Retail Crime Prevention

Kate Green Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2019 Westminster Hall

[David Hanson]

My hon. Friend makes a valuable point. I am starting with the financial cost of crime, but I will come in a moment to the key issue, of which the Minister will be aware, of the consultation regarding attacks on shop staff.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on securing the debate. I draw the House’s attention to my membership of and support from both the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers and the GMB, which represent shop workers in my constituency. My right hon. Friend and my hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) have mentioned attacks on shop workers. In the Trafford Centre in my constituency, there have also been physical attacks on shoppers—gangs were threatening them with knives. Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is not just protection of shop workers that is a crucial factor in this debate, but the wider protection of the public?

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[David Hanson]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. Everybody who runs a shop wants their staff to be protected. Large multinational retailers such as Tesco, the Co-op, Sainsbury’s and Asda are caring for their staff, but everybody who runs a shop, be it a corner shop, a one-person shop, or another kind of small shop, wants their staff to be protected at work. That is particularly important when those staff are upholding the legislation that we have passed. When they are threatened by people who want to buy alcohol late at night or early in the morning, when they are threatened for refusing cigarette, solvent or knife sales and when they are threatened for taking action to try to stop shoplifters, it is imperative that we, as the society as a whole, look at what measures we can put in place to help support them.

The Co-op Group recently produced a report entitled “‘It’s not part of the job’: Violence and verbal abuse towards shop workers”. It shows clearly that violence against shop staff has long-term consequences for them and their communities. I know the Minister will know that this is a key issue, but it is one that we need to raise, recognise, and highlight, and we need to give a commitment to those staff on the ground to ensure that they are protected as a whole.

USDAW, which, like my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), I am proud to be a member of—I declare my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests—runs annually the Freedom from Fear campaign, and in the run-up to Christmas it will again run the Respect for Shopworkers campaign. Of the 6,725 shop workers surveyed by USDAW in the past year, 64% faced verbal abuse at work, 40% were threatened by a customer, and 280, on average, were assaulted every day. That is not acceptable.

I pay tribute to the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), who previously dealt with this issue. We raised it during proceedings on the Offensive Weapons Act 2019. We tabled amendments and called for action in the form of a review of attacks on shop staff. The then Minister agreed to that review during a roundtable meeting with the Co-op, USDAW and other trade unions, the British Retail Consortium, the Association of Convenience Stores and the National Federation of Retail Newsagents. That review has been undertaken; it has taken evidence. There have been an awful lot of consultation responses. The previous Minister promised to respond to that evidence in the course of November. It is now November, so I wanted to put that on the record and get some feedback from the current Minister as to where we are with that action. We are in a politically divisive time, but I hope the Minister and his team see this as an important issue on which we can have cross-party co-operation. If he can tell us what he intends to do, if the Government are re-elected, that would be welcome. I know what I would like to do if Labour is elected as the next Government—we would take action—but it is important that we discuss these issues today.

[Kate Green]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that it would be helpful to understand, should the Minister’s party be returned to government, what its view is on the use of facial recognition technology, which has been tried in the Trafford Centre, but is controversial? It has the potential to address crime, but we need to know what protections would be in place for personal privacy.

[David Hanson]

My hon. Friend has put an important issue on the table for the Minister to respond to.

In June, 50 senior retail figures, chief executives of the UK’s most recognisable retailers, the general secretary of USDAW, the chief executive of the Charity Retail Association and the chief executive of the British Retail Consortium all signed a letter calling for legislation in response to the Government consultation. Can we hear about the consultation and the potential legislation, and about what the Government intend to do, so that we can make a judgment about that? Whoever wins this election—that is for the British people—we need to know what measures are in place to take this issue forward.

I met with the Charity Retail Association—not just retail shops as a whole—which wrote to me on 5 June:

“We look forward to joining your list of…organisations in your fight for better protection for shop workers from violence or abuse.”

I wrote to the Minister earlier this year on the consultation that he is now considering. He responded on 3 September:

“Early analysis suggests that, as you highlight in your letter, the vast majority of respondents believe that violence and abuse toward shop staff has increased in recent years and that many respondents are unaware of the measures and tools available to tackle it and provide support for victims.”

My challenge to the Minister is this. Given that those respondents believe violence and abuse has gone up, and they want to see action from the Government, what will the Government do?

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[Kit Malthouse]

I will come on to that. I am not wholly convinced that we are without the tools that we need to deal with the issue, but we might need to address whether we are using them correctly.

On serious violence, we published the serious violence strategy, which has a particular focus on early intervention, in April 2018, so there has been action in that area. We allocated £22 million to the early intervention youth fund and, in the long term, £200 million to the youth endowment fund to ensure that those most at risk are given the opportunity to turn away from violence and to lead more positive lives. We launched a public consultation on a new multi-agency public health approach to tackling serious violence, following which we announced that we would introduce a new legal duty on statutory agencies to plan and collaborate to prevent and reduce serious violence. We gave the police extra powers to tackle knife crime through the Offensive Weapons Act, including new knife crime prevention orders.

Those wider measures will help, but we recognise the importance of focusing our efforts on measures that are specifically targeted on tackling retail crime. This year, the Home Office provided £60,000 for a targeted communication campaign, led by the Association of Convenience Stores, to raise awareness of the existing legislation to protect shop workers. We published guidance on gov.uk about the use of the impact statement for business, which provides victims with the opportunity to tell the courts about the impact that a crime has had on their businesses. We also worked with the police to develop guidance for staff and retailers to use when reporting emergency and violent incidents.

The right hon. Member for Delyn and other hon. Members have asked the Government to consider introducing a new offence of attacks on shop staff, or to increase the severity of existing offences. I hope that he is aware from previous discussions that powers are already available to the police and the Crown Prosecution Service to deal with that type of offending and to provide protection to retail staff.

There are a number of assault offences and corresponding differences in maximum penalties. At the higher end of the scale, causing grievous bodily harm with intent and wounding with intent carry maximum penalties of life imprisonment. The sentencing guidelines on assault include an aggravating factor of

“offences committed against those working in the public sector or providing a service to the public”,

which should be taken into account by the courts when deciding what sentence to impose and may be applied to retail staff conducting their duties. In addition, the Sentencing Council is reviewing its guidelines on assault. A consultation on the revised guidelines is anticipated in 2020. I advise hon. Members to respond to that consultation with a specific focus on assaults on retail workers.

Let me turn to some of the specific points raised. Several hon. Members called for me to publish the review of the call for evidence as quickly as possible. The fact that we are going into an election will make that quite difficult, but I give my undertaking that, as soon as we come back, if I am in the job, we will try to get it out as quickly as possible. Obviously, the five-week election campaign gives officials a bit of an easier time, so they can digest the responses and get it out as soon as they can.

The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) raised the issue of facial recognition technology. Obviously, we are supporting the police as they trial the use of new technology across the country. It has become clear that facial recognition technology has significant crime-fighting possibilities. A recent court case established that there is a sufficient legal framework for its use and operation in this country, but as its use is expanded, possibly by police forces, in the months and years to come, I have no doubt that it will have to come to the House for some sort of democratic examination at some point. Thus far, however, where it is being deployed, we are seeing significant benefits from it.

[Kate Green]

I am pleased that the Minister believes that there will need to be a full debate about facial recognition technology in the House. He will be aware of concerns about personal privacy and the possibility that it is, in some respects, discriminatory against certain groups. If he and his party are returned to government, will he commit to ensuring that the House has an opportunity to have that full debate?

[Kit Malthouse]

There has already been a debate in the House on the use of facial recognition technology, and it is obviously within the purview of Members and Select Committees and others to examine the issue. It has just been through the courts—South Wales Police has been challenged on its use of facial recognition technology, and the courts found the current framework satisfactory. I have no doubt that when we get back from this election there will be an urge for the issue to be debated in the House, given the enormous success that is being seen with facial recognition technology.

The right hon. Member for Delyn raised the issue of local police plans, suggesting that we put pressure on police and crime commissioners to include retail crime in their plans. If this was a pressing issue in the high street, one would hope that the police and crime commissioner would commit to having it in their plan anyway. However, we have created a new National Policing Board, which is looking at systemic issues across the country that should be addressed by the whole policing family in a concerted effort, and one area we are looking at is neighbourhood crime. What we put into that basket has yet to be fully agreed, and I will certainly consider putting retail crime in there.

I am very alive to the connection between drugs and alcohol misuse and the impact on shops and retail crime. First, on alcohol, I hope Members will have noticed that we are planning to roll out alcohol abstinence monitoring orders across the whole country. From memory, we have been given about £22 million to do that. The orders have been very successfully used in Croydon and in a pilot in Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Humberside recently. They are for low-level offending and those convicted of a crime where alcohol was the compelling factor in its commission. Compliance rates with that disposal are up at 93% or 94%, and there is enormous potential there.

With drugs, we have been given some money to start to combat the awful scourge of county lines, which is causing mayhem in many small towns across the country, not least in my constituency. I hope that when we return after the election we will see even more assertive action on that.

There is more that we can do on treatment and rehabilitation for those who fall into drug addiction. We must look imaginatively at schemes around the world that can be used to divert from offending those who have been convicted of a drug offence and are out in the community on probation. I point Members to a very interesting programme in Hawaii called the HOPE programme—Hawaii’s opportunity probation with enforcement—which I would be very keen to try to establish in this country as a way to deal with people who are low-level offenders because of a drug addiction. That could be managed in a much better way than I think we are managing it at the moment.

A number of Members mentioned the £200 threshold. I hope they are aware that police can still prosecute somebody who steals something worth less than £200.

EU Settlement Scheme: Looked-after Children and Care Leavers

Kate Green Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd September 2019 Westminster Hall

[Steve McCabe]

I thank my hon. Friend for those remarks. I hope that, in the course of this debate, it will be possible to demonstrate that this is not scaremongering, that these are real issues and that there are solutions, but that does require the Government to recognise the problems that my hon. Friend has raised and to agree to act on them.

As I was saying, it seems unlikely that social workers will have the time, expertise or legal knowledge to deal with these issues, particularly if they begin to encounter problems in the process. The Children’s Society, along with other charities, has repeatedly highlighted the problems that this group of children is facing and the challenges that exist in trying to process an EUSS application. There is no evidence that I am aware of that additional support will be made available to local authorities—the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) raises.

During the pilot phase, every application that Coram Children’s Legal Centre made on behalf of a child in care or a care leaver included detailed nationality advice—nationality advice that requires expert legal advice and understanding—and social workers had to be supported at each stage during the process. That is the evidence from the pilots.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the case that he is making. The Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit has been working with directors of children’s services in Greater Manchester to try to offer the support to which my hon. Friend refers. Does he agree with me that we urgently need the Government to get the resolution currently before the House on extending legal aid to children in immigration cases through the House and on to the statute book? If the Government did that, social workers would be absolutely clear that legal aid was available for these cases and that they would not have to rely just on the chances of getting exceptional case funding.

[Steve McCabe]

My understanding is that that is an outstanding Government promise; as my hon. Friend says, there is a resolution to that effect. If there are any plans to curtail the time that we will spend here in the coming days, one good use of the time here would be in dealing with this simple issue. That would certainly raise the prospects of our being able to deal with the whole issue in a much more satisfactory manner, and I would certainly support it.

The current guidance states that local authorities can make applications on behalf of children where they have full parental responsibility, but, as I mentioned earlier, for care leavers or children in care under a section 20 order they are instructed simply to raise awareness or to signpost those young people to the scheme. Children in care under section 20 orders include children with disabilities, the children of prisoners, children involved in the criminal justice system and victims of child trafficking. It seems unrealistic to think that those children will be able to gather the correct documentation, make the application for themselves and challenge any incorrect decision the Home Office might arrive at.

Looked-after children are starkly over-represented in the criminal justice system, as I am sure the Minister knows. Around half of children currently in custody in England and Wales have been in care at some point. The Government have provided no clarity as to how these children will be treated when they apply for the scheme and, if they are offending, whether that will be used against them, as in the adult scheme. I raise that point because in this country we normally take the view that juvenile criminal behaviour should be treated differently from adult criminal behaviour.

Many looked-after children and care leavers may be eligible for British citizenship, but the social worker will need to know the law in order to recognise that. Local authorities would have to pay the application fee, which is currently £1,012 per child. That is a significant disincentive for cash-strapped local authorities. As I said earlier, we are working on estimates because local authorities do not record EU nationals who are in their care or classed as children in need, but the Government estimate that around 5,000 EU children are currently in care, and there are perhaps a further 4,000 care leavers across the UK, who need to be registered. At the present time, it is virtually impossible to estimate the number of children in need, which is a broader group.

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[Tim Loughton]

I appreciate that very important point. It has been the subject of some of the discussions we have had with previous Home Secretaries. We have discussed not only what happens if there is a no-deal scenario but what happens if there is an agreement. If there is an agreement, the terms that should apply to children seeking to be reunited with families need to be at least as generous as those under the Dublin scheme, because under our domestic terms a range of family members are not included. We need to overhaul our own laws and increase the flexibility with which we can take on unaccompanied children who seek to be united with relatives who are often distant relatives but are nevertheless the only remaining members of their family, such has been the danger and the terror that they have had to escape from.

So, whatever happens in the next few weeks and months and goodness knows when, this issue needs to be looked at separately. As I say, I have had very positive discussions. When I and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport have approached the Home Secretary before, having been on trips to Greece with UNICEF to see some of the children who are applying for these schemes, we have had a very positive response and I very much hope that that will continue under new Ministers within the Home Office. But the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) makes a very pertinent point. Therefore, whatever happens, we need clarification under Dublin.

However, there is a problem closer to home, which is what we are discussing today, as a direct result of Brexit. It has not received the level of attention that many other aspects of the immigration scheme have, and it is a cause for concern. I have an interest in it, both as a former children’s Minister, and as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for children and vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group for looked-after children and care leavers, which the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak very admirably chairs. These sorts of issues come up with the children who we see.

As we know, the EU settlement registration scheme aims to establish the immigration status of EU citizens legally residing in the UK after we have left the EU. It grants settled or pre-settled status, with rights to work, travel, use public services, access public benefits and so on. As the hon. Gentleman said, it is the largest registration system ever planned in the UK. It has been a huge challenge and not without its problems, certainly early on. It needs to progress smoothly, to avoid another Windrush scandal, which has been mentioned. It has been subject to a lot of scrutiny and some criticism by the Home Affairs Committee, which I sit on. We produced a report in May on the scheme. In fact, we will take evidence again tomorrow—with the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) there, too—on how our preparedness for Brexit has hopefully improved since we last heard from witnesses on this subject.

Over a million people have now registered under that scheme; I gather that nobody has been refused. I myself have had just one complaint from constituents about the way it works, so things are better, if still not ideal.

[Kate Green]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that many people have been able to access the scheme successfully and it has been very helpful that the Home Office has begun to publish the data on the number of people going through the scheme. However, does he agree that we need one particular piece of data to be disentangled, which is in relation to 16 to 18-year-olds going through the scheme? Currently, they are being included in the number of adults going through the scheme, but nowhere in our law is a 16 or 17-year-old treated as an adult.

[Tim Loughton]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right; in fact, she has pre-empted what I will now not bother to say later. As she says, 16 and 17-year-olds have been assimilated with adults, but children in this country are those under the age of 18. So, it is absolutely essential that that definition is applied to all children, not least those most vulnerable of children. And as a result of schemes such as Staying Put, what is effectively the definition of the children who come within that remit will expand to include those aged up to 21, 23 and even 25 in the case of some, including those children with disabilities. Therefore, those figures that she referred to absolutely need to be disassembled, because these children are probably the largest group within the cohort that we are talking about today.

The Children’s Society has been very vociferous on the issue that we are considering today and it has done a lot of work on it; I pay tribute to that work, and the Children’s Society has also helped us to prepare for this debate. It has made a calculation—it is not about children in care, but it allows us to put things in context—that between the end of August 2018 and the end of June this year, 107,110 children under the age of 16 applied to the EU settlement scheme. So far, 86% of those children have had a conclusion to their application; 65% have got settled status and 35% have got pre-settled status; 180 applications were withdrawn, or were void or invalid; and no applications have been refused. However, that still leaves 14,510 children, who are presumably waiting for their applications to be concluded. So there is also a group of children coming through the normal scheme who are slightly in limbo.

Again, the whole point about the 16 and 17-year-olds is that we do not know how that group is broken down. So I repeat the call from the Children’s Society to see the ages of applicants broken down further, so that under-18s—as well as 18 to 25-year-olds, who are another potentially vulnerable subset of children not of “child age” but who are equally important and vulnerable—can be properly identified and, as a result, supported.

The Children’s Society also says:

“Additionally, only 12% of the applications to the EU Settlement Scheme have come from children aged under 16. But analysis from the Migration Observatory suggests that there were 700,000 EU children under 18 in the UK in 2018, meaning hundreds of thousands of children may still need to apply for settled status or secure British citizenship. If they do not, they risk being left without a lawful status in the UK which means being unable to access education, employment, healthcare, housing and other vital services.”

Therefore, this is still a big problem for those children in the care system and for those who, though not looked after, are unaccounted for in the applications that have come through so far. There is still an awful lot of work to do.

That group of up to about 5,000 looked-after children who will need to apply to the EU settlement scheme does not include care leavers—some of whom may be subject to “staying put” arrangements and other special support measures—or children who are classified as in need and who receive support services and vital help from local authority children’s services departments. That figure represents something like 6% of all children in care in this country—five years ago it was 3%, so there has been a rapid increase. Those individuals are an important part of the looked-after children estate and potentially some of the most problematic children to identify, support and register.

As the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak mentioned, it is a sad fact of life that children in the care system are still much too disproportionately represented in the youth justice system. Many are victims of people traffickers, many have English as a second language, and many rely on being able to access benefits and other support that we take for granted. Our children’s services departments are hugely overstretched, and the all-party parliamentary group for children has recently produced a number of reports on the issue.

I welcome hugely the announcement of an additional £14 billion for schools. I hope it will be confirmed tomorrow in the comprehensive spending review, although goodness knows what will happen tomorrow. It will be very well received, particularly in my part of the world of Sussex and other shire counties, but I want to ensure that children’s social care services are not excluded. Those services are within the remit of the Department for Education and have faced huge funding challenges, yet it is the local authority departments that provide them that will be responsible for looking out for these children, for identifying and registering them, and for the legal expertise for cases that are not as straightforward as those involving other children. For example, if children are here with a French or German family, they will be able to make the application on their behalf.

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[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the chance to contribute, Mr Bone. It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship. I welcome the Minister to her post and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak (Steve McCabe) on securing this debate.

I share the concerns that have been expressed today. It is estimated that in the north-west there are around 700 looked-after children of European economic area or Swiss nationality, but we do not know the numbers for sure. It is vital that we gather the data, so I was pleased to see in a written answer to Lord Russell on 9 July that the Home Office will survey local authorities to benchmark the current uptake of the scheme and to baseline cohorts of EEA citizen looked-after children and care leavers, and that the survey will take place at set intervals throughout the lifetime of the European Union settled status scheme.

Is the Minister able to update us about progress on gathering the survey data? Will she confirm that it will include children in need—a vulnerable group not encompassed by the provisions of the settled status scheme and special help from local authorities, as my hon. Friend pointed out? Will she also confirm that there will be an opportunity to disentangle data from the statistics in relation to 16 and 17-year-olds?

As others have said, we are talking about the most vulnerable children in the country who may have suffered appalling abuse or neglect. As we have also heard, securing status for those children is absolutely vital for them to thrive and maximise their potential in adult life. I share the concerns expressed about local authorities only being required to ensure that applications are made for children under section 31 care orders. I invite the Minister to explain why other children looked after in the ambit of section 20 —or those, for example, who are privately fostered or are care leavers—are not also included within the obligation on local authorities: they, too, are very vulnerable young people and children.

The Government intended the application process for settled status to be straightforward and simple. However, as we have heard, that will not be the case for many looked-after children because of the difficulties they might have in accessing documentation to support their applications, because their carers might not understand the need for them to apply or because local authorities might be overstretched and not able to give them the support that they need to do so.

As I have said, many such children will be reliant on legal aid to support them in making a sufficiently strong application. Social workers do not have the expertise, training, capacity, or indeed the legal right to give advice on immigration matters; they would be in breach of immigration law if they tried to. So it is vital that the Government, having finally tabled, after a year, the order to bring immigration cases for looked-after children within the ambit of the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, get the order put through in good time before 31 October. I hope the Minister will be able to commit today that the Government will ensure that that happens.

I want to mention a couple of other points: first, the issue of children’s best interests. I recognise that the Children Act 2004 requires that local authorities discharge their functions having regard to the welfare of children, and I also recognise that section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009 requires immigration authorities to take into account the need to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in the UK. However, the lack of systems and processes to embed children’s best interests into the settled status decision-making process means that those issues might not be properly addressed. What guarantees can the Minister give us that the EU settled status scheme will operate so that children’s best interests are always paramount? Will it be made explicit in the settled status scheme, and will she undertake to carry out a child rights impact assessment of the operation of the scheme?

I, too, want to highlight particular concerns in relation to EEA and Swiss national looked-after children in the criminal justice system. As we have heard, looked-after children are disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system. Half of children in custody have been in care. As with local authorities, there is a dearth of data on the nationality and status of children in the criminal justice system. Will the Government put in place arrangements to collect centrally nationality data for children in youth offending services and in detention as a matter of urgency, so that where applications need to be expedited for those children, that can take place?

As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak has said, our criminal justice system recognises the difference between childhood and adult offending, for example, in sentencing or in the time that it takes for a conviction to become spent. However, that difference is not clearly recognised in the EU settled status scheme. Any child or young person over the age of criminal responsibility—in other words, over the age of 10— will be subject to criminality checks. Where checks reveal “serious or persistent” offending, a referral will be made to immigration enforcement for a case-by-case determination as to whether an applicant should be refused status on the basis of “suitability”. I recognise that the Government have stated that those under 18 will not be required to answer questions relating to suitability and that children under 18 will be deported only on imperative grounds of public security, but there is no single definition of what kinds of offences are likely to be captured in that exception. It would be useful if Ministers could guarantee to set out the higher threshold that will apply in guidance, and also confirm that both the non-disclosure requirements and the higher threshold applying to under-18s will continue after 31 October, even in the event of no deal.

The settled status scheme also fails to differentiate between adults and children in relation to the continuous residence criteria: the general caseworker guidance makes no distinction between adults and children in terms of resetting the clock on residence following a period of imprisonment or detention. Will the Government look at amending the scheme to ensure that a custodial sentence imposed on a child does not impact on the calculation of their continuous residence for the purpose of making an application for settled status?

Finally, may I invite the Government to publish specific guidance on children and young people applying to the settled status scheme from within the secure estate or the wider criminal justice scheme? Will the Government consider granting settled status to all children irrespective of their criminal history? I echo the calls made in this Chamber this morning and invite the Government to supply settled status to all looked-after children and children in care. We risk those children being left in a limbo that will affect them all through their adult lives if we do not make their status absolutely clear and safe now. As we have heard, those children have already demonstrated their right to our protection. We cannot afford to let them down as a result of a decision to leave the European Union, which was in no way any of their making.

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[Seema Kennedy]

May I please finish my point? For some of the children we are talking about, the local authority is the parent. A second group might be the parents of section 20 children, and another group includes children in need. The problem is that some children still have their parents, who, perhaps at a later point, might come back in order to make the application for them. We are talking about three distinct groups of children. It is important that we recognise that, although some children might temporarily be under a section 20 order, they might return to their parents afterwards.

[Kate Green]

Will the Minister give way?

[Seema Kennedy]

I must finish this point. I have asked officials to look at the hon. Lady’s point about the local authority giving the evidence, and I will write to her in more detail.

[Kate Green]

That was the point I was going to make.

[Seema Kennedy]

It is important to note that not all the children we are talking about have local authorities that are in loco parentis.

On the role of local authorities, a new burdens assessment has been made. It will take into account the important work of identifying the cohort of children and their parents. We have asked local authorities to return figures by the end of August—I think the hon. Lady referred to that—and we are currently co-ordinating those returns, which came in only a few days ago. That is how we are supporting local authorities.

We have given £9 million to 57 voluntary and community sector organisations across the country, to help us reach an estimated 200,000 vulnerable or at-risk EU citizens and help them apply. Of course, it is not only children who might be in a vulnerable cohort; the Home Office is very aware of that. Additional support is available to people who do not have the appropriate access, skills or confidence to apply online. There are more than 300 assisted digital locations across the UK, and there is an opportunity for a paper application in some circumstances.

Immigration Detention: Victims of Modern Slavery

Kate Green Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes]

I reiterate the point that detention can only be maintained where there is a realistic chance of removal within a reasonable timescale. The hon. Lady will have heard me comment earlier about auto-bail applications at two months. An individual in detention can apply for bail at any time. I urge her constituent to provide that advice to the individual concerned.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

Every Child Protected Against Trafficking has worked with child victims of trafficking who have been detained in immigration detention having been incorrectly considered to be adults. Despite displaying indicators of having been trafficked, these children can struggle to prove their age. They may not have identity documents or they may have been given false identity documents by their traffickers. What efforts is the Home Office making to ensure that no child who is a victim of trafficking is being held in immigration detention?

[Caroline Nokes]

The UK ended the routine detention of children in immigration removal centres in 2010 and enshrined that in law under the Immigration Act 2014. It is worth noting that, in the last year of the previous Labour Government, 1,100 children were held in detention. However, in some cases, individuals without documentary evidence of their age who are detained as adults subsequently claim to be children. When that occurs, our revised interim policy states that they will be afforded the benefit of the doubt and released into the care of social services until a further assessment of their age has been made, unless their physical appearance and demeanour very strongly suggest that they are over 25 years of age. Home Office policy means that such cases may be counted as under-18s for the purposes of data collection, but the hon. Lady is right that we should not be detaining children, and we have put in place steps that will prevent that from happening. Where there is an age-dispute case, the benefit of the doubt will always be afforded to the individual.

Tier 5 Religious Worker Visas

Kate Green Excerpts

Thursday 4th July 2019 Westminster Hall

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered changes to Tier 5 Religious Worker Visas.

It is, as always, an immense pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Gapes. I thank colleagues on the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for this debate; it is greatly appreciated. I also pay tribute to my co-sponsors, my friends the hon. Members for East Renfrewshire (Paul Masterton) and for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Ged Killen). I have always believed that our politics is better when we work cross-party to tackle injustices, so I am particularly grateful to them for joining together on this occasion.

More than 70 right hon. and hon. Members expressed support for this Backbench Business debate, and I know from conversations with colleagues across parties that the changes introduced by the British Government have caused great consternation in constituencies and parishes all across these islands. For example, my hon. Friend the Member for West Dunbartonshire (Martin Docherty-Hughes), who cannot be here today, has been inundated with correspondence from more than 120 constituents in three Catholic parishes because they are particularly concerned about the changes. Likewise, the right hon. Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) wanted to put his opposition on the record, but for diary reasons he cannot make it to the debate.

This is an opportunity to air those concerns with the Minister, who I know will listen attentively before responding. Before I go any further, I express my sincere thanks to Anthony Horan from the Catholic Parliamentary Office in Edinburgh and to the Bishops’ Conference for an excellent briefing in advance of the debate. We have only 90 minutes and I want to ensure that all colleagues get a good opportunity to air their views, so I will confine my speech to around 10 minutes, but I will of course be happy for colleagues to intervene.

Concerns about changes to religious worker visas were first raised with me by my good friend Father Liam McMahon, the parish priest at St Michael’s in Parkhead. Essentially, at the tail end of last year the British Government introduced a change in regulations that meant that visiting clergy could no longer enter the UK via the tier 5 visa route and would instead have to apply via tier 2. The changes, which came into force on 10 January, are causing something of a headache for a whole host of religious organisations, but particularly the Catholic Church, which requires visiting clergy to cover for periods of illness, holidays, religious retreats and even for priests who are away on pilgrimage with their parishioners.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on his speech—I am sorry that I cannot stay for the whole debate. He is right that the changes affect all faiths and denominations, including the local gurdwara in my constituency. In the Sikh community, there is a pattern of bringing priests over for short periods each year, which enriches their faith, and enables them to share ideas and philosophies and to train each other. That is inhibited by the rule changes.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kate Green Excerpts

Monday 10th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

My right hon. Friend has a long track record in this area. He is entirely right to raise the sensitivity in finding the right balance between security and civil liberties. On the Met’s numbers, there is a one in 1,000 chance of a false alert, but we need to see the evaluation. I am very clear in my mind that we need to support the police in trialling new technology, but if we are to take the public with us we have to be absolutely sure that it sits inside a regulatory framework that they trust. We believe that there is a legal framework for it, although that is being challenged in the courts. I give him my undertaking that, given the importance of maintaining public confidence and trust, we are doing urgent work to review the regulatory environment in which this technology development sits, including new oversight and advisory boards, because I recognise the fundamental importance of taking the public with us on this journey.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

The police national database contains 15 million images, which have been used in a much less controversial way for static facial recognition since 2014, but police tell me that the algorithm that is used to support the database is out of date and needs investment. Will the Minister confirm that the necessary investment will be made?

[Mr Hurd]

I can confirm to the hon. Lady that, across a substantial range of technology requirements for the police, the Home Secretary and I are considering the funding requirements of the police in the context of the comprehensive spending review, and he and I have made it clear that police funding is our priority.

Illegal Seaborne Migration

Kate Green Excerpts

Tuesday 4th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes]

As my hon. Friend knows, I had a really informative visit to the Dover lifeboat over the Christmas period, and it was absolutely at the forefront of understanding the channel, the risks and the crossing patterns that were emerging at the time. I was very impressed by the commitment shown by the brave men and women who crew the Dover lifeboat. She makes a valid point, and I would be absolutely delighted to put that request to the Chancellor, although of course I cannot make any commitments. It is important that we not only thank our lifeboat crews, and I would be happy to make that request to the Chancellor.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

Can the Minister categorically confirm that no one who could make a claim for asylum is being sent back to France under the so-called gentleman’s agreement that allows for migrants to be returned within a 24-hour period?

[Caroline Nokes]

I reassure the hon. Lady that this cohort is being treated no differently from any other.

Places of Worship: Security Funding

Kate Green Excerpts

Tuesday 7th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I thank the right hon. Lady for her comments. She asks whether the funding is new, further to what was announced soon after the atrocity in Christchurch. The £1.6 million for places of worship is not new, although there is more detail available on it today; I also announced the £5 million for training at the time. What is new today is the Ramadan package.

Like other colleagues, the right hon. Lady expressed her concern about how online platforms are being used. In particular, she mentioned Facebook. When legislation is in place, it will naturally be easier to take action. However, as I have said, there is action that online platforms can take today, including on closed groups. There has been a welcome increase in engagement, but I do not feel that it has been enough. I think more can be achieved by working with our international partners, who are taking this matter seriously.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I welcome the statement. The Home Secretary will be unsurprised to learn that I welcome the Ramadan package, as I was one of over 90 colleagues who wrote on behalf of our mosques to ask for extra protection during the holy month. I very much appreciate the announcement.

As the Secretary of State for Education is on the Treasury Bench, may I also raise the concerns that my constituents have expressed about safety around schools? In particular, Muslim mothers in traditional dress are highly visible as they collect or drop off children and are often vulnerable to abuse and hate attacks. Will the Home Secretary work with his colleague to advise and support schools to ensure that children and parents are safe whenever they attend school premises?

[Sajid Javid]

I support what the hon. Lady said about the Ramadan package and the work that she has done with her community and others to raise the issue. She is also right to raise the issue of schools. I mentioned in my statement that there is £14 million of support for the Jewish community, as there should be. Most of that is for Jewish schools. It is right that we take a fresh look at other schools and religious establishments where people of certain faiths gather. Schools and community centres would be included in that. I have asked my officials for further advice to make sure that we look at this issue again in the light of the recent terrorist attacks that we have seen internationally. I know that the Secretary of State for Education shares my determination to make sure that we are doing all that we can by working together.

Facial Recognition and the Biometrics Strategy

Kate Green Excerpts

Wednesday 1st May 2019 Westminster Hall

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to participate in this debate under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) on securing it. My speech will be neither as lengthy nor as expert as his. My interest in this matter arises from the issue in my constituency last year when a report in the Manchester Evening News revealed that the intu Trafford Centre had been working with Greater Manchester police to use live facial recognition technology. I had not been made aware of that previously, and as far as I know, none of my constituents, or the other members of the public, knew of it either. Following the report in the Manchester Evening News, the intu Trafford Centre and Greater Manchester police suspended the pilot.

Like my colleagues, I suspect that many of our constituents would support the use of facial recognition and other technologies to prevent crime, keep us safe, catch criminals or trace missing and vulnerable people, which is something that I understand the British Transport police are considering. However, as we have heard, the use of the technology raises a number of issues, which my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West drew attention to. I have discussed some of them directly with local police in Greater Manchester, and at national level. I am grateful to the police officers who have spoken to me for their openness in those discussions. It is clear that the police themselves feel that there is a pressing need for the national framework that would make effective use of the technology possible. For now, they do not feel they have that.

From my perspective, and in the light of the experience in my constituency, I think that the framework will need to address decision making, who takes a decision to use such technology in a particular context, oversight and, importantly, accountability. How can such use be scrutinised and how can the police and other state authorities be made accountable to the public? I say that because what is happening could constitute a significant intrusion into the privacy of individual citizens whose record contains nothing criminal or threatening, and who are merely going about their daily business. It is important that the use of the technology in relation to the majority of citizens should be both appropriate and proportionate.

Issues that concern me include the size and content of any watchlist that might be constructed—particularly vis-à-vis the effectiveness of the size of the watchlist. In the Manchester Evening News report it was revealed that 30 million people per annum visit the intu Trafford Centre. It is an iconic destination in my constituency. However, over the sixth-month period during which the technology was being deployed, only one positive identification was made. That makes me question whether it was right to draw so many members of the public into the ambit of the experiment, for what seems to be a low level of effectiveness.

We also have to consider where the technology is being used. The police themselves said to me that some events or venues will be more suitable, and some less. Also we need to consider why it is used—at whose initiative or request such technology is deployed. In the Trafford Centre the intu management themselves had suggested it to Greater Manchester police. Is it right that police priorities should be set by the wishes of private enterprises? If that can be right, and in some circumstances there can be a partnership approach between the police and private entities, if the private entity draws a disproportionate benefit from the activity is it not right that it should pay for it? Football clubs pay for additional police protection at football matches.

We have heard concerns about potential ethnic bias in the databases and technologies that are currently available. I am told that what is on the market, as it were, at the moment is better at matching north European and south-east Asian males than other ethnic categories. That relates to the countries in which the algorithms that underpin the technology were developed, but from the public’s point of view we can say that if there is any ethnic disparity, or perception of it, in the way the technologies apply, it is bound to sow public mistrust. It cannot be right that we make use of technologies that do not treat all communities equally.

I have mentioned my concerns about where decisions are taken in police and other public agencies. It has been made clear by regulators that that should be at the most senior strategic level, and in my view it should be in the context of an absolutely transparent national framework. I also think we must think about mechanisms for accountability both to individual members of the public and the community that a police force serves overall.

Finally, while we are not going to halt the speed of spread of technology, and I think that we can expect more resources to go into such technology in the future, there is a question about how we prioritise resources vis-à-vis effectiveness and public buy-in. The static facial recognition technologies that have been used have excited much less contention and public concern. People can understand that the police hold a database of those with previous convictions and criminal records, and that they will check, where they have got someone whom they are not able to identify, against those records. I understand that that database is in need of new investment, which it is not currently scheduled to receive. I ask the Minister whether that might be the first priority for investment in facial recognition technologies; can the investment that is needed in the police national database be brought forward?

I am glad we have had the opportunity to debate the matter in Parliament today. I would be misleading the House if I suggested that it was causing widespread concern among my constituents, but in fact it should be. How the technology is being used, and the context in which we are made aware of its use, should concern us all. That is not to say it should not be used, but in the absence of a clear legislative or regulatory framework for its use, I do not think it would be right for the House not to ask those questions today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. This excellent discussion has been informed by expert opinion, particularly from my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones), whom I congratulate on securing this important debate. I think the public would be shocked to hear about the lack of legislative framework and guidance, and the potential for such intrusion into people’s lives by the state.

My hon. Friend spoke about the need for us all to understand the technology that could be used, and to ensure that the frameworks we set out are relevant and keep pace with legislation. That must be informed by a principles-based framework, because legislation will never keep up with the technology used by law enforcement or private operators. Several Members mentioned the police national database and the unlawful processing of custody images by police forces. That is not a good starting point for this debate, given that the Home Office’s response to that issue has been poor and the delays in the auto-deletion of images are worrying.

My hon. Friend mentioned the need for ethics by design to ensure that any biases, particularly against people from BME backgrounds, are built out of such technologies from the beginning and are not allowed to be replicated and harden. He described well the astonishing fact that there is no legal basis for these invasive, pervasive technologies and highlighted clear gaps in the biometric strategy in failing to address those issues. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) spoke powerfully about the consequences of false positives, and raised basic questions about the rights of innocent people. Those questions should be answered. We should not need to hold this debate to speak about the right of innocent people not to have their privacy undermined, and about the police unlawfully holding images of people who have committed no crime.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) spoke about her personal experience and the Trafford Centre in her constituency. She made the important point—I have had the same conversation—that the police want and need a transparent, national and consistent framework, because they feel that they have to make things up as they go along. Experiences will differ: South Wales police has demonstrated a completely different attitude from the Met’s in rolling out facial recognition, and it cannot be right for people to experience different technologies in completely different ways and with different attitudes, depending on the police force in the area where they live.

[Kate Green]

My hon. Friend is right to say that the police want a clear, national framework, and it cannot be right that different police forces operate in different ways. Greater Manchester police has stopped using that technology altogether, but there may be circumstances where we would like it to be deployed to keep us safe.

[Louise Haigh]

That is completely right, and that is why this debate and the framework are so important. We cannot allow the police, with all the best intentions, to attempt to use this technology and then in some cases to mess it up—as they will—and have to roll it back. We want to ensure that the framework is in place so that the police can go ahead with confidence and the public have confidence. We must ensure that biases are designed out and that people accept the intrusion into their privacy and understand that such technology is being used proportionately and out of necessity. At the moment we cannot have confidence in that, which is why this debate is so important.

Retail Crime

Kate Green Excerpts

Thursday 11th April 2019 Westminster Hall

[David Hanson]

My hon. Friend backs up my point strongly. It is simply not acceptable that people who are doing their jobs are abused. Ultimately, I want to look at age-related sales, because when the Government determine that the sale of certain goods and services should be restricted for a range of reasons, it is the shop staff who must enforce that.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

I apologise for not being able to stay for the whole debate. Like my right hon. Friend, I am proud to be an USDAW member, and I very much welcome the debate. He is right to highlight the theft of high-value goods, which is sometimes related to addiction and sometimes—particularly in the case of women offenders—results from coercion by others to obtain goods that can be sold for those coercive partners to benefit from. Does he agree that it would be well worth the Minister’s while to look at the initiative undertaken in Manchester, where women caught shoplifting in such circumstances are diverted not to the criminal justice system per se, but to women’s centres? Good, preventive work can be done there to deal with addiction, domestic abuse, coercion and other causes of this kind of retail crime committed by violent and dangerous offenders, and also some vulnerable offenders.

[David Hanson]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point. I will talk about the four or five solutions in a moment, but the outcome of this should not necessarily be putting more people in prison. It might actually be trying to deal with the causes of people committing offences in the first place. That scheme in Manchester is a good example of how that could be integrated, and maybe, with good practice, developed still further.

That brings me on to the question of drug and alcohol treatment orders. If, as the ACS says, 50% of repeat offenders are motivated by drug or alcohol addiction, the key is to stop the drug or alcohol addiction. The figures for community order starts for people who have been caught, convicted and given a community order show that, in 2014, which was well into the Government’s term of office, 8,734 drug treatment orders and 5,547 alcohol treatment orders were given. However, the figures last year were only 4,889 drug treatment orders—halved—and only 3,315 alcohol treatment orders, which were down by at least a third.

If I go back—dare I say it, it is a long time now, but it is still worth going back to—to the last years of the last Labour Government, in 2007-08, we gave 16,607 drug treatment orders, which is double what we had in 2014 and four times more than now. I simply say that one way we can support people is by identifying why they steal alcohol or other products for their own use. They are doing it to sell them quickly, or to satisfy their cravings. We have to have alternatives, such as that in Manchester, and drug and alcohol treatment orders, which also help.

Finally on the picture of where we are is the threshold for low-level shoplifting. As shadow Minister, I dealt with this issue in Parliament five years ago when the Government introduced a £200 threshold for low-level shoplifting under section 22A of the Magistrates’ Court Act 1980, which means that people do not go to court for thefts of goods valued at up to £200. That in itself is fine, because if they are caught that might be dealt with by post.

However, this is five years on. The concern expressed to me from both outside and inside Parliament is that that has been seen as decriminalising shop thefts of under £200. That leads to the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton made about police not attending, which leads to magistrates not taking cases in front of court, which leads to offenders thinking that they can get away with it. I simply say that we should look at that in detail and review this, now that we are five years on.

Windrush Compensation Scheme

Kate Green Excerpts

Tuesday 9th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Nokes]

The hon. Lady is right to point out the severe impact on individuals of the Windrush generation. As I said previously, the Home Office is determined to work alongside HMRC, which will have evidence of previous earnings and the earnings level at which her constituent would have been, and to work with him through his own evidence. She indicated that he had kept close records through HMRC to ensure that he is properly compensated. As I mentioned earlier, there is also a discretionary element to the scheme that in some instances may well provide redress that is not otherwise identified in the tables.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) and I are meeting constituents from Windrush families this Saturday, and I think there will be very considerable interest in the engagement events that the Minister mentioned, so it would be helpful to know whether she can provide local MPs with details of when these events might be coming to our areas. Due to the deep mistrust and scepticism about the Home Office, there may be reluctance to supply full information to enable a cost-based claim to be submitted, so will the Minister guarantee that there will be a firewall in place to ensure that any data supplied for the purpose of seeking compensation under this scheme is not used by the Home Office or any other Government Department for other purposes?

[Caroline Nokes]

Absolutely, I am happy to give that commitment. The hon. Lady makes an important point about the importance of outreach and of building trust. I am absolutely determined to do what she has asked and to provide information to hon. Members across the House of when there will be outreach events in their constituencies or close by. I recognise that, in the case of Manchester, a number of Members are close by. We will certainly provide that information.

As I mentioned, in many instances it is those from the community who can provide the greatest reassurance. I was struck last week when talking to two gentlemen from Birmingham by the emphasis they put on the work that their charity does in supporting individuals. I have taken a close interest in that and looked to see how the Home Office can provide additional assistance to such individuals, who provide such a useful bridge between Home Office officials and the community.