Immigration (Bulgaria and Romania)

Mark Harper Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2013 Westminster Hall

[Keith Vaz]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman; he is absolutely right. That is why we wanted the Migration Advisory Committee to assist.

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

On that specific point, we asked the Migration Advisory Committee in 2011 the question about the labour market, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) referred. In its response, the committee stated:

“It would not be sensible, or helpful to policy makers, for us to attempt to put a precise numerical range around this likely impact.”

That was the advice it gave us, and that was the advice we followed.

[Keith Vaz]

I say to the Minister, for whom I have enormous respect—he is a hard-working and fair Immigration Minister, and I have seen quite a few in my time—he has obviously not had the time to read the evidence of Sir David Metcalf. I specifically asked him that question after it was also raised by others, and he said:

“we have never been tasked to make estimates of the numbers coming from Romania and Bulgaria.”

He said that last week. The Minister has quoted something from 2011, but frankly the chairman himself has not been asked yet.

[Mr Harper]

David Metcalf was right in what he said, and I have read the transcript. The point is that he and his committee said that asking them to do that work would not be sensible or helpful because of the uncertainty, so it seemed pointless to ask them, because they had replied to the point when we commissioned them in 2011.

[Keith Vaz]

That may be so, but that is not what he said to us last week. Perhaps the Government, because of the importance of the issue, should have kept in regular touch with Sir David Metcalf. If they had done so, perhaps he would have updated what he said in 2011.

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[Mr Hollobone]

I welcome the intervention from the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey), not least because, as always, she knows what she is talking about. She is a proud champion of the concerns of her constituents, who will be rightly concerned about that issue.

[Mr Harper]

Given that two hon. Members have raised the question, and given that my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) takes part in crime fighting directly, I think it would be helpful to give an answer. The order I signed and laid before the House on 6 December, which I will set out in more detail later, enables us to remove from the UK people who are not here to exercise treaty rights—those committing low-level, but damaging crimes, begging and sleeping rough—and importantly stop them from coming straight back again, unless they are coming to exercise those rights. That is an important power and change that goes some way to addressing the concerns of my hon. Friend and the hon. Lady.

[Mr Hollobone]

It does indeed go some way, and I am grateful for it, but sadly the changes do not go far enough. Those people can be sent back under the order he mentions to their country of origin, but in a certain amount of time, they can come back to our shores. I have a private Member’s Bill on the Order Paper that would ban foreign nationals who commit an offence in this country from ever returning to our shores. I think that measure would enjoy popular support.

The scale of this crime wave is really quite startling. Romanians are seven times more likely to be arrested in London than British nationals; Romanians account for more than 11% of all foreign offenders in the UK, despite currently making up just a tiny proportion of foreign residents here; and last year Romanians accounted for almost half of all arrests for begging and a third of arrests for pick-pocketing in the capital. I declare in my interests that I am a special constable with the British Transport police on the London underground, and I can say that eight out of 10 pick-pockets are from Romania. So the whole thing is completely out of control and the Romanian authorities need to provide the British police with information about the Romanian criminals that they know are in this country far more quickly than they are currently providing it.

The background to all this is that we are a crowded island. What the British people object to is not the nationality of someone coming to our shores, the colour of their skin or the language that they speak. What my constituents object to—what the British people object to—is the numbers coming to our shores, with which our crowded isle cannot cope.

We are now told that, according to official Government statistics, some 43% of new housing requirements are because of immigration. Immigration is driving up our population to unsustainable levels, and we have a population boom that is fuelled by EU migration. Indeed, Polish immigration has contributed almost half of the UK’s recent population growth. Half of all foreign-born residents currently in the UK have come here since 2001. From 2001, the number of foreign-born residents rose by almost 3 million, and yet in the 50 years beforehand only 2.7 million people arrived in the UK from abroad. There has been more immigration to our shores since 1950 than there was in all the time between 1066 and 1950. We are one of the most densely crowded countries in the European Union.

The vast majority of people who have come here in recent times have come from Poland. Poles are now the second largest group of foreign-born nationals in the UK, with only Indians having a larger presence. Figures from the Office for National Statistics show that in 2011 there were 7.5 million non-UK-born residents in the country—13% of the population—and it is migration that has contributed to just less than half of that population change in the last 60 years. The non-UK-born population has almost quadrupled since 1951, from 4.3% of the population to 13.4%. My contention is that our crowded island cannot cope with this level of population increase, because our population is set to rise, according to official statistics from the ONS, by 9.6 million people by 2037, reaching a total of 73.3 million people, a level of population that our country has never had to cope with before.

Unless we close the door to immigration from EU states, my contention—on behalf of my constituents—is that our country will struggle to cope, and not just in our capital city or our other big metropolitan areas but in semi-rural areas, such as my constituency of Kettering, where the number of houses is set to increase by a third within the next 25 years.

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[Mr Ruffley]

Indeed. I am reminded of Cecil Rhodes’s comment that to be born a free-born Englishman was to have won first prize in the lottery of life. English as the world language is obviously the reason why so many migrants want to come from within and outside the EU, and attend language schools in this country. My hon. Friend is correct in suspecting that London will be a huge magnet for Romanians and Bulgarians. There are perfectly understandable reasons for them to want to come to this country, and many will no doubt want to work hard. Perhaps some will take jobs illegally under the minimum wage level of £6 an hour. We do not criticise those individuals who want a better life; we merely suggest that what I have outlined is a luxury that the country cannot afford, now or in the future.

[Mr Harper]

On the argument about where people might go, my hon. Friend considered the facts regarding the number of Romanians and Bulgarians who are already here, but let us look at the other countries mentioned. Italy did not have transitional controls, and there are 1 million Romanians and Bulgarians there. Spain and Germany did, and 500,000 Romanians and Bulgarians went to Germany and 1 million to Spain. I do not say that that is conclusive, but it may be one aspect of what was meant when it was suggested that there is a range of options for Romanians and Bulgarians besides coming to the United Kingdom.

[Mr Ruffley]

One could argue that in Germany and the other countries my hon. Friend mentioned, job vacancies for Romanians and Bulgarians are perhaps pretty much full up now, and they may want to try their luck in the United Kingdom, where, if they do their research, they will understand there are many job vacancies that remain unfilled, despite the economic recovery, and that there could be rich job pickings. However, I do not think that the argument can be made conclusively either way.

I am getting rather tired with the argument that all immigration to this country is by definition good, in economic terms. First, I pray in aid a 2008 report of the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee, which made the point that total output can be driven up by increasing the number of people in the country. The greater the population, the greater the economic growth. That is an economic truism that no one disputes. However, the Committee also said that that was beside the point. What matters is not GDP, but GDP per capita. A much larger population, generating a higher total output, means there is a bigger cake; but there are also more people who want a slice of it.

The key point, which the Home Secretary and her Ministers have identified, is that this is not just about getting bodies into the country to generate more economic growth; it is about getting the right people in, with the skills and specialisms that we need. That, almost by definition, means small numbers of immigrants, who will meet a high-skill, high-value-added specification—not tens or even hundreds of thousands, as there were in the case of Poland and other accession countries in 2004. I fear that what happened then will also happen with Romania and Bulgaria.

If anyone is thinking of references for the debate, many arguments have recently been made about work by University college London that argues that immigrants contribute more in tax than they ever take in benefit. I do not have time to say why that work is grossly inadequate. Another grossly inadequate body, in my view, is the Office for Budget Responsibility, which in the past six months has blithely said that, unless this country has 7 million more immigrants between now and 2050, we will not cut our deficit and our national debt. Those figures are “Through the Looking Glass” stuff. I repeat again that the current Home Office Ministers understand that truth, but they are not able to say that they have made it tougher for EU migrants to come here, as they have with non-EU migrants. As a result of the EU treaties, Ministers have not been able to impose such welcome discipline on the number of EU migrants coming into this country.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) talked about the polarity—which he helped to set up, if he will allow me to say so—between little Englanders and free traders. I like to think that I am a free trader, and I want to run the Prime Minister’s global race, as I am sure we all do. I can hardly wait to run that race. As a free-market, right-of-centre—nay, right-wing—Conservative, I believe in free trade and Britain facing outwards to the world, but we should still understand that the best way to earn our way in the world is not to open our doors willy-nilly to an undifferentiated mass of workers from other countries, when we have no way of sifting to see what skills they have and how highly specialised those skills are. We can do that for workers from the rest of the world, but we cannot do it for workers from the EU.

Over the past year, as we all know, the British economy has begun to recover, thanks to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer and his tenacity in sticking to his economic project. Private sector employment is now at an all-time high. In the past, as the number of job vacancies increased, the response from employers in this country would have been to increase wages to attract the best workers. When the economy grew, wages grew. That is a fairly uncontroversial proposition, but that link seems to have been broken in the current recovery. The number of people in employment has increased, but real wage growth has been flat.

With gross migration to this country running at some 500,000 a year, and with many of those migrants coming from low-income countries, there is not much incentive for employers to increase wages. In 2004, when the Labour Government lifted the restriction on Polish and other eastern European workers coming into this country, the average wage in Poland was just 42% of the average wage in the UK. If a Polish plumber could more than double his salary by coming over to fit bathrooms in Wellingborough rather than Warsaw, who could blame him for jumping on the next easyJet flight? Good luck to him.

Although some think that lifting restrictions on Bulgarians and Romanians will somehow produce a different outcome, we should bear in mind the following facts, which have been alluded to in earlier contributions. Average wages in Bulgaria and Romania are currently 31% and 34% of average wages in the UK respectively. That is even lower, relative to the UK, than Polish wages were in 2004.

Wage levels in the UK have been fairly flat recently, but since 2004, wages paid to workers in so-called elementary occupations, such as manual labourers and cleaners, have declined by 8%. Wages have not been flat. At the very lowest end, we have seen a very large fall in wages. Cleaning jobs and labouring jobs are hard, difficult and often monotonous work, but they are the sorts of jobs that many immigrants drift towards, at least when they first arrive in a country and need a job fast. Many immigrants have a strong work ethic. It is not surprising that several academic studies in many countries have found a close link, over time, between the scale of migration to a developed country such as ours and the wages of less-skilled workers. Those wages go down or stay flat.

If the restrictions are lifted—and it looks as if they will be—and there is an influx into this country of an indeterminate number of Bulgarians and Romanians, jobs in the elementary occupations might be paid at below the legal minimum wage. Why might that be? Paying below the minimum wage is, of course, illegal, but it is certainly anecdotally true that many immigrants do not have a tendency to inform the authorities that they are receiving £3 or £4 an hour, rather than the £6-plus that is the legal minimum in this country.

The problem of British workers being undercut by EU workers—in this case Bulgarians and Romanians—who are willing to accept extremely low wages, sometimes perhaps illegally low wages, may get worse in the coming year. This statistic has been mentioned before, but it bears repeating: the legal minimum wage in both Romania and Bulgaria is under 80p an hour; in the UK it is well over £6 an hour, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough recited. One factor that we all know, and which has also been referred to, is that British workers do not want low-paid jobs. We hear all the time that young people do not want to take jobs in domiciliary care, nursing homes and so on. Suffice it to say that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is doing excellent work in reforming the benefit system, but there is more to do.

We cannot say yet that the welfare reforms have been a success. As Andrew Green, the chairman of Migration Watch UK, reminds us, it is inexcusable for British employers not to give British workers a level playing field on recruitment. The key point is that, with 1 million young people not in employment or training, it is imperative that they are given a chance to get on the work ladder. The route to proper employment has to start somewhere, and 1 million young people in our country are not doing anything at all. It is fairly inevitable that the influx of Bulgarians and Romanians will crowd out the opportunities for young people to move off benefits and into productive work.

I will close my remarks by saying that we may have lost the argument on lifting the controls, but I hope that this debate, and the further debates that I trust we will have in 2014, will move on to new territory. That territory must include the views attributed to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary, who I understand has floated a cap on EU migrants to this country of 75,000. EU migrants to this country should be blocked from claiming benefits not just for three months, but for three years or more. Finally, freedom of movement from poorer countries should be restricted, and we should insist that such movement may happen only when the GDP of those countries has reached 75% of the UK’s GDP. I hope that those of us here today, and those who support my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley, will press the Prime Minister to put such radical reform of freedom of movement at the very top of his list of renegotiation items when he comes to renegotiate this country’s future as it relates to the European Union.

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[Mark Reckless (Rochester and Strood) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope) and I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills) on securing the debate.

I was elected to this Parliament on the basis of a promise to cut immigration from hundreds of thousands a year to no more than tens of thousands a year. Many of my constituents voted for me on that basis. They had had enough of a Labour Government who oversaw uncontrolled immigration for year after year after year, and they wanted to see immigration cut. As a Member of this place and of the Select Committee on Home Affairs—I am delighted to have its Chair, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), next to me—I have found that whenever we hold an inquiry into immigration all manner of people want to come in to tell us why there should be more immigrants for their particular vested interest, but hardly anyone, except Migration Watch UK, which is a superb, independent and thoroughly respected think tank, will put the counter-argument—

[Mr Harper]

And the Minister.

[Mark Reckless]

And of course the Minister, and his predecessor from Kent, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashford (Damian Green), who also put forward that case.

Although the Government have taken a lot of action on immigration, much of which is in the detail of what has been done—I credit both Ministers for their work in that area—I am concerned that in several key areas we have relaxed what we should have done and perhaps originally intended to do. One such area was the number of people whom we allow in on inter-company transfers. When the Prime Minister went to India, he came under pressure, from Liberal Democrats and the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, to put in place this loophole whereby people with incomes of down to the £24,000 or £30,000 level are allowed to come in for a certain period but then leave, and other people come in and also earn below the proper cap for inter-company transfers. That has put people in the IT industry in particular under intense pressure in terms of holding down wages in that sector and, I fear, has also increased the number of people in the country.

Another area is post-study work, which expanded under the Labour Government. As far as I can see, anyone can come here and do any course, and then stay on and work afterwards, or indeed while they are doing the course, with few if any questions asked. I was delighted when the Home Office said that it would get rid of that, but unfortunately it was then watered down under pressure from universities and, as ever, the Liberal Democrats. I would love to hear from the Minister whether they signed up to that policy, and whether it is a Government policy.

We then said that anyone who comes here and gets a degree from a university can stay on and work. We are subsidising our university sector through our immigration policy. The Government go on as though everyone else does it, but they do not. I studied in America, and it is difficult to stay on there afterwards. I think only Australia has a more obviously generous system than we do. Our universities should compete on the basis of their academic excellence, not on the basis of “If you come and study with us rather than with some other competitor, you’ll be able to stay on and work in the British labour market, and potentially stay on for ever thereafter.” The fact that we have allowed that loophole makes net migration higher than it otherwise would be, and we are further from hitting our target.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) said that we have cut net migration by more than a third. I am afraid that his figures are significantly out of date, if indeed they had a solid basis when produced. He referred to a couple of weeks ago, “on Third Reading of the Immigration Bill”, which he may be aware has not actually happened yet.

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[Mr Hanson]

That would be valuable. We have to have some positive dialogue. Statements have been made in the Chamber today that paint a picture of people from Bulgaria and Romania in one particular category—not all individuals are in the categories referred to today by some hon. Members. We need to look at what measures we can put in place before 31 December, including those the Opposition have suggested in response to the issue.

Members have mentioned a number of issues. There is potentially downward pressure on wages, because of people being undercut. There are recruitment agencies recruiting solely from eastern Europe, which was mentioned again by the hon. Members for Rochester and Strood and for Christchurch (Mr Chope). There are pressures on certain economic markets run by gangmasters with minimum wage, as mentioned by the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds (Mr Ruffley); people are coming to this country because they believe that a £4 or £5 an hour wage packet is better than a £2 an hour equivalent wage packet in their home country. Whatever happens on 31 December and whatever numbers of individuals come to the United Kingdom, I therefore want to see a real focus by the Government on enforcement of the minimum wage as a starting point. We need to put some effort in, not only through Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, but by looking at the possibility of giving local authorities the power to enforce the minimum wage, so that we can have greater enforcement, potentially stopping the undercutting of wages that the hon. Gentleman and others have referred to.

We need to look at enforcement of the Equality Act 2010. The hon. Member for Christchurch mentioned recruitment from eastern Europe. It is illegal to recruit individuals based on their race or nationality under that Act, but it is not widely enforced. I have discussed that with the Minister and he has agreed to look at it and refer it to the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

[Mr Harper]

I have done so.

[Mr Hanson]

I am glad the Minister has done that, because I recently gave chapter and verse in the Immigration Bill Committee on a number of recruitment agencies that are recruiting to fill positions in the United Kingdom solely with people from abroad.

We need to take greater action on the enforcement of housing regulations. Only yesterday, I was pleased to see the Prime Minister—again, I give credit when it is due—visiting a raid on a beds-in-sheds encampment in Southall. One aspect of immigration that greatly upsets my constituents in north Wales is when individuals share properties in squalid conditions and so are able to undercut wages locally, because the low standard of their accommodation means they do not have the outgoings that other people have. We also wish to look at extending legislation on gangmasters. It is perfectly reasonable to put controls in and extend gangmaster legislation to sectors to which it does not apply at the moment, such as catering and tourism.

There is action that we can take, but—and this is not intended to provoke a political fight—I genuinely do not think that the approach that some hon. Members are taking, of arguing that the transitional controls should be extended beyond 31 December, is the right one: we know, as do they, that that is a matter for treaty negotiation. Nor do I think, speaking with genuine humility, that the approach of withdrawal from the European Union is one that I can support. The European Union provides significant investments to constituencies such as mine. It also provides significant employment and a proper standard of working conditions across the board.

Furthermore, although this might not be a common thought at the moment, just under 100 years ago my grandfather was fighting Germans, Romanians and Bulgarians in the trenches and Turks in the middle east. But now, we have not had a world war for a generation and there is a stability that would surprise my grandfather if he were alive today. People from Germany, Romania, Bulgaria and Britain now sit in the same chamber to discuss issues of common economic and social interest whereas in his generation Europe was at war. That view of the European Union and the potential of a strong future Europe might not be a common one, but it is one that I hold passionately.

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[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Benton. I agree with the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) that the blend of you and Ms Dorries could not have been bettered. I congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills), for Wellingborough (Mr Bone), for Kettering (Mr Hollobone), and for Bury St Edmunds (Mr Ruffley), who collectively made a bid to the Backbench Business Committee for the debate.

I will not spend a great deal of time being partisan—that is not my natural way—but I want to make a couple of points. Part of the reason for the concern that our constituents have—a number of hon. Members touched on this—is the record of the previous Government, and the fact that they did not put transitional controls in place for the previous accession of new EU member states. Of course, the important thing was not just that we did not have them, but that we were the only significant country that did not have them. That was the reason for the very significant influx then, and that is a different position from the one that we face now.

My hon. Friend the Member for Kettering tried to get the right hon. Member for Delyn to say sorry, but it is, of course, the hardest word, and he could not quite bring himself to say it. Interestingly, the Opposition have never said that they accept that they made any mistake on non-EU immigration. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) said, that was twice as large—twice as many people came from outside the EU—and it was completely controllable, as there were no issues about free movement. The Labour Government also messed that up, but not only have we heard no apology for that, we have not even heard an acknowledgement that it was a mistake. Perhaps in due course that statement will arrive; we wait with bated breath.

The other thing that we have been criticised for is not taking action previously. The shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), has criticised us for not having made changes to the benefits system. It slipped my mind during our debate on this topic last week, but she was the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions in the previous Administration. I am sure that the right hon. Member for Delyn will leap up and correct me if I am wrong, but I do not recall either of them acknowledging at any point, while he was at the Home Office or she was the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, that there was a problem with benefits for immigrants; nor, frankly, do I recall them doing anything about it. We are being criticised by the Opposition for not having taken any steps when our Immigration Bill is before the House and we have laid out steps in secondary legislation to deal with people’s concerns; that is a little bit on the rich side, but we will not be spending too much time on that.

I am sure that you will be pleased to hear, Mr Benton, that I will not spend too much time on the bigger issue of our membership of the European Union.

[Mr Bone]

Go on!

[Mr Harper]

Tempting though I find the invitation from my hon. Friend to say more, I will just observe this: we were not, as we have discovered, blessed by the presence of any Liberal Democrats in this debate, but I note that there were only two Labour Back Benchers here—sadly, neither is here now. Interestingly, both support a referendum on our membership of the EU, and both attended the House on a Friday to support the excellent European Union (Referendum) Bill promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton South (James Wharton). The right hon. Member for Delyn is a little isolated: the only Labour Members who were here today, aside from him, are in favour of a referendum on our EU membership, want us to renegotiate that membership, and were willing to vote for that excellent Bill. Perhaps he should reflect on that and think about whether it might be more sensible for the Labour party to change its official position to support the Prime Minister when he leads that renegotiation after we win the general election with a Conservative majority Government, and then support us when we put that new position to the people.

I will say a few words on our record. We have reduced net migration. I will act as referee between my hon. Friends the Members for Bournemouth East, and for Rochester and Strood (Mark Reckless): net migration is down by nearly a third since its peak. My hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood was right about the latest figures, but what my hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East said was correct before those came out. The reduction is now nearly a third, rather than over a third. Non-European economic area migration is at its lowest level for 14 years, and is back to the level that it was at when we were last in power by ourselves. That is significant progress.

[Mark Reckless]

I was talking about the last year under the previous Government, rather than the peak. Is the Minister concerned by the increase in visa applications? They had gone down to 500,000 a quarter in the first half of the year, but are now up to about 530,00 for the third quarter.

[Mr Harper]

It depends on the sort of visa applications. Some people coming to Britain do not count as immigrants, because they are not here for a long enough period of time. I will have to check the information, but my understanding is that our visa numbers suggest that the downward trend on non-EU migration will continue, based on our reforms. It is right to say—this goes to the heart of the debate—that the reason for the increase in the last set of figures was an increase in migration from the European Union, but not from eastern Europe. Interestingly, it was from the more traditional countries—the western European countries, with which there is not a massive disparity in GDP, although our economy has been rather more successful than theirs in creating jobs.

My hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley made a key point about employment. We might disagree about the solution, but his concern is well placed. My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East made this point strongly, too. Between 2003 and 2008, when the economy was growing under the previous Government, more than 90% of employment growth was accounted for by foreign nationals. Yes, the economy was growing under Labour, but the benefit was largely going to people who were not UK citizens—not the people for whom we all work. We have made a difference. Since the Government came to power, our immigration and welfare reforms have made it more worth while for British citizens to be in work.

Our skills agenda, more rigorous education and more apprenticeships are helping to make a difference. Since the second quarter of 2010, there has been a 1.1 million net increase in employment, and more than three quarters of that rise in employment has been accounted for by UK nationals, so the employment growth that we have seen since we came to power has largely benefited UK citizens, which is a significant turnaround. It is exactly what we wanted to achieve, and it is being achieved not only by the Home Office, but by our policies on immigration, on welfare, and on apprenticeships, training and education, which are all aligned and delivering the same outcome. That is significant, and it means that hundreds of thousands of families in Britain today have somebody in employment; they would not have had somebody in employment if the policies followed by the Labour had continued. That is welcome, and it is something of which we can be proud.

We are still committed to bringing down net migration. My hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood referred to the Prime Minister’s remarks. Just to be clear, he was drawing attention to the difficulty of the task, particularly given the problems in some of our western and southern European neighbours’ economies. In the interview, he reasserted the importance of delivering on our policy; he was simply drawing attention to the fact that it is a little more difficult than we had first thought, because of the difficulty in the European economies, but we are absolutely still committed to the policy.

It is worth putting the numbers in context. It is still the case with our reforms that, even having driven down migration from outside the European Union, 48% of immigration to Britain is from outside the EU, compared to 36% from the EU; the remainder are British citizens who have been overseas for more than a year and are returning to the United Kingdom. We should remember that many British citizens go to other European countries. According to the 2010 figures, there were 2.2 million EU nationals in the UK and 1.4 million Brits in EU countries. Interestingly, only five European Union countries have more than 100,000 citizens in the United Kingdom, and it is not the ones people might think: France, Germany, Ireland, Italy and Poland. In the case of Ireland, there are historical reasons not connected to the EU. Poland is the only non-traditional country that has a significant number, which is 500,000.

If we balance the figures with the countries in which our citizens live, there are only two European Union countries where the net number of EU citizens in the United Kingdom is more than 100,000. There are 145,000 more Germans living in Britain than vice versa, and Poland has a significant number—519,000 more. Of course, Spain is the opposite way round: there are 750,000 more Brits living in Spain. It is worth putting that in context, so that we can have the rational, sensible debate that the right hon. Member for Delyn talked about.

Turning to the specific points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley, and to his new clause to the Immigration Bill, it is worth remembering—I agree with the right hon. Member for Delyn on this point—that for that Bill to take effect, it has to go through our House and the other place. Whether we had debated the new clause this side of Christmas or the other side of Christmas, it would have made no difference, because the measure cannot become law until the Bill progresses through Parliament, and that is not likely to happen until towards the end of this Session. As the Leader of the House has said, the legislative agenda is quite packed. Only yesterday, five or six Acts of Parliament got Royal Assent, and—this is rather above my pay grade, so I have to be very careful, because the usual channels are in the room—the business will be scheduled in due course, but it will not make a difference to when the measure becomes law.

I fear that the right hon. Member for Delyn is right: the previous Government signed the accession treaties and we supported them. Of course I am not pretending that we did not support them. The treaty came into effect in 2007, and the seven-year transitional controls expire at the end of the year. It is worth being careful about language. We are not lifting them; they expire. They cease to have any legal effect, because of the terms of the accession treaties. I am not doing anything to lift them; they simply become legally ineffective at the end of the year, because of the provisions.

[Mr Bone]

Will the Minister give way on that point?

[Mr Harper]

If my hon. Friend will forgive me, I am trying to cover the points made in the debate. I have listened to the debate, and I only have three and a half minutes to try to cover the other points that people have raised.

Unlike the previous Government, who chose not to apply controls, we have extended them to the maximum length possible, so I feel that the strategy of my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley is not going to work. Although it is perfectly reasonable for colleagues to have concerns, I hope that they will have seen—of course, I knew these things were in the pipeline when we debated them in Committee, which, obviously, my hon. Friend did not—the order that I signed a couple of weeks ago, which puts in place tough rules about limiting jobseeker’s allowance to six months. It puts in place the controls that I talked about in response to points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering and the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey).

We will be able to remove, and stop returning to Britain, people who are here not exercising their treaty rights—who are here begging, rough sleeping and engaged in criminality. If Members look at some of those tough changes, they will see that they address things that our constituents are concerned about, so I urge Members who have signed the new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Amber Valley, and those who have not done so, to look at the changes that we have brought forward. I think that they will see that they address many of their concerns.

My right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary have laid out their thinking about the discussions we need to have on the new accession countries and free movement generally. We can have that negotiation only when there is a new Government. We are constrained by the coalition with our Liberal Democrat colleagues. The renegotiation strategy is not the current Government’s policy, but it is the Conservative party’s policy, which we will put before the people at the election.

The final point is that we should remember that the transitional controls are about employment. A significant number of people—102,000 Romanians and 53,000 Bulgarians—are already here, according to the Office for National Statistics. They are working, or are self-employed, self-sufficient or studying. They are already in Britain. As one or two hon. Members suggested, some people already here might not entirely be doing what they purport to be doing. They might be working. We might find that they regularise their status in the new year. The point is that the controls are about whether people can work, not whether they can come to Britain. People can come to Britain for three months, but they can stay only if they are exercising treaty rights. We have given ourselves the power to remove people if they are here not exercising treaty rights—not working, studying or being self-sufficient—and we can stop them coming back to the UK to cause damage.

We want people who come here to work, contribute and pay taxes. The legislative changes that we will make with the Immigration Bill, and that we have made in secondary legislation, address the concerns. I urge hon. Members to study the changes. If they do so, they will be reassured that the Government are taking the tough action that our constituents want. We have a good story to tell our constituents.

Question put and agreed to.

Immigration Transparency Data

Mark Harper Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2013 Written Statements

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

The Government are committed to openness and transparency to enable the public to hold the Government and other public bodies to account. This Government have made more data available than ever before. The Home Office contributes to that agenda by regularly releasing information about its work, spend and outcomes in a publicly accessible and open format.

This includes information about the immigration family returns process on our website. Unfortunately between 15 and 28 October 2013 some personal data were available on the Home Office website as part of a spreadsheet alongside the regular data set, in error. This was identified by Home Office officials on 28 October 2013 and the personal information was removed immediately. The personal data related to the names of 1,598 main applicants in the family returns process, their date of birth and limited details about their immigration case type and status. It did not include personal addresses or financial information.

The Department has taken steps to establish whether the data were viewed or accessed outside of the Home Office. That analysis suggests there were fewer than 30 visits to the relevant webpage. It has not been possible to ascertain whether those who visited the webpage went on to open the data sheet in question or accessed the part of the data sheet which contained the personal information.

The Home Office has notified the Information Commissioner’s Office and is undertaking an internal investigation. Measures have been put in place to prevent a recurrence of the error and verify that no similar error has previously taken place.

Our official assessment is that the risk to those whose personal information was accessible for the period is low. However, I have instructed my officials to take steps to notify those individuals concerned, where it is possible and appropriate to do so.

EU/Swiss Agreement

Mark Harper Excerpts

Thursday 12th December 2013 Written Statements

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

The Government have decided to opt in to the Council decisions to sign and conclude an agreement to extend the EU-Switzerland free movement agreement to Croatia.

The proposal seeks to amend the agreement to reflect the accession of the Republic of Croatia to the European Union on 1 July 2013. The amendment is a natural step following accession and will extend the agreement to apply to nationals of Croatia in Switzerland, and to nationals of Switzerland in Croatia. The proposed amendment will not extend a right of free movement in the UK to persons who do not already enjoy such a right. Therefore, the proposed amendment will have no impact on the UK.

Immigration

Mark Harper Excerpts

Wednesday 11th December 2013 Westminster Hall

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to contribute to this debate under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak. Although I speak from the Opposition Benches, I am not in the business of defending everything that the previous Government did in relation to immigration, but frankly, the suggestion by the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner) that the decisions that we made about the A8 accession countries—which we recognised were a mistake, and perhaps arose from listening too closely to the calls of the business community and its desire for free movement of labour into the UK—were some sort of ideological plot to transform the nature of our society is perhaps something that is better placed in the pages of the Daily Mail.

Let me describe a personal experience. Last Friday, when I was conducting one of my regular advice surgeries, I was talking to a Romanian citizen currently living in the UK. She is a student and is making a significant contribution to our local economy in Sheffield. She was volunteering for AIESEC, which is a student society committed to promoting business, finding business placements, developing skills in an industrial and commercial context and growing global-minded entrepreneurs. She was enthusiastic when she came to Britain, but she was deeply depressed by the public discourse around Romania and Bulgaria and their citizens, which made her feel unwelcome. I think we need to take care how we debate the issue, not only for her sake and others’, but also for the sake of all those UK citizens who have raised concerns, of which all hon. Members have experience, about immigration. They deserve proper leadership from us as politicians, which means being honest about the facts and coming up with the right solutions to the real problems.

I have some sympathy with the Minister. He was right a couple of weeks ago to talk down the fear of a mass influx of Romanians and Bulgarians. He will not be surprised, however, that I have only some sympathy. Much of the problem has been created through the Government talking up the problems of migration for political advantage. We need an honest debate. We have heard a lot of noise, some of which was reflected in the speech by the hon. Member for Isle of Wight, about benefits for newly arriving EU migrants. The impression being given is that EU migrants are freeloaders who come simply to claim our benefits and to exploit our generosity. However, all the evidence, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman knows, suggests that EU migrants make a net fiscal contribution.

A study was published last month by the centre for research and analysis of migration—CReAM—at University college London, which is one of our country’s greatest universities and one of the world’s leading universities. It concluded that recent immigrants—those who arrived after 1999, who constituted 33% of the overall immigrant population in 2011—were 45% less likely to receive state benefits or tax credits than UK natives. Over the same period, recent European economic area immigrants have on average contributed 34% more in taxes than they have received in transfers. By contrast, over the same period, the total of UK natives’ tax payments were 11% lower than the transfers they received.

We welcome the most talented migrants. In 2011, 32% of EEA immigrants and 43% of non-EEA immigrants had university degrees. The estimated net fiscal contribution of immigrants increases even more if we consider that immigration helps to share the total cost of fixed public expenditure among a larger pool.

The main reasons for the large net fiscal contribution of recent EEA immigrants are their higher average labour market participation than UK natives and their lower receipt of welfare benefits. Professor Christian Dustmann, the director of CReAM and the co-author of the study, said:

“Our research shows that in contrast with most other European countries, the UK attracts highly educated and skilled immigrants from within the EEA as well as from outside. What’s more, immigrants who arrived since 2000 have made a very sizeable net fiscal contribution and therefore helped to reduce the fiscal burden on UK-born workers. Our study also suggests that over the last decade or so the UK has benefited fiscally from immigrants from EEA countries, who have put in considerably more in taxes and contributions than they received in benefits and transfers. Given this evidence, claims about ‘benefit tourism’ by EEA immigrants”—

that myth—

seem to be disconnected from reality.”

Another example of the Government talking up the migration issue but introducing measures that damage the economy by targeting the wrong issue is on the issue of international students. The Minister will not be surprised to hear me speaking about that again. I agree that the Government are right, as were the previous Government, to clamp down on bogus students who not only are exploiting our system, but are themselves in many cases exploited by bogus colleges. However, overall, international students bring huge benefits to the economy.

Oxford Economics conducted research on behalf of the university of Sheffield, which looked at the students’ net contribution after all costs to public services—such as traffic congestion and everything else it could think of. The survey was published in January 2013 and showed that during the previous academic year the 8,000-plus international students at our two universities made a net total contribution of more than £120 million to the Sheffield economy. Probably about 6,000, 7,000 or 8,000 local jobs depend on those students. Furthermore, the net benefits generated by the indirect supply chain advantages were assumed to account for approximately an additional £22 million to the local economy. International students obviously bring further external benefits, such as boosts to demand as a consequence of increased familiarity with locally produced goods and the potential for our status as a city and a country to be boosted by the relationship that they build while they are in the UK.

International students are a growing market internationally. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has calculated that by 2020 the market could double. Instead of being worth £8 billion to our economy, it could be worth £16 billion; instead of 6,000 jobs in Sheffield, it could be 12,000 jobs. Currently, international student numbers are flatlining, while our competitor countries are taking advantage of some of the measures that this Government have put in place. We should be concerned about that.

The hon. Member for Isle of Wight expressed concerns about things that are happening in the labour market. My concern is that he did not focus on the things that can be done to address issues in the labour market. The Minister for Immigration made a useful contribution before the Home Affairs Committee this week when he was challenged about a statement from the head of Domino’s Pizza about why it was unable to recruit sufficiently from within the UK domestic work force. The Minister rightly made the point that the company should perhaps look at its employment conditions and wages. It would be helpful to consider positive labour market interventions that can create the sort of level playing field that the hon. Member for Isle of Wight seeks.

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

To be clear, it is worse than the hon. Gentleman suggests. The chief executive of Domino’s Pizza was not arguing that he could not recruit in the UK alone. He was arguing that he could not recruit enough people from the whole EU labour pool, and that we needed to start importing low-skilled workers from outside the EU in order that he could keep low wages in his business. That is why I said he perhaps ought to reflect on the terms and conditions. So he was arguing that we should have an unrestricted free-for-all, but I do not think it is the role of Government policy to let multinationals keep wages low when, frankly, they should pay their staff a little more.

[Paul Blomfield]

I agree entirely with the Minister on that point. We should ensure that multinationals pay wages that will attract people to do the jobs. We should also ensure that companies do not recruit exclusively from eastern Europe, as they seek to do. Jobs should be available to local workers in the market. We should also do more to ensure that companies that flout the minimum wage rules are prosecuted. The number of businesses that are fined for employing illegal workers has halved, plummeting from more than 2,000 in 2009 to a little more than 1,000 in 2012. We can talk positively about those sorts of labour market interventions to address many of our concerns.

I will conclude by commenting on something that the hon. Member for Isle of Wight said about a constituent, who is concerned about the way in which their community has been transformed by the influx of migrants. I am sure that if we look back in 50-year snapshots, we will find that people have always expressed such concerns. I am sure that they expressed concerns about my wife’s family, who came across from Ireland to supplement the work force in the UK. I was brought up in Sheffield in the 1960s and it was a relatively monocultural city. The city in which I have brought up my son in the 1990s is stronger, richer and better for having welcomed people from around the world—some to build better lives, some fleeing persecution. I am proud that we are the country’s first city of sanctuary.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Howarth, and it is a rare treat to have two Howarths in the Chamber at the same time. I suspect that you are at rather different ends of the political spectrum—although you, as Chair, are completely neutral.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner) for securing the debate. As the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) said, it is always good to have one and a half hours of valuable parliamentary time to talk about issues that are of concern to all our constituents. Some are concerned, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) said, about attracting the best and the brightest. Others are worried about the numbers of people coming here and whether they are all making a contribution.

I am also pleased to see that the right hon. Member for Delyn has some friends today. Last time we debated immigration, he was completely by himself with no Labour Back Benchers to support him. Today, however, one Labour Member spoke in the debate and another is in the Chamber, so the right hon. Gentleman’s powers of oratory are clearly attracting a wider audience.

My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight was right to highlight the failure of the previous Labour Government, and one can argue about whether that was the result of a conspiracy or a cock-up. The former Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) leans towards the view that a “spectacular mistake”, in his words, was made. A significant number of people came into the country when the previous Labour Government were in power, which is partly why people have concerns. It was partly to do with the fact that at the time of the eastern European accession, we were the only major country to have no transitional controls, so most of those who left their own countries to work came to Britain.

It is worth remembering, however, that eastern Europe was not where the largest number of people came from. During the Labour party’s time in office, more than twice as many migrants came from outside the European Union. Although the shadow Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), was presented with that information in a clear graphical format during a recent edition of “Sunday Politics”, and she was sitting right in front of the screen, she denied that it is true. I am afraid it is, however. Although the Labour party may argue that it made some mistakes on eastern European migration, in an area in which it had complete control over who came to the United Kingdom, it failed. That is behind many people’s concerns, so we have tried to demonstrate that we are able to take tough decisions to reassure people.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cleethorpes (Martin Vickers) said that even in an area such as his constituency where immigration is low, people see significant numbers of migrants from eastern Europe in neighbouring towns, such as Boston in Lincolnshire. People are concerned about the numbers of people who have immigrated in a relatively short space of time and how successfully they have integrated. That is why we have to address those concerns.

We have made progress. Several Members have referred to the fact that net migration is down by nearly one third since its peak. We are building a system that works in the national interest. Immigration from outside the EU is now at its lowest level for 14 years, and almost back to the level it was when the previous Conservative Government left office.

The good news is that we are being more selective. According to the latest figures, there is a 7% increase in students coming to our excellent UK universities. The hon. Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield) has made that point before and I am sure he will make it again, as will my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge. We welcome international students coming to our excellent universities, and both the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend have more than one excellent university in their areas. It is important that we welcome students who come to Britain to study. Most will leave, some will stay, some will start businesses and some will help create economic growth, and we very much welcome them. I think my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth) was being slightly unfair earlier—the “hear, hears” when he congratulated my hon. Friend the Member for Braintree (Mr Newmark) were coming not from him but from the rest of us. He made an excellent speech focusing on those who are going to contribute. People who come here and contribute are important.

I listened carefully to what my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) said about numbers, which was also a concern of my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight. Two things are worth remembering. First, my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering was concerned that we will see a repeat of what happened in 2004, but the situation now is different, because in 2004 we were the only country to have no transitional controls. This time, we have had such controls and at the end of September, the controls of eight other European countries—including large countries with successful economies, such as Germany—will expire at the same time as ours. We are not the only country that will have a policy change. Secondly, 48% of immigrants come from outside the EU, 36% come from within the EU and 15% of the people coming to Britain are British citizens who have lived overseas for more than a year who are returning home or who have never lived here. It is worth putting the numbers into perspective.

Most hon. Members talked about employment. We have made a difference, which my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight put his finger on when he talked about our immigration policy, our welfare policy and our education and training policy. The difference is in the combination of the three—a tougher immigration policy; a tougher welfare policy that encourages people to work and contribute; and an increase in the number of apprenticeships and more rigour in schools. In the five years to December 2008, under the previous Government, when there was economic growth and jobs were being created, more than 90% of the increase in employment was accounted for by foreign nationals. That is probably what provoked the comment of the previous Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), about

“British jobs for British workers.”

Since the second quarter of 2010, under the current Government, more than three quarters of the 1.1 million new jobs in the economy have gone to British citizens, which is of benefit. Talented people are still coming to Britain to fill gaps in the labour market and contribute, but the growth in employment now benefits British citizens. That is, first, what we are in business to do in Parliament, and, secondly, very welcome.

We are committed to continuing to bring net migration down. My hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot referred to removing people who have no right to be here. The Immigration Bill currently before Parliament contains measures to reduce the rights of appeal and make it easier to remove foreign national offenders, for example, from the UK when they have no right to be here, which is welcome.

[Sir Gerald Howarth]

I salute the Minister for what he is doing. My point is not so much that further measures, which I welcome, are being taken, but that many people in this country have already exhausted the extensive appeals procedures and have still not been removed. Despite people like me writing to say, “Why aren’t they being removed?”, officials do not seem to take action.

[Mr Harper]

I agree with my hon. Friend. We will certainly give ourselves the powers to take action. Since we split up the UK Border Agency earlier this year, there has been a change in the culture of the two new parts. The immigration enforcement branch now feels that it is a law enforcement organisation and its job is to deal with those who break our immigration rules.

On the subject of those who break the law and want to come to the UK, I would like to make a bit of a public service announcement. I noticed in media coverage this morning that Mike Tyson, who wants to visit the UK, is not able to come here because we changed the immigration rules for those guilty of serious offences. A column in The Sun says that he received a “knock out blow”—the first time I have ever, in effect, got in the ring with a boxer. Mr Tyson is a convicted rapist. If people have been convicted of an offence for which they have been sentenced to a period of imprisonment of at least four years, we will refuse them entry to the UK. I say that because his publisher, who organised his UK book tour, said:

“There was a change in the UK immigration law in December 2012 of which we were unaware.”

That is a fault on their part. I will say in Parliament, therefore, to make the position clear, that we have toughened the immigration rules and people who are criminals who want to come to the UK will not be able to if they are guilty of serious crimes. The measure is welcome and has been welcomed by many who support victims of violence. The child protection campaigner, Sara Payne, said:

“I think the Home Office got it right.”

I savour those words; I do not often hear people say them. She said:

“The rules don’t change just because the offender is famous.”

That is an important point. People have to obey the law. The Government make no apology for toughening up the rules in 2012, and those rules will apply to people equally, whether they are famous or not.

Before I move on, I shall pick up on the intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot. The Immigration Bill will reduce the number of appeals and tighten up the rules on article 8, putting them in primary legislation. People who have no right to be here, for example a foreign national offender we are trying to remove, will have fewer opportunities to argue that they should be able to stay, and we will be able to remove them more effectively. I hope my hon. Friend welcomes that.

There was much discussion about labour market rules. The right hon. Member for Delyn mentioned advertisements that aim to hire only foreign nationals, which are unlawful already. I said during a debate on the Immigration Bill that I would draw such advertisements to the attention of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which is the regulator and enforcement body in that area, and I have done so. It wrote back to me and, to paraphrase a relatively lengthy letter, it is on the case. I will be able to update hon. Members when the Bill returns to the Floor of the House.

My hon. Friends the Members for Cleethorpes and for Braintree referred to what we are doing as we move towards the end of the year. We are preparing for the transitional controls expiring. Last week, I signed an order, which we laid before the House on Friday, amending the European economic area regulations, to take steps to restrict access to benefits, guard against the abuse of free movement and prevent individuals who are removed from the UK for not fulfilling the requirements of the free movement rules from coming straight back again. Those changes will be helpful. A number of them come into force on 1 January. Those we remove for begging or rough sleeping, for example, will not be allowed to come back unless they can demonstrate that immediately on re-entry they will be exercising a treaty right, coming back to work or study, or that they will be self-sufficient.

I am pressed for time and I want to deal with the other issues my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight raised. We will restrict access to jobseeker’s allowance to six months for foreign nationals who become unemployed. This week, the Department for Work and Pensions is rolling out a toughened habitual residence test to increase the range and depth of evidence collected from benefit claimants to ensure that they are entitled to be here. The Home Secretary has consistently raised that issue at the Justice and Home Affairs Council, and she did so again last week. She received support from a number of member states and, I note, robust support from my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot.

The Government are taking the tough measures necessary. We are bearing down on numbers, but also ensuring that Britain is open to those who want to come to contribute, to put something back and to make our country wealthier. We have the balance right. I want to continue to make changes and I am confident that hon. Members on both sides might even support them.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Harper Excerpts

Monday 2nd December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Mills (Amber Valley) (Con)]

6. What assessment she has made of the expected level of immigration from Romania and Bulgaria between 2014 and 2018.

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

My hon. Friend will know that we consulted the Migration Advisory Committee on that question, and it advised us that making an estimate was not practical because of the number of variables, so we have not done so.

[Nigel Mills]

I am grateful for that answer. Having seen the numbers last week for the increase in migrants from the EU, does the Minister still believe that we can get total net migration down to the tens of thousands in this Parliament without having some restrictions on immigration by Romanians and Bulgarians next year?

[Mr Harper]

If my hon. Friend looked closely at the net migration statistics last week, he will have seen that what was interesting about them was not only the reduction in emigration by European Union nationals, but the fact that the increase in migration from the European Union involved people from not eastern Europe, or Romania and Bulgaria, but some of the southern European states, reflecting the weakness in their economy and the strength of ours.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

Yesterday was the national day of Romania, celebrated in Bucharest, and also in White Hart Lane, where a young, talented Romanian, Vlad Chiriches, was man of the match. Is it still the Government’s position, as set out on the website in Bucharest, that we want Romanians to come to this country to live and work, provided that they do not claim benefits? How many members of the Government support the retention of the restrictions?

[Mr Harper]

Of course, since 2007, Romanians and Bulgarians have been able to come to Britain to study, if they are self-sufficient, or to work in a skilled occupation, where they have asked for permission to do so. All that is happening at the end of the year is that the general restrictions are being lifted. Of course, if they want to come here to work and contribute, they are very welcome to do so; the changes set out last week by my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary make it clear that we do not want them coming here just to claim benefits. I think that those reforms are welcome and are supported by Government Members.

[Mark Pritchard (The Wrekin) (Con)]

I congratulate the Government and the Minister on getting non-EU immigration figures down. I want to be helpful to him. He will know that the respected think-tank Migration Watch UK has predicted that between 30,000 and 70,000 Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants will come to the UK every year for five years. What figures, within those parameters, does he favour?

[Mr Harper]

As I said, we consulted the Migration Advisory Committee. I have seen a range of forecasts. I have seen the Migration Watch UK one, forecasts from the two countries concerned, which are much lower, and other forecasts that are much higher. The fact that there is such a range of forecasts from independent commentators demonstrates how sensible the Government’s decision was not to join in.

[Mr Kevin Barron (Rother Valley) (Lab)]

Three million Bulgarians have left their country to work in other countries over the last few years, because they have had the right to access 15 European countries. Is not a lot of the rhetoric that we have heard recently just scaremongering, following on from the disgraceful situation in the Eastleigh by-election? [Interruption.] I see a Member squinting; in that by-election, it was said that 3.1 million Bulgarians—more than half the population of Bulgaria—would be coming here in January next year. Why does the Minister not publish the actual number of Bulgarians who have come here to work in the past few years, so that we do not have this rhetoric running around the media?

[Mr Harper]

I wish that I could control the rhetoric running around the media, but unfortunately I cannot. Today I did an interview with the BBC in which I was more or less told that there is no problem, which was interesting, because, as I gently pointed out, it is running an entire week of programmes on the subject. That suggests it has a strange sense of priorities. To answer the right hon. Gentleman’s point seriously, the Government have been clear that if people want to come here to work and contribute, as Romanians and Bulgarians have done since 2007, that is absolutely fine. The changes we made last week are about ensuring that people do not come here to claim benefits. It is also worth noting that 79% of the new jobs created since the Government came to power have gone to British citizens.

[Mr Julian Brazier (Canterbury) (Con)]

Although I welcome the measures that the Government have taken on benefits, which will have an effect, are not the concerns about immigration from Romania and Bulgaria really just the tip of a wider problem? With much of southern and eastern Europe still heading into recession, tolerance of the free movement of people is quite close to reaching its natural end.

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. It is why our right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said last week that we very much want to look at free movement and how we negotiate future accession arrangements for large countries. He set out a range of things we might want to consider, other than just time limits—for example, relative income levels in countries—which I think has great merit.

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

The Minister did not really answer the question from the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Nigel Mills), so let me give him another go. Given that figures published last week show that net migration rose to 182,000, from 167,000, over the previous year, before the impact of any Romanian and Bulgarian immigration in January, does he think that the target, as set out in the Prime Minister’s solemn manifesto pledge, of having a net migration in the “tens of thousands,” to quote the hon. Member for Amber Valley, by May 2015 will be met—yes or no?

[Mr Harper]

When the right hon. Gentleman’s party was in power, net migration reached 2.1 million. I should also point out, to help the shadow Home Secretary, who was challenged on this yesterday by Andrew Neil, that most of that immigration was from countries outside the European Union. There was a large bar chart showing that on the television screen, but she denied what is reality.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

9. What steps she has taken to restrict access to benefits for immigrants.

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

My hon. Friend will have noted the steps set out last week by the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary to tighten up the benefits system and ensure that those coming to Britain do so to work and contribute, rather than to take out of the country.

[Mr Turner]

A thought-provoking article on migration published last week by Civitas shows that the British sense of fairness dictates that there should be some link between what people put into the welfare state and what they get out of it. Does my hon. Friend agree that in the case of new immigrants there is very little link at all, and does that not need to be looked at?

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend is spot on. A number of the changes we set out last week do exactly that. For example, we are limiting the period over which a jobseeker can keep claiming benefits to six months. Colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions have strengthened the habitual residence test to ensure that it is tougher. We have also made sure that if people who come here are not exercising treaty rights and we remove them from the United Kingdom, we can stop them returning unless they demonstrate that they are going to do so.

[Ms Gisela Stuart (Birmingham, Edgbaston) (Lab)]

Much of the detail on access to benefits is determined locally, and it is quite difficult, even after checking with the House of Commons Library or the website, to understand what some of the precise definitions mean. What steps has the Minister taken to ensure that local authorities and the various agencies interpret what he thinks is a toughening consistently across the country?

[Mr Harper]

On the hon. Lady’s point about benefits, those are not decisions for local authorities but for the Department for Work and Pensions, which trains its staff very carefully and gives them clear guidance. They are rolling out the new habitual residence test, which is robust and has a clear script with questions that people are asked. There will be further changes on access to housing benefit. We will make sure that where these decisions are for local authorities they are provided with clear guidance so that they can make the right decisions in the tougher regime.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

On 1 January, when the transitional controls on Romania and Bulgaria are lifted, will entry also be permitted to non-EU citizens who have Bulgarian or Romanian passports? If so, will the very large number of Moldovans who have Romanian passports be entitled to benefits, like Romanians and Bulgarians?

[Mr Harper]

I may be missing something, but if people have Romanian or Bulgarian passports and are citizens of Romania or Bulgaria, they are entitled to come to Britain because those countries are members of the European Union. Indeed, they could come to Britain today; the transitional restrictions are only about whether they can come here to work. People with a Romanian or Bulgarian passports—citizens of those countries—are of course able to come to Britain today.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

My constituents are pretty accepting of migration and have been for very many years, and I have always been liberal about migration to our country, but what does worry them is not just the benefit position but whether we have enough school places and social housing. Do we have enough public services to meet the challenge of a fresh wave of immigration?

[Mr Harper]

It is very good, of course, that the hon. Gentleman takes a very liberal approach; he will have been delighted, then, when his party was in power and had net migration of 2.1 million over its period in office, but I do not think that was the general view. On the availability of public services, it is exactly because of the pressures on school places and on access to GPs that the Government have reduced net migration by nearly a third since the election. We want to make sure that people who are coming here are doing so to contribute and to pay their way, and that immigration is properly controlled.

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

10. What changes she plans to make to the deportation appeals system.

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

We are making changes in the Immigration Bill to reduce the number of appeal rights and to ensure that those convicted of criminal offences will, in most cases, be able to be deported first and their appeal to take place from overseas.

[Christopher Pincher]

I am grateful to the Minister for tightening up the previous Government’s deportation regulations so that the scandalous waste of time it took to deport Hamza and Qatada can never happen again. Can he confirm that the proposals he has tabled are unlikely to be struck down by the European Court of Human Rights? If they might be, is he prepared to take action against the European convention on human rights first?

[Mr Harper]

We have looked very carefully at this, and we are confident that the measures in the Immigration Bill, including the changes that clause 14 makes to put article 8 on a proper statutory basis, are robust. The Home Secretary has made it clear that at the election we will have to deal with the impact of the Human Rights Act 1998 and the convention. Indeed, that has been reinforced by comments from Lord Sumption, who pointed out that the Court is now engaged in judicial law-making, which is in constitutional terms remarkable, taking many contentious issues that should be questions for political debate and turning them into questions of law to be resolved by a tribunal. I could not agree with him more.

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

11. What assessment she has made of trends in the number of referrals from the police to the Crown Prosecution Service for domestic violence offences.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

12. How many random inquiries on immigration status have been made in public places in each of the last six months.

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

None.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

That is a surprising answer, because a number of us have witnessed immigration officers at Metropolitan line and other tube stations around London stopping people and asking them for their immigration status. Will the Minister assure me that no immigration officer would ever stop anyone randomly in a public place, ask them for identity documents and then call in the police to assist them with their inquiries, when there is no requirement to carry identity cards at any time in this country? Indeed, such identity cards do not even exist.

[Mr Harper]

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we do not conduct random operations; we conduct intelligence-led operations, as did the previous Government, and they are very successful. The street operations we have conducted this year have led to the arrest of almost a third of those encountered. They are very successful in enforcing our immigration laws. We do not stop people at random; we are not empowered to do so by law and even if we were, we would not do so as a matter of policy. We stop people when we think there is intelligence to indicate that they are breaking our immigration laws, and I make no apology for that.

[Mr Russell Brown (Dumfries and Galloway) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister and his staff for the support they gave recently to a constituent of mine to clarify a situation and smooth over the problems.

The number of illegals being identified by the police at the ferry terminals in my area—which is part of the common travel area—has fallen only slightly. Is the Minister able to tell the House the number of people in that category who are stopped but not properly processed and who simply disappear?

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s opening remarks.

I do not have the figures to hand, because I was not aware that he intended to ask that question. I will look at the issue in detail and write to him, but on the common travel area in general, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims signed an agreement with the Irish Justice Minister in, I think, December 2011. We are taking steps with the Irish Republic to strengthen the common travel area to make sure that our borders continue to get more secure.

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

13. What recent discussions she has had with the Secretary of State for Education on preventing violence against women and girls.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gordon Henderson (Sittingbourne and Sheppey) (Con)]

15. What steps she is taking to reduce net immigration.

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

We have reduced net migration by nearly a third since its peak in 2010. Immigration continues to fall, with immigration from outside the EU at its lowest level since 1998. We will continue to take steps to keep immigration under control, while allowing the best and the brightest to come to Britain to contribute to our economy.

[Gordon Henderson]

I welcome the Minister’s answer, but will he assure me that the Government will remove people who are not here to work and prevent them from coming back, unless they have a very good, legitimate reason for doing so?

[Mr Harper]

From last week’s announcements, my hon. Friend will have noted that we are changing the relevant regulations so that if EU citizens in Britain are, for example, involved in low-level criminality or rough sleeping, and not exercising their treaty rights, we will be able to remove them and prevent them from coming back, unless they can demonstrate that they will immediately be exercising those treaty rights. I think that those changes will be welcomed in the country.

[Mr Charles Kennedy (Ross, Skye and Lochaber) (LD)]

Will the Minister address that part of his responsibilities in this policy area as they affect would-be foreign students coming to study in this country? On 17 October, he painted a pretty positive picture in a written answer to me on this issue, but that stands in stark contrast to what the UK university sector is saying about a massive loss of income and of international good will for our country.

[Mr Harper]

I am surprised by that, because figures published last week showed a 7% increase—an increased increase on the previous statistics—in the number of such students going to our universities. There is no reason why a student who is properly qualified, who can speak English and who can pay their fees cannot come to a university, and if they get a graduate-level job, they can stay afterwards to work and to continue contributing, so I am not sure why the university sector is saying that. The increase in the number of students does not support its argument.

[Sir Gerald Howarth (Aldershot) (Con)]

Although I can understand, given the grotesque underestimate by the previous Government, my hon. Friend’s reluctance to predict the number of Bulgarians and Romanians likely to come to this country, may I encourage him to give the public and local authorities some indication so that they can plan? Furthermore, even at this late stage, may I invite the Government to support new clause 1 to the Immigration Bill to extend the transitional arrangements—and let us see the courts of these islands, or indeed the European Court of Justice, defy the will of Parliament?

[Mr Harper]

On the first point, predictions only have any value if they are accurate. I am sure that my hon. Friend was listening carefully to my earlier answer, but the figures from independent commentators—from the countries concerned to Migration Watch and other forecasters—are wide-ranging. Indeed, from what I think I heard an Opposition Member say, there is a political party in this country that thinks that all 29 million citizens of those two countries are going to arrive at Heathrow airport on 1 January. With that range of forecasts, it would not be wise to make any predictions.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

16. What changes she is considering to terrorism prevention and investigation measures.

--- Later in debate ---

[Martin Vickers (Cleethorpes) (Con)]

T2. My constituents are concerned about immigration from Romania and Bulgaria and would like to see the transitional period extended. Public opinion in neighbouring EU states shows that that view is widely shared. Have the Government had discussions with other EU Governments on united action?

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

It is not possible to extend transitional controls due to the terms of the accession treaties signed by the Labour party when it was in government. Eight other European countries will remove those controls at the end of the year. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary has, however, been working with our European colleagues to tighten the rules so that we see a reduction in the abuse of free movement.

[Hazel Blears (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

I welcome that fact that now, under Clare’s law, victims of serial perpetrators of domestic violence will be able to get disclosures from right across the country. The Home Secretary knows that victims are probably at their most vulnerable at the point of disclosure, so will she ensure that organisations such as Women’s Aid and domestic violence advisers have sufficient resources to be able to protect those victims at that point?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

T5. After the wave of mass immigration under the previous Labour Government, my constituents believe that this country is full, and do not want to see unrestricted immigration from Romania, Bulgaria and, as it now turns out, up to one third of Moldova. At this late stage with a month to go, I urge the Home Secretary to think again and not to waive the transitional controls.

[Mr Harper]

Obviously I understand why my hon. Friend’s constituents are concerned, given the appalling job that was done by the Labour Government. In fact, under Labour twice as many people arrived from outside the European Union as arrived from within it. However, as I said earlier, the transitional controls under the accession treaties that Labour signed can last only until the end of the year, and eight other European countries are removing those controls. That is why we have announced changes to ensure that anyone who comes to this country comes to work and not to claim benefits.

[Sheila Gilmore (Edinburgh East) (Lab)]

A number of my constituents who have been given leave to remain in this country, in some cases after appealing, are now spending several months waiting for the paperwork to come through, with the result that a number of them cannot take up job offers. What steps is the Department taking to deal with that?

[Mr Harper]

If the hon. Lady knows of any specific cases and has not already written to me about them, I suggest that she do so. Since we split up the UK Border Agency, UK Visas and Immigration has been concentrating on improving its customer service standards. We have already reduced the backlog of cases by a significant amount in the current financial year, and we will continue to do so. The new director general is focusing on improving performance for our customers.

[Annette Brooke (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (LD)]

T6. What action is the Home Secretary taking to ensure that child victims of trafficking are receiving all the support to which they are entitled, and would she consider piloting a system of independent guardianship?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Harper]

I know that this matter is of concern to my hon. Friend and his constituents, because he wrote to me about it early this year. As I said earlier during Home Office questions, we continue to work closely with the Irish Republic following the protocol signed by my right hon. Friend the Minister for Policing, Criminal Justice and Victims. We work closely with the Republic in sharing intelligence to strengthen the controls that ensure that our country is properly protected.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

Given the record number of animal experiments that were recorded in 2012, what action are the Government taking to create a downward rather than an upward trend?

Stalking

Mark Harper Excerpts

Thursday 21st November 2013 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

First, I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing this well-subscribed and informative debate for Members who have had an interest in this subject for a great deal of time. This is not meant as an insult to you, Mr Deputy Speaker, but I would have liked to have seen Madam Deputy Speaker in the Chair, because this would then have been the first debate in which I had spoken under her chairmanship. If you will forgive me, I will place on record that it was a great pleasure to be sat here quietly while she chaired the first part of the debate. I was enormously pleased by that and I am equally pleased to have been joined by you for the latter part of the debate.

I will not refer to what the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Mr Llwyd) will do after the next election, because when other Members did so it sounded terribly like an obituary. I am sure he has plenty of life left in him and plenty of exciting challenges waiting for him when he eventually departs this place, so I will simply pay tribute to him for his work not only as chairman of the all-party group on stalking and harassment, but as chair of the parliamentary inquiry into stalking law reform. I also pay tribute to the other members of the all-party group, including its vice-chairs my right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan) and the hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock (Sandra Osborne).

Unfortunately, my right hon. Friend is unable to be present for the end of the debate. I listened carefully to her excellent speech and she has done a great deal of work in this area. There was a strange irony when Madam Deputy Speaker read out the Royal Assent for the HS2 Bill, which my right hon. Friend has campaigned against in varying levels of publicness, including when she was a member of the Government and even more forcefully since. That was an interesting and spooky part of the debate, but I think she saw the ironic and funny side of it, as did the rest of the House.

Every Member who has participated in the debate has made the point that stalking is a serious crime and the various examples given—the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) spoke from her personal experience—have illustrated that it can seriously affect people’s lives. People can be physically attacked and they can lose their homes, families, friends and jobs in a bid to escape a persistent, fixated stalker. Stalking can also take place in a relationship or after a brief relationship, or people can be stalked by a complete stranger. It varies and the response needs to take that into consideration.

The crime survey for England and Wales shows that 4% of women and 3% of men are affected by stalking in some way, so it is clearly a very important issue that affects a large number of people. The work of the parliamentary inquiry, chaired by the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd, demonstrated clearly that there was a gap in the law, and the Government were able—partly, I am sure, because of the excellent case that was made, but also, I suspect, because of the fortuitous timing of an appropriate piece of legislation—to introduce the new offences very shortly after the case had been so powerfully made. Legislation is, of course, not the only response and I will address some of the other issues that have been raised.

We want to work through the reforms we have already made to the policing landscape. That brings me on to police and crime commissioners, which several Members mentioned, including my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Henry Smith), and my hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), who particularly mentioned the Essex police and crime commissioner. Those who are elected, such as police and crime commissioners, will listen to the concerns of the public, so they provide a good opportunity to drive the issues home. Angus Macpherson, the police and crime commissioner for Wiltshire and Swindon, is someone I know personally as I used to live in Swindon, my home town. He attended a stalking awareness event and made it clear that he wanted to understand the issue so that he could see whether there were any provisions that he could put in place to further support victims and stop offenders.

The Hull Daily Mail reported last December that the new police and crime commissioner there, Matthew Grove, was backing calls for tougher measures to protect stalking victims. I know more about the Hull Daily Mail now, having seen yesterday its excellent supplement celebrating the award of city of culture status to Hull. Stalking is an issue that that newspaper has taken very seriously. To be cross-party on the issue, I note that the PCC for Greater Manchester, Tony Lloyd, a former Member of this House, has welcomed the fact that the police are taking stalking seriously, and has been working closely with his police force to raise awareness of the importance of dealing with that crime. There is a great opportunity for Members of Parliament to work with police and crime commissioners and to have a democratic voice in challenging police forces that may not take the issue as seriously as they should. The vast majority of police and crime commissioners have made violence against women and girls a priority in their policing plans, which is an important first step.

I do not always agree with the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) and he does not always agree with me, but on this subject I can agree with him. He said that one role of the Government was to try to bring organisations together. We have issued information to police and crime commissioners so that they are better equipped. We have also hosted an event for them, which I suspect will not be the last, bringing together police and crime commissioners and enabling them to hear from the voluntary sector, for example Paladin, an organisation that was mentioned by almost every Member who spoke in the debate. I echo the appreciation expressed for the work of Harry Fletcher and Laura Richards, who are paying close attention to this debate. They were able to be present and take part in the day. That is the start of the engagement with police and crime commissioners, and it will continue.

The College of Policing is the other new feature in the policing arena that will help, by driving consistent training across police forces in England and Wales. This month the college’s training package on stalking and harassment won the silver award for “excellence in the production of learning content” at the E-learning awards. It is based on powerful scenarios developed with the help of victims and their families, as the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd said. The training package is available to all police officers and staff. Since last October it has been used about 44,000 times, which represents about a third of police officers, so that is some progress but clearly, picking up the right hon. Gentleman’s point, we want all police officers to be trained. The national policing lead on stalking and harassment, Assistant Chief Constable Garry Shewan of Greater Manchester police, has written once to all chief constables and will continue to do so jointly with the Director of Public Prosecutions to ensure a consistent message to the law enforcement community for both the police and the CPS, so that the issues are taken seriously.

Much of the debate about police and crime commissioners focuses on the “police” part of their role, but the most significant benefit that they can bring is the “and crime” part. It is their role in their police areas to bring together all parts of the criminal justice system—the police, the Crown Prosecution Service and the voluntary sector—and to bang heads together so that there is a properly joined-up approach in local areas. That is one of the most significant things that police and crime commissioners can do, and it is one of the reasons we set them up. The Crown Prosecution Service has made its training mandatory this year. More than 1,000—or about 45%, I think—of its lawyers have completed the training, which is a good start, and we obviously want the rest of them to do so.

[Helen Jones]

Will the Minister tell the House whether he has any explanation for the discrepancy between the number of people arrested and the number of people actually charged?

[Mr Harper]

I will come on to the guidelines issued by the CPS, but that matter to some extent depends on the details of individual cases. Normally, decisions are based on how realistic a prosecution is and what evidence there is, as well as the public interest test. I do not know whether different prosecution rates relate to the ability of the police to put cases together, or whether some forces are more likely to make arrests than others. Without looking at the information, I simply do not know the answer to the question.

An advantage in the devolved criminal justice landscape —the hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock referred to the experience in Scotland—is that police forces in England and Wales could look at the Scottish example to see what lessons can be learned. The systems are of course different and not directly comparable: the criminal justice legislation is different and, for example, harassment legislation has not been put in place in Scotland. We should, however, look at whether different parts of the UK are doing things better, and if they are, we should happily learn from them. That is a benefit of devolution of which we should take advantage.

[Mr Llwyd]

As I would expect, the Minister is trying to engage constructively in the debate, which is how he always deals with these matters. I suggest that another contributor to the variation in prosecution levels is, sadly—I am a great supporter of the police, and I come from a police family—that some police officers are under-charging under the old 1997 Act, because it is far easier to do the paperwork and get rid of it.

[Mr Harper]

I defer to the right hon. Gentleman’s detailed knowledge of this area. One purpose of the College of Policing is to have consistency in training and to share best practice. To be fair, this is about ensuring that police officers, as well as the CPS, have the necessary knowledge and understand what works and is successful. The College of Policing can help share best practice, which is one advantage of having set it up. The Government will keep that under close scrutiny—the Home Secretary takes this area very seriously—and we will take steps if it does not succeed.

It is important to talk about victims and their experience of the criminal justice system. We have consulted on a revised victims code to give victims clearer entitlements. It was published at the end of October, and will be implemented next month. It includes information on the victim personal statement, which lets victims explain the impact of the crime on them. That will be of particular benefit in stalking cases, where much of the issue relates to the emotional and psychological impact of the offence on the victim.

The hon. Member for Walthamstow made that point strongly. She spoke about seeing the powerful effect on victims of advocates’ listening to them explain their cases. Enabling the voices of victims to be heard is clearly very beneficial. My hon. Friend the Member for Witham, who is in her place, made exactly that point. I know that she has worked on and published this year a report called, “Rebalancing the Scales”. She edited it, and the foreword was by the Lord Chancellor. The chapter on stalking, which was prepared by the ubiquitous Harry Fletcher and Laura Richards, highlighted the voices of victims and their experience in the criminal justice system, an area on which I know my hon. Friend has campaigned.

[Stella Creasy]

My concern, and that of other people who have experienced this problem, is that the victim’s voice has traditionally been heard when there is a prosecution, but that should happen during the investigation of the offence. The police, like the criminal justice system, need to develop a different culture in which the offence is not seen as an issue of harassment, but in relation to the impact of particular forms of behaviour on the victim, because that opens up a different investigative process. The training is so important because too often the presumption is still that a victim comes in after the offence has been determined, rather than as part of the process of determining the offence.

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Lady makes a very good point. When the impact on the victim is part of the importance of the offence, the matter is more complex. She is right that that should form part of the investigative process in terms of the work that needs to be done to provide the evidence and to ensure that the right charge is brought. I will draw her point to the attention of the College of Policing for its consideration when rolling out the training.

The hon. Lady also made an important point, sadly illustrated by her own experiences this year, about the dark side that the internet brings out, alongside all its benefits. On the internet, it is easier for people to abuse their victims. Sometimes that happens wholly online and that has a tremendous impact. Sometimes, it happens offline as well. The Government are clear that if something is illegal offline, it is illegal online. There is no difference. She said that in her experience and in the experience of other people, police forces have not always recognised that.

When online abuse constitutes stalking, it must be dealt with. The Director of Public Prosecutions has published new guidelines on social media. They make it very clear that cases of stalking online should be prosecuted robustly. Those guidelines are relatively recent and we will have to see what impact they have on the Crown Prosecution Service. I looked at them carefully in preparing for this debate and I think that they are very robust. [Interruption.] I do not know whether the hon. Lady wants to intervene again, but she is pulling a face that suggests that she is not entirely enamoured of the said guidelines.

[Stella Creasy]

I press the Minister, as I did in my remarks, to consider the course of conduct and the disparities in relation to that. The police are doing some fantastic work. I pay tribute to the police who are dealing with my case at the moment. However, they are hampered by the disconnect between what we are told at a national level about guidance and how that guidance is interpreted, especially with regard to behaviour online. There is an issue with the understanding in our criminal justice system of behaviours online and of what constitutes a course of conduct. I am sorry to tell the Minister that I do not feel, as a victim myself, that that issue has been addressed. That will have an impact on our ability to move forward unless it is addressed.

[Mr Harper]

I listened carefully to the hon. Lady’s point on that issue. The inter-ministerial group on violence against women and girls, which is chaired by the Home Secretary, draws together the Government’s efforts on this matter and on the support for victims. I will draw the hon. Lady’s point to the attention of the Home Secretary.

There are some offences for online communications that do not require a course of conduct, some of which can result in custodial sentences. I think that the DPP’s guidelines are clear and robust. The hon. Lady is right that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Like us, she will want to see that the guidelines are taken seriously by Crown prosecutors.

As I said, police and crime commissioners should remember the “and crime” part of their job title. This matter is absolutely within their remit in their local areas. As well as looking at the police’s response to these offences, they should look at the response of the Crown Prosecution Service and the way in which it works with the police. One advantage of police and crime commissioners over the police authorities that we had previously is that they can pull those organisations together locally and get them to work more effectively together. Commissioners can draw to the attention of those organisations the guidelines that the DPP has issued and ensure that they are followed locally.

I will draw the specific concerns of the hon. Lady to the attention of the Home Secretary and the Justice Secretary. I am sure that she will monitor the matter closely and come back to us if she does not see action on the ground.

My hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) cited some good work that has been done by the university of Worcester and the Worcestershire forum against domestic violence. They have done some very practical work to raise awareness of the new law and to hear from victims. From his description, it was clear that that was part of a preventive strategy, which is something that has been raised by the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) and others.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham asked specifically about data, which we have spoken a little about. Convictions and sentencing data are collected by the Ministry of Justice and published on an annual basis. The data for 2012 were therefore published just a short period after the offences under sections 2A and 4A were inserted into the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. Headline data on court proceedings have been published, but those are at a high level. Detailed data will be published for this calendar year in May next year—that is when properly robust and assured data will be published.

On policing information, we are working on a new method of data collection specifically to call out the offences from this legislation, but again that will not be available at national level until next year. More detailed information is available at police force level, and I know that Labour Members and the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd have attempted to get those data from police forces under freedom of information legislation. The Home Office is working to publish those data on a consistent basis at national level, and will be able to do so next year.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Chesham and Amersham and others, including the hon. Member for Warrington North, mentioned sentencing guidelines. The Sentencing Council plans to start work on a new public order guideline in 2014, and it will consider guidance on stalking offences as part of that. Several Members, including the hon. Member for Ayr, Carrick and Cumnock, mentioned out-of-court disposals by police forces. The Justice Secretary has announced a review of those, and we will ensure that for both stalking and domestic violence, we look specifically at whether out-of-court disposals—cautioning, for example—are being used properly and appropriately for these serious issues.

I am conscious that I want to leave time for the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd to wind up this debate, which I have found very constructive. Members have raised a lot of serious issues, and I hope I have been able to demonstrate that the Government take the issue seriously and want to drive responses across a number of organisations.

[John McDonnell]

Will the Minister take back to his Department the request from the family courts unions parliamentary group for a meeting about the closure of family contact centres?

[Mr Harper]

I will take that request back to my colleagues at the Ministry of Justice and ensure they hear it and respond to the hon. Gentleman. On that note, Mr Deputy Speaker, we want to hear from the right hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd.

Identity Documents (Home Office)

Mark Harper Excerpts

Tuesday 19th November 2013 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

I reiterate what the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty) said; it is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main. I do not think that I have done so, either, if I remember accurately. That is clearly an oversight by the House scheduling authorities and it is a great pleasure to redress it.

The hon. Gentleman raises a number of cases. It is difficult to comment on the specific cases for which he has not furnished the details, but I will try to comment on the general points. I thank him for what he said about the front-line Home Office staff and the MP account manager team that supports his office. I know from conversations we have had that it does its best to support his office, as it supports other hon. Members. We have been trying to put a great deal of effort particularly into supporting Members of Parliament. That does not mean that there are no issues, but in terms of the ability for MPs to get swift answers on operational matters and to resolve issues, both the director general, Sarah Rapson, whom the hon. Gentleman mentioned, and myself have made it clear in the organisation that, when an MP account manager is pressing for information or action, they are acting on my behalf and that of the director general to resolve the issue for hon. Members. That message is getting home. MP account managers are therefore empowered to seek answers from the Department. Of course, if hon. Members are not happy with the response from the MP account manager, or if the MP account manager has not delivered it, they have the option of raising the matter directly with me, as the hon. Gentleman is doing today.

Before I move on to the care and custody of documents, let me respond to the hon. Gentleman’s mentioning the time taken to make decisions and how many cases are ongoing. That is a good point, because a number of the hon. Gentleman’s examples stem from the length of time that cases took to decide. Some cases were a result of the backlog of lengthy decision making in asylum cases. Clearly, if somebody’s case file is being held and the arrangements take the best part of a decade, it is not surprising that mistakes and errors happen with paperwork. One solution is to make faster decisions and return the documents in a timely fashion.

The hon. Gentleman knows—I have been frank about it in the main Chamber—that in the 2012-13 financial year what was the UK Border Agency in its in-country operations, which are those within the United Kingdom, where a lot of these issues stem from, did not do a good job at making timely decisions and we had a backlog of cases. I am pleased that in this financial year we have made significant progress, although we are not all the way there, in reducing that backlog to the extent that we have a relatively small number of weeks of cases on hand and we are largely, although not entirely, within our service standards. That important factor will enable us to both make more timely decisions and deal with issues about managing paper and valuable documents.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned valuable documents, including passports and biometric residence permits. We take the custody and care of the documents seriously. For context, I shall set out some data. We deal with about 1 million in-country applications every year for study, work or refugee status. Last year, we received 469 complaints about the loss of valuable documents—down from the year before. In about 42% of those cases, the Home Office was partially or fully responsible. Yes, that is 469 too many, because in an ideal world we would not lose any documents and documents would not go astray, but that is less than 0.02% of cases, which, putting it in context, suggests that we are not doing too bad a job. However, that can cause a great deal of annoyance and inconvenience in each individual case, and in a case that the hon. Gentleman highlighted, which I will come to, there was a certain amount of distress for the constituents concerned.

I hope that the hon. Gentleman is pleased that we have recognised that we need to do things differently, particularly in respect of managing valuable documents. He spoke about ensuring that staff are properly trained and that they complete the mandatory training on protecting personal information, not just to be aware of the procedures and policies, but to understand the consequences of the loss of such documents. He was right to say that it is important that staff are aware of the people behind the cases, not just of cases to be processed. That mentality will enable people to take more care.

The second thing that we are doing, which I think will help, is that, having listened to customer feedback on our holding on to valuable documents until we have made a final decision, we are moving to system in which we will only retain copies of the documents once we have validated them. Customers will send in their application with their valuable document—their passport or biometric residence permit, or whatever—and once we have established the bona fides of the document and made a note of them, we will take a copy of that document and return it to the person at that point, as opposed to hanging on to it all the way through the process. That will help, because we will return the documents on a more timely basis, so reducing the opportunity for loss.

The final thing that we are doing—this comes back to some comments that the chief inspector made—is that, rather than maintaining valuable documents at different locations around the country, with what should be standard but in practice turned out to be variable care, we will record and track the receipt of those documents at a central location, where we will manage and store them and where people with expertise will take proper care of them and look after them. When we hold documents, we will hold them in a more secure and better-managed environment.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the postal system and correctly said that we always send documents by recorded delivery. He made a fair point about how Royal Mail compensation for recorded delivery compares with that for special delivery. I will look at our strategy there, at the cost of those two services and whether the point that he raises in practice—it is clearly a theoretical problem—relates to cases where that has been an issue. It would help if he told me about specific cases, if he has not done so previously, because I could use those examples to see whether they raise wider issues. I am happy to do that, because he is right. Clearly, if Royal Mail loses valuable documents and we and his constituent have done everything right, Royal Mail is responsible for the compensation. We must consider whether the compensation that Royal Mail pays for the service that is used is adequate for the task. That is a perfectly reasonable point, and I will take it away. Whether or not I decide that we need to make a change, I will write to him and place a copy of the letter in the Library, so that other Members may know what I have concluded.

The hon. Gentleman also talked about compensation where we are at fault. My understanding is that, in the case that I considered, we will pay compensation and refund the cost of replacing the documents, including associated costs such as travel. I accept his point that that requires the person to deal with the situation and claim back the money, but the flipside—he talked about managing public money—is that we also have a responsibility to ensure that, where we compensate people, the claim is genuine, which it is in most cases, but we have had examples in which people claimed costs that they did not incur. That is why we insist that people reasonably evidence the costs before we pay them. My understanding is that we will pay not only the direct costs but the associated costs, including travel.

Where we find that we have lost a document, we have a departmental security unit that considers the root cause of the problem. Was it human error, or was it just poor management? Is there a systemic process involved in that part of the operation that we need to fix by putting something in place?

The hon. Gentleman raised two specific cases involving his constituents, and I have some information on those cases. He did not name the constituent who was sent the birth certificate of an unconnected child in her application for leave, so I will not name her, either. We are grateful to her for returning the document, and I confirm, as we have confirmed to her, that the document had no bearing on the decision-making process. Such things happen infrequently, but we are continuing to investigate how it happened, and we will take appropriate steps. As the hon. Gentleman has raised the matter, I will ensure that I am briefed on the appropriate steps that are taken in that case.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned a specific constituent, whom he named—Mr Conde. Frankly, it has taken too long for us to reach a compensation agreement with Mr Conde. I confirm that I have investigated the matter. I gave officials instructions to address the situation, and I confirm that today we will be dispatching a letter to Mr Conde with what I think, based on what he is claiming, is a much more reasonable offer of compensation, which I hope he will find acceptable.

After this debate, I will write to the hon. Gentleman with details of the offer. I did not write to him beforehand because I wanted to see whether he would raise any other concerns. The letter will set out what has happened in the case, what we have offered and the thinking behind it. I hope the offer is acceptable and that we will be able to resolve the matter. I have asked officials to consider the matter not only by the book, but in terms of what is reasonable, particularly as his constituent was unable to attend his sister’s funeral, which clearly caused him significant distress. I hope that my response is helpful in that specific case.

[Stephen Doughty]

I appreciate the Minister’s personal efforts on those cases, and I look forward to seeing the replies.

On compensation in general, it would be helpful for hon. Members and members of the public to see the scale and extent of the problem. Will the Minister furnish us with a detailed figure on the overall compensation paid, so that we may understand the scale of the problem?

[Mr Harper]

I listened carefully to the hon. Gentleman’s speech, and he referred to a parliamentary question. One of the challenges, of course, is that this is always a balance of resources. When answering parliamentary questions, we have to consider how much resource we have to put into extracting the information. He will know, as I know to my cost, that the systems in the Home Office for recording and tracking information are not the best in the world. There is always a balance. The information is available somewhere in the Department, but pulling that information together from multiple systems can be very costly.

The answer to the hon. Gentleman’s parliamentary question stated that the information is not held centrally. I cannot remember whether we simply did not have the information centrally or whether pulling together the information would have cost more than the prescribed cost threshold for answering the question. I will go away and see what information is readily available on overall compensation. That information might not be brilliant, but let me see what is available. Again, I will write to him either with what is available or, if the information is not any better than the parliamentary answer, I will tell him so. Again, I will place a copy of that letter in the Library.

I have one-and-a-bit minutes left. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the care of valuable documents is important. I have set out some significant process improvements that are being introduced by the Department and UK Visas and Immigration in our in-country business to safeguard those documents better, to make faster decisions and to ensure that there are fewer issues. He raised a sensible point on how we transfer those documents through Royal Mail, and I will consider whether the compensation is appropriate in that specific example, which I thank him for raising. I hope that we can resolve his constituent’s case satisfactorily. I will write to him after the debate, and he will receive his and his constituent’s letter in the next few days. I am grateful to him for raising those issues today.

Question put and agreed to.

Immigration and Visa Charging Principles

Mark Harper Excerpts

Tuesday 12th November 2013 Written Statements

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

People who need permission to visit the UK and those who want to live, work or study here must pay a fee for their visa. It is important that we seek input into how we ensure that those who benefit directly from the immigration system and enhanced border control contribute appropriately to its costs in the future.

I am therefore launching a targeted consultation looking at charging principles which will begin on 12 November and will last for three weeks. As part of the consultation we will be seeking views on how the Home Office charges customers and the services it provides.

We will be seeking views from stakeholders who have an interest in the way fees are set, the consistency and complexity of fees and on premium services. We are also seeking views on proposals on administrative reviews and refunds and how the Home Office interacts with third parties.

A copy of the consultation document will be placed in the House Library and on the gov.uk website.

Immigration Enforcement

Mark Harper Excerpts

Thursday 31st October 2013 Written Statements

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

The Home Office’s immigration enforcement command ensures that the immigration rules are complied with and that those with no right to be in the UK are removed. It is better for both the UK taxpayer and offenders themselves if offenders leave the country voluntarily rather than in an enforced manner. Immigration compliance and enforcement teams are therefore working to identify how they can promote the visibility of enforcement operations to drive compliance and encourage more immigration offenders to leave the UK voluntarily.

A pilot operation, Operation Vaken, took place between 22 July and 22 August 2013 in six London boroughs to test whether different communications could encourage any increases in voluntary departures. It included a number of communications techniques, such as mobile billboards highlighting the risk of arrest, postcards in shop windows, adverts in newspapers and magazines, leaflets and posters advertising immigration surgeries in faith/charity group buildings.

The pilot period ceased on 22 October 2013 and a full evaluation report has now been produced, a copy of which will be placed in the Library of the House. As of 22 October, there have been 60 voluntary departures which can be directly attributed to this pilot. The report also identifies a further 65 cases that are currently being progressed towards departure.

The total cost of the pilot was £9,740. Data held by the Home Office indicate that the average cost of a voluntary removal is £1,000, and the average cost of an enforced removal is up to £15,000. The 60 voluntary removals connected to this pilot therefore represent a notional saving of approximately £830,000 compared to the costs of enforcing those removals.

The most cost-effective communications were the adverts, leaflets and posters that advertised immigration surgeries in faith and charity groups, rather than the advertising vans or other forms of advertising used in the operation. In addition, as my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary told the House of Commons on 22 October, the advertising vans in particular were too much of a blunt instrument and will not be used again.

During this period, a separate pilot was conducted in two immigration reporting centres, in Hounslow and Glasgow. These centres are principally used to ensure that those suspected of immigration offences are kept in regular contact while their case is progressed to removal. This pilot used a variety of communication materials to encourage those reporting to inquire about leaving the UK voluntarily and ceased on 4 October. The activity is being evaluated separately but there are no plans to repeat it.

The Government will continue to enforce the immigration rules and promote voluntary departure schemes to those who have no right to be in the UK—backed up with arrest, detention and enforced removal where individuals refuse to comply with the immigration rules or present a danger to the UK public.

Oral Answers to Questions

Mark Harper Excerpts

Monday 28th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jonathan Djanogly (Huntingdon) (Con)]

5. What steps she is taking to restrict immigration routes into the UK without limiting the ability of UK universities to attract international students.

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

Since 2010, the Government have taken steps to reform all routes into the UK to deal with abuse, but we have been careful to protect our world-class universities. In the past year, we have still seen a rise in visa applications to universities.

[Mr Djanogly]

Given that we have significantly restricted the ability of foreign students to stay on after the end of their studies, is it worth retaining their inclusion in the immigration figures?

[Mr Harper]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question, as it gives me the opportunity to say that they should be in the figures. Those who come here for more than a year are migrants in the same way others are, and use public services. It also gives me the opportunity to say that we have not restricted the ability of students to work where they have a graduate-level job that earns £20,300. We welcome the best and the brightest to do exactly that.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

On the Chancellor’s recent visit to China, he made a big and open offer to the most populous country on earth: all Chinese students are welcome to study in the United Kingdom. If they take up that offer, that will have a serious effect on the Government’s aim to restrict immigration to under 100,000. What does the Minister for Immigration think of that big and open offer?

[Mr Harper]

First, I do not think the Chancellor was suggesting that the entire population of China will come to the United Kingdom all in one go. The right hon. Gentleman makes a sensible point, but it is worth remembering that students who come to the UK will stay for their course and then leave. They do not, over time, make a contribution to net migration. We have, however, already seen strong growth in the number of students coming from China. They are welcome at our universities and we want to see them come.

[Jeremy Lefroy (Stafford) (Con)]

What is the latest assessment the Minister has made of the value of international students to the UK economy and society?

[Mr Harper]

We welcome international students as long as they study at a genuine university or other genuine institution. We have dealt with abuse, which we inherited from the Opposition, but we welcome students and the best of them are welcome to stay here to create businesses, wealth and jobs.

[Pete Wishart (Perth and North Perthshire) (SNP)]

The Minister knows that almost the entire Scottish higher education establishment despise the immigration reforms, which do nothing but make Scotland a less attractive place to come. This is not working for us and we do not have the issues of the rest of the United Kingdom. Can we now make our own course, so that we can make Scotland an attractive and welcoming place for international students?

[Mr Harper]

If the hon. Gentleman looks at the facts, he will see that there is an increase in the number of international students going to the excellent universities in Scotland. Scotland is attractive to international students, as is the rest of the United Kingdom. I see no evidence that our immigration reforms are turning students away.

[Julie Elliott (Sunderland Central) (Lab)]

International students play a vital role in Sunderland university, which is in my constituency. The changes to immigration rules since the Government came to power have made a lot of areas of the world feel that we are closed for business. What is the Minister doing to address that view and change it back, so that they know we are open for business and welcome international students?

[Mr Harper]

Ministers take every opportunity to make the case that we welcome genuine students and to set out the attractive offer we have. As the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), the Chair of the Select Committee, said, both the Chancellor and the Mayor of London were in China recently to make that case. The Prime Minister has been to India, as has my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. We make the case at every opportunity and I am glad the hon. Lady is doing so, too.

[Paul Uppal (Wolverhampton South West) (Con)]

6. What steps she is taking to tackle gang crime.

--- Later in debate ---

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

8. What steps she is taking to reduce illegal immigrants’ access to housing.

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

The Immigration Bill will require private landlords to make some simple, straightforward checks so that illegal migrants do not have access to private housing. Existing legislation already makes it clear that illegal migrants do not have access to social housing.

[Harriett Baldwin]

Farmers in my constituency offer temporary housing to the seasonal agricultural workers who pick the delicious crops we grow in West Worcestershire. Will it be the farmers or the gangmasters who are required to verify their immigration status?

[Mr Harper]

If employers make available tied accommodation —meaning it is tied to their employment—they will not have to make further checks, because, as employers, they already have to check someone’s right to work in the United Kingdom, and we do not want to overburden them with bureaucracy.

[George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)]

I congratulate and thank the Home Secretary for the excellent measures in last week’s Immigration Bill, which is strongly welcomed by my constituents. Have Ministers seen the recent report stating that the NHS is currently losing £2 billion a year on health care to non-UK residents who should not be here? May I encourage the Home Office, with other Departments, to do everything possible to continue the good work to clamp down on illegal citizens taking public services from our citizens?

[Mr Harper]

We will be doing the first stage of that in the Immigration Bill by ensuring that people who come here as temporary migrants make a fair contribution to the NHS before they can have access to it. The Secretary of State for Health will also introduce separate measures to ensure that hospitals become more effective at charging people who have no right to free access to health care paid for by our taxpayers.

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

9. What steps she is taking to tackle the use and supply of legal highs.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alec Shelbrooke (Elmet and Rothwell) (Con)]

14. What steps she is taking to reduce abuse in the immigration system.

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

We have taken a number of steps to deal with abuse in the immigration system, and the Immigration Bill will go further. It will ensure that people do not have access to public services when they should not, it will reform the appeal system, and it will establish the House’s and Parliament’s views on how judges should make decisions relating to article 8 of the European convention.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Housing pressure in my constituency is huge as a result of the last Government’s unfettered immigration policies. Can my hon. Friend confirm that he intends to continue his endeavours to cut immigration further, thus relieving the pressure that is undermining the level of new housing being demanded by Labour-led Leeds city council?

[Mr Harper]

My hon. Friend has made a good point. Our reduction in net migration will reduce the pressure on housing, and the provisions in the Immigration Bill ensuring that people who have no right to be here have no access to housing will increase the amount of housing stock available to British citizens and to lawful migrants who are following the rules.

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

I accept the need to tackle abuse in the system, but may I draw the Minister’s attention to a disturbing anomaly? Families in which neither parent has been given the right to work become dependent on local churches and friends, and experience great distress. Is there no way in which the immigration system can take account of their circumstances, and allow one parent to work? That ought to be the norm, but it seems to be happening less and less often.

[Mr Harper]

If neither parent has the right to work because neither has the right to be in the United Kingdom, the solution to the problem is for them to leave. If the reason is that their case is being examined because they are, for example, claiming asylum, the state will support them while the case is under way. If the hon. Gentleman wishes to raise a specific case in his constituency, I should be delighted if he got in touch with me, and we can have a look at it.

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

17. What advice would the Minister give councils when residents with dependants have exhausted the immigration appeal process and therefore have no recourse to public funds, but, because they have not left the country either voluntarily or as a result of enforcement, the councils are still continuing to have to meet their high costs?

[Mr Harper]

In most cases, councils will have no liability to support such people, but they should carry out a human rights assessment. In a limited number of cases they may have to support them, but in most cases they will not. Indeed, by continuing to support those people when they need not do so, all that councils are doing is encouraging them to remain in the United Kingdom when they have no right to be here.

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

Baroness Warsi has said of “Go Home” ad vans:

“I don’t think it was a particularly positive experience and I am glad that we won't be going back to it.”

She also said:

“I think it’s always important for government to be clear when they are speaking to their communities that all people who are part of this nation legally are absolutely welcome.”

Does the Minister agree with that Cabinet Minister, and what steps will he take to reduce the use of dog-whistle politics?

[Mr Harper]

I entirely agree that everyone who is in the United Kingdom legally, obeying our laws and rules, is very welcome indeed. We have always made that clear. As the hon. Lady knows, the campaign was focused squarely on those who were here illegally. My right hon. Friend the Home Secretary made it clear last week that we had looked at some of the evidence, that we did not think the pilot had been successful enough, and that we would not be rolling it out further.

[Diana Johnson]

Having considered the evidence and decided that the campaign was not successful and should not be repeated, why does the Minister not publish the assessment of that policy, and let us see how many people left the country as a result of it?

[Mr Harper]

During last week’s debate on the Immigration Bill, my right hon. Friend made it clear that we would indeed publish the assessment when we had finished carrying out the evaluation. We are going to do the work properly, and we will publish the information in due course.

[Mr David Heath (Somerton and Frome) (LD)]

One of the parts of the immigration system that has been least open to abuse historically is the seasonal agricultural workers scheme. I know how carefully the Minister looked at the evidence before deciding to end the scheme. Will he now commit himself to monitoring the position, along with his colleagues in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Department for Work and Pensions, so that we can ensure that the ending of the scheme does not damage either the economy or food availability?

[Mr Harper]

I have a constituency interest, as constituents of mine took advantage of the scheme. The hon. Gentleman is right—it was not abused, but it was nearing the end of its natural life this year, because it was open only to those from Bulgaria and Romania, and they will be able to come to the United Kingdom in any event after transitional controls have been withdrawn. We had to choose whether to create a new scheme, and we decided that we did not need to do so because sufficient labour was available in the European Union. However, I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we will continue to keep the matter under review, along with other Departments, to ensure that our agricultural industry is not damaged in any way.

[Mr Robert Syms (Poole) (Con)]

15. What plans she has to make it easier to deport foreign terrorists and criminals.

--- Later in debate ---

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

I recently met a young Tamil man who had previously been deported back to Sri Lanka by the Home Secretary. He showed me his torture scars resulting from the Sri Lankan terrorist investigation department having tortured him. Will the Minister give me a categorical assurance that we are no longer returning men to Sri Lanka to be forcibly abused by the Sri Lankan authorities there?

[The Minister for Immigration (Mr Mark Harper)]

The hon. Lady will know that we make decisions on asylum on a case-by-case basis and very carefully. We look at the country information we have and use the best available data. Everyone whom we determine does not have the right to our protection has the opportunity to have their case heard by an independent judge. We only return people to countries where we do not think that they need our protection, and we always keep the situation in the country under close review, working with our international partners.

[Sir Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

Is there any possible reason for a chief constable or another warranted police officer not to respond to a reasonable request or recommendation from the Independent Police Complaints Commission?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Nick Raynsford (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

The Minister for Immigration will be well aware that I have had to draw his attention to unreasonably long delays in implementing tribunal decisions which have reversed Home Office refusals in individual cases. When will he put an end to the scandal of people waiting six months or, in some cases, more than a year for legally binding decisions to be implemented by his Department?

[Mr Harper]

The right hon. Gentleman is quite right: he has drawn some of those cases to my attention. Sometimes, when tribunals make rulings that require a change in policy, it is important to get that policy right to make sure that we can implement the tribunals’ decisions in the way they intended. If the right hon. Gentleman has any further cases, which he seemed to have, will he please get in touch with me and I will be happy to take those up for him.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—