Police Funding
Tulip Siddiq Excerpts(8 years ago)
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Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
It is an honour to follow in the footsteps of my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon Central (Sarah Jones), because I will be speaking about knife crime as well.
Many Members of this House will have seen the young people in Washington speak last week very movingly and eloquently about losing their friends in shootings. Many of us saw the tens of thousands of young people marching on Capitol Hill in Washington. For me, as I listened to the youngsters speak and watched them marching, it felt dangerously close to home, because just two days before what happened in Washington, I went to a march in my own area—the Camden march against violence. This was co-organised by my constituent Elaine Donnellon, who had decided that people had to do something to protest, and also to find out the causes of the knife crime in Camden over the past few years. The victims are young men and boys who constantly get knifed and die, mostly members of the black community.
The testimony of the mother I spoke to who had lost her sons was unbelievable. The words of comfort that I gave to her felt inadequate when she had lost son after son through knife crime in Camden. The recent knife violence in London, which my hon. Friend articulated so well, has pushed many of our communities into despair. Those are the people I want to speak up on behalf of today. I want to speak for the elderly who now carry personal alarms because they are so scared to go out into the street. I want to speak for the parents who say goodbye to their children when they go off to school and are not sure if they are going to return home after school ends. Most of all, I want my speech to be a rallying cry for the young people who died after suffering from knife crime and cannot speak for themselves.
There are some damning statistics that I want to share with the House. Since January, London has seen double the number of fatal stabbings compared with the same period last year. Since 14 March alone, five people have been stabbed to death in our city. Many more are still fighting for their lives in hospital. Half the victims are aged 23 or younger. Any of the families who were on the march and who have suffered loss and those who have lost friends will say the same thing over and again—that knife violence does not exist in a vacuum. The banner at the front of the silent march that I attended had one message: “Stop the Violence. Invest in our Youth.”
The huge cuts to the Government’s preventive services have put even more pressure on the police and our communities. Overall, there has been a 44% youth service budget cut, which means that across 25 councils with like-for-like data, 81 youth centres and major council-supported youth projects have been cut. The situation we are facing is being exacerbated further and further by cuts to youth services. I am sorry if this is uncomfortable for some, but frankly, having attended that march led, as I say, by a mother who suffered three—yes, three—sons dying in the space of six months, I am in no mood to temper my words.
There are now fewer officers on our streets than in 2010. For the first time in a decade, the number of crimes recorded annually has passed the 5 million mark, rising by 13%. I do not have time to go through all the statistics. However, the cutting of police numbers and the lack of investment in services that offer a safety net to all the young men in my constituency is an obvious part of this very real problem, and to say otherwise is to allow policymakers simply to wash their hands of it.
Passports: Parental Identification
Tulip Siddiq Excerpts(8 years, 3 months ago)
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Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
Travelling with one’s child should provide lasting, happy memories. From seeing how our little ones react to their first flight to watching how they take on their first journey on the channel tunnel, travelling with a toddler can prove both thrilling and—as I am sure you are aware, Mr Speaker —stressful in equal measure. However, for a growing number of parents in the UK, trips abroad are blighted by confrontations that are both unnecessary and entirely avoidable.
I have chosen to highlight this issue because I believe that a critical purpose of our work in the House is to ensure that British institutions keep pace with the changing nature of our constituents’ lives. Throughout the past century, as women have fought for economic and political equality with men, it has been this House that has introduced laws to cement progress and make those campaigns worthwhile. From the Equal Franchise Act 1928 to the Equal Pay Act 1970 to the Equalities Act 2010, Britain has a strong record of addressing the grievances of the marginalised, but also of being proactive to ensure that the British institutions can support the ever- diversifying demographics of British society. With that in mind, I intend today to focus on the issue of children’s passports, and to draw attention to the unfortunate reality that a number of parents are being penalised simply for failing to share their child’s surname.
Before I address the scale of the problem, I should probably declare an interest: I am a parent who does not share a surname with my young daughter, and I was stopped at the border on my return from a recent trip to France. As my husband Chris and I approached passport control, I happened to be carrying Azalea and pushing the pram, and, through no fault of anyone’s, I was separated from my husband in the queue. When I reached the counter, the border official looked at my passport for a long time, looked at my daughter’s passport, and then said, “Who is this girl?” I am sure Members can imagine my surprise. I replied, “This is my daughter.” I accept that my daughter looks very different from me; for a start she is quite tall for her age—if people can believe that. I told the official that she has my husband’s last name, a decision we took collectively upon her birth. To my shock, the situation became quite tense. The official kept asking me for more and more documentation, which I did not have, and I explained over and over again that the child had my husband’s last name, not mine. My daughter was saying, “Mama, mama,” and crying because the unfortunate incident took so long, but even that did not seem to convince the border official.
My problem was that there was a real air of suspicion and I was made to feel that I was doing something wrong when I had just gone on holiday with my daughter and husband. I then had to go and find my husband, bring him back to the border official and convince him that this was my husband, this was my daughter and I was the mother. I wonder what would have happened if my husband had not been there. Would they have let us go? What would have happened next? These are the kinds of questions that many people have emailed to me since this incident came to light.
It is not only women who travel with their children; numerous LGBT couples have contacted me regarding their adopted children. One such couple said that they
“have been questioned mercilessly at the borders wherever they go.”
The same applies to foster parents.
I have a few statistics that I would like to share with the Minister. Between 2010 and 2014 at least 600,000 mothers and fathers have been quizzed at airport, ferry and Eurostar terminals because our out-of-date passport system does not recognise that their children might have a different surname from them. That was first highlighted by the Parental Passport Campaign a few years ago, and it is a reasonable assumption that more than 1 million people could have been quizzed in this manner by now.
Choosing to retain a surname is a neutral choice. I know that some choose to see it as a feminist statement and I certainly abide by the notion that no woman is a man’s property. However, for me, the increasing numbers who keep their surnames are often just a simple reflection of changing life circumstances. According to the experts at STEP, who advise families on succession planning, more than 3 million couples in the UK choose to cohabit, rather than marry or enter a civil partnership.
I personally chose to keep my surname for professional reasons. I was already elected as a councillor under my name when I got married, and had also written for my local newspaper under my name, so I felt no need to take a new name. A number of high profile surveys in recent years have shown that I am far from alone in this choice. According to a 2013 survey by Facebook of its 33 million UK users, women are increasingly keeping their own names. Some 38% of women in their 20s said they were intent on keeping their surname after marriage, up from 26% of women in their 30s. A 2016 YouGov survey showed that
“for those people who wanted themselves and their spouse to keep their original surnames upon marriage”
the most popular option, at 42%, was for the children to have a combined version of their parents’ surnames. The next most popular option in the YouGov survey was for the child to receive the father’s surname, which was preferred by 32% of men and 21% of women, while only 18% of women and 12% of men wanted their children to receive the mother’s surname.
While the YouGov poll found that 59% of women would take their husband’s name—again, a perfectly valid choice—that figure is a huge decrease from that in a similar poll into British attitudes in 1994, which found that 94% would take their husband’s surname. So the trajectory of this trend is clear, and provides an undeniable opportunity for our passport authorities to consider the need for change.
From the day that the excellent Guardian reporter, Jess Elgot, covered my troubles at border control, I have been inundated with emails from parents who have faced the same situation. I will relay some of their anecdotes shortly, but first I want to reflect on the Government’s position on this issue.
Our Border Force has a duty under section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009 to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. Work to protect vulnerable children and those who could potentially be trafficked is vital, and I pay tribute to the efforts of the Border Force in that endeavour. Child trafficking is an unspeakable evil, which is why nothing I am suggesting today would compromise the efforts of the Border Force to tackle it; quite the opposite. I hope that my suggestions will reduce an administrative burden on the Border Force and make it easier to separate those engaging in criminal behaviour from those parents who are simply trying to go on holiday with their kids.
The Government’s position on this issue is inflexible, and their reluctance to engage with simple solutions is quite surprising, not least as any such changes to passports would not require legislation. In September and October, I asked the Home Secretary a number of questions on the matter. For one, I asked whether the Government had any record of the number of occasions on which British women had been asked by border control to prove they were related to their children. The Minister responded by saying that this was not something that the Government recorded, and that it was therefore not possible to provide the information. The Minister added that
“it is not currently mandatory for a parent to produce documentation that explains their relationship to the child they are travelling with”.
In principle this is welcome, but such a position has not prevented many thousands of British parents from being unduly harassed and interrogated by officials at the UK border. Similarly, when pressed on the need for reform in 2014, a coalition Minister said:
“A passport is a document for travel. Its fundamental purpose would change if it were to be used to identify a parental relationship.”
I find that strange. The Government’s policy is to stress the need to verify the identity of parents and those travelling with children, yet they also try to swat the issue away by suggesting that a passport’s fundamental purpose would somehow change if it were to be used as an identification document.
Before I outline my proposal today, I want to reflect on three particularly problematic cases that I hope will prompt Ministers to give more considered responses on this. I will not be letting this matter drop! The first case involves Helen, who wrote to me following her ordeal at Gatwick in August, on her return from holiday in Italy. She mentioned that her eldest daughter was from her first marriage and did not share her surname. She also mentioned that her daughter had special needs and struggled with her speech and social situations. After a long wait at passport control, Helen’s daughter was asked, “Is this your mother?” Helen explained that her daughter was unable to provide reliable answers, and that in the process of having her passport updated, she had actually sent paperwork to explain her condition.
The border official had no information on record about her daughter, or about who her primary carers were. Helen rightly asks what would have happened if she had allowed her daughter to answer the original question. She might well have said no, and then what would have happened? The assumption would be that Helen’s daughter may have been questioned separately. Helen tells me that this would have led to her daughter having a major meltdown that could have caused long-term emotional damage. After this, Helen was informed that she should have registered her daughter’s disability with Gatwick airport, as it is the airport that can offer support, but this was not pointed out when she applied for the passport. In her email to me, Helen said:
“I cannot explain in an email how painful this was for us all, genuinely thinking that our re-entry to the UK depended on my daughter who has minimal cognitive ability and all because of her surname”.
Another anecdote I want to share with the Minister is about Jane, a mother of three, who wrote that she was left
“incredibly angry and deeply humiliated”
by a dispute involving her 12-year-old daughter at Stansted earlier this year. She explained:
“They refused to believe I was her mother because we didn’t share the same name and in the end my husband had to be called back from the baggage carousel to ‘claim’ her. I felt incredibly angry and deeply humiliated. I will travel with my children’s birth certificates in future but feel furious that I should have to do this.”
Samantha similarly wrote in with her experience at border control, saying:
“Every time I have re-entered the UK I am made to prove that I am the mother of my daughter. My daughter is 7 in a few weeks and over the last few years has been quite distressed by the atmosphere of accusation and suspicion, even though I always travel with a copy of her birth certificate.”
Samantha raises an extremely valid criticism of the process, which seems to be disproportionately focused on the parents’ return to the UK. She said:
“This situation astounds me on many levels, but my main concern is the lack of attention to people allowed to leave the UK. I have travelled with my daughter to a number of countries all over the world and have never been asked to prove her identity when leaving the UK. This means that she could be taken by anyone, anywhere, so how is this upholding the UK border control’s explanation of this treatment as ensuring the safeguarding of the child and minimising child trafficking? It also means that anyone technically with the same surname has the right to travel freely with her, without questioning.”
So in addition to those with differing surnames being penalised, Samantha’s story shows that it is important to reiterate the fact that having the same surname as the child does not guarantee that the adult with them is their legal parent or guardian. Those stories are just the tip of the iceberg and, frankly, I could have reeled off hundreds of cases for the Minister to reflect on today.
Children’s passports were introduced in the 1990s and list the child’s name and date and place of birth only. It is high time that they were updated to reflect the changing circumstances of British families. Expanding the details in children’s passports to include their parents would improve the time taken when passing through immigration and would relieve stress upon the numerous airport security measures. Support for including both parents’ names on child passports has come from across the House, and many of my colleagues support my efforts today.
I will finish with a few questions for the Minister. Does he accept that including both parents’ names on child passports does not require legislation, nor would it require great expense? The names of the parents are recorded on the application for a child’s passport, so why not make the names available to border control when the passports are being checked so that the relationship between adult and child can be established? In addition, is it not the case that border officers could simply have access to the registry office database in the case of couples that are married? Does the Minister accept that including parents’ names on child passports could save time, confusion and, ultimately, money at the border? Surely the Government can see that that would help the authorities to identify when a child is related to the adult accompanying them. Lastly, will the Minister commit to reviewing children’s passports? If Brexit is to bring new passports for the country as a whole, now seems as good a time as any to iron out issues with the current format.
Those questions are important because the current situation, whereby parents are subject to harsh questioning at the border, is unfortunately creating a great deal of upset. For many, it feels like 1950’s attitudes to marriage are prevailing at the detriment of common sense and acceptance of how the nature of families is changing. Neither I nor the many thousands who have signed up to the campaign want to interfere with anything that prevents child trafficking, but it is clear that the policies need amending to recognise that more and more children will not have the same surname as both of their parents. I do not want my daughter to grow up thinking that the only way to avoid being penalised at the border is to adopt the surname of her future partner. She and the many thousands of children currently in the same situation should be able to grow up in a world where they can travel at ease, knowing that their identity is one of their choosing and does not leave them treated as criminals by over-zealous border officials. I hope that the Minister can address the points that I have raised, so that we can move on from a policy that is not achieving its stated aims and is making many hundreds of thousands of people extremely unhappy.
Health, Social Care and Security
Tulip Siddiq Excerpts(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
I thank the constituents of Hampstead and Kilburn, who helped me to increase my majority from 1,000 to 15,500. It is a pleasure to be back here. I also want to thank the nurses and doctors at the Royal Free hospital in my constituency. Members will be aware of the tragedy of Grenfell Tower, but they may not be aware that 12 people from the tower were rushed to the Royal Free for treatment, including two who were placed in intensive care due to the extent of their injuries. The nurses and doctors of the Royal Free responded diligently, with speed and professionalism. I put on the record my thanks to them, and I am sure that other Members will join me in doing so.
Many of the doctors and nurses who treated the people from Grenfell Tower are EU citizens, which is what I want to focus on today. In February, I voted against triggering article 50 because I did not feel that EU citizens had been reassured about the security of their ability to stay in this country. Since the vote, I have submitted freedom of information requests to NHS trusts that reveal the extent to which our local NHS services depend on EU nationals. In total, EU nationals make up 15% of professionally qualified and clinical staff, 21% of nurses and health visitors, and 50 of the 350 midwives employed by the Royal Free NHS Foundation Trust. EU nationals also make up 10% of both specialist doctors and consultants. As Nigel Edwards, the chief executive of Nuffield Trust, said back in January:
“There are already a number of reasons to be concerned about the workforce: this”—
Brexit—
“could be the last straw.”
A Commons Library report from April underlined our NHS’s dependence on EU nationals, with 60,000 members of staff coming from EU countries. To be frank, the Prime Minister’s feeble attempt to satisfy the EU nationals living here is just not enough. The fact that she has asked all EU citizens who have applied for permanent residence to reapply for settled status shows how little respect she has for those people, who are already suffering from high stress and anxiety as they go through a burdensome application process. I want to quote a nurse, Karen, who is 40 years old. She says:
“Before the Brexit vote, we used to have hundreds of applicants in nursing. Now, we barely see 50. All staff are tired and worried about what will come next. In my department, 60% of nurses are EU citizens and already five of them have handed in their notice. I am an EU citizen myself and I’m already making plans to leave the UK for good. The healthcare system will collapse and I don’t want to be part of it.”
Whichever Member laughed while I was reading that out should be ashamed of themselves.
The Prime Minister needs to offer some kind of security to EU nationals. If she does not, the healthcare system will be in serious jeopardy. I will continue to fight in this House for the 17,000 EU nationals who live in Hampstead and Kilburn, many of whom work in the Royal Free and have shown how dedicated they are to our health system in this country.
Detention of Vulnerable Persons
Tulip Siddiq Excerpts(9 years ago)
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Anne McLaughlin
I will come on to say a little about that issue, and I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising it. One of the most significant issues is that the system is not capable of dealing with people who have mental health problems, and the agreement was that people with mental health problems would not be detained, but unfortunately that is still happening. As I said, I will come to that.
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
The hon. Lady is making a passionate speech about a very important issue that is close to my heart. She will be aware of my constituent, Nazanin Ratcliffe, a mother who has been imprisoned in Iran for a year and is suicidal. In April, it will be one year since she has spoken to her husband, and she barely ever sees her two-year-old daughter, Gabriella. Will the hon. Lady ask the Minister to make a point on that, because we need to bring Nazanin home, back to West Hampstead?
Anne McLaughlin
I echo that call and hope that the Minister will respond to it. The hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) has fought long and hard for this woman who is fortunate to have her, but so unfortunate to be in the situation she is in—it is so wrong.
Leaving the EU: Security, Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice
Tulip Siddiq Excerpts(9 years, 2 months ago)
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Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
First, I would like to pay a personal tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt). He grew up in the best constituency in the world and went to school in the best constituency in the world, Hampstead and Kilburn. I also thank him for sending me a long handwritten letter after my maiden speech, which was much appreciated by a newbie.
I am in danger of breaking the rules again, so I will come to the debate at hand. The problem with being so low down the pecking order is that everything has already been said and articulated very well by others, but I thought I would speak about the worries of my constituents, 75% of whom voted to remain in the EU. As such, they voted in support of continued security co-operation with our European partners, as indeed they did on many of the other matters raised in today’s important debate. As Londoners, the strength of feeling over the upcoming renegotiations on security protection should come as no surprise. London residents are obviously not alone in their experience of the devastation inflicted by terrorism, but they are particularly clear-minded when it comes to the value of EU-wide security arrangements in bringing people to justice.
The hon. Member for Bath (Ben Howlett) has already referenced a time when the European arrest warrant played a crucial role in allowing the police to do their jobs, help keep Londoners safe and bring offenders to justice. He cited the famous example of 2005, when the failed bomber, Hussain Osman, was brought to justice in just a few weeks because of our access to the European arrest warrant.
Other agencies and conventions, such as Europol, which has been mentioned several times this afternoon, and the European Criminal Records Information System help to combat crime across borders through international co-operation and the sharing of forensic data. For a global city such as London, where my constituency is, abandoning European security co-operation could compromise our effectiveness in confronting a number of issues beyond terrorism, including human trafficking, intellectual property crime, money laundering and mobile organised crime groups.
I believe that my friend, the Mayor of London, was absolutely right to demand that London has a seat around the table, alongside the devolved nations, in ensuring that continental security apparatus is kept intact. It was extremely disappointing to see no direct reference to London’s additional law enforcement needs in the Prime Minister’s statement yesterday.
The Government’s decision in December to opt into new Europol regulations was a welcome one, and in principle, would appear to back up the Prime Minister’s words on maintaining a continental approach when gathering criminal intelligence and producing threat assessments. Londoners—not just in my constituency, but everywhere—will want to know whether the Europol regulations we have adopted will outlast the EU negotiations, and whether the Government will develop alternative frameworks of co-operation on policing and security matters, including on the matters I have outlined. Only when we have such answers will my constituents be reassured that their security needs and those of fellow Londoners are being considered with the utmost care by this Government.
Beyond continued co-operation and information sharing with our European partners, it is clear that Brexit will pose financial challenges to the economy. One area that we shall scrutinise is, of course, the money spent on policing, particularly the current spend. In arranging any post-Brexit settlement, the Home Office must fully recognise London’s position as a major global capital. It is no surprise to know that this city incurs extra security costs in trying to keep the large population safe when policing major events and in protecting our most famous landmarks, such as this Parliament in which we sit today. At present, these extra needs cost £300 million a year, but London receives funding from the Government only for barely half this amount. So in addressing our post-Brexit security and law enforcement needs, making sure that the capital has the money to protect itself will be of the utmost importance. We want answers from the Minister on this issue.
I have a few other questions that I want the Minister to answer. Will he ensure that the Home Office gives the Met the full amount it needs through the national and international capital cities grant? There is currently a more than £100 million shortfall, which threatens the police’s ability to protect Londoners. Will the Minister make it clear where our future lies in respect of our relationship with Europol? This will be vital for accessing criminal records information systems, yet we know the EU’s deputy chairman has already made it clear to Denmark that it
“should not be under any illusions”
about its ability to negotiate a parallel agreement to membership.
Finally, there is the question that everyone has asked over and over again. What will be our future relationship with the European arrest warrant? In November, the Director of Public Prosecutions said that up to 150 essential extraditions would not have been possible without the European arrest warrant system and our relationship with it, and the former director general of MI6 has warned that losing abilities such as that provided by the arrest warrant would make the UK “less safe”.
I hope that the Minister will make it clear how we can continue to protect our citizens and to protect London, where my constituency is. I urge him to address these practical security questions: that might even earn the Government some good will from those who will be sitting on the other side of the negotiating table. As I am sure the Minister will recognise, the No. 1 priority of any Government is to ensure the security of their civilians, but it is not entirely clear to me at present how this Government intend to do that.
Immigration Rules (International Students)
Tulip Siddiq Excerpts(9 years, 4 months ago)
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Stuart C. McDonald
I agree with much of what the hon. Gentleman says. International students’ contribution to GDP is actually now £10 billion—even higher than the figure he quotes.
I will finish my praise for international students by turning to the St Andrews University students’ association, which put out a statement this morning that I think sums things up nicely:
“Universities... owe much of their value and their success to their diversity. Without a student or staffing body comprised of people of all races, religions, class or political allegiance, we cannot and will not achieve the level of quality—in research and personal character—to which the UK is accustomed. By mixing, debating, and learning from those with varied views and cultural backgrounds, we become better, more rounded, more tolerant and accepting individuals.”
Those views are broadly shared by around three quarters of our own students, according to a Higher Education Policy Institute survey.
Turning to where we are now, the UK has for some time been a world leader in attracting international students, but that reputation is in jeopardy.
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing this important debate, and I echo what my right hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) said about the Government’s rhetoric on international students. There are a lot of students in Hampstead and Kilburn, and they are diverse; they make my constituency what it is. The hon. Gentleman talked about international students’ net contribution, which I believe is £14 billion a year. Does he agree that in post-Brexit Britain, we should recognise the value of those students and remove them from the net migration target to make them feel more welcome in our country?
Stuart C. McDonald
I agree wholeheartedly. I will turn later to the contradiction that on the one hand, the Treasury appears to be all for increasing our education exports, but on the other, the Home Office includes students in its net migration target and therefore sees them as a ready target for trying to clamp down on migrant numbers.
In 2014-15, of the around 2.27 million students at UK higher education institutions, more than 125,000 were from other EU countries and more than 300,000 were from non-EU countries. In the most recent year that we have figures for, overall international student numbers just about held up, but the number of new entrants fell by 2.8%. Figures from June this year show that the number of study-related visas granted by the UK fell by 5% from the previous year. The British Council has stated that the UK is beginning to lose market share to competitors.
There are serious concerns about the UK’s performance in attracting students from key markets. The number of Indian students enrolling in their first year at UK universities fell by 10% in 2015 compared with the year before. The number of Indian students studying here has fallen by around 50% in the four years since the UK Government started to turn the screw while our rivals were all improving their offer. It is no coincidence that there is now a record number of Indian students in the US, which has, for example, opened up post-study work schemes.
Where do we want to go from here? If any other industry brought such a wealth of benefits to the country, the Government would be mad not to pull out all the stops to go for growth. Education is one of the UK’s most successful exports. In what other export market would we say that we were not going to bother so much with expansion and we were quite happy to see our rivals catch us up and overtake us?
The Government’s official ambition is for education exports as a whole to be worth £30 billion by 2020. In last year’s autumn statement, the Chancellor projected that the number of non-EU students in England alone would rise by just over 7% in the next two years and by 3.2% in the two years after that, but if the 0.6% increase in student enrolments last year is anything to go by, the Government’s goal, modest though it is, has no chance of being met.
The Government must be much more ambitious. While our share of international students is beginning to falter, international student numbers are growing much more significantly and strongly in countries such as the US, Australia and Canada—in fact, those countries are in a completely different league from us. International student numbers are expected to grow significantly around the world in the years ahead, so the opportunities are there if we want to take them, but countries such as Canada, Australia, Germany, New Zealand, China, Japan and Taiwan often talk about doubling their number of international students by 2020 or 2025.
Our universities are alarmed about the implications of Brexit, so the Government must step up to the plate to reassure rather than seek to complete what essentially would be a triple whammy, with another crackdown and a persistent failure to listen to rational arguments about a post-study work visa. One of the key underlying problems is, as the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) said, the inclusion of students in the net migration target. At best it seems inconsistent for, on the one hand, the Treasury to be targeting an increase in education exports and, on the other, the Home Office to be quite clearly seeing student numbers as a target for reductions.
To make matters worse, the Home Office appears to be motivated by international passenger survey statistics and a belief that about 90,000 students are not leaving when their courses end. That is not a good thing, because serious questions about the accuracy of those figures are now being asked not just by me, but by the UK Statistics Authority, the Select Committee on Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs, and the Institute for Public Policy Research, just by way of example. The main reason for the concerns is that the figures suggested by the Government are completely out of kilter with many other sources of information, from Home Office longitudinal studies to the destination of leavers survey and the annual population survey. We are talking about not just a few hundred students here and there, but many tens of thousands.
As the Minister will know, just a few weeks ago an article appeared in The Times that suggested that the Home Office has in its hands an independent analysis that shows that just 1% of international students break the terms of their visas by refusing to leave after their courses end. Sadly, as I understand it, the Home Office has refused to share that study with other Departments, never mind with MPs or the public. Perhaps the Minister will explain why.
Oral Answers to Questions
Tulip Siddiq Excerpts(10 years, 1 month ago)
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Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
The financial threshold for family visas is causing particular distress to one of my constituents, who cannot work the hours required because she is a carer for her vulnerable child. This means my constituent is living without her husband and the child is living without his father. Does the Minister acknowledge that he is at risk of creating a generation of children whose only contact with one of their parents will be via Skype?
James Brokenshire
No, I do not accept that, and these issues of the welfare of the child are absolutely part of our consideration. This matter was considered by the Court of Appeal and our approach was firmly upheld. When the threshold was set in November 2011, the MAC gave the lower threshold of £18,600 but also advised that the threshold could have been set as high as £25,700. The Government reflected and set the current level, which has been upheld by the courts.
Donald Trump
Tulip Siddiq Excerpts(10 years, 2 months ago)
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Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
The arguments over why we are having this debate have already been articulated by the speakers who came before me—my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) and the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully). I want to discuss why this online petition, which has been signed by 3,000 of my constituents in Hampstead and Kilburn, has evoked such emotion. Is it because Donald Trump’s comments have tarnished the entire Muslim community with the views of a small group of extremists whose views ordinary Muslims absolutely condemn? Is it because the world’s largest economy might be excluding the world’s second largest religious community—more than 1.6 billion people? Or is it because people in this country are proud of the long history we have of welcoming immigrants, refugees and asylum seekers?
People often say that the public are apathetic about politics. This petition, signed by nearly 600,000 people, shows that when people feel a sense of justice—when they feel that we need to stop a poisonous, corrosive man from entering our country—they will act in good conscience. We are not talking about just any man. This is a man with an extremely high profile who has been involved in the American show-business industry for years—a man who is now interviewing for the most important job in the world. His words are not comical. His words are not funny. His words are poisonous and risk inflaming tensions between vulnerable communities. Let me make one thing clear: we have legislation in our country to ensure that we do not let people who are not conducive to the public good enter. My hon. Friend outlined some of the people the Home Office has banned from entering this country.
Mr Adam Holloway (Gravesham) (Con)
You are talking about a candidate for the presidency of the United States. It is up to the American people to decide whether his views are objectionable, not you guys.
Sir Roger Gale (in the Chair)
Order. The hon. Gentleman has been in the House long enough to know that he has to address the Chamber through the Chair. I have no view on this matter whatever, as he will appreciate.
Tulip Siddiq
I think the question has been answered for the hon. Gentleman.
I looked at the cases of the 84 hate preachers who have not been allowed into the country. I want to highlight the case of a female blogger—I will not name her, but hon. Members are welcome to look her up—who was banned from entering our country. I looked at the rhetoric she used. Her crime was to equate the views of the entire Muslim population with those of a handful of extremists. The Home Office spokesperson said that she was not allowed into the country because:
“We condemn all those whose behaviours and views run counter to our shared values and will not stand for extremism in any form.”
Her views and those of Donald Trump, who thinks that Muslims are all the same, are strikingly similar. They use very similar words. Will we apply our legislation equally to everyone or will we make exceptions for billionaire politicians, even when their words clearly fall short of the Home Office guidance?
Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)
The hon. Lady said that she does not want any exceptions, but I have heard large number of my constituents make similar remarks to those of Donald Trump. She may disagree with them, but lots of my constituents agree with what Donald Trump said, whether I like it or not. Does she think that they should be expelled from the country as a result of their views? If not, what is the difference?
Tulip Siddiq
The hon. Gentleman should think carefully about what he just said. That is not the same as our deciding not to let into the country someone whose views fall short of the Home Office guidance.
My hon. Friend the Member for Newport West outlined Donald Trump’s views about Mexicans and black people. Do not forget that Donald Trump ran a dog-whistle campaign to see Barack Obama’s birth certificate to find out whether the President of America is really American. Imagine what would happen if, in the mother of Parliaments, my colleagues decided to question ethnic minority MPs about whether they are really British.
Tulip Siddiq
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention.
When Megyn Kelly asked Donald Trump on Fox News to explain why he called some women
“‘fat pigs’, ‘dogs’, ‘slobs’ and ‘disgusting animals’”,
he replied,
“What I say is what I say.”
Is that the kind of man we want in our country?
I thoroughly anticipate the rebuttal that we cannot exclude people merely because they offend us or because we do not like them, but as politicians we have to make difficult decisions. We have to decide when freedom of speech compromises public safety. We are worried about our constituents’ safety. The Centre for the Study of Hate and Extremism pointed out that anti-Muslim crime has increased in line with the rhetoric that Donald Trump used in the last three months of 2015. My hon. Friend the Member for Newport West mentioned the homeless Hispanic man who was beaten up by two brothers from south Boston. When they beat him up, they broke his nose and urinated on him. The police report said that one of them justified the act by saying:
“Donald Trump was right—all these illegals need to be deported.”
Donald Trump’s words stoke and inflame hate crime.
Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)
I am interested in the point that the hon. Lady seems to be making. To make sure I have understood her correctly, is she laying all the responsibility for the increase in hate crime against Muslims at Donald Trump’s door? Does she not believe that acts of terrorism, such as those in Paris, contributed to it?
Tulip Siddiq
Of course, I do not lay all the blame for the increase in hate crime at Donald Trump’s door, but there is a correlation between the words he uses and the increase in hate crime. The point is that his words lead to real crime and violence. That is where I draw the line on freedom of speech.
Richard Drax
I do not mean to undermine the hon. Lady’s argument, but many things incite violence. For example, parliamentary regulations can incite violence: policemen have been attacked, and one had his head chopped off. That is not to say that we should shut down debate. All kinds of things incite violence—always by totally irresponsible people.
Tulip Siddiq
I do not have much time, so I will wrap up by saying that I draw the line on freedom of speech when it leads to violent ideology being imported, which is what I feel is happening. We have legislation in place to protect the people of Britain from such individuals. It has been used previously to prevent other people from coming into the country, and the same rules should apply to Donald Trump, which is why I feel he should not be given a visa to visit the multicultural country that we are so proud of.
Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)
I appreciate the opportunity to contribute so early, Sir Roger. When considering my remarks for this debate, I thought that I would be in conflict with the hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn), but I am pleased to say that that is not the case. However, I want to make one point about exclusion to him, the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully) and the Petitions Committee. When I log on as a Northern Ireland Member and try to access the Committee’s online map, Northern Ireland does not exist. If there is an issue of exclusion, I hope that that can be addressed when the licensing is sorted out with Ordnance Survey.
I am also concerned and apprehensive that the right hon. Member for Chelmsford (Sir Simon Burns) is present. He is the chief parliamentary proponent of Hillary Clinton. I wonder whether an intervention will be made to the detriment of Donald Trump.
I never thought I would say it, but I agree wholeheartedly with that dreadful right winger the hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh). In this debate, it is important that we consider the principles of democracy and of firm and thorough debate. We should stand robustly by our strong, well-principled position, and not run from fear or opposition or the contrary arguments that others may make, be they in this country or abroad.
Members present will know of Lynton Crosby, the political adviser and analyst, who has talked about the dead cat on the table theory. The idea is that, if one is losing an argument or not being referred to at all, throw a dead cat on the table and people will notice. They will stop and the direction of political discourse will change. That is exactly what Donald Trump is doing. It is not a one-off initiative; it marks his campaign entirely. He throws a dead cat on the table, people stop considering what they were considering and stop doing what they were doing. They listen to him and take him seriously.
There will be those today—the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq) has done so already—who support Donald Trump’s exclusion. I want to see Donald Trump come to this country and be grilled either by Members of Parliament, by Andrew Neil or one of this country’s great interrogators in public discourse. I want them to challenge him. I want him to get a sense of the fury and the frustration caused by his xenophobic remarks. Let him leave this country feeling that there are better principles than what he has outlined so far. We as a country should be proud of our values, which we would like to see throughout the world. Confront him. Challenge him and confound him into recognising that what he outlines may get headlines and may change the nature of political discourse in the United States or across the world, but it is bad policy and would change the nature, image and reputation of the United States irrevocably from that created by the founding fathers and by those who have built up so much over the past three centuries.
Moving on, the Leader of the Opposition indicates that it would be appropriate to open back channels with Daesh, yet we have members of the same party saying that we should exclude somebody who has erred politically, but who is not a terrorist. For what should we open back channels with Daesh? To negotiate reasonably with somebody who would consider that negotiation in the context of whether to murder someone’s wife or rape her first before cutting off her head?
The same Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Chancellor gave succour to terrorists in our United Kingdom over the past 30 years. They supported the IRA murdering citizens in Northern Ireland and murdering our countrymen. To put into context what the hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn would have us believe, she thinks it would be appropriate to ban somebody who has erred in political ideology, but who has not erred in law. This person has not promoted terrorism or extremism to the extent that lives have been lost and communities have been damaged or destroyed.
Tulip Siddiq
Does the hon. Gentleman think that this country’s legislation should be applied equally to everyone?
Gavin Robinson
I think that it does. However, I am setting clear blue water between the support given by the hon. Lady’s leader in years gone by for terrorists who have destroyed, maimed and killed, and somebody who is a ridiculous xenophobe, but who we do not need to promote any further. That is my point.
Some might take a hypocritical stance, such as those north of the border from where we now sit, who are still very much part of our United Kingdom. They lauded and applauded Donald Trump. They invited him to their country, appointed him as an ambassador and regaled him with civic support and adoration because of brass tacks.
Tom Tugendhat
The hon. Lady is quite right: we have the right to criticise. However, I do not think that we should exercise that right on people who are running for elected office in foreign countries. It is for the American people to judge Donald Trump and to hold him to account. It is bad politics and bad judgment to intervene in the electoral processes of other countries and I would wish to do it as little as possible.
Tulip Siddiq
The London mayoral candidate from the Labour party, my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan), is of Muslim origin. Under Donald Trump, he would not be allowed to travel to America. Will the hon. Gentleman comment on that?
Tom Tugendhat
I am delighted to comment on that, on the grounds that the United States makes wonderful provision for the balance of powers. The hon. Lady’s failure to understand that the President of the United States is neither a sovereign nor a despot, but is balanced by Congress and the courts, is a failure to understand the United States. Despite—let’s face it—having had one or two incumbents of the White House who might not have been Mensa candidates, the country has yet succeeded all the way through to today as a bastion of liberty and of economic success.
Today is also Martin Luther King Day and it is worth remembering that he, too, relied on those rights and freedoms. He, too, relied on those rights while he was campaigning to desegregate the University of Alabama. When those students bravely marched in on 11 June 1963, the prevailing opinion was that they should shut up and that their right to freedom of speech should be curtailed. I think that Donald Trump is crazy and has no valid points to make, but I will not be the one to silence his voice.
When I think about what more we should do, I say that we should stand aside and wait for an American to come forward as the great Joseph Welch, the chief counsel for the US army, did. In the 1954 trials, he looked at Senator McCarthy and asked, “Have you no shame, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?” For someone to say that to Trump is surely better than for us to legislate on the freedom of expression or of travel of a citizen of that great country, the United States.
Victoria Atkins
I can only give the hon. Lady reassurance. As someone who used to prosecute criminals for a living before I came to this place, any defendant who tried that on in court would get very short shrift from me and, I am sure, from the jury. We must not allow people who behave in such a disgraceful way—criminals who beat up other people on the basis of their religion or beliefs—to remove themselves from that by blaming someone on a different continent. If they beat up a Muslim on the streets of Britain, that is their responsibility and no one else’s.
One of the values that best sums up our country is the freedom to exchange thoughts and ideas within the law—the freedom to persuade or rebut; the freedom to inspire or eviscerate in argument; the freedom to speak; and the freedom to listen. That freedom is not always comfortable. Indeed, my hon. Friends the Members for South Dorset (Richard Drax) and for Tonbridge and Malling (Tom Tugendhat) referred to the rising problem in some of our universities about allowing free speech and providing safe spaces for it, for fear that people may be offended, but the freedom of speech must mean that we will sometimes be offended. It means allowing those whose views we hold to be unedifying to speak their minds. Crucially, it also means the freedom to reply—to say, “No, Donald Trump, you are wrong, and you are wrong for the following reasons.” That freedom was hard won over centuries and it must be defended jealously, because it goes to the essence of democracy and the rule of law.
Opposition Members may rely on the argument of consistency—indeed, one Member said, “So-and-so has been excluded, so Mr Trump must be excluded.” Let us remind ourselves of the threshold that must be met for that to happen. The Home Secretary must conclude that the person’s presence in the United Kingdom is not conducive to the public good.
The House of Commons Library helpfully provided a briefing paper for the debate, which gives 14 examples of people who had been excluded by Labour Home Secretaries by May 2009. Of those, 10 were considered to be engaging in “unacceptable behaviour” by seeking to foment, justify or glorify terrorist violence. Nine were considered to be engaging in unacceptable behaviour in order to provoke others to commit terrorist acts or serious crimes. Five were considered to be fostering hatred that might lead to inter-community violence in the UK and one had spent 30 years in prison for killing four soldiers and a four-year-old girl.
I ask a simple question of those who would ban Donald Trump: are they really saying that his conduct, no matter how offensive it may be, meets those criteria? If Donald Trump poses any question for us as a country, the answer is not to fuel his publicity by talking about banning him—incidentally, this debate is doing that nicely—but to rebut his arguments. The answer is to challenge him in a robust, democratic argument on why he is wrong about the contribution of American and British Muslims to this country.
Tulip Siddiq
The hon. Lady cites 14 cases of people who have been banned. Has she considered the 84 hate preachers who are banned? If so, she will see that there is a striking resemblance between what was said by Donald Trump and by two bloggers who were banned two years ago by the Conservative Home Secretary. Will she comment on whether the same should apply to Donald Trump?
Victoria Atkins
Forgive me, but I have already answered that. The House of Commons Library paper, as I think most people would accept, is a neutral document and those were its examples. I used every single one of the 14 examples given, and they are in a very different category from what Donald Trump has said on this issue and many others.
Finally, I will deal with the point raised by my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh). In a recent Republican debate, Ted Cruz accused Donald Trump of having New York values. Both of them would be enriched by the values of my constituents in New York and beyond, who are hard-working, generous and welcoming. They may be rather bemused that we are fuelling that man’s publicity machine by having the debate at all.
Lucy Frazer (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes of the US Supreme Court said:
“The principle of free thought is not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought we hate.”
Of course, there are limits to freedom of expression, even in a libertarian democracy, where statements will cause real harm. However, if we fear all outrageous statements, if we fear a swell of support for unpopular views and if we fear challenge, we will stifle not only free thought but independence and liberty. We will lose the opportunity to rebut and to expose to argument, analysis and scrutiny, and we will lose the opportunity to win over those who may have listened, silently supported and agreed.
Limiting free speech does not always quash unwelcome beliefs. France has more laws restricting free speech than any other western democracy. It also has Europe’s largest far-right party. In 2009, Nick Griffin appeared on “Question Time”, watched by 8 million people. At the time, the BNP polled 6.26% of the national vote. In the first general election after that it not only failed to win a seat but fragmented in the polls. Last week, the Electoral Commission announced that the BNP had been stripped of its status as an official political party. The New Statesman referred to the poor performance on “Question Time” as a factor in eroding Nick Griffin’s popularity and the support of the BNP. To persuade those who may share the beliefs of a speaker, we need to do more than silence that speaker. We need to address the real grievances of those who may support them. We need to listen. We need to take note, and then we need to respond.
Tulip Siddiq
I thank the hon. and learned Lady, who is also my constituent, for giving way. Does she know that in the 24 hours after Nick Griffin had the platform of appearing on “Question Time”, 3,000 people joined the BNP?
Lucy Frazer
It is important to have free speech, so that we have debate. Nick Griffin’s appearance on “Question Time” will have evoked a number of responses. When there is an advocate for something, there will always be people who follow them. It may be a small minority. What we need to do is put those voices out there in order to slam them down. That, ultimately, is what has happened to the BNP.
Donald Trump’s statement that all Muslims should be banned from the US wrongly categorises an entire religion with a few extremists. His statements should be exposed as such. Now is not the time to ban him. Now is the time to say clearly that extremist Islamists are wrong and must be rooted out and stopped. Now is the time to say that the Muslim community is not Daesh. Now is the time to say that Muslims have given us such things as algebra and transformed the study of light and optics—discoveries that founded one of the bases for our modern technologies.
The other real difficulty is that Donald Trump is a presidential candidate. If we banned the leader of every country who made offensive, inappropriate or inflammatory statements or who took steps we did not approve of, we would have a much more limited foreign policy. Indeed, we may not even have a Leader of the Opposition.
I welcome both petitions and this debate. We live in a democracy that respects freedom of expression. When people make unacceptable statements, we need to use our capacity to expose their weaknesses and then ultimately defeat their arguments.
Kwasi Kwarteng
I fully appreciate the hon. Lady’s remark, but as other people have observed, the answer to Donald Trump’s ban is not to ban him. That does not make any sense to me, and I will explain why briefly. He is banning Muslims. In his own mind, he is saying that Muslims constitute a danger to the United States. That is what he thinks, and on those grounds he is banning them. We are doing the same thing if we ban him. We are saying that Donald Trump represents a danger to the United Kingdom, and on that ground we are banning him from coming. The implied logic is exactly the same. The circumstances are different, but the logical thought is exactly the same.
Tulip Siddiq
I thoroughly disagree with the hon. Gentleman when he says that this is exactly the same. It is not exactly the same: Donald Trump has said that he wants to ban all Muslims because of their religion. That is 1.6 billion people whom he wants to ban, because of their religion. The reason why some Members are asking for him to be banned is the rhetoric, the sentiment and the values that he has expressed. That is different from banning someone because of their religion. I hope that that point is clear to another Member who made the same point.
Kwasi Kwarteng
I have been very generous with interventions, but I want to clarify that point. I do not have much time, but I repeat: the ground on which Donald Trump is banning Muslims is not their faith; it is because he believes that they constitute a danger to the United States. That is the ground—[Interruption.] I am just explaining his logic; I do not agree with it. And I am saying that any case to ban Donald Trump would be on the basis that he is a danger to our civic safety. Logically, it is exactly the same.