My Lords, I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay, on his maiden speech. I look forward to hearing from the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, shortly.
I will use the limited time I have to talk about immigration and policing. In the Prime Minister’s introduction to the Government’s background briefing on the Queen’s Speech, he talks about a “fast-track NHS visa” scheme for healthcare professionals. Can the Minister confirm that the NHS will have to pay the immigration skills charge of £1,000 a year for each foreign healthcare professional it employs and that each foreign healthcare professional will have pay £625 a year to use the NHS, neither of which currently applies to EU nationals? What assessment have the Government undertaken of the likely impact of these changes on NHS budgets and on the recruitment of foreign healthcare professionals?
The Prime Minister also talks about an
“Australian-style points-based immigration system”.
Can the Minister explain how such a system will work in relation to auxiliary staff who work in low-paid jobs in the National Health Service, care workers employed in the social care system and foreign nationals employed in the catering and hospitality sectors?
The Prime Minister talks about “making our streets safer” by recruiting 20,000 new police officers. If the number of police officers leaving the service continues at the current rate, the Government will have to recruit more than 40,000 new police officers over the next three years, recruiting at a rate never previously achieved in the history of the police service. Is the Minister aware of the spikes in the rates of police misconduct and police corruption as a result of mass recruitment in the mid-1970s and mid-2000s? What steps are the Government taking to ensure that this does not happen again?
Of course, as the Prime Minister’s predecessor said repeatedly, it is not just about police numbers. British policing is based on consent—on the active support and co-operation of the public acting as the police’s eyes and ears, calling them when they see suspicious activity, passing on information and being witnesses in court. We would need vastly greater numbers of police officers were such co-operation to cease.
Blanket use of Section 60—“suspicionless” stop and search—undermines policing by consent. Only a small proportion of young black men are involved in violent crime, yet Section 60, a power that can be lawfully deployed only in areas with high levels of violent crime, affects a large proportion of young black men, the majority
of whom will not be involved in violent crime. Despite a Sunday Times article last weekend casting doubt on the effectiveness of Section 60 and research by the College of Policing showing that stop and search is not effective above relatively low levels, the Government want Section 60 to be used even more, lowering the authority levels required. Today, the BBC published research showing that killings in London have risen every year over the past three years despite massive increases in Section 60 stop and search and higher stop and search rates per head of population than anywhere else in the country. Outside London, where stop and search is used far less, homicides are down for the first time in five years. We cannot arrest our way out of the crisis in violent crime.
The proposed legislation to provide better protections for the survivors of domestic abuse and better support for victims is welcome, but my concern about the royal commission into the criminal justice system is that it provides cover for inaction over the lifetime of this Parliament.
When it comes to immigration and making our streets safer, this Queen’s Speech contains many provisions that do not appear to have been thought through, or where the evidence suggests that they will be ineffective or even counterproductive. They will certainly not compensate for the loss of safety as a result of losing such measures as the European arrest warrant, the reduction in EU workers as a result of abolishing free movement and the other benefits of European Union membership.
We will assiduously scrutinise the Government’s actions and legislation. With a sizeable majority in the other place, there will be no one but the Government to blame when, as the evidence suggests they will, these measures fail to produce their intended outcomes.
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