Unaccompanied Asylum-seeking Children

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Tuesday 24th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Jenrick]

No one would want to do that. The only alternative to using these settings is for young people to go into good quality, permanent local authority support, and I have already said that we have made available substantial financial incentives for local authorities to do that. The best thing that we can do is to encourage our own local authorities to take part in the national transfer scheme and ensure that there is a better solution.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

It is totally right that unaccompanied asylum-seeking children should be safeguarded in the most appropriate settings. It is totally wrong that there are all-too-frequent reports of young adult asylum seekers claiming to be children in their asylum claims. Other countries employ far more scientific methodology to establish the age of a child who will not reveal their true age. Will the Minister urgently bring forward such measures to the House so that they can be approved and introduced?

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend is correct. We recently published a report from the Age Estimation Science Advisory Committee on scientific methods to assess the age of asylum seekers and resolve age disputes. These practices are widely used across Europe, including in Denmark, Norway and Sweden. We are considering that report and we will set out further details in due course, because we need to address this challenge.

Police Conduct and David Carrick

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Tuesday 17th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

The Government legislated in February 2020 to strengthen police complaints and disciplinary systems to make them more transparent, more proportionate and more accountable. New powers for the Independent Office for Police Conduct include the power of initiative to ensure that it can commence investigations without the requirement of a referral from the police, as well as measures to streamline and speed up decision making. They build on previous reforms and, as I announced today, we will carry out a more in-depth review into the disciplinary process. If legislation is needed to change, we will do that.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

This is an utterly shameful and shocking case. The vast majority of police officers in the Met and across the country believe in and perform to the highest professional standards. They see fellow officers who do not have appropriate action taken against them and the problem is that they just do not believe that appropriate action will be taken. Chief constables are tearing their hair out because they know they have some officers who are not fit to be in the police service, but they cannot dismiss them easily. May I join the calls from the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) for the Government to bring forward legislation to revise the dismissal procedures for police officers? The sooner we get rid of police officers who are not fit to serve, the better it will be for all concerned.

[Suella Braverman]

I agree wholeheartedly with my hon. Friend. As Baroness Casey identified in her interim review at the end of last year, the misconduct process takes too long. Officers and staff do not have confidence in the process. Allegations relating to sexual misconduct and other discriminatory behaviour are less likely than other misconduct allegations to result in a case-to-answer decision. There is a real need for action to take place. That is why we will come up with proposals on the back of the review I have announced today.

Migration and Economic Development

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Suella Braverman]

It is not appropriate for me to speculate on the claimants’ response or whether there will be any appeals following today’s judgment. We welcome today’s findings and we will vigorously defend any appeal on the substantive matters of the lawfulness of the policy. We have been clear that, in designing and introducing our legislation next year, we will have to ensure that it is sufficiently robust to promote a scheme to ensure that if people arrive here illegally, they will be detained and swiftly removed to a safe country for your asylum claim to be processed.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

My constituents welcome the High Court judgment and want the relocation flights to Rwanda to take off as soon as possible. They will be very concerned to hear that they could be subject to further judicial delay. Could the Home Secretary outline to my constituents how long she anticipates that judicial delay will be? When can I tell my constituents that the flights will take off?

[Suella Braverman]

The reality of litigation is that there are appeal rights. There is a hearing on 16 January, in which the claimants and the Home Office will make representations on any applications to appeal. The court will decide the next steps, if any, in UK litigation. I am considering the Home Office’s position with my legal team, so it would not be appropriate to discuss our strategy in the meantime. There is a hearing on 16 January to consider appeal applications.

Hotel Asylum Accommodation: Local Authority Consultation

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. We do have a lot of business to get through this afternoon, so, if we could have quick questions and quick answers, that would be very helpful.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

I believe that the situation is now so bad and chaotic that the Minister should consider his position.

On Friday, North Northampton Council, Northants police and other local agencies had an online meeting with the Home Office and Serco regarding the potential use of the 51-bed Royal hotel in Kettering, slap bang in the middle of the town centre. Serious environmental health issues, including mould and no kitchen facilities, were raised. Northants police raised serious concerns about community safety and the vulnerability of the asylum seekers. The Home Office and Serco officials agreed that the hotel would not be used until those issues were properly addressed. Yesterday, the council was advised that 41 asylum seekers had been moved into the hotel on Sunday afternoon, without any notification at all, and that could rise to 80. No biometric of previous offending history data has been shared with the local police. It is totally, 100% unacceptable.

On 27 October, I asked the Minister face to face for a meeting. I asked him again on the Floor of the House last Wednesday. No such meeting has been forthcoming. This is a wrong-headed decision. The local police, the local council and I have been misled, and I have no confidence at all that the Home Office, Serco or the Minister have the first clue what they are doing in relation to asylum seeker relocation.

[Robert Jenrick]

I will be happy to make some inquiries and come back to my hon. Friend.

Domestic Abuse and Public Life

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd November 2022 Westminster Hall

[Apsana Begum]

I completely agree with the hon. Member; she is absolutely correct. It is so important to be able to give others the hope and courage to come forward. Those of us in public life, I am sure, feel a duty to encourage others to come forward, and feel quite lucky to be in a position to do so.

I want to make it clear that I do not view myself as a victim as such, nor am I seeking to play the “victim card”. In fact, I would argue that such accusations reflect not my weakness, but the weakness of those who make them. The truth is that it is extremely difficult for survivors to come forward. The stigma and the structural and systemic bias is always against us. The use of the courts and the law to threaten and silence us, never mind the trauma of the abuse itself, all too often seems insurmountable.

When I put myself forward to represent my local area, it was with hope for the future. Perhaps stupidly, I thought I could move on. Little did I know then that, a few years later, I would be in court facing a possible jail sentence and, just this June, I would have to present myself to A&E and subsequently be signed off sick. Just as I manage to survive one onslaught, another is coming up ahead—it goes on and on. The wall of institutional gaslighting is chilling.

I have a choice: to submit, to be crushed and then to be swept under the carpet as an unsightly problem, or to speak out. But I know this is not just about me. My experiences have shown that, despite steps forward, including the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, there is still insufficient understanding and awareness. I am very conscious of how survivors struggle against a system that fails them. Today is for them, and I am moved to see campaigners and local women watching this debate.

When I was studying at university, I lived at home, helping care for my father through an extended period of dementia up to his death. I got to know an older man, who had already been married twice, and ended up marrying him and moving in with him. As the relationship progressed, it became more and more volatile and abusive. By the end, I was sleeping in the living room with the sofa pushed up against the door so that he could not get in. I had to wait until he had an appointment in another city before I could plan my escape.

It is commonly assumed that a woman should just leave and her problems will be over, but that is far from the reality for so many. At its core, post-separation abuse is about power: attempting to control and punish in almost any way possible, whether through physical means such as violence, intimidation, threats or stalking, or via remote monitoring, emotional abuse and manipulation. I raised my ex-husband’s behaviour, including the abuse, stalking, harassment and intimidation, with the police on several occasions. Police records regarding him include his being issued with a warning for harassment.

Gradually, I began to rebuild my life, which involved becoming engaged in politics locally, but he continued to make things difficult, including by behaving threateningly and aggressively towards me in public. As soon as I started to indicate that I was going to put myself forward to become Labour’s parliamentary candidate in the general election, it all intensified even further, because of course I was just meant to stay in my lane and be little Apsana Begum. He told people that he was angry that I had not asked his permission to stand for selection.

Smears and rumours were spread about me, and there were threats that he would expose me for who I “really was” in front of the community. I was aware that he had pictures of me without my hijab on; if someone threatens to use something like that against someone now in this country, it is considered an act of intimate image abuse. He was privy to private information: my medical records, my previous mental ill health, and the fact that I had a secret abortion during the early stages of our relationship, which at the time was unknown to anyone, including my family.

This honour-based harassment was about maliciously destroying me in front of elder members of my community. He called campaign team members, making threats that he had been contacted by the media, who had offered to buy stories about me, and telling people that they should make me stand down or else. It all got even worse after I was elected to Parliament. How dare I not listen? How dare I not do what I was told? There were calls to local people who supported me when he was drunk, saying that evidence was being collected for the council to take me to court. He was a sitting councillor at that time.

As such, just two years after being elected as the UK’s first hijab-wearing MP, I had to endure an eight-day trial, which brutally forced me to talk about painful private experiences. While I was found innocent of all charges, I fear that the ordeal of that trial, which cost the council significantly more than the amount I was accused of defrauding it of in the first place, will haunt me for the rest of my life.

The practice of abusers misusing the court system to maintain power and control over their former or current partners, a method sometimes called vexatious or abusive litigation—in other words, stalking by way of the court—is recognised by experts as a form of domestic abuse. I want to explain why I believe this case to have been vexatious and why I want something like it never to happen again.

I first heard of the complaint that led to the case through threats, rumours and the press a month before even being informed officially that an investigation was under way. An article published in The Sun newspaper during the general election even showed a picture of the building where I lived, which was extremely frightening given the risk that this placed me under. I have since found out that the complaint that led to the investigation was made by my ex-husband’s brother-in-law, Syed Nahid Uddin, to coincide with the deadline for final nomination papers to be submitted.

During the trial, my barrister, Helen Law, brought out, through cross-examination of the fraud investigator from the council’s fraud team, a series of conflicts of interest, including that my ex-husband was a member of the council’s audit committee in the same year of the fraud investigation. That committee had governance and oversight over the work of the fraud team. The matter of domestic abuse was actually used against me by the prosecution. It was argued that the abuse was a motive for the alleged crimes. Raj Chada, the criminal defence partner at Hodge Jones & Allen who represented me, argues:

“Prosecutors and investigators need to better understand and consider how victims of coercive control and domestic abuse behave and how they are treated by the criminal justice system.”

At around the same time that I was going through the ordeal of the court case, a group of people who were close to my ex-husband took over the local Labour party, and despite my being vindicated the smears have continued and accountability has been thwarted. Motions in support of me were passed by the local party, but only after they were blocked from even being discussed for months on end. Meanwhile, people who supported me or spoke up for me continued to be targeted, including some who were contacted by my ex-husband himself. I believe that to be an example of what is often called indirect abuse, whereby threats are made against third parties or they are intimidated or manipulated into engaging in behaviours desired by the perpetrator. Those behaviours involve the use of proxies to humiliate and discipline, and ultimately to maintain power and control.

Most recently, while I was unwell, a trigger process —a process that my party uses to decide whether a sitting MP will remain the candidate at future elections— was conducted. Again, I am aware of my ex-husband’s involvement: there are even witnesses who saw him among the reportedly 50 men who stood outside one meeting in a way that many felt was intimidating. In my mind, it is no coincidence that the process was overseen by his associates. To explain and provide further evidence of that conflict of interest, I will give some examples. The procedure secretary who oversees the whole trigger process is close to my ex-husband, and has publicly credited him as one of the reasons why they were elected to their role. One of the local executive observers for two out of the four in-person meetings, who was secretary for another meeting, is a close friend of my ex-husband and has been pictured with him only recently on social media. Another has been the subject of a complaint after he sent an email to all branch members containing a copy of a letter repeating allegations of which I had been cleared and revealing my home address, putting me at risk.

Another close associate of my ex-husband was the secretary overseeing one of the meetings. He had previously been warned by the police to stop harassing me after I reported him for continuing to contact me; I had to ask him to stop unwanted contact after he posted a letter to me through my family member’s letterbox. The chair of one of the meetings was a long-time associate of my ex-husband, who had even approached me in 2018 and asked me to meet him, advocating on my ex-husband’s behalf that I should go back into a relationship with him. I also understand that comments were made in meetings about the fact that I speak too much about domestic abuse, and that the process was about teaching me a lesson. Even the delegated national executive observer has connections to my ex-husband.

Of course, it is up to individuals who they wish to associate with. My point is that such people cannot also oversee a process about my future, because not only can domestic abuse be indirect, but it can involve the use of public status and societal power. That is before one even considers that the trigger process was conducted while I was unwell, and that a litany of complaints have been submitted containing allegations of harassment and misogyny, particularly from local women. I am still in a situation where I have to risk-assess local events, and am unable to participate if the risk is too high or cannot be mitigated. I believe that there must be a duty to ensure inclusive, democratic and safe environments and it deeply saddens me that I continue to be placed in a position where, for safeguarding reasons, I am being prevented from participating fully in public life.

As I have said, my experiences are far from unique. I have been contacted by women and survivors from all over the country and I feel a tremendous duty towards them. Domestic abuse has been hidden for far too long, despite it having serious health consequences for individuals and our society, but after everything I have been through and whatever the future holds, I am determined to raise awareness and campaign for a society where individuals experiencing domestic abuse feel confident that they will be believed, listened to, and given the support they need. Ultimately, I want the UK to be a country where survivors are not thwarted by ongoing harassment and abuse.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

The debate can last until 4.30 pm.

Migration

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Wednesday 16th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

Yesterday the National Crime Agency confirmed that Albanian organised crime gangs are ferrying thousands of young men to enable them to enter the country illegally so that they can set up, take over and run cannabis farms across the country. On arrival they claim asylum, and the Home Office then transports this criminality to communities up and down the country to infiltrate the local crime scene.

Once such community is Kettering, where there is a disgraceful proposal to house potentially up to 150 Albanian single males in a 50-room hotel with no kitchen facilities, slap bang in the middle of the town centre. This is the biggest night-time economy in north Northamptonshire, and it is near a family park. These young men will be milling around getting into all sorts of trouble. I cannot think of a worse location for an asylum hostel. Will the Minister meet me as a matter of urgency so I can explain to him why the proposal should not go ahead? From where I am sitting, at this present time, His Majesty’s Government is neither protecting our shores nor protecting my local community from an increase in imported crime.

[Robert Jenrick]

My hon. Friend has raised important concerns, and I should be more than happy to meet him. He and I have already spoken, but a formal meeting would be an obvious next step.

Oral Answers to Questions

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Monday 5th September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

8. What steps she is taking to fast-track the removal of Albanian migrants without a right to be in the UK.

[The Secretary of State for the Home Department (Priti Patel)]

Over the last calendar year, I have overseen the enforced removal of more Albanian nationals than any other nationality. We regularly return Albanian criminals and immigration offenders to Albania via chartered flights, a process that is aided by the returns agreement that I have signed with the Albanian Government.

[Mr Hollobone]

Recent reports suggest that despite passing through many safe countries en route to the UK, when the very large numbers of Albanians who have been crossing the channel in small boats in recent weeks land on our shores, they claim not only asylum, but modern slavery protection. Does my right hon. Friend agree that now is the time to reform our modern slavery laws to prevent an increased abuse of our good will?

[Priti Patel]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He is correct that over the summer the majority of arrivals in small boats from France—about 60%—have been Albanian nationals. He will be delighted to hear about the work that I have led on reform of the national referral mechanism, a key component of the reforms to the Modern Slavery Act 2015, which has been committed to within this Session of Parliament.

Rights of Children (Police Custody)

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

I remind hon. Members that no reference should be made during the debate to any ongoing legal proceedings.

[Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the rights of children while in police custody.

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Hollobone. In March, I led an Adjournment debate following the incredibly concerning case of a constituent who was held in a cell for nine hours before an appropriate adult was called. Unbeknown to his family, he had been missing; he had not arrived at school, and they were unaware of his whereabouts. From that case and many others of a similar nature, it is clear that the law is simply not working for children in police custody. There is room for further debates on the general policing of minors and children, but today’s debate is focused on the rights of children while in police custody.

I am sure the Minister knows that various legislative protections are in place to ensure that children are detained as a last resort, and for the shortest possible time. The failing is that this is clearly not happening, because the policies are being ignored. Some 50,000 children are held and locked up in police custody every year. Children are detained in cells in police stations that have primarily been built for adults. On average, children are detained for over 13 hours, with 21,369 detained overnight in 2019. The decision to detain children is approved 99% of the time, and it is time the whole process was reviewed.

According to the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984, the role of the appropriate adult is to safeguard the interests, rights, entitlements and welfare of children and vulnerable people who are suspected of a criminal offence by ensuring that they are treated in a fair and just manner and can participate effectively. The Act derived from public concern over the Maxwell Confait murder case in my constituency in 1972, which led Parliament to pass the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, known as PACE. This year is the 50th anniversary of the Confait case, which involved a tragic murder and the wrongful arrest, charging and sentencing of minors, which was later overturned.

PACE tackled a number of areas of growing public concern, including the treatment of suspects in police stations and cells, the length of detention without being charged, the conduct of interviewers and access to lawyers. In cases where the suspect is a child or vulnerable person, PACE requires the presence of an appropriate adults, also known as AA.

--- Later in debate ---

[Janet Daby]

I agree with my hon. Friend that, in such instances, it is abuse. It is harmful for children to be in such situations. The very service that is there to protect them is also doing them incredible harm. The Government have to take that on board and to accept their responsibility and the role they need to play. The welfare of the child is “paramount”—it says that in the Children Act 1989. If the welfare of the child is paramount, their welfare needs to be paramount on all occasions and in all situations. The very services that are there to protect and support them need not only to carry out justice—absolutely—but to consider the welfare of the child.

I am sure we want more for our children—I am hearing that already—but we must not keep them in a state of despair. That is simply wrong. As I said, the Government can change that. Even with children who end up being convicted, we cannot bury our heads in the sand and carry on with a system that is devoid of compassion.

Cutting the detention clock for a child in custody would mean that the appropriate adult is likely to be called out quicker and is more able to stay for the duration of the detention. It would also lead to a decrease in the frequency of overnight stays. That would be better for the public purse economically, but also for the physical and mental wellbeing of the child.

For the police, it would improve relations with key communities in the area, reduce reoffending rates and ensure that all their collected evidence was reliable. It would prevent the collection of evidence from being hampered by the lack of sleep or the worry and stress stemming from 13 or so hours in solitary confinement. To be clear, calling for a reduction in the child detention clock would not hinder the police’s ability to fight crime. The police currently have the power to request an extension from the superintendent if the case is complex. That power would be retained even if a lower detention cap was implemented.

During the previous Adjournment debate, the Minister failed to respond to my call to cut the stay limit from 24 hours. Will she hear me now and respond to that call? There is evidence calling for a stay limited to 12 hours instead of 24.

I will mention two other things before I finish. First, there must be far higher reporting and monitoring of the use of strip searches in police custody. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova) for her recent parliamentary question. The current rate of strip searches is woeful. They are degrading and humiliating and, as we have seen, they completely traumatise children. Will the Minister commit to increasing transparency and accountability on this issue and exploring technological alternatives that are less intrusive, less emotionally harmful and less damaging to the child?

Secondly, a decade of legal aid cuts has meant that firms cannot afford to send down more than minimally trained representatives to police stations, and then only for the shortest possible period. Lawyers therefore often arrive just before the interview, when the child is too exhausted to engage—if the child gets a lawyer at all. Currently, children have to opt in for legal advice, and too many children forgo their right to legal representation; they are burnt out, emotionally exhausted and probably do not fully understand, and they falsely believe it will make the process go faster. The fallout from this kind of misunderstanding can be avoided if we instead implement an opt-out system.

There is also a danger that post-pandemic remote legal advice will begin to spread. Research from Transform Justice shows that remote legal advice increases the stress and anxiety of children and impedes the communication between lawyer and child. To ensure high-quality advice that serves the needs of the child, it is vital that the Minister continues to champion in-person legal advice, moves towards an opt-out system and bolsters legal aid.

As I draw to a close, I ask the Government to maintain public safety and to protect children throughout the youth criminal justice system. I call on the Minister to review the detention clock for children, to roll out the Met’s new approach to appropriate adults across the Met and the police nationwide, which will allow us to begin finally to have a child-first approach to police custody suites, and to implement opt-out legal representation system for children. I ask again whether the Minister will commit to increasing transparency and accountability for strip searches and exploring technological alternatives that are less intrusive and harmful to minors. As a country, we should see the welfare of the child as paramount in all instances and across all services at all times.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

The debate can last until 4 o’clock. I am obliged to call the Front Benchers no later than 3.37 pm. The guideline limits are 10 minutes each for Her Majesty’s Opposition and the Minister. Janet Daby will have three minutes at the end to sum up the debate. I believe that three Back Benchers are seeking to catch my eye, so there should be plenty of time for everyone to get in.

--- Later in debate ---

[Marsha De Cordova (Battersea) (Lab)]

I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Janet Daby) on securing this important and timely debate. I thank the many organisations that have worked really hard to raise awareness of the issue, including the Howard League for Penal Reform, Just for Kids Law and many experts.

My hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East highlighted that she had an Adjournment debate on the subject recently, and I went back to it for reference. I thank her for sharing her constituents’ experiences, and I thank her constituents for their bravery in sharing those horrific experiences. I recently had a similar case in my own constituency, where a young child in their school uniform was kept in police custody for just under 24 hours—it was 23 hours and some odd minutes. That child was found to have suffered some serious failings in relation to their safeguarding while in custody. Worse still, the child was not charged with anything; they went through that horrific experience and there was no charge.

I recognise that custody is a core element of our policing. It is crucial to ensuring justice and to keeping the public safe. However, it must be balanced with the safeguarding of children, as the safety and welfare of children is paramount. Public bodies have a responsibility to protect minors. The Children Act 2004 places a statutory duty on the police in relation to children. Article 37 of the United Nations convention on the rights of the child makes it clear that children should be detained only as a last resort, and for the shortest appropriate period possible, as we have heard from my hon. Friends the Members for Lewisham East and for Erith and Thamesmead (Abena Oppong-Asare).

It was therefore deeply worrying to read the Just for Kids Law report, which found through a freedom of information request that 21,369 children were detained overnight in police custody, either pre or post charge, in 2019. That statistic should worry us all. Those children have potentially been scarred for life. That statistic is still a significant underestimate, because it only includes the responses of 34 police forces, which tells us the number could be higher. Black children are disproportionately detained in police custody overnight, according to the responses from 31 of those 34 police forces. As an MP representing a London constituency, I am particularly concerned that more than 44% of children detained overnight in police custody in 2019 were black children.

It is not right that there is such a huge racial disparity, and it points to the institutional and structural racism in the policing of our black children. The Government can no longer deny or dismiss that, because the data and the evidence are quite clear. For a child, spending a night in police custody is an extremely traumatic and frightening experience. Spending a long time in such an environment has serious consequences for a child’s mental health and wellbeing. My hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East has already spoken about that, and that is why she is right when she says that reform is desperately needed.

It is quite clear that legislation written 50 years ago—be that PACE or other pieces of legislation—is outdated. We need to look at reforming the current system. That is why I agree with the recommendations in the Just for Kids Law report. We need a reduced time limit on how long children can be detained in police custody, because the current 24-hour limit is the same for adults and children. That cannot be right, because we know that children and adults are not the same, so it must be reduced to 12 hours or less.

The issue about appropriate adults is key, because we have already heard that children have to wait for hours in police custody without an appropriate adult. That system has to be overhauled. If it is about safeguarding the child, I am not sure what can be done if we cannot overhaul that aspect of the process.

I cannot stress enough the importance of data. Data and evidence are crucial to this process, because they really help to illustrate and paint a picture of the crisis in our policing of children. We also need a review of the collation of data so that we know what is being collated, and we need consistency across the country over what is collated.

Publication of this data will be important, because it helps with scrutiny and it helps to give robust oversight of what is actually going on. That is why publication should be mandatory. No police force in this country should decide on a voluntary basis to record data. I am not sure how that can be acceptable. Just for Kids Law was unable to access all the data in relation to its freedom of information request; it only got data from 34 police forces, when 43 could have responded.

I recently asked an oral question at Home Office questions—I think it was just over a week ago. I am calling for mandatory recording and publication of the data on children who are strip-searched. Everybody was horrified at the case of child Q, but we know now that that was not an isolated incident and that many children—including young girls, whether they are on their menstruation cycle or not—are being strip-searched. These are people’s children, and we all have a responsibility and a duty to protect them. Will the Minister commit to looking into the mandatory publication of data in relation to police interactions with young people? As I have highlighted, at the moment the police are required to record and publish such data only if an arrest has been made. However, as was the case with child Q, who was not arrested—

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

Order. I said right at the start of the debate that no reference should be made to any cases where there are ongoing legal proceedings. [Interruption.] The hon. Lady made a glancing reference, which is fine, but she should not repeat the reference to child Q any further in the debate.

[Marsha De Cordova]

I apologise for that, Mr Hollobone, and I will not refer to that case in the rest of my speech.

Finally, I believe we need a review into the policing of black children. They are being over-policed and treated with less care and protection. That perception of maturity —a term that is used is the adultification of our young black children—is another form of racism.

I have seen many examples of that when I have seen young children being detained by multiple officers, and the police say afterwards, “Based on the evidence before us, nothing is wrong here.” If that is the case, something is wrong with the way our young children are being treated. I really hope that when the Minister responds to the debate, she will refer to that. The disparity in the treatment of black children across policing is bound to lead to a breakdown in community relations, and a lack of trust and confidence in the police force. All I try to do, as an elected representative, is to help the police to build trust and confidence in our communities.

I do not believe that the solution can simply be boosting diversity in recruitment; although diversity is important, there are other elements to consider. The solution is not just about providing cultural changes, either. We need an urgent root-and-branch review that investigates the policing of our black children and sets out clear recommendations about how the police can reduce disproportionality and build and restore trust.

I hope that when the Minister responds to the debate, she will agree with me that we need a review, and if she does not agree, that she will explain why, so that I can understand. No one can be against a proposal that will help to reduce the racial disparities facing our children. We all know that our children are our future. It is on us to create that fair, better future for them.

[Claudia Webbe (Leicester East) (Ind)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Hollobone. I thank the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Janet Daby) for securing this important debate.

I am mindful not to speak about cases currently going through the courts. I intended to allude to child Q, unaware that the case is in court. I will modify my speech accordingly. None the less, it is damning in the 21st century to be talking about children being strip-searched by police officers while at school and in their own environment. It is also damning to have seen the public report, which I hope I can speak about. Perhaps I cannot, as I have just received an eye from the Chair. That report is public and gives a damning account of what—

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

Order. Will the hon. Lady resume her seat? I am acting to try to protect the hon. Lady. She was honest to say that her speech was to be about a particular case, and now she is going to do her best to talk about the same issues without referring to the particular child, but we all know who she is talking about. She will have to be very careful and speak only in general terms. I am saying that to protect her and Parliament.

[Claudia Webbe]

Thank you for your guidance, Mr Hollobone.

We know there are cases where children are not given an appropriate adult when brought into custody, are not presented with their rights, or are asked whether they want representation. Such practices must end. We must come to a better understanding of how we treat children, not only when protecting them from crime, but when they are brought into custody and falsely accused, or otherwise.

I have dealt with cases in my constituency where children innocently engage in social media and are then caught in a spiral in system where they are brought in for questioning; they are frightened by the type of questioning and the way it is posed. They are immediately so fearful of that questioning and the adults in the room that they are ready to sign anything in order to get out of there as quickly as possible. Children should have an appropriate adult; they should be told their rights in a manner that gives them an informed choice about having proper representation. If necessary, a pause should be given, so that they can make that informed choice. It is important that they have an adult in the room and have proper legal representation because what they say and admit to in that room can rest with them forever and a day and affect every aspect of their life going forward. It is important that children get the right representation from the outset, because many of them are in the midst of important, serious exams that will affect the rest of their lives. They need to be in the right mindset to do those exams.

In one of the schools in my constituency, children had been accused of a form of bullying, which turned out to be a conflict between ethnicities and races. The children and parents were not given the proper support and advice, and the children were told to stay away from the school environment until the investigation was complete, without being given any support to study at home or do anything that enabled to them to have a better understanding of the education that they need to continue with.

I am continuing to be mindful not to talk about child Q, Mr Hollobone, but I will say that it is important that children are allowed to feel safe in their school environments, neighbourhoods and communities, and that they know that the first action by the police will not be to bring them into an invasive situation wherein they have less power, but that the police will treat children as children, with the right and proper support around them. I hope that all the recommendations that come out of many of the serious and important reports on the way that children are treated in custody are implemented, and that somebody is appointed at a senior level to ensure that this is the case. Too often, recommendations remain unadopted and sit at the bottom of the shelf, but they need to be implemented to protect the future. It is even more vital that racist and misogynistic attitudes are left out of the custody suite and interactions with children. Far too often, black and other globalised children are left reeling from racism and, if they are young women, misogyny.

Institutional racism and misogyny in the police force needs to be seriously addressed, especially when it involves children. At the end of the day, we are talking about police services that have already been deemed to have used sexist, derogatory and unacceptable language when it comes to dealing with people in their custody. We know of adults being wrongly strip-searched. We also know that two serving Metropolitan police officers were jailed for sharing photographs of the bodies of Bibaa Henry and Nicola Smallman, two young black sisters from north London who went missing in June 2020. The officers shared the photos with 41 members of a police WhatsApp group. The police were also accused of showing a lack of interest in the fact that the two sisters were missing, which delayed their search.

The Metropolitan Police Service was recently forced to deny that it is plagued by a culture of misogyny, after an official report revealed shocking details of officers sharing messages about hitting and raping women, as well as about the deaths of black babies and the holocaust. The Independent Office for Police Conduct said in its report on behaviour at Charing Cross police station that there was a culture of “toxic masculinity” and that the behaviour was not confined to rogue individuals, but was part of an offensive Metropolitan police culture. The report states:

“We believe these incidents are not isolated or simply the behaviour of a few ‘bad apples’.”

Of course, that inquiry came after the brutal police crackdown of a vigil in the memory of Sarah Everard. I do not believe that that case is—

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

Order. The debate is about the rights of children while in police custody. I understand that the hon. Lady has made the remarks that she has for reasons of context, but the debate is specifically about the rights of children in police custody, so I would appreciate it if she came back to that subject.

[Claudia Webbe]

Thank you for that guidance, Mr Hollobone. Indeed, I was highlighting a policing culture that no adult, let alone a child, should be subjected to. We simply cannot expose children to that type of policing culture. It is therefore vital that measures to avoid holding children in police custody, or to reduce the time that they spend in it, are strengthened and enforced.

The Youth Justice Legal Centre found that children are not interviewed under caution outside a custody suite as often as they could be. Too often, children who are refused bail are not transferred to local authority accommodation, as is legally required; instead, they are kept in police cells. That must end. I also support the calls from the Just for Kids Law charity for an end to the overnight detention of children by police. Children are currently subject to the same time limit as adults. We cannot allow that to continue and it must change.

We must redouble our efforts to end the scourge of racism and misogyny that plagues our police forces and all aspects of society, and in doing so, we must ensure that our children are not exposed to unnecessary harm in police custody.

--- Later in debate ---

[Janet Daby]

I thank everybody who participated in this afternoon’s debate. All hon. Members, including the Government and Opposition spokespeople, spoke comprehensively. Many issues were touched on, but the thread that ran through everybody’s contribution was the need to safeguard the wellbeing of young people, children and minors.

I was particularly struck by the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Marsha De Cordova). She spoke about a young person who had been held in a custody cell for 23 hours and then discharged without being charged with any offence. Young people who are arrested by the police are sometimes not charged at all because no evidence is found that they have committed a crime.

I have worked closely with the police in previous jobs and have had brilliant professional relationships with police officers. I do not believe that anybody comes to work to do a bad job; I think everybody goes to work to do a good job, including the police, but people do not always have the tools or training they need to do that or the policies in place to enable that. There is room for change, which I will mention briefly in the time I have left.

I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for his contribution and comments, which were very meaningful. He mentioned the rights of children and that a 10-year-old child is still learning about what is right and what is wrong. Those children may not have the ability to say whether they need legal representation or not, but they absolutely need it.

The hon. Member for Leicester East (Claudia Webbe) spoke about young people needing to be protected and about preventing overnight detention, as well as being an advocate for safeguards to be in place for strip searches.

I welcome the Minister’s comments about what is happening in regard to strip searches. I would be interested to see the information she offered to my hon. Friend the Member for Battersea to clarify if it relates to all strip searches; it is an issue we need to be open and transparent about. I was interested to hear about the Government’s work to prevent the adultification of young people, as well as about the new design for custody suites.

The main point of the debate was about the detention of children and about appropriate adults. As I mentioned, successful child trials have been rolled out with the Met. I press the Minister and the Government to look at that trial to see whether it could be pushed forward across the Met and other police forces to ensure that children are not detained longer than necessary. I also press them to consider minimising that stay from 24 hours to 12, to look at the whole legal aid system, in order to ensure that all children can access legal aid, and to consider the opt-out system.

Thank you very much for your time, Mr Hollobone.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

Thank you for yours.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the rights of children while in police custody.

Foreign National Offender Removal Flights

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Wednesday 18th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Tom Pursglove]

I, too, think there is absolutely a place for rehabilitation within the criminal justice system. That is right and proper, and something I think we all broadly accept across the House, but what we are talking about here is serious criminality that is a scourge on our society and our communities, and causes real harm to real people and real families in the communities we represent. That is front and centre in the decisions we make, and of course we act in accordance with our legal responsibilities under the legislation as it stands. I have to say that I am hearing a sort of orchestra of suggestion that we are getting decisions wrong. We are getting decisions right on these cases. It is the process that is flawed and we are fixing it.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

May I encourage my hon. Friend to come to the Dispatch Box more often, because that was one of the best Government statements we have had in recent times? Residents in the Kettering constituency want foreign national offenders who have committed serious and violent offences to be deported and they will be appalled that, thanks to the intervention of lefty, woke human rights immigration lawyers, 107 of those who should have left our shores this morning remain on British soil. May I urge my hon. Friend to go further and faster, arrange more flights and attach conditions so that those who are deported are never allowed to re-enter the United Kingdom?

[Tom Pursglove]

It is fair to say that the status quo is thoroughly depressing. I know that, behind people in Corby and east Northamptonshire, Kettering people are very sound and they are right to raise this issue. [Interruption.] And of course people in Wellingborough, too. They are right to demand action. They are right to be impatient for the change we have promised. We will continue to work hard and constructively to deliver the reforms we are making. The issue about people returning in breach of a deportation order is one that I am conscious of. The changes we are making through the Act, particularly around illegal entry, should help us to clamp down on that.

Delivering Justice for Victims

Philip Hollobone Excerpts

Thursday 9th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

I thank the Minister, my parliamentary neighbour, for his statement, and I congratulate him on his work on the new victims Bill. Residents in Kettering want to see fewer victims of crime and more criminals in jail paying for their crimes. As well as the national effort to help victims, what work is he doing with the Northamptonshire police, fire and crime commissioner to get more localised support for victims in Kettering, Corby and Wellingborough?

[Tom Pursglove]

I am grateful to my constituency neighbour, who is ever innovative in his questions. It is fair to say that many leaflets have gone out over the years with both of us on them to campaign for more police officers out on the beat catching criminals and deterring crime, which is exactly what we are delivering and what people in Corby and east Northamptonshire want.

We have an excellent police, fire and crime commissioner in Northamptonshire, Stephen Mold. I would urge Stephen to take part in this consultation and to get across the experiences and issues of victims in Northamptonshire so they can be reflected in this work and so we can get the policy right for residents in Northamptonshire and across the country.