, however, she will not be able to tackle the issue of bogus colleges unless she accepts a previous recommendation by the Committee to restrict the use of the word “college”. It is because this word continues to be used that people enter this country and pursue non-educational courses. Will she please look into that? Will she also examine how the whole administration of the immigration system operates in relation to illegal immigration?
Mrs May
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his question. His turn of phrase encourages me to enjoy my time in front of the Home Affairs Committee when that happy occasion next comes around. He also made a serious point about his Committee’s past recommendations on this issue. We will certainly look at his specific suggestion. We need to consider a number of ways of ensuring that students coming to the UK are genuinely coming as students and to institutions properly offering an education and providing a qualification. This is not just about the immigration system, but about the reputation of the UK, because we do not want people to come here thinking they are coming to a college on an educational course, but then find that they have come to something quite different.
Immigration
Keith Vaz Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Mr Field
My right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who chairs the Home Affairs Select Committee, laughed, as I did, at that suggestion, but I think it is a rather good one. I shall touch on the Migration Advisory Committee report later. The Government might wish to refer to it; it would solve some of our difficulties. It is an intriguing idea and I hope that it will be developed in the debate.
We were talking about how the debate has changed. Perhaps the best way of showing that is to look at the stance of the Institute for Public Policy Research. In the past, no organisation was more adamant that we should have open borders and less prepared to consider the downside of such a policy. It is very significant that, this week, the IPPR has moved into the mainstream of the debate by saying that this country benefits from immigration—I doubt whether anyone would wish to express a contrary view in this House, which is important on account of our teaching role in the country at large—but that the debate is about the numbers, not about the principle.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right that during my 23 years in this House and during his time here, there has been a shift in the tone of the debate. There is agreement that immigration has to be controlled, but can we be clear that we are talking about non-EU immigration? Does he accept that we cannot do anything about 80% of the people who come into this country?
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.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
It is a great pleasure to follow the speech of the hon. Member for Croydon Central (Gavin Barwell). I cannot believe he has been in the House for only six months. Given the eloquence and fairness of his speech and the way in which he crafted it, it sounded to me as though he had been here for six years. He is very proud of his multicultural constituency, and I thought he was fair and balanced in how he put his arguments forward. It is right that we should conduct a debate on immigration in such terms.
I apologise to the House for having missed part of the debate. The Liaison Committee was meeting the Prime Minister for the first time, and of course it was important for me to be there as the Chairman of the Select Committee on Home Affairs. In fact, the Prime Minister gave us a bit of news on immigration that I will report to the House in a moment. I missed the contributions of many right hon. and hon. Members, and I look forward to reading them in Hansard tomorrow.
I declare an interest: I, of course, am an immigrant. My parents were originally from Mumbai, having gone there from Goa to seek work. They then went from Mumbai to Yemen for similar reasons, as economic migrants. I and my sisters were born in Yemen, and I came to this country when I was nine years of age. As in the situation that the hon. Member for Croydon Central described, my parents chose to come here, exercising the rights that they had through living in a British Crown colony, Aden, to enable their children to grow up and remain here.
I am extremely proud of this country. I am proud of its multiculturalism and the way in which it has absorbed so many communities, not just in the past 30 years but throughout its history. It is difficult these days to know what is pure English, because the British people have been represented by so many different cultures over the past 1,000 years.
What has been good about this debate is the tone in which it has been conducted. I remember that, when I was first elected, great passions were raised on both sides of the House on the subject. I was in opposition then and have returned to opposition now after 13 years. No debate on immigration policy was conducted without people getting extraordinarily passionate and very angry with each other across the Floor of the House. Today’s consensus is extremely important, and I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) for suggesting the debate and the Backbench Business Committee for holding it. Normally, we discuss immigration only when the Government of the day, be they Conservative or Labour, introduce legislation. We have had many immigration Bills over the 23 years I have been in the House, and I am not sure all of them have achieved what they have been intended to achieve. It is good to be able to discuss immigration in the House and to share our experiences.
The Home Affairs Committee has just published its report on the immigration cap. I urge all Members to read it or at least the conclusions and the summary, as I do with other Select Committee reports. We did not argue with the Government’s desire to impose a cap—that is not the purpose of a Select Committee—but we wanted to see whether they could achieve their goal of reducing immigration from hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands. Our conclusion—this was an all-party decision, and there was one unanimous vote in the Committee, which is, of course, in the report—was that they needed to look again at the cap because it cannot, as currently constructed, achieve what they want within the five years they have set out. If they want to look at the figures in five years’ time, they will have to look at the immigration figures in 2013 and extrapolate them to 2015.
The Committee made a number of suggestions that it felt would be helpful. We thought it was extremely important that the Government should look at different avenues if they were to reduce immigration to tens of thousands. The fresh piece of news that I bring to the House this evening is that, in answer to a question at the Liaison Committee—I do not know whether the Minister even knows this, although he may have mentioned it in his speech—the Prime Minister said that the Government’s new immigration policy would be announced next week.
That is the earliest indication that we will have a statement to the House at some stage, and we welcome that. At the moment, we have a temporary immigration cap, and people are concerned. Business is concerned about whether it will be able to bring in the employees that it absolutely needs to fill vacancies that it cannot fill from within this country. Students need to be told whether they will be caught by the permanent cap. As the Committee said in its report, if the Government are to achieve their reduction in numbers, the overseas student population will have to be reduced by a huge number, which will, of course, affect the education system. At a time when fees will be going up, the loss of income to some of our colleges and universities will be very serious.
Anyway, the crucial thing is that we will get a statement of Government policy next week. In a sense, the debate should have taken place next Thursday, rather than this Thursday. However, I am sure that we will find opportunities for further debate on this issue.
The hon. Member for Croydon Central mentioned the possibility of an exemption for footballers. In fact, that is what we have at the moment. Footballers are exempted, but scientists who might win Nobel prizes—the elite scientists—are not. One of the recommendations in the Committee’s report is that if we are going to exempt footballers—even after last night’s result, although everyone who plays for England is, of course, English—we should look at groups that could help the economy.
The Committee also suggested that intra-company transfers should be excluded, because they represent 60% of tier 1. Within 12 hours of our report’s being published, the Prime Minister accepted that recommendation at Prime Minister’s Question Time. Select Committees always feel rather chuffed when their recommendations are accepted by Ministers, and especially by the Prime Minister.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead mentioned Professor Metcalf, and I join the praise of him. The Migration Advisory Committee, which survived the cull of quangos, provides a very useful service. Today, it published a report telling us in stark terms that there will have to be a reduction in student migration and family migration if the Government are to get to their figure for 2015. I am afraid that that will affect all those in the House with constituencies that contain settled communities whose members, for whatever reason, want to bring spouses and dependants from abroad.
Across the Chamber, I see the hon. Member for Croydon Central and the hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), who must have quite a large settled community. The hon. Member for Finchley and Golders Green (Mike Freer) has a big immigration case load. On the Opposition side of the House, my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), both shadow Ministers—my hon. Friends the Members for Bradford South (Mr Sutcliffe) and for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood)—and many others, including myself, have immigration case loads. Our Whip, my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), will have hundreds of immigration cases to deal with at her surgery tomorrow. The reduction in immigration will affect not only people coming as students, but our settled communities—British citizens whose sons and daughters wish to bring spouses or dependants from abroad. We will all be affected as constituency MPs who deal with immigration cases.
I commend to the House the excellent report of John Vine, the chief inspector of immigration. When he was originally appointed a year and a half ago, he had a pretty hard time from the Home Affairs Committee, because we did not like the fact that he was called an “inspector” and wanted him to be called the “independent inspector”, and we felt he was far too close to the Home Office. However, we need not have feared for his independence, because every single one of his reports has been severely critical of the UK Border Agency. Even today, he has reported that of the £40 million-worth of fines imposed by UKBA on those not complying in respect of illegal immigration, only £5.6 million has been collected. He says that if the Government are to tackle illegal immigration, they must be strong and firm. Any discussion of immigration must deal with illegal immigration as well as legal. I do not agree with the Mayor of London that there should be an amnesty for those living illegally in this country. However, it is important that we consider their cases and give them a decision as quickly as possible.
That leads me to the second part of what I wanted to say today, which relates to a constituency interest of the hon. Member for Croydon Central—I hope he does not take it personally if I criticise UKBA, which is based in his constituency. UKBA remains unfit for purpose. Of course, a Labour Home Secretary announced that, but it will be still less fit for purpose following 20% budget cuts. When Lin Homer appeared before the Home Affairs Committee last week, she said that she could cope with that 20% reduction and with losing 5,000 members of staff, but the Committee believed that such cuts would mean that UKBA could not provide the kind of service required.
One problem is that in the time it has taken UKBA to deal with immigration cases, people get married and have children, which is inevitable when people meet someone they love. Then they want to stay, because they have been here for years. I am sure all right hon. and hon. Members know of such cases in their constituencies. Last week, I met at least half a dozen people who had been in this country trying to get their cases resolved for 14 years. They have become settled and they do not want to go back, and UKBA must deal with that problem. We must be careful in asylum cases that we do not send back those who are genuinely persecuted, but we must deal with other cases as quickly as possible.
One perennial problem for all hon. Members who deal with legacy cases is the letter that comes back from UKBA saying, “Sorry, we can’t deal with this case now, but we’ll have it done by July 2011.” There are hundreds of thousands of legacy cases, some of which lasted the entire length of the previous Labour Government. I have told Immigration Ministers a number of times, “You could be the first Immigration Minister in history to clear the backlog.” None seems to have wanted that epitaph, so the backlog remains after 13 years. Lin Homer has said that if the backlog is not cleared by 31 July 2011, neither she nor any of her senior officers will take their bonuses next year. We will hold her to that. I want to see how she does that following a reduction in staff.
Another thing that concerned us was the rise in indefinite leave to remain—up 4% over the past four months. The House brings in legislation, and tries to do it as quickly as possible, but the figures are going up because the Home Office is granting indefinite leave. Indeed, net immigration this year might even increase, despite the temporary cap, because of the number of ILRs being granted. We should therefore be very sceptical. My right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead keeps talking about the numbers. Those numbers will continue to rise if we clear a backlog of 400,000 and grant indefinite leave at such a rate—an extra 30,000 cases since February. We do not want people arguing at the end of that, “This Government have let in a whole lot of immigrants.” It is a necessary conclusion to the legacy process.
My next point is about foreign national prisoners. One of the problems is a lack of co-ordination between the Prison Service and the UK Border Agency and the length of time between the finishing of a sentence and removal. Even though we assist people to leave—we pay them up to £1,500 to leave the country—there is no monitoring to ensure that they do not re-enter the country. I and other Home Affairs Committee members went to the camp at Calais, which was cleared several weeks after we visited, and the people to whom we spoke had every intention, if removed, of returning to Calais and making their way from there to the United Kingdom on the back of lorries. They know that the French police protect and monitor their border not on a 24-hour basis, but on a shift basis. Those determined to break immigration law know exactly when those shifts end. So rather than more legislation, there are practical and administrative ways of dealing with this issue.
This has been a good debate—it is important that we can discuss immigration in the way we have—but I caution Members on both sides of the House if they think that the solution to this problem rests entirely with non-EU immigration. One Select Committee member, the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood), who I think is one of the most outstanding Members in the new intake, inserted into a recent report a phrase about how the Government should be careful about being more restrictive on the routes of migration that they can control, because they cannot control other routes of migration.
That brings me to my final point about EU migration: neither Members nor the Government can do anything about 80% of the people entering this country, because they do so under treaty obligations that Conservative and Labour Ministers and Prime Ministers have signed over the years.
Mr Lilley
The right hon. Gentleman is very distinguished and knows the facts, even though he was not here when the Minister quoted them: net immigration into this country is 196,000, and net immigration from outside the EU is 184,000, so it is the bulk of the problem. To pretend otherwise is to mislead people outside the House.
Keith Vaz
I have great respect for the right hon. Gentleman, who is very interested in this subject and has spoken, I think, in every immigration debate in which I have spoken. Immigration is inevitably about volume and numbers, but the freedom of movement enjoyed by EU citizens means that they can come and go as they please. I was the Minister for Europe at the time of enlargement.
Keith Vaz
Yes, and that is the point. Some of our constituents’ criticisms are not about people who come from outside the EU, but about people who come from the EU. Hon. Members will remember the general election and the confrontation between the then Prime Minister and Mrs Gillian Duffy, whom I met for the first time at the Labour party conference one month ago. Her complaint was not about non-EU immigration, but about EU migration. That is what Mrs Duffy was concerned about. When we talk about such immigration and those numbers, we need to know that this House can do nothing about it. This may be an unpopular view in the House, but EU migration has been very good for Britain, for exactly the reasons that the right hon. Gentleman mentioned. During the boom years, people from Poland, Romania and Hungary came to this country and contributed to the boom; when it went, they went back.
Keith Vaz
The right hon. Gentleman cannot have it both ways. He cannot say that there is no impact, but then say something else when I say that there is freedom of movement. There is that capacity. We live on an island, so by all means let us have measures that will ensure that we do not overpopulate this island. That is now accepted in all parts of the House. I do not believe it possible to have a limit, because I do not think that the state can have a limit, as there are so many exemptions. America has an immigration cap, but there are so many exemptions that it is not even worth having. The American Government are currently charging Indian IT firms $2,000 a visa, to help with the cost of building the fence between Mexico and the United States. That is where things will end up unless we are careful about this whole debate. I believe that we can be careful. I believe that the Government will respond positively and that we need to conduct this debate in the kind of tone and with the kind of temperament that we have seen today.
Mike Freer
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his comment. The company is not looking for an intra-company transfer, and that is exactly the problem. If it cannot recruit a Chinese national or an Indian national, it will have to recruit them in an offshore company, or not at all. Either way, we are hampering the expansion of a good UK company, and that cannot be the purpose of the cap.
The other issue is that if we continue to recruit offshore highly skilled technical migrants who are essential to UK companies, we may benefit from the exports of the UK company, but we will lose the benefit that that small number of highly skilled economic migrants bring to the economy through their personal taxation and spending.
Keith Vaz
I apologise for intervening on the hon. Gentleman’s excellent speech, but that company needs those people now because of the skills they possess. This is not an issue of settlement; it is an issue of ensuring that we can produce goods and therefore employ more British people in such companies.
Mike Freer
I accept what the right hon. Gentleman says. We need a long-term strategy to develop the necessary skills. We can already provide the technical skills, but the training in our British universities cannot provide a knowledge of foreign markets. There is a difference between training someone in the latest Sri Lankan IT software, which we can do, and teaching them the nuances of how to access the decision makers in the Chinese economy, which we cannot. There is a big difference between the two.
I understand that the Government might be thinking of relaxing their stance on visa extensions. The company has an Indian graduate who can no longer get a visa extension. The company will lose his skills and his contribution. I ask the Minister to think again, and perhaps to assess companies on a case-by-case basis to see whether an extension could be granted because of the contribution that certain individuals make.
Oral Answers to Questions
Keith Vaz Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Damian Green
Some Labour Members seem not to think this an important issue, but it is an extremely important issue. Part of our summer crackdown has been precisely aimed at sham marriages, and that campaign has produced more than 800 arrests. Perhaps most vividly, and extremely regrettably, a Church of England vicar has been convicted of facilitating sham marriages. We are working very hard with the Church authorities to make sure that nothing like this happens in future and that we help vicars, those in register offices and all such people to make sure that they are not accidentally involved in any more of this type of criminality.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
One area that might well need reform is the humane removal of failed asylum seekers, following the death only 20 days ago of Jimmy Mubenga. Will the Minister confirm newspaper reports that the contract for escort services provided by G4S has now been terminated? What immediate steps, pending the outcome of the police investigation and the other investigations, is he taking to ensure that that kind of tragic event never happens again?
Damian Green
The right hon. Gentleman will know, of course, that while a police investigation is going on it would be completely improper of me to give any details about that investigation. I can confirm that the contract for the removals has been given to Reliance, but I should say at this point—to clear up any possible misunderstanding—that the tendering for the new contract took place under the previous Government, last September, and the decision was taken in August. The change in the contract away from G4S has nothing to do with any recent events.
Aviation Security Incident
Keith Vaz Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Mrs May
I thank my hon. Friend for his detailed question. I am not in a position to give him an absolute answer, because forensic work is still ongoing in relation to the device. Obviously, once that forensic work is complete, we will know rather more about the device and, therefore, about what the response should be in relation to screening that sort of device. Until that forensic work is complete, it would not be appropriate for me to hazard an answer to the point that he has made.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
Mr Speaker, may I declare my interest, commend those who work in East Midlands airport, and warmly welcome the phone conversation between the Prime Minister and President Ali Abdullah Saleh? Does the Home Secretary not agree that the best way to protect our people is to work with the Yemeni Government? That means giving them the equipment and the security capability that we promised them at the London conference in January and implementing the recommendations of the Home Affairs Committee. I implore her to work with the Foreign Secretary and the International Development Secretary to ensure that a stunningly beautiful but desperately poor country does not fall into the hands of al-Qaeda?
Mrs May
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for those points. I understand that the equipment that was promised earlier this year, following the Detroit incident, is to be delivered to Yemen shortly. The Government have been working with the Yemeni Government, and we have common cause against al-Qaeda and will continue to do so for as long as it is in that country. Certainly, my right hon. Friends the Foreign Secretary and the Secretary of State for International Development are cognisant of the role that their Departments can play in helping the Yemen to fight back against the cancer of terrorism.
Anti-Slavery Day
Keith Vaz Excerpts(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the matter of Anti-Slavery Day.
It is probably close to 200 years since this House has debated slavery. As the chairman of the all-party human trafficking group, it is my great pleasure to open this debate, but it should not have been me opening it; it should have been the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart). I congratulate her on her pitch to the Backbench Business Committee and her success in securing this debate. However, once she had done so, she was immediately put into the shadow Government. She has risen like a phoenix from the ashes, and is now sitting by the Dispatch Box to answer for the Opposition. I congratulate her not only on securing this debate, but on her promotion.
William Wilberforce is a name that is synonymous with anti-slavery. In 1807, led by Wilberforce, an Act for the abolition of the slave trade was passed by Parliament. In 1833, the Slavery Abolition Act was passed. Why, therefore, are we here debating slavery, more than 200 years after the abolition of the slave trade? Perhaps we are celebrating the success of William Wilberforce; or are we here to congratulate ourselves that no slavery remains within the United Kingdom? We cannot do that. Slavery and trafficking are still far too common an occurrence. A frightening statistic is that there are estimated to be more than 27 million slaves in the world today. One in eight of them are in Europe, and at least 10,000 of them are here in the United Kingdom. How can that be true? When I walk around London or my constituency, I do not see slaves sweeping the streets or working in the fields. The fact that the problem is not as visible as it was in the time of William Wilberforce does not mean that it is not as important or as serious.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman rightly paid tribute to the work of my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), but will he join me in paying tribute to the work of Anthony Steen, his predecessor as Chairman of the all-party parliamentary group on human trafficking, for all his excellent work on bringing to the House’s attention the slavery that is human trafficking? I am sure that he was about to mention him in his speech.
Mr Bone
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend—I shall call him my right hon. Friend today—for that intervention, but he will have to wait just a little longer before I mention the former Member for Totnes.
The three most lucrative criminal activities in the world are those associated with narcotics and with firearms, and the trafficking of humans. The first two criminal activities are well documented and vast sums of money are rightly invested in catching the criminals involved. Why then is the trafficking of humans—modern-day slavery—so badly documented, and why is so little invested in the fight against it? It takes place on the same scale as narcotics and firearms offences, and that gap needs to be addressed.
So where are all those slaves, and whom does this affect? In the United Kingdom, the main victims are women and children. They are often tricked into coming to this country, usually with a promise of some sort of job. When they arrive here, they are often locked up and forced to have sex with up to 30 men a day. I shall give the House an example. I met a 14-year-old Kenyan girl who had been trafficked into this country by a middle-aged white man on a passport that did not bear her name and did not have her picture on it. She was taken to Liverpool, locked in a house and forced to have sex with numerous men. Luckily, she escaped after a few days and was helped by a national charity. She was one of the lucky ones, if you can call it lucky to endure what she had had to. She managed to escape, but how many girls do not manage to do so? How many girls are locked in houses such as those while we are debating this issue today? Even if there were just one, that would be one too many, but there is not just one; there are thousands.
We have some fantastic non-governmental organisations working with trafficked victims, including ECPAT UK, the POPPY project, the Human Trafficking Foundation, the Bromley Trust, the Tudor Trust, and Kalayaan, to name but a few. Their work must not stop. I have one single goal, however: I want all those NGOs and charities to become redundant, because they are no longer needed. That is my aim. As I mentioned, they do fantastic work with trafficked victims, but I believe that prevention is the key.
How do we prevent human trafficking? That is a very difficult question to answer. I believe that making the public more aware of the issue is a good first step. On 18 October, the UK will celebrate anti-slavery day for the first time. I would like to take this opportunity to thank my former colleague, Anthony Steen, for working tirelessly to make the Anti-slavery Day Act 2010 his lasting legacy to the House. He pioneered an approach to human trafficking that I am very happy to follow. Quite simply, he put modern-day slavery on the parliamentary map. Anti-slavery day will mark out what we all hope will be the beginning of the end of slavery in the United Kingdom and make the public aware of the gravity of the problem.
What can be done? First, we need to identify victims better. Very few ever approach local authorities to complain, and even if they do, those authorities might not realise that the problem has resulted from trafficking and modern-day slavery. The police are on the front line of trafficking. The individual police officer on the beat is the best and probably the first person to meet a trafficked victim, but does every police officer know what to do, how to help and to whom they should send the victim? We need to help the police and make them more aware of trafficked women. There needs to be a national protocol to help victims.
We also need to enhance the border control system and stop the traffickers from bringing in the victims in the first place. That is the very best way to end trafficking. The UK must be a country that it is just not worth the traffickers using.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
It is a real pleasure to follow the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous). He is right that this is a big issue. The fact that it unites my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), the hon. Members for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake) and for South West Bedfordshire and others is a real tribute to the work that Anthony Steen pioneered in his many years in the House of Commons.
I have been here for 23 years; others have been here for as long as I have while others still have been here for a shorter period. What a legacy for the House and the country was Anthony Steen’s private Member’s Bill, which had the support of hon. Members on both sides of the House and produced the marking of anti-slavery day. I wish that he were here. Perhaps he is—perhaps, in a moment, he is going to pop in to tell us that we have gone on for too long, and should hear the benefit of his expertise. I am glad that his expertise remains in this House, as the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone) has said. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Wellingborough for picking up this torch; he will become just as distinguished in his time in ensuring that this remains at the forefront of concerns among parliamentarians.
Of course, this is an important issue. The Select Committee on Home Affairs conducted a very long inquiry into human trafficking, which lasted a year. The hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington was one of the members of that Committee, which travelled to Russia and Ukraine. We took evidence from all the projects that have been mentioned today and we found, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan has pointed out, that victims were reluctant to come forward. We found out stunning statistics about what is the second-biggest illegal activity in the world after drugs. It is a billion-pound illegal industry, but it is very difficult to get people to come forward. That is why it is crucial that we have at our disposal the ability to track down the people traffickers.
I endorse what my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham said about the EU directive. It is very important that the Minister should reflect on this issue in the coming weeks and months and that we sign up to the directive. We cannot be kept apart from the rest of Europe when we need the support of other European countries to achieve the good and laudable aims that the current Government have in this area and that the previous Government certainly had.
I want to raise with the Minister three practical issues that will help us to achieve that aim. First, the Home Affairs Committee raised with the previous Prime Minister our concern about funding for the Metropolitan police’s people trafficking unit, which was disbanded nine months ago. Despite that, we have had successes, such as during Operation Golf this week, when people were found to be trafficking in central London. The Met should keep such relationships going with police forces in other parts of the world—in that case, for example, in Romania. The funding and the provision of resources for that unit are extremely important, because we require expertise.
Secondly, the UK Human Trafficking Centre was moved, as the Minister knows, away from independence and into the Serious Organised Crime Agency, which will now be abolished and form part of the new national crime agency. I urged the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice yesterday, during a debate about policing, to pause before the Government decide how the centre will sit within the national crime agency. The point about such organisations is that they have expertise beyond policing and act as a centre to co-ordinate many people and professions. It is vital that we retain such activity. I hope that the Minister before us will take up that issue with his ministerial colleague.
My final point is about the one issue that the Committee raised in its most recent report, because it is still a concern. There is no Europe-wide mechanism that brings together the origin, transition and destination countries of those who are trafficked. There is no such organisation. That work is done through conferences and meetings, and sometimes the European Union decides that it wants to be involved, but there needs to be a stand-alone organisation—a structure—to share good practice. When someone from Moldova travels through Greece, as the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire said, and ends up in Amsterdam, Bedford, Leicester, Wigan or wherever, they need to be tracked. That is not happening, but we have to ensure that those who are responsible for trafficking are prosecuted, because our record on such prosecutions is pretty bad.
I am absolutely delighted by the presence in the House of so many right hon. and hon. Members. We must keep debating the issue, because that is the only way in which we will effect real change.
Identity Documents Bill
Keith Vaz Excerpts(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Julie Hilling
I remain absolutely convinced that my constituents deserve fair treatment. They deserve either to have the money refunded—sadly, this mean-spirited Bill does not allow that to happen—or for their identity cards to continue, although I accept that this might be difficult. The easiest thing would be to allow them £30 credit towards a passport.
People have talked about alternative means of identification, but I wonder whether those hon. Members who are present know how much they cost. All those alternative means of identification cost more than the identity card. Those who are disabled—for instance, those with a visual disability or other conditions—cannot get a driving licence; and indeed, if someone was never going to drive, why would they apply for one? However, a driving licence is one of the few photographic means of identification that we have in this country. The identity card was therefore valuable as a tool with which people could prove their identity, which is becoming increasingly important and difficult to do nowadays.
Let me finish by saying that I believe that the Bill is mean-spirited. The Government should give £30 credit to those affected, and I very much hope that hon. Members will vote for that later.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
I have known you long enough to know that when you frown in the way that you have, Mr Deputy Speaker, you wish and expect short speeches from hon. Members. I therefore intend to be brief.
I came into the Chamber mindful of the Opposition amendment and with a view to supporting the proposal to pay compensation to those who have taken out voluntary cards. However, I have listened to what hon. Members have said, including the thoughtful speech by the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman). It is probably right that people should have been cautious in taking out a voluntary card, knowing that the policy was not carried in all parts of the House. However, it would have been better for the Government to pay the money back as a good-will gesture than for us to be fighting about £30 multiplied by 11,000 on the Floor of the House. I understand that the principle is important, and I say to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) that the 12 constituents and others who may have written to her are obviously deeply concerned. Perhaps £30 is not a lot to some people, but it is certainly a great deal to the constituents whom she mentioned.
Catherine McKinnell
Just to clarify whether £30 is a significant amount, in fact, we are not talking about £30; we are talking about the additional £50 that will be required to get another valid form of identification. An extra £50, making £80 in total, is a lot of money for some people, and particularly for pensioners, who have to save for some time to afford it.
Keith Vaz
I agree with my hon. Friend: it is a lot of money for some people, but it is not clear whether there is a huge point of principle, based as it is on the fact that people were clear that identity cards were an absolutely partisan policy on the part of the previous Government. Only my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall South—
Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab)
Walsall North—the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) is your sister.
Keith Vaz
I thank my hon. Friend for reminding me—I think I just about know the difference between my sister and my hon. Friend, who was so often the conscience of the Select Committee on Home Affairs when it considered the issue in the previous Parliament. We accepted that the previous Government had an absolute right to put through their legislation on ID cards. It was only my hon. Friend who reminded the Committee on so many occasions that he thought that the policy was wrong.
Mr Winnick
As for the previous Government, obviously there was controversy among Labour Members on the subject—it would have been odd if that were not so—but does my right hon. Friend not agree that the original idea for identity cards came from Michael Howard, when he was the Home Secretary in, of course, a Conservative Administration?
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)
I certainly agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall North (Mr Winnick): Michael Howard had a proposal for something called the smart card. He tried to get it through this House, but he could not do so.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. Let me remind hon. Members that we are discussing new clause 2. These points are not relevant. I am sure that you will wish to return to the new clause, Mr Vaz.
Keith Vaz
Unfortunately I did not know about those points until they were made. Had I known that they would be raised, I would not have given way. However, as you say, Mr Deputy Speaker, this is not a debate about Lord Howard; it is a debate about new clause 2.
Although I came into the Chamber wanting to support those on my Front Bench—and I still want to, because I have great respect for my hon. Friend the Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier), who was a superb Minister, appearing many times before the Home Affairs Committee on identity issues, including the cost of identity cards and their implementation—I am probably minded to abstain if there is a vote.
I understand that the Minister has written to—[Interruption.] Let me say to my right hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane), for whom I have enormous respect and affection, that I do not think that what is proposed is the equivalent of the nationalisation of British Steel, with the Government moving in to take away somebody else’s property, including his own. As the Minister said, the card that my right hon. Friend is waving before me is the property of the Government. However, that is a side issue. I understand that when he makes his point, he comes from the steel capital of Britain, but we are not talking about the nationalisation of British Steel.
Mr MacShane
I am grateful to my right hon. Friend—for whom I worked as a Parliamentary Private Secretary for many happy years—for giving way. I would be quite happy to concede the financial point if the Government were prepared to cut a deal and let me keep the card until it expired. That seems quite reasonable, because it is a European card. Every time I have used it to go through airports in the past three months, people have said, “Ooh, that’s a good idea! The Brits are becoming like us.” Well, thanks to the coalition, now we are not.
Chris Bryant (Rhondda) (Lab)
We have a set of former Ministers for Europe in the Chamber.
Keith Vaz
Indeed. Let me say to my right hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Mr MacShane) that he is the last person who needs an identity card to get into France. He is probably the only former Minister for Europe to be fluent in half a dozen European languages. His very face is sufficient to get him into the European Union.
Keith Vaz
I meant the mainland European Union.
Anyway, before this becomes a debate about the European Union, let me say that I shall abstain on new clause 2. However, I am attracted to amendment 8, which stands in the name of my hon. Friends the Members for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) and for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson), and not just because they are distinguished members of the Home Affairs Committee, as the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Mr Burley) is, but because there is a lot of merit in what they say. The Minister should take amendment 8 seriously. I do not know whether my hon. Friends will push it to a vote, but the destruction of the data is an important issue.
When I raised this matter on the Floor of the House, following the Home Secretary’s announcement that ID cards were to be abolished, either she or the Minister—I cannot be sure which—said that there would be a huge event in which all the data would be destroyed. I think that it was said, perhaps playfully, that there would be a big bonfire, and that Members of the House would be invited to attend such an event. I know that that was meant in jest, but this is a serious point.
I support what the Government are doing to remove the names of innocent people from the database. That is absolutely a move in the right direction. The hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) asked whether the previous Government had lost their way on civil liberties issues, and I would say that we did a little, partly because of a lack of scrutiny by this House, rather than through any intent on the part of the Government. We should have been better at scrutinising legislation.
I hope that, when the Minister responds, he will give us a clear statement on how the data are to be destroyed. My hon. Friends who have tabled amendment 8 have proposed a time limit of four months, within which a statement must be made to the House. I do not believe for one moment that that is an unreasonable request. I hope that the Minister will give my hon. Friends the assurances that they seek. This is not a huge issue, but it goes to the heart of what the coalition Government say that they are going to do with these data. We must not keep the data unless it is absolutely necessary to do so, and I hope that he will give some comfort to my hon. Friends, and an assurance that the data will be destroyed within four months.
Damian Green
It would be slightly premature for me to give too much detail now because the legislation has not been passed. We have tried to be as clear as possible in saying that we will do it as quickly as possible after the Bill has passed through all its stages, but I do not wish unnecessarily to annoy or provoke the other place by saying anything else.
Keith Vaz
It is a great pleasure to follow the former Home Secretary, my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett), who took us all the way back to the birth of ID cards and has now read out their last rites in the Chamber of the House of Commons. I do not think he should take the criticism of the last Labour Government personally. People say many things in leadership election campaigns. Let us see what happens next week when, in opposition, we have an opportunity to fashion our new policies. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend for all he did as Home Secretary on so many issues to do with his portfolio.
I also pay tribute to the Minister. Anyone who has followed Home Office debates over the past few years since he has been on the Front Bench will have noted the enthusiasm, delight and intellectual vigour that he put into the campaign against identity cards. I am sure it gives him great satisfaction to be here to read the last rites of the identity cards and to do so very modestly. I suppose that when faced with the Liberal Democrats, the Conservative party, the Scottish National party, Justice and Liberty—a very odd combination—it is probably right that the official Opposition have, in a sense, thrown in the towel. The shadow Minister accepted that there was no appetite among Labour Members to oppose the Bill on Second Reading and she tabled some carefully thought-out amendments, but the Government, with their majority and with this Bill as a central part of their Home Office agenda, have got their Bill through, after only 12 weeks.
I hope that the Minister will take seriously—I know that he will—the concerns expressed about the destruction of data. The Select Committee on Home Affairs will be writing to him in two months’ time. I know that he did not give that as the absolute timetable, but he mentioned two months and then a further two months, and he then said that this would depend on what happens in the other place. I do not think that it will be a problem there, so by Christmas or, at least, by the new year we should be in a position to know that these data have been destroyed. I am sure that we will be writing to him to ensure that now that the funeral is over, the ashes will be scattered in about four months’ time.
Crime and Policing
Keith Vaz Excerpts(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Alan Johnson
I knew that that one would be on the crib sheet. Of course it was right to say honestly to the public that no Home Secretary could guarantee that police numbers would not fall by a single police officer. The number of police and recruitment for the police are matters for chief constables and police authorities. What we guaranteed, as I will explain in a second, was that the central funding that the Home Office provides—which has led to the recruitment of 17,000 more police officers and 16,000 police community support officers—would continue to be provided, index-linked, because we considered crime and policing to be a priority.
The savings that we set out included £70 million in reduced police overtime, £75 million from business support and back-office functions, £400 million from procurement and IT, and £500 million from process improvement. My deal with the previous Chancellor—the one who did produce progressive Budgets—was to prioritise the police and security services by maintaining the 2010 level of central funding necessary for the continued employment of record police numbers, thus reducing the Home Office budget by around 12%, or £1.3 billion,without hitting front-line policing.
We have had a report from Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary and the Audit Commission endorsing that approach. The report, “Policing in an age of austerity”, concluded that
“cost cutting and improvements in productivity could, if relentlessly pursued, generate a saving of 12% in central government funding …while maintaining police availability.”
This is therefore not an argument about whether there need to be cuts to the police budget over the next four years; it is an argument about a cut of 12% or, as the Chancellor announced on 22 June, a cut of 25% for the Home Office, which he describes as an unprotected Department.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
I assure my right hon. Friend that I thought of this question myself. On Monday I met the chief constable of Kent, who was concerned about the lack of information coming out of the Home Office. I do not know whether things were done in the same way when my right hon. Friend was Home Secretary, but although the Policing Minister said on Monday that we had to wait until 25 October for the comprehensive spending review, chief officers are now having to prepare their budgets without knowing even a ballpark figure for the cuts. Would it not be helpful if the Government could give an indication as to how much the figure could be, so that chief officers could prepare for what is inevitable?
Alan Johnson
I thank my right hon. Friend for that question. I do not think that the collegiate approach in this House has stretched as far as Members on the Opposition Benches getting the Government Chief Whip’s crib sheet. I know that that was his own question, although I suppose that it might have come from our crib sheet. The issue is this: we would not have revealed before a CSR what the settlement was. That is why it is difficult to itemise the savings in advance of a CSR. What can be done—and what we did with the police in the policing White Paper—is to identify those areas that I have mentioned and ensure that the police and the security services understand that we were prioritising police and security. Also, in this year Parliament, including those now on the Government Benches, approved the allocation of funding, knowing that there would be another pay increase in the three-year police pay deal. What has happened now is that the Government have not only demanded more savings this year, despite having to meet that pay increase, but frozen the precept. The police are in a far worse position, including the chief constable of Kent, than they would have been had we been in government.
It is extraordinary that the Government should refuse to add policing to health, education and international development as an area requiring special consideration. The Chancellor is fond of quoting Canada as a precedent for the kind of savage cuts that he heralded in the emergency Budget, but the Canadian Government were not foolish enough to slash police budgets. Expenditure on policing fell by just 0.1% in the years following the Canadian Star Chamber cuts, and then rose steadily thereafter. The number of police officers dipped by at most 3%. In this country, the budget will be slashed by at least 25%, which means a cut in police numbers of between 35,000, as estimated by Professor Talbot, the respected criminologist at Manchester university, and 60,000, according to the magazine Jane’s Police Review, which took what I hope is the exaggerated view that the cuts might amount to 40%.
The HMIC report means that there can be no further pretence that front-line policing can somehow emerge unscathed from this kind of budgetary carnage. As well as failing to protect central allocations, on which police forces rely for between 50% and 90% of their funding, the Government have placed a two-year moratorium on any increases in the local precepts. So much for localism. As a result, plans are already being drawn up in every police force throughout the country to cut the number of officers, as my right hon. Friend has pointed out. The 16,000 police community support officers, who are popular with the public and central to neighbourhood policing, are bound to go if there are cuts of 25%. As civilian staff, they are more easy to dispose of, which is why police forces such as Durham have already put every PCSO under notice of redundancy.
There was nothing about this in the coalition partners’ manifestos. Indeed, the Lib Dems, who believed that this country was under-policed, were promising to use the money saved by scrapping identity cards to recruit 3,000 additional police officers. We now have the Government’s own figures for the amount of money that will be saved by scrapping ID cards. I will willingly take an intervention from anyone on the Lib Dem Benches if they want to tell me how many police officers that equates to. Is it 3,000? No. Is it 2,500, 2,000, 1,000, 500, 200? No. If we used all the money saved by scrapping ID cards, we would get 117 extra officers, not 3,000. Would that we could look forward to any increase in officer numbers at all. It is now likely that the Lib Dems will preside over the loss of 3,000 officers every four months over the next four years.
Mrs May
Either I or the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice would be very happy to meet delegations of colleagues, but I must say to my hon. Friend that the Lincolnshire Members of Parliament have already got in before him to discuss their bid on formula funding. However, as I have said, I am happy to meet such a delegation, as is the Minister for Policing and Criminal Justice.
Let me turn to the point about the accountability of the police and the policing reforms that we will put forward in the police reform and social responsibility Bill. Our changes to the accountability of the police will be crucial in ensuring that they once more become crime fighters instead of form writers. Central to those reforms is the idea that we want to get rid of the inefficient and ineffective processes of bureaucratic accountability, where power rests with Whitehall civil servants, and replace it with direct democratic accountability, with power placed back in the hands of the people. Not only will that make the police truly responsive to the needs of the public, but it will mean a more efficient and innovative police service, free from the meddling of central Government. We can be as aggressive as we like in cutting police paperwork—and we are—but we will never achieve the culture change we need until we deal with the driver of the problem and that is Whitehall.
As I noted earlier, according to the recent report by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary that is cited in the motion, only 11% of police officers are visible and available to the public at any one time. It is not as if the Opposition were not warned about that when they were in power. The shadow Home Secretary has quoted Sir Ronnie Flanagan, but he said in his review that the difference in paperwork now compared with when he was a front-line officer was “truly staggering”. Jan Berry, the last president of the Police Federation, said:
“As a result of Government diktats, the service has been reduced to a bureaucratic, target-chasing, points-obsessed arm of Whitehall”.
The last Government did not listen, but we will. Already we have cancelled the top-down public confidence target and scrapped the policing pledge. We are reducing the reporting requirements for stop and search and we are scrapping the stop form in its entirety. We will return charging decisions to officers for minor offences and we will reform the health and safety rules that stop police officers intervening to protect the public.
That is just the start. Shifting the model of accountability from the centre to local communities removes the need for pages and pages of bureaucracy and it removes the temptation to Home Secretaries to issue initiative after initiative.
Keith Vaz
Of course, we welcome the steps taken by the Home Secretary to reduce bureaucracy, but the previous Government were also committed to reducing bureaucracy. That goes back, as the Home Secretary has said, to the Flanagan report. Will she commit herself to ensuring that Jan Berry, when she delivers her final report, can continue the good work that she is doing in monitoring the level of bureaucracy and advising the Government from outside the Home Office about the need to continue along this path?
Mrs May
We obviously look forward to the results of the further work that Jan Berry has been doing in this area. The right hon. Gentleman started his intervention by commenting that the last Government intended to reduce bureaucracy, but the problem was that they did not. We have come in and within a matter of months we have shown specific examples of where we can reduce that bureaucracy.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
It is always a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Tom Brake), who for a long time was a member of the Select Committee on Home Affairs. I congratulate him on his recent appointment as the Liberal Democrat spokesman on home affairs.
It would be unfair to talk about the Government’s record on crime and policing, as they have been in office for only 16 weeks. Quite rightly, therefore, the debate so far has been focused on their reform programme. It is an ambitious programme—I know it, and so do members of my Committee, some of whom are in their places, such as the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Mr Burley) and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe). At every single meeting of the Committee so far, there has been discussion about how on earth we will respond to the Government’s crowded agenda on crime, policing and other Home Office issues.
I should like to begin by welcoming some very important policies that the Government have initiated, because they are all recommendations of the Home Affairs Committee of the previous Parliament. The establishment of the National Security Council, the work on alcohol- related crime, the announcement today of the extradition law review, even though we have not yet had a decision on Gary McKinnon, what the Government are suggesting on reducing bureaucracy, the decision to implement the law on wheel-clamping, which the Committee has been on about for the past five years, and the proposals on a fast-track means of banning legal highs are all welcome moves by the Government because, of course, the Committee recommended them in the previous Parliament.
My concern is that the good intentions will be put at risk by the comprehensive spending review. The Government will have serious problems with police numbers. I accept that the law and order and policing debate should not be around numbers, although every Member of Parliament has always told their constituents that they want to see more bobbies on the beat. In exchanges with me and others, the Police Minister has said—indeed, he told the Committee this—that he does not believe that there will be a reduction in front-line policing as a result of proposals in the CSR, but I do not believe that that is possible.
On Monday, at the invitation of another member of the Committee, the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless), I went to Medway, where I spoke to the chief constable about his statement last Friday, in which he said that if the Government’s proposals to cut expenditure by 20% go through, he will see a reduction of £35 million in his budget, which would mean the loss of 1,500 police officers. That is a huge number for a county such as Kent. Therefore, although the Minister feels that he cannot be specific on numbers and the effect that the CSR will have on local police forces, the fact is that it will impact on each and every Member of the House. Will he seek at the earliest opportunity to give an indication to local police forces of how much the cuts will be, because at the moment, an enormous amount of senior police officers’ time is spent trying to guess what the percentage will be? The earlier they get a response from the Government, the better. Even a broad indication of the proposals would be extremely helpful to them.
I listened to the excellent speech of the hon. Member for Cannock Chase, who is absolutely right that the reduction of bureaucracy and the saving of money is a crucial part of our view of policing, but the previous Government started us along that route. Perhaps they did so later than anticipated, but as the Minister may find out, Ministers cannot do everything immediately—things take time. The previous Government initiated the Flanagan review, and Jan Berry was appointed by Jacqui Smith, the previous Home Secretary, and she has done some valuable work on the reduction of bureaucracy. We all have an interest in ensuring that police officers are back on the beat and that they provide front-line services rather than waste their time on unnecessary bureaucracy. That is why the Government should give a commitment to keep Jan Berry in post after she delivers her final report in July. It is important that someone who knows about policing acts as an external force, because such a person can deal with the vested interests that try to prevent real change.
However, the Government should also give special attention to good practice. When I was in Kent on Monday, I saw that the local police were doing some excellent work on the reduction of street prostitution and on offender management. When I went to the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson), I saw effective engagement by the police with local people—the essence of community policing is the ability to engage with local people. It is important that such good practice is shared as quickly as possible.
I remember a visit to Burton I made a year ago with the then MP for the area. Staffordshire police had done good work in reducing paperwork from 24 sheets of paper to one, but that good practice has still not been rolled out by the Home Office to other areas of the country, and that would save a great deal of time.
I shall not go into the issue of procurement now, but I am sure that the Minister knows what I mean. Kent police have bought Skodas, but the next-door forces in Sussex and Surrey have bought different makes of car. We cannot have 43 police authorities all buying different vehicles. Procurement is vital. Indeed, it is a no-brainer and I do not know why it has not been done in the last 20 years, let alone the last 13. Successive Governments have failed to get the procurement policies right, but it is time to break down the vested interests and give some clear direction.
The big change will be in the landscape of policing, including in effect the abolition of the Serious Organised Crime Agency and the National Policing Improvement Agency, and the creation of the national crime agency. This is a great opportunity to change the landscape of policing. For the first time, one can achieve policing on a national level with specialist interests. This is an opportunity for the Government to pause and hear the advice of stakeholders before they rush in and create a new organisation. The danger in abolishing existing organisations—which have budgets of £470 million and £430 million, almost £900 million—without thinking carefully is ending up with the problem that the NHS has of almost constant reorganisation. I ask the Minister to pause and ensure that he thinks very carefully before coming to his final conclusions.
Because the Government’s agenda is so large, the Select Committee has decided to put together the proposals in a major stakeholder meeting to be held in the constituency of the hon. Member for Cannock Chase. I hope that the Minister will accept the invitation to attend that meeting, because we seek to bring together the 43 chief constables and other stakeholders to discuss all the issues that are before Parliament and the public. So everybody will have the opportunity to have their say and consult the stakeholders carefully before the Select Committee embarks on the four policing reports that we will undertake. We have decided not to have one big policing report, because that would take too long and we want to keep up with the Government’s suggestions.
We need to engage with local communities and stakeholders, and actually ask local people what they want. Politicians can discuss structures until the cows come home, but the issue comes down to the ability of the public to pick up a telephone and call a police officer if a crime has been committed or to see a police officer on the beat. That is what policing is all about, and if the Government engage with Parliament and we do this— as far as possible—on the basis of consensus, we can make a lasting change to our policing structure.
Oral Answers to Questions
Keith Vaz Excerpts(13 years, 8 months ago)
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Nick Herbert
The hon. Lady is just speculating. In relation to the in-year cut to which she objects, it is important to understand that it represents less than 1% of what the police will spend this year, and our view is that the police can find those efficiencies and make the savings. In relation to further cuts, there will have to be savings, but the independent inspectorate of constabulary said a few weeks ago that police forces could save more than £1 billion a year—equivalent to 12% of spending—without having an impact on the front line.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
This morning, at the invitation of the hon. Member for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless), I visited Medway and was shown two innovative, award-winning schemes pioneered by the police there to combat prostitution and to ensure effective offender management. The chief constable of Kent told me that if the envisaged cuts of 20% are put in place, 1,500 jobs will be lost in Kent and £35 million will come off his budget. Will the Minister give us an assurance that the schemes that I saw today, and others all over the country, will be protected? Could he at the very least give police authorities an early idea of the budget constraints they will have to deal with, as 25 October is quite a long way away?
Nick Herbert
The right hon. Gentleman invites me to speculate ahead of the spending review outcome, and he knows that I cannot do that. We will know fairly shortly what sums of money will be available to police forces, but it will be necessary for them to make savings, and it will be up to chief constables to achieve greater efficiencies and more collaboration between forces. The inspectorate is clear that those efficiencies can be made.
European Investigation Order
Keith Vaz Excerpts(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Mrs May
I must tell my hon. Friend that decisions on when the ESC meets are rather more a matter for him—as I understand it, he is the Chair of that Committee—than for me. However, I share some of his concern. As he and other Members of the House will know, I have written a pamphlet and proposed a 10-point plan on how Parliament can have more of an opportunity to have a say on, and to debate, decisions on European matters.
The instrument came before the Government on 29 April with a three-month deadline for decision. Of course, that period was partly taken up by the election, and the ESC was formed only last night, as my hon. Friend said. In the normal course of events in Parliament, the ESC could suggest the matter for debate. On that point, it is certainly my hope that when the Government propose to opt in on a major JHA issue, Parliament can consider it. However, I hesitate to give more of a guarantee than that, because what happens in Parliament is a matter for the business managers rather than for me. On the powers that my hon. Friend claims the EIO gives to foreign police forces and others, I must tell him that I think he is wrong.
Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)
May I welcome the new-found affection between the Front Benchers, and take that one stage further by agreeing with the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) for the first time on a European issue? It is really important for Parliament to have the opportunity to scrutinise this decision. We have just had a meeting of the Home Affairs Committee. The Police Minister gave evidence about police resources, but we could not question him on the EIO, because the Home Secretary was due to make this statement. This is a serious matter that requires scrutiny by the ESC or the Home Affairs Committee.
The Home Secretary made a statement to the House that the EIO will not have an effect on police resources, and the Police Minister, in his excellent evidence to the Committee, talked about the need to preserve police resources, but a request from one of our European partners will result in more police time being spent. That must be the case, because they would not make such a request otherwise.
Mrs May
I agree that it would be of benefit for Parliament to scrutinise and debate many such European matters more than has happened in the past. However, given that we are up against a deadline and going into recess, it would have been very easy for me simply to have made a written ministerial statement. Instead, I chose to come to make an oral statement so that I could answer questions on the EIO.
On police resources, I remind the right hon. Gentleman that we intend and hope to introduce a proportionality test in the negotiations, which is important. However, the EIO is not some new arrangement that will suddenly require extra police resources. Rather, it codifies and simplifies processes that already exist. To the extent that it reduces bureaucracy and simplifies those processes, I hope that it will be of extra benefit to our police.