Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Graham Excerpts

Monday 15th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Harper]

That is because a significant number of people who have come to this country in the past purporting to be students have not actually been students. We have rooted out a large number of bogus colleges that were abusing the immigration system, and I make no apology for our having done so.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

8. What assessment she has made of the potential effects of introducing a bond requirement for visiting nationals from countries deemed to be high-risk.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)]

I am planning to launch a small-scale pilot scheme later this year to test the impact of requiring financial bonds, in limited circumstances, from a minority of visitors from selected nationalities who present a high risk of overstaying. The details are still being finalised, and I will make an announcement in due course.

[Richard Graham]

Any requirement for United Kingdom citizens to post bonds for visiting relatives from countries such as India risks being seen as yet another bureaucratic obstacle to cross-border family visits. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is vital for UK citizens to be reassured about both the goals and the benefits of any such policy in advance of its implementation?

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend is right: we need to explain to people why we are proposing a pilot to establish whether we should introduce the system more widely. As I have said, we are still finalising the details, and we are currently looking into the operation of bond schemes in other countries. We want to set a level that gives people an incentive to return home rather than overstaying, but is not disproportionate. We are considering all the possible implications of introducing such a scheme.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Graham Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) looks as though he is about to burst. Let us hear him.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I am delighted that the Government, the police and the Opposition have all accepted the police arbitration panel’s recommendations on the first Winsor report. My right hon. Friend knows how important it is for the morale of police in forces such as the Gloucester constabulary to see agreement reached on the second Winsor report. Does she see this as an encouraging precedent?

[Mrs May]

We have yet to receive Tom Winsor’s second report on police pay, terms and conditions, but I would say that the process that we followed on the first report, which showed the importance of giving all parties the opportunity to make their contribution on the decision that was finally made, is one that we would expect to follow in future.

Intelligence and Security Committee

Richard Graham Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

There may be some truth in what my hon. Friend says, and obviously these matters must be taken on board. Given his comments, I will make the general point that we should realise that cyber technology can be a threat and an opportunity for this country and others. One need only think of the use of what has become known as the Stuxnet malware, which temporarily prevented the Iranians continuing with uranium enrichment, which might lead to nuclear capability. If that happened—obviously, the information available is limited—it is a positive example of how such technology might prevent military conflict or a war ever taking place. Technology is not peculiar to one side of the debate or the other, but we must protect our secrets and our information. I strongly endorse my hon. Friend’s comments.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

Will my right hon. and learned Friend confirm that ministerial responsibility for cyber-security will be with the Cabinet Office and that that will in no way detract from the Foreign Secretary’s overall responsibility for GCHQ?

[Sir Malcolm Rifkind]

That is one of the great dilemmas that Governments have faced and, I suspect, continue to face. It is not for me to comment on what the conclusion will be, but there has been some confusion on that. My hon. Friend will be aware that Baroness Neville-Jones at one stage had some responsibility for that within the Home Office, but she is no longer in government. It probably makes sense that the Cabinet Office has some sort of lead responsibility, but many loose ends still need to be addressed. If the Home Secretary or the Minister has any thoughts on those matters, I am sure that the whole House will be delighted to hear them when they reply to the debate, as it would deal with a problem that has been present for a considerable time and to which our report refers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

It is with great pleasure that I rise to make my first contribution to this important annual debate as a Back Bencher representing constituents who work at GCHQ. May I add my congratulations to those already made to my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) on the crispness of the ISC annual report and the swiftness with which many of its recommendations have been incorporated into the Ministry of Justice Green Paper on justice and security?

As a member of Her Majesty’s diplomatic service at the time, I well remember the concerns that were felt among the agencies in the run-up to the Intelligence Services Act 1994. They were very concerned about the impact of coming in from the cold and into the limelight of parliamentary oversight. Those concerns were, of course, largely overcome by keeping that exposure away from operations. I think it is true to say that the agencies’ worries in terms of parliamentary limelight have not been realised, but two issues have emerged: the handling of reputational issues, and the increased number of challenges of Government actions in our courts. I shall deal with each of them in turn.

The Foreign Secretary rightly said only a few days ago, on 16 November:

“Secret Intelligence saves both military and civilian lives, protects our economy, stops criminals and makes a critical contribution to our diplomatic and military success.”

However, it is also true that the agencies depend hugely on their reputation—as, indeed, do all of us in this House. Reputation is everything, and I believe that, had the accusation of complicity in extraordinary rendition leading to torture been dealt with by an ISC with operational oversight, that reputational question mark would not still be hanging over the agencies. Nor would the ISC have faced the issues of poor record keeping that are identified in pages 70 to 73 of the annual report. That is a practical example of why the ISC remit should be “strengthened” to provide “more credible oversight” and

“greater assurance to the public and to Parliament”

by adding operations to its current remit of policy administration and finance. I therefore welcome that proposal and the Home Secretary’s positive response this evening, while also recognising that there will be much detail to resolve.

On the increased number of challenges to Government actions in the courts, I absolutely agree with the Justice Secretary’s comments in the Green Paper that we need to use closed material procedures in mainstream civil courts, as that is the only way to reconcile the two difficult challenges of both providing fairness to all and ensuring our secrets are kept secret.

I join the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) in paying tribute to the Government for their innovative move of creating the National Security Council. I am sure that it contributed considerably to the successful pursuit of the United Nations Security Council resolutions on Libya, and I was delighted to see in the ISC annual report recommendation M on the NSC, which pays tribute to the successful establishment of the organisation.

The right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper) referred to there being too few checks and balances, but where was she and her concern for checks and balances when her country needed her in the run-up to the Iraq war of 2001, when it appeared to many of us outside this Chamber that decisions were being made and dossiers prepared exclusively in No. 10? I believe that, had the NSC existed at that time, with its checks and balances, it would have changed the course of our involvement in Iraq. No doubt historians will, in time, ruminate on that.

Tonight, we have heard more detail on the ISC proposals, and we have heard the endorsement given to them by the Home Secretary. I have highlighted my strong support for two key measures: the more credible oversight provided by the ISC with a stronger mandate to include operational oversight, and the handling of secret intelligence in the courts so that the right balance between fairness and secrecy can be struck.

The right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) said not long ago that the Government have found “elegant solutions” to dilemmas that have faced successive Home and Foreign Secretaries in balancing the pursuit of openness with the requirements of secret intelligence. I agree, and I hope they prove to be practical solutions that will enhance the oversight of the work of our agencies, which are so important to all of us in this country.

Gangs and Youth Violence

Richard Graham Excerpts

Tuesday 1st November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

Sources of funding are available, such as the innovation fund, for which authorities can bid, and which will have a specific role in making funding available for gang-related projects. The chief executive of Waltham Forest and local Metropolitan police representatives came to speak to the inter-ministerial group, and they made the point that the amount of money they were spending effectively on families was often lower than the amount that Government collectively might have been spending on them in the past. There is therefore a significant reduction in the amount of money that needs to be spent to deal with this issue.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

The Home Secretary is right to highlight the benefits of partnership-working. Last week, I visited the newly formed Quedgeley youth centre, which replaces the local authority’s former Echoes youth club. It has been created by an innovative partnership led by local Conservative councillors and financed by Prospect Training Services, other businesses and the Quedgeley Community Trust. Early indications are that the new youth centre is proving even more popular with the young, and that it will be very successful. Will my right hon. Friend join me in congratulating all those involved in this local initiative, which shows the benefit of partnership-working, at zero cost to the taxpayer?

[Mrs May]

I am very happy to welcome the opening of the Quedgeley centre, and I am sure from what my hon. Friend has said that it will do excellent work locally in helping young people and providing the support they need. He also makes the valid and interesting point that dealing with these issues is not all about Government spending money—sadly, a message that Opposition Members seem to have failed to understand.

Oral Answers to Questions

Richard Graham Excerpts

Monday 27th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Damian Green]

No.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

15. What steps her Department is taking to protect women from domestic and sexual violence.

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

17. What steps her Department is taking to protect women from domestic and sexual violence.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Lynne Featherstone)]

In March this year we published a detailed action plan on tackling violence against women and girls. We have already delivered in several areas, including a commitment to provide more than £28 million of Home Office funding over four years for local specialist services to support victims of domestic and sexual violence.

[Richard Graham]

Recent incidents of rape and sexual assault in my constituency have been linked to Gloucester’s nightlife. Although Gloucestershire constabulary, which incidentally is increasing the number of front-line officers in our city, is doing a great job to protect my constituents on the streets, many parents would like awareness to be raised among youngsters about the risk of sexual assault. Are there things that the Home Office could do, perhaps together with the Department for Education, to help in that?

Aviation Security Incident

Richard Graham Excerpts

Monday 1st November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

I am happy to support what the hon. Lady has said about the need to deal with those who purport to encourage others to kill human beings and indulge in mass murder in the name of politics. As for her first question, there are many different aspects, and many different approaches need to be taken in response to intelligence. Some of that response may involve police work, while some may involve physical security work by Governments or others. It is essential for us to think carefully about all the facts that we need to identify and deal with, and we are working on that with airline operators and the aviation industry generally.

As I said in my statement, the screening equipment manufacturers have done helpful work with the Government since the incident involving the plane to Detroit. I look forward to establishing a relationship with those manufacturers, along with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport, as we address yet another issue.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

In the light of all that has happened recently, I thank the Home Secretary and the Government for making the difficult decision, in straitened times, to increase our overall spending on intelligence in order to combat terrorism. Will the Home Secretary join me in thanking my constituents who work down the road at GCHQ for the vital work that they do to protect our nation, and will she join me in encouraging our schools to make full use of the language immersion centre in Gloucestershire, which will be built soon and which will develop the skills in difficult languages that are so vital to our intelligence work?

[Mrs May]

My hon. Friend has raised an issue of which he has particular knowledge, but there is probably not much awareness generally of the need for people to be skilled in a large number of languages, including some that are not normally taught. I am happy to commend the work to which my hon. Friend has referred.

Identity Documents Bill

Richard Graham Excerpts

Wednesday 9th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

I congratulate you on your election, Mr Deputy Speaker, and thank you for giving me this opportunity to make my maiden speech. I also congratulate the previous maiden speaker, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), not only on his excellent speech but, if I am not mistaken, on becoming the first Member of this House to make his maiden speech while his wife, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman), was not only present in the Chamber but sitting before him on the Front Bench.

It is a big step for anyone to represent his cathedral city in this House. Many previous maiden speakers have alluded to the difficulties of filling the large shoes of their predecessors. In my case, that is literally true as both of my feet would probably fit into one of Parmjit Dhanda’s shoes. I pay tribute to him for the work he did on behalf of Gloucester, his great interest in Gloucester City football club and his contribution to the relocation and rebuilding of Gloucestershire college. I also respected his enthusiasm—although I did not share it at all—for the regionalisation of many things, including government, planning, the police and fire control centres. In these respects at least, I hope that small is beautiful.

It is appropriate that I am making this maiden speech on behalf of my Gloucester constituents during the Second Reading debate of the Bill to abolish ID cards, which are certainly a vivid example of the misuse of both parliamentary time and taxpayer money.

The main issue in my city and others like it is not dissimilar to that described by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington: we are a great working city which now has record youth unemployment and too many families with no working role model—in fact, there are occasionally three generations living entirely off benefits. I believe that everyone in Gloucester will support me in our main endeavour today—to increase business growth in order to generate more jobs, especially for the young, and that this will in turn generate the tax revenues that fund the front-line services that are so crucial for everyone in my city.

Let me try to put our work in context. Gloucester first appeared on the map through two early attempts at European integration: first, it was the Roman colonia of Glevum, and it was then at the forefront of a large Norman military and religious building programme, which has left us with the glories of Gloucester cathedral. However, as Conservative Members know so well, economic development rarely follows Government plans, and our next phase of mass tourism was created by the unfortunate and regrettable homophobic act of regicide against Edward II in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael). The numbers of pilgrims then arriving in our city have only recently been exceeded, with another pilgrimage after the filming of Harry Potter in our cloisters.

Our true business adaptability was shown during the industrial revolution, however, when we created, first, the world’s deepest canal, and then Britain’s most inland port, to bring raw materials to Gloucester to make things. That is where my city has excelled: we have always made things. We manufactured wagons during the age of the railway to carry everything from coal to maharajahs, with slightly different degrees of comfort, and most spectacularly we built the world’s first jet fighter, the Gloster Meteor, which was exported to 14 countries.

Today, we face different times and challenges. Like many other constituencies, our business sector has a strong retail and financial element, but we continue to manufacture despite the large drop in our manufacturing sector during the last 10 years. Some 15% of Gloucester’s gross domestic product still comes from manufacturing, including health products and large quantities of materials for the aerospace industry such as insulation, coatings and cylinders, and almost every ice cream that every Member has eaten in this country comes from the Wall’s ice cream factory in Gloucester.

It is as a symbol that I am today wearing something manufactured in Gloucester. The shirt I am wearing was made two days ago on the Cross in the heart of our city by Gloucester cutters and machinists, and I am proud to say that the company that makes these wonderful shirts will shortly be opening a retail space in Bombay, demonstrating that Gloucester will soon be exporting to India again.

At the same time as this greater diversity in manufacturing and business enterprise, we have seen a growing diversity of our residents. I thought it would be useful as a new Member of Parliament to have lived and worked in 10 countries and to speak the languages of eight of them, but the people of Gloucester speak 46 languages and so, in this as in so much else, I still have a lot to learn.

It will be of interest to Members to learn that many of our residents from overseas come from close to the Indian port of Surat in Gujarat, which was, by wonderful historical irony, the port where Elizabethan sailors from this country first landed in India some 450 years ago. I welcome all my friends from Gujarat, and also more recent arrivals. I am proud to have been invited as the guest of honour at the opening this weekend of the new association for Tamils and also to an event by the Polish community.

Today, the truth is that all of us, whatever our origins, face severe difficulties in handling the record youth unemployment and in trying to re-grow our economy to provide jobs for our young people. That is why all my constituents will welcome measures taken by this Government to stimulate business, which we must remind ourselves is the sole source of growth, providing jobs and then tax revenues for the services that many Members are calling for in our different constituencies.

The most famous book written about Gloucester is Beatrix Potter’s “The Tailor of Gloucester”. Some Members will remember the sad moment when the tailor runs out of money and finds that there is “no more twist”. In his case, he was bailed out by the mice, who in the dead of night brought both the cloth and the needles and finished his sewing for him, but today we cannot trust entirely to the benevolence of the mice in Gloucester to re-stimulate our economy, and therefore I welcome the changes that I am sure this Government will make in order to bring about that re-stimulation.

So I promise the constituents of Gloucester, whom I am so proud to serve, that I will work ceaselessly, especially to help business growth that will provide job opportunities and generate tax revenues. To those ends, I intend to create a new all-party parliamentary group on urban regeneration—which links so many of these issues together—and I shall work with Members on both sides of the House to explore new ways of contributing to the solutions in that area. If we can successfully stimulate micro-regeneration on the streets, as well as macro-regeneration through projects and new investment, it will be possible for the people of Gloucester to take greater pride in our city and for hon. Members and people all round the country to see that, like our cathedral and our rugby club, our entire city belongs to the premier league.