Security Services: Supervision

Lord Judd Excerpts

Thursday 7th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in thanking my noble friend Lord Soley most warmly for having had the courage to initiate this debate. If anything has been established in the very important deliberations so far in this debate, it is that there is a need for a proper, full debate, and a much wider public debate, about the issues at stake. If nothing else, my noble friend is to be congratulated on that.

I should say at the outset that I have, of course, been a Defence Minister and a Foreign Office Minister. I was a Defence Minister in the days when we had service Ministers, and I was very proud to be Minister for the Navy. As such, I was regularly briefed by the head of intelligence in the Navy, who was a very enjoyable admiral, so it was a good conversation. I shall always savour the day on which he came to see me with his briefings and said, “Minister, I think I ought to let you know that the head of the Russian Navy is describing you as Cold War Warrior Judd”. I am not sure that that would be immediately recognised by all my colleagues and the rest, but I will always savour that occasion.

I grew up in a non-conformist Christian family, and one of the realities of growing up in that kind of culture was that from a very young age I was encouraged to realise that, whatever I might do with my life, God knew everything. My theological thinking has rather moved forwards since those days, but I do not think that at any point in my evolution have I seen GCHQ or the NSA as God. That is the point. God was there as a moral balance in life. He was your conscience. There is immense power in the hands of these authorities now, but no one—including, I believe, most of those working in them—would begin to believe that they are the moral authority of the world; they are there to preserve security.

I have been convinced for a long time that if you make a hard analysis of the threats that face us as a nation, the combination of terrorism, the fact that small numbers of people can do terrible things and the increasing accessibility of the material for mass destruction is a nightmare. One only has to think of the whole business of germ warfare, crude nuclear weapons and the rest to imagine what could happen. If I have one comment for the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, after his very powerful speech, it is that I am not quite sure how he comes to his conclusion in the equation he put before us, because I do not think that it is just a matter of more localised, small incidents or nuclear war. I think that there is a whole gradation in between and that the real dangers lie in that area. That is why intelligence is indispensable. For a long time, I have felt that our security lies very much in the realm of intelligence and in ensuring that it is properly staffed and properly resourced.

Therefore, going back to my point about God, if I may, it is all the more important that everyone can be certain that in the leadership of the intelligence agencies there are people committed, second to none, to the principles of liberal democracy and freedom that they are defending. It is important that that commitment and understanding permeates the whole organisation and that the internalised culture is that what it is doing is defending freedom, democracy and a decent society. That is a terribly easy thing to say but a terribly difficult thing to achieve.

I believe that we need to look very hard at the criteria for selection in the intelligence services, the training and the leadership at all levels. Otherwise, the excitement, the intoxication and the challenges of the task could become dominant; there is also the danger of counterproductivity.

I emphasise that, like others who have spoken, I believe this country owes a tremendous tribute to the courage and dedication of the overwhelming majority of people working in the security services and what they do on our behalf. I believe, therefore, that it is our duty not only to scrutinise, which we are doing today, but to stand firmly by those who have this concept of responsibility and of what they really are there to do. We must deal very severely with those who abuse that task or who indulge in things that I believe could ultimately be described as treason. Extremists work best when there is a culture of sympathy. We must never allow things to happen which accentuate that culture and which introduce more doubt among thinking people, thus opening up the opportunity for extremists to recruit and to strengthen their cause, and I am afraid that we are in danger of that happening.

Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill

Lord Judd Excerpts

Tuesday 29th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I have found this debate particularly interesting. Some of the speeches will be well worth reading again to ponder more deeply. I include in those the splendid and powerful maiden speech by the noble Lord, Lord Paddick, and the speech by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, which I found very telling.

We have talked a great deal about ASBOs in this debate. When I was in the other place I had an inner-city constituency and I was brought face to face, very rudely, with the realities. Quite a small number of people can certainly make a living hell for people in a community that is already disadvantaged, and where there are frail people, elderly people and frightened people. It is all very well for those of us who live in more affluent areas to talk about this in terms of high policy, but we have to face the realities on the ground.

That is exactly what makes me worried about our approach to such things in terms of containing and managing, as distinct from solving and overcoming. If we are to solve and overcome, we have always to ask why: we have always to ask about the causes of the unacceptable behaviour that confronts us. If we get that wrong, we are likely to aggravate the situation. We shall accentuate alienation and stigmatisation, and drive people into chronic delinquency and quite sinister criminal communities.

What are the causes? What lies behind it? This is not sentimental stuff; this is hard thinking, if I may say so. Of course deprivation, broken and dysfunctional families, domestic brutality and alcoholism are all highly relevant to the situation. Of course we need a matrix approach to tackling it. We need an education system that at all levels, in all parts of society, emphasises social responsibility and citizenship as much as achieving and success. We also need to introduce, in practical ways, a matrix approach, which must engage community workers, social workers, counsellors—and, indeed, local councillors—youth workers and conciliation services. If we do not have that kind of matrix approach, just trying to shove things back by managing the situation with punitive measures will not lead to any kind of worthwhile future at all. The problem is that it is exactly these areas that we see being prioritised for cuts—cutting back at the very time when, if we are really serious about this, we should be enhancing and strengthening the matrix work.

Of course we as a society need to be clear about what is acceptable and what is not; my own conviction is that the law should be clear on that. However, in keeping with my own understanding of justice and its importance to our ethos as a nation, these practical measures—the steps that we have to take as envisaged in the Bill—are there to underpin that ethos. I remember that when I was Defence Minister, a very senior officer said to me once on a visit to an establishment, “Of course the Queen’s regulations are important, but the officer or NCO who walks around with a copy of the Queen’s regulations under his arm is lost”. That underpins the point: it is about ethos, consistency and credibility.

That means that our understanding of what is acceptable behaviour and what is not, and indeed what is anti-social behaviour, has to apply at absolutely every level of society. We should be condemning bankers and financiers who act irresponsibly in terms of anti-social behaviour, as we should anyone at the bottom of the pile. How on earth are we going to have credibility with people at the bottom of the pile unless the same principles clearly apply to those who are at the peak of society, as we like to regard it?

I shall finish with four points that I personally shall be watching carefully as the Bill proceeds. First, we talk about a responsible society, but how can we claim responsibility when it is still the case that when parents or carers go into prison, or into custody on remand, there is not necessarily a proper inquiry about their children—how many they have, who is looking after them and what the plans for them are? How can that be responsible? It is likely to lead to aggravation of the very issues that we claim to be concerned about. We need to look at whether the Bill helps to strengthen our behaviour in that respect.

Secondly, I find myself in agreement with those who say that to talk about “nuisance” or “annoyance” is very subjective. One thinks of children playing tag or football in the street or cycling around in it; one thinks of exuberance in the community playground; one thinks of cooking aromas. To different people, these will be very objectionable and anti-social. We must have clearer language here about what we are really talking about.

Thirdly, we need to look at the consequences of mandatory evictions. If we are just driving people into more insecurity and worse behaviour, and driving children into more disorientation than they have already encountered in their lives, how does that help? We must have a social policy that goes alongside any use of evictions. I am not very happy about evictions anyway, but we cannot just talk about mandatory evictions in certain circumstances.

Fourthly, whether directly or indirectly, if any behaviour or consequence of it is likely to lead a person into the stigma of criminality, we really cannot go on talking about the balance of probabilities; we have to talk about “beyond reasonable doubt”. That has been central to our legal system in the past, and it needs to apply in these situations every bit as much as anywhere else.

Drugs

Lord Judd Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, I join those who pay tribute to the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, not only for the way she introduced this debate but for the consistent and effective work she does on this subject. She is becoming a leading figure internationally in her commitment. I was sorry to miss the first sentence of her speech because I totally misunderstood that the previous business would wrap up as quickly as it did.

I am always impressed by those working on the front line on the drugs issue, and I wish we in Parliament could find ways of listening to such people more directly. I certainly learnt a great deal when I was serving under the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, on Sub-Committee F which a couple of years ago did a report on this subject. It is worth reading, not least for the evidence in the report which comes from those on the front line. I thank those in the front line for the tremendous help they have given me in clearing my thoughts and focusing for this debate.

I understand that there are moves among the Liberal Democrats to shift the drugs lead from the Home Office to the Department of Health. If so, that is immensely encouraging. I think we should all cheer that, if it is happening. I hope that other parties will be able to follow suit. The same call should be made to move the brief internationally from the UN Office for Drugs and Crime to the World Health Organisation.

This is no longer a theoretical debate. Regulation is happening now. Cannabis has been legalised in Washington state, Colorado and Uruguay. Each year that the war on drugs continues, we spend £60 billion to create an illegal drugs market with a turnover of £200 billion.

Senator John McCain, not well known for his liberal views, now supports legalising cannabis. The most recent national convert to legalise cannabis for medical use is Romania—again, not known for its liberal positions as a whole. Half the world’s opium is grown for the legal opiates market; 3,500 acres is grown in the UK. None of it attracts the attention of organised crime or the Taliban. No drug is made safer left in the hands of organised criminals and unregulated dealers. Mike Barton, chief constable of Durham and lead on intelligence for ACPO, recently called for the drug supply to be taken over by the NHS. We cannot continue to allow the world’s drug policy to be determined by our special relationship. It must be determined by UN principles, health, security, development and human rights. These are not supported by prohibition.

There are in fact two wars on drugs. The first is the misguided overconcentration on attempting to rid the world of certain drugs—not, incidentally, the biggest killers; those are overwhelmingly tobacco and alcohol. The second is the war against the organised criminals who profit from the unintended consequence of prohibition, namely the creation of the second largest income stream for organised criminals: illegal drugs.

There is a significant point in Sub-Committee F’s report. Part of this war results often in the trade being displaced, and previously unaffected countries and communities being drawn in, sometimes with the most appalling human rights consequences. We need to take that seriously.

As with alcohol prohibition in the US, there is only one way to end this madness: ending the prohibition and replacing it with a system of responsible regulation. This must mean placing drugs under the control of doctors, pharmacists and strictly licensed retailers. Successive Administrations have continued to spend taxpayers’ money on a system of criminalisation that has never been subject to evaluation. Despite being promised an evaluation in 2010, we have still not seen one from the Government.

I am personally highly dubious about whether the Home Office has any real idea of what has resulted, positively, from the £100 billion expenditure. Legalising and regulating heroin would mean that Afghanistan no longer produced heroin for the non-medical market. What we are talking about here is the potential transformation of international relations, enabling developing countries, especially those involved in drug production and supply, to extricate themselves from the nightmare of prohibition and aspire to the same goals that we all do. Imagine reallocating £60 billion annually to development, rather than spreading crime, misery, stigma and blood-borne viruses.

Immigration: UK Citizenship and Nationality

Lord Judd Excerpts

Thursday 10th October 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, listening to the noble Baroness, it seems to me that one thing that is absolutely certain is that anyone who, at the end of the day, is still in the game and wanting to be a British citizen must be really committed to that objective. I was tempted to think, as I listened to the noble Lord, Lord Roberts, who is an old friend on these issues, that I should just get up and say—in the Welsh tradition of non-conformism—“Hallelujah!”, and sit down. However, the issue is too important for that. I want to make just a couple of observations.

I am always impressed how, within a broad sweep of history in Britain, each wave of immigration has added to the vitality of our life. There are difficulties, but it takes time. If we are determined to narrow ourselves down into a small group of people and to limit ethnic variety, geographical and other backgrounds, we will be shooting ourselves in the foot because previous generations have made a tremendous contribution. One looks at the public services. We encouraged people to come and be part of us. My God, there are large parts of the public services that would never have survived if those people had not been here and provided their service and in many ways become cheerful, positive members of our community. Yes, there are difficulties, and it is no good looking at these things just in terms of five or 10 years—we need to look at them for longer than that—but, looking at the broad sweep of history, I am certain that the outcome will again be positive.

We should look not only at the public services but at higher education, in which I am involved as a university member of court and an emeritus governor of the LSE. Some members of our ethnic minorities, as we like to call them, are doing incredibly well in higher education and are adding to the quality and prowess of our society. What is all this about? Is it about putting obstacles in the way of citizenship or is it about encouraging people to become citizens without bearing a grudge or feeling exasperated, having been through a sensible, rational process of learning how you become a citizen? We used not to have all these arrangements. I think that it is clear to anyone outside that they are not about learning about citizenship but about limiting the number of people who obtain citizenship. We need to separate out these issues. I do not believe that it is possible to have an open-door immigration policy leading to citizenship; that is just not rational or possible. Ideally, it would be lovely but it is just not possible. However, what we should not do is aggravate and alienate people as that leads to dissension and frustration. That is not a good way to create harmony and achieve the best possible outcome. The process should be open and just.

I am very worried about the financial barrier, as is the noble Lord. If it is a mix, it is a mix. What may seem hardly petty cash to many Members of this House is a very heavy cost indeed to many ordinary people in our society who play a constructive part in our community. What are we doing with that? As regards the test, what I worry about is how we will assist integration, harmonisation and the future well-being of our mixed society if we indulge in hypocrisy. I ask noble Lords to please go to an average football match, cricket match, commuter train, airplane or place of employment and say to people, “You claim to be a British citizen. How many wives did Henry VIII have?”. How many unquestioned members of our society would be able to say how many wives Henry VIII had just like that? However, we expect newcomers to our society to answer questions that we know a large number of people in all parts of our social system would be unable to answer.

The noble Lord, Lord Roberts, put my next point extremely well. It seems to me that if we are to have a citizenship test—in many ways I wish that we did not have to have one—it should ask questions about the character of our society. It should ask imaginative questions which test people’s understanding of our society and the stresses and strains within it rather than simply asking technical questions. My wife has spent her professional life teaching history at an advanced level. When she heard the question about how many wives Henry VIII had, she hit the roof. She said, “What does that tell us about the story of British life and British citizenship?”. It is not an essential dimension. From that standpoint, I ask that we please do not base our policy on hypocrisy.

EU: Police and Criminal Justice Measures

Lord Judd Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I have known the noble Lord, Lord Stoneham, for a number of years and we have become good friends. I am sure he will not mind my saying that it pains me to see Liberals whom I have respected for their idealism and uncompromising stand on so many things that are vital to our nation going through the process of rationalising and trying to persuade themselves that compromises that they would have condemned out of hand in their days of opposition are somehow acceptable.

I should also like to draw attention to what my noble friend Lord Foulkes said about the letter we received today with the Government’s reply. He drew attention to the disingenuous words about wishing “to ensure as comprehensive and detailed a response as possible”. What the hell is the point of the reply? The reply is there to inform the debate. How on earth can a reply to a serious report, which has been prepared over many months, be taken properly into account in a debate if it arrives just hours before the debate begins? The Government ought to be ashamed of themselves for behaving in this way. We quite understand the tangles and difficulties with which the Government are faced within their own ranks, but this amounts, in effect, to a wanton disregard of the significance and dignity of Parliament itself.

I want to make a couple of points. We have been talking a great deal tonight about the measures—what we will accept and what we will not accept. The measures are not the end in themselves: the measures are means to achieving certain objectives. The objectives that I hope we are trying to achieve are the safety and security of the British people in the sphere of crime and, very much, in the sphere of terrorism. The reality with which we are confronted is both that crime has become highly sophisticated on an international basis in our lifetime and that terrorism is, almost without any doubt, where it is most dangerous, involved in international realities.

There is no way that we can protect the well-being, the safety and the interests of the British people by fooling ourselves into thinking that we would be better at doing it on our own—that we may have to make certain concessions to Europe but that we can pick and choose those things that happen to suit us. If we are to tackle this mammoth strategic task for the safety and well-being of the British people, we have to create an understanding and culture in this country that their interests and well-being are inseparably intertwined with the well-being and interests of other people within Europe, and that we must have institutions working within the realms of security and policing that are effective at the international level. If they are not effective at the international level, we shall be trying to put our thumbs in the dyke that is crumbling all around us. It is crucial that we give this leadership to the nation, and the trouble is that the Government are—

[Lord Lawson of Blaby]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, whom I have known for many years, but he is making a totally false point. Does he not know that there is the most intense and intimate co-operation, for example, between this country and the United States in the intelligence sphere and in other ways, against international terrorism? That is very necessary. These sorts of protocols and directives are totally unnecessary. There will be co-operation with the United States, with Europe and with other countries around the world whatever happens, because we all share the same objective.

[Lord Judd]

Similarly, I respect the noble Lord who has just intervened, but I ask him to read the reports to which we are referring today. Under the distinguished chairmanship of the noble Lords, Lord Hannay and Lord Bowness, we listened to witness after witness from the front line of this operation saying how badly they needed this European co-operation and how it would be very unfortunate in any way to jeopardise it, because it would not make the work that they were trying to do on behalf of the British people more effective. Read the reports: one expert or front-line worker after another in this operation said that.

I have one further point. What has been so sad in this debate—not the debate today but the one that is going on all the time in Britain—is the failure to distinguish between what is emotion, what is prejudice and what is fact. Because I was so concerned about a particular issue that was receiving a lot of attention about the way in which European institutions made it difficult to repatriate prisoners when they had completed their prison terms, I tabled a Question on the issue. I asked the Government,

“on how many occasions in 2012 they were prevented from deporting criminals who were not United Kingdom citizens following the completion of their sentences by rulings of the United Kingdom courts citing Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights”.

I would have thought that the answer to that Question would have been pretty central to serious deliberation in a debate of this kind. It is seven weeks since I tabled that Question. Do the Government not keep records? Do they not do any analysis? Why have I had no answer to that Question? It is part of the refusal to face facts that I suspect will not be very helpful to the Government’s case or to prejudice and the xenophobic cause. Why can we not have these facts before us before we try to undertake serious consideration in Parliament?

Immigration Rules: Impact on Families

Lord Judd Excerpts

Thursday 4th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Baroness on having introduced the debate. She was right to do so. It is very important that this matter should receive scrutiny and consideration in this House.

I am deeply concerned by the situation in which we find ourselves because it seems to me that when we talk about the kind of society we want to be in—we spend an awful lot of time talking about that—what really matters, and the values which we have as central to that society, should be evident in all aspects of our life. People, however reluctantly, can understand the need for immigration controls and immigration policy. That is true of this country and of our friends abroad. What upsets people is when, within that immigration policy, we do not follow through the logic which we say is vital to maintaining the values and behaviour which we see as being central to our nation.

I am really very disturbed that we are speaking with forked tongues on the issue of family. We keep emphasising the importance of family in our own society, but it does not apply to people who have been allowed through the immigration system to come and join us and make a contribution to our society. Either the family matters or it does not. I found the evidence submitted by the BMA, to which my noble friend Lord Parekh has already referred, very interesting. It talks not just about the personal pressures but about the quality of work undertaken by doctors if they are surrounded by their family or if they are debarred from having their family with them. If we see these doctors as essential to the operation of our health service—and, my God, they make a huge contribution to our health and well-being—it is terribly important that family values should apply, to enable them to perform at their best.

My noble friend, Lord Parekh, in a delightful but telling way, wove together the principle and practicalities of this. We all know, in our own families, how important grandparents are to the operation of the family, enabling mothers to work and running children to school and to their activities. Grandparents have a crucial part to play in the success of the family as part of society. It is shooting ourselves in the foot to say that we want people who are entitled to come through our immigration system, and to welcome them so long as they are making a full, positive contribution to our society, but then to deny those very aspects of life which will enable them to maximise their performance. It just does not make sense.

I also want to pick up on the more difficult, contentious issue of the operation of our penal system. If people have had sentences over a certain period of time they are subject to deportation. I have seen too much evidence that the impact on the children is not taken into account in these decisions. Sometimes there is a quite cynical neglect of any consideration whatever of the children in the paperwork and the rest. We were pioneers—I repeat, pioneers—in the creation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, in which, I am glad to say, the Conservative Party played a big part. We won great international esteem for the part we played, as I was saying the other night in our deliberations on the Children and Families Bill. We have a long way to fall and I am afraid we are falling. What people judge us by is not what we said at the time of the convention’s creation but how we actually operate the convention, not only in detail but in spirit, in our own society and the way we go about organising our affairs. I am not going to say there have not been some marginal improvements, and of course there are some very fine people working in this area. However, are we absolutely certain that the child is central to our considerations in all the work of the UK Border Agency and all the work of the Home Office on deportation in connection with crime? That is what the convention, which we helped to draft, demands. Is the child central to our considerations? This needs to be taken very seriously indeed.

In conclusion, all of us, whatever our party differences across the House, want to live in a nation that feels at peace with itself—a nation that is confident in the underlying principles in our society. We all want to be seen as a nation that is not only successful and achieving in materialist terms but whose characters of compassion, care and concern are self-evident in everything that we do and the way that we go about it. I am not denying the need for an immigration policy—of course I am not, it would be nonsense—but those principles, which are admittedly difficult and challenging, have to be seen as applying in the operation of that policy. I am glad that the noble Baroness has given us the opportunity to look at these issues. Some of them need to be examined very carefully indeed.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Home Office (Lord Taylor of Holbeach)]

I thank all noble Lords for contributing to a good debate and in particular my noble friend Lady Hamwee for tabling the Motion. It can but be a proper function of this House to scrutinise government and what it does. In this area, noble Lords have indicated in their speeches today sincere and genuine interest in the application of policy.

As noble Lords know, the Government are determined to reform the immigration system and restore public confidence in it. In that context we implemented in July 2012 a major set of reforms of the requirements to be met by non-European Economic Area nationals seeking to enter or remain in the UK on the basis of family life. The Government welcome the report of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Migration on its inquiry into the impact of the new family migration rules. In monitoring this impact, we will consider carefully the findings of the report.

Many noble Lords have spoken of their concerns about these new rules. The passion of the noble Lord, Lord Judd, and the challenges from my noble friends Lord Teverson, Lord Avebury and Lord Taylor of Warwick have provided us with a test. I enjoyed the speeches of the noble Lords, Lord Parekh and Lord Kilclooney. I am not entirely sure that I enjoy the testing standards of my noble friend Lord Roberts of Llandudno, but I am pleased that in his closing speech the noble Lord, Lord Rosser, demonstrated that we agree on many of the key issues and recognise the heart of them for government. I hope he does not believe that I presume too much.

Perhaps I can start by setting out the background to the changes introduced last year. My noble friend Lord Teverson focused very strongly on his concerns about family life in this country. The Government welcome those who want to make a life in the UK with their families, to work hard and to make a contribution, but family life must not be established here at the taxpayer’s expense. That is fundamental for the income test and is the reasoning behind the income threshold. We expect the new income threshold to prevent burdens on the taxpayer and promote successful integration. Those wishing to establish their family life here must be able to stand on their own feet financially. That is not an unreasonable expectation as the basis of sustainable family migration and good integration outcomes, on which I am sure all noble Lords agree.

The previous requirement for adequate maintenance was not, as it turned out, an adequate basis for sustainable family migration and good integration outcomes. It provided little assurance that UK-based sponsors and their migrant partner could support themselves financially over the long term. One of its considerable downsides was that it involved a complex assessment of the current and prospective employment income of the parties and their other financial means, including current or promised support from third parties. This was not conducive to clear, consistent decision-making.

That is why the Government decided to establish a new financial requirement for sponsoring family migrants. The level of the threshold was based principally on expert advice from the independent Migration Advisory Committee. The levels of income required are those at which a couple, once settled in the UK and taking into account any children, because children can be included in the threshold by an additional threshold sum, generally cannot access income-related benefits. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and my noble friend Lord Taylor of Warwick said that a family policy needs to be fair. The Government believe that this is a fair and appropriate basis for family migration. It is right for migrants, local communities and the UK as a whole.

The Government agreed with the Migration Advisory Committee’s conclusion that there is no clear case for varying the income threshold across the UK. I hope the noble Lord, Lord Kilclooney, will understand that it would be impossible to set a threshold for migration to Scotland, Northern Ireland or Wales. What would become of freedom of movement within the United Kingdom? It is unreal, and that is the principal reason why it has been ruled out. A requirement that varied by region could lead to sponsors moving to a lower threshold area in order to meet the requirement before returning once a visa was granted. It could also mean that a sponsor living in a wealthy part of a relatively poor region could be subject to a lower income threshold than a sponsor living in a deprived area of a relatively wealthy region. A single national threshold also provides clarity and simplicity for applicants and caseworkers. I think all noble Lords will agree that the Immigration Rules are complex enough. They have been complicated by politicians and lawyers, and we need to make the rules as simple as we can if we want an efficient and effective way of determining outcomes.

We have built significant flexibility into the operation of the threshold allowing for different income sources to be used towards meeting the threshold as well as significant cash savings. Employment overseas is no guarantee of finding work in the UK, and the previous and prospective earnings of the migrant partner are not taken into account in determining whether the threshold is met. If the migrant partner has a suitable job offer in the UK, they can apply under tier 2 of the points-based system.

We have also made significant changes to the adult and elderly dependent relative route, ending the routine expectation of settlement in the UK for parents and grandparents aged 65 or over. A number of noble Lords were concerned about this. The noble Lord, Lord Parekh, made an eloquent speech about it. Close family members are now able to settle in the UK only if they require a level of long-term personal care as a result of their age, illness or disability that can be provided only in the UK by their relative here. The route is now limited to those applying from outside the UK. These changes reflect the significant NHS and social care costs to which these cases can give rise.

The report highlights some cases affected by the changes that we have introduced to this route. The new criteria for adult dependent relatives more clearly reflect the intended thrust of the requirement of the old rules that parents and grandparents aged under 65 and other adult dependent relatives of any age be allowed in the most exceptional compassionate circumstances to settle in the UK.

There should be no expectation that elderly parents and grandparents who are self-sufficient or who can be cared for overseas should be able to join their children or grandchildren in the UK. That is the policy intention and the cases which have been highlighted are not unintended consequences. They demonstrate how the policy is intended to work.

The new family rules are intended to bring a sense of fairness back to our immigration system. The public are rightly concerned that those accessing public services and welfare benefits have contributed to their cost. The changes we have made are having the right impact and they are helping, I hope, to restore public confidence in the immigration system.

The number of partner and other family route entry clearance visas issued in the year ending March 2013 is 37,470. It has fallen by 16% compared with the year ending March 2012. I can assure all noble Lords who have spoken in this debate—the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, approached this with a great deal of understanding of the issues—that we will continue to monitor the impact of the rules. Since last July we have made some adjustments to the rules in response to feedback from customers and caseworkers. These include allowing those in receipt of research grants paid on a tax-free basis to count the amount on a gross basis and counting investments transferred into cash savings within the period of six months before the date of application. My honourable friend Mark Harper has also indicated, in a parallel debate in another place, that he would consider representations made on parts of detail about the operation of other aspects of the rules. I hope noble Lords feel that this debate has been worth while. Certainly the report of the APPG has been worth while.

[Lord Judd]

The Minister, in his usual way, is replying with great courtesy and concern. We all appreciate that. He referred to the complexity in the regulations and the difficulties for caseworkers and, indeed, we might add, border officials and the rest in applying those regulations. Does he not agree that that is why it is so important that certain salient points of guidance should be expressed all the time by Ministers and others, such as the paramount importance of the child, the rights of the child and the situation of the child in the midst of this jungle of complexity?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I would agree with the noble Lord that our policy here within the UK is a strong focus on family—and indeed on children. It could be argued that there is a dichotomy here between an immigration policy that is designed to limit numbers and reduce net migration and the maintenance of family structures.

I was going on to seek to answer the noble Lord’s points on a number of issues because he did ask about the impact on children. We recognise the importance of the duty under Section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009 to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in the UK. The consideration of the welfare and best interests of children is taken into account in immigration policy. The noble Lord came in right on cue even if I have not been able to satisfy him totally.

My noble friend Lord Avebury asked whether any adult dependent relative visas have been issued since October 2012. I can give him an answer to that. In the year ending March 2013, 5,066 visas were issued to other family members according to published Home Office statistics. These figures do not separately identify adult dependent relatives of British citizens and settled persons in the UK.

The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, asked what consideration of the impact of policies on boys denied contact with the fathers, and of the impact of policies on both boys and girls, was taken into account in the development and implementation of the new rules. We do not know how many children are affected by the rules. Where the effects of refusal under the rules would be unjustifiably harsh, there is a provision to grant leave outside the rules on a case-by-case basis if there are exceptional circumstances.

I said before that this has been a good debate, not least because there have been three John D Taylors speaking in it. I am grateful to all noble Lords, however, for their contributions. I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Hamwee for bringing the report to the attention of the House and of the Government. We welcome all contributions to the debate on how best to ensure that family migration is done on a properly sustainable basis. I am grateful to have the chance to hear the views on these issues. I am conscious that I have not replied to every point that has been raised in this debate but, with the leave of noble Lords, I will write a commentary on the debate, covering all points made, addressed to my noble friend Lady Hamwee and copied to all participatory Peers, and place a copy in the Library.

Europol Regulation: European Union Opt-In

Lord Judd Excerpts

Monday 1st July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

My Lords, as a member of your Lordships’ European Union Select Committee, I rise to support the Motion of my noble friend Lord Hannay and to follow the eloquent and powerful arguments put forward by him and the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey. They are experts in this area.

I wish to start by reading one of the committee’s recommendations on page 10, which states:

“If the Government were to opt in to the draft Europol Regulation and also exercise the block opt-out we urge them to opt back in to the Council Decisions which fall within the scope of the opt-out and which are connected with Europol’s continued operations, should this prove necessary”.

I do not quote that to criticise the committee, quite the reverse. However, this process of opting in, opting out and opting in again is like hokey-cokey politics in which the Government are indulging. They are dancing to the tune of UKIP and the Eurosceptic right in their party and putting our national security and the fight against crime in jeopardy as a result.

The Europol matter that we are discussing is complicated by the threatened block opt-out, as I said at Question Time today and as the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, mentioned. The noble Lord, Lord McNally, was rather coy earlier when speaking about the differences of view between the two sides of the coalition in the discussions on this matter. We have a Conservative Minister replying to this debate and it will be interesting to hear his response. However, we get a very clear view of the position from the documents that were leaked to the Daily Telegraph, and I wish to quote briefly from one or two of them. A number of measures were binned, where we agreed not to seek to rejoin, which must cause concern.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, that one of the documents refers to,

“37 measures identified by DPM”—

that is, the Deputy Prime Minister—

“as being of less importance”.

One of the measures that Mr Clegg identified as being of less importance was:

“Joint Action … on cooperation between customs authorities and business organizations in combating drug trafficking”.

How can that be identified as being of less importance? Then we come to measures that are undecided. The document states:

“48 measures for Immediate Discussion (Differing Views in the Coalition on Rejoining)”.

There were differing views on whether it should rejoin those measures, having exercised a block opt-out on 133. Should we rejoin the measure on combating child pornography on the internet? Is there any doubt about that? Why is there any discussion about it? Why does one side of the coalition think that we should opt in and another that we should opt out?

Another measure mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, concerns,

“security in connection with football matches with an international dimension”,

where we have seen that police forces acting together have been very effective in passing on information about known troublemakers so that they can be dealt with on the spot. British police officers can go out to matches abroad and offer their help and police officers from other countries can come here and help with identifying troublemakers. However, all this is being put in jeopardy by what the coalition is considering doing because of the pressure of the 133 opt-outs. It is dancing to the tune of UKIP and the Eurosceptic right, which I know the Minister is not part of. I hope that he will take the opportunity to make that clear again today.

I now wish to consider the measures in detail. We are told—the noble Lord, Lord McNally, used this excuse earlier today—that each of them is being looked at and the reason the Government have taken so long to consider the other report of our Select Committee on the opt-out is that the measures are all very complicated. He also said that each one has to be looked at in the national interest. I always get a wee bit worried when the coalition talks about the national interest. It seems to me that it is often a case of what is in the best interests of keeping the coalition in power rather than what is in the national interest. When pressed to explain their thinking, Ministers have said that they look at the measures on a case-by-case basis as far as the national interest is concerned.

There are two key problems with the Government’s plan of action. The first is the cost to the United Kingdom of permanently opting out of some of the measures, with Europol a particular concern, as the report rightly says. The report expresses the view that,

“none of the concerns expressed by the Government … outweigh the benefits to the UK of Europol’s assistance to national police and law enforcement agencies in the fight against cross-border threats (including terrorism) and serious organised crime”.

Therefore, we are putting the fight against terrorism and serious organised crime in jeopardy through this opt-out. Rarely has an all-party report, unanimously agreed by all the members of the sub-committee and the committee, been so damning of the government line.

The second problem is the cost of what the Government hope to retain. Opting back in is not a straightforward process. The noble Lord, Lord Williamson, having been secretary of the European Commission, will know only too well exactly what has to be done. There is no guarantee that negotiations to opt back in would be successful. We might find ourselves locked out permanently of key crime-fighting tools. Ensuring that this does not happen will require a large and wholly avoidable expenditure of diplomatic capital. Our experienced diplomats would have to spend their time persuading the other 27 countries of Europe, now that Croatia has joined, that we should be allowed back in.

The rewards that the Government hope to win by such a policy are largely intangible. The measures they hope to scrap are mostly technical points relating to the definition of certain crimes. What is really driving this agenda is the streak of destructive Euroscepticism that runs through some of the Tory Back Benches. In this instance, it is clear what they mean by the national interest. As I said, the national interest is the interest of a small, bullying minority. David Cameron is trying to paint himself as a national champion, but in fact he is having his arm twisted. It is a clever piece of political spin but it is a disastrous piece of policy that could leave all of us in the United Kingdom dangerously exposed to crime and terror. I hope that the Minister will indicate that the Government will have second thoughts in light of the unanimous report from our Select Committee.

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I am very glad indeed to follow the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, as I find myself in a great deal of sympathy with the argument that he has put forward.

It always seems to me that if one set out to design a nation that was dependent on its relationships with the world in almost every sphere of our significant life in Britain, it would be difficult to think of a better example than the United Kingdom. We live in a totally interdependent world. I believe strongly that the test of political leadership in our country is to demonstrate that we are determined to look to the well-being of the people of these islands of the United Kingdom, but that that can best be done only if we are in a network of international co-operative relationships, of which the European Union is one. It is not a romantic debate about whether one is a European or a Briton; it is hard-headed practical common sense about how we look to the well-being of the British people. Certainly, as far as I am concerned, any thought that we should retreat into being a sort of free-floating raft off the mainland of Europe in the turbulent world in which we live, and that we will somehow then look better to the interests of our people, is a betrayal of the British people and should be dismissed as such.

These matters of security and international crime and the rest are paramount examples of this. We all know that crime is now internationalised on an almost unimaginable scale. We all know that security and terrorism and threats of this kind operate on an international basis. All the new technology at the disposal of the human race makes all this more acute. There is no way in which we can look to the security of the British people without the maximum co-operation of those who are seeking the same objectives for their people in Europe as a whole. Indeed, that should always be a stepping stone to maximum international global co-operation, because that is ultimately the indispensible solution that we must find.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I am seeking to explain this particular case solely to those who are listening to me at the moment. As I have said, we are not coming to this debate with a set point of view. We are here to listen. We have had the opportunity of considering the report and we will continue to do so. The noble Lord will know that this debate will be looked at and the points made in it will be considered as part and parcel of the Government’s decision on whether to opt-in to the proposal or leave the decision and let the negotiations take their course. That is the Government’s position at this stage: that is what we are considering. This debate is very important because it will help to inform the Government’s decision. I have not come here with a point of view that will determine the outcome of those considerations.

[Lord Judd]

I am rather confused by what the Minister is saying. Do the Government agree that we best look to our interests on international crime and terrorism by being in an arrangement which ensures maximum European operational effectiveness? If they do agree that that is the case, how will we make sure that the regulation is what it should be if we sit on the sidelines, wait until others have decided and then make up our minds as to whether or not we want to join?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I have clearly said that we are not determining whether we will be in the negotiations or sitting and observing them. We are not likely to be passive—this Government are not inclined to be passive—and we shall certainly not be passive on an issue in which this country plays an important part, such as the future of Europol.

I am trying to be even handed on the issue. The Government have not made up their mind. We recognise that there are differences. That is why I have made clear that there are advantages in being a party to the negotiations having opted in, but I also pointed out the disadvantages that we might not achieve what we want to achieve through those negotiations and we would not have the freedom to negotiate from outside if we did not opt in. That is a reasonable position to present and I hope that noble Lords will accept it. There are strong arguments either way and the Government have not yet decided which option they will take.

Let me now deal with some of the points raised by the committee in its report. We agree that the data protection provisions in the regulation should take full account of the draft data protection directive and regulation. We also support appropriate scrutiny of Europol by the European Parliament and national Parliaments, a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay. However, we would need to know how the proposals to disclose classified information to the European Parliament might work.

The noble Lord, Lord Hannay, said that US information is higher than other member states. I can confirm that the UK is currently in the top three countries that provide data. As I have indicated to noble Lords, whether or not we opt in, we will fully participate in negotiations and work closely with member states to seek the necessary amendments to these draft proposals. In response to the question put by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, on retaining CEPOL, following the announcement of the closure of the Bramshill site, the Government’s priority is now to relocate the College of Policing so that it will be put on as strong a footing as possible to support policing in the UK. Other member states have expressed an interest in accommodating CEPOL, and there seems little point in insisting that it should stay in the UK just for the sake of it. We expect that the new proposal will repeal and replace the existing Europol Council decisions, although this does remain subject to negotiation. No final decisions have been made as to whether the Government will seek to rejoin as part of the wider 2014 opt-out decision. That decision has not been determined.

The noble Lord also asked why the debate scheduled for 3 July in another place was postponed and whether it will be reinstated. In truth, the debate was postponed to give the Government more time to consider the important voice of the opt-in and to reach a final view on it. The noble Lord will be aware that opt-in debates in another place are held on a Motion setting out the Government’s position. As I said earlier, we have not yet reached a decision on what that position will be. However, the Government are clear about their intention to hold a debate on this matter in another place, and such a debate will take place.

Global Migration and Mobility (EUC Report)

Lord Judd Excerpts

Thursday 6th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, first, I want to say—and I know I speak for others on the committee—that once again it has been a real privilege to work on this report under the leadership and chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Hannay. It really has been a good experience to be there with him on that committee. The second thing I want to say is that I passionately believe that we in this House, whenever we discuss the issues of immigration, should never miss an opportunity to say thank you to all those immigrants who have made such a fine, positive and desperately important contribution to our life in Britain and to the life we take for granted. It is true that all of us, every day, experience it in our families and with our friends when using the health service and it is true every day when we take our trains up and down the country. We know that we have received tremendous benefits in this country from immigration. That is why so many of us are ashamed of the myopic, cheap opportunism—that comes from educated people who should know better—of trying to seize negative emotion and work up passions, where we should be emphasising the importance of reason and analysis.

I found the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson of Astley Abbotts, very powerful, very analytical and very challenging. When he was speaking, I could not help reflecting on paragraph 13 of our report, in which we state:

“There are approximately 214 million international migrants worldwide”.

So we are faced not only with the pressures within our own society but with the pressures of migration for the global community as a whole. That is why it is crucial for those of us in this House, who have the space in this House to look at things in perspective, always to emphasise that, if ever there was an issue that requires international collaboration and international policies to deal with the huge issues that arise from it, it is the issue of migration. We simply cannot solve the issues of migration as a nation on our own. European co-operation is vital. The noble Lord was right to say that we should never consider these matters in our own country without looking at the experiences of others in Europe. But, of course, it is in the management of the issue that co-operation is so important.

That is why the European debate going on in Britain at the moment is very significant. To me, it flies in the face of reason to envisage in any way a future in which somehow we will do better on these issues if we operate as an island on our own, offshore from the mainland of Europe. We need to work with those in Europe if we are to be effective in handling the situation. Of course, it is important not just in Europe but worldwide as well.

That brings me to the issue of higher education, which has been fully debated today. As we debated it, I could not help feeling that if the sub-committee was looking for allies in the House, it could not have had a better ally than the noble Lord, Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market. That was an amazingly penetrating analysis and speech, and I just hope that his noble friends on the Front Bench have listened to every word of it and will recognise its significance.

There is one other point that I want to make, and I declare an interest because I am involved on a voluntary basis in three universities in this country—the London School of Economics, Lancaster and Newcastle. We talk about the economic consequences of policy towards overseas students, for the universities themselves immediately and the long-term consequences for the country as a whole. These are very central issues for our debate. There is one other point that needs to be emphasised. The first reality of existence for all of us on planet earth is that we are totally interdependent, and how history—if history is there to judge us—will judge political leaders of the time in which we live is on the success or failure that we make of handling that reality of international interdependence. I simply do not understand how you can approach education, let alone higher education, without that international reality being central to the deliberation in virtually every discipline being studied.

It is absolutely crucial that in our fine universities—we have some very fine universities in this country—there is a real, living community of scholars, not just from these islands but from the world as a whole. It is going to be the interplay of cultural experience and of different perspectives that will help students to become educated, as distinct from trained, and to understand the nature of the world in which they live and the scale of the issues that confront them. I know that when I was an undergraduate I was learning all the time from people who came from very different backgrounds from my own. I greatly appreciated that. It is true of Britain, but it is much truer of the world as a whole. What we do not emphasise enough in our considerations about higher education is that the quality of our universities is related to the presence of an international community central to their activities. Whenever that is diminished, the quality of education itself is being diminished. It is disturbing that current policies are leading to a decline in the number of students wanting to come to study here, because it is perceived that it is not a welcoming place and it is not a good place to spend a lot of time trying to get to when you can get elsewhere. That point has to be taken very seriously.

There are a couple of other points in the report on which I want to dwell for a moment. They have been referred to in the debate. One is the issue of integration. I was very impressed by what the right reverend Prelate said about his work and experiences in Derby. It is clear that civil society is crucial to making a success of integration, but not just civil society in terms of the NGOs, although they are very important, but even in the more established parts of civil society, if that is not a contradiction in terms. The chambers of commerce have a very important part to play and trade unions have an absolutely crucial part to play in the issue of integration. But then the NGOs themselves are vital. As someone who has spent a great deal of my life in NGOs, I worry that we are slipping into an era in which they are seen as an extension of public administration to deliver policy. I want good quality public service and I am sure, therefore, that NGOs will have an important contribution to make, but that is to miss the point. In a vibrant society, NGOs are there to contribute to the debate. They are there to learn from their engagement and experience and to bring to the quality of the public debate the depth of their experience and what they are discovering every day, on the front line, with real people. I do not get the feeling, under any Government in recent times, that the views, attitudes and experience of the NGOs have been central to the development of policy on integration in immigration matters. There is a lot of work to be done on that.

It is also important to realise that, if we are talking about successful integration, we must face up to the pressures on many of our relatively deprived communities which find themselves grappling with the largest elements of immigration and the movement of people. This is why we must make sure that, in areas where immigration is more concentrated than others, the schooling, hospitals, public services, housing and employment are given real priority. It is in these areas that the frustrations build up and the idiots who demean the whole quality of public debate start deploying their opportunism.

On the opportunism, I say to all our political leaders, please realise that you are never going to buy off that kind of opportunism. It has to be challenged and confronted. One has to talk about the values which are central to our society and in which we believe, and about why, with rational analysis, we must make a success of this interdependence about which I am talking and the inevitable movement of people. How can you talk about free and open markets if there is not to be the movement of people? It is a fundamental contradiction if you say you have a free and open market but people cannot move about to follow the investment. However, we know that it is not currently possible for that to happen, so we have issues. Theoretical and ideological solutions like open and free markets will not provide a total answer. We must have pragmatism at work, based upon real experience, real issues and how we handle them.

I have been heartened by the seriousness of this debate today. Again, I offer warmest thanks to our chair for having led us in preparing the report. I hope that we may have many opportunities to go on discussing this issue, but not just as a sort of Greek chorus wringing our hands about it but as part of a process that is making sure that we are doing the things that are necessary to meet the challenges.

Visas: Student Visa Policy

Lord Judd Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I am involved in the governance of the University of Newcastle and the University of Lancaster and, after 30 years as a governor, I am now an emeritus governor of the LSE. We live in a highly interdependent global community. To be relevant, each centre of higher education, as a community of scholars, must be a living international community. This is indispensable to the very quality of education that they provide. Present arrangements potentially damage that quality.

Why do we have a one-size-fits-all approach? Why on earth should universities with a strong record of not losing touch with their students and with low dropout rates have to go through the bureaucratic hoops and expense of attendance registers and the rest? It hardly enhances their dignity and attraction as mature communities of self-motivated students. What really is the rationale for treating students as any other immigrant instead of being in a separate category, as happens in many other countries?

An aggravating factor is the regional differences in the operation of UKBA. This adds to the uncertainty. Recruitment from India, especially of postgraduates, is certainly at risk. After China, India is hugely important in this context. The removal of the post-study work experience scheme particularly hits Indian recruitment. There are disturbing differences between what Ministers say about the vital need to win overseas students to the UK and what the too-often insensitive and unimaginative operation of UKBA presents in practice.

It boils down to this: are we determined to appear to the future leaders across the world as a neurotic, bureaucratic, small-minded, defensive little island to the north of Europe, so why go there to study, or as a dynamic, self-confident and welcoming player in the global community, which is an excellent place to be a student?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

There is one basic policy—there is no limit on international students coming to this country. That is the fundamental and basic policy. I will not get involved, if the noble Lord will forgive me, in a discussion about statistics. I understand the weakness of arguments based on statistics. However, it is important to emphasise why the Office for National Statistics includes students in the net migration figures. It is because of the international definitions which govern these things. I emphasise to noble Lords that there is no limit on international students coming to this country.

[Lord Judd]

The noble Lord keeps saying that the Government have no limit, but there is a difference between the Government having a position and their making it effective. Has that been culturally absorbed by the UK Border Agency?

[Lord Taylor of Holbeach]

I would like to think that it has. I am more concerned whether it has been culturally absorbed by noble Lords. I am doing my best to emphasise to noble Lords that there is no limit on international students coming to this country.

EU Drugs Strategy: EUC Report

Lord Judd Excerpts

Thursday 19th July 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Hannay, on this report, which, given the number of people who are involved in this debate, shows how vital this issue is. During my short time as a practising economist, one of the things I learnt about markets was that while states can regulate them, they certainly cannot abolish them; where there is demand, there is always supply. That applies to the area of drugs probably more than anywhere else. It is an irony that the UN Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs signed in 1961 and the subsequent war on drugs have been pushed particularly strongly by the United States, the country we see as the bastion of capitalism and markets, but there is an absolute contradiction here. The convention was implemented in 1964 and in theory there should be no global drugs market at all because the convention was signed by the vast majority of the members of the United Nations.

As the noble Lord, Lord Howarth, has said, the drugs market was worth $320 billion back in 2003, but perhaps what is more important—and I suspect that I am underestimating it—is that it represented 1% of GDP. In 2009 the market for cocaine was estimated to be worth around $85 billion, which can be compared with the income of Andean farmers at around $1 billion. There is a huge market in South America. Of that laundered money, which at today’s value is something in excess of half a trillion dollars, under 1% is actually seized during its transit by authorities, so 99% of it is recycled into organised crime. The report is very clear—and it has been mentioned by a number of other noble Lords—that, in terms of supply and demand, the existing EU strategy has had no noticeable effect whatever.

I was also interested in the statistics at the beginning of the report that suggest that almost one-quarter of EU citizens have admitted to using drugs, and one in 20 on an ongoing, annual basis. That suggests that whether we like it or not, drug taking—I suspect mainly so-called soft drugs—is a part of our culture and of life. However, simply because the law is transgressed, does not mean that we should endorse drug taking. I am sure many of us break the speeding limit, but that does not mean that we should not have speed limits as part of the rules of driving. However, there is an issue there about what we make legal and illegal.

One of the results of this policy, and the area that I will concentrate on, concerns consumer countries. We have black markets and we have health risks—because there is no quality control, taking drugs is more dangerous under a prohibition regime. There is no consumer advice. The activity produces criminals—in the United States it is estimated that one in four imprisonments is drugs-related and in the UK maybe up to 50% of crimes have some relation to drugs. We also have organised crime as part of our infrastructure. Perhaps more importantly, in producer countries we have already mentioned the 47,000 or 48,000 Mexicans who have been murdered during the presidency of President Calderón over the past six years, and 95% of all murders in Mexico are drugs related.

I very much welcome the comments of my noble friend Lord Mancroft about transit countries. Honduras has the highest murder rate in the world. I chair the all-party group of a country that is not well known—Guinea-Bissau, an ex-Portuguese colony in west Africa. It is a state that has failed in many ways and has become a main route for drugs from South America into Europe. As a result, that society has disintegrated even more; corruption is strong and the military within the country has become a state within a state and is largely financed through the drugs trade. In those countries, we have not only drug habits but much greater corruption.

One of the most important paragraphs in the report, paragraph 64, quotes Youngers and Rosin in 2005, who say that,

“international drug trafficking breeds criminality and exacerbates political violence, greatly increasing problems of citizen security and tearing at the social fabric of communities and neighbourhoods. It has corrupted and further weakened local governments, judiciaries and police forces … it can be extremely damaging to local environments”.

This issue of displacement—I welcome its emphasis in this report—shows the great difficulty of this policy. When we clamp down in one area, it destroys another without mending the societies where the problem has been solved from a consumer state’s point of view.

I would probably disagree with noble Lords so far—I disagree with the report in this regard—about one area, which comes back to practical economics. One cannot decriminalise the consumption of drugs and keep the criminalisation of the supply chain. What happens in that circumstance is that one sits slightly more smugly as a consumer in your population, but you still lay waste to the developing world and the transit countries through which those supply chains operate, because no difference is made to the way the system operates there.

That is why this issue is particularly difficult and there are no easy answers. There are huge political risks —the newspaper issue in the UK has been mentioned by the noble Lord many times—but the system has failed, and now we have an international network of organised crime.

[Lord Judd]

I am impressed by what the noble Lord is saying, but could he help us by clarifying this issue? If he does not accept that you can decriminalise the taking of drugs while keeping the criminalisation of the trade in drugs, how does he compare that with the situation in which the illicit black market in tobacco is criminalised?

[Lord Teverson]

You will never completely take away criminalisation, but perhaps the least damaging solution—again, I am not pretending that there are any easy answers regarding the supply chain—is to have pharmaceutical companies becoming distributors of drugs like any other prescription drugs. Will you ever completely decriminalise something where there is high taxation or smuggling? The taxation-hedging that takes place is perhaps more the issue than the question of VAT on drugs like alcohol or tobacco, and is perhaps the area where you have to be more careful.

There is an international network of organised crime involving money-laundering; corruption; human misery, of course; and a very large black economy. More than that, though, we have reduced liquidity within that black market which allows arms trafficking, people trafficking and terrorism. You can regulate markets but you cannot abolish them. I agree very much with the report’s conclusions in general but I would very much like to see the EU lead this debate internationally into much more realistic waters for the future. I particularly agree with this part of the Government’s response, which reads:

“It is vital that this debate is focussed on clear evidence and analysis and we will continue to champion the use of evidence at local, national and international level”.

However, the track record of UK Governments on evidence-based drugs policy has been particularly bad.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, I speak as a member of Sub-Committee F of the European Union Committee chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Hannay. I would like to pay tribute to his leadership and chairmanship, which is always outstanding. Indeed, I think that the way in which the report has been welcomed, and the plaudits that it has received, indicate how much appreciation there is for what he has done.

I hope that those who are interested in this subject will not only read the report but will read the evidence that was submitted to the committee. A lot of work went into much of that evidence and it should not just be cast to one side. It contains some very interesting reflections of experience. I, for one—and it is not only in this sphere that I have noticed it—found an interesting difference of perspective between those dealing with the issue at a global policy level and those dealing with it at the front line of people affected by drugs. I think that your Lordships would find it refreshing to read the evidence given by the Reverend Eric Blakebrough, who is at the forefront of working with drug addicts. What he had to say was extremely illuminating.

As has come across in this debate, a review of global drug policy is clearly overdue. As some noble Lords have emphasised, the Global Commission on Drug Policies has said this, too. It is significant, and we would be remiss not to take it seriously, that states such as Guatemala, Colombia and Uruguay, which face many of the consequences of what we are debating, are calling for an urgent debate of this kind. If there is to be a debate, the European Union should certainly take a lead in it.

Our report is an absolute reflection of the consensus that was reached. I attach great significance to those sentences where we talk about the health dimension being at least as important as the enforcement dimension. I wish that the debate could move more into the role of health. Since our report was published, the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction has commended the Portuguese approach. The cost benefits of a health-focused, rather than a criminal justice-focused, approach are particularly relevant at a time of so much economic stringency and cuts in public funds, because we must be certain that the money being spent is not being wasted and is being used as cost-effectively as possible.

As my noble friend Lord Howarth was sharing his thoughts on decriminalisation, my thoughts immediately turned to the report. There in chapter 1—I hope that the House will forgive me if I quote from it—we deal with exactly that, stating:

“It is instructive to compare illegal narcotic drugs with two psychoactive drugs which are legal and openly commercially available: alcohol and tobacco. Worldwide, one person in three uses alcohol, one in four uses tobacco, whereas fewer than 5% of people declare themselves as using drugs at least once a year, and fewer than 1% use drugs on a continuing basis. Tobacco kills five million people a year, alcohol 2.5 million people a year, and drugs about 500,000 a year. These are figures that need to be borne in mind when considering why some potentially harmful addictive substances are licit and some illicit. Prescribed drugs, whether or not mixed with narcotic drugs, also lead to acute cases of addiction and withdrawal, but they too are outside the scope of our inquiry and are not examined in this report”.

Perhaps I may say on a purely personal note that, after undergoing an operation for which I had to take painkillers afterwards, I had a hell of a job coming off one of the painkillers that was prescribed. My GP told me, “You do realise you are taking an addictive drug and you are going to have a tough job throwing it”. The interfaces in this area are very important to face.

A further issue is how we toughen up our approach to money-laundering. We have to take very seriously what has become clear in a big case in the United States at the moment. One of the difficulties in facing up to this is that it is sometimes very difficult to establish where the dividing line is exactly, if there is such an absolute dividing line, between illegal and legal business activity. This greatly complicates the tasks of the enforcement agencies.

I referred to the urgent need for a review. It is fair to say that, after 50 years of the current enforcement-led international drugs control system, the so-called war on drugs is coming under unparalleled scrutiny. The goal was, of course, to create a drug-free world. Instead, despite more than $1 trillion, according to the UNODC, having been spent fighting the war, illegal drugs are used by an estimated 270 million people and organised crime profits from a trade with an estimated turnover of $330 billion a year—the world’s largest illegal commodity market. The UNODC has acknowledged that choosing an enforcement-based approach was having a range of negative unintended consequences, including the creation of a vast criminal market, displacement of the illegal drug trade to new areas, diversion of funding from health and the stigmatisation of users. The noble Lords, Lord Mancroft and Lord Teverson, dealt with that point. What concerned us in our deliberations in Sub-Committee F was not only this displacement and the drawing of third countries into the whole affair but the human rights dimensions. Sometimes, what was being done by the enforcement agencies and others in some of the third countries was totally unacceptable in terms of any basic commitment to human rights. We really do need to watch where our money is going and what is happening to it in terms of whether it is upholding human rights, whatever the cause may be. We cannot deal with one problem by transgressing very seriously in another area.

I shall conclude my brief intervention by saying that I have been impressed, in the context of the urgent need for a review, by a recent report produced by Count the Costs, which is a coalition of NGOs working in this area. It is a very interesting coalition that has produced an alternative report. The headings in that report include:

“Wasting billions and undermining economies … Undermining development and security, and fuelling conflict … Threatening public health, spreading disease and causing death … Undermining human rights … Promoting stigma and discrimination … Creating crime and enriching criminals … Causing deforestation and pollution”.

The report also examines other options for controlling drugs, including health-led approaches—hence the significance of Portugal—and legal state regulation and control. It ends with a call to UN member states to count the cost of the war on drugs and properly explore all the alternatives that might deliver better outcomes. In the report, we hear the voice of people very often giving their lives to work in the front line of the consequences of this very serious issue. In our deliberations, we should take seriously what they are saying.