Domestic Abuse Bill

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

Report stage & Lords Hansard
Monday 8th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Polak (Con)]

My Lords, I spoke in support of my noble friend Lady Meyer’s amendment in Committee and do so again. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Cormack, for I agreed with his every word.

I continue to read, and I continue to listen. The arguments have been well made, and again I pay tribute to my noble friend Lady Meyer for her courage and resilience. It is clear to me that there are difficulties, opinions and alternative views—all that is legitimate. What is not legitimate is that the experiences and feelings of those who have suffered from alienation are either denied a voice or told that this does not happen. It plainly does.

The noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, made a sensible point about the danger of creating a hierarchy of abuse, which I agree with. Can my noble friend the Minister assure me that the genuine and real cases of parental alienation—of which, sadly, there are many—must be heard? It could be a severe form of abuse if mention of parental alienation is not made within the guidance.

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl) [V]]

My Lords, I have no hesitation in supporting the aims of this amendment standing in the name of my friend, the noble Baroness, Lady Meyer, and others. I feel very strongly that we will listen—I certainly will—to what the Minister is going to say, because there are difficulties. I have listened to some of the opposition to the amendment, although there seems to be a very general agreement on the principles. It has now become a very wide-ranging Domestic Abuse Bill, so I really need to be satisfied that the aims and principles of what we are trying to do in this amendment, and what the noble Baroness, Lady Meyer, is trying to do, will actually be satisfied without the amendment.

I believe that we should use the Bill to protect children and their victim mothers or fathers from psychological abusive and coercive control. During my 30 years as a Member of Parliament, I had many cases of parents, male and female, coming to see me and telling me in harrowing tones what was happening. They did not use the words “parental alienation”—it is a very Americanised term, which I personally do not like. But I listened to the some of the ways in which they talked, very simply—[Inaudible.]

[Lord Parkinson of Whitley Bay (Con)]

I think we might have lost the connection to the noble Baroness, Lady Hoey, so we will go to the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss.

Windrush Compensation Scheme

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

As I said earlier, each case will be treated sensitively and each person who makes a claim will be assisted through that process—not to prove them wrong but to prove them right regarding the compensation they are owed. There is no cap on the level of compensation or indeed on the scheme itself. However, we need to encourage more people to come forward. There have been communications campaigns and money has been given out to community organisations to promote the scheme, but by this point we would have expected more people to have come forward for their claims to be processed.

[Baroness Hoey (Non-Afl)]

My Lords, does the Minister recognise that many of the Windrush generation who have been treated so badly for so long are actually quite frightened about approaching the Home Office because they see it as an institution that has been responsible for many unfair deportations? Will the Home Office think about being much more proactive about going out and talking to these people, many of whom are now in the last stages of their lives? If we do not get this sorted out soon, it is going to be a real travesty of justice for all those people.

[Baroness Williams of Trafford (Con)]

I totally take that point on board. I agree with the noble Baroness that they might be frightened and that any notion of “state” might be frightening to them. As I have said, we have done quite a lot of outreach through church leaders, faith leaders and community leaders, but I shall certainly take that back. I know we will be reflecting on how far we have got with people coming forward and trying to make that process better, because clearly, more people should be coming forward.

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

Monday 31st October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

We all saw over the weekend the dreadful scenes in Exeter. I would be delighted to come with my right hon. Friend to thank the police and the fire and rescue teams who did fantastic work dealing with such a difficult situation.

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

Just recently, two very brilliant human rights campaigners in Zimbabwe were refused visas to come to this country to speak not just in this House but elsewhere, despite the support of our ambassador in Harare. Will the Minister for Immigration please look into what is going on there? Quite honestly, we are letting in people who have done dreadful things, yet two decent, law-abiding, respectable, hard-working people—one of them has been given asylum in America—have been refused entry.

[Mr Goodwill]

I am more than happy to meet the hon. Lady in person to discuss this issue. I am aware of a number of cases involving Zimbabwe that we have under review.

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

Monday 22nd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call Kate Hoey.

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

Me?

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Lady looks so surprised. She is rarely a shy or retiring soul. If she is, she must overcome her shyness.

[Kate Hoey]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The Minister is well aware that the fire and rescue services collaborate well all over the country, particularly with the ambulance trusts. Why does he consider it necessary for police and crime commissioners to take control of the fire services under the Bill? Surely the two organisations are so different in so many ways that collaboration is possible without the PCC running our fire services.

[Mike Penning]

The truth of the matter is that someone duly elected to run the service, as the PCC would be, is better than anybody seconded on to any committee. I am sure we all want efficient emergency services, and the fire service working closely with the ambulance service and the police is the way we would like to do that.

Criminal Law

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

Monday 10th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mrs Theresa May)]

I beg to move,

That the draft Criminal Justice and Data Protection (Protocol No. 36) Regulations 2014, which were laid before this House on 3 November, be approved.

Protocol 36 is the part of the Lisbon treaty that relates to the United Kingdom’s opt-out from the policing and criminal justice measures that were adopted before the treaty came into force. The opt-out provisions are unique to the United Kingdom, and were negotiated by the previous Administration. Under the terms of protocol 36, the UK had to decide before the end of May 2014 whether it wished to opt out of all the police and criminal justice measures—some 130 in all—that predate the Lisbon treaty. The opt-out had to be exercised en masse; we could not simply leave the measures that we did not like.

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

I want the Home Secretary to be very clear, and give a yes or no answer. Will the House get the chance in the next couple of weeks to vote on the European arrest warrant?

[Mrs May]

The House is getting a chance today to debate the European arrest warrant. The House has been clear that it wished to have such a debate. We were very clear during the debate on the business motion that regulations are before the House, and the House will vote on those regulations. I have also been very clear about the Government’s position. We have brought those particular regulations before the House because they are the only ones that we need to transpose into UK legislation. I will come on to comment on the European arrest warrant. As I said earlier, I am very clear that the vote today relates to whether or not the UK opts back in to the package of measures that we have negotiated. The package comes together; it is not an a la carte menu from which one can pick and choose.

National Crime Agency

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Dr William McCrea (South Antrim) (DUP)]

The NCA is the UK’s leading agency against organised crime, human, weapon and drug trafficking, cybercrime, and economic crime that goes across regional and international borders, but it can be tasked to investigate any crime. The NCA has a strategic role as it looks at the bigger picture across the United Kingdom, analysing how criminals operate and how they can be disrupted. To do that, it works closely with the regional organised crime units, the Serious Fraud Office and individual police forces.

In Northern Ireland, where police assessments indicate that more than 140 and perhaps even 180 organised criminal gangs are in operation—that is those that are known—the NCA is unable to operate owing to the intransigence of the nationalist parties, namely Sinn Fein and the SDLP. The need for the National Crime Agency to have full powers extended to cover Northern Ireland is recognised by many interested parties, including the agencies responsible for administering justice and the courts and those involved in policing. Of course, we in the Democratic Unionist party strongly support that extension.

As someone who represents a rural constituency in the heart of Northern Ireland, I am well aware of the impact criminal gangs have on our rural communities by creating victims of crime, and their negative impact on the rural economy. We have seen audacious attempts by many gangs to carry out all sorts of crimes, including the exploding of ATMs on the forecourts of garages, the laundering and selling of illegal fuel, the stealing to order of valuable machinery, and the worrying trend in the theft of cattle, and the illegal slaughter and sale of those animals in the Republic of Ireland and certain areas such as south Armagh. Those incidents illustrate the need to have at the PSNI’s disposal the expertise and assistance of the National Crime Agency. As we all know, criminals do not respect borders or victims in their illegal pursuits.

The work in which the NCA is involved not only relates to the crimes that I have outlined but, importantly, has a significant role in the area of internet-based crime. Members will be aware that the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child has expressed its strong views on the protection of children online. The UN committee is rightly concerned, as we all should be, about the lack of NCA powers in Northern Ireland, as that means that the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre is not fully operational in Northern Ireland. The entire House should be alarmed about that. Our children are at much greater risk owing to the fact that the NCA is not operational. I challenge the nationalist parties to explain to the public why they have adopted a negative stance on its implementation in Northern Ireland given the UN report and its ramifications.

I certainly feel that the issue is directly affecting a broad range of people, from the rural farmer who has valuable machinery stolen to order to those involved in the detection of online crime, such as the serious and sickening issue of child pornography. The National Crime Agency is a body that Northern Ireland simply cannot do without. It operates in other regions of the UK and, at a time when our policing budgets are under severe pressure, it makes complete sense to allow the PSNI to have the necessary assistance of the NCA to carry out its investigative duties. I also believe that the ability to seize assets is vital in the fight against gangsters who think that they are untouchable.

The reluctance of Sinn Fein and the SDLP to accept the necessity of allowing the NCA to operate and the PSNI to avail itself of its expertise in the fight against crime internationally puts Northern Ireland and its citizens at a severe disadvantage. The two nationalist parties continually bleat about equality, but once again those calls fall short of ensuring that our communities have the very best security and that the organisations tasked with their protection have the very best intelligence and powers at their disposal.

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

I agree with everything the hon. Gentleman is saying. Many people will understand why Sinn Fein might not want to enter into this, because it does not actually want Northern Ireland to be successful, but what does he think is really at the bottom of the reluctance of the SDLP, which has worked very closely with all parties in trying to take Northern Ireland forward?

[Dr McCrea]

I have to say to the hon. Lady that I am still trying to work that out. I listened very carefully to the hon. Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie), but there is no genuine reason whatsoever that she can give her constituents—she certainly did not give one today—for why she and her party are standing in the way of introducing the NCA in Northern Ireland.

--- Later in debate ---

[Karen Bradley]

No, I will not, given the time we have left.

My right hon. Friend the Member for South Leicestershire (Mr Robathan), who apologised for having to leave before the end of the debate—

[Kate Hoey]

Will the Minister give way?

[Karen Bradley]

No. I am sorry, I need to make progress. My right hon. Friend, a former Minister for Northern Ireland—there should be a collective noun for former Ministers of Northern Ireland, because we have many in the room today—explained clearly the importance of the issues in the light of his great experience. My hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) pointed out that, in a way, he has a land border with another member state—the only such non-Northern Ireland Member in the room—and expressed clearly the need for the NCA to operate throughout the whole of the United Kingdom.

A number of Members, including the hon. Members for Upper Bann (David Simpson) and for East Antrim (Sammy Wilson), the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz), who chairs the Home Affairs Committee, and my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Beckenham, talked about the need for proceeds of crime measures to be extended to Northern Ireland. I very much agree with those points. Depriving organised criminals of their assets makes it harder for them to return to crime and perhaps acts for many as a bigger deterrent than jail. I refer Members to the changes we are putting through in the other place through the Serious Crime Bill, which will assist us in dealing with asset recovery. Clearly, extending those provisions to Northern Ireland would be very important in improving that recovery rate.

The hon. Member for South Down (Ms Ritchie) talked about the oversight mechanisms, and usefully clarified her party’s concerns about accountability. It is probably useful if I make some points now about the accountability proposals. There are no statutory mechanisms, about which she asked, providing for NCA accountability in Northern Ireland at the moment, but David Ford’s proposals provide that the NCA director general will attend meetings of the Policing Board on request—including urgent meetings, with reasonable notice—and this will be in statute. NCA officers will need the agreement of the Chief Constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland to exercise policing powers in relation to an offence, and the PSNI will then produce a community impact assessment.

On covert techniques, in all cases the NCA will obtain the agreement of the PSNI prior to their use, save for where the request is related to a case of police corruption. That would be enshrined in a memorandum of understanding, made under schedule 24 to the Crime and Courts Act 2013. The human rights adviser of the Northern Ireland Policing Board will have access to the surveillance commissioner’s report on the NCA, in a non-redacted form, in connection with the NCA work associated with criminality in Northern Ireland.

Child Sex Abuse (Rotherham)

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

This shocking report should unite all of us in this House, all political parties and all communities to see what we can do to make sure these things never happen again. Just at this moment a little boy is sitting in a prison in Spain, a very long way away from his parents. Will the Home Secretary make it clear that the Crown Prosecution Service will be asked to rescind the legal document, because it is shocking that this is happening now? Whatever the original reasons, it should not be happening now, and this document should be rescinded and the family allowed to be together.

[Mr Speaker]

The hon. Lady has shoehorned that matter into this urgent question. It is not relevant to the question, but it is of great interest to the House and we look forward to a pithy reply from the Home Secretary.

Immigration (Bulgaria and Romania)

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

Thursday 19th December 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Hollobone]

My hon. Friend needed to pay more attention to the presentation. The estimate is 30,000 to 70,000 a year, with a central estimate of an increase of 50,000 a year in the population for five years, as the right hon. Member for Leicester East said. The estimate is based in part on the precedent set by the A8, but also on the growth rate of the current Romanian and Bulgarian population in the UK and the number of national insurance numbers issued, as well as the disparity in incomes and living standards between the UK and Romania and Bulgaria. My hon. Friend the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood) will appreciate that the disparity between us and Romania and Bulgaria is rather bigger than the one between us and Poland. A Romanian or Bulgarian moving to the UK to work at the minimum wage could increase his take-home pay by four and a half to five times, after accounting for the cost of living. Families could increase their income by between eight and nine times. To put it another way, workers on the minimum wage in the UK could earn in one hour roughly what could be earned in a day in Romania or Bulgaria.

There are other factors to consider. Spain and Italy, where unemployment is now very high, especially among the young, have nearly one million Romanian and Bulgarian workers each. A worker from Romania or Bulgaria could increase his take-home pay in Spain or Italy by at least 50% if he or she were to move to the UK. Another serious issue, to which I have not had a satisfactory response from the Minister despite raising it on the Floor of the House, is that Romania is known to have issued some 600,000 passports to ethnic Romanians from Moldova. Moldova is not a member of the European Union and yet a significant proportion of its population has the right to move to, live in and work in the UK. I am sure that that was never the intention of the accession treaties. The number of ethnic Roma from Romania and Bulgaria who might migrate is another factor to consider, but the numbers are extremely uncertain. Substantial numbers of Roma people live in poor conditions in a number of EU countries. An estimated 2.5 million Roma live in Romania and Bulgaria.

There have been welcome changes, such as the Government’s announcement about out-of-work benefits for people coming from Romania and Bulgaria. The announcement was good, but do the measures also apply to tax credits? I would like a specific response from the Minister. Does the new three-month rule for entitlement to out-of-work benefits extend to people from other EU member states or only to those from the new entrants, Romania and Bulgaria?

Crime is a big concern. To put the issue into a pithy sentence, I would say that we are importing a wave of crime from Romania and Bulgaria. I put it as strongly as that deliberately. There are no powers to deport EU citizens, unless they have been convicted of an offence that attracts a two-year prison sentence or a sentence of 12 months or more for an offence involving drugs, violence or sexual crime. We should be able to deport any foreign national, whether from an EU or non-EU state, to their country of origin if they are convicted of any crime in this country. That is one thing on which I agree with the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), who said that on the Floor of the House when he was Prime Minister, but sadly his Government did nothing. The right hon. Member for Leicester East, who is currently conversing with you, Ms Dorries, mentioned Judge Sean Morris, who said in court the other day to Romanians and Bulgarians,

“don’t come here and commit crime.”

He has delayed sentencing one such criminal, because of his frustration with delays of six months and more in obtaining criminal records from the Romanian authorities, and he has called on Ministers to do something about it. In Westminster Hall some months ago, I raised directly with the Minister the issue of the number of criminals from Romania and Bulgaria coming to our shores. There is a crime wave, particularly in London and particularly on the London underground, to do with Romanians.

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

I am sorry to arrive in the middle of the hon. Gentleman’s speech. He raises an issue that resonates closely. Just across the river from the House of Commons, there is an increasingly difficult problem with many people doing exactly what he describes in the Waterloo area. Everyone gets involved—the police and the community safety teams—but at the end of the day, they can do nothing to get those people, some of whom do not even have the right to be here as EU citizens, out of the country. People are getting angry. I hope the Minister will respond to that.

[Mr Hollobone]

I welcome the intervention from the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey), not least because, as always, she knows what she is talking about. She is a proud champion of the concerns of her constituents, who will be rightly concerned about that issue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Ellwood]

I do not think the name of the aircraft was the precursor of the deal falling through or the reason why it did so. I could have said “Typhoon”, as my hon. Friend is aware.

The majority would agree with the approach that I have spelled out, but fundamental flaws, out-of-date practices and British schoolboy errors have allowed a scale of migration into the UK over one decade that is incomparable with the spikes in migration on this island in all its history, as I mentioned earlier. That is what concerns my constituents and those of other hon. Members.

Let us look at some of those mistakes. Like other hon. Members, I am sorry that there are now no Labour Back Benchers—[Interruption.] I am sorry; apart from the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey), who was not here at the beginning, there are none here to put the case. And there is not a single Lib Dem here, either.

Under Labour, in 2004, there was a deliberate policy of uncontrolled migration, resulting in more than 1 million people coming from central and eastern Europe, who now live here. Why? Because the UK completely opted out of the transitional controls on new EU member states. Britain was the only country to do so, ignoring the right to impose a seven-year ban before new citizens could come and work here. We were almost all alone in Europe.

[Kate Hoey]

On that point, many members of the Labour party were against that at that time. Indeed, my hon. Friends on the Front Bench at the moment have said that that was the wrong decision and have apologised for it.

[Mr Ellwood]

I am not sure that the apology will be accepted by a nation that is now having to live with the consequences. As we have seen, the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw) is now embarrassed to admit that that was a huge mistake. I am sorry that the hon. Lady was not more vocal at the time or that her voice was not listened to, because that decision has had a profound effect, not only in respect of migration, but on the balance in the UK, as has already been mentioned.

Crime and Courts Bill [Lords]

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

Wednesday 13th March 2013 Commons Chamber

Incidentally, back in 2004 the Joint Committee on Human Rights recommended that the same provisions be included in the 2005 Act for England and Wales, and it is a matter of great regret to me that my Government, though it was not me; I was abroad at the time—[Interruption.] I always say that; it is always true. It is a matter of great regret to me that my Government did not do that. The amendment is a serious one, moved with serious purpose, and I hope we can hear from the Minister that it carries his serious approbation as well.

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Have you had any message from the Minister for Europe that he would like to come along and make a statement to Parliament on the decision of the European Parliament today not to support the budget—to throw out the budget that we in this Parliament asked to be cut?

[Mr Speaker]

I have received no such indication from a Minister. The hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) is a ready source of information. She has now enlightened the House. I had not heard that news, but I imagine that it will now be well known to the Treasury Bench and her remarks will very soon find their way to Ministers, so my advice to her is that she should remain alert for any developments that might arise. I thank her for what she said.

Olympics (Security)

Baroness Hoey Excerpts

Thursday 12th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs May]

We have obviously had discussions with LOCOG and G4S about their plans for the numbers that they were bringing on board at any particular point in time. It has become clear to G4S that it cannot guarantee the numbers that it had previously given us reassurances about. It is in those circumstances that we have made the contingency arrangements.

[Kate Hoey (Vauxhall) (Lab)]

I welcome the use of extra servicemen and women at our Olympics. The three Olympic games that I have attended have had many representatives of the armed forces, who do a brilliant job. Perhaps they should have been involved from the beginning and the money that has gone to this security force could have gone to them to start with. Can we please remember that this is a sporting event? I worry that we are going so over the top on the security aspect that people have forgotten that this is about countries competing in sporting endeavours in a friendly way.

[Mrs May]

The hon. Lady makes an extremely valid point. This is a sporting event. We want people to come to London 2012 and enjoy it as a sporting event. We want them to feel safe and secure while they are doing that. That is why it is appropriate for us to ensure that the venue security arrangements are right. She referred to the military being engaged in other Olympic games. The military in the UK provides security at other sporting events, such as Wimbledon, so it is not unusual. What is different is the scale of this event and, therefore, the scale of the venue security that has to be provided.