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Tag: Stuart McDonald

  • Stuart McDonald – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    Stuart McDonald – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Stuart McDonald on 2015-10-21.

    To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many (a) prosecutions have taken place and (b) penalty notices have been issued under paragraphs (i) 13 and (ii) 12 of the Accession (Immigration and Worker Authorisation) Regulations 2006 in each year since those regulations entered into force.

    James Brokenshire

    The number of prosecutions under Regulations 12 and 13 of the Accession (Immigration and Worker Authorisation) Regulations 2006, in each of the years the regulations were in force, 1 January 2007 to 31 December 2013, is shown in Table 1. The data in the table has been provided by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and is not held by the Home Office. MoJ Court Proceedings Database holds information on defendants proceeded against, found guilty and sentenced for criminal offences in England and Wales.

    The Regulations only allowed for employees to be served with a Fixed Penalty Notices (FPNs) under Regulation 13. The sanction against employers under Regulation 12 was prosecution through the Courts. The Home Office does not hold Management Information for this period which would explain why the prosecution numbers are low. Management information in Table 2 shows the number of FPNs notified to the Home Office as having been served in each of the financial years the Accession (Immigration and Worker Authorisation) Regulations 2006 were in force.

    The Home Office has no record of any Fixed Penalty Notices being issued to Croatian nationals working in breach of the Accession of Croatia (Immigration and Worker Authorisation) Regulations 2013. The Home Office has not issued any civil penalties to employers in respect of breaches of the Accession of Croatia (Immigration and Worker Authorisation) Regulations 2013.

  • Stuart McDonald – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    Stuart McDonald – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Stuart McDonald on 2015-10-21.

    To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, how many (a) prosecutions have taken place and (b) penalty notices have been issued under paragraphs (i) 15 and (ii) 16 of the Accession of Croatia (Immigration and Worker Authorisation) Regulations 2013 in each year since those regulations entered into force.

    James Brokenshire

    The number of prosecutions under Regulations 12 and 13 of the Accession (Immigration and Worker Authorisation) Regulations 2006, in each of the years the regulations were in force, 1 January 2007 to 31 December 2013, is shown in Table 1. The data in the table has been provided by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and is not held by the Home Office. MoJ Court Proceedings Database holds information on defendants proceeded against, found guilty and sentenced for criminal offences in England and Wales.

    The Regulations only allowed for employees to be served with a Fixed Penalty Notices (FPNs) under Regulation 13. The sanction against employers under Regulation 12 was prosecution through the Courts. The Home Office does not hold Management Information for this period which would explain why the prosecution numbers are low. Management information in Table 2 shows the number of FPNs notified to the Home Office as having been served in each of the financial years the Accession (Immigration and Worker Authorisation) Regulations 2006 were in force.

    The Home Office has no record of any Fixed Penalty Notices being issued to Croatian nationals working in breach of the Accession of Croatia (Immigration and Worker Authorisation) Regulations 2013. The Home Office has not issued any civil penalties to employers in respect of breaches of the Accession of Croatia (Immigration and Worker Authorisation) Regulations 2013.

  • Stuart McDonald – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

    Stuart McDonald – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the HM Treasury

    The below Parliamentary question was asked by Stuart McDonald on 2015-10-21.

    To ask Mr Chancellor of the Exchequer, pursuant to the Answer of 25 June 2015 to Questions 3601 and 3602, if he will make an assessment of the potential economic effect on Cumbernauld of moving the HM Revenue and Customs office there elsewhere, as proposed in Building our Future – Continuing the Conversation, published in May 2015.

    Mr David Gauke

    As part of the on-going thinking for the future and planning to move to regional centres, HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) has been looking at each region across the country in turn, taking into account local economic issues, business requirements, impact on current workforce and location principles.

  • Stuart McDonald – 2022 Speech on Manston

    Stuart McDonald – 2022 Speech on Manston

    The speech made by Stuart McDonald, the SNP Westminster spokesperson on Home Affairs, in the House of Commons on 28 November 2022.

    I thank the Minister for bringing his statement to the House, but it is another day and another very disturbing development. Our thoughts and condolences must go to the family and friends of the man who died at Manston.

    The Minister is right that it is important to emphasise that there is a very small risk to the UK population, but the converse is that, to those from nationalities that do not have an extensive vaccination programme, this is a very dangerous and contagious infection that can be fatal, as we have just seen.

    On the rate of the response, the Home Office seems again to be in crisis mode, having waited until we are in a really serious crisis. Were there no indications from colleagues on the continent that there were rising cases of diphtheria there? It was only a matter of time before cases arrived on these shores, so we should have had plans in place much further in advance. I welcome the work to improve the medical facilities at Manston, which we saw when we visited it as the Home Affairs Committee. The Association of Directors of Public Health has accused the Government of putting

    “asylum seekers and potentially hotel workers at avoidable and preventable risk”.

    Its president says that an offer to help Ministers cope was rebuffed, making the situation

    “far worse than it could have been.”

    Does the Minister want to comment on those assertions? He spoke of robust screening but, as far as I can tell, it is still only of people presenting with symptoms. Is there not a case for at least some degree of asymptomatic testing, so that the Home Office has an indication of whether a boat-load would be worth further investigation before onward movement?

    Finally, the Minister has spoken about procedures being put in place today, but does that mean that people were moved to new accommodation even though they were known to have diphtheria, or to have been awaiting test results, and how was that managed? What notification was there for health authorities in places of dispersal? Have people with diphtheria been sent to hotels without anyone being told? What protocols are in place to ensure that public health leaders have the information they require, because some have been complaining that there is zero information coming from the Home Office?

    Robert Jenrick

    I thank the hon. Gentleman for those important questions. The most important point to stress is that the advice of the UKHSA has been followed throughout. With any emerging health issue, the response has to be dictated by medical advice and the response has to increase along with the issue and the challenge. That is exactly the approach we have taken. When there were a very small number of cases, the approach of the UKHSA was that we screened individuals, that we provided medication and support for those who had symptoms, and that we ensured that the directors of public health in the community knew how to treat those people who responded later on with symptoms. Now that the number of cases is somewhat higher, it is clear that we have to up the response, which is why we are now ensuring that no one with symptoms leaves our care at Manston or at the accompanying secure hotel. It does mean that we need to ensure that the right data flows with the individuals—I think that is the point he was making—so that, if migrants arrive in a particular location, the directors of public health and the local NHS know as much as is possible about their pre-existing medical conditions, given the cohort of people.

    Now that we are operating Manston in the way that I would wish, meaning that individuals flow through it within a matter of hours, fewer people will be detected at Manston because they will be there for far shorter periods. It is important that we work with directors of public health to put in place the correct procedures in the community so that they can identify people, get them the treatment they need, vaccinate them where appropriate and ensure they are properly isolated.

    Finally, the hon. Gentleman asked a valid question that I too have asked of our advisers: is there a simple test we can apply to all those with diphtheria? It is the advice of Dame Jenny and UKHSA that there is not a lateral flow-style test that could be applied to all individuals while they are at Manston that would provide any degree of accuracy. However, we will be screening people thoroughly and, if there are any symptoms, they will be put into this new procedure.

  • Stuart McDonald – 2022 Speech on Local Authority Consultation on Hotel Asylum Accommodation

    Stuart McDonald – 2022 Speech on Local Authority Consultation on Hotel Asylum Accommodation

    The speech made by Stuart McDonald, the SNP spokesperson on immigration, in the House of Commons on 23 November 2022.

    I think we are all agreed in this House that it is important that the Home Office liaises in advance with local authorities, service providers, non-governmental organisations and local representatives. The Minister has made some commitments in that regard today, and we will obviously monitor closely how those are implemented and how they work. We should also be agreed, and I think we are close to being agreed, that hotels really should be a matter of last resort, rather than routine, so I have a couple of thoughts on how we get there.

    First, on where the Home Office spends resources, I hate to say it—well, I do not mind saying it—but the £140 million spent on Rwanda is a complete waste of money. Could the Minister confirm that about 4,000 or 5,000 caseworkers could have been employed for that sort of sum? Let us not waste any more money on that at all. Will he also look at the tens of millions of pounds that contractors are now raking in in profit through that scheme, and seek to provide that money directly to local authorities to procure accommodation in their communities?

    Secondly, on the backlog, as I have said before, there are thousands—tens of thousands—of Afghans and Syrians in the system who could be taken out of it with a quick decision. The inadmissibility procedure is a complete waste of time. It achieves nothing, and it clogs up 10,000 spaces.

    Finally, we did hear confirmation today that decision makers are among the lowest-paid civil servants going, but they make life and death decisions. Surely that has to be looked at again, and they need to be paid properly.

  • Stuart McDonald – 2022 Speech on Documents Relating to Suella Braverman

    Stuart McDonald – 2022 Speech on Documents Relating to Suella Braverman

    The speech made by Stuart McDonald, the SNP MP for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East, in the House of Commons on 9 November 2022.

    I think nobody in this Chamber will be surprised to hear me say that I think there are a million reasons why the Home Secretary should be nowhere near the office that she currently holds—whether it is her atrocious rhetoric about Rwanda, her desperate smears about a “Benefits Street” culture, her trashing of the Attorney General’s office or the fact that, as far as I can tell, she still thinks that the infamous mini-Budget was brilliant and worth sticking to.

    This morning, I joined colleagues from different Committees to visit Manston. I hate to report to the Minister that we did not notice an improvement there; rather, we noticed a significant deterioration, not because of the hard work of the staff there, but because of the overcrowding. As the shadow Home Secretary said, it is fair to say that the Home Secretary has significant questions to answer as to why Manston was allowed to move from being a strict 24-hour short-term facility to a place where families are having to spend days and weeks living on mattresses on the floor, not because of, but despite the efforts of staff, who have been placed in an impossible position by the Home Secretary.

    This afternoon, the Labour Opposition have raised security concerns, and of course they are perfectly entitled to do so. Indeed, it is something of an open goal given not only the Home Secretary’s own words, but those of many of her former and current colleagues—none of whom is here today, it has to be said—who have expressed doubts about whether they could accept what the Home Secretary says, publicly questioned a serious breach of security, and suggested that multiple breaches of the ministerial code occurred. In her words:

    “Pretending we haven’t made mistakes, carrying on as if everyone can’t see that we have made them, and hoping that things will magically come right is not serious politics.”

    But that seems to be a very good description of precisely what she is trying to do now, hoping that people do not fully understand what happened or that they forget.

    In fact, the only objectionable thing about those words is her characterising what happened as a mistake—and the Minister veered towards that description today as well—but she did not resign because of a mistake. Her own resignation letter confirms that she resigned because she quite intentionally used her personal email to share a sensitive Government document with someone outside Government. She knowingly and deliberately broke the rules, and she was therefore right to resign.

    Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)

    On 20 October, I raised with the Minister whether the Home Secretary had shared documents not just by email, but on WhatsApp, Signal or Telegram. Does the hon. Member agree with me that the Home Secretary’s letter to the Home Affairs Committee only talks about email, but there has been no certainty over whether any document—confidential, secret or otherwise —might have been shared on other social media messaging apps?

    Stuart C. McDonald

    The hon. Member raises a very fair point. There are all sorts of things missing from the Home Secretary’s letters—both her resignation letter and her letter to the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee—which raises all sorts of questions, some of which I will come to.

    The fact is that the Home Secretary took an incredibly blasé attitude to sensitive information. When the incident that prompted her resignation happened, unlike everybody else involved, she just carried on as if nothing of note had occurred. Her resignation letter downplayed the incident as “technical” and did not in fact present the full picture, as we have just heard.

    Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)

    My hon. Friend is telling it like it is. When I asked both the Home Secretary and the Minister responsible for national security if they would countenance an employee—a civil servant—being re-employed after such a breach, neither of them would answer the question. Is it not the case that they would not accept that in any circumstance, and it is just a disgrace that she maintains her position as Home Secretary?

    Stuart C. McDonald

    My hon. Friend makes an absolutely valid point, in that we are holding staff to a much higher standard than the standard to which the Home Secretary appears to want to hold herself.

    The other point I want to make is the contrast between how others responded on the day of these events and how the Home Secretary responded. When the staffer who was the accidental recipient of the draft ministerial statement picked up the email, he or she understood that it was an important matter. That staffer flagged the issue both directly to the Home Secretary and to his or her boss. In contrast, the Home Secretary just asked them to delete it and carried on with routine meetings, alerting absolutely nobody.

    When the Home Secretary’s colleague who employs that staff member saw what had been sent and how it had been sent, he too understood the significance. He emailed the Home Secretary directly to express concern about security and the ministerial code, and he made clear her response so far had been unacceptable given

    “what appears, on the face of it, to be a potentially serious breach of security.”

    He was concerned enough to consider a point of order in this very Chamber, and he approached the Government Chief Whip, yet while he was taking all these very significant steps, in contrast the Home Secretary had wandered off to Westminster Hall to meet a couple of constituents, still having alerted nobody.

    When the Chief Whip heard what had happened, she understood the significance. She WhatsApped the Home Secretary and then, along with her colleague, seems to have gone to track the Home Secretary down. More than that, the Chief Whip notified the Prime Minister’s private office. In contrast, the Home Secretary failed to notify anybody, until of course it had been taken out of her hands. Only on being confronted did the Home Secretary do anything about it, and she went off to speak to her special adviser.

    None of these events supports the Home Secretary’s claim of a rapid report to official channels. As one of her own colleagues expressed it, the evidence was put to her and she had to accept the evidence, rather than the other way round. Her sluggish response has only two explanations: either she was simply hoping to get away with her breach, head in the sand, or she totally failed to understand the significance of it. Perhaps it was both: she thought she could get away with it precisely because she thought it did not really matter. Indeed, I have heard almost nothing since to suggest that, if she had not been caught, she would not still be operating in precisely the same way today.

    Not only did the Home Secretary’s actions at the time show little regard for the seriousness of treating sensitive information in that way—so did her subsequent attempts at an explanation. Her resignation letter totally failed to mention that a sensitive Government document had been sent to an accidental recipient, referring instead only to the “trusted colleague” she sent it to. She claimed in that letter to have reported the breach “rapidly” on official channels, when in reality she carried on as if nothing had happened until she was caught. She talked of a “technical infringement” and she has since been at pains to point out that this was not top secret information. However, at paragraph 28 of her letter to the Committee Chair, she acknowledges that “of course” a draft ministerial statement is sensitive. Indeed, it was so sensitive that she could not append it to the letter to the Home Affairs Committee Chair. What is more, it could not even be shared with the Chair, except on a confidential basis. Yet she was happy to batter that off from her Gmail account to a trusted colleague with a quick, “What do you think?” Extraordinary complacency.

    To emphasise the point, next week, we will almost certainly pass legislation promoted by the Home Office that would see some people leaking protected information like that imprisoned for life, depending on the reasons they were doing it. I am not remotely suggesting that what the Home Secretary did is remotely comparable to the offences we will be passing in relation to the National Security Bill, but the fact that her own Department wants to protect that information from foreign state actors, with sentences of up to life imprisonment, puts quite a perspective on it. As has been pointed out, that is a double standard when compared with how other people would be treated in similar circumstances.

    There are still many questions to be answered. In her letter to the Committee Chair, the Home Secretary said that the document was emailed to her Gmail account simply because No. 10’s proposed edits had come in “too late” to print them off. So why not just email it to her Government account? The letter also says there was no market sensitive data in the leaked document. Why then did No. 10 apparently repeatedly brief that there was?

    The letter to the Committee Chair also reveals that a Home Office inquiry found six further uses of personal IT to look at sensitive Government documents. Despite efforts to downplay it, that is more than once a week. Is the Home Secretary really arguing that neither she nor the Home Office could come up with a better way to allow her to view documents while taking part in online meetings? As she notes in her letter to the Chair:

    “The Guidance on ‘Security of Government Business’ makes it clear that you should not use your personal IT…for Government business at any classification; and the Government’s stated position is that Government systems should, as far as reasonably possible, be used for the conduct of HMG business.”

    She knew all that, yet she deliberately and repeatedly sent those documents in breach of those rules. More importantly, how often did this happen in previous roles? The inquiry we have heard about clearly relates only to Home Office documents and her time at the Home Office alone. Are we really to believe this was the first time she had shared sensitive information with her “trusted colleague”?

    Alan Brown (Kilmarnock and Loudoun) (SNP)

    My hon. Friend is right to highlight the absurd excuse from the Home Secretary. Is not it the case that she could use an iPad for a phone call and a Government-issued phone to view documents? She clearly has access to more than one parliamentary device, so to say that she had to use her personal device is ridiculous.

    Stuart C. McDonald

    A whole host of arrangements could have been made that would have been far preferable to what the Home Secretary did, and it is extraordinary that she thought that was something she could do week in, week out.

    The shadow Home Secretary highlighted other reports of investigations: first, an apparent probe into whether the current Home Secretary, while Attorney General, leaked sensitive details about the Northern Ireland protocol; secondly, a probe by the Government security group at the Cabinet Office into leaks about the Government’s plan to seek an injunction against the BBC in relation to reports of a spy accused of abusing his position to mistreat a former partner. Apparently, that leak caused MI5 “concern”. According to another report, the Home Secretary has been subject to three official Cabinet leak inquiries this year alone.

    I appreciate that, ultimately, no conclusive evidence was found in these cases, but it is fair for us to ask whether these events and inquiries formed part of the Prime Minister’s deliberations before the Home Secretary’s reappointment. Did he seek advice from agencies? What precisely was the view of the Cabinet Secretary? Is it correct that he advised against her reappointment? All those are absolutely legitimate questions that the motion would help us find answers to.

    The ultimate question, though, is about the Prime Minister’s judgment. Given all these issues and concerns, the outstanding questions and the resignation just one week before, how on earth could he think it sensible and appropriate to reappoint the Home Secretary to such an important role in charge of national security? No doubt the Prime Minister thought it in his interests to appoint her—we all know why that was—but it does not seem that he weighed up the UK’s security interests in coming to that decision. It was, in the Home Secretary’s words, “right” for her “to go”. It is not right that she is back in the same post, and so quickly. In fact, it is ludicrous and everyone knows it. That, in a nutshell, is why we need to support the motion.

  • Stuart McDonald – 2022 Speech on Asylum Seekers Accommodation and Safeguarding

    Stuart McDonald – 2022 Speech on Asylum Seekers Accommodation and Safeguarding

    The speech made by Stuart McDonald, the SNP Spokesperson on Immigration and the MP for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East, in the House of Commons on 7 November 2022.

    I, too, congratulate the right hon. Member for North Thanet (Sir Roger Gale) on securing this urgent question and on his persistent scrutiny of these issues. Surely we have now reached the point where the Home Office can no longer be left responsible for the safety of those children. Hundreds are missing and thousands more are stuck in hotels outside the child protection system. Children are reportedly pressurised to claim to be adults and are increasingly misidentified as adults. There have been harrowing accounts of assault and rape; there is general evidence of fear and depression; and adults are not even being properly disclosure checked. Can we have a cross-Government taskforce, headed by the Prime Minister, to get children into local authority care instead of into more hotels?

    Progress in moving people out of Manston is welcome, but it massively begs the question why that was not possible last month. To help the Minister to free up accommodation, will he prioritise the outstanding claims of the 15,000 or so Syrians and Afghans, who should be comparatively easy to identify as refugees and to award their status? Will he suspend the pointless process that saw staff identify just 83 inadmissible claims out of 16,000 cases? For goodness’ sake, instead of wasting their time on that, they should be looking at asylum claims and the backlog.

    Robert Jenrick

    The hon. Gentleman is wrong to suggest that the UK Government pressurise any individual to falsely identify as a child. It is the people smugglers who do that; we are doing everything we can to clamp down on it. I have been to Western Jet Foil at Dover to meet the Border Force staff who try to make those assessments. At times, up to 20% of the adult males who arrive at Western Jet Foil claim to be under 18, when clearly the number is substantially less than that. We have already changed the law, which I think the SNP voted against, to change the way in which those tests are administered, and if we need to make further legal changes, we will.

    The hon. Gentleman is right to say that it is wrong that many children, in particular unaccompanied children, are in hotel accommodation. I want to change that. The way to do that is to encourage more local authorities throughout the United Kingdom to accept those individuals and to help them into private or state foster parenting arrangements. We have put in place a significant financial package of about £52,000 a year per foster carer per child to ensure that can happen, plus a £6,000 up-front payment to the local authority to help to accommodate that. The financing is available, so I want to ensure that more local authorities step up. If he can encourage those run by his SNP colleagues in Scotland to do so, I would be happy to support him.

  • Stuart McDonald – 2022 Speech on Visas for International Doctors

    Stuart McDonald – 2022 Speech on Visas for International Doctors

    The speech made by Stuart McDonald, the SNP MP for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East, in Westminster Hall on 2 November 2022.

    It is good to see you in the Chair, Mr Stringer. I also start by welcoming the Minister to his place. I wish him good luck; he probably needs it, as much as any Minister in Government, because his is an incredibly challenging post. We will, of course, have significant political differences on this topic, but it is an important issue, so if there is an opportunity for constructive and positive engagement, I am up for that, wherever possible. I thank the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness (Matt Warman) not just for securing the debate but, as ever, for his expert introduction to the topic and advocacy.

    Moving to the subject at hand, like other Members I will start by recognising the extraordinary contribution of non-UK nationals to all parts of our NHS. I suspect everybody in the room has benefited from that, never more so than in recent times. GP practice is no different, and nationals of other countries will continue to play an important part, both now and in the future. As the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness alluded to, figures suggest that 47% of new GP trainees in England in 2020-21 were international medical graduates.

    Another important context for this debate is the extraordinary pressure that our NHS is under, particularly in the light of covid, but also for all sorts of other reasons, which we could perhaps touch on in another debate. High vacancy rates are among them. As has been mentioned, challenges in recruitment and retention affect GP practices as well as everywhere else.

    Against that background, the hon. Member identified what at first seems to be a technical problem in the operation of the immigration system, but one which, when examined, is significant. A failure to solve it leads to some absurd and harmful consequences. As he pointed out, the pain will ultimately be felt by patients. He explained that the three-year GP training regime for IMGs leaves them, on completion, two years short of being able to apply for settlement. That is unlike other specialisms, which have longer training periods.

    That requires IMGs to find a GP practice that has become a tier 2 sponsor, which is not easy. The hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) alluded to statistics highlighting that, with half of all IMGs having struggled with the visa process, 30% having considered moving away from GP practice and 17% thinking about leaving the United Kingdom.

    The Minister’s predecessors appeared to dig their heels in and say, “We just need more GP practices to become tier 2 sponsors.” I agree with the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness that that prioritises Home Office bureaucracy above the health service. Ultimately, it is the wrong answer for patients who are struggling to access a GP. We are going to lose skilled and dedicated GPs as a result.

    There is one issue where I do have some sympathy for the Minister’s predecessors, and that is the rejection of the idea that a route to settlement should simply be shorter. Settlement is an important and significant thing. There are aspects of that where I am open to persuasion on the case to shorten routes generally and in some specific cases, for example, family members. However, an argument to shorten the route to settlement simply because a training course lasts a certain time is perhaps not the most persuasive. It is not one that I am closed to, but it is not one that I immediately find the most persuasive.

    However, the Home Office should be pragmatic about other possible solutions that have been put forward. Its current insistence that 8,166 GP practices right across the UK should just invest time—and over £4 million—in becoming tier 2 sponsors on the off chance that they might want to recruit an IMG is simply not realistic. The £4 million in fees from those GP practices would go to the Home Office—I wonder if that has something to do with its intransigence at the moment.

    The alternative approach of a practice only becoming a sponsor once it has already had an application for an IMG is also far from ideal. The delay that that causes is bad for all affected, and the pressure on IMGs to find a tier 2 sponsor to satisfy immigration requirements prior to their existing visa expiring means that they cannot wait. As evidence given to the Health and Social Care Committee earlier this year highlighted, newly qualified GPs have received removal letters from the Home Office soon after their qualification. That is absurd, because we not only need them but have spent tens of thousands of pounds on training them to do a job that we urgently need them to do. I hope good sense will prevail over the Home Office’s current intransigence.

    I now turn the other solutions, which I think are perfectly reasonable, that the Royal College of General Practitioners has put forward. The first solution is to create a new post-medical training visa that works in the same way as a graduate visa. The second is to create umbrella bodies that could operate as a sort of super-sponsor. That could be the NHS or whichever training body had already sponsored the first three years of the IMG’s presence here. Who knows—it could be the Royal College of General Practitioners itself. I do not have the answer as to which option would be best, but any of them would clearly be better than the absurd situation we find ourselves in.

    Steve Brine

    I have a suggestion, at least for England: the primary care networks or the new integrated care boards could quite easily act as an umbrella sponsor, thereby taking the bureaucracy away from the practices, which is part of their purpose.

    Stuart C. McDonald

    That is a valid proposition, and we could do the same with health boards in Scotland. If we knock our heads together, we can come up with a way to fix this. It just requires a little bit of pragmatism.

    There is a second issue I wanted to raise—when I saw the motion for this debate, I wondered if the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness would raise it. That issue relates to recent reports from the BBC flagging complaints of poor treatment and conditions for international doctors in private hospitals, as well as highly questionable recruitment practices. I will touch upon it briefly because it has not been raised, although it is important to draw it to the House’s attention and to see if the Minister will investigate and respond. There were reports from 11 October suggesting that doctors from some of the world’s poorest countries were being recruited, by Nuffield Health in particular, to work in private hospitals under conditions prohibited in the NHS. There are reports of doctors being on call 24 hours a day for a week at a time, not being able to leave the hospital grounds and, unsurprisingly, suffering from extreme tiredness, putting both patients and doctors at risk.

    Nuffield Health denies those allegations, but a British Medical Association and Doctors’ Association UK questionnaire of 188 resident medical officers adds some credence to the claims. It shows that 81% of respondents were recruited from Nigeria, and most complained of extreme working hours and unfair salary deductions. The conclusion of the Doctors’ Association UK was that we now have a two-tier system: one for the NHS and one for other international recruits in the private sector. I ask the Minister to look into that.

    That issue highlighted to me another fundamental problem with how the immigration system operates. We have all sorts of checks and regulations that focus on ensuring that people who come to work here abide by their visa conditions, and they include the doctors we have been talking about—the IMGs—where the Home Office is on their case as soon as they have qualified to see what they are doing next. However, little or no checks are done to protect people who come here. That is not just in the NHS and with doctors; I have been firing off parliamentary questions and freedom of information requests in relation to the agricultural sector. That is a sector wide open to exploitation, but as far as I can see there is no concerted effort to protect people from that exploitation.

    As the Minister will appreciate, Nigeria is a red-list country for recruitment. According to both the World Health Organisation and the Government, that is not where we should be finding doctors.

    Jim Shannon

    Does the hon. Member agree that, when it comes to the criteria used, one thing we should perhaps be seeking from the Minister is an assurance that greater weight will be given to the skills that people have, as opposed to the money they could earn?

    Stuart C. McDonald

    That is absolutely fair. The point I am making is that we should also consider—and in fairness, we do—where it is that we are recruiting from. We do not want to leave some of the poorer countries in the world without the skills they need.

    Nigeria is a red-list country, but the report highlighted that both the General Medical Council and the British Council are involved in establishing and overseeing a professional and linguistic assessment board test in Lagos. I encourage the Minister to look into those reports. I appreciate that he might not be able to tell us about them today.

    Various broader issues have been raised, including visa fees, pensions and so on. We could talk about the impact of free movement and how that has mired certain services, including GP practices, in red tape and bureaucracy, but we will keep that discussion for another day.

    I again congratulate the hon. Member for Boston and Skegness on securing the debate. Throwing out skilled and desperately needed GPs in whom we have invested tens of thousands of pounds in training is utterly absurd. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) put it very nicely, as he always does. The question is how we can help them to help us. There are pragmatic solutions available. This is an early test for the Minister on whether he will be a pragmatist or take what I would characterise as the more dogmatic approach of the previous Home Office regime. I very much hope it is the former and that he is a pragmatist.

  • Stuart McDonald – 2022 Speech on Overseas Chinese Police Stations in UK

    Stuart McDonald – 2022 Speech on Overseas Chinese Police Stations in UK

    The speech made by Stuart McDonald, the SNP MP for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East, in the House of Commons on 1 November 2022.

    I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton (Alicia Kearns) on securing this important urgent question, and I welcome the Minister to his place.

    These are really alarming and incredibly serious allegations, which, as the Minister says, have to be properly investigated. Indeed, the suggested international scale of these activities across 30 countries on five continents is actually pretty shocking. Given the international perspective, what discussions are the Minister and his counterparts having with colleagues in the EU and beyond about how they can co-ordinate on this matter?

    What steps can the Minister say have been taken to ensure that law enforcement and security services have the skills and resources to tackle the matter? This seems a recent and different challenge for them. Will he say a little more about the co-ordination with devolved Governments who have responsibility for policing?

    The Minister expressed confidence that the powers in the National Security Bill, which we have debated at some length, will be sufficient to tackle this type of alleged activity. Will he express a willingness to use those powers if these allegations are made out?

    Finally, does the Minister agree that, while our attention is rightly focused on the bad actors seeking to control and coerce Chinese residents, BNOs and others, it is all the more important that we remember and support the many other groups, businesses and individuals who do positive work in supporting their communities to contribute to our society?

    Tom Tugendhat

    I thank the hon. Member for the tone with which he has addressed these questions. This is truly a United Kingdom issue, and the way to address them is for the United Kingdom to work together.

    The hon. Member is absolutely right that there are wider dimensions, which include our friends and allies around the world. The Government have already been working with Governments around the world to make sure that we deal with the repression and oppression that we are seeing in different places. He will remember well the way in which the United Kingdom stood so clearly with the Government of Canada to call out the illegal detention of Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig. I am delighted to say that that will continue.

    The hon. Member is right that working with police forces across the United Kingdom—including Police Scotland, which does excellent work—is really important, but it is also important that they have access to the resources that we are able to bring as the United Kingdom. The agencies that do so much to support us all are essential.

    I am grateful for the hon. Member’s kind words about the National Security Bill. His support on that Bill has been incredibly important and demonstrates that this truly is a cross-party, cross-nation effort to keep the whole of the United Kingdom safe. He can be absolutely assured that I will not hesitate to use the powers in the Bill should they be required.

    The hon. Member’s question on the community is also really important. We need to make it absolutely clear that what we are resisting here is authoritarian Governments seeking to influence free people. We welcome people from across the world. We welcome people from communities that may be repressed at home but can be free here. It is essential that we champion those who can enjoy freedom here, and the Hongkongers are a clear demonstration that this Government and this country welcome those seeking freedom.

  • Stuart McDonald – 2022 Speech on Western Jet Foil and Manston Asylum Processing Centres

    Stuart McDonald – 2022 Speech on Western Jet Foil and Manston Asylum Processing Centres

    The speech made by Stuart McDonald, the SNP MP for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East, in the House of Commons on 31 October 2022.

    I thank the Home Secretary for her statement and join the whole House in condemning the frightening attack at Western Jet Foil and in sending our sympathy to all those who are impacted and, indeed, our thanks to all who responded so professionally.

    But responsibility for the disaster and dysfunction at Manston and for the unlawful detention conditions there lies squarely with the Home Secretary herself and her predecessor. She and they knew what was happening, including the numbers arriving, and she was provided with advice that by all accounts she did not act on. She has very carefully said that she did not block hotel use, but did she at any point avoid supporting new procurement? If not, why have we heard that her successor—or predecessor, depending on which way we look at it—had to intervene? Ultimately, what was a functioning facility in the summer is now totally unsafe, and that was on her watch.

    Looking to the future, what now? Unfortunately, the Home Secretary offers only the same old failed soundbites, discredited policies and nasty rhetoric. What we need is an expansion of safe legal routes, at a minimum reversing the loss of the routes under the Dublin convention, instead of spending £120 million on a disgraceful Rwanda “dream”. That could have trebled the number of asylum caseworkers working to clear the backlog. Why not fast-track claims from the 1,600 Syrians and Afghans, half of whom have been waiting for more than six months? If we make decisions about their cases quickly—95% or more will get asylum—they can move on and we can free up accommodation.

    On the Home Secretary’s letter today, last week she resigned and claimed that she accepted responsibility, but the facts suggest that she tried to dodge it and got caught. Why else did she find time to request that the accidental email recipient delete and forget it, yet notified senior officials and the Prime Minister only after being confronted? Those excuses will not wash.

    Ultimately, how can one so-called misjudgment last week be a resignation offence, yet the Home Secretary can stay this week after admitting to six of the same misjudgments? She has said that no documents were top secret, but how many were marked official and sensitive? Did she do similar as Attorney General? How do we know?

    The Home Secretary’s return so quickly after an admitted ministerial code breach is a farce. It reflects poorly on her and on the Prime Minister. Both should think again so that someone else can get on with the real work.

    Suella Braverman

    I refer the hon. Gentleman to the letter that I sent today to the Chair of the Home Affairs Committee, the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Dame Diana Johnson). I have been up front about the details of my diary on 19 October and co-operative with any review that has taken place. I have apologised; I have taken responsibility; and that is why I resigned.

    I hope that the House will see that I am willing to apologise without hesitation for what I have done and any mistakes that I have made, but what I will not do under any circumstances is apologise for things that I have not done. It has been said that I sent a top secret document. That is wrong. It has been said that I sent a document about cyber-security. That is wrong. It has been said that I sent a document about the intelligence agencies that would compromise national security. That is wrong, wrong, wrong. What is also wrong and worrying is that, without compunction, these assertions have been repeated as fact by politicians and journalists. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to clarify the record today.