Oral Answers to Questions

Gagan Mohindra Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is right. That sort of graffiti and serious hate crime divides communities and needs to be taken seriously by police across the country. It is one of the reasons we are strengthening the law to give the police stronger powers to prevent intimidating protests around not just synagogues but mosques.

[Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)]

T7.   My thoughts are with the family of Jayesh Pitrola. Hertfordshire’s policing budget already faces a £7 million shortfall, and the recent spending review contained no direct funding from the Home Office to address that. Will the Home Secretary reassure my constituents, as well as our police and crime commissioner Jonathan Ash-Edwards, that Hertfordshire will benefit from more police officers without further local tax rises being required?

[The Minister for Policing and Crime Prevention (Dame Diana Johnson)]

As the Home Secretary just pointed out, we have provided an additional £200 million this year to support new neighbourhood police officers and PCSOs for all our communities. I am very happy to meet the hon. Gentleman if he would like to discuss policing further, but this Government are committed to making sure that the police have the resources they need.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gagan Mohindra Excerpts

Monday 13th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Dan Jarvis]

Yes, we can confirm that that is the case.

[Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)]

Several of my constituents in South Oxhey have unfortunately been the victims of burglary or attempted burglary. Will the Home Secretary outline the measures her Department is taking to allow the police to invest in technologies such as live facial recognition, which can make crimes such as burglary easier to solve?

[Dame Diana Johnson]

We are currently looking into whether there is a need for more regulation of live facial recognition, but I recognise that it is a very important tool to which the police should have access. I am having a series of stakeholder meetings with various groups to discuss how we take this forward, but I do recognise how important the technology is and how it can be a really positive way of identifying people and solving crimes.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gagan Mohindra Excerpts

Monday 21st October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Yvette Cooper]

The purpose of setting up a border security command is to strengthen the security of our borders. We will do that by working with other countries. It is crucial that we do so to tackle the gangs and the boats before they reach the French coast in the first place. We have increased our co-operation, with new agreements in place with the G7, Europol and Italy, and we are working on new agreements with France, Germany and Belgium. Those agreements would not be possible if we were somehow abandoning international law.

[Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)]

As the House will be aware, there have been recent crossings. Is the Home Secretary considering reopening hotels to house asylum seekers, and if so will she commit to keeping the House informed about the methodology for choosing those hotels and ensuring that constituency Members are informed at the appropriate time?

[Yvette Cooper]

Ensuring that constituency Members are informed is something that I take seriously. It often did not happen in the past, but it is important and it needs to happen. The overall situation that we inherited included an asylum backlog that was increasing because asylum decision making had totally collapsed. We have now increased that decision making so that we can clear the backlog and end hotel use. Sadly, that will take time—because of the soaring backlog we inherited as a result of the collapse in decision making—but we are determined to ensure that we can clear the backlog and save the taxpayer hundreds of millions, if not billions, of pounds.