Asylum Seekers: Accommodation

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Thursday 16th January 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful and I realise that this is a live discussion point. The downside of asylum seekers working is that sometimes asylum claims are not upheld or found to be fraudulent and sometimes people have to be returned. Sometimes, therefore, asylum seekers could be put in positions whereby they are undertaking work they have no legal right to do. I understand that is a difficult issue, but the Government are committed to trying to resolve it by processing asylum claims as speedily as possible so that people can be legitimised or, in the case of non-legitimisation, returned to a place of safety elsewhere.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, given that the Government are trying to get all parties to collaborate on social care, when the policies emerge, and given the difficulties we have across the board with immigration and the suggestions that we need some new policy approaches, should we not attempt to bring all the parties together to try to get some movement and commonality to deal with the whole range of topics that face us, which none of us have been successful in addressing properly so far?

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The Government have an immigration White Paper due to be published shortly and I hope that all parties and Members can contribute to the discussion around that.

Respect Orders and Anti-social Behaviour

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

Having finished with off-road biking, I was moving on to the point about drones. The noble Lord makes an extremely valid point, and we will examine that issue and the use of drones as part of the legislation. It is not in the Statement today, but the point about the illegal use of drones and their use for criminality is certainly valid. I will take that away as part of the discussions prior to the introduction of legislation in this House.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

I welcome and support the Statement from the Government and the initiative they have taken. But, more particularly, I look forward to the legislation that is coming. In my area of Battersea, the Co-op does not display meat or fish because it is stolen regularly. A niece of mine works in a bank in the north of England where staff now have to wear body cameras because of the assaults or near- assaults they suffer. When I go to the vets, I see a statement that says, “Please respect our staff”. Everywhere we look, we see the loss of respect, so any steps that can be taken will be welcome.

However, we are all guilty of failing to see the pace at which change is taking place and of failing to respond with the techniques available to us. We need more police but, in particular, we need to make greater use of technology. We get very upset about facial recognition technology and other such things, on the civil rights front. We are all guilty of running away from the need for identification, using technology for that purpose.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to my noble friend for those points. These issues are consistently under examination by the Home Office. Going back to the potential legislation and the remit of the Statement, the two big issues in the Statement show that there is a real focus on shop theft, from a very low level through to a very high level. That should be put into policing plans on shop theft as a matter of urgency, with changes to the law made accordingly to reflect that.

On protection for shop workers, they are doing a job and should not be attacked in the course of their work for upholding legislation on sales or for resisting theft. I note the abuse they sometimes get, particularly from people who are undertaking anti-social behaviour in a more formal way. I declare an interest as a member of the shop workers union. That is the thrust of the two bits of legislation that are linked in the Statement, and I hope that will be welcomed by this House in due course.

Asylum Seekers: Hotel Accommodation

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Monday 25th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I refer the noble Baroness to the answer I gave earlier to the noble Lord, Lord German. Those are issues I will take as a representation, but the prime focus of the Government currently is to increase the use of asylum cases being approved and we have done that—up from 1,000 a month to 10,000 in the last month. That has been a big focus. I repeat myself, but it is important, the focus is on the issue of small boats, the Border Security Command and the issue of trying in the long term to reduce the number of hotels and to scrap the Rwanda scheme. Those are initial proposals the Government have brought forward. We will look at other options in due course.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, are we not seen as a soft touch by those who want to get into this country and as having little control over the number of people coming in? According to reports, there may be close on a million people who are not registered as British citizens. Should we not be exploring again the use of a modern identity system? The abolition of the ID cards by the coalition Government was a serious error. Is it not the case that we will have to return to it, and the sooner we look at that, the better?

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Fookes) (Con)]

My Lords—

EU Borders: Hand and Face Scanning

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Wednesday 17th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

My Lords, considerable investment is going into the queues at Dover. Noble Lords may be aware that the Department for Transport has provisionally awarded £45 million of levelling-up fund money to Kent County Council for the Dover border improvement project, which aims to substantially reduce outbound queues at the port. Ferry operators have previously been very pragmatic about allowing vehicles on to ferries if crossings are missed due to disruption, but we recognise the impact of disruption. The Kent Resilience Forum has a package of well-tested traffic management plans to manage disruption to keep passengers and freight traffic flowing.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, the Minister will recall that I have raised with him the major mistake we made in abandoning the opportunity of having an identity facility. In fact, he said that I had a good point. Can he tell me whether he has taken it back to his department and whether they will act on it now and reverse the stupid decision taken by the coalition Government?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I think I agreed with the noble Lord, Lord West, only last week, that that is a good point. I have taken it back to the department and have no answer for him.

Former Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration: Reports

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Wednesday 6th March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

To start with, the noble Lord is incorrect in saying that unaccompanied children will be sent to Rwanda; as he is well aware, that is prohibited under Article 3 of the treaty. On the review, the ICIBI started on the country-of-origin information but that has not yet been sent to the Home Secretary. That is one of the ongoing pieces of ICIBI work that cannot be finalised until a new or interim ICIBI has been appointed, and I cannot comment on that process yet.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

Do we not have thousands of people in this country who should not be here, but of whose whereabouts we have no knowledge? Had the Government and the Lib Dems not abolished the Labour Party’s plan to introduce an identity system, we would know where they were.

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

The noble Lord makes a very interesting point.

UK: Violence Against Women and Girls

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Thursday 29th June 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Drake for tabling this debate; I wish her well and hope that she is soon back with us. I thank my noble friend Lady Warwick for introducing it. So much has been said that I will not be able to add much, other than on alcohol and domestic violence, as noble Lords might expect.

All the statistics indicate that violence against women has been increasing since about 2008 or 2009, particularly domestic violence. In many areas, that is linked in part to alcohol, which has not been raised so far. It is high time that we had a look at the rules that my Government, the Labour Government, introduced in the 2003 Act, which greatly liberalised freedom to purchase and access to alcohol. A re-examination of what has been happening with pricing and freedom to access alcohol is long overdue, as well as of the consequential difficulties that have arisen from cheap booze being freely available and so easily accessible. In turn, it has the effect of many men attacking women, which has continued to increase in recent years. Covid made matters even worse in that respect, so I hope the Minister might be prepared to comment on how the Government feel about the impact of alcohol and drugs on women.

Secondly, on pornography, unfortunately, I did not participate in the Online Safety Bill debates, but I have been watching carefully and I am pleased with how things are going. However, we still have not gone anything like far enough. Interestingly, the British Board of Film Classification tells us that it would never permit the stuff it sees to be shown in films. It is freely and widely available, and increasingly so across the whole of the online system. We need a broader societal debate about pornography and its impact across the board, particularly on younger children, and we need it soon if we are to believe the Met Police, which is very concerned about how the metaverse will develop. When that technology becomes more freely and cheaply available, we will see extraordinary things that will have an impact on the whole of society, particularly children. The metaverse has not been disused today, and I wonder whether the Minister can explain to us the Government’s views on it and how it may impact violence between men and women. Indeed, there is increasing violence between men and men, which is an issue that has not been raised today.

I hope the Minister will be able to give a general response to those three points.

Police Uplift Programme

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd May 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

The picture that the noble Lord paints is obviously concerning. I will say that this is not a marginal uplift but a substantial uplift. As regards specific circumstances in Northern Ireland, I am afraid I cannot answer his question on the numbers, but I will investigate and come back to him.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I think there is general agreement that trust has declined since 2010. We need to restore that as best we can. Knowing the Minister, I was rather surprised by his throwaway line in response to some of the questions about trust. When he said that there will be “a few bad apples”, I found that rather complacent. The police inspectorate has said that, of the people being recruited into the police force, some hundreds have come in within the past three years who should not be there. We know the plan that has been set in place to try to avoid a repetition of this in the future, but what is happening to try to root out the 300 or so that are around?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I am sorry if I sounded complacent to the noble Lord. It was really just a reflection on the statistics of this, as with any normal distribution—the noble Lord will know how normal distributions of population cohorts and so on work out. That is all that that comment was meant to reflect. As regards the numbers of police that have been recruited, I have commented extensively on the vetting processes. The dismissals review, which I referred to earlier, is concluding this month. I hope that we will have a lot more to say very soon on how that process will be strengthened.

Women’s Safety

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Wednesday 8th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Janke (LD)]

My Lords, does the Minister accept that confidence on the part of women that sexual and violent crimes against them will be properly investigated is at an all-time low? If so, what will be done to make sure that the police focus on the crime and the offender rather than on shredding and undermining the reputation of the victim?

Net Migration

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

I note what my noble friend says, but the level of provision of medical training is a matter for the Department of Health and the Department for Education.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, is it not true that one of the great attractions of this country is that people can come in and get employment without any real problem whatsoever, and that the major error that we have had is the abandonment of the policy we had in 2010 to have a form of identity for every individual in the country? This has now been exposed as a major failing of the then Tory and Lib Dem Government, and something needs to be done to address it.

[Lord Murray of Blidworth (Con)]

The Government do not agree that the answer is identity cards.

Police: Vetting, Misconduct and Misogyny

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

I reassure my noble friend that I did say I would reflect on the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Dear, and I intend to do so.

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

The Minister is very well regarded in the House. He is on a difficult one today, but would he express a personal view on what he believes should be done in regard to the question from my noble friend Lady Chakrabarti?

[Lord Sharpe of Epsom (Con)]

No.