Immigration Bill

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

The problem with the argument that the hon. Gentleman and other Labour Members have been advancing in relation to landlords is that we already have an example of a system where people check the status of individuals: employers do that, and they are provided with support by the Home Office. Exactly the same will happen with landlords. The idea that this is something entirely new is completely wrong. Many landlords already ask exactly these sorts of questions of the people to whom they are renting properties.

Establishing the identity of illegal migrants is a further difficulty in the removal process. Visa applicants are required to give their fingerprints to an entry clearance officer before they enter the UK. Following my border reforms last year, the fingerprints of arriving passengers are checked to ensure that the person who has travelled to the UK is the rightful holder of the visa, but there are gaps in our powers to take fingerprints, and the Bill closes them. When the police encounter a suspect, they have the power to check fingerprints, but when an immigration officer encounters a suspected illegal migrant, they may check fingerprints only where consent is given unless they arrest them. Not surprisingly, not everyone consents. Officers need powers equivalent to those of the police so that when they find an illegal migrant they can check their fingerprints to confirm their suspicion and start enforcement action.

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

rose—

[Mrs May]

I have already been very generous in taking interventions.

Part 2 is about appeals. The appeals system is complex and costly. Seventeen different immigration decisions attract rights of appeal, and when a case finally comes to a close some applicants put in fresh applications and start all over again. That is not fair to the public, who expect swift enforcement of immigration decisions. The Bill sorts out the mess. In future, the 17 rights of appeal will be reduced to four. Foreign criminals will not be able to prevent deportation simply by dragging out the appeals process, as many such appeals will be heard only once the criminal is back in their home country. It cannot be right that criminals who should be deported can remain here and build up a further claim to a settled life in the United Kingdom.

As well as reducing the number of appeals, we propose to simplify the process. An appeal to an immigration judge is a very costly and time-consuming way of correcting simple casework errors that could be resolved by a request to the Home Office to review the decision. This is what we already do overseas for millions of visa applicants. Applicants will be able to contact the Home Office and ask for a simple administrative review to remedy such errors. That can resolve errors in decisions cheaply and quickly, within 28 days, and it is substantially quicker than the average 12 weeks that it currently takes to appeal via the tribunal with all the costs that that incurs. The Bill creates an effective and efficient appeals system that will ensure that the process cannot be abused or manipulated to delay the removal of those who have no basis for remaining in the UK, but it still provides an opportunity to challenge a decision where fundamental rights are concerned. The public are fed up with cases where foreign criminals are allowed to stay because of an overly generous interpretation by the courts of article 8—the right to respect for family and private life. Under the current system, the winners are foreign criminals and immigration lawyers and the losers are the victims of these crimes and the law-abiding public.

The Government first sought to address this issue in July 2012 by changing the immigration rules with the intention of shifting the weight the courts give to the public interest. This House debated and approved the new rules, which set out the factors in favour of deportation and the factors against it. The courts accept that the new rules provide a complete code for considering article 8 where we are deporting foreign criminals. However, some judges have still chosen to ignore the will of Parliament and go on putting the law on the side of foreign criminals instead of the public. I am sending a very clear message to those judges: Parliament wants a law on the people’s side, the public want a law on the people’s side, and this Government will put the law on the people’s side once and for all. This Bill will require the courts to put the public interest at the heart of their decisions.

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[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend will know that we are looking at the whole question of how we deal with human trafficking, or—let us call it what it is—modern slavery. Next year we will introduce a Bill to deal with modern slavery, with a particular focus on dealing with the criminal gangs who undertake this activity. The launch of the new National Crime Agency gives us an even greater ability to deal with those gangs. I want to ensure that we not only start to reduce but end this horrible crime of human trafficking—modern slavery.

[Meg Hillier]

Will the Home Secretary give way?

[Mrs May]

I am going to make some further progress.

Part 3 is about migrants’ access to services. We want to ensure that only legal migrants have access to the labour market, free health services, housing, bank accounts and driving licences. This is not just about making the UK a more hostile place for illegal migrants; it is also about fairness. Those who play by the rules and work hard do not want to see businesses gaining an unfair advantage through the exploitation of illegal labour, or to see our valuable public services, paid for by the taxpayer, used and abused by illegal migrants.

Hon. Members will know that the right of non-European economic area nationals to work in the UK is restricted, and where the right to work is granted, it may be restricted to a particular employer or limited hours. Employers are required to ensure that their employees have the right to work in the UK and if they do not, they will face penalties, but the process for enforcing those fines is complicated. The Bill will streamline that process, making employers think again before hiring illegal labour.

Let me turn to the national health service. Many temporary migrants are currently allowed free access to the NHS as if they were permanent residents. Such an approach is extremely generous, particularly compared with wider international practice. Our intention is to bring the rules regulating migrant access to the NHS into line with wider Government policy on migrant access to benefits and social housing. That means restricting access to free NHS care to those non-EEA nationals with indefinite leave to remain and those granted refugee status or humanitarian protection in the UK. Under this Bill, other migrants will have to contribute.

Temporary migrants seeking to stay in the UK for more than six months will have to pay an immigration health surcharge on top of their visa fee. I assure the House that this surcharge will make the system fairer and will not undermine our aim to attract the brightest and the best. We have carefully examined what other countries do and will ensure that the UK offer is a competitive one in a tough global market.

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[Yvette Cooper]

The most recent figures for net migration show that it has increased. The hon. Gentleman has chosen to support a target that ignores illegal migration altogether and that includes university students who contribute to the economy. Furthermore, he can claim that progress has been made in meeting the target if the number of British citizens who leave the country or who fail to return to the country increases. That is the target that he is pursuing.

[Meg Hillier]

Many of my constituents are first, second or multiple generation immigrants who work hard to prop up our NHS and other public services. Does my right hon. Friend agree that penalising people when their families come over by adding extra charges to every application is unfair on those people who are breaking their back for Britain?

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Monday 15th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

I agree with the hon. Lady, who I know has a long record of constructive activity in this field, that missing children are particularly vulnerable. That is why the new taskforce I am chairing has on it significant representation from the Department for Education, so that those who are looking after the children can try to reduce the numbers that go missing in the first place.

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

I visited Nigeria last week with the all-party parliamentary group on Nigeria. While we were there we met the federal agency dealing with trafficked children. Nigeria is the source country for the majority of trafficked people into this country. I welcome the Minister’s taskforce, but does it include people who have an understanding of Nigeria? Perhaps he will update us on his relations with that country.

[Damian Green]

In a previous ministerial job, I, too, visited Nigeria, and the hon. Lady is quite right to raise what is an important issue there. I am happy to assure her that part of the taskforce’s work is specifically to promote greater international co-operation so that in countries such as Nigeria—it is important to have activity going on in such countries as well as in this country—we are establishing and maintaining better links with the authorities.

EU Police, Justice and Home Affairs

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Wednesday 12th June 2013 Commons Chamber

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

I had the privilege of serving in Her Majesty’s Government for three years as a Minister in the Home Office, negotiating justice and home affairs issues to ensure that our country was a safer place. I had the great privilege of working with the Home Secretary’s two immediate predecessors, both of whom were excellent Home Secretaries who had the interests of the public very much at heart. I therefore have enormous respect for the position of Home Secretary, and I extend that respect to any incumbent in the role because I know the challenges they face. I believed this Home Secretary when, on taking on the job, she said that she took her role of protecting the public very seriously. I therefore have to ask why she is playing such games with the safety of the British public in her approach to the opt-out on justice and home affairs issues. Is this an example of dog-whistle politics as she burnishes her credentials in preparation for taking over from the Prime Minister in due course? If so, she is not doing very well today, given that not many of her Eurosceptic friends have even bothered to attend the debate or listen to her speech.

We need to look closely at the proposals. The hon. Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) talked about the rights of British citizens in relation to these EU measures. I want to talk about the rights of British victims, which should be at the heart of what any Home Secretary does. If we were to opt out of all the justice and home affairs measures, we could in theory opt back into certain mechanisms. However, it is important to make it clear that that is not an automatic right. Because so many EU member states rightly support the European arrest warrant, there is a strong likelihood that they would agree to a UK opt-in on that particular issue.

Let us be clear about what the Government are saying to us. They are not clear on a lot of points, but on one thing they are quite clear. The Prime Minister, the Home Secretary and many other Conservatives on both the Back and the Front Benches are telling us that they will negotiate, or renegotiate, an entry into the European arrest warrant on more favourable terms, or stay out of it. At least, that is what the hints we have heard suggest—nothing very concrete, but that is what has come through in numerous debates in this House.

The reality, however, is that the treaty does not allow for automatically amending the European arrest warrant. We know that it is popular among other EU member states and it has been hard fought for and hard negotiated. As the hon. Member for Daventry highlighted and as others have said, there is a mood for change here and there in how the arrest warrant works, but that is much better done by all 27 nations working together in justice and home affairs Councils and negotiating together to make any amendments. That is better than the UK going it alone, but the UK going it alone is the sort of dog whistle approach that this Government adopt, ensuring that they talk in any language that will appeal to the Eurosceptic Back Benchers of the Conservative party rather than talk about the safety of the British public.

[Michael Connarty]

I want to confirm that my hon. Friend’s analysis is accurate. Along with other members of the European Scrutiny Committee, I have just returned from Lithuania where the Lithuanians were being harangued by the hon. Member for Stone (Mr Cash) about how everyone in Europe was turning against the EU, how we are all going to withdraw and he gave the example of the opt outs. They could not believe that any UK parliamentarian could talk about withdrawing from what, as my hon. Friend says, was a hard-negotiated agreement.

[Meg Hillier]

Absolutely. In my three years of negotiations, I was certainly struck by how positive other EU member states were in comparison with our Eurosceptic parliamentarians about the benefits of being members of Europe. We need to be really clear that there is no guarantee that we will be able to amend and then opt back in later. Even if that were to happen, there is no timetable for it, and we could be left uncovered for a period of time. We would have to negotiate 26 separate treaties with our EU colleagues. I cannot see them being very positive about that. Even when we were in government, I was told many times by my European colleagues that the UK was trying to have its cake and eat it. Through detailed and hard-working negotiation across government, however, we made sure that we got the best deal we could for the British public. My personal view is that we need to opt in; we need to amend, if necessary, on a cross-EU 27-member-state basis.

I am still puzzled about why the Home Secretary is lending her name to this risky game and why we are seeing such strong anti-European rhetoric from the Prime Minister. Perhaps it is all about Conservative Back Benchers and the threat to this Government of the UK Independence party. This Home Secretary and this Prime Minister are gambling with the security of the British public and the rights of victims—and we need to make that crystal clear.

That brings me to the other part of this coalition Government. The Liberal Democrats are now a party of government. That sometimes seems difficult to believe, but it is the case. We hear very little from Lib Dem Members, so I was heartened to hear from the hon. Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert) that he is pro the European arrest warrant. That is not the impression I gained about Liberal Democrats in my full eight years in Parliament, so it is great to hear that and I look forward to his speech. He has talked about making some technical amendments, so the question for the hon. Gentleman when he stands up to speak on behalf of his party tonight is, “will they or won’t they?” Will the Lib Dems support the rights of British victims by voting with us, or will they sit on the fence as they often do and hedge their bets?

The UK’s reputation in Europe is also put very much at risk by this approach. Over the years, we have built up a strong reputation as good negotiators, using our influence in a positive way—for the UK in Europe, but also for Europe more widely. The Home Secretary has not really answered the questions about the support and role of the devolved Administrations. When I was negotiating for the Government, I would be accompanied by members of those devolved Administrations who would be at our side as we discussed and negotiated. What sort of discussions has the Home Secretary had?

I do not have time to go into all the measures today, but it is important that Prüm was mentioned. There were arguments about how it was handled and how the technical and IT administration was carried out, but it will nevertheless introduce important protections. At present, those in this country who, in a global world, employ people from abroad do not know much about where those people have come from, and do not know whether they have criminal records. Proper data exchange can make our country a safer place.

It would be good to know when the House of Commons will vote on the opt-out. As many Members have pointed out, we are within a year of making a final decision, and we shall need to discuss the issue at length. There are barely six weeks before the summer recess, and we shall want to look at the details of the Government’s proposals. I should have thought that, in three years, the Government would have got further than they have. We need to see full details of the opt-in measures; when will we see those? How will the Liberal Democrats vote? That is another important question, which I hope will be answered by the hon. Member for Cambridge. Finally, what is the Home Secretary doing to protect victims?

We are not a teenage debating society. We are talking about real, serious measures that would protect or threaten the British public and other citizens in Europe. We need to ensure that the debate continues beyond today, and that we winkle out of the Government much more detail than they have been prepared to offer on this occasion.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Thursday 14th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Maria Miller]

My hon. Friend is a very persuasive Member of Parliament, and I am sure that as many MPs as possible will be there.

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

Tomorrow marks the start of London fashion week. Are the Government willing to work with the British Fashion Council, which is announcing a mapping exercise of manufacturing in the industry to help to support jobs and growth for all of our constituents?

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Monday 11th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I will respond to my hon. Friend in relation to the individual case that he has raised, but he starts off by saying that too many decisions by the UK Border Agency are wrong. One of the problems for UKBA is that very often entry clearance officers take decision on the basis of the information in front of them, which may perfectly well be the right decision on the basis of that information, then further information is provided before an appeal is heard. That is an issue that we need to look at.

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

Further to the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart), I have many constituents who have submitted an in-time application and have not even received an acknowledgement from the UK Border Agency. When my office chases up some months later, it turns out that they have not even been input into the UKBA computer system. Perhaps the Home Secretary can tell us whether this is an attempt by the Home Office to massage figures about the number of applicants and the speed with which it is dealing with them.

[Mrs May]

No such attempt is being made in relation to what the hon. Lady says. She will have heard the answer that I gave. I acknowledged that there are problems in some areas of the operation of the UK Border Agency. That is why we are looking at the UK Border Agency, and why work is being done to improve the processes within it to ensure that we have a system that provides an efficient and effective response to those who are applying.

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Monday 7th January 2013 Commons Chamber

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

14. What steps the Government are taking to tackle antisocial behaviour.

[The Minister of State, Home Department (Mr Jeremy Browne)]

We have just published a draft Bill setting out measures to put victims at the heart of the response to antisocial behaviour. They include the community trigger, which will ensure agencies take persistent problems seriously; the community remedy, giving victims a say in the punishment of offenders out of court; and, overall, faster, more effective powers so that front-line professionals can better protect the public.

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[Mr Browne]

Let me make two brief points. First, we take antisocial behaviour extremely seriously. I think that MPs of all parties see the terrible effect that antisocial behaviour has on decent, law-abiding citizens and we want to help them. Secondly, the measures are designed to be quicker and more effective than those previously in place. If they were not going to achieve that objective, we would not be bringing them forward.

[Meg Hillier]

The Minister has given warm words about his desire to tackle antisocial behaviour, but why is it that my constituents and people up and down the country who suffer antisocial behaviour will now get no action unless they complain three times, not just once?

[Mr Browne]

The hon. Lady misunderstands the intention of the policy. Our hope is that the police and other authorities will respond instantly when concerns are raised about antisocial behaviour. The problem in the past has been when the same concern has been raised repeatedly and no response has been forthcoming. What we are putting in place is a defined measure to make sure that that no longer happens.

Gangs and Youth Violence (2011 Riots)

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 4th December 2012 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Streeter. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) on securing a debate on this important subject.

I am going to dive straight in by saying that despite media reports, overall crime levels in Hackney have dropped dramatically over the past six years. However, safety issues and the fear of crime remained the No. 1 priority in the council’s residents survey. Indeed, one reason why parents appeal school admissions is that young people are frightened of crossing postcode areas. Although fewer than 1% of Hackney residents have any involvement in gang crime, the fear effect therefore ripples out further. The Home Office had the mission in the past of reducing the fear of crime as well as actual crime, and I hope the Minister can comment on the progress that has been made on that, if it remains a target for the coalition Government.

My hon. Friend talked about riots and gangs overlapping; as she said, there are separate issues, but there are some similarities, and I will echo her comments in the time I have. However, I would like to mention one concern. I am a great defender of a free press, but one thing that those of us who are routinely active on doorsteps, in communities and in people’s homes get quite irritated about is the simplistic headlines generated by some of the media. Some of the journalism about the aftermath of the riots in Hackney was based on questionable and often unbalanced vox pops and on evidence gathering that was not true evidence gathering, which was not helpful. I suspect Hackney suffers from its improved transport links and its proximity to the headquarters of many national newspapers.

Let me give a feel for how inaccurate the coverage sometimes was. I turned up in Hackney town hall the day after the riots in August 2011. I was speaking to a French journalist, who interrupted our interview to stick her microphone out in the road, saying, “I just needed to get that police siren for good effect in my report.” That rather summed up the issue, especially as she also said, off-microphone, “This is a really nice area of town, isn’t it? It’s much nicer than Paris.” That is something I would echo for those Members who have not been to Hackney recently.

However, let me get back to some of the issues, causes and concerns. One really big concern that has been mentioned is unemployment. Unemployment among under-24s in Hackney is very high. We have a high percentage of young people, and about a third of Hackney residents—it is probably even more now, because these are old census data—are under 24. We had an increase of 30,000 or so in our population between censuses, which was made up largely of under-fives and people in their 20s and 30s. Some of those young people will be living in private accommodation, where 90% of people are employed, but only 40% of my constituents living in social housing are employed.

The issue of young black men is also of real concern; it feeds the negative stereotypes that are so often untrue, but there is a reality in Hackney. It is interesting that no schoolchildren were involved in the riots in August. There may be poverty in my constituency, but there is no poverty of ambition. We have seen hugely improved school results, so there is real reason for people to focus on what they can achieve in their own right, and that improvement in education is making a difference.

Another big concern—this touches on some of what is going on in our schools—is that, sadly too often, there is a lack of good influences and role models, particularly male role models. I will not repeat all the research, but an eight-year-old boy will typically look for a male role model. At that age, he looks away from his mother’s skirts, and he will latch on to whomever is around. On the Pembury estate—contrary to media reports, it was not the heart of the riots, but adjacent to where some of the worst activity took place—when older gang members have been put in prison, the youngsters, aged nine and 10, have sometimes begun to act the big man and to act as the leaders of their groups. The lack of male role models in schools, communities and, often, homes can therefore make a real difference.

That is a big issue for the Home Office to resolve, and I am not saying that it can resolve it, but we need to have a serious adult discussion nationally about what is happening, particularly in our primary schools. I always add up how many male teachers there are in primary schools, and, sadly, there are far too few. In under-five settings, too, there are generally far too few male role models. That is a real issue, which has a long-term effect, and I am sure my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) will have something to say about that.

Let me touch on the operation of gang injunctions. They were introduced by the coalition Government, and the Minister has direct responsibility for this area of policy. There is a concern about them, compared with antisocial behaviour orders. Gang injunctions come into operation after a crime has been committed, and they link good, positive aspects with punishment, but lawyers for the convicted have been arguing against the positive elements—for example, that their clients should have to attend college—and they have been winning. I hope the Minister will continue to be vigilant about how the Crown Prosecution Service represents the Crown in such situations, to ensure that those positive elements are not removed. I hope he will be humble enough to recognise that if gang injunctions do not work as intended, they may need reform. I am not completely against them, but they need to work, and it takes a lot of time to put them in place. If they are not delivering the positive, diversionary element, they are not worth very much. I hope the Minister will comment on that; if not, I hope he will give me a detailed response in writing.

Has the Home Office given any consideration to Operation Ceasefire, which is based on work by sociologist David Kennedy from Harvard? He came up with the Boston strategy, or Operation Ceasefire, in 1995, and it has subsequently been copied, most notably in Glasgow. In its work on knife crime in June 2009, the Home Affairs Committee praised the Glasgow model for achieving results. I will not go into detail, but, in summary, this approach involves pulling known gang members—nominals—together and confronting them with the information the police hold about them and with the impact of their crimes, before offering them the opportunity to come forward for diversionary activity. The model has critics and supporters, but has the Home Office done a serious analysis of this option for dealing with gang nominals?

That brings me to the work being done locally in Hackney. On the policing side, some progress is being made against gangs, but the most important work is being done by the gangs integration unit, which is headed by the former borough police commander, Steve Bending, who is now no longer a serving officer. The unit brings together police, probation, youth work, housing and any other agency that needs to be involved to tackle and divert gang members. It targets the top 50 gang nominals at any one time and sends them letters saying, “We know who you are, and we know where you are. We will be watching you. If you wish to divert yourself from gang activity, to move house or to get involved in education, or if your family do, we will help you in any way we can.” The unit is also doing a strand of work on girls in gangs, which, as the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field) said, is a growing issue and a real concern in my constituency. The unit’s work is funded by the London borough of Hackney, where the mayor has done a good job, in difficult circumstances, of making sure that certain local priorities retain council funding.

I strongly echo the point so well made by my hon. Friend that we cannot have a stop-start approach. I am not asking for lots more money, but we need consistency of approach. Solving gang problems is not about having lots of new initiatives all the time. There are things that have been proved to work, and I am sure there are things we can learn that will work in different situations in the future. However, this is not about continually reinventing the wheel, as the hon. Gentleman said; it is about consistency of approach. I am sure the Home Office is fully aware that the cost to the taxpayer of not tackling these issues is probably higher than that of tackling them early, so this is important. Given the fear of crime that the few members of gangs can generate, this has to be a high priority for the Government.

I want briefly to mention some of the work being done by local landlords. The Peabody Trust, which is the housing association that runs the Pembury estate, has projects such as Threads, which helps young women on the fringes of gangs. It also has the local intervention fire education programme—LIFE—which is a five-day course for 13 to 17-year-olds on the estate. The evaluation is clear that the programme works and really diverts young people from antisocial behaviour. The trust has also introduced a 13-week parenting course, and parenting is an issue we have perhaps not touched on enough. It is challenging being a teenager’s parent at the best of times, but it is very difficult at the worst of times. It is easy to tell parents that they should control their children, but if they have a large teenager who has got in with the wrong crowd, that can sometimes be difficult.

We also have the Makeda Weaver project, supported by Shian Housing Association, which helps to rehouse gang members away from their area of activity. In the current climate, with such pressures on housing, some of which are caused by the coalition’s policies, such a scheme might be unpopular, but I would defend it to the hilt, because unless we get gang members away from their area of activity, there is no easy way of helping them to stay away from the company they keep there.

There are many organisations that do good work in Hackney. One is The Golden Company, which works with young people at risk of exclusion and often on the edge of gangs. They get engaged in a project that collects honey and other bee by-products, and they learn how to create small businesses and become young entrepreneurs. The company does some very good work.

In short, there are important local solutions, and one pan-London or national solution may not always work. We have good examples of how local solutions can work in Hackney. However, we can learn lessons, and some things can be applied more or less across the board. Pan-London support is crucial. There cannot be a rehousing programme from one borough: Hackney cannot have a rehousing programme on its own, and nor can Westminster. We need a proper way of working, agreed across London, or it will not deliver.

We need funding for diversion and intervention early on. The Peabody Trust is working with Hackney council to attend to parenting and intervention from toddler stage onwards. We need to consider a range of actions. I touched on parenting support, which is important, and so is support for young women; that is also happening in Hackney. It is all needed. I know that not everything that I have mentioned is within the purview of the Home Office, but I plead with the Minister to become a champion of the approach, across Whitehall.

I want to reiterate the point that it is not one-off funding and lots of new initiatives that we need. Let us stick with what works and keep funding it, so that we do not have a stop-start approach. As for those young people whose lives are ruined by gang membership, whose life chances are changed for ever and who are affecting their neighbourhoods, we need to get them out of that and into positive activity. Let us deal with the scourge of gang activity and gang violence once and for all.

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[The Minister of State, Home Department (Mr Jeremy Browne)]

Thank you very much, Mr Streeter, for giving me the opportunity to conclude this afternoon’s debate. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) on securing this debate. I remember that about five or six years ago, when she was a Minister and I was a relatively new MP, she was very nice to me—well, she said that I was surprisingly sensible for a Liberal Democrat, which was qualified niceness but nevertheless nicer than I had expected. I will try to reciprocate that positive attitude during my concluding remarks.

I just want to give a little bit of context. I do not say this in any way because I take any of the issues that have been raised lightly, but listening to the debate, one might be forgiven for thinking that we are having it against a backdrop of escalating crime in London or across the country. I will respond in a moment to the substantive points that Members have made, but it is worth briefly putting the statistical context in front of the House.

That context is that recorded crime figures show a 14% reduction in homicides in the last year. That is very substantial. Offences involving knives and sharp instruments are down by 9% over the same period. Also, NHS data on hospital admissions for assault, which are a very good indicator of the level of violent crime, including unreported violent crime, show a 6% reduction in the 12 months to the end of March 2012. Members have been good enough to pay tribute to the work that has taken place with the Metropolitan Police Service and other agencies here in London.

Of course there are appalling incidents and we are not complacent. As a Government, we want to try to do everything that we can to reduce gang membership and gang violence, but it is worth noting that there have been successes. There are volunteers and charitable organisations across London and across the country as a whole who should feel proud of what they have achieved; we should recognise that their efforts are reaping some dividends; and we would like even more to happen in the future.

I will divide my comments into three sections: the first is about how we try to prevent gang membership and violence; the second is about how we try to intervene at the crucial point if we fail to prevent gang violence; and the third is about the sanctions that are used afterwards.

I obviously have only a few minutes left to speak, so let me split up the first section on how we try to prevent gang violence. In a way, prevention easily splits into a sort of adolescent stage and a pre-adolescent stage. Regarding the pre-adolescent stage, I hope that Members will join me in Westminster Hall tomorrow when we have a debate about early intervention. That is a very important area and Members will know about the troubled families initiative, in which the Prime Minister takes a personal interest. That initiative is trying to help the 120,000 most troubled families in the country. There is a very high statistical correlation between children being born in troubled circumstances and their going on to experience underachievement, as shown in their employment history, their crime record and their gang membership. There is a certain level of activity through which the Government can intervene in that area.

Members will also know about the Government’s commitment to the family-nurse partnership programme, in which we will double the number of places to at least 13,000 by 2015. So there is a body of early work, and the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) again mentioned today the importance of even wider social initiatives, such as having more male teachers in primary schools and more role models for boys, and I agree with him on that.

We then get into the adolescent and predominantly male stage; we are talking mainly, although not exclusively, about young men. Members have referred to the Government’s initiative to reprioritise £10 million worth of funding to 29 areas, including areas here in London—every Member who has spoken in the debate, apart from me, represents a London constituency. At least half of that money, so at least £5 million, has been spent on grants that have been given to voluntary groups, and that is not the only funding that has been made available.

However, I should say that I do not think the Government’s commitment to tackling this issue is just measured by how much public spending is devoted to it. There are huge numbers of very good voluntary groups, such as cadets, scouts, sports clubs, church groups and others, that are run by people right across the country and that have a very big role to play in engaging young people and giving them meaningful activity that does not involve gang membership and violence. I therefore reject the notion that the Government’s commitment to the agenda is measured entirely by the amount of public money we spend.

Having said that, we are spending £3.75 million over two years on the communities against guns, gangs and knives programme, £4 million has been made available to voluntary and community organisations working directly in local communities, and—I was asked about this by the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field)—we are also providing £1.2 million over three years, starting this year, to improve services to girls at risk of being victims of gangs and sexual exploitation.

[Meg Hillier]

I have been in the Minister’s shoes, and I am a constituency MP with a strong interest in this matter. He has talked a lot about voluntary projects, but what the Home Office can do apart from providing some funds is rigorously to evaluate what works and to ensure that funding goes only to the projects that work. It should not be sprinkled so thinly that it has less impact than it ought to.

[Mr Browne]

We are keen to spend the money where it works most effectively. As has been pointed out, it is not just the Home Office that spends it; the Department for Work and Pensions has an innovation fund of £30 million, some of which is spent in this area, and there is another DWP project that helps prisoners on their release from prison. That matter was raised by a number of Members, including the right hon. Member for Tottenham.

The Ministry of Justice is leading some interesting pilot studies on payment by results, looking at how we can incentivise prisons more effectively to reduce the terrible reoffending rates, which the right hon. Gentleman mentioned. He also talked about work in young offenders institutions and adult prisons, and he specifically mentioned Feltham young offenders institution, which has joined together with the Islington youth offending team to deliver a specialist programme for gang members in custody. There is a lot of excellent work such as that, large parts of it directly supported, and in some cases funded, by central Government.

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Monday 19th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

The hon. Lady will know that we have a cap on skilled workers, and that, so far, we have not come anywhere near to it taking effect. No business that has wanted to hire a skilled worker who meets the requirements has been unable to do so. Our policies are sound: we are keeping control of immigration but contributing very successfully to economic growth.

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

I represent Tech City, and in my regular meetings with representatives of those technical businesses, immigration comes up as one of the main challenges. For all the Minister’s comments just now about there being no cap, he is causing confusion and complication in a sector that could be driving the British economy. When will he rethink?

[Mr Harper]

I really do not think that the hon. Lady is right. We have a cap on skilled migration, but we have not come anywhere near it. We have a clear system for businesses being able to bring in skilled workers. If she has specific examples from businesses in her constituency, I would be delighted to meet the people involved so that I can set out clearly what our policies are, and if there are genuine issues, I will absolutely look at them.

Extradition

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Tuesday 16th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I thank my hon. Friend for his observations and comments. As he knows, the Government’s current thinking is that we will exercise the block opt-out and then seek to opt in to a number of measures. We will obviously consider the matter carefully and, as I said earlier, discuss the whole question of the European arrest warrant with the European Commission and other member states. As I have indicated, I am aware that other member states are also concerned about certain aspects of the European arrest warrant’s operation.

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

I fear that the Home Secretary is gambling with the justice for British victims of foreign criminals who flee to their home countries in Europe. She has chosen to opt out of the EAW, with no guarantee that we can opt in again, which could mean that British citizens will be denied justice. Will she outline in more detail what conversations she is having with other EU member states and what plan B is? Is it bilateral treaties with every single member state?

[Mrs May]

I am surprised that the hon. Lady does not understand the process a little better than her question suggests. I announced yesterday that the Government’s current thinking is that we will exercise the block opt-out. It is not open to us to opt out of individual measures; we can only block opt in or block opt out and then seek to rejoin certain measures. That is the process that the Government are currently going through. We will be talking with the European Commission and other member states about arrangements for the opt-ins and the specific measures that the Government choose to opt in to. The circumstances she sets out in her question are quite far from the reality.

Oral Answers to Questions

Meg Hillier Excerpts

Monday 15th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Browne]

The House will not be surprised to learn that I strongly agree with my hon. Friend. Scrap metal theft is a serious crime that can have serious and expensive consequences, but Members in all parties will feel that when it involves the desecration of war memorials, particularly those relating to the two great wars of the past century, in which so many British and Commonwealth soldiers died, that is particularly offensive to our sensibilities. I very much hope that his private Member’s Bill, and other measures being taken by the Government, will help to address that appalling behaviour.

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

The theft of war memorials is a real problem, so what conversations is the Minister having with the taskforce chaired by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport on how the Departments can work together to tackle this problem further? I say that notwithstanding the excellent work being done by the hon. Member for Croydon South (Richard Ottaway).

[Mr Browne]

I am happy to have discussions with any parties that are interested in trying to ensure that we can make improvements, but I can tell the House that new measures will be introduced as early as 3 December to create a new criminal offence that prohibits cash payments in the purchase of scrap metal. We are putting a series of measures in place; we are not merely waiting for my hon. Friend’s private Member’s Bill to come into effect, which we hope will happen. We are acting more swiftly than that and I am keen to draw on support from all parties and none to try to ensure that we tackle this serious crime as effectively as possible.