Counter-Terrorism and Border Security Bill

Eddie Hughes Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons
Monday 11th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson), particularly as at least an element of my speech would have exhibited a degree of naivety without his. I will continue with it, but I think I should apologise for it in advance. The purpose of the first part of my speech was to juxtapose my experience of terrorism in this country with what was happening with regard to the IRA and its activities in this country. Part of my premise is that, after the Good Friday agreement we are in a position where any occurrences that happen in Northern Ireland make the news in a considerably lower-level format than they would have done during my time growing up. So it is almost easy to believe, viewing Northern Ireland from a distance, that all is well over there, peace has broken out and the world is a good place, whereas, the incident mentioned at the start of the hon. Gentleman’s speech clearly proves that that is not the case.

I was drawn towards making this comparison because it is my 50th birthday this year, the troubles started in 1968 and I wanted to talk about my experience of how they had an impact on us in this country over that time. I am not old enough to remember this, but in 1972 we might have had the first cynical ceasefire that the IRA announced over the Christmas period, and yet only a short time later we had the bombings in Birmingham.

I fully appreciate that nobody has been convicted of those bombings in Birmingham, so it is not possible for us to say so with a degree of certainty or to attribute the cause to it, but I would say that we are fairly comfortable in knowing that the IRA was responsible, and many people lost their lives at that time.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Does the hon. Gentleman share the concern of those of us on this side of the Chamber within our party, and perhaps further afield, who see glorification in a play park in Newry being named after an IRA volunteer who was involved in a campaign of murder and terrorism, and in Gaelic Athletic Association clubs naming their venues and locations after IRA men and IRA women who have been involved in terrorist activity? Does he share our concern about glorification of their activities, which, hopefully, the Bill has the power to change—making it unlawful so that it cannot happen?

[Eddie Hughes]

I absolutely do share those concerns, and I sincerely hope that the Bill presents the opportunity to prevent that from happening. The hon. Member for Belfast East made the comparison that if we were to experience something similar in this country we would all think it an abomination, yet clearly, that is what is happening over in Northern Ireland.

Let us move through that period to come to a comparison that I want to make. In 1996 the IRA exploded in Manchester what I understand was the biggest bomb to be exploded on the mainland since the second world war—a 1,500 lb bomb. Fortunately, 90 minutes’ notice was given, and the excellent work of the emergency services allowed 75,000 people to be evacuated, although, unfortunately, those services were unable to defuse the bomb and I understand that 200 people were injured when it went off.

The cost of that bomb runs to the equivalent today of approximately £1.2 billion, I believe, but how this country responds to that sort of situation is to be celebrated. In 1996, England was hosting the European football championships. The following day, Germany was due to play Russia. That game proceeded and turned into a celebration of the fact that countries around the world would not be oppressed by terrorism and actually joined together in a celebration that said, “Terrorism will not win.”

Compare and contrast that with the bombing in Manchester last year. An Ariana Grande concert was targeted with the perpetrator knowing full well that parents would be there with very young children. It was completely despicable. My understanding is that the perpetrator, who was also killed in that attack, had been to Libya and had some Libyan connections. To draw back to that parallel, clearly Libya has been a source of great difficulty given that association and its previous association with the IRA over the suggestion of the supply of arms and a fight against what was considered British imperialism.

We need to say that we are not going to accept terrorism and that we are going to do everything we can to ensure that our laws are tidied up to prevent it. An element of that, which I would like to celebrate, is biometric data. We should celebrate the fact that, many years ago, DNA was discovered in this country, and the double helix formation was subsequently identified, but it was not until 1984 that Sir Alec Jeffreys was able to realise the benefits of using DNA to profile people and help to determine the difference between pieces of evidence.

We should celebrate that because DNA profiling is now used by 120 countries around the world, and 54 of them have DNA databases. This technology is not only used to help to identify people who are guilty; it helps those who are innocent. Its first use was in a case just two years after its discovery. It was a case in Leicester, where somebody had admitted rape and murder only to have the DNA evidence prove that they were not responsible. Some time subsequently, Colin Pitchfork was identified as the murderer as a result of DNA evidence.

It is important that we realise the benefits of modern technology and the pace with which it can change. We need to ensure in this House that the law tracks those developments, because people can now be radicalised in their home in the UK by reading literature produced in other countries. We need to ensure that we act appropriately to prevent the dissemination of that sort of information. To return to the bomber in Manchester last year, that person acting alone, thanks to the internet and those illicit sources, had the opportunity to learn how to make a bomb using items that are freely available in this country. Without physical contact with other people, they were able to garner the information, be radicalised and carry out a dreadful act. It is surely essential that we do everything we can to tidy up the law in this country to prevent that.

I want to end with a quote I heard yesterday:

“The law is reason free from passion.”

Aristotle apparently said that. I think it is important that in this House we are not totally free from passion, that we remember these dreadful atrocities that have been committed and that we ensure that we have law that prevents them.

Oral Answers to Questions

Eddie Hughes Excerpts

Monday 4th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

With ingenuity, the hon. Member for Walsall North (Eddie Hughes) will detect that his question is not unadjacent, and if he wishes to put it now, he can.

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

21. Thank you very much, Mr Speaker. May I ask my right hon. Friend what work his Department can do to support the Mayor of the West Midlands, Andy Street, as he seeks greater collaboration between the police and fire services in the west midlands?

[Mr Hurd]

I assure my hon. Friend that I speak regularly to Andy Street. The Government are determined to honour the second devolution deal, including with proposals to help to bring police and fire services under the Mayor, as we have done in London and Manchester. I assure my hon. Friend that we are absolutely committed to working with both Andy Street and the police and crime commissioner to make sure that that happens by 2020.

Grenfell Tower Inquiry

Eddie Hughes Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. It is a particular pleasure, and perhaps a daunting prospect, to follow my friend, the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips). As Brummies, I feel “friend” is the appropriate word. It is appropriate that I should follow her, because I want to open my remarks by talking about the idea of sentiment and feeling.

My understanding is that some people postulate that there are five stages of grief that people move through, beginning with denial, then anger, and ending eventually in acceptance, although as the hon. Lady said, I understand that that period of acceptance may never come. The feeling may diminish over time, but originally, I was approaching this situation from a much more technical position.

I am a civil engineer by degree and a member of the Chartered Institute of Building, so I was giving some thought to the complexity of the panels, how they may be configured and where else they might be deployed. Of course I would do that because, as well as being a member of the Chartered Institute of Building, I chair the board of the housing association in Walsall. We have 20,000 houses. Following the Grenfell disaster, we had to review our buildings in order to determine whether we had any aluminium composite materials—ACMs—in buildings that we were building or cladding at the time. We determined that, in one case, we had exactly those elements present in one of our buildings. Although it was relatively low rise, we fully appreciated that the people living in that building would be concerned. It was not a question that would be answered by referring them to a technical building regulations document that would allay their fears. They needed reassurance on the basis that a tragedy had happened and they wanted to ensure, beyond reasonable doubt, that they would not be involved in a similar tragedy.

One of the things that helped to move me along massively was the opportunity to meet Grenfell survivors last week. I spoke to Hisam, who had lost six family members. The level of grief is incomprehensible to me. I lost my father 18 months ago. That feels like a dreadful tragedy, but he was an 83-year-old man who had a stroke and we had the opportunity to spend time with him before he passed away. It is not a comparable situation at all. I cannot begin to understand the level of grief experienced by those affected.

While speaking to Hisam, I thought, “Are you reassured with regard to the way the Government are handling this situation?” He explained to me that they wanted to bring family members over from another country to offer support to those who were grieving in this country. The barriers that they faced were incredibly intractable. When finally they were given the opportunity to bring family members over, my understanding is that it was for a two-week period. Sometimes we have processes that people follow by virtue of some sort of diagram or detailed specification, and we lose sight, as an hon. Member said earlier, of the fact that we are talking about people, not processes.

Similarly, Hisam had a child who had been affected and who had missed some time from school. He hoped that some one-to-one education might be provided to help that child catch up with the education he had lost. Originally, that was refused by his school. He needed to move to another school before, eventually, the original school said, “Actually, we could have provided some support after all.”

This is not a technical question about composite materials and ACMs; this is about how we treat people. I see at first hand just how complicated that can be. I used to be the assistant chief executive of the YMCA in Birmingham. We had 300 accommodation units for formerly homeless young people. We had a building that we refurbished that used to be a social care building in Birmingham, so we had an architect design a scheme for us and we refurbished it to create 33 flats. That was two years before Grenfell.

In the light of Grenfell, we went back to the fire safety experts—in fact, we brought in new experts—to review the layout of the building and ensure that we would be able to manage a safe and secure building for the vulnerable and frequently chaotic young people that we serviced. Dreadfully, we found that some items in the layout of the building needed to be addressed in order for us to regain that confidence. That building had been designed and refurbished only two years previously, yet there was an opportunity to reinterpret and be more secure in the judgment that was applied.

I sincerely hope, although I fully appreciate that it is unlikely, that we will be able to help people to move through all those stages of grief and to reach a point where they feel a level of acceptance. As a Government of MPs, not just the governing party, it is beholden on all of us to ensure that we provide that support from a people point of view rather than a process one.

Windrush

Eddie Hughes Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), who made her case so passionately, and I would like to associate myself with many of her comments. We have heard that there is complete understanding from Members on both sides of the Chamber today that a wrong needs to be corrected.

Before I go on to the rest of my speech, I would like to add a brief moment of levity. There was some temporary excitement among my friends yesterday when they read a headline in the paper suggesting that the son of an immigrant bus driver had been elevated to the position of Home Secretary—they thought that the honour could have been bestowed on me already. However, when I explained that someone who holds that great position of state needs to be able to command a Department of 27,000 staff and a budget of £14 billion, handling millions of decisions every year, I think they completely agreed with the Prime Minister that it was probably best left in the hands of my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromsgrove (Sajid Javid), for the moment.

However, as I say, I am the son of an immigrant bus driver. My Irish parents came over from Ireland in the 1940s and I grew up in an Irish community in Birmingham. To go back to the comment made by the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood, I heard stories of signs on bed-and-breakfast accommodation that said, “No blacks, No Irish.” I have a complete understanding and affinity for that community, with which my parents shared so much of their early life. Indeed, my father never went outside of England and Ireland. He never travelled to another country and I cannot imagine how disturbed he would have been to be faced with the prospect of having to provide documents that would allow him a passport to travel to other places around the world to join and support family members, as the hon. Lady so rightly mentioned. I completely understand the difficulties that people will have faced and we need to put it right.

We also need to understand the context in which this debate can sometimes be framed. My hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) mentioned that we have approximately 1 million illegal immigrants in the UK. Clearly, this is a sizeable problem. Today, I read an article in the paper that said my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) had been talking about the fact that we need to reconsider our approach to our immigration policy in this country. In 1997, a poll showed that 3% of the people who were asked their view on immigration thought that it was the most important issue facing the country. Ten years later, 46% of people thought that it was the most important issue, so for today, we have a problem. However, it is best placed in the hands of a man who is a brilliant Minister, who will completely sympathise with the people affected.

What have the Government done so far? We have made 7,000 calls, identifying prospectively 3,000 people who have been affected; 600 appointments have been made and 100 people have already had their documents processed. As a party, we are taking this problem very seriously. We have deployed the resources necessary to address it, and I firmly believe that within months the Conservative party will have dealt with this issue.

Gender Pay Gap

Eddie Hughes Excerpts

Wednesday 18th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Victoria Atkins]

I said at the beginning of my statement that I was extremely grateful to the right hon. and learned Lady for raising this issue in an urgent question, and I meant it. I fully recognise and thank her for the work that she did in government to introduce legislation on the gender pay gap. Like her, I thank other female Members, including the Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), who, along with her colleagues on the Committee, does so much to drive through change. I thank female Members from all parties. There is a real sense of urgency and impatience about this issue. For what it is worth, my right hon. Friends the Home Secretary and the Prime Minister share our impatience—I hope I do not regret that word—to have this matter sorted.

I must of course pay tribute to the right hon. and learned Lady for all the work she does to try to ensure that this place is a little more understanding and accommodating of a diversity of backgrounds, for Members and our staff. I very much take on her advice, although I worry that I might be stepping a bit above my station if I commandeered Downing Street for the summit she suggested—

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

We will back you up!

[Victoria Atkins]

I assure the right hon. and learned Lady that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary is taking a very keen interest in this urgent question and the issue. I welcome her ingenuity of thought. Watch this space.

--- Later in debate ---

[Victoria Atkins]

We have thought about this carefully. At the moment, we are saying that it is best practice for companies to publish action plans, and a lot of companies are doing so. I want to take businesses with us. I do not want to set the Government’s face against them. We want this change to happen and we know that the public will exists, so although we are advising organisations to publish action plans as best practice, that does leave us with options should companies not choose to follow that guidance.

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

I feel compelled to advocate on behalf of the men who work at Personnel Hygiene Services Ltd, where my wife works, who are paid 6.3% less than the women—we do not want to forget about the men. I appreciate what the Minister has said, but will she commit to naming and shaming companies that do not file their returns? This has gone on long enough, and we need to be aggressive in narrowing the pay gap.

[Victoria Atkins]

My hon. Friend shows his customary courage in saying that during this particular UQ. The information on naming and shaming is actually out there already—in case anyone has not had the chance to look at it, the names of the companies that have reported, and all their details, are on the gov.uk website. Indeed, when I had the pleasure of appearing before the Treasury Committee, I encouraged colleagues across the House to look at the gov.uk website to see for themselves whether large employers in their constituencies have complied, because I would hope that they would want to encourage those employers to follow the law and report their findings. At this stage, after the deadline, compliance is a matter for the EHRC, which has a range of powers and has considered the issue very carefully. It has published its action plan, and it will be for the EHRC to decide the best action in relation to each and every company.

Oral Answers to Questions

Eddie Hughes Excerpts

Monday 16th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

The hon. Gentleman will know that we keep the tier 2 visa route constantly under review. We are looking very carefully at the issue that he raises.

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

T10. Can the Secretary of State reassure my constituents in Willenhall and Bloxwich that post Brexit we will continue to work closely with our friends in Europe on matters of security and counter-terrorism?

[Amber Rudd]

Yes, I can certainly give my hon. Friend that reassurance. We know the importance of working closely with our European Union friends on matters of security. In conversations with my opposite numbers, I have received much reassurance from them that that is what they want as well.

Police Funding

Eddie Hughes Excerpts

Wednesday 28th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Louise Haigh]

Neighbourhood policing is the bedrock of our policing system, and it has been the greatest loss following the police cuts of the last eight years. I shall say more about that shortly.

Between 2010 and 2015, cuts in policing amounted to £2.3 billion. At least in those days the Government used to admit that they were making cuts. Between 2015 and 2017, funding for local forces fell by a further £400 million in real terms, and in the year ahead central Government funding will fall by more than £100 million in real terms. It is an insult to the public and to the police that Ministers refuse to admit to those cuts.

The Government will know that in the year ahead, any increase in funds for local forces will only come through a hike in the council tax paid by local residents, and those residents will be angry at being asked to pay more and get less thanks to cuts that the Tories have made from Westminster. What is more, that method of funding the police is fundamentally unfair.

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

I appreciate that I have yet not been in the House for a year, but I am slightly confused. If the money does not come from taxation, where else does the hon. Lady think it comes from?

[Louise Haigh]

In their announcement on police funding, the Government attempted to claim to the public that they were making £450 million available. That is not the case. They are asking people to pay more in tax, and we are asking them to be clear about that. They are forcing local ratepayers to pay more for a lesser service because they are making real-terms cuts in police funding.

As I have said, funding the police through council tax is fundamentally unfair. Last week the chief constable of West Midlands police issued a warning about the aggressive use of council tax to raise funds, because the police forces that have already been forced to make the most cuts will raise the smallest amount of money. West Midlands, which has lost a staggering 2,000 officers since 2010, will be able to raise a little over 2% of its budget from the precept, and will still have to make substantial cuts next year thanks to the unfunded pay rise, pension fund strain and other inflationary pressures. Surrey, which has half the population of the west midlands, will raise almost the equivalent in cash terms.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Latham]

I thank the hon. Lady for that comment. I will talk a lot about Derbyshire. I recognise that she came into the House recently, but the number of police officers is broadly similar to what we have had for some time.

When Members of Parliament met the police and crime commissioner, Councillor Hardyal Dhindsa, recently, he was not able to tell us how he would spend more money if he got it, he could not tell us what his budget covered and he was not able to give us any facts whatsoever. We have looked at his budget, and he is not as desperate for funding as he claims.

Interestingly, the police and crime commissioner spends a lot of his time going around parish councils in Derbyshire, frightening the life out of parish councillors, who do their very best for the people they represent, often with no political affiliation—certainly in my area. He is telling them that there are cuts, so he cannot do this and he cannot do that. He has got rid of most of the police in the rural areas I represent. The parish councillors are really worried about the future when they do not need to be. Yes, he has closed police stations and reduced services in much of my area, but the area that he represents as a councillor does not have to face any cuts. He should look much more at how he can spend the money more efficiently and effectively, because in Derbyshire, as in most places, the majority of the funding comes from the Government grant and the rest comes from council tax.

The police in Derbyshire are having to do many more things than they used to do, particularly in respect of domestic violence, rape and modern slavery in particular, which there has been a lot of in Derbyshire. There has also been grooming of young girls. With Operation Retriever, it was the first place in the country where it was found that young men were grooming girls and trafficking them. We have prosecuted many people successfully for that.

Since 2011, Derbyshire police have put significant amounts of money into their reserves. Between 2010 and 2016, during the so-called austerity period, the reserves increased by 60%, yet the number of police officers went down by more than 18%. Those numbers are now going up—the police are recruiting as we speak. The police and crime commissioner justifies the need for more money by saying that he faces cuts.

[Eddie Hughes]

I make no comment other than to say that my understanding is that in the west midlands, the police and crime commissioner has reserves of more than £100 million.

[Mrs Latham]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point. Why do police and crime commissioners need these enormous reserves when they talk about cuts all the time?

--- Later in debate ---

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Halifax (Holly Lynch), and I mean that most genuinely. I was in the Chamber when she made her speech on the “Protect the Protectors” Bill, and I thought it was incredibly moving and personal. I completely endorse what she just said and would like to offer her any support that I can.

Many years ago I was a member of the West Midlands police authority. I thought we did a good job of holding the police to account, and I was delighted to sit on the committee that appointed Dave Thompson as deputy chief constable. He proved to be a good appointment, because he is now chief constable.

I fully accept that in 2010 both the Liberal Democrat and Conservative manifestos suggested that we needed an alternative form of governance that would allow people to hold an elected official to account for police performance. The following legislation gave us the police and crime commissioners, and perhaps the rest is history. I fully appreciate that, in her opening remarks, the shadow Minister said that police and crime commissioners can only play the hand they have been dealt, but they must surely be accountable for their role.

Unfortunately, my relationship with the Labour police and crime commissioner in the west midlands could best be described as strained. On 23 March 2018, he was directly quoted by the Express & Star as saying

“Eddie has been voting for cuts to our force’s budget in parliament”.

That is misleading. Since being elected nine months ago, I have never voted for a cut in police funding. The independent House of Commons Library confirms that my vote in favour of the police funding grant means that total direct resources funding for England and Wales will increase to just over £11.4 billion in 2018-19, up from £11 billion in 2016-17, a cash rise of 2.5%—so no cut there.

Explaining the breakdown of the cash rise, the head of the UK Statistics Authority wrote to the shadow Minister for Policing:

“As the Minister for Policing’s statement outlined, up to £270 million of the funding settlement will come from local council tax”.

As I pointed out earlier, all Government spending comes from tax of one form or another. The letter continued:

“In addition, the Leader of the House of Commons stated that the £270 million that can be raised locally was on top of the…£450 million.”

That is the £450 million the Minister has already announced—so no cut there, either.

However, I am on record as stating at public meetings in my constituency that police funding should increase. Indeed, the police and crime commissioner would have heard me say that in Willenhall on 8 December 2017 if he had bothered to attend the public meeting arranged by the Labour leader of Walsall Council, who also happens to chair the West Midlands police and crime panel. Snow apparently prevented the police and crime commissioner from making the 18-mile journey from his very expensively refurbished office in the centre of Birmingham. Others travelled considerably greater distances to attend the meeting.

Further, in his press release in 2017, the police and crime commissioner asked for an increase of £5 per household on the precept. I voted for an increase of £12 per household, but he still says he does not have enough money. I will continue to fight for more police funding for my constituents and for our hard-working police in Willenhall and Bloxwich, but the good people of my constituency deserve better service from their police and crime commissioner.

Oral Answers to Questions

Eddie Hughes Excerpts

Monday 8th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Eddie Hughes (Walsall North) (Con)]

11. What steps her Department is taking to tackle violence against women and girls.

[Maria Caulfield (Lewes) (Con)]

14. What steps her Department is taking to tackle violence against women and girls.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Amber Rudd)]

In March 2016 we published the cross-Government violence against women and girls strategy, which sets out an ambitious programme of reform and is supported by increased funding of £100 million. We will also introduce a draft domestic abuse Bill to transform our approach to domestic abuse, to support victims better, and to bring perpetrators to justice.

[Eddie Hughes]

What action are the Government taking to support refuges for women fleeing domestic violence in Walsall and throughout the Black country, whose excellent staff do so much to protect the safety of women and children?

[Amber Rudd]

My hon. Friend is right: excellent work is being done in the Black country to support women and children. When I visited a Women’s Aid Black country refuge, it was impressive to see the excellent work that was being done there. I can reassure my hon. Friend that Walsall Council received a share of £639,000 of funding from the Department for Communities and Local Government—it is £40 million in all—in partnership with local authorities across the Black country. In addition, Wolverhampton and Birmingham received £1.1 million between them from the Department for early intervention projects.