(3 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberLots of questions and loopholes have been identified. The fact that the Home Office had to issue hundreds of pages of guidance, even in the two or three weeks prior to the end of the transition period, shows that the issue has been difficult for it to address.
I come to what this debate should be about, which is looking forward to what can be done. We absolutely maintain that even now a declaratory scheme would be far preferable—people would still apply to the settlement scheme to prove their status, but at the very least the huge uncertainty would be removed and security would be delivered for them. Short of that, surely to goodness the transition period should be extended. There are a million reasons why that would be sensible—not least covid. Outreach work has been curtailed and embassies and scanning centres have been closed. People are not ready.
It is important to remember that this is not just a question of EU nationals being ready, but of employers, the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, Department for Work and Pensions staff, landlords, local authority staff and bank staff having to be ready and NHS staff having to understand. As I said, the Home Office itself was still pumping out hundreds of pages of guidance in June and making tweaks to the system. I do not think the Home Office was ready for the end of the transition, and I do not think it can expect all those other organisations to be ready either. As I will mention, there is also an enormous backlog of cases.
Alternatively, the Government could at least remove the requirement for a reasonable excuse and keep the scheme open for the duration. It has to be open anyway, both for late applications and for people with pre-settled status who then go on to try to secure settled status. Why not simply allow people to come forward as it becomes necessary to secure their rights?
To be absolutely fair, the guidance on the reasonable excuse provision is reasonably generous, and more generous than it could have been, so I thank the Minister for that. But the very existence of that test plants huge seeds of doubt in people’s minds—if I have any doubt about whether my excuse will be accepted, am I putting myself at risk of enforcement action? I say that we should continue to encourage people to come forward, not discourage them.
That last proposal would be better than nothing, but it would not protect people from the impacts of the hostile environment in the meantime. That hostile environment is supposed to be undergoing an end-to-end review in the light of Wendy Williams’s Windrush report. The fact that the review has not yet been completed should be another ground for extending the grace period. More fundamentally, the hostile environment should be entirely suspended until the review takes place and its findings are implemented. All these are real, sensible, constructive options, open to the Government, that would ease the pain of the process. I hope the Government listen.
I turn now to a tiny number of examples of how difficult, technical and confusing the process has become. I am highlighting what groups such as the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants and the3million are telling me. I do that to press the Minister for a response and to underline the case that there has at least to be an extension to the transition period.
First, I turn to the question of those who applied before the deadline but are still waiting for a decision. How on earth is it that, as I understand it, the backlog has risen to 570,000 cases? Back in October 2019, the resolution centre was able to conclude just over 400,000 cases, but in each of the three months up to the deadline, as I understand it, fewer than half that number were concluded each month, despite additional staff having been drawn in from the Post Office and elsewhere. Is that backlog not enough in itself to justify an extension?
Can the Minister tell us how many applications received in June were dealt with in the five-day target? According to EU settlement scheme statistics, applications from children comprise 15% of the total, with decisions on 25% of applications still pending; they also comprise around a quarter of applications pending for over three months. Why is that?
In theory, the full rights of people with outstanding in-time applications are protected while they wait—and that, of course, is welcome. But what is the reality on the ground? Already, all sorts of reports are coming in to representative groups about employers and landlords—and also the Home Office’s own Border Force staff—getting the checks wrong. That does not surprise me, because the situation is messy.
Some people with outstanding in-time applications will provide their prospective employer or landlord with a certificate of application to show that they have made the application. Some will provide a physical certificate, printed off, that leads to the employer contacting the employer checking service or the landlord checking with the landlord checking service. Others still will not have a certificate of approval but just an acknowledgement email; that, too, should lead to the checking service being consulted.
But in the last few days, the Home Office has started sending digital certificates of application to avoid the need for anyone to use the checking services, which can take a couple of days. The applicant will provide a code to the prospective employer or landlord, and when that is input into the system it should confirm that an application is outstanding. I hope hon. Members followed that, because all of us in this House are employers, but given that the guidance was issued only a couple of weeks before the deadline, I suspect that there are huge swathes of employers and landlords out there who do not have the first clue what somebody means when they approach them for a new tenancy or a new job and say, “Here’s my digital code. This should tell you that I have an application outstanding.”
I am absolutely delighted to hear this speech, because the hon. Gentleman is explaining the complexities of leaving a Union that we were part of for about 40 years, yet somehow he seems to assume that leaving this Union is really hard but that leaving one that includes the military, finance, pensions, homes and everything else is going to be incredibly easy. I am not quite sure whether he will explain that disconnect.
The point, as I have said, is that the Government could have made this process a hell of a lot easier. Government decisions have made this difficult, not anything else.
We know from research that discrimination is widespread when private actors have to undertake even basic checks, such as passport and visa checks, and it is blindingly obvious that the half a million people who are in the queue are going to face discrimination on stilts if they have to explain these processes. Other than telling employers and landlords to follow guidance, what more is being done to clamp down on and prevent this discrimination? What monitoring, even, is being done?
In theory, public bodies should find this easier, yet we hear of cases of universities not being prepared to confirm that students are eligible for home fee status, or the Student Loans Company not confirming eligibility for student finance until their status is decided. Just an hour ago, I learned of a universal credit case being turned down because, even though the national insurance number and date of birth all matched up, the Department for Work and Pensions could not verify the digital share code. What is the Home Office doing to identify and accelerate these cases to ensure that no one is denied the educational opportunities that they are entitled to? How will people be compensated when they have been wrongly refused entry to the UK, work or housing, or been charged for NHS treatment or incorrectly denied home fees or student finance because of a failure to apply the law correctly?
Another huge problem is that use of the checking service provides a landlord or employer with only a six-month guarantee of protection from prosecution, but why would an employer or landlord take on someone when they can have a guarantee of only six months’ rent or six months’ work? That is why it was wrong to end the transition while over 500,000 people were in this perilous position. A freedom of information request in May showed that 100,000 people had been waiting for over three months for a decision. That is a hell of a long time to be in this semi-legal limbo.
Finally on this particular topic, I understand that there are also significant numbers of cases where people have completed parts of the application process online but not the whole process—for example, even just the final “submit” stage. Is the Home Office taking steps to identify and reach out to those people as well?
Turning to people who apply late, or have applied late and are waiting for a decision, it is welcome that they can continue to access healthcare and that, if I understand it correctly, they can continue to exercise rights that they are currently exercising, such as keeping an existing job or social security benefit if they apply with 28 days’ notice. However, the huge gap here is that there is no right to take on a new job or new accommodation in England, or to claim a new social security benefit or use other services, so an important first question is why the Home Office thinks this is consistent with the withdrawal agreement, which states that pending a decision on any application, all rights will be deemed to apply to the applicant.
It is easy for the Government to say, “Well the process is quick and therefore these issues should not be widespread. Get the application in and then get on with your job hunt or social security application”, but, in practice, it is not that simple. We know that over 100,000 people had been waiting for more than three months in May, and remember, too, that, as we know from Windrush, it is precisely when people are making new job applications or applying for social security or a tenancy that they suddenly realise that they have not applied and should have done. Waiting for three months at these moments of crisis could destroy lives, with employment, accommodation and financial support all missed out on.
The Home Office has mentioned a process for accelerating certain cases, which is welcome, but how does that work? How can we ask on behalf of our constituents that their case is accelerated for these very good reasons? What will the criteria be for accelerating cases, what will the timescales be, and what does that mean for other cases and how long they will take?
Finally, on late applications, I previously asked the Minister what would happen if someone incurred health charges because they had failed to apply for the settlement scheme, but, having realised their error, they then went on to apply late and successfully showed that they had a reasonable excuse. If I recall correctly, the Minister suggested at the Home Affairs Committee that it would be ridiculous to then insist on those charges being paid. After all, they had had a reasonable excuse for a late application, but, as I understand it—I would love to be corrected—that is exactly what will now happen in England. How can that be justified? Why is it that someone who is considered to have reasonable grounds to apply late can still be held liable for healthcare charges incurred before submission of their justifiably late application? It seems an incredibly strange situation.
What about those who have not applied at all? I want everyone to apply, though late—I am sure we all do—so what is the Government’s strategy here? Is there not a danger that the reasonable excuse test is going to put people off, especially if, as suggested in the guidance, it has to be more strictly interpreted the more time goes on? Why is that advice there? Those who encounter border enforcement, whether the Home Office version or delegated private actors such as employers, are going to have 28 days’ notice to apply, but what has been done to make sure that some of the people most likely to have missed a deadline—vulnerable and marginalised groups, and maybe those with health issues or with poor English—understand what that notice means and what exactly is required of them? For example, is it going be available in different languages, will they be signposted for advice and what happens if that 28-day deadline is missed?
It is much more likely that people who have not applied will become aware of the problem only through an encounter not with Border Force, but with an employer, the DWP, a landlord or somebody else, so what work has been done to ensure that, rather than just saying no, they signpost and, in the case of Government Departments, assist them in ensuring that an application can be submitted. The Government are committed to funding grant-funded organisations supporting EU citizens with late applications until September. Why is it only to September? Can we have funding for beyond that as well?
Finally, I turn to the issue for those who actually get settled or pre-settled status. Even if somebody is successful, that is not the end of their problems, and others, as I have said, will speak about the lack of a physical proof of status. There are more than 2 million people with pre-settled status, and many of them will struggle to prove the five-year residence required for settled status. What support will be available to help them with equally vital applications, and what happens to those who fail to apply at the time when their pre-settled status expires?
The settlement scheme may have been designed to be straightforward, but its interplay with our complicated immigration system means that it just cannot be. I struggle to follow its implications, and I suspect many hon. Members will have struggled to follow them as well, yet guidance for employers and landlords was issued just a couple of weeks back. This has, I am afraid, at the end of the day, ended up being a rush job. Even if all our other ideas are rejected, at the very least we need a longer transition period, and for the umpteenth time, I do ask that the Minister meets the3million campaign group.
In closing, during the referendum the now Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster also promised that, after Brexit, Scotland would have immigration powers. That seems to have gone the same way as his promise to EU nationals. We have debated the devolution of immigration or at least some immigration powers before, and it is on these occasions that the normally very measured Minister tends to start engaging in tub-thumping rhetoric rather than the arguments in the discussion. I am not going to repeat all those arguments today, but report after report from the Scottish Government, academics, thinktanks and immigration lawyers offer myriad reasons why this should be done, and templates for how this could be done.
As the first Home Office Minister to come to the Dispatch Box since this afternoon’s news, I would like to pay tribute to my colleague and right hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), and say that we will miss him as a Minister in the Home Office. We obviously still look forward to continuing to work with him as a Member of this House, and wish him the very best for the future.
I am very grateful to the SNP for the opportunity to use the time allocated for today’s debate to highlight the great success of the EU settlement scheme, our approach to late applications, and how welcome it is that so many of our friends and neighbours who arrived during the time of free movement want to make our United Kingdom their home on a permanent basis. I appreciate the generally constructive tone of my debates with the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald): even though we disagree on some fundamental points, he has given some very constructive input, both during his time as my direct shadow and now in his slightly different role as the SNP’s lead spokesperson on home affairs.
As this House is aware, the deadline for applying to the scheme for those resident in the UK by the end of the transition period was last Wednesday, 30 June. As of that date, in excess of 6 million applications have been received by the scheme. More than 5.4 million of those have already concluded and more than 5.1 million grants of status have been issued, with literally thousands being decided every day.
I am delighted to hear my hon. Friend making these statements. Is he aware that if he had applied for settled status in France, he would probably be queuing up even now, and that if he had done the same in Belgium, he would even now be waiting for documents to be approved? The Home Office has secured a remarkable achievement: even when we were members of the European Union, the paperwork needed to be legally resident in France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, and in many other countries around the EU was significantly more complicated than the procedure that my hon. Friend has set up.
I thank my hon. Friend for his comments: obviously, he has a unique perspective on these issues, given his chairmanship of the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs. It is always worth reflecting that on the day the French system opened for applications for UK nationals living in France, the EUSS had already received over 4 million applications. That just shows the scale of the scheme, and most people had the ability to apply from home, using an app on their smartphone to verify their identity in conjunction with their national passport. We are very pleased, and we hope that others will learn lessons from our success at getting so many applications in and so many settled and concluded already when it comes to how they approach the position of UK citizens living in their own nations.
To be clear, any application posted on 30 June is also considered to be in time. In recognition of the time it can take for post from all parts of our Union, especially the highlands and islands, to be delivered, we will assume any application received in the post until midnight tonight was posted in time. This is to ensure there is no prospect of an in-time application being ruled out purely on the basis of when it was delivered to the Home Office. Overall, these numbers are significant just in themselves: despite all the warnings about our potential willingness and ability to deliver, literally millions of EU citizens in the UK and their family members now have their status protected and their rights secured under UK law.
(3 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberNo.
I support the Bill. I congratulate my right hon. and learned Friend and thank him for bringing forward legislation to ensure that rapists are not released early in their sentences. That is what the public want, that is what we were elected on a manifesto to deliver, and that is what we are doing.
I am delighted to speak in this debate and to speak in favour of new clause 17, which is tabled in my name. I am delighted that many hon. Members on both sides have expressed their support for it.
I will not move the new clause this evening, because I am lucky to have had conversations with the Lord Chancellor, who I am delighted to see is in his place, about the nature of this particular crime. This crime is, I would argue, almost unique in that it is a complete betrayal. It is a complete betrayal because it is not just by a person, but by the parent of a child at its most vulnerable stage. It is a complete betrayal because it is a failure—yes, of those parents, but actually of our entire society—to protect the most vulnerable. It is a complete betrayal because it allows a crime to continue when it should have stopped days before, and in this case days are lifetimes.
I am talking, of course, about the terrible abuse of children like Tony Hudgell—children who, like Tony, are in the early stages of life. They are not able to give evidence to a court, because they are in their 40th or 50th day of life. They could not possibly stand up in a court and give testimony, and they could not possibly point the finger at their abuser, so they find themselves in the invidious position of not being able to get the full weight of the law brought against their aggressor, because they are too young, too innocent, too silent to be able to bring that action.
The Lord Chancellor has spoken to me privately—I hope that he will not mind my raising it publicly—about how we share the same horror of these crimes and these offences, but at the moment the law does not allow the same sentencing. I only ask that in the next few months, before the Bill gets to the Lords and the change comes that we all hope for, he looks at this legislation and realises that there is a small lacuna—a gap—in which the sentencing could be corrected. It does not require a complete redrafting of the law, but a small swish of his pen, as his quill hits the vellum to change the sentences and match them appropriately to the crimes—crimes that would have reached the same sentence had the child been able to point the finger and identify the criminal.
Other hon. Members have spoken eloquently about some of the amendments and new clauses that I strongly support: to protect shop workers from abuse; to protect people from harassment outside abortion clinics, as has happened in my constituency; and to protect the ability to meaningfully protest. I therefore want to confine my brief remarks to new clause 30, which is in the name of my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy). It is the same as a new clause that was tabled in Committee in her name and my own. I do not need to speak for long because she covered the issues very well in her excellent speech.
I want to pay tribute to my constituent Julia Cooper, who first approached me a few months ago to tell me about her experience at Sale Water Park, which is adjacent to my constituency. She had been out with a friend and was breastfeeding her baby when a stranger put on a telephoto lens and started taking photographs of her in the park without permission. She confronted the individual, but he refused to delete the pictures. She complained to the park authorities and then to the police, and was told that there was nothing that they could do. I was shocked for two reasons. First, I was shocked that a stranger would actually take long lens photos of someone breastfeeding without their consent. Secondly, I was equally shocked that the police said that there was nothing in the law that they could do to tackle the issue.
When I raised this issue previously in Women and Equalities questions in the Chamber, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), said:
“This is unacceptable and we will deal with it.”—[Official Report, 26 May 2021; Vol. 696, c. 364.]
It is therefore disappointing, having raised the issue in Committee and tabling the new clause today, that the Government seem to be kicking this into the long grass with a review by the Law Commission. This is a pretty simple issue that could be dealt with quickly and effectively today through new clause 30. We should accept the new clause, because the number of people who have contacted Julia, other campaigners and my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow are testament to the number of times that this has happened around the country. It is now happening every week.
We ought to be taking action now. We should not be kicking this issue into the long grass. If this new clause is pushed to a vote this evening, and I hope that it may be, I urge hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber to support it. If not, I do hope that the Lords will look at this issue and perhaps bring forward something similar when it is dealt with there. It is shocking and disgraceful behaviour, and we could take action today—now—to stop it.
(5 years ago)
Commons ChamberIt would be wrong for me to comment on a live investigation, and I know the hon. Gentleman will respect that. Checks undertaken at our ports and airports are intelligence-based—they are all intelligence-led. I do not want to add much more right now specifically on this case, because, as I have said, a live investigation is taking place.
Madam Deputy Speaker, I have literally just come from a meeting with the Romanian ambassador, which is why, although I was here at the beginning, I had to duck out.
This case raises great concerns for cross-European truckers, who do so much to keep our people fed and our businesses going. Can my right hon. Friend assure me that she is reaching out to the nations that supply these truckers—Bulgaria, Romania and so on—so that drivers are aware of the risks they face and the protections they can seek if they ask for them? When she was on the Committee that I am privileged enough to chair, we did a lot of work on migration. What is she doing in relation to north Africa, where, as we both know from our inquiry, there are very, very serious problems?
My hon. Friend raises the right questions. Road haulage drivers come from specific countries, in particular Romania, Bulgaria and Poland. It is right that we work, through the road haulage network in the UK and across Europe, to provide the right care, guidance and awareness they need, because they can, unwittingly, become part of a criminal gang, organisation or trafficking process, and we need to stop that.
My hon. Friend is right: we spent many hours, days, weeks and months working together on migration in his Committee. The migration report he refers to looked at north Africa and the upstream work required. Much work is taking place right now through international co-operation, but more can be done.
(5 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberUrgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
As I said earlier, one of the reasons that some of these things remain online is that the servers of the companies are often abroad and out of our jurisdiction. We are seeking the powers to do something about that through the online harms White Paper. If these companies have a nexus in the UK, it gives us more power. If they do not, we have to look at other technical issues and see whether we can do this another way. The White Paper is imminent, and I am happy to meet the hon. Gentleman and any Member from across the House to discuss whether they think it is too soft or too hard, or what needs to be done to improve it.
The hon. Gentleman points out one of the real challenges. The United States’ first amendment protects freedom of speech. We often approach companies in America asking them to take down websites and so on, and we get a first amendment response—that is, that they are obliged to United States law and the first amendment. That is why we ultimately have to seek an international solution to go alongside whatever regulation we look at here.
I was particularly moved this afternoon to hear the Home Secretary using the Arabic words, “Bi-smi llāhi r-rahmāni r-rahīm”, meaning “In the name of God, the most compassionate, the most merciful.” We are fundamentally talking about a compassion and a mercy that were not shown to a community—this time in New Zealand, but sometimes at home—and a justice that we now need to extend to members of our own community who feel that they do not have access to the same security as others. I welcome the views that will come forward from the Home Secretary and the Security Minister, and the work that they have done. We need to make sure that addressing these publishers—for that is what they are—who are putting up, or tolerating the publication of, online hate material is absolutely the first line of defence, not the last.
The communications service providers around the world need to get the message that we know that they seem to manage to do something when they really want to. We know that their algorithms are often designed to maximise viewing numbers and profits, rather than the safety of our constituents, and we need them to realise that we are on to that and are going to do something about it. Last year, Facebook took down 14.3 million pieces of content, 99% of which was done by automated tools. Before that, it took the Government to set up the Counter-Terrorism Internet Referral Unit—not the CSPs. That unit, on its own, managed to take down 300,000 pieces of content. If we can do it, those multi-billion-pound global corporations can invest more in artificial intelligence, and they can do so much quicker.
(5 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberI thank my hon. Friend. Again, he has highlighted the fallacy about different wings in an organisation which has only one wing, and that is a wing of terrorism.
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. Al-Muqawama—the resistance in Lebanon—is indeed entirely part of the single organisation. Does he agree, however, that what this organisation has done, with the backing of Iran in Syria—and not just in areas of the middle east but with Syrian support in places such as Argentina, which he has already cited—is spread antisemitism, and spread the repression of ideas and liberty, all over the world? This is an act of resistance that my right hon. Friend is right to take in the UK, but he is also joining the Dutch and other European countries that have taken this action already. Will he encourage more countries to follow suit?
I very much agree with my hon. Friend. As he says, other countries have taken the action that we are proposing, and I shall mention a couple of them in a moment. However, I hope that others, including our allies across the world, are listening, and that those that still maintain the distinction between a military and a political wing will listen carefully and perhaps be encouraged to take the action that we are taking.
(5 years, 8 months ago)
Commons ChamberI would like to give my hon. Friend that assurance. This House and hon. Members across the House have done a huge amount in recent years to fight the abhorrent practice of FGM. My hon. Friend is right to highlight how the internet has been used to promote this vile practice, and I can give her the assurance that it is one of the harms being looked at in the White Paper.
Mr Speaker, you will have heard, as we all have over the weekend, of the vile extremism that has spread over the internet and has encouraged many people to join groups such as ISIS. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the opportunity has really come to change the law, and to look at how we can charge people with treason? Will he look at the espionage Bill, which is coming before this House soon, and see whether the Policy Exchange report written by me and the hon. Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr Mahmood) could be used as an inspiration for some amendments to that law?
My hon. Friend makes an important point. He will know that this House recently passed the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill and made it into an Act that gives the Government some new powers on fighting terrorism. He has also raised the issue of further potential powers, including in relation to treason. I am taking these issues very seriously. We are looking at this, and I would be happy to meet him and discuss this further.
(6 years, 3 months ago)
Commons ChamberUrgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
In this particular case, much of the potential for a trial was based on a comparison of the United States’ statute book and ours, and whether the US had the suite of offences that would achieve a conviction and we did not. As I said to my right hon. Friend the Member for Sevenoaks (Sir Michael Fallon), that is why we are bringing in some new offences in the Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill, which is currently going through the House.
Does my right hon. Friend agree that one of the great shames in this is that we have not brought a charge of betrayal against these people? Fundamentally, what they have done is not just to bring violence against people in Syria but to undermine community cohesion in this country. That betrayal against our own state—that sense of wrong done to the citizens of this country—is a crime in itself and should be tried as one.
I can give my hon. Friend the assurance that throughout the whole process of this and many other cases that we have to make decisions on, we try to keep in balance the security of the nation from people who pose such a threat, whether they betray our values or betray their nation. We do that all the time and work incredibly hard to try to make sure that where we achieve justice, we do not do it by cutting corners and breaking international law, which we have seen happen in this House previously. The consequences that flowed from that are significant, which is why I can say, and said earlier, that the Government’s position on Guantanamo Bay is not as was reported in the media this morning. We absolutely oppose its existence. We wish it to be closed down and we would not, and will not, share information with the United States if individuals were going to end up in Guantanamo Bay.
(6 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberHaving worked in a Government Department and having had to produce papers for Ministers, does my hon. Friend agree that the failure to have any record to go back on means that there is no historical precedent, which affects future decision making?
My hon. Friend is right: it puts civil servants in an invidious position. I would never discuss any advice that I might have been privy to in those days, but this puts civil servants in the most horrendous position. As I said to the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford (Yvette Cooper), there are many Opposition Members who served their country with distinction in government. Before they vote to establish this precedent, I ask them to consider what the implications would have been for the men and women providing them with advice to the best of their ability, and for the advice that they might have received.
This wide-ranging motion would set a deeply damaging precedent. What makes it even worse is that it incorporates confidential advice directly relating to our relationship with other independent states, and in its last line it might even be encroaching on the minutes of a Cabinet Sub-Committee, which risks undermining the basis of collective Cabinet responsibility.
We all want to ensure justice for the Windrush victims, but I do not believe the motion is a responsible way to go about achieving that.
Thank you for calling me to speak in this important debate, Mr Speaker.
This debate touches the very heart of us. For so many of us, it is fundamentally about fairness. It is a debate about how people should be treated fairly. It is clear that all of us feel that a gross unfairness has been done to people who have been here legally, are part of us and are very much part of the fabric of our community. It is an unfairness that, sadly, started generations ago and has persisted for far too long.
Many Members have spoken, so I will not take up much more time. I simply want to say that that unfairness applies not only, as many have said, to the Windrush generation in the purest sense, but to a wider community who have come from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the African nations, the middle east and all over the world. One community I would particularly like to highlight, because it is one that touches me personally, is the Jewish community, who have come over the years and have also suffered unfairness through immigration at various points. I realise that that is in many ways tangential to today’s debate, but the point about fairness in migration is that it must include everyone or it includes no one.
I celebrate the fact that we have a son of the Windrush generation representing Her Majesty’s Government—is that not an image of the British dream if ever there was one?—and that he is not referred to as a British-Pakistani. He is not referred to as a British-anything. There is no qualifier. Nobody here is referred to as a British-anything. We are all simply British. That is a huge enrichment for our national life. It has made us, as a country, so much stronger.
I will end by saying how proud I am that this House is represented by so many different communities and by so many people who have come here very recently or many generations ago. The fairness we speak of today—this aspiration of equality that we all seek and too often fail to achieve—is at the heart of Britishness. It is therefore at the heart of the duty of the Home Office to deliver it. I know the new Secretary of State will do just that.
(6 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberWell said—I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman. Hezbollah is a terrorist organisation and it should be banned in its entirety—whoever you are a friend of—if you are not a friend of the terrorists. I would add one other thing: it is not just for Jews to fight anti-Semitism, and this is an anti-Semitic organisation; it is for all of us to stand up on that issue.
The distinction is not one that Hezbollah has ever recognised; in fact, it has consistently and explicitly refuted it. In 1985, its founding document stated clearly:
“As to our military power, nobody can imagine its dimensions because we do not have a military agency separate from the other parts of our body. Each of us is a combat soldier when the call of jihad demands it.”
It could not be clearer.
In 2009, Naim Qassem, Hezbollah’s deputy general secretary, made it clear that
“the same leadership that directs the parliamentary and government work also leads jihad actions in the struggle against Israel”.
It could not be clearer. He repeated this message three years later, declaring:
“We don't have a military wing and a political one; we don’t have Hezbollah on one hand and the resistance party on the other…Every element of Hezbollah, from commanders to members as well as our various capabilities, are in the service of the resistance, and we have nothing but the resistance as a priority.”
Those are Hezbollah’s own words.
Also in 2013, Nasrallah himself ruled out any notion that the military and political wings were somehow different:
“However, jokingly I will say—though I disagree on such separation or division—that I suggest that our ministers in the upcoming Lebanese government be from the military wing of Hezbollah.”
He also mocked our Government’s division between the two, saying
“the story of military wing and political wing is the work of the British”.
That is what he said. It is a distinction that, with good reason, many other countries throughout the world do not recognise. Those that do not include the Netherlands, Canada, the US, the Arab League and the Gulf Co-operation Council.
The right hon. Lady’s passion and clarity on this issue are absolutely right. I agree that it is incumbent on the Government in principle—I hope those in the Opposition Front-Bench team would follow—to change the policy. Is it not absolutely possible to work with the Government of Lebanon—a Government with whom we are extremely friendly and whom we are assisting to defend herself against the predations of ISIS, initially, and now of other factions in Syria? Is it not absolutely possible to assist our legitimate and welcome allies in Lebanon against those things, yet still call out this terrorist group for what it is, for the violence it is committing in Syria and for the destruction it is carrying out in northern Israel and all around the region?
Absolutely. The hon. Gentleman is right. Those Governments that do proscribe Hezbollah in its entirety do talk to the Lebanese Government. If Hezbollah wishes to change its views on Israel—to not obliterate it—and to signal that it will give up its arms, I am sure that, whether it is proscribed or not, that would be the right road to take if it wished to take part in any peace negotiations, which it clearly does not.
Many Members of this House do not recognise the false distinction between the military and the political wing, as is evident today. Last summer, marchers at the al-Quds day parade in London displayed Hezbollah flags, causing great offence to many, especially in the Jewish community. Once again, they were exploiting the utterly bogus separation that the Government choose to make.
I pay tribute to Jewish communal organisations, such as the Community Security Trust, the Board of Deputies and the Jewish Leadership Council, which have tirelessly campaigned on the issue of Hezbollah proscription. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman), as well as the hon. Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) and the Mayor of London, for their efforts to persuade the Government to proscribe Hezbollah in its entirety.
I note not only the Government’s unwillingness to do so but their inability to explain or justify why they will not act. I understand that, in conflict situations, it is sometimes necessary to keep open channels of communication to facilitate dialogue and to encourage those who are engaged in violence to abandon the bomb and the bullet for the ballot box. However, there is not a shred of evidence to suggest that this is Hezbollah’s intention. In both its rhetoric and its actions, this leopard shows no sign of changing its spots.
Nor do I accept the notion, which Ministers have previously advanced, that banning Hezbollah’s political wing might somehow—the Chair of the Select Committee touched on this—impede our ties with Lebanon, where Hezbollah exercises not just military but political power. Proscribing Hezbollah in its entirety does not appear to have hampered relations between Lebanon and any of the countries we have already referred to. I am deeply concerned that this Government are simply not taking the threat posed by Hezbollah seriously. Only last week, I was informed by the Home Office that it does not collect data on the numbers of Hezbollah members or supporters in the UK, a practice that is followed by other European countries, such as Germany.
The Terrorism Act 2000 allows the Home Secretary to proscribe an organisation which
“(a) commits or participates in acts of terrorism,
(b) prepares for terrorism,
(c) promotes or encourages terrorism,”
including the unlawful glorification of terrorism, or
“(d) is otherwise concerned in terrorism.”
As I have demonstrated, Hezbollah, the leaders of which assert that it is unified and indivisible, more than fulfils those criteria. Even if a distinction between the political and military wings could be drawn, the words of the former in promoting, encouraging and glorifying terrorism surely meet the Government’s criteria for proscription.
After last June’s terrorist attack at London Bridge, the Prime Minister said
“there is, to be frank, far too much tolerance of extremism in our country.”
I agree. Hezbollah is an organisation that is driven by a hatred of Jews, that promotes and encourages terrorism and that calls for the destruction of the middle east’s only democracy—a key British ally in the region. However, as long as the Government do not proscribe Hezbollah’s so-called political wing, the tolerance will continue.
(7 years, 8 months ago)
Westminster HallWestminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
I am grateful, Mr Bailey, that you have found time for me to make a brief contribution to this important debate. I very much welcomed the words of my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Dr Mathias), who spoke eloquently on many of the matters that I might otherwise have covered.
In the United Kingdom it is not new for us to be talking about torture. In fact, we have been talking about torture in this House for much of the past 1,000 years—although we were ordering much of it for an awfully long time, too. Various people including, most famously, Guido Fawkes were taken from inquisitions to appear before politicians, often in the Star Chamber, and ended up being tortured in places such as the Tower. We have long experience of torture in this country.
From bitter experience, however, we know that torture does not work—people get the answer they want, or think they want, rather than the answer they need. That is why sensible countries, ones that realise that the rule of law is about discovering the truth and not about exacting punishment, do not practise torture. I am proud that our country set the model on that through two Acts: the Bill of Rights; and the Treason Act 1708, which included Scotland—I say that for the benefit of the Members representing Scotland, the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) of the Scottish National party and the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) from those various islands of our wonderful country.
Those fundamental Acts set out what we now think of as a universal right under the United Nations or European conventions, which is the right not to be tortured. Unlike other rights, that right is completely unqualified: there is no situation in which torture is possible; there is no situation in which a country may derogate from that right; and there is no situation in which torture is ever tolerable. Even the right to life, we admit, is not absolute. If it were, the intervention to prevent people dying would be absurd, or a battle to protect our nation’s interest would be impossible. Torture is not like that; torture is an absolute, and it is so because it violates the very principles of a free and democratic society. It violates absolutely the integrity of the individual. It violates totally the right to life and the principles that have grown up in various ways from Judaeo-Christian and Islamic tradition. That is why it is so utterly abhorrent to us.
I am glad that we are holding this debate because it allows us to reinforce those views of torture and, I am sure, for the Minister to reinforce them on behalf of Her Majesty’s Government, and to remind ourselves why they matter. Those views are not simply about carrying a banner of principle for us to wave at others in some sort of virtue-signalling way. That is not what they are about. Our views of torture are about protecting ourselves. The reason why we do not torture is not only a moral but a selfish one. We do not torture because it is wrong to do so, and because it leaves us more vulnerable and not better protected. Torture would leave us more exposed and in greater danger. That is why we do not do it.
The debate today is focused on asylum; that is not only about people coming to us but about stopping people needing to come to us. It is about nations with whom we very often and in many ways have good relations, whether in trade, culturally or historically—we often have very good relations with countries that practise torture. Part of our duty as a responsible, free and democratic state is to help our partners and, yes, even our friends to understand that torture is wrong, not only for moral reasons but because it is bad for them. Torture promotes violence, instability and the very unrest that many countries are seeking to prevent.
I will leave it there, except to pay tribute to some organisations, such as those that the hon. Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) mentioned when talking about the forms of torture that often are not recognised or are overlooked. I also pay tribute to an organisation that has done a lot to promote human rights—that is not to say that I agree with every one of the cases it has brought, because I certainly do not. The AIRE Centre—Advice on Individual Rights in Europe—did an awful lot of work with some of the new accession states to the European Union and with some of the states newly freed from Soviet tyranny to help them understand what rights are, why they matter and, in that context, why torture is always wrong. There are such organisations out there, and I very much welcome the work of Her Majesty’s Government to support them. I am glad to see cross-party support in the debate on such an important issue that is fundamental to our democracy and our freedom.
I, too, express my gratitude to the members of the Backbench Business Committee for allowing us the time to debate this subject. I commend the hon. Member for Twickenham (Dr Mathias) for her leadership in securing the debate. I note that, in a minor way, the pronunciation of the constituency of the hon. Member for East Kilbride, Strathaven and Lesmahagow (Dr Cameron) risks becoming, for some people, an instrument of torture in itself.
The hon. Member for Harrow West (Mr Thomas) posed some very relevant and pointed questions to the Minister regarding the training of caseworkers in the Home Office. I will not repeat them, but they were pertinent and ones with which I would very much wish to associate myself.
Like others, I place on the record my appreciation for the many non-governmental and campaign organisations that work in this field. Freedom from Torture was mentioned, and I was present in November at the launch of its most recent piece of work, “Proving Torture”. I have been associated with Reprieve for many years and have campaigned with Amnesty International in different parts of the world over the years, principally on the abolition of the death penalty but also on human rights concerns more widely.
Whenever I have been in other parts of the world, it has struck me that however much we may beat ourselves up about our past misdeeds, foreign policy failings and other things, we are still seen, by and large, as a force for good in the world. That goes to the point that the hon. Member for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) made about the counterproductive nature of torture. It also touches on the point made by the hon. Member for Twickenham that we are a world leader in this area, and it is more important now than ever that we maintain that position.
At Foreign Office questions some time ago, I asked the Foreign Secretary whether he had raised the possibility of sharing intelligence with the Trump Administration in the event that they reverted to the use of torture, such as waterboarding or, as the President said during the campaign, something
“a hell of a lot worse”.
In the House, the Foreign Secretary said that that was an operational matter that he would not comment on —I think it is more a matter of policy myself—but in later correspondence he returned to the quote that the hon. Member for Twickenham offered us from the Prime Minister, who said that
“we do not sanction torture and do not get involved in it. That will continue to be our position.”—[Official Report, 25 January 2017; Vol. 620, c. 291.]
Those sentences should be on the desk of every Home Office and Foreign Office Minister. I would like to hear a more express statement about the possibility of sharing intelligence with any country in the world that uses torture, both because of our leadership position and because we must atone for some of our quite recent failings in this area.
The right hon. Gentleman heard me speak, I hope very clearly, about my views. I merely caution that we should use slightly more modified language than, “We share no intelligence with anyone who uses torture.” That would exclude so many people with whom we need a relationship built on trust. In many ways, our intelligence services, rather than NGOs or diplomats, are some of the best people to preach the message of freedom from torture.
That is a fair point. I put it in those terms—I know the hon. Gentleman’s background—because we have some damage to repair.
I am mindful of your strictures about the sub judice rule, Mr Bailey. We now have the final Supreme Court judgment in respect of the Government’s preliminary points in the Belhaj and Boudchar case, which I referred to earlier. I will not talk about the substance of that case, because that would clearly be inappropriate and I would be ruled out of order, but it is a matter of public record that the Government so far have spent £750,000 pursuing those unsuccessful preliminary points. The case will presumably go through the courts to whatever conclusion is reached, but it is worth reflecting that we have got this far at the cost of £750,000 but we are just back at the starting line, and a lot more could still be spent on that case. The plaintiffs have offered to settle for £3—£1 each from the Government, the former Foreign Secretary and Sir Mark Allen, whose involvement in the case is fairly well documented.
The al-Saadi case, which was very similar, was settled out of court without any requirement for the case to be taken. More significantly, Belhaj and Boudchar want an apology as well as their £3. No apology was made in the al-Saadi case, but it cost the British taxpayer some £2.2 million. That is why it is important that as we enter a new phase of international relations with a new Administration in the White House, rightly or wrongly, we should have concerns about their approach to torture and put out there the highest possible standards. We should not forget—the Crown Prosecution Service has already said this—that Sir Mark Allen sought political authority for his actions in the al-Saadi and Belhaj cases, so it is difficult for us as a country to deny any knowledge or complicity in them.
Freedom from Torture’s “Proving Torture” report contains several highly concerning statistics from the sample of cases that it examined, and I will remind the House of some of those. Some 76% of the cases that Freedom from Torture studied in preparing that report eventually resulted in successful appeals. I take the Minister’s point that new information is sometimes provided on appeal that was not there in the first instance. Appeals may succeed for any number of reasons, but the fact that 76% of cases resulted in asylum being granted on appeal should concern Home Office Ministers. I suspect that if a judge sitting in a sheriff court in Scotland or perhaps a Crown court in England had 76% of his or her cases overturned on appeal, the Lord Chancellor would look carefully at the way that judge went about his or her business.
There is more context in that report to support my contention that the 76% figure is concerning. In 74% of the cases examined by Freedom from Torture, asylum caseworkers substituted their own opinion for that of clinicians, and in 30% of cases, asylum caseworkers disputed or queried clinicians’ qualifications or expertise. Those things should cause concern. They give context for the 76% of successful appeals that I referred to and relate to the points raised by the hon. Member for Harrow West.
The hon. Member for Twickenham was absolutely right to say that the Home Office has a duty of care towards people who do such enormously difficult and taxing work, from which significant political pressure is never far away and which is done in the professional context of an occasionally toxic debate. I worked as a public prosecutor for some years a long time ago. No one was supposed to work for more than six to 12 months at the very most on cases involving the sexual abuse of children, because they were such difficult and taxing cases, and the people who were involved in that sort of work ended up being burnt out. For that reason, I suspect that rotation among caseworkers who do asylum work should be taken a bit more seriously than it appears to be.
I am mindful of your strictures about time, Mr Bailey, so although I could probably say a great deal more about this subject, I shall conclude my remarks and allow others to take part.
I do not doubt the hon. Lady’s commitment to human rights, given everything she has said on them in the Chamber. The Home Secretary is due to visit Saudi Arabia later this month; it will be interesting to see if she will use that opportunity to challenge one of our “closest allies” on some of the less palatable aspects of its record on human rights and torture. At a recent Prime Minister’s Question Time, my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition asked the Prime Minister to condemn President Trump’s comments on torture. He has supported things like hooding, which is sensory deprivation, stress positioning and waterboarding, which the hon. Lady mentioned. President Trump seems to have a gung-ho attitude to those and does not equate them with torture. I would like to hear stronger statements from our Prime Minister condemning those comments.
I have limited time and the hon. Gentleman spoke at length earlier; I will be happy to speak to him afterwards. I think any special relationship should also be friendly. We can be a critical friend to countries and point these things out; maybe not holding their hand but holding them to account in some way. We are debating the UK asylum system and not any of these other people, so I will get back to that.
We all seem to have seen the same figures from Freedom from Torture’s “Proving Torture” report. Other Members have made those points very graphically. We have to consider the moral dimension to this, as well as our legal obligations; we are talking about protection for the most vulnerable in our society. The statistic just quoted was that 27% of adult forced migrants living in high-income countries have survived torture in their country of origin, yet we continually hear stories of their humiliating treatment when they seek to prove it. The standard of proof seems to be very high, and it is often confusing when they have to prove what happened to them. It is a chicken and egg situation. There is little other than medical evidence to prove their torture, but it is nigh on impossible after the fact to prove that it was torture, even when extensive medical evidence is presented; we hear that medical evidence is often disregarded, mistreated, misinterpreted or ignored by the Home Office. It would be good to hear the Minister clarify how that can be tightened up.
Hon. Members also quoted the fact that 76% of such cases that are unsuccessful are overturned on appeal, which is alarmingly high when compared to just 30% of standard asylum cases and indicates a serious problem in the Home Office’s handling of asylum claims. As the hon. Member for Twickenham pointed out, that requires correction by a judge in a specialist immigration tribunal, which comes at considerable cost to the public purse—UK taxpayers.
Not only is it International Women’s Day next week but apparently March is also International Women’s Month, so it is worth pointing out that rape is shockingly not recognised as torture for women asylum seekers. I think that will come as a surprise to many hon. Members. Women remain particularly vulnerable to deportation. My hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West referred to legal aid for asylum cases; I know that that is probably another debate for another day, but I flag it up as it is connected to this debate. I have also had constituents from Sri Lanka pressing me. There was a debate in this place last week that I was unable to attend, but I am glad that my hon. Friend expressed his concern about the Sri Lankan Government’s torture record and that we should treat asylum seekers from that country with the respect that they deserve.
I wanted to be brief, but while I am here I will flag up my concern that we may be led out of the European Court of Human Rights; I believe that the plan has been shelved for this Parliament, but it could still happen. It is a live policy.
I have said that I will press on without interventions on this occasion. The ECHR is one of the most effective torture prevention tools in history, and it was drafted by British lawyers, including Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, then a Conservative Member of Parliament. Having our own, unilateral British bill of rights seems to send the signal to countries with questionable human rights records, such as Russia and Turkey, that international human rights obligations can be shirked or are an optional extra. It also undermines the Government’s foreign policy objective of championing a rules-based international system.
I know that the Minister has received a lot of questions from other hon. Members, but I have one for him. I think the systematic decision-making errors that we keep hearing about in these cases are a matter of quality control and auditing. Will the Minister reaffirm the UK’s position as a champion for the absolute ban on torture? I am optimistic that he will. Will he also implement immediate measures to improve decision making in asylum claims made by survivors of torture to address those weaknesses?
We live in tumultuous times of turmoil and turbulence, when the only predictable thing is unpredictability. The UK has a proud history of standing up for human rights and taking care of people in need, and it has never been more important to reaffirm that commitment and make sure that it works in practice.