Misuse of Nitrous Oxide

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Tuesday 21st July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Rosie Duffield]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that point. Kent police’s road policing unit has recently made a video highlighting the dangers. That is one of the things that they are really concerned about.

The data on those driving under the influence of nitrous oxide in fatal accidents is unclear, but anecdotally enforcement officers up and down the country will say that it is a big problem. Whitstable residents report to me that night after night young people are driving dangerously around the town. It is becoming a blight on our area and putting a strain on our excellent local police services. Come to Canterbury or Whitstable on a Friday or Saturday night, and you will see the drug being used everywhere.

When the users have gone home, they leave behind the consequences. They do not see the toddlers picking up the shiny thing from the beach the next day to play with. They do not see the dog trying to eat one in a park—including my own daft dog, I am afraid. They do not see the volunteers who put in hours picking up litter that otherwise would be swept out to sea, casually discarded after a few moments of fun.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

The point that the hon. Lady is making about items being discarded at the roadside is true of Pollokshields in my constituency as well. The local environmental group has been going out and finding that this is an increasing problem in the community. I thank her very much for raising it, because it is a growing issue and the Government should be alive to the problems that it is causing in our communities.

[Rosie Duffield]

I thank the hon. Lady. I will be mentioning the environment in a little while.

According to last month’s guest blog in the British Medical Journal written by three eminent voices from the pharmaceutical sector, despite the scarcity of information on the economic and health burden, a number of unsafe practices in nitrous oxide use have been reported, including inhaling it from the nozzle of a whipped cream dispenser, from plastic bags, or directly from a tank. Reported deaths have been caused by sudden cardiac arrhythmias and/or asphyxiation. Between 2010 and 2017, more than 30 people died in England and Wales from nitrous oxide use. The latest figures show an average of five people per year, but data on these deaths is not currently routinely gathered by hospitals. The number of patients presenting to healthcare services with neurological damage due to nitrous oxide consumption is expected to rise. It can cause hypoxia and brain damage, and in some cases can be highly and instantly addictive. Symptoms such as personality changes, emotional disorders, impulsive and aggressive behaviours, hallucinations, illusions and other psychotic symptoms can all be the result of nitrous oxide abuse. Despite the name, it really is no laughing matter.

Let us not forget another really important factor, as mentioned by the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss): nitrous oxide is a powerful greenhouse gas. It can stay in the atmosphere for up to 150 years, absorbing radiation and trapping heat, so not only is its misuse a blight on our society and a danger to people’s health, but it has an environmental impact too. These canisters will sit in landfills for ever.

It is clear that tighter regulations around the sale of nitrous oxide are now needed. My hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan) has written to Amazon about this recently, and it is a growing concern in his constituency. I agree with the British Compressed Gases Association, which is also calling on the Government to use their consumer protection powers for much tighter regulations on sales, and which says that legitimate users, such as those using it as medical pain-relieving gas, would not be adversely affected by tighter controls. I agree also with Professor Gino Martini and his expert colleagues, who are calling for provision of identification for the purchase of nitrous oxide, raising the age of sales to people over 25 and restricting quantities per purchase.

Covid-19: Support and Accommodation for Asylum Seekers

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Monday 29th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Before we move on, I would like to say that my thoughts and, I am sure, those of the House are with those injured in Glasgow at the weekend.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Home Secretary if she will make a statement on support and accommodation for asylum seekers during the covid-19 pandemic.

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for those kind words; they will mean an awful lot to my constituents.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Chris Philp)]

My thoughts and those of the Home Secretary and, I am sure, the entire House are with the victims of the appalling knife attack that happened in Glasgow on Friday afternoon. I would like to pay tribute to the brave first responders who, as always, ran towards danger to protect the public. They include Police Scotland hero David Whyte, who was very sadly seriously wounded. The suspect has been named as Badreddin Abadlla Adam, a 28-year-old asylum seeker originally from Sudan. The House will appreciate that I am able to provide only limited information on this case while the investigation is under way, but I can talk about the United Kingdom’s proud history of supporting asylum seekers.

Last year, the United Kingdom made 20,000 grants of protection or asylum, one of the highest numbers of any country in Europe. We welcomed more than 3,000 unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, the highest number of any country in Europe. Indeed, it made up 20% of Europe’s UASC intake.

The UK has a statutory obligation to provide destitute asylum seekers with support while their case is being considered. While asylum cases are being considered, asylum seekers who would otherwise be destitute are provided with free accommodation. The utilities are paid for, council tax is paid for and free healthcare on the NHS is available. Free education is available for those with children, and there is a cash allowance to cover other essential living needs, which recently increased by 5%, considerably more than inflation. The package needs to be viewed as a whole.

During the coronavirus pandemic, we have stepped up the help available to go beyond the statutory requirements that I have just laid out. We have paused the usual practice of asking people to move on from supported accommodation when their asylum claim is decided either positively or negatively, so that they can remain in supported asylum accommodation. As a consequence of that decision, which was implemented on 27 March, around 4,000 more people are in supported accommodation than was the case at the end of March, because people are still coming into the system, but nobody is moving on. We have therefore been frantically procuring additional accommodation around the country to meet that additional need. The circumstances in Glasgow are slightly different, but I suspect we will come on to the specifics of Glasgow, so I will answer those questions in due course. That is the principal measure we have taken to ensure that people seeking asylum have been looked after and protected during the coronavirus epidemic.

Where we have procured additional hotels, we provide full-board accommodation, including laundry services, personal hygiene products and feminine hygiene products. Wrap-around services are also provided, including welfare support, healthcare and access to mental health services. Asylum seekers also have 24-hour-a-day access to assistance via Migrant Help through a freephone number.

We are working at pace to increase the available accommodation so that we can move asylum seekers from hotels into more permanent accommodation as quickly as possible, which I think we would all agree is more suitable. Efforts are currently under way to do exactly that. Over time and in due course, we will be returning to a business-as-usual approach in a phased, proportionate and careful way.

We are committed to ensuring that vulnerable asylum seekers are provided with all the support they require. As our nation has been battling coronavirus, we have continued and will continue to look after asylum seekers. We will continue to drive forward the reforms required to support those asylum seekers who are in genuine need. I commend this statement to the House.

[Alison Thewliss]

There have been two deaths in hotel accommodation in Glasgow Central since the start of lockdown: Adnan Elbi in McLays Guest House at the start of May, and Badreddin Abadlla Adam, who was shot dead on Friday after carrying out a shocking knife attack, which left three asylum seekers, two Park Inn hotel staff and Police Constable David Whyte in hospital. My thoughts are with them and their loved ones, and my thanks go to the emergency services who so bravely and swiftly dealt with a terrifying situation.

The Minister came to the House less than two weeks ago to hear the concerns raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens). Our concerns persist. At the start of lockdown, the Home Office contractor Mears moved 321 people from initial accommodation in serviced flats across Glasgow into city centre hotels. It did not consult, as it is obliged to do, with Glasgow City Council or anyone else. Contrary to the oral and written evidence to the Home Affairs Committee by Mears boss John Taylor, those people included pregnant women, trafficked women, torture victims, family groups and vulnerable people, young people included, two of whom ended up in hospital on Friday. They were given little notice: according to the Scottish Refugee Council, one family with food on the hob and clothes in the washing machine were given half an hour to gather their belongings.

One of my constituents was a friend of Adnan, who died in McLay’s Guest House. He has faced extreme trauma because of that and has asked to be moved, but is still in that guest house two months later.

I have some questions for the Minister. First, which Whitehall source led the BBC to report that three people had been found dead, which was not true and caused a great deal of distress in my constituency? Mears has misled Committee members—elected Members—and has now admitted that no vulnerability assessments were carried out. When did the Minister find out that Mears had lied to everybody about this, and will he suspend its contract? Will he immediately reinstate the meagre £5.37 a day to allow asylum seekers a small but important degree of dignity? Will he halt any evictions while this outbreak is going on? Will he work with Glasgow City Council, organisations in Glasgow, the Scottish Government and asylum seekers themselves to return them to appropriate accommodation as soon as possible? Will he authorise an independent inquiry into asylum accommodation, which is very urgently needed? Lastly, will he take responsibility and apologise for a saga that has heaped trauma on to already vulnerable people in Glasgow and across the UK?

[Chris Philp]

I thank the hon. Lady for those questions. She started by asking about the move of 321 people in Glasgow from serviced apartments into hotel accommodation, which occurred around the end of March. That was a separate process from the one I described earlier, involving the extra 4,000 places. The contractor, Mears, moved those 321 people from the serviced apartments into hotels because it was judged that, as the coronavirus epidemic took hold, the serviced apartments were not appropriate and not safe. It was done for safety reasons, and that has been entirely borne out by the subsequent statistics. Glasgow accommodates slightly over 5,000 asylum seekers, as the hon. Lady will know—many of them are in her constituency—and during the coronavirus epidemic over the last three months or so, of those over 5,000 service users, only two have tested positive for coronavirus, and both, I am pleased to say, have fully recovered. Among those people accommodated in hotels there has not been a single confirmed case of coronavirus. So the steps being taken to safeguard the public, and to safeguard the asylum seekers in particular, have been successful.

The hon. Lady asked about the plans for the future, and I can confirm that it is our plan to move people out of those hotels into more regular mainstream accommodation as quickly as possible. That was always the intention; it was only ever a temporary measure, and that applies to hotel accommodation, of course, in the rest of the United Kingdom as well as in Scotland. But I would say that these hotels are of good quality. The one involved on Friday was a three-star Radisson hotel; it was a good hotel with substantial facilities, including en suite showers for every single room.

The hon. Lady asked about evictions and whether people are being asked to move on, as would ordinarily be the case. That is currently not happening, as she knows, following the announcement on 27 March, but in due course, as life returns a little bit more to normal and now that the ban on moving home has ended, we will be returning to normal over time, but it will be done in a very careful and phased way. Nothing will be done in a rush, and I would point out that those who have successful asylum grants will actually be better off with universal credit when they move on, so it is in their interests as well.

There are a number of questions that the hon. Lady and her colleagues from Glasgow asked me in a letter dated a week ago today, 22 June. I do now have detailed answers to all those questions. I will be sending them in writing, to the hon. Member for Glasgow South West (Chris Stephens) in the first instance, in the next 24 to 48 hours, and then meeting with all Glasgow MPs who wish to meet her to go through those in detail either later this week or at the latest early next week.

Covid-19: Asylum Seeker Services in Glasgow

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Chris Stephens]

At the very start of my speech, Mr Deputy Speaker allowed me to say a few words to condemn the violence we have seen in Glasgow tonight, as I am sure the Minister will. There is no place for far-right thuggery anywhere in the United Kingdom. People are entitled to protest peacefully if they think the Government are not making the correct decisions. A peaceful protest was planned for tonight and they were met with thugs. I am sure that we will see and hear more about that on the news later this evening.

I have a couple of questions for the Minister. May I urge him to please urgently reconsider and confirm to me today in writing that he will not restart any support cessations, or the evictions that will inevitably follow, without the express agreement of asylum local authorities, public health directors, and, where relevant, devolved Administrations? Will he confirm that the last meeting to have taken place with local authorities, political leaders and Ministers was just less than a year ago, when the right hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) was the Immigration Minister? What does that say about the Home Office and its relations with political leaders in local government dispersal areas? Can he tell us when the next meeting with the local government dispersal areas will be?

On the acute risk of covid-19 and severe illness and death for BAME communities, I turn briefly to a critical matter touched on earlier that is of the utmost public interest. As the evidence is now overwhelming that BAME communities living in areas of deprivation and often higher population density are at an acutely high risk of contracting covid-19 or of dying from it, this already high risk will escalate if BAME communities are made homelessness. The asylum seekers are from BAME groups, with people from Bangladesh, Pakistan, India, Nigeria, Sudan, Afghanistan, and China, among many others. They are at a higher risk of dying from covid-19. Surely given that, the Minister must not end, but extend, the ban on asylum support cessation and evictions. It would be even more irresponsible in public health and safety terms to restart business as usual. Given the evidence about those who are homeless catching covid-19 and, for BAME communities, of dying from it, will the Minister urgently extend the ban on asylum support cessation and evictions, and set out how he is paying due regard to this public sector equality duty in deciding to end the current pause on cessation and evictions?

My third point is about hotel detentions, which was the subject of tonight’s peaceful protest in Glasgow. I have read the exchanges between Mears and the Home Affairs Committee. I have seen that the asylum charities have had to supply supplementary evidence. I have read the reports in the media and new media, and I have read the Minister’s letter to Councillor Jen Layden, so let me lay out the facts.

A decision was taken by Mears in the first week of lockdown, on 23 March, to quickly uproot 300 asylum seekers from single-occupancy or two-bedroom serviced apartments in the city—de facto households—into hotels. Asylum seekers have contacted my office and the offices of asylum charities to say that asylum seekers were bundled into vans with no social distancing and transported to these hotels—not quality hotels by any manner of means. In some of these hotels, the food provided has been mouldy and unfit for consumption, and in some it is culturally inappropriate, to the extent that around 20 asylum seekers are currently on hunger strike.

Asylum seekers have contacted my office to say that, due to the food provided, they have been unwell. That is not acceptable. It is so bad that charities have had no other choice than to step in and provide food. I can confirm, as a trustee of the Feeding Britain charity, that it has agreed to contribute to the provision of meals that are of sufficient quality and cultural appropriateness for families. I should add that 300-plus people uprooted from their serviced apartment accommodation, on arrival in the hotels, had all financial support cut off, which is not something that was required by asylum support. However, the Government and the Department chose to do that, and people are suffering every day. How would we feel when we leave this room today—how would any of us feel—if we were told that we had no money at all?

There is no social distancing and health concerns are too often ignored or met with a dismissive attitude. Claims made in ministerial correspondence that organisations such as the Red Cross and the Scottish Refugee Council have inspected the site and raised no concerns are denied by those organisations. As the Red Cross put it:

“I have confirmed with our operational staff that the offer of a visit to hotel accommodation was not taken up by our staff due to public health guidelines advising against all non-essential travel, this however may change as we transition out of lock down”.

The Scottish Refugee Council said:

“We declined the first invite to a hotel for lockdown public health reasons. We accepted the second invite to visit one of seven hotels in use, which we did, but we said to Mears before then, during it and after that visit, that there is not much we can meaningfully say on conditions and how people feel, on the basis of one short visit to one location. Mears accepted this was the case.”

It is the case that the decision to place asylum seekers into hotels results in those individuals losing that state financial support. The argument that this is not a cost-cutting exercise just does not wash, and sadly, there has been one tragic death.

Can the Minister confirm whether, on what date and to whom in Glasgow City Council Mears gave notice of the plan, with effect from 27 March, to move those 300-plus asylum seekers who were already on section 98 support and who were in serviced apartments in the city? Did Mears not give advance notice to the council in that regard?

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

The case to which my hon. Friend has referred was in my constituency. A young man called Adnan passed away at the start of May in temporary and inappropriate hotel accommodation with insufficient mental health support. Does my hon. Friend agree that the conditions that vulnerable people are expected to live in are entirely inappropriate, and does he share my concern at the reports from the Glasgow No Evictions Campaign of two further people in temporary hotel accommodation who were refused medical assistance over the weekend by staff at the hotel and Mears staff?

[Chris Stephens]

I am aware of those claims, and I would say to my hon. Friend that the Home Office must immediately intervene and establish the facts in that regard. If people need medical care, they should get medical care. Indeed, the Minister’s letter to Councillor Jennifer Layden outlines that there is supposed to be immediate medical care for those asylum seekers who are in hotels.

A further question to the Minister relates to deaths that take place in asylum accommodation. Will he set out what steps his Department takes in relation to a death in asylum accommodation? I understand that he may not be able to talk about the current case, but can he signpost me to the policy that the Home Office follows in these situations? Lastly, can he tell me when hotel detentions will end and when asylum seekers will be returned to suitable accommodation?

In closing, I can tell the Minister that Glasgow is a political village. People know when someone is not telling the truth or the full facts. They know when someone is trying to pull the wool over their eyes. A number of things in his correspondence to the council are simply not the case. In Glasgow, asylum seekers are our neighbours and friends. They are part of the community. Any move to detain them in hotels or to evict them from their accommodation will be met with the same resistance that led to the rent strikes led by the great Mary Barbour, and the same resistance shown by the great Glasgow Girls. All we ask is that our neighbours, our fellow Glaswegians, are treated with respect, because that is what they deserve.

Public Order

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Monday 8th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He will know of the operational independence of our police forces. Obviously, police and crime commissioners have responsibility for the totality of policing within their force areas. When it comes to resource and support of our police officers, I am unequivocal: we have given the police the highest funding uplift in more than a decade; we are equipping and training them so that they are equipped at the highest level and to the highest standard, and that, of course, will continue.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP) [V]]

The use of rubber bullets in the UK is, thankfully, rare, but not so in the US. It has been identified that the bullets have a 15% rate of permanent disability and a 3% fatality rate. Can the right hon. Lady assure me that they will not be used here, and, if they will not be used here, will she end their export to the US?

[Priti Patel]

I have just been reliably told by the Policing Minister that rubber bullets are not authorised for use on the mainland.

Points-based Immigration System

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Monday 24th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise the EU settlement scheme. She will have heard me say that so far 2.8 million people have been granted settled status, and there have been over 3 million applications.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

My constituent Naseer Afridi is one of many highly skilled migrants who have been put into debt and bankrupted as a result of this Government’s attitude to migrants in paragraph 322(5) of the immigration rules. Does the Home Secretary not realise how insulting it is when she says that she will bring in highly skilled migrants, given that these highly skilled people have been treated so badly by her Government?

[Priti Patel]

I would say the complete opposite. The system that we will bring in will end discrimination and show that we are being firm and fair. Everybody who has the right level of skill can come to the United Kingdom, and they will be treated equally and fairly.

Windrush Compensation Scheme (Expenditure) Bill

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Money resolution & Programme motion
Monday 10th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Stuart C. McDonald]

As I said at the outset, I welcome all the consultation that is happening. I also welcome the role that Martin Forde has played, but we do not have to simply take every chapter and verse of the design that he comes up with. Ultimately, we are the politicians and this is the Government, and we can do things slightly differently if we wish to. The Immigration Minister has already made some changes to the scheme. All I am saying is that there are changes that can make the scheme fairer and more generous, and I will continue to make that case. I absolutely respect the role that Martin Forde has played and I do not mean to diminish it in any way at all.

As we speak just now, lots of folk are having to be helped through the system by pro bono lawyers, volunteers and even students. Not only are difficult concepts of immigration and nationality law involved, but the process of documenting losses and damages is often not easy. Given the significance of these applications to the people making them, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan), it is only right that legal aid funding be made available. Ultimately, is it not a bit rich for the Home Office, an institution that completely failed to understand its own immigration rules and laws despite employing an army of policy experts and lawyers, then to turn round and tell victims of those failures that they do not need legal advice? The Home Secretary herself referred in her speech to applications being complicated. That is why legal aid funding should be made available to all the victims.

The fourth issue is the time limit. We welcome the Minister putting the deadline back—the original might even have been capable of legal challenge—but we suspect that there may need to be a further rethink in future. We are also concerned that if a deadline remains, there must be generous provision for those who miss it and a very low threshold for considering reasonable excuses. That is necessary, given the vulnerabilities and isolation that many victims will have suffered. It is also necessary because the Home Office has limited its proactive search for victims to Caribbean countries, despite being told by the NAO that its reasons for not proactively searching for victims elsewhere do not add up. That must be revisited.

Fifthly, we share concerns that many of the limits, tariffs and caps in the scheme are wholly inappropriate. The range of immigration application fees that are recoverable is unduly restrictive, and so too are limits placed on legal fees related to those applications. Some of the lump sums seem surprisingly low. Right across access to social security benefits, housing, employment and education, we cannot accept restrictions on possible total awards. Why is the scheme not aiming to come closer to providing restitution for actual losses, rather than very limited broadbrush payments?

Sixthly, we are concerned about provisions that allow for compensation to be restricted for what essentially seems to be a form of contributory negligence, as well as for serious criminality. On the first point, how can it be right for the Home Office to say, “If only you’d contacted us, things would have been sorted,” and use that as a reason to reduce compensation? For many, simply looking at the eye-watering application fees would have been sufficient to think that fixing the situation was impossible. Others who did try to contact the Home Office to remedy their status ended up the subject of enforcement action and in immigration detention.

It seems that unsuccessful applicants were automatically placed in the migration refusal pool and therefore were at risk of removal, so who can blame people for not attempting the dangerous and seemingly insurmountable task of proving status and contacting the Home Office? After all, this Department was sending out “Go home” vans, but now we are saying in retrospect that at that same time, people suspected of being here illegally should have got on the phone to the Home Office to rectify their situation. That seems wholly unrealistic. The insistence that people would usually have contacted the Home Office within 30 days bears little resemblance to reality and could have severe implications for significant loss of earnings claims. We welcome the Minister’s announcement that the range of actions that the Home Office will accept as attempted mitigation is to be broadened, but we seriously question whether any such deductions are appropriate at all.

On criminality, we are unconvinced by the appropriateness of the provisions. Part of the guidance on this has been redacted from public view, and another section refers to situations where the

“offending was of such a nature that makes it inappropriate to make an award in whole or in part”,

which is vague and lacks clarity. As a point of principle, the fact that someone has a criminal record surely does not mean that the person is not owed compensation when they are wronged by the Government.

Finally, there is a huge issue over what caseworker guidance says about the standard of proof in certain cases. As a general rule, the guidance states that caseworkers should

“take a holistic view of the claim where there is a lack of supporting evidence and decide the claim on a balance of probability.”

That is welcome and as it should be, but a list of exceptions is then provided, including claims for loss of earnings, reimbursement of private medical fees, reimbursement of international student fees and loss of access to banking. The guidance demands that caseworkers

“must be satisfied beyond reasonable doubt before making an award in these cases.”

That is the criminal standard of proof. I cannot for the life of me see why a loss of earnings claim for a Windrush victim should require to be proved to the criminal standard of proof, rather than the usual civil standard. That seems pretty outrageous, and I look forward to hearing why that is in the guidance. Members have raised various other issues with the scheme, and I look forward to exploring those in Committee.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

My hon. Friend has laid out issues with the scheme as it stands and improvements that could be made. There are still ongoing cases with the Home Office where people such as highly skilled migrants have lost huge sums of money, had to fight in the courts to get their status proven and had decisions overturned in their favour. Does he agree that there needs to be a further look at compensation schemes where the Home Office has clearly got it wrong?

[Stuart C. McDonald]

My hon. Friend makes a perfectly valid point, and I fully support what she says about those individuals.

That brings me nicely to the concluding part of my speech. The Secretary of State was right to say that compensation cannot be an end to the matter. As one victim, Judy Griffith, said:

“I do think that we deserve compensation. But there is no amount that can truly reflect the fear and anxiety, frustration and ill health we have suffered.”

Indeed, the way we respond to what has happened must go way beyond the compensation scheme. It is about completely overhauling the institutions and hostile environment policies that led to this situation in the first place. Instead of defending the right to rent scheme in court, the Government should be scrapping it. It is about asking whether the public sector equality duty, at 10 years old, is working properly, particularly when it comes to making immigration policy; I think it is self-evident that it is not.

It is about listening to concerns that many EU citizens will face an even worse prospect if they miss the settled status scheme deadline; the shadow Home Secretary was right about that. It is about ensuring urgent publication of the Williams lessons learned review and responding. It is about no longer pricing people out of their rights, especially their right to British citizenship. And it is about a full-blown apology—not just for the fact that this all happened, but for the fact that Government caused it to happen.

Deportation Flight to Jamaica

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Foster]

Absolutely. Those committing criminal offences in this country should have no doubt that I and the Home Secretary will ensure that they face the penalties prescribed by law, and they will be judged on their criminality, not their nationality.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

As the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on immigration detention, I am deeply concerned by some of the implications of this flight. The Minister did not answer the question from the Chair of the Select Committee, so can I ask whether he is aware of the outages of phone signal at Harmondsworth and Colnbrook immigration removal centres exposed by Detention Action, and whether all the people on the flight had access to functioning mobile phones so that they might access legal representation?

[Kevin Foster]

It has to be said that one of the people on the flight did a TV interview this morning, so there is provision for communications. Again, we have met the legal thresholds and the legal test. Ultimately, this is about whether we wish to deport serious or persistent offenders who have committed a range of offences. Many people will be watching with astonishment the attitude on the Opposition Benches.

Oral Answers to Questions

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse]

I am more than happy to endorse my hon. Friend’s remarks. He has been a champion for his part of London for a long time before coming to this House. He is quite right to have high expectations of the Mayor of London, whose efforts on crime have sadly disappointed during his time as Mayor thus far.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

T6. Glasgow has had plans for a medically supervised drug consumption room since 2016, and the evidence worldwide points to the efficacy of such rooms, so when the UK Government hold their drugs summit in Glasgow later this month, will they act on the evidence and bring in solutions for urgent change, or will it be more of the same from this Government?

[Kit Malthouse]

I am sure that the issue of drug consumption rooms will appear in the discussions during the drugs summit, but I repeat what I have said to the Scottish Affairs Committee on this matter, which is that the Scottish National party’s obsession with drug consumption rooms is a distraction from the major effort that can be put into this issue. The irrefutable evidence from across the world is that treatment is by far and away the best way to prevent drug deaths. However, it is no surprise that the SNP should seek to distract in this way, not least because the SNP Government have cut drug treatment funds in Scotland over the past few years.

Prevent Programme

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Brandon Lewis]

My right hon. Friend has given a very stark and concerning example of the kind of issues and details that Prevent and indeed our police deal with. He is right to highlight the education sector, which in 2017-18 accounted for some 33% of referrals to Prevent, which works across extremism and not just in one particular area. I will certainly follow up with him directly on the issue he has raised to make sure that this gets proper attention.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

I have been a member of Scottish CND for many years. Does the Minister agree with me that it is ludicrous, perverse and offensive that an organisation of people peacefully protesting indiscriminate murder with nuclear weapons has ended up in this document?

[Brandon Lewis]

The police are reviewing the document. As I said earlier, it is a guide that is there to help the police identify and understand a range of organisations they may come across. It does not in any way suggest that membership of or affiliation with non-proscribed groups would be sufficient to trigger some kind of Prevent referral, or that we would consider non-violent protest as a potential indicator for extremism. I can give her the assurance that, as I say, we protect people’s right to freedom of speech and the right to protest, which I think is an important part of our society, and this document is being reviewed.