Sir Bernard Jenkin
MP for Harwich and North Essex · Conservative · United Kingdom
“Despite long and historic disagreements between successive UK Governments and Israel, it has remained a steadfast ally in counter-terrorist efforts to keep our people safe in this country. We are now embarked, it seems, on a full diplomatic dispute with Israel and tit-for-tat expulsions of diplomats.”
“I would very much have liked to have discussed the medical devices questions arising from the Bill. The Minister made an incredibly short speech about that important matter. It is quite clear that these provisions are part of the covert dynamic alignment with the EU and the covert rejoin agenda being pursued by the Government.”
“I am as keen as anybody to get on with discussing the Health Bill, but this topic is too serious an opportunity to miss, given that the hon. Member for Leeds Central and Headingley (Alex Sobel) has raised such important issues. I really commend his speech and his initiative. Everybody should read it.”
“The Minister shakes her head, but she is yet to give a good reason as to why this measure is in the Bill. When we had an Adjournment debate in July with the then Minister for patient safety, the hon.”
“The chief executive of the CQC is wantonly conflicted in terms of looking after the safe space, so he cannot be the one left in charge of that function. The real point here is that we are missing the opportunity to save so much money. Governments keep having public inquiries.”
“I asked the Minister, in a letter I sent her after the debate in July, to give us the information on how much the transfer of all this would cost. Nothing has arrived. I never had a reply to the letter. Of course, the Government have changed the Minister and the new Minister for patient safety, the right hon.”
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“The Government’s original business case for the e-Borders scheme said that it would provide “the ability, for the first time, to comprehensively count all foreign national passengers in and out of the UK, improving public confidence in the integrity of the border and enabling a more accurate count of migrants for future planning and for informing the population count.” Of course, not everyone entering or leaving the UK is migrating, but if people are on a visa, it should be possible to measure when they enter and when they leave the country. Passport checks are all about checking whether people have a valid visa and whether they are on a watch list. Currently, although 80% or 90% of visas are scanned on entry or exit, we are told that those data are not used for counting in and counting out visa nationals. Why not?”
“In their response to our report, the Government said that the data gathered through the border systems programme “does not hold the information to directly estimate net migration” and that: “The Border Systems Programme is not designed to provide direct statistical measurement of migration flows”. My understanding is that that represents a significant downgrading of the Government’s original ambitions for the programme and a failure to deliver what was originally envisaged.”
“The ONS and the Home Office should move as quickly as possible towards measuring immigration, emigration and net migration using e-Borders data, so that at least a significant proportion of people can be counted in and out of the country as they enter and leave. The e-Borders scheme has now been replaced with the border systems programme, but it should still be possible to use it to count people in and out of the country. Those administrative data would give information about cross-border movements different from that provided by the IPS, but they would still not be without faults. In many respects, the data would give a deeper understanding of the comings and goings from our country.”
“Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans) said, the only sure way to improve migration data is to use the e-Borders information. That comes from the advance passenger information, or API, which airlines and other carriers provide to the authorities whenever there is an incoming aircraft or ship. “Using e-Borders data in the production of long-term and short-term migration counts would be a ground-breaking improvement that would offer several advantages over the migration estimates produced solely from the International Passenger Survey”. Those are not my words but those of the ONS.”
“The Government concluded against funding such a migrant survey after it was estimated that it would cost a mere £2 million, based on the survey design envisaged. Unlike the Government, I think that that would be good value for money, and that option was recommended by the Office for National Statistics. I hope very much that the Minister will deal with that in his closing remarks. A migrant survey could provide valuable information on the characteristics and distribution of migrants. That would increase the reliability of immigration estimates in relation to smaller geographical areas and be of some help to local authorities such as Westminster, which at the moment are reduced to doing surveys of their own. In the longer term, as the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz) and my hon.”
“It does not help us with the quality of the data for smaller groups of migrants or for local areas. The ONS could see what extra value it could derive from the IPS by, for example, asking respondents for various details, notably passport numbers but also national insurance or NHS numbers, which would allow responses to be linked to administrative data, but that would still not address the fundamental problem of the small sample size. Alternatively, there could be a survey more specifically targeted at migration. A large-scale face-to-face survey of migrants in the UK has previously been considered, leading to a feasibility report published by the Home Office in January 2011. I ask my hon. Friend the Minister to give that further consideration.”
“That, perhaps, is one of the shortcomings of Westminster Hall, Mr Walker. The question is how this situation could be improved. We suggested, and I suggested to the Prime Minister when he came before the Liaison Committee, that we should expand the size of the international passenger survey and therefore increase the size of the migrant sample on which the estimates are based. We were advised that if we spent an extra £15 million on the IPS, that would quadruple its size. That would halve the size of the confidence interval, meaning that there would be a 95% chance that the data were within 17,500 of the estimate, rather than there being a total margin of error, on a 95% confidence interval, of 35,000. That brings the range down, but it is a lot of money for not much improved accuracy and it still helps us only with the headline figures.”
“That is an interesting observation. The task of checking people’s luggage and what liquids they are carrying is far more complicated physically than checking passports or tickets or checking people in. However, where there has been a real will to try to reduce that anxious and tiresome part of the journey for passengers, great strides have been made in making a very painful process tolerable for passengers. Does that not show that where there is will, there is a way? We could get far more data from passengers as they go through ports of entry.”
“Just as an aside, if the implementation is no good, that means that the policy was no good, because there is no point in one without the other. We are of course outside the Schengen area, so exit and entry checks mean nothing unless we can check people coming across our borders from other European Union countries within the Schengen area. Will the right hon. Gentleman make it clear that his party’s policy is that we should be able to check any passenger coming in or out of the UK from or to another EU country regardless of the free movement provisions, and that we should be able to ask them who they are, why they are coming here, where they are going to, and all the other questions that we would ask any other person coming in or out of our country?”
“In my remarks, I raised the question of the 2011 study conducted by the Home Office into the expansion of the use of separate migration survey data. That would cost only £2 million, so is much better value than increasing the size of the international passenger survey. Is the Minister going to come on to that point in his remarks?”
“Friend—I think he said yes, sotto voce, but I will not require Hansard to record that comment, as I am not sure whether I understood him correctly. I thank you Mr Brady, and Mr Walker, for chairing the debate. We will keep an eye on the matters in question. Question put and agreed to.”
“Friend the Minister showed the extraordinary complexity of the issues in his response, and I am grateful for what he said. My parting thought for him is about not dismissing the fact that checks are made on passports—and will be made on visas—when people enter and leave the UK. We can surely use those administrative data in conjunction with other data. We were not calling for the e-Borders data to replace the international passenger survey data, but we do want to press the Government to get systems going to enable those data to be used to inform the survey data. That would give us far more confidence about the IPS data and the component parts of those data about where people are going and the groups within the sample. That is the passing thought that I want to press on my hon.”
“I hope that the Minister will consider that. My hon. Friend the Member for Windsor (Adam Afriyie) is right to say that if we want more granular data, we need to collect it. Despite what the Government say about the inadequacy of e-Borders or border systems data and advance passenger information, I cannot help but feel that we could make better use of it, particularly when it can be cross-referred with visa data information that will be collected from 2015. I commend the Opposition spokesman, the right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson), for his bipartisan approach. I draw comfort from his remarks and those of the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee. There appears to be a degree of cross-party consensus in support of the general thrust of our report and on the need to deal urgently with the issues it raises. My hon.”
“Thank you, Mr Brady, for taking the Chair. I thank all the right hon. and hon. Members who contributed to the debate—particularly two members of my Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Ribble Valley (Mr Evans) and my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner), who reminded us that we can help to inform our own immigration data by sharing data with other countries. I fear that the Chairman of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), is on the wrong track. He was complimentary about my report, I hasten to add, and I am grateful to him; but a massively larger international passenger survey is not the best use of resource, however enthusiastic the people doing it might be. His question about why arbitration on the e-Borders contract is taking so long was apposite.”
“I commend my right hon. Friend for being determined to create a different and more effective safety culture in the NHS, just as in the airline or oil and gas industries. Does he accept that publishing more data is only part of the equation and will not necessarily change attitudes and behaviours, particularly if those data are then gamed at another target? We must tackle attitudes and behaviours at source—in the operating theatre, the GP’s surgery and throughout the whole service—to get that better safety culture.”
“I echo the call for a debate on the situation in Iraq, although it is noticeable that Her Majesty’s official Opposition did not ask for such a debate, having not provided a debate on foreign affairs during consideration of the Queen’s Speech. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we need a general debate on foreign affairs, to cover not only Iraq but the crisis in Syria and the situation in Ukraine?”
“I am probably interrupting the Chair of the Standards Committee to make a different point, but on public confidence, why did Mr Mercer hear about the contents of his report before it was published from journalists briefed by people who were party to the report? Is that not a breach of privilege that the right hon. Gentleman should take very seriously?”
“They have a very difficult task, but they have produced a good report and one that Mr Mercer accepts. Indeed, he said how ashamed he was of his own behaviour. That is testimony to the honour of the man. We need to learn from this experience and see how we can improve our procedures to maintain their respect, impartiality and integrity. It does Parliament no good if the media feel that they can hunt down the contents of a report before it has been published—it undermines Parliament and it undermines the integrity of the proceedings of the Committee. I have nothing further to say, except that I very much welcome the fact that there will be a new Member of Parliament in the constituency, as there should be. Mr Mercer took the right decision and the courageous one in doing what he did.”
“I should make it clear that Patrick Mercer is my friend and that I admire many of the things that he has achieved in his professional life. He was the first to admit that he had behaved badly in this matter. I condemn his behaviour and wholly endorse the report that has been produced by Parliament, painful as it is. I raised the possible leaking of the contents of the report because it undermines the authority of the Standards Committee. I do not share the confidence of the Committee’s Chairman that it was just speculation, because there was too much certainty in what Mr Mercer was told. Although the Committee might not have concluded its proceedings, there may well have been drafts that informed the speculation, as the Chairman referred to it. I do not envy the Chair and members of the Standards Committee.”
“I am most grateful to my right hon. Friend for his endorsement of the work of the Committee on which I served. Will he take this opportunity to make clear that we enjoy parliamentary privilege not as a privilege but as an obligation and duty? It is a freedom we hold on behalf of our constituents; it is a protection for our constituents that their elected representatives can enjoy limited immunity in respect only of what we do in this House, so that we can act in their interests without fear or favour. It does not protect us from any aspect of criminal law should we commit any ordinary criminal offence, which is how it should be.”
“It is important to emphasise that parliamentary privilege rests solely on an understanding between the courts and Parliament, albeit that that rests on article 9 of the Bill of Rights. It is implicit that the Bill of Rights overrides every other Act of Parliament. All we are saying in the motion, for the avoidance of doubt, is that that is the case unless an Act of Parliament specifically says otherwise. In the absence of any provision in any Act of Parliament, article 9 applies and the courts, who do not wish to interfere in the proceedings of Parliament, will respect that.”
“I am sorry to interrupt my right hon. Friend again. The resolution does not need to be followed by any legislation. It is implicit that article 9 applies—end of story. The only time legislation might impinge on article 9, and the only time we are saying that it could possibly impinge on article 9, is if Parliament expresses that explicitly in a subsequent Act of Parliament. However, we do not anticipate doing that, so article 9 applies.”
“I support the hon. Lady’s response to the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) because he has just made the classic error of thinking that privilege refers solely to freedom of speech in Parliament, and it does not, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) said. The term “privilege” is a technical one that applies in many spheres of life; we talk about legal privilege for solicitors and the privilege of the courts, and we should not try to redefine the term, as we would be tempting the courts to start to adjudicate on the very thing we do not want to tempt them to adjudicate on. That shows the importance of her explicit endorsement of these two paragraphs of our report.”
“By a quirk of the rules, police offices are denied what is called “interim relief” in constructive dismissal cases, so he will cease to be paid from 6 June while he awaits his tribunal, which will not be until August or September. We are calling for Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary to investigate the Metropolitan police service in respect of the treatment of PC Patrick. We do not believe that the Metropolitan police service has treated him fairly or with respect and care.”
“Acting as a whistleblower, he tried to highlight serious concerns about police recorded crime and the target culture. We record the fact that we are indebted to PC Patrick for his courage in speaking out, in fulfilment of his duty to the highest standards of public service despite intense pressure to the contrary. I am pleased that the Minister for Crime Prevention has now written to me—he is on the Front Bench at the moment—to say that the Home Office is looking at a range of what he calls radical proposals to strengthen the protection of whistleblowers within the police. But this has all come too late for PC Patrick.”
“They put their lives at risk in the line of duty while they serve our communities. We see them around this Palace, ready to throw themselves between us and the terrorists if the need arises. Yet these same officers are deeply cynical about the quality of their leadership and its honesty and integrity. That is why we recommend that the Committee on Standards in Public Life conduct a wide-ranging inquiry into the police’s compliance with the new code of ethics and, in particular, into the role of leadership in promoting and sustaining those values. The most depressing part of our inquiry is the way in which the Metropolitan police have treated my constituent, PC James Patrick, who was our key witness. He says he has been forced to resign from the Metropolitan police.”
“What does the institutional dishonesty about police recorded crime say about their compliance with the core values of policing, which are meant to include accountability, honesty and integrity? That comes on top of all the other controversies that have raised questions about the values and ethics of the police and their leadership: Hillsborough; Stephen Lawrence; the attempt to hide the cause of Ian Tomlinson’s death in the G20 protests; Plebgate; Operation Elveden, about the police accepting payments from journalists to leak unauthorised information; just last month, four police officers under investigation for allegedly getting a burglar to confess to 500 crimes he apparently did not commit; and many other instances. I yield to no one in my admiration and respect for so many police officers.”
“The Home Office must accept responsibility for the quality of police recorded crime statistics and do more to discourage the use of targets. As a result of PASC’s inquiry, the UK Statistics Authority has already stripped police recorded crime data of the quality kitemark, “National Statistics”. The Home Office, the Office for National Statistics and the UK Statistics Authority have all been far too passive in addressing this problem, even though they have all known about it for years. Leadership by targets is a flawed leadership model, and that is what really must be addressed, because poor data integrity reflects the poor quality of leadership within the police.”
“Lax supervision of recorded crime data means that the police are failing in their core role of protecting the public and preventing crime. The main reason for this mis-recording is the continued prevalence of numerical targets. They create perverse incentives to mis-record crime, so a police officer is presented with a conflict: does he or she record “attempted burglary”, as was originally reported, or subsequently downgrade it to “criminal damage” in order to achieve the burglary target? That creates conflict between the achievement of targets and core policing values. We deprecate the use of targets in the strongest possible terms. But most police forces are still in denial about the damage that targets cause both to data integrity and to standards of behaviour.”
“I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for this opportunity to launch the Public Administration Select Committee’s report entitled “Caught red-handed: Why we can’t count on Police Recorded Crime statistics”. The Daily Telegraph has already described our report as “devastating”. That is because this is not just about inaccurate numbers; it is about the long crisis of values and ethics at the heart of our police force. Crime statistics are central to our understanding of the nature and prevalence of crime in England and Wales. They provide crucial information for the police, without which they would have no way of knowing how to deploy their manpower and resources. We found strong evidence that the police under-record crime, particularly sexual crimes such as rape, in many police areas.”
“I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his compliments, but I am not sure that that is quite what Sir Andrew said. What the Office for National Statistics has said is that crime may not be falling quite as fast as police recorded crime suggests, but the crime survey for England and Wales, which is a survey not a recording system, does corroborate the fact that crime is falling. That is the figure the Labour party relied on when in government and it is the figure the Government of any party are entitled to rely upon. On the substantive point that we need to improve the auditing of police recorded crime statistics in order to make them a more reliable source of data, the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right.”
“That should be regarded as a good thing, so long as we can corroborate that with the crime survey in England and Wales still showing a fall in crime. The Home Office has overall accountability to this House for the quality of police recorded crime statistics. So the Home Office, along with the Crime Statistics Advisory Committee, the UK Statistics Authority and the ONS, has a responsibility to ensure that the police recording of crime is improved, and overall the Home Office is accountable to this House for ensuring that the police recording of crime is of better quality than it is now.”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that. Yes, this is historical, but I am afraid that makes all the more damning the fact that police recorded crime is still being misrecorded in this country. Yes, the Home Office has handed this over to the ONS and the UK Statistics Authority, and the Home Office has ceased to set its own targets, but the Committee does recommend that the Home Office, which collects the data and gives them to the ONS, has an obligation to ensure that those data are recorded correctly. We lament the fact that HMIC has not been doing regular audits. Where a regular audit was done in the Kent polices there was an immediate increase in police recorded crime. We probably need to look forward to increases in certain categories of crime, as that would confirm that such crimes are now being recorded correctly.”
“Our key witness told me that the Metropolitan police is still full of target junkies. It will take a long time to change the culture of leadership throughout our police forces in England and Wales—this also applies to Scotland, although we have not inquired into Scotland—but it has to be done.”
“There are three steps to take to ensure more accurate crime statistics. One is regular audit. The second is to abandon targets. Many police and crime commissioners have abandoned targets altogether, because they recognise that they have a distorting effect on behaviour and attitudes. The third is that the police themselves need to emphasise the core policing values of accountability, honesty and integrity so that police officers at desks recording crimes recognise that, above everything else, recording the crimes effectively is a microcosm of the honesty, integrity and accountability that they must carry throughout their entire policing profession. It is these values that have been subverted by the target culture. That is the responsibility of both parties over a long period—it is not a partisan point.”
“They are: “Anonymity for the whistleblower from the point at which the allegation is made…‘sealed’ investigations so that, for a set period, no-one under investigation knows that it is happening …immunity from disciplinary/misconduct proceedings… financial incentives for whistleblowers, for example a share of recovered criminal assets from the case…protection against vexatious or malicious allegations.” All those options would have made life very different for my constituent.”
“We recommend immunity from disciplinary proceedings while a whistleblowing process is under way. That is standard practice in the financial services industry, nuclear industry, aviation sector, transport sector and many other industries, and it should be so in the police as well. I am pleased to say that, in a letter sent to me by my hon. Friend the Minister, a number of possible options have been included.”
“That shows that there must be a very wide divergence of practice across police forces, and it demonstrates why an investigation into this question is necessary, particularly for such a serious offence. I expect the same applies to many other offences, such as domestic violence and violence against women and some of the less fashionable offences that we have difficulty talking about.”
“I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his work on the PASC and for his question. I refer to chart 3 on page 17 of the report, which shows a remarkable divergence in the average no-crime rate reported for rape incidents. It is important to understand that no constabulary sets a target for rape. That lesson has been learnt, but the culture of downgrading rapes to lesser offences is embedded in the culture of the police. Generations of police officers have learnt that it is a good thing to downgrade the importance of crimes to make the figures look better. The result is a 20% variation across forces in how often they downgrade a rape to a lesser offence.”
“Friend is tempting me to apply for a fuller debate on the report so that Ministers can give a fuller response. Perhaps that can happen after the Government have responded in full to our report.”
“I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for his question. Sadly, I must tell him that there is not a single police officer on the streets or around the Palace who has expressed the least surprise about what we were told in evidence by PC Patrick and many other witnesses. They all knew that this was going on, and everybody has known that this has been going on in many police forces, possibly most police forces, for very many years. The fact that my hon. Friend has not been exposed to it is intriguing; I will say no more than that. Let me reassure him that I am immensely reassured that my hon. Friend the Minister is in the House today and has indeed participated in these proceedings. I have already had a meeting with the Home Secretary at which we have had a preliminary discussion about the report. My hon.”
“Our recommendation is that MOPAC should abandon targets. If it has slogans, they should be aspirations, not targets. The hon. Gentleman, who is on the Committee and for whose work I am grateful, is right that there are aspects of this that raise very serious questions about the ethics and values of the leadership of the police, particularly the Metropolitan police.”
“In our evidence, we heard that there was not enough internal or external inspection. When Kent police were specially audited a year or two ago, it turned out that there was substantial manipulation of crime statistics. Whether it was advertent or inadvertent, it was happening. The result has been a much cleaner bill of health for Kent. Regular audit and inspection is one of the things that must happen, and HMIC must make that a priority every year.”
“I am interested to note that Lincolnshire is one of the outliers in the table of the average no-crime rate for reported rape incidents that shows the downgrading of rape. As I look at the table, I cannot remember instantly whether that means it is very good or very bad— [ Interruption. ] My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) says that I should turn it upside down. The hankering after practical policing based on common sense outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) suggests that the police would be well advised to lead according to common-sense values and the values in the ethics code. If they do the right thing on the day according to those values, their leadership should back them.”
“It did not finish up in court—that was the point, wasn’t it? It was privileged. I thought the incident was bizarre and showed an extraordinary lack of understanding of where the police sit in the constitutional framework of this country. It seemed to me to lack common sense and I agree with my hon. Friend. I should say for the record that Cleveland, Surrey and Lincolnshire had a far higher no-crime rate than the national average when it comes to reported rapes. My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough should be asking his police why they record rape and then downgrade it so much more often than the vast majority of constabularies.”
“However, Parliament as a whole should be the guardian of that consensus, which is why any commission on the civil service should be a parliamentary commission.”
“The only question is how that can best be done. Some take the view that Ministers need more power, especially power to appoint and dismiss officials, while others believe that any move in that direction challenges the very principle on which the present civil service is founded. These questions should therefore be decided by Parliament, which is the only institution with the legitimacy and authority to do so. We can all agree that reform should be based on cross-party consensus, but that consensus cannot be a private one between Ministers and aspirant Ministers. It should be based on the widest possible range of evidence from those with practical and academic expertise and experience: think-tanks such as the Institute for Public Policy Research, Reform, and the Institute for Government.”
“Under our constitution, the Executive exercises the royal prerogative, and enjoys substantial control over the legislature and appointments to the judiciary. Governments come and go, and, in the absence of a codified constitution or formal separation of powers, it is this body of permanent officials that underpins the constitutional stability of our country. That is why a permanent and impartial civil service was established. The civil service has no separate legal personality: the Crown, Ministers and the civil service are, in law, indivisible. However, under the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010, Parliament rather than the royal prerogative is now the legal source of authority for the management of the civil service, and it therefore falls to Parliament to address the future of the civil service.”
“I support many of the current reforms, such as those involving procurement, the work of the Efficiency and Reform Group and innovations in IT and digital government, but who would disagree with the suggestion that reforms such as those, although necessary, are not sufficient? This is not to denigrate Ministers or civil servants; indeed, this is an opportunity for us to thank all civil servants and pay tribute to their dedication and achievements; but when concerns do arise, they all raise questions about accountability, trust—particularly trust between Ministers and officials—and leadership. Those are fundamental, and determine whether reform will succeed or fail. The civil service is one of the great institutions of state.”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered the Eighth Report from the Public Administration Select Committee, on Truth to power: how Civil Service reform can succeed, HC 74, and the Government response, HC 955, and the First Report from the Liaison Committee, on Civil Service: lacking capacity, HC 884, and the Government response, HC 1216. I shall be as swift as I can, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for giving me the opportunity to speak about these two reports. The main conclusion of both of them is that our civil service faces challenges that can be addressed only through the establishment of a cross-party commission on the future of the civil service in Parliament. Let me make clear at the outset that there is far more on which we can agree than disagree.”