Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (Tenth sitting)
Lee Anderson Excerpts(3 years, 5 months ago)
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Bambos Charalambous
I do not know who signed the petition, but I am sure it is available. The right hon. Gentleman will have to explore the petition himself to see who signed it.
A broad coalition, from the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children to Liberty, from Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities to the Ramblers Association and from the police to Shelter, is united in the view that the proposals put forward by the Government would be wrong and unhelpful, and go against our basic rights.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)
We have a big problem in Ashfield with the travelling community. They come two or three times a year. I did my own poll of about 2,000 constituents, and 95% agreed with me that the Travellers were creating a massive problem—crime was going up, pets were going missing, antisocial behaviour was going through the roof and properties were getting broken into. My constituents do not want them in our area anymore. That was a survey of 2,000 people, and that was the response from 95% of them. That evidence from my area is a bit more compelling than the petition the hon. Gentleman mentioned, which has probably been signed by 100,000 Travellers.
Bambos Charalambous
One of the problems is that there is less local authority provision for Travellers to go to. That loss of provision, which is partly due to cuts to local government, has caused more problems, meaning that more people are on the road at any given time. However, this issue does not affect just the Traveller community, as the hon. Gentleman will see when I go on to make further points. It also impacts people such as ramblers, birdwatchers and others who want to stay out and sleep in their vehicles while enjoying countryside activities.
Bambos Charalambous
Therein lies the problem: many people do not want to have Travellers anywhere near them, and that is partly why there are so few sites. If more sites were made available, that would potentially solve the problem.
Lee Anderson
We have already established that in places where Traveller communities set up, such as Ashfield, crime goes up; we know that there is a direct correlation between Travellers being in the area and crime going up. Does the hon. Gentleman think that crime will come down if we have a permanent site in Ashfield?
Bambos Charalambous
As I have said, there is no excuse for criminality, and the Gypsy and Traveller community is already overrepresented in the prison population, but I do not think that the two issues are necessarily related to what the clause is trying to achieve. The hon. Gentleman is trying to say that the Gypsy and Traveller community is responsible for crime in Ashfield. I do not know the facts and figures in relation to that, but what the clause does is criminalise communities for being in vehicles on public land. While each Member has a concern about their individual constituents, we need to get back to what the Bill is focusing on, which is criminalising anyone in a vehicle, even on their own. I think that is what we need to focus on.
Bambos Charalambous
Again, my hon. Friend makes a very good point. We want to make sure that people are free to enjoy the beautiful countryside we are lucky to have in the UK without fear of being criminalised in such a way.
Marc Willers QC went on to say:
“That distress can be engendered or underpinned by the prejudice that Gypsies and Travellers face in our society today. It is a widespread and long-standing prejudice, dating back to the first time that Romani Gypsies came to these shores in the 1500s… There may well be unwarranted and unjustified concerns on the part of the occupier, which could lead to the criminalisation of an individual who has nowhere else to go.” —[Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 18 May 2021; c. 72, Q104.]
Lee Anderson
At the beginning, the hon. Gentleman made an interesting point about Romani Gypsies coming here more than 500 years ago, but the Gypsy encampments that we are talking about in places such as Ashfield are not the traditional, old-fashioned Gypsies sat there playing the mandolin, flogging lucky heather and telling fortunes. The Travellers I am talking about are more likely to be seen leaving your garden shed at 3 o’clock in the morning, probably with your lawnmower and half of your tools. That happens every single time they come to Ashfield. Does he agree that there is some confusion on the Opposition side as to who these people actually are?
Bambos Charalambous
I have said previously that we certainly do not condone any antisocial behaviour or criminal activity, but this is one of the many prejudices that exist about the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, and it is these sorts of problems that would lead to people invoking some of the clauses in the Bill in order to criminalise people.
Another point made by the Minister for Policing was that the clean-up costs of the encampments can be huge. This is truly a problem, but it will not be solved by these clauses. Friends, Families & Travellers has pointed out that there are tried and tested ways of saving money while supporting families on roadside camps. Adopting a working, negotiated stopping policy where local authorities provide basic facilities such as toilets, water and rubbish collection, and working with families on encampments to agree suitable temporary locations and lengths of stay, has been proven to significantly reduce the costs attached to encampments. Research from De Montfort University found that a negotiated stopping policy developed in Leeds was shown to be self-financing when financially analysed. The creation of permanent pitches leads to the generation of rent and council tax for a local authority. If there are issues of commercial waste management such as large-scale fly-tipping, local authorities can use the legislation that already exists to deal with that crime. Additional legislation is not necessary.
Lee Anderson
About five years ago, we had Travellers come to a car park in my village and they left a load of rubbish there, which cost the council over £1,000 to clean up. A few weeks later, they came back again, left another load of rubbish that cost another £1,000. I got that fed up with the local council that I hired a JCB and put two concrete blocks there, to stop the Travellers coming back and to keep the beauty spot tidy, and I got a £100 fixed penalty notice from my local Labour authority. Does the hon. Gentleman think that that was the right course of action?
Bambos Charalambous
As I have said, there are powers in place to deal with fly-tipping. Where people feel the need to secure certain sites, it is down to the local authority to deal with those issues. I am certainly not encouraging people to take the law into their own hands and deal with things in the ways they see fit. That would be the road to chaos. I have heard what the hon. Gentleman said, but I am not going to comment on individual situations. The law is there, it is available and it can be used. It has been used quite successfully by many local authorities and the police.
There are other solutions for managing unauthorised encampments such as negotiated stopping whereby arrangements are made on agreed permitted times of stopping and to ensure the provision of basic needs such as water, sanitation and refuse collection. The manifesto commitment and the Government response referred to littering as a problem, but then why do the Government not consider providing more authorised camping sites with proper refuse facilities? Why do the Government think that confiscating someone’s home, putting them in prison and fining them is the answer? Why do the Government not instead consider the proposals of my hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Mr Perkins), whose private Member’s Bill would make it an offence to demand money to vacate an unauthorised encampment? That, along with a significant increase in permanent site provision, could prevent Gypsy and Traveller communities from being forced to make unauthorised encampments, having nowhere to go, and prevent the small minority of Travellers who demand money to leave sites where they are not entitled to be.
I acknowledge the difficulty that people or businesses can face with unauthorised encampments on their land. The Victims’ Commissioner put it well when she said that
“unless there is proper provision of authorised encampments, you have two sets of victims. I quite agree with you that the people who are distressed, damaged or whatever by an unauthorised encampment are victims of that. There is no doubt of it…but I want you to take into account the difficulty of finding somewhere to camp in a lot of places, which forces people into an unlawful place.” ––[Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 21 May 2021; c. 120, Q193.]
The Policing Minister also claimed that money for sites was available in the £150 million affordable homes programme pot, but the last shared ownership affordable homes programme in 2016 to 2021, with a budget of £4.7 billion, awarded grants for just two Traveller sites across the whole country in the scheme’s entire period. They were both just transit sites in Birmingham and Cornwall. That was revealed by Friends, Families & Travellers, which FOI-ed Homes England to find that information. Funding for Traveller sites must be more than warm words.
The Minister also claimed that there has been an increase in the number of caravans on sites from 14,000 in 2010 to 20,000 in 2019, but she failed to point out that the number of caravans counted on sites is different from the actual number of pitches. The 14,000 and 20,000 figures are the total number of caravans counted that are listed as unauthorised sites in the caravan parks. While there has indeed been a rise from 14,730 in January 2010 to 19,967 in January 2020, the number of caravans on socially rented sites fell by 364.
Small-scale, family-run sites are great for those who have the resources to pull this off, but they are incredibly problematic and inaccessible for those who live in areas where land is at a premium and who have limited finances. It is the number of permanent pitches that can really improve things for Travellers, residents, local authorities and the police. Although there has been a 39.9% increase in transit pitches alone, it amounts to an increase of only 101 pitches—the equivalent of 10 per year over 10 years—with an overall decrease of 11.1% in permanent pitches on local authority and registered social landlord sites. In fact, the Government’s published figures show that there has been an overall 8.4% decrease of pitches on local authority Traveller sites. Nesil Caliskan, the chair of the Local Government Association, told us in the evidence sessions:
“There has to be a commitment from local authorities that those sites are allocated. The statutory legislation that already exists for these protected characteristics needs to be taken seriously. We should be meeting the obligations that are already set in statute, which says that we should have adequate sites for these communities, but we just do not.”––[Official Report, Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Public Bill Committee, 18 May 2021; c. 68, Q99.]
The Government should focus on ensuring that local authorities have the resources they need to provide more space for Traveller communities to legally reside. By taking an enforcement approach to address the number of unauthorised encampments, the Government are overlooking the issue of the lack of site provision.
Part 4 of the Bill would cause harm to Gypsy and Traveller communities for generations. Gypsies and Travellers are already the most disproportionally represented group in the criminal justice system. Part 4 would compound the inequalities already experienced by Gypsies and Travellers and further push them into the criminal justice system, just for existing nomadically. I urge the Government to rethink these harmful proposals.
Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (Third sitting)
Lee Anderson ExcerptsThursday 20th May 2021
(3 years, 6 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 View all Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act 2022 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 20 May 2021 - (20 May 2021)
Siobhan Baillie
Q
Dame Vera Baird: Yes, I do. It is very important that what victims want, which I have described—procedural justice, being treated with decency, being kept up to date and so on—is provided for in the process of delivering a caution. It looks as if victims are about as satisfied when the offender is given a caution as they are when the matter goes to court, so as long as they are consulted and they are treated as victims throughout, I think it is probably excellent to streamline the nature of this work.
There is one reservation: perhaps something needing a bit of looking at is the obligation to admit guilt in order to get an out-of-court disposal. Sometimes something like a deferred prosecution might be something that a person would be readier to accept, and it should be no more of a problem for a victim. But in principle, as long as victims are involved—we have a massive backlog in the courts, so if we can deal with justice for both sides in some other way, let us do it.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)
Q
Dame Vera Baird: I am not an expert on sentencing and I do not think you particularly want my personal views. Do you want the perspective of victims on that?
Lee Anderson
Yes, please.
Dame Vera Baird: It is hard to say because we do not get a lot of victims coming to us and talking about sentencing; they are usually talking more about their own treatment by the justice system. But what I can tell you is that although they are broadly supportive of different sentencing, the briefing that you have probably had—and that we certainly have had from RoadPeace, Brake and British Cycling—suggests that they are worried about the difference between a sentence where someone has caused death and a sentence where someone has “only” caused what might be the very most serious of harms, and they wonder whether there ought to be some nearer proximity between the two.
But victims do say quite clearly that they have concerns about making causing death by dangerous driving and causing severe injury by dangerous driving have much higher penalties, because of the factor I mentioned before: it might deter prosecutions, or it might deter juries, who can pretty easily see themselves in a driving seat when something goes wrong, from convicting. So they have that reservation.
I think the telling line is that victims are not sure why there is such reliance on custodial sentencing for people who may have driven dangerously but are not dangerous people. Is it not better to use driving bans more effectively and not to allow such leeway about the unfairness of it but to make them pretty well automatic? That is their take on it, and I do not think I can second-guess them.
Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)
Q
To finish the conversation that we started at the beginning, it would be helpful if you could describe the impact that you think those amendments will have on the process and on the victims. Perhaps you could say a bit more about their sense of confidence in the system. What are we aiming for here?
Dame Vera Baird: We do have to protect the article 8 rights of complainants, and the open nature—the swingeing and unconditional nature—of these clauses does not do that. I have set out all the people who have commented on how commonplace it is for a victim to have their phone demanded and for it to be trawled, as it is called on the ground. I have set all that out.
The consequence, of course, is that complainants, who say they have been sexually assaulted—they are already injured, and we have already failed to protect them against crime. They are probably vulnerable. They are certainly very nervous. They have heard that it is not a nice thing to go to court. They probably know the conviction rate is very low. They have got together the courage to go and talk to the police and to discuss the case, and they seem to be met—my survey last year made this very clear—with police officers who are looking askance at them as genuine victims and saying, in effect, “Hand over everything there is for me to know about you, so that I can check whether you are a worthy person for me to get behind and prosecute this case.”
Other than sexual assaults, rapes and trafficking, and occasionally domestic abuse, I do not know of any other kind of case in which the download of phones is used in that way. It is not just the download of phones. Frequently the police ask for, and frequently the CPS requires, all health notes, psychiatric notes, school reports and social services reports, which obviously adds to the tendency to think that you are the one under investigation, and not the other. This is a massive deterrent and, not surprisingly, a good reason why people withdraw.
Following the pilot we did in Northumbria, which was highly successful, it is very important that there should be automatic legal advice. When someone’s article 8 human rights—we have an obligation to protect human rights—are put at stake by what the CPS has found are overly intrusive demands in 60% of cases, the only way to try to deal with it, given that there are a whole range of cases about it, is to get free, independent legal advice for the purpose of discussing and ordering with the police and the CPS what is appropriate to seek, what should be disclosed and what should not.
Our amendments say that, and we have sent those to the Government. I think we have also sent them to every member of this Committee. I hope that the Government will realise that although it has an end-to-end rape review—the purpose of which is to restore confidence and restore prosecutions—this piece of legislation is actually running in the opposite direction and is likely to make things worse.
Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill (Fourth sitting)
Lee Anderson ExcerptsThursday 20th May 2021
(3 years, 6 months ago)
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The Chair
Thank you all. I also thank you all for joining us early. It was really kind of you to give up part of your day to let us talk to you a few minutes before we had scheduled. Right, Mr Anderson would like to ask a question.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)
Q
I surveyed 1,000 people in my constituency earlier this year. I will run through a couple of the questions I asked. The first question was: do you think the Travelling community respect the rights of the local community when they set up camp in your area? Only 4% said yes. I asked: do you think the Home Secretary is right when she said that we need to give our police tougher measures to stop unauthorised camps? Only 3% said no. I am not going to run through all the questions, but the last one I will give you is this: do you think crime rises in the area when an illegal camp is set up? Some 92% of my residents said yes.
The Bill is great news, because what it will do is see a decrease in crime the four or five times a year when unauthorised camps are set up in my community. I would like to ask the witnesses whether they agree with me that crime will reduce in places such as Ashfield because of the new measures in the Bill to stop unauthorised camps. It is a yes or no answer.
Professor Clark: Well, I am speaking to you as someone who has been employed as a professor and a researcher for more than 25 years.
I suppose we need to begin with querying the methodology of the survey that was just mentioned and how robust that kind of response and the data are. In terms of a yes or no answer, the answer in a sense would be this. What is in place to ensure that we address the ripple effect of the issues and consequences of the lack of provision of Traveller sites at least since the Caravan Sites Act 1968 and up to the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994? The concern is that if people have nowhere to go, if there are no legal sites in the area, these encampments will not go away, so unfortunately this new legislation, which I think is going to be just about as unpopular as the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991, and we all remember how unpopular that was, will do nothing to solve this issue.
What needs to be in place is a national site strategy that to some extent addresses the wide-ranging social policy issues that arise when there are unauthorised camps, as they were referred to there; roadside sites is another way of talking about it, in terms of the terminology. The Government need to work with the organisations that represent the communities to plan an effective road map—quite literally—of UK sites and accommodation. I just do not see this legislation helping that by any means at all.
We are witnessing right now what is going on in Bristol —the really draconian eviction that is going on in Bristol. We are witnessing what has happened at the Wickham horse fair. This goes back many, many generations, and I think there has been an overreaction at the Wickham horse fair today as well. A really serious rethink is needed. I would hope that time and energy were spent addressing the shortfall issues with accommodation and the consequent social policy issues that arise, rather than trying to use a sledgehammer to crack a walnut. It is a minority within a minority of the population. Bear in mind that 75% to 80% of the Gypsy and Traveller population in the United Kingdom are in bricks-and-mortar housing; this is a small percentage.
I absolutely sympathise with the speaker who mentioned the issues in the local area. What needs to be done is to address that issue in a more comprehensive, national strategy. That, not criminalising populations, is the answer.
Oliver Feeley-Sprague: I agree with a lot of what Colin said. The specific issue around Traveller legislation is not something that we prioritised in great detail in our submission on the Bill, but as a representative of Amnesty International I would say that Travelling communities, not just in the UK but widely across continental Europe, are among the most discriminated against and victimised of any minority group in existence. That is even reflected in things like the Lammy report on racial discrimination in the UK. You do not address the problem by criminalising an entire way of life, which is one of the potential outcomes of the measures in the Bill, especially when you are talking about groups that already have protected characteristics under other relevant law.
I point out that the list of things that anecdotally were reported as part of the survey are already criminal acts. There are already powers in place to prevent, detect and stop those things and to prosecute the offenders. A common feature of some of the measures in the Bill, in our view, around the necessity and proportionality test, is that many of the things that are addressed are already criminal, or can be made criminal in the right circumstances. Those measures are neither necessary nor proportionate.
Gracie Bradley: I would echo a lot of what Colin and Olly said. The real issue here is the chronic national shortage of site provision. Instead of criminalisation, what we want to see is local authorities and Government working together to improve site provision.
It is really important to recognise that we are talking about one of the most marginalised communities in the UK at the moment. These measures are a disproportionate and probably unlawful interference in Gypsy, Roma and Travellers’ nomadic way of life. Article 8 of the European convention on human rights protects people’s right to private and family life and their home. The Court of Appeal has set out that this community has an enshrined freedom to move from one place to another, and the state has a positive obligation to protect Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities’ traditional way of life. The new seizure powers in respect of vehicles in particular are very likely to mean that people end up facing homelessness.
As we have already discussed, some elements of these proposals are very subjective and invite stereotypes and profiling. The majority of police forces do not want greater powers. Research from Friends, Families and Travellers has shown that when police were consulted in 2018, 84% of the responses said that they did not support the criminalisation of unauthorised encampments, and 75% of responses said that their current powers were sufficient and/or proportionate. The issue is the chronic national shortage of site provision, and that should be the priority of Government and local authorities.
Maria Eagle
Q
Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill
Lee Anderson ExcerptsMonday 15th March 2021
(3 years, 8 months ago)
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Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con) [V]
Now then, no one should feel unsafe in our country, and this Bill will be of great comfort to law-abiding British people who want to see greater powers for our police and tougher sentences for child murderers, sex offenders, killer drivers and anyone else who thinks they are above the law. If you cannot live by the rules of our society, then you should live in a place that has a different set of rules, and that place is prison. The good news is that we are recruiting 10,000 extra prison officers and 20,000 new police officers, and we are building more prisons.
Post covid, people want to return to safe streets and safer neighbourhoods. This Bill does that. This Bill ensures that the victims of crime are put first. I find it strange that Labour is talking about tougher sentences for crimes against women, yet in December it tried to stop us deporting foreign rapists. One Labour MP said we should not deport those criminals in December as it was too close to Christmas. I disagree; I thought it was a great Christmas present.
Labour says that this Bill will remove the right to protest. Rubbish. This Bill will protect peaceful protests from being hijacked by trouble-causing agitators. Labour’s idea of peaceful protests are the ones we saw in Whitehall last year, where police were attacked, our flag was burned and memorials were damaged, while its own MPs looked on and said nothing. That was disgraceful.
We have a Home Secretary who is brave enough to tackle the issue of illegal camps. Those camps have made the lives of Ashfield residents a misery. When they are set up, crime rises, locals feel intimidated and the council is left with a massive clean-up bill. This Bill puts a stop to that nonsense. Police in Ashfield are doing a great job, but I know they are frustrated by short sentences and weak bail conditions. This Bill will give our police extra powers and the extra confidence they need.
I am confused that the shadow Home Secretary said tonight that he agrees with lots of things in the Bill, yet he will vote against it, proving once again that Labour is on the side of the criminals. Before lockdown, residents would often see me sat in the front of a police car going out on patrol and supporting our police, which is in sharp contrast to some Labour politicians, who have been seen in the back of police cars on the way to the station. It comes as no surprise to me that Labour will not support this Bill, after reading this week that there are 14 leading Labour politicians who have been arrested, imprisoned or under investigation in the past six months. There is no wonder we need more prisons.
UK Border: Covid Protections
Lee Anderson Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Priti Patel
It is important at this stage to reflect upon the amount of support that the Government have put in to businesses throughout this pandemic. Of course the hon. Lady is right on certainty for businesses and others with regard to coronavirus restrictions. Nothing has changed on that, and of course we will work with all sectors, as we have done throughout this pandemic, when it comes to not only support, but giving them information up front.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con) [V]
Will my right hon. Friend please confirm that people should not be travelling in and out of the country unless absolutely necessary? Will she assure me that airports are fully aware that they too have a moral duty to ensure that social distancing is in place?
Priti Patel
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. He is right: we are in a global health pandemic. The daily numbers that we see of people being hospitalised and the impacts of covid are a sobering reminder of all of this. I wish to make a couple of points. Of course passengers are checked at the airports—we have just discussed that today. All airports across the UK are operational partners, and they have a responsibility to comply with those social distancing and covid-compliant measures. We will continue to work with them and support them to do so. As ever, my message again is: people should not be travelling; we are in global health pandemic.
Police National Computer
Lee Anderson Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Kit Malthouse
I do not know whether I ought to be taking offence at the hon. Gentleman’s suggestion of my obvious lack of suitability to appear before such an esteemed audience as Her Majesty’s Opposition, given their seeming obsession with the Home Secretary. I would have thought the most important thing was to ensure that the integrity of police data is as good as it can be and that the police are in the best position possible to fight crime. As I outlined in my statement—for the hon. Gentleman’s sake, I will say it once again—we are in the process of making sure that we understand the scale of the problem and then putting in place rectification and retrieving the data that is required. The stage that follows that is learning exactly the lesson that he wants us to learn, which is how we can ensure this it does not happen again.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con) [V]
I thank my hon. Friend for updating the House; he is more than capable of doing this. A previous shadow Home Secretary stated in the Chamber in 2018:
“The state has no business keeping records on people who are not criminals.”—[Official Report, 11 June 2018; Vol. 642, c. 640.]
Does my hon. Friend agree that the outcry from the Opposition Benches is indeed in contrast to that statement?
Kit Malthouse
My hon. Friend, in his usual forthright way, identifies the perhaps interesting relationship that Opposition Members have had with UK policing and, indeed, the data and intelligence tools required by the police to put them in the best position to fight crime. I know that he and I will stand shoulder to shoulder, whatever the Opposition might say, to ensure that British policing gets the best technology and information it needs to ensure that it can fight crime in my constituency and in his, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year, as it has been doing over the past 12 months.
Immigration Rules: Supported Accommodation
Lee Anderson Excerpts(3 years, 11 months ago)
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Chris Philp
The Government’s policy, as I have laid out, is to do everything we can to make sure that where people wishing to claim asylum are already in a safe, civilised country like France, Germany or Spain, they claim asylum there and do not attempt a dangerous journey facilitated by ruthless criminals. That is the right thing to do, and I would hope to have the hon. Lady’s support in doing it.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)
The people of Ashfield and Eastwood are fed up with seeing illegal economic migrants leaving safe countries such as France to claim asylum in the UK while filling the pockets of greedy lawyers. I welcome the immediate steps the Government are taking to overhaul our broken asylum system, but the people of Ashfield and Eastwood want to know what steps my hon. Friend is taking in the longer term to fix this system once and for all.
Chris Philp
My hon. Friend is right in the sense that the system does not work currently in the way that it should. People are able to make repeated, unmeritorious and sometimes vexatious claims to frustrate the system and prevent removal. For that reason, we will legislate in the first half of next year to make sure that the system is fundamentally fixed and fundamentally reformed in a way that will give his constituents the confidence they have every right to expect.
Scheduled Mass Deportation: Jamaica
Lee Anderson Excerpts(3 years, 12 months ago)
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Chris Philp
The hon. Lady said a few moments ago that the people subject to deportation proceedings are mainly black. That is not true because, as I said earlier very clearly, the majority of people removed and deported are removed and deported to European Union countries, and in the last year well under 1% of people subject to these proceedings have come from Jamaica. In relation to age, the test, as we have discussed already, is set out in statute—in the UK Borders Act 2007. It is an Act passed by the last Labour Government with the votes of a number of her colleagues who are sitting on the Opposition Benches right now.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)
Unlike Opposition Members, the people of Ashfield are absolutely delighted that murderers, rapists and other dangerous criminals are being flown out of the UK and deported to their country of origin. This will keep our streets safer and send out a clear message to anyone who does not share the values of our great country. Can my hon. Friend please reassure me and the people of Ashfield that this Government will continue to send vile criminals back to where they come from as they have no place in our society, and can he also thank Opposition Members for supporting this Act when it was passed in 2007?
Chris Philp
I am sure the Opposition Members who voted for the 2007 Act are extremely grateful for my hon. Friend’s reminder and thanks, but the thrust of his point I completely agree with. It is right that where someone endangers our fellow citizens, we act to deport them, because if we do not do that, we are exposing our constituents to ongoing risk. That is completely unacceptable, and this Government will take action.
Birmingham Attacks and Extinction Rebellion Protests
Lee Anderson Excerpts(4 years, 2 months ago)
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Kit Malthouse
Direct action is not the same thing as a crime. If the hon. Gentleman is saying that there are certain crimes that he wishes to ignore, then I am afraid the Opposition are in a very difficult place. I am the Minister for policing and crime, and when, under our current law as approved through this House, somebody commits a crime, I have no choice other than to condemn it.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)
The people of Ashfield see no benefit in protesters gluing their ears to the pavement, spraying red dye on our monuments or camping out in trees on Parliament Square. Extinction Rebellion is now public nuisance No. 1 because of the disruption it causes, as well as the massive cost to our emergency services when, frankly, they have better things to do. Does my hon. Friend agree that this group should be classified as a crime group and feel the full weight of the law if it continues to disrupt members of the public going about their daily business?
Kit Malthouse
I know that my hon. Friend is the genuine voice of his constituents, and he will have received many emails from them on this issue. As I said earlier, the classification of any particular group depends on its conduct in society. Obviously, when a crime is committed, that should be investigated and prosecuted, and punished accordingly.
Oral Answers to Questions
Lee Anderson Excerpts(4 years, 4 months ago)
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Priti Patel
The hon. Lady will know that extensive work has been undertaken across Government, not just recently but in previous years as well. I am absolutely committed, as is my right hon. and learned Friend the Justice Secretary, to ensuring that we take an end-to-end approach to this through the royal commission that we are establishing on the criminal justice system, and that much more work is undertaken within policing to ensure that charges are undertaken and that the right kind of effective training is put in place for police forces and police officers. I have been very clear about that through all my work in policing, as has the Policing Minister. Ultimately, charging and getting those cases to court has to be the priority, which is why the Home Office is taking the right approach and working in the right way with the criminal justice system and the Lord Chancellor.
Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)
Marco Longhi (Dudley North) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Kevin Foster)
We are ending free movement and will introduce a new, firmer, fairer, skills-led global immigration system, with further details of it published today. Last month our Immigration and Social Security Co-ordination (EU Withdrawal) Bill passed through the House unamended, despite the best efforts of the Labour party and those on the separatist Benches.
Lee Anderson
On behalf of the people of Ashfield, I fully support the Government in introducing a points-based immigration system. For far too long, freedom of movement has encouraged the exploitation of migrant labour, which has driven down wages, increased pressure on public services, and had a significant impact on housing in places like Ashfield. Could my hon. Friend please assure me that, moving forward, this Government will implement a firm but fair points-based system attracting high-skilled workers while also prioritising British jobs for British people?
Kevin Foster
I agree with my hon. Friend. The points-based system will support our wider economic strategy by encouraging investment in a domestic UK workforce while ensuring that businesses can still attract the brightest and the best from around the world to Ashfield. We want employers to focus on training and investing in our domestic workforce, driving productivity and improving opportunities for resident workers, with immigration policy being part of, not an alternative to, our strategy for the UK labour market.