Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Andy Slaughter and Victoria Atkins

Tuesday 24th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising this, and I know the concerns his community have. As he rightly says, I visited Thorn Cross to see for myself and to ask the governor what can be done to improve the abscond rate. This is an open prison, so it is right that the assessments of risk for each prisoner entering Thorn Cross must be as full as possible to understand whether they have ties that may cause them to abscond from an open prison. What I have done is commission a further look into the assessments that are conducted nationally to ensure that the team at Thorn Cross are able to manage the people who are staying there as well as possible for the local community.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Given the constitutional importance of his role, is the Lord Chancellor considering his position in the Cabinet in the light of the Foreign Affairs Committee report on the withdrawal from Afghanistan?

Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme

Debate between Andy Slaughter and Victoria Atkins

Thursday 6th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I thank my hon. Friend and I pay tribute to the very moving speech he gave in this Chamber over the summer. On the schemes being superseded by the ACRS and ARAP, if I may, I will discuss that with him outside the Chamber, because I just want to be clear about what schemes he is responding to. Our aim throughout is to get eligible people to the United Kingdom as quickly and as safely as possible, and then to settle them well within our country.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Around 200 Afghan constituents have contacted me since August. In the main, they have either dependents stuck in Afghanistan or relatives who are at serious risk because they worked in support of coalition forces but do not qualify under the restrictions of the ARAP scheme. Can the Minister explain how those groups will be helped by her scheme? To me, and I suspect to them, it looks like a brick wall.

[Victoria Atkins]

Again, I hope the hon. Gentleman will appreciate that I cannot analyse 200 cases off the cuff at the Dispatch Box. The ACRS has now been launched and the ARAP scheme was launched some time ago, and assessments are being conducted to refer eligible people to those schemes. The family reunion rules are set out in the immigration rules, and we are working with third countries and other international partners where we can to try to secure routes outside of Afghanistan to the United Kingdom.

Afghanistan Policy

Debate between Andy Slaughter and Victoria Atkins

Monday 13th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

Again, I really cannot be expected to make decisions such as the hon. Member describes at the Dispatch Box. The ARAP scheme has been defined by the MOD. We are setting out the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme. If there are queries about eligibility, then I encourage her to look at the gov.uk website for greater guidance.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

This morning, a family with a very sick child, one of 300 people placed in a quarantine hotel in Shepherd’s Bush, were told to get on a coach to Stockport, despite having lodged an application for housing assistance in Hammersmith. On Saturday, 90 Afghan evacuees arrived at a bridging hotel in Fulham with no money, the clothes they stood up in, and no information about what was happening to them. A local charity, West London Welcome, and our council are trying to help. If we try to get through to the Home Office, it does not answer emails or phone calls. Is this what the Minister means by Operation Warm Welcome?

Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill

Debate between Andy Slaughter and Victoria Atkins

3rd reading
Monday 5th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

That sums up the balancing exercise that the Government are drawing on the advice of the independent police inspectorate. The Bill does not stop the freedom to demonstrate; it balances it with the rights and liberties of others. The existing laws are 35 years old. We want to update them and also implement the recommendations of the independent Law Commission.

It will continue to be the case that the police attach conditions to only a small proportion of protests. To put that in context, in a three-month period earlier this year, the assessment of the National Police Chiefs’ Council was that of more than 2,500 protests, no more than a dozen had conditions attached to them: 12 out of 2,500.

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Victoria Atkins]

I will not because I genuinely have other matters to address.

In deciding whether to attach conditions, including in respect of the generation of noise, the police will continue, as they do now, to take into consideration protesters’ freedom of speech and assembly.

I move on now to unauthorised encampments. Similarly, there seems to be misunderstanding about what the Bill is attempting to do. It is not an attack on the nomadic lifestyle. Proposed new section 60C(4) of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 sets out conditions applicable if

“significant damage… significant disruption”

or

“significant distress has been caused or is likely to be caused”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Slaughter]

Will the Minister give way on that point?

[Victoria Atkins]

I have one more minute.

We are trying to tackle harmful behaviour, and Opposition Members need to ask themselves just how much damage, disruption and distress is acceptable for their constituents to bear.

I will quickly deal with the extraction of information. This is an important part of the Bill, because we want to ensure that strong privacy safeguards are in place when dealing with people’s sensitive personal information. This Bill, coupled with the rape review, is an absolutely critical part of that effort.

Mindful that the House will want to vote on these matters, I will conclude. We promised our constituents that we would take measures to make our society safer and to crack down on crime. As my hon. Friend the Member for Derbyshire Dales (Miss Dines) set out, that is the promise we all made to our constituents. We are delivering on promises made to the electorate and standing up for the decent members of society who do not commit the sorts of crimes that we in this Chamber have sadly had to hear about. I therefore have no hesitation in commending the Bill to the House.